Our bizarre fifth session, 7 August 2011:
Giovanni: Rast the Amazing Spellcaster
Beau: Aldan the Righteous Deliverer
Eric: Balto the Warrior-Scholar
Dave: Gurgrock the Assassin
Hector: Seppo the Protagonist
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After a Quiet Month, A Ship
Now February, it has been a month since the players all rallied around Rast on Evil Island in the harbor of their backwater port town, where he finished the two-part Spell of Control which abjured the countless ghosts and spirits conjured by the late Magister Hienimi back to the nether word from which they came. Aldan had been busying himself with helping rebuild the houses burnt down in the struggle. Balto and Rast had been enjoying the Magister's house in his absence, making a home of it and studying from his library. I'd like to think that Gurgrock and his old mate Seppo made sure their late friend Nikko's mother was comfortable waiting for her son to come home.
And then, drinking at the Old Oak Inn, the players joined the crowd rushing to the docks at the announcement of a ship coming in. It has been a long and rainy winter, and the lumber, hides, and other trade goods have been languishing in the harbor waiting for a merchant ship to sail this far. Indeed, a merchant ship from the week-distant port city of Gar approached the port to the glee of the townsfolk.
Alcohol flowed freely and the sailors of the visiting one-masted ship hit the docks as the women hoped for more exciting lives on foreign shores, and the men hoped to win some honest work and maybe word from the outside world.
Mayhem on the Docks
Indeed, one of the towns' ladies, waiting on the dock for her long-at-sea lover, recognized Aldan, as always in his resplendent and gleaming glory, just as her lover emerged from a week at sea and longer from his lover's embrace. Jealousy ensued, as it does, and as the cuckolded man pushed through the dock to the Paladin now uncomfortably embracing his beloved, he was tripped by a quick-thinking Seppo (avoiding real labor) and was pitched into the embrace. A struggle, and the two original lovers were over the edge and into the drink, along with an unfortunate mother and child.
Meanwhile, Balto and Gurgrock infiltrated the ship by their respective means of acrobatic ropework and fast-talking aided by light disguise work and an accent cultivated from working the docks and servicing Gar ships, and learned that the person in charge was not the captain, but a mysterious and learned man named Hans who chartered the vessel, not for trade but for his personal reasons to visit this backwater.
Gurgrock, in desperation, clocked out a young seaman stealing food from the hold who'd once been the brother of the victim of the half-orc's teenage abuses a decade and a half ago in the streets of this very town, and now threatened to call him out.
Back on the docks with innocents unable to tread water, Gorbo the Apprentice (Rast's newest minion), now bedecked in the Trell-Beast's hide, tasted heroism by leaping into the water and swimming, as a wild animal might, and rescuing the child.
Two of the jealous man's mates rushed Aldan, who, impelled by the bloodthirsty Back Talker sword, in an incredible swing cleaved them in two, sating the blade but ensuring a messy outcome. Aldan risked further spiritual contamination as a price to pay for jumping in after his babe-in-arms, hoping that the bilge-stained water would be pure enough to cleanse his transgressions.
He, predictably, sank like a stone.
By the time the adventurers were all safe and sound and the belligerents were sated or defeated, Rast too was soaking wet from a pitch in the drink, Gurgrock snagged a sailor with a poisoned dagger in the fray, and the mysterious Hans, observed only briefly as a portly, well-dressed aristocratic type, had escaped the chaos and
absconded into the town.
The Antagonizing of the "Merchant" Hans
Wisely, the players surmised Hans might be looking for the Magister Hienimi, so they retreated to the House and waited.
Before long, four townsman approached and passed word that Hans, now in the Old Oak Inn, requested a meeting. They said to tell Hans to come back tomorrow. They promptly followed the men back to town to the Inn, observed the finely-attired Hans and two hired valets at a crooked table (along with the lad now twice abused by Gurgrock's crueler impulses), and, in true style, had the innkeeper drug Hans' drink. The mysterious man passed out halfway up the stairs and they proceeded to steal his chest of clothes, rob him blind, step on his fingers; later bringing out the unnoticed Seppo to put on his innocent look and garner sympathy from the woozy and rotund traveler, woozy from his run-in with petty thieves in this dangerous backwater.
The next morning at the House as planned, Hans squeezed to discomfort by overnight-tailored suits cut a size too small, met with Rast, acting as if he were the magistrate all along. Hans was here for the Crystal (the one which Gurgrock, Foliage, and Rast all realized saps one's very life energy away as it boosts one's mystic potential), and ready to pay well for it. The deal: mundane for arcane. Hans' "master", whom he did not describe, was very interested in the Crystal's power when combined with other artifacts of lore. The Master has been watching all along, and has eyes in many places. A bag of gold emerged from Hans' coat (it had not been observed by the band of thieves beforehand) and dropped onto the table. Rast (er, "the Magister") tantalized with the Crystal as Hans waited patiently.
Predictably in retrospect, the players, having learned that Hans was an adept of divination and other magics and thus clearly a threat, decided to ambush him while in the house. Surely a diviner would not have seen such coming. One hired hand ran for the kitchen, pursued by Gorbo, egged on and uncharacteristically animalistic under the Trell-Beast's impulses, while the other hired hand hit the ground fast from a handful of marbles and a crossbow bolt from Seppo to the back. As Balto, as is his way, burst from the outside through a window at Hans, the target, in that irritating way that wizards, good, evil or neutral, are known to do, snapped his fingers and disappeared. This would not be the last of Hans.
Passage to the Wider World
Fortunately, Aldan had made arrangements with the ship's captain, no fan of Hans or of this sudden chartering which left him will little in the way of trade goods, and had booked passage on it for all the players, to return to the city of Gar forthwith, as hired hands to replace the very hands Aldan had cut down in his fury.
That very night, with only a brief goodbye to Nikko's mother, without explanation of the crimes committed against her only son but a half-bag of gold left to rebuild her life, they set sail for Gar in the driving rain and wind. That the town was not left a smoking ruin was perhaps a testament to the characters' desire to leave at once.
A week later the ship arrived, and the players, in their respective roles, scattered gleefully to their respective roles, immediately seeking out the library, temple, and dens of thieves, fences, and dealmakers.
Thoughts
This was not a session of great heroism, climactic battles, or deep intrigue. But the passage to Gar nonetheless opens a new chapter to the players. This Crystal, and those who seek it out, will be sure to bring new troubles and challenges, hopefully ones to bring out the players' more valiant colors and test their calling as great men. So many open roads ahead.
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