Session 29: Regal Smuggling

Player Characters, Henchmen, Hirelings, & Animals:

Crowned Maniacs

Lexis King - Level 3 Human Thief, Neutral Evil

Arctus Thadonius - Level 2 Half-Elf Cleric/Magic User, Chaotic Neutral

Captain Deez - Level 1 Human Fighter, Lawful Evil

Butler, Jester, 3 King's Guard, Michelle Bolton (King)

8 Paradisan Marines (Deez)

Downtime - This session is sparked by what happens in Lexis King’s downtime.

In downtime, King replaces his butler and jester with some of the fanatics that flock to him. They’re unwise and enthralled due to the effects of the rod of splendor. He has no trouble getting them to agree to his odd requests of dressing up in a tuxedo/jester’s outfit and running errands around Halifax for him. They’ll be doing the purchasing of goods for him, so he doesn’t have to go out to deal with all the fans, who flock to him due to the rod of splendor’s effects, and later the assassin’s who will target him.

One day he notices a gnome watching him from the rooftops. Odd but whatever, someone watching him from their own roof, not the biggest deal, he’s already drawing the attention of everyone around him anyway. Then the next day, he makes eye contact with the same gnome on a different roof. Lexis realizes that this gnome must be following him.

Upon making eye contact, the gnome springs away balancing from roof to roof via tight ropes. Lexis climbs a building and sees the gnome escape into a trapdoor on a roof a few houses down. King can’t cross tight ropes, so he goes down to investigate the building with the trap door.

He meets a couple half-elves in the alleyway, and gets vibes that they are trying to trick him into a backstab, so he makes an excuse to get out of there and has one of the fanatics give them cigarettes to keep them busy.

He goes to the thieves guild to ask about the building, but everyone is trite. They refuse to talk with him. This is odd since they used to be very friendly to a fellow thief. His trainer is the only one who says anything of substance by suggesting he leave town and stay away from that building. Lexis is not sure what their problem is until he steps out into the street and finds a “dead or alive” wanted poster with his name on it blowing in the wind. He now has a hefty 25,000 gold bounty in Halifax!

He goes to the thieves guild to ask about that building, but everyone is trite and refuses to talk with him. This is odd since they used to be very friendly to a fellow thief. His trainer is the only one who says anything of substance by suggesting he leave town and stay away from that building. Lexis is not sure what their problem is until he steps out into the street and finds a “dead or alive” wanted poster with his name on it blowing in the wind. He now has a hefty 25,000 gold bounty in Halifax!

He sneaks his way back to his quarters and decides to lay low. He is awoken at night by somebody who invades his dreams and implies they are over 300 years old. They are named “Brook” and in search of somebody with royal blood. Brook tells Lexis to check his drawer for a way to contact him if Lexis is willing to help him out.

King finds a peculiar snail that has chameleon powers in the drawer, as well as a cryptic message and some scribbled notes. He can’t figure out how to get the transponder snail to work, so he asks his court wizard.

The court wizard, Jon Arbuckle, recognizes that they put one of those snails in his ankle monitor when they let him out of prison, but he doesn’t know what it is or what it does.

King sends his Court wizard to investigate the transponder snail. The wizard will be doing that in the background during this session since the player is at work IRL.

Enter Captain D, a marine veteran from Paradiso who comes along with 8 Paradisan marine men at arms. He’s a bit of a smuggler, who uses the authority of the marines to evade detection.

He came along with the warships who went to Gnometanamo bay. He responds to an otherwise failed henchman advertisement. Just like anyone else of average wisdom, he becomes instantly enamored by the king due to the rod of splendor. He craves to join his King’s guard. Men-at-arms have been hard to come by in Halifax recently, so the King is happy to have some marines join his party.

Captain D and the King find "The Mad Prophet" Acrtus and show him the cryptic note Brook left him in his night stand.

The party is stumped by the note, so the prophet buys the materials for an augury and asks his deity, “Would it be beneficial to protect this note from the cold?” The diety replies with a resounding “NO” This information will benefit the party greatly later!

At this time they do not understand the note. They plan to get revenge on the gnome acrobat that was spying on them, since he was probably the one who tipped BP off about the rod of splendor. The king is drawing a crowd so the mad prophet distracts them with a sermon and allows the rest of the party to continue alone. (player got sick IRL and had to go home so his character will leave and take the crowd elsewhere)

3/29/24 King climbs up the building and finds the squeaky trap door the acrobat entered through. It’s not locked so he takes the risk and opens the squeaky door.

He drops down into an office space, which has wanted posters pinned to the wall, including his. He exits this room and makes his way down the stairs, skipping the second floor so he can get to the front door and let Captain D in with the rest of the marines.

The marines begin clearing the first floor, and King goes to the second floor in search of the acrobat.

Lexis doesn’t find the acrobat, but he does find an assassin. He rolls a good reaction and the assassin speaks back with him in thieves cant. King finds out that this building is the headquarters of an assassin’s guild. Remembering that he has a bounty, and that this guy is an assassin, King decides to kill him before he has a chance to try and collect the bounty. Lexis manages to kill the gnome assassin with ease, and loots a poisoned scabbard and dagger off his body. Lexis then heads downstairs to join with the fighters who have discovered a door leading into the basement. The Party go down and realize this is a hidden dungeon, not just a normal basement.

The first door they find is locked. King is able to pick the lock, and the party enters a room with draconic faces carved into the wall. Captain D grabs a corroded mace in the corner, he picks it up and the head falls off, as if the mace had been burned by acid, or sat in salt water for a decade.

They continue through a long hallway as King checks for traps. Lexis does discovering a spear trap. There are holes about chest height on the wall, so he goes prone to crawl underneath the spears. They activate, but shoot out above him harmlessly.

The rest of the party follows his lead, ducking under the spear holes. They then tap through another long tunnel and come to a bend. King searches for traps, but does not see the gelatinous cube shaft above them.

They continue down this tunnel to a dead end but trip a wire and hear the sound of a gelatinous cube plop down from behind them. The King recognizes the sound and they prepare thrown weapons to hit the cube.

As the cube becomes visible, it begins to close in on them. The Crowned Maniacs are able to finish it off before the gelatinous cube reaches them. In the leftover pile of goo, they find two potions, (fiery burning, and fumbling) and a few spare daggers. They are lucky they don’t try to smell the potions at this time!

They go back past the cube tunnel and come to an iron door with a handwheel. It looks like the entrance to a submarine. They crank it open into a hexagon shaped room with a single fishman and 10 fishwomen.

The fish people get 4 turns of surprise, yikes! The male runs up a ladder and pulls a lever, causing water to start filling the room. The women want privacy so they spend their turns of surprise grappling the party to throw them out of the room, which they are able to accomplish in the 4 turns of surprise, despite taking some “fending off” hits by the players with their weapons.

After getting dumped in the hallway, the party tries to muscle the door back open, but it doesn’t work out because the room is filling with water. Now with the water pressure is against the door, they decide to leave the fish people’s lair spiked closed. They leave to discover a staircase going downwards.

They go downstairs and find that this level of the dungeon is lit up by torches on sconces, and the floor consists of metal grates. They put out their own torches since this level is already lit for them to save torches.

The Party open a room but find it’s empty, so they go down the hall and find a stuck door. Captain D tries to open it, but finds that he has some sort of magical disadvantage. He has to roll twice to open it. Which he does successfully. But the handle on this door has a hidden razor blade which cuts his hand for 1 damage as he opens it.

The party meets Banana Joe in this room. He is an alchemist who is using a pure water spring in this room to make potions. Banana Joe has a ghostly apparition for a shadow, which seems to slightly curse everyone but him.

The assassin’s guild lets him use this spring because the potions he makes are useful to them. King rolls a good reaction, so Banana Joe thinks they are associated with the guild, despite their nervous stammering. He teases about how they let anyone join the assassin’s guild after that acrobat joined, but does take a liking to the party.

The party asks about the acrobat, and Banana Joe has nothing but bad things to say about him. He gets the impression that the party is here to kill the acrobat, which would be a “dirty hit” since he’s a part of the guild, but banana Joe is personally okay with that. They mutually agree to not speak of their interaction.

Banana Joe offers them an oil of etherealness or potion of healing, if they have coin or potions to trade. The party shows him the two potions they found in the gelatinous cube. He identifies the potion of fiery burning as such, and warns that even opening that bottle could spell catastrophe. This is because the potion will mix with the air and instantly ignite, causing massive fire damage (5d6) to everyone around it.

He misidentifies their potion of fumbling, as a potion of protect from demons. The party wants a healing potion since the mad prophet is busy with the fanatics outside, so they trade the fiery burning potion for a healing potion and leave Banana Joe to his alchemy. This party is evil so they consider killing Banana Joe, but they wager Banana Joe is more useful alive than dead.

They come to a long room with a single exit on the other side. King checks it for traps and discovers spear holes on the ceiling above the door. He fails to disarm them, so he bravely chooses to bust through the door and tank the spear damage.

He makes a save for half damage and takes 4 total damage from the spears. He opens the door, finding two manes (previously encountered demons only hit by +1 magical weaponry) staring back at him!

The party does not have any magical weaponry, so they decide to flee. King drinks the potion of fumbling, since he think’s it’s a potion of protect from demons. Then the party runs away only taking a few scratches from the slow moving manes.

There’s a 50% chance for King to drop what he’s holding every round for 12 rounds after drinking the potion of fumbling, somehow he passes every secret fumble roll and never figures out he drank a potion of fumbling. The chance of no fumbles occurring in 12 rolls is 1/4096…

Since the Manes are guarding the only apparent path on this floor, the party retreats back to clear out floor 1.

They go down a hallway they passed up earlier to find that it splits into two parallel passages. One labeled “Cold” and one labeled “Hot.” They think back to the augury of the mad prophet, and that “protecting the note from cold would not be helpful”, so they lather up in yeti oil and choose the cold path.

This ends up saving them from a potential party wipe from a fire trap on the hot side!

They are sprayed with icy cold water along this path. The yeti oil protects them from cold damage, and a message appears on the note that was not visible until now.

The note reveals that they have been tracked by the transponder snail in Arbuckle’s ankle monitor. It explains how they can put the transponder to sleep with cold. They can use a scroll written on the back of the note to detach the ankle monitor from Arbuckle.

King then checks the divide for traps. He is able to see that the “hot” side of this split passage is a fire trap, but could be used to make a controlled flame, if you know that the trap is there.

They continue down the hall to find a door, which Captain D busts through. They find a room with a spike pit and a ring of large stones like stone henge.

The party search the stone henge and find a 10 foot pool of water in the middle. All of the sudden, what appears as a man covered in needles rises up out of the water and slings a sword onto his back. He then begins to T-pose as needles start protruding from his body, as if he’s about to launch them.

The party declares actions. Everyone including hirelings takes cover behind the large stones of the stone henge, except for Captain Deez. He bravely charges in and hacks away at the Needleman. His first chop lobs off the head of the Needleman, but it appears to be wooden, like a tree of some sort.

This does not kill it. Instead the spiky figure reacts by firing a barrage of needles at him. A couple of the needles sneak their way into Deez flesh, past the chinks in his armor. Captain D responds by chopping horizontally, slicing the needle man in half at the torso, and cracking through the legs separating them.

The sword on the back of the Needleman falls into the pool of water. The marines take the remaining chunks of the needle man and pin them to the ground with spears just in case the creature is not totally dead.

King is the only one in swimmable armor, so he ties a rope to himself. He hands the end of the rope off to the King's Guard to pull him up if he runs into trouble.

King dives into the pool and sees the sword resting on top of a treasure chest. He is running out of air after searching, so he decides to grab the sword and come back up for air before getting the chest.

Once he grabs hold of the sword, King finds he can now breathe water as if it was air! He grabs the chest and gives the signal for his men to help pull him up with the loot. They find 100 platinum and a gem in the chest.

The party continue down for one last room. They bust their way in, only to be surprised by a group of orcs for 4 turns! It’s a bloodbath, the orcs kill half of the marines and a king’s guard by the time the party even realizes what is happening.

The party starts to fight back and King goes in for an overbear, but slips and goes too low, allowing an orc to pound him on the back of the head for 8 damage. Ouch! Captain D attacks and then is forced to sip a healing potion.

King gets a Pete Dune style finger lock grapple on an orc, which allows a hireling to finish him off with a stab from the flank. The party begins to turn the tide at this point.

The orcs get some licks in but ultimately are slain by the party. They find life jackets, 48 electrum, 1000 copper, 6 gems, and a piece of jewelry. They leave the dungeon to heal up.

Lexis King feels content with his revenge since they did kill an assassin. It turns out the gnome acrobat may have been tracking him because of his bounty, and may not be the one who actually got him the bounty.

Lexis decides to work on the gems and jewelry before selling them. He has his butler buyout a furnace so he can craft his signet in platinum. His royalty arguably comes into question at this point, when he begs Captain D for a loan of 219 gold to afford this platinum signet, but the enamored fighter gives the gold willingly and has enough left over to train to be a level 2 fighter while Lexis works on his signet.

Lexis tries to cloak himself on the way to the furnace, but still attracts 10 fanatics (plus one assassin pretending to be a fanatic.) Luckily one of the true fanatics notices the assassin hiding in the crowd as he went to poison his dagger for the hit.

Noticing his intentions, the Fanatics attack the assassin and clobber him into the ground, smashing his skull on the pavement like an afterschool fight in Hazelwood. Lexis sneaks off during the brawl, and makes it to the furnace his butler bought out to craft his signet in peace.

Lexis starts to realize he won’t last very long in Halifax with daily assassination attempts. He makes a plan with Captain D to smuggle him out of the city. He hides in the secret smuggling compartment of Captain D’s ship. (Standard for all Paradisan Marine Ships)

Halifax customs checks alignment of everyone before letting them in or out of Halifax. Since evil is detected, they do search the boat. Luckily they do not find Lexis hiding under the floorboards of the ship.

They are able to sail out of Halifax without conflict. They find a dock on the side of Gnoma Scotia facing the Barbarian lands several hours away from the capital. Lexis King scouts it out with is guard to find a village a few hours inland from the dock. He let’s Captain D and the crew know he is going to hide out in this village. Captain D heads back to Halifax to retrieve the court wizard, mad prophet, and perhaps Lexis’s horse, if they’re feeling risky.

Treasure & XP:

Treasure:

Poison Scabbards and Dagger 100 XP

Longsword +1 of Water Breathing – 800 XP

100 Platinum – 500 GP, 500 XP

10 Gems – 210 GP, 210 XP

48 Electrum – 96 GP, 96 XP

Wrought Platinum Necklace – 2500 GP, 2500 XP

XP rewards:

Assassin slain on floor two - 79 XP

Assassin slain by Fanatics - 76 XP

Gelatinous Cube - 133 XP

Needleman - 136 XP

8 orcs - 121 XP

4756 XP total, split 2 ways

Rankings:

Captain D: E – Bravely fought the Needleman by himself when everyone else took cover, never ran from a fight.

"The Mad Prophet": E –Saved the party from falling into a fire trap by casting a useful augury which sent them in the right direction. Unintentionally fulfilled the chaotic part of his alignment by leaving early.

Lexis King: E - broke into the assassin’s guild by climbing walls and picking a lock in the basement, bravely tanked the spear trap he couldn’t disarm, detected and evaded other deadly traps. Would have gotten an P for begging for money to make the signet (not very kingly), but I checked the DMG, and rating is based on class and alignment, not adherence to backstory, so he gets a pass this time!