Decaying Lands 37: A Princely Request

PCs Present & Played:

Barthelm Schade, Specialist (James)

Edmond Renault, Fighter (Skarne)

Tenkos, Cleric [plague doctor kit] (Sugarplum)
Viggo Pyreborn, ?? (Peanut Butter)

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Last time the party made a new friend (Edmond!), traveled through Prince Fabian's domain a bit enjoying its particular culinary delights, and arrived at the prince's manor.

Barthelm was able to make this session so we retconned some travel chat of him inquiring more into Edmond's past. Edmond expanded on his tale, describing how he rescued Prince Florent's general from an overextended expedition into Ghallia-That-Fell. When pressed with more details he only offered up that "The Plaguelands are dangerous."

Sidebar: This session was mostly talking, especially a lot of talking from Prince Fabian. I felt weird to be talking so much (this is the party's show) but then Peanut Butter reminded me not to apologize so damn much. Also meeting with a major player NPC who is also one PC's patron and rival to another PC's former patron... probably worth having a lengthy conversation?

Description: A walled city cut into halves by a mostly east-west road. Farms ring the outside and a third leg breaks south.
City of Lenticot, capital city of Prince Fabian. Prince's manor circled at #1, Ribald Moose at #2.

Their escort took them straight to Prince Fabian's manor in the center of the city. Barthelm still had enough time to request a smithy recommendation from the guard captain riding with them. He was specifically looking to replenish their supply of bear traps after losing two in Viggo's melty burny after-death. Initially offended that Barthelm might be thinking of raiding the Prince's hunting lands, he gave an appreciative head nod when Barthelm clarified that their prey was typically two-legged rather than four-legged and promised to help after their meeting.

Description: Vertical rectangle with a dark blue background. Ropes run diagonally with knots where they cross.
Flag of the Unified Principalities of Ghallia. The blue is for the seas and rivers that Ghallians are famous for traversing and the ropes represent the bond between various princes. A single flag can be joined on any side with another of the same when princes muster their resources together for a common purpose.

Sidebar: My players asked first what Prince Fabian's flag was (and gave suggestions) and then what the flag of Ghallia would be. This is what I came up with. The tiling aspect of the flag is probably cheesy but I like it. They also asked for Fabian's sigil but my first attempt sucked so that's going to have to wait.

Prince Fabian's flag flew above the manor, with the Flag of the Unified Principalities of Ghallia on one side and their sigil on the reverse. The Prince was in residence, waiting.

The furnishings in the manor were luxurious without being ostentatious. Their wagon was secured and they were quickly ushered through a set of double doors, announced as "Tenkos, faceless doctor in the service of our prince and his companions." The room was a small side eating chamber, not the main dining hall, and Prince Fabian was seated with an assortment of supper options. They rose, greeted the party, and invited them all to sit and relax.

Tenkos opened up about their experience in Stilton. Prince Fabian confessed that they hadn't had a chance to fully examine the latest information but very much appreciated all of Tenkos' prior missives. They began to pick and pull snippets from the party's previous adventures, calling out the members present by name and exploit. Prince Fabian expressed their extreme appreciation for Tenkos and his continued loyalty, truly a faceless doctor dedicated to the cause of Ghallia.

The only one who the Prince did not recognize was Edmond, but they did recognize the tattooed insignia of Prince Florent on the soldier's wrist. They also noted the manacles on his wrist with an arched eyebrow. Edmond shared with Prince Fabian his recent stay in Prince Florent's jail after a highly unusual, and overextended, foray into Ghallia-That-Fell. The Prince's other eyebrow shot up and they looked from Edmond to Tenkos and back again.

Prince Fabian immediately summoned their majordomo, Antens, as well as Captains Brice Robineau and Pascal Lajoie. They quickly retasked the captains to reallocate appropriate assets into Prince Florent's lands to acquire further evidence of their cousin's activities during Edmond's reported forays into Ghallia-That-Fell.

The Prince then presented a problem of their own that involved the abandoned plaguelands across the river. Prince Fabian's niece, Noëlle, had fallen ill and none of the faceless can do anything to help her. She will die. She is not only the Prince's niece but also their heir. This cannot be.

Prince Fabian explained that though none of the faceless have been able to help they have been able to uncover some whispers and fragments of information referring to a wizard who lived in Ghallia prior to the Fall who had dabbled in rituals of resurrection. Prince Fabian's resources were not able to uncover an exact location but they believe the possible laboratory location to be deep into the plaguelands. Prince Fabian stressed that they sought only volunteers and were not in any way commanding Tenkos to undertake this journey.

Edmond got up and walked out, disgusted at the thought of another prince suggesting further forays deep into Ghallia-That-Fell. The doorman on the way out suggested that he wait for his friends at the Ribald Moose and enthusiastically recommended that he "ask for Frances."

Tenkos wanted a private audience, so Majordomo Antens took Barthelm and Viggo into the next room. Tenkos explained about how his magic brought Viggo back from the dead and, although Tenkos isn't exactly sure how yet, perhaps he could help Noëlle. The Prince again expressed their gratitude for their loyal servant, appreciative of any and all assistance. They also hoped that Tenkos would be able to convince his friends to help if he was indeed interested in volunteering.

After Tenkos rejoined Barthelm and Viggo they got some more information from Majordomo Antens. The majordomo was not thrilled with Prince Fabian's plan but explained that the prince would be be willing to offer aid of material and influential significance in preparation for an expedition and substantial monetary recompense if they returned with the ritual. If they returned with a ritual and it worked?... Even more so.

Tenkos, Barthelm, and Viggo departed Prince Fabian's manor after Barthelm found out where Edmond went (with the same elbowed recommendation for the "horny moose" and to "ask for Frances"). After they all echoed Edmond's disappointment that it was Frances' night off, they discussed the options before them. The party's latest addition gave an impassioned speech, paraphrased:

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I spent my whole life dedicating myself to the leadership of this land and now in short order have seen two princes suggest lunacy. The concern isn't the motive, the concern is the repercussions. A leader's role is to make the call that is for the good of the nation, if that is to lose a loved one that is what must be done.  "If Fabian wants us to go into the Plaguelands, how do you know that won't be the root of the downfall of Ghallia?"

----

Barthelm told Edmond that there's no way to know whether there will be more trouble staying or going, but to know that if if did go with them they would have his back.

Sidebar: Yeah I made that joke in my head but didn't want to disrupt the flow. Then one of them made it out loud. Not my fault.

"Are you so hungry for coin you would risk an entire nation?" - Edmond

"It's not the coin, it's that I WOULD risk an entire nation to help my friends." - Barthelm

Edmond contemplated staying in the Ribald Moose as a bouncer but realized that he would regret not going with them, probably for the rest of his life. Barthelm felt somewhat guilty that Edmond acquiesced to his argument, but they downed their Meisterbrau as comrades and began to discuss preparations for the expedition.

Sidebar: Apparently Meisterbrau is a real, discontinued, beer that one of my player's fathers used to drink. It is also apparently TERRIBLE.

Sidesidebar: This has opened the door for potentially the second EVER intentional downtime of this campaign as they prepare for travel. First downtime was maybe two weeks? Maybe third downtime, Jewel advocated for a week off to train Buddy to level 1 in a class I suppose. 37 sessions over 2ish years...

Endbar: These summaries take me too long to write for how effective they probably are. Part of that is a predilection to distraction but part of that is that they may not serve much purpose. Even as a player / me reference they seem lacking. Not sure what to do though.

Decaying Lands 36: Gastrotourism

PCs Present & Played:

Claus Drexol, Magic-User (Vegas)

  Phillip Bachman, linklad
  Lucien Courtet, infantryman
Edmond Renault, Fighter (Skarne)

Tenkos, Cleric [plague doctor kit] (Sugarplum)

---

Last time the party took a huge chest of silver and half of the library from Cooper Thornhill's basement of horrors, told everyone about what happened, and finally made it back to Tenkos' patron's domain. Oh and Viggo is not dead but not the same, either. Edmond joined the party! They caught up to him when they rode their wagon into Meilleur, the first town within Prince Fabian's domain, after two days of breakneck travel. Fabian is Tenkos' patron prince so it was a mad dash to get from Stilton to somewhere a little friendlier. They arrived in town right after another traveler who looked even more haggard than they were. They went straight to the nicest inn they could see, The Maiden & Chariot, and invited their new friend along. The military insignia on Edmond's right hand as he shook Tenkos' indicated membership Prince Florent's military. He looked beaten and road-weary, with a thick cloak and heavy iron bracers around his wrists. He was certainly grateful for the hospitality.

Perhaps if I use gimp more I will not hate it so much and simple things like this will not take me FOREVER.

Claus noticed all this but was more focused on the part where Edmond addressed TENKOS before CLAUS. SO RUDE. This was only underscored when they actually entered the the inn and the host, Mara, directly addressed Tenkos and ignored everyone else. She showed him great deference as she guided them to a choice spot near the fire and explained what culinary delights awaited them in this fine establishment.
For breakfast, roasted pheasant stuffed with its own deviled eggs and hot spiced cider (Edmond detected a hint of cardamom and felt warm and whole for the first time in DAYS). Supper would be smoked lamb, fat charred on the outside but stuffed throughout with morsels of garlic. I was going to get into breakfast after they had woken up the next day but aaaaaah it was fresh crawdads from the river. With luxurious butter sauce, creamed up. Dammit. Sidebar: I was told at one point that I should consider starting a food description ASMR channel. Perhaps I have found my true motivation in RPGs! Through all this food description Tenkos and Claus shared their story about what had happened in Stilton. Edmond confessed that he had been imprisoned in Prince Florent's stronghold wrongfully and, although he had not seen the prince involved himself, suspected some kind of deviation or corruption in the chain of leadership. He thinks it may have been related to his revelation that Prince Florent's soldiers were making possibly unsanctioned forays into Ghallia-That-Fell for purposes other than keeping the riverbanks clear. He managed to escape but kept the manacles around his wrists and the heavy chain links around his chest as a reminder. Sharing is bonding and they spent the next day resting and cleaning up from their travels, making their way deeper into Prince Fabian's domain and arriving at the town of Pastow. Edmond wanted to give something back to his new friends after their generosity in Meilleur so went looking for some general labor he could perform to earn some scratch. He quickly assessed the other patrons at the Drunken Fool, calling out one patron who was on the edge belligerence and another who was concealing a knife. The bartender hired Edmond on the spot for the evening! Edmond got the drunk to excuse himself, passing along a flask of cider and some whispered advice that, "The secret is a bit of cardamom." The man hiding a knife turned out to be a coward, and overall Edmond was able to easily manage the room and prevented any trouble from breaking out. Ransa Refont, propriertor of the Drunken Fool, was so appreciative that he paid more than the general rate (10sp), gave a bonus on top of it (another 10sp), and told Edmond that he was welcome any time he was in town. Sidebar: Pastow was about to be an eyeblink. This whole sequence all came off a "Hey is there anything else you want to do here before you travel on?" prompt. Hell of an opening play from Edmond! An entertaining sidebar and a friendly contact to boot. Tenkos, inspired, went about searching for some cardamom to buy for his new friend. "Isn't Cardamom from India?!" Turns out in real life, yes, yes it is, which is good enough for our "use real world geography as a very loose model because games are hard" campaign world. Luckily Tenkos' prince encourages living well so he was able to scrounge some up (at a not insignificant cost) and gifted the spice to Edmond. Now well seasoned, the group finally traveled on to Lenticot, Fabian's manor town near their fortress. I asked the party to be on the same page with what they want to tell Prince Fabian, figured travel time was a opportunity. Claus asked if there was anything they wanted to get out of Prince Fabian and nope, not really. Tenkos just wanted to execute his duty to his sworn prince! Claus was down to tell them in detail about all the stuff they found out in Ghallia with an eye towards portraying themselves as the heroes! Probably close enough, this time. Edmond wanted to try and get a private audience to discuss his concerns about Prince Florent and potentially illicit forays into Ghallia-That-Fell. Tenkos just wanted to go home for a bit and fill in prince. They entered the city proper and the guards at the gate immediately recognized Tenkos, first as one of the faceless and then called out by name. They dispatched a runner to inform Prince Fabian while two other guards began to escort them through the city toward Fabian's manor. In the distance they could see the prince's stronghold on the banks of the River of Thorns.

Decaying Lands 35: Stilton Escape

PCs Present & Played:

Claus Drexol, Magic-User (Vegas)

  Phillip Bachman, linklad
  Lucien Courtet, infantryman

Tenkos, Cleric [plague doctor kit] (Sugarplum)
Viggo Pyreborn, ?? (Peanut Butter)

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Last time the party reunited with Barthelm, killed all of the guards of Stilton, pulled down the cow cult arch, and lit Cooper Thornhill's cheese barn on fire.

Claus was lost in his books and fell asleep reading and missed all the craziness of the last session. Claus and Tenkos were discussing what to do in the basement library when they heard a horrific wrenching scream come from the central room of the basement. They tried to ignore it and keep talking but the sustained scream turned into ragged breathing. Finally Tenkos cautiously poked his head around the door and saw...

Viggo! Kind of. He was naked and charred and dazed and somehow still alive. The two awful cuts that ended his life were scarred over, sloppily, like a bad weld. His flesh was charred and had chunks of his chainmail melted into it. It was around this time that they noticed that the two bear traps Viggo usually carried had been melted and destroyed by the blackfire as well. It was a tough moment.

"Check to make sure he's not an undead monstrosity!" - Claus

"They got me and everything went black and then I felt fire in my soul, fire like I never felt before. Light, beautiful, burning light. And then you!" - Viggo

Claus hypothesized that Viggo could be some kind of human phoenix! Viggo didn't remember any of his family members dying and coming back. He remembered everything up until getting chopped down and standing back up again, somehow alive. Claus tested him with his iron-tipped cane (with no reaction) after Viggo began picking out the chainmail chunks and hurling them away with disgust.

Viggo was still naked which didn't bother him much but did seem to perturb his comrades. He acquiesced, grabbing a pair of trousers and boots from Thornhill's pile of discarded clothes and some leather armor from one of the dead guards. He considered taking a sword or shield but found that he no longer had any desire to use those kinds of weapons. His magic hunger boots survived the blackfire, so he fashioned a sack from old clothes and stuff them in along with his melted pile of silver.

Their friend somehow returned (though Claus was still suspicious), they turned their attention to the problem of getting out of the burning barn with all of Cooper's silver. Their first idea was to make more sacks from clothes, stuff them half full of silver pieces, and then pile body parts on top. They would then claim that they needed to study the parts for... plague science reasons? Then they thought they could just stuff a dead body full of silver! Then they mostly abandoned this line of thought.

Claus found a magic scroll in the library! He won't know what it's for until he takes the time to cast read magic on it but he tucked it safely away.

Discussion about what to do immediately, in Stilton, turned into a discussion about longer term goals. Tenkos wanted to go farther south into Ghallia and report in person to his prince, Fabian, with an eventual goal to head into Ghallia-That-Fell.

"If there was some way we could prove there were mutant cows down here... let's rebuild the arch!" - Claus

They could tell the fire upstairs was burning out. Claus dragged a bookshelf across the library entrance in an attempt to hide the rest of the books and they got ready to go up.

Tenkos went full on faceless (plague) doctor as soon as they got topside, mask and everything. He was trying to fake a minor outbreak and get everyone to go back to their homes. He had told the rest of the party to fashion makeshift facemasks (like bandanas) to help sell it, and it was kind of working, but there was also a building sense of panic. On top of the general fear of plague outbreak on this side of the river there was a sense of confusion and concern over the fact that Thornhill's daughter, who was supposed to be dead 9 months ago, looked very recently deceased.

Tenkos saw the local priest approaching in the crowd and called out to her. Auntie Mildred helped to corral everyone and send them back to their homes until the local prince's own faceless doctors could arrive. She also helped to emphasis that no one should bother the poor Thornhills and picked a messenger to dispatch to Prince Florent.

Sidebar: Since the priests are Father and Mother in stuffy oppressive Teutonia I threw out off the cuff that maybe priests in Ghallia are Auntie and Uncle. It was well received enough to keep it.

Mildred offered to take the party over to the church and house them while they waited for Florent's men since the inn was off limits. Claus' hirelings stayed behind at the barn, ostensibly to guard it but really to start loading as many books from the library as possible into the party's wagon. They had to dump almost all of their massive food stocks but it was a good trade in their eyes. (Mine too, they got a fair amount of XP and potential library value off those books).

Once they got to the church with Auntie Mildred they started laying it all out for her, what really happened. Tenkos was a little reticent at first until the Auntie started talking about her own research into the barn. She was the one who originally sold Thornhill the barn; for some reason the church owned the dilapidated building. Thornhill's sudden success and familial changes prompted her to investigate more and it seems like the church may have stamped out some kind of pagan cult 400-500 years ago. Claus asked if the church had many such seemingly abandoned properties on its books and Auntie Mildred got real quiet and just stared into the distance as the possibilities dawned on her. Horrifying realizations all done for the evening, everyone made to retire.

Except the party of course! Tenkos left a note with 100 sp explaining that he wasn't really here to investigate and that Prince Florent's people would be here soon enough. Claus' hirelings were done loading up the wagon by now and had swung it round to the church. They attempted to sneak their way out but woke up their host. Auntie Mildred sleepily caught them and tried to call after them but everyone just hopped into the wagon and sped off!

The passed near to Dourdain and felt the pull of longing and possibility from their dreams stronger than ever. "Hey let's stop and check it out JUST KIDDING."

They continue on through the night, not resting until the came to the very edge of Prince Florent's domain along the Great Cheeseway. They stopped in the town of Sortie just long enough to rest the horses and give everyone a chance to sleep. Tenkos did take the opportunity to send letters to the neighboring principalities describing what had gone on in Stilton under Prince Florent's nose as a way to shame the rival to Tenkos' own Prince Fabian. They also enjoyed the local Sortie specialties, spiced dried peas and fig pies!

Sidebar: donjon is the BEST.

They rode on as soon as they thought the horses could take it, finally crossing over into Prince Fabian's lands at the town of Mellur. End of session.

Sidebar: Given how Viggo's corpse got terribly melted by blackfire I approached Peanut Butter with an option to test out a class I've been marinating on for a very long time. He was very enthusiastic about the inspiration and possibilities and added that he'd like to play it close to the chest. A slow reveal sounds awesome to me, so it'll be cool to see how he shows his hand.

Sidebar: From an XP perspective the party killed it this session! 2k+ each, enough to immediately level Viggo Pyreborn to level 2. The pickings before that had been pretty slim, with only 3 out of the last TEN sessions netting more than 100 XP per PC. Then 11 sessions ago we had another 2k+ haul (11k total though, more PCs then), so it really seems like feast or famine. I wonder if this is typical for gold for XP games? Or is this partially because of my hands off approach towards refereeing and a generally slow pace?