The Judges

January 9, 2014

Praetorius trains Ermalos and gets him to be a real fighter.

Rasardo, Praetorius

Verus meets a man named Gorvio, another child of Westcrown. Verus realizes he is a natural sorcerer. He seems to think that there was an outer-planar influence in generations back. 

Arael offers to make potions for us. 1/2 price. 

While hanging around Vizio's tavern, we overhear that there have been robberies in the area. We attempt to get details about them. They are apparently happening after dusk, but no one knows anything about the robbers staying anywhere after dark.

We start going around to the victims and asking questions. Two places have been robbed each of the last three nights. Ricken finds that the people he talked to were very angry about the "dirty tieflings" and how they used physical means. Verus finds out that the people that robbed the people he talked to were also tieflings, but wielded magic. We also get the impression that there used to be clean robberries once a week, where no one was seen and no one was hurt. Now it's very mean and brutal with groups of 5.

We all set up in a tenament house in the middle of all three of the remaining target buildings. We place two children of Westcrown in each of the three target houses. We then spend time waiting for something to happen. Right at dusk, ten tieflings appear in the courtyard with four dogs. One is named, "Dravano", takes a group to the building watched over by Ricken and Curator. The other five head towards the house Ermalos and Gorvio are in. 

Curator goes outside and starts a fight. Ricken enlarges him to make him scary big.

Praetorius jumps out the window and runs up behind a couple of mummies. He then wraps his chain around the mummy's neck, while the rest of that group heads right to Ermalos and Gorvio.

Verus runs out to help Praetorius and hears something slurping behind him in the darkness. He casts a light spell and sees a horror that will haunt him.

Then, one of the mummies charms Praetorius. Then they start arguing about how legitimate the other mummies claim at innocence is. Praetorious sluffs off the charm spell, after Verus comes up and casts Protection from Evil. Afterwards, he uses the chain currently wrapped around the mummies head to whip at the second mummy. In the process he just rips the head off of thee first mummy. 

A magic user moves to Praetorius and Verus and bursts fire all over them. Verus responds  by tapping into his arcane bloodline and firing 5 magic missiles at him, killing him.

While all this is going on, Curator is killing everything around him.

Verus's light goes out and a tentacle grabs onto him. Responding to his scream, everyone comes running.

Eventually the tentacle lets go of Verus and Praetorius cuts the mouth off. 

Curator manages to plunge his sword into the mass of the creature, but doesn't really do much. This creature seems to have lots of spell resistance and damage resistance. He hits him again, with similar effect.

A tentacle shoots out and latches on to Gaylen, but Praetorius steps up and cuts it off.

Gaylen realizes that this has a connection to the plane of shadow. This may lead us to a better understanding of what happens at night here.

Praetorius manages to crit against it and make it try to retreat. The resulting attacks of opportunity kills it.

We all hear multiple sounds of others of the same type of creatures and everyone else heads inside. We stay outside and search the tieflings. We find what look like smoky quartz on leather thongs. There seems to be something about these stones that tie them to the plane of shadows. Gaylen found on the cleric a small missive -

"Palaveen -- While we appreciate the work of your Bastards,  the council never intended this association to be anything more than that. We shouldn't need to remind you that if your tiring applications continue, we'll need to solve this problem  in a manner less concerned with your continued good health."

We find 10pp, 99gp, 390sp. 2 potions of cure light wounds, wand of cure light wounds (20 charges), potion of disguise self, +1 breastplate, +1 morningstar, masterwork breastplate, and a key on the cleric likely from a lockbox.

The people in the tenement praise us and feed us. They finally ask who to thank. We respond with "The Judges."

We decide to transfer the enchantment from the morningstar to Gaylen's rapier and gave the +1 breastplate to Praetorius. We find Cadmus, and apprentice enchanter ready to graduate, to try to transfer the enchantment. He points out the rapier isn't masterwork, so we go to the market to find one. Instead we find an Aldori dueling sword, masterwork. The merchant takes both of our masterwork breastplates in exchange, but it's just amazing we find one. The enchantment transfer cost Gaylen 250gp. The team fund had to kick in 6pp and Ricken let him borrow 5gp.

We also have Cadmus look at the quartz talismans. He says he hears "friend" being repeated and has no feeling of negativity from them.

Gaylen and Verus spend some time researching and listening to rumors. They find out that some injured tieflings went into the Bruised Eel dive bar seeking asylum from the night. 

Verus and Ricken look through Verus's history books to look for any indication of an opening of a portal. They found out that there was a Council of Theives at that time. They also find that in the civil war there was a big celebration at Delve Haven (Pathfinder's Society HQ). There seems to be a connection between those events, but they were unable to narrow it down.

We gain 2 fame points for the fight of the robbers and the fact that we gave the money back to the neighborhood. 

We decide to investigate the Bruised Eel, but after dark. We hang out in the keymaster's (Theldrat Meldorp) place until dark. We talk about the key of his, apparently it returned when it disappeared from our hands. We ask him about the key we found on the cleric. He apparently made that key and installed the lock on a strongbox that was 2'x1'x1'.

He feeds us and gives us drinks when he finds that we are the "The Judges". Verus leaves him 10sp when they leave, to cover the cost of the refreshments.

We approach the Bruised Eel the sense of fear grips us, but we shake it off. Verus checks the door for traps and rattles it with a cantrip. When he realized it's locked he says, "Little pig, little pig." Praetorius and Curator kicked in the door. There are 6 tieflings in there that panic when they see us calmly walk in. Praetorius picks up a mug and drinks it. Curator says, "It's Judgement Day."

They scatter. We attack.

They start running for stairs leading down, a couple are taken out by Curator as they run past. Curator continues to hunt them down through a series of tunnels. He avoids a couple traps and continues down the tunnel. Verus figures he doesn't have anything to offer and robs the bar's lockbox, for 4sp and 116cp.

Curator and Gaylen track down the last of the tieflings and slaughter him.

In a laboratory, we find 3 cure moderate potions, 6 cure light potions, and 250gp worth of components for potions. We package them up and take them with us.

Curator continues on and finds another door he breaks down. All of the loot from the robberies is in this room. We move on to the next large room. Curator tries to kick down the door and sets off a rune in the middle of the room. Fire rolls through the room and the door stands. Verus sees that the door is trapped with a Glyph of Warding. He manages to disable it and goes into an office. There is a lot of correspondence from someone named Palaveen to a council of some kind. Verus looks through the desk and finds a hidden scroll compartment. In which he finds:

 2 bless, 1 hold person, and 2 aid scrolls 

Masterwork Dagger

Masterwork Rapier

Jewelled shortsword, non-masterwork

Gems (Verus appraised:

        2x Pearls: 100gp each

        1x small brown: 75gp

        2x turquoise: 150gp each

        3x Agate: 200gp each

        2x Smoky Quartz: 25gp each

Money: 160pp, 1880gp, 460sp

And the deed. Place renamed: "Judged"

We decide to stay there and make plans for the reimbursement of the stolen goods, which gained us another fame point.

We also realize that there is a mummy still unaccounted for:

2200 xp

Jon +600xp

Drew +400xp

Bob +300xp

Brook +300xp

GM Notes

• We finished the first module of the Council of Thieves AP in this session.  I explained my changes to them to fit the group, which I had no problem doing and found fun!  Highlights of those changes include:
• I had the Children of Westcrown be led by Arael, the Lawful Good leader, rather than his lieutenant Janivan, who is Chaotic Good when the PCs met the group.  I did this change because two of the players are playing Lawful (Neutral) characters.
• I did not make the Hellknights the defacto bad guys because the scenerio needed bad guys.  Instead, I played up the bandits in the ruins.
• I did not catch, at all, until later, that the city walled off the northern area.  I wouldn't have done that even if I had seen it.  Instead, I made them more like the warrens of Tyr in Dark Sun in that people are living there but they don't feel safe due to the dangers of the town.  
• I did not have Arael captured and need to be rescued.  Indeed, he went on a few adventures with them with Janiven as well.  The group then decided that they wanted to be associated with the Children of Westcrown but not part of it and formed their own group.  
• I did introduce the NPCs needed for some of the later adventures as well as run the last part, going after a tiefling gang. I had introduced them earlier and so it worked out when they went after them this time. I did use a different series of maps, again because I had changed the areas.   
• We are now set to start the next module, which is one of the highest rated in the series.  I'm quite excited about it as it does involve a really fun play!  
• The group came up with the name The Judges for themselves and I think that was brilliant!  
• Really enjoyed this session.  I was surprised at how much fun I'm having running a module instead of doing my own thing.  Maybe it's the break I have needed?  
• I did have to set the xp straight.  I think PF was forced to come up with their own XP tables due to the OGL so the players will have to track that on their own.  
• They got a good amount of treasure, although I almost forgot to mention the magic items!  I think that worked out well.
• Yay!  I got bonus xp, unless that was for John.  Then, d'oh.   

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