Session 8; Alignment and Punishment.

 Session 8.  Played October 18th to the 22nd 2023. 

The player from last Saturday’s success gathered up a second party and prepared for adventure. 

Noctius, Fighter. HP: 8

Fortius, Explorer. HP: 6

Bractius, Thief. HP: 1

Falconius, Fighter. HP: 4

To avoid just having their forces flounder around, I prepared a rumor table and after two rolls on it, they learned that the whole town is almost exclusively talking about the legate’s niece who has been kidnapped and the general belief is that she is being held in the Grave of Fell Heroes, the nearby mega-dungeon.  The party set off into the blasted badlands/beach and immediately were overflown by a young Red Dragon.  The party unilaterally decided that the legate could handle his family by himself and they immediately turned tail and fled into the forest, going for a more standard patrol.  They ran into 5 giant bats and started a fight.  Perhaps the funniest thing to happen there was on of the fighters managed to grapple a bat and then headbutt it in a brawl the next turn.  This did not really help the other characters as the thief was downed and the explorer severely injured (brought to 0 hp), before the bats finally failed a morale check and fled.  One of the archers got a spiteful shot into a fleeing bat and killed it.  They mercy killed the thief who was at -3 hp, while we consulted the wounds table to see how the downed explorer should have been handled.  As is something of a pattern, I misread it and there was some confusion as to how many of his eyes were missing and whether he should have been able to survive to get back to town or not.  Errors were made, but he was ultimately left in town with 1 eye in working order and bedrest for sometime. 

While the impression he was missing two eyes was still shared by both of us, I was trying to confirm the player’s intentions toward the wounded character.  Behold the statement given!

("I am a believer in saving money, not on spending it on lost causes." -Noctius 

Noctius said as he looked through the group's party's wallet, and saw very little money, and looked over at the blind Explorer. He made sure that Fortius was in earshot.)

Having waited a day to recover, the two remaining live party members very boldly went out into the countryside.  Their goal, to go to the Valley of Slaughter and get something for themselves there.  This was thwarted by their lack of explorer and they got lost, twice in a row.  The didn’t have any encounters until they found themselves in the mountains and spotted something flying.  2 Giant Eagles.  The two fighters decided they liked these odds and opened fire.  They achieved surprise, but the distance was too great for the arrow to hit and now the proud eagles were enraged.  

The fight lasted quite a while, but ultimately the fighters had picked too hard a target and died, having killed neither of the eagles.  There was some discussion about what their alignment was for them to attack eagles (in ACKS eagles are seen as related to the Lawful Gods) and how this would be seen in universe.  It was fun. 

Reflections.

Having received some advice on twitter, I should have already prepared lairs that can be cleared, so that players can have a sense of victory and progression for their combat.  I had not originally done this, but it seems unavoidable and I will try to figure out how many need to be done per area to make them safe for colonization by Silvans or their client groups.  This will likely be more interesting to my players than dungeons, given their tendency to go on patrols and just try to kill everything that moves. 

Rolling up a dragon on the fly is not quick.  I am somewhat tempted to roll a total number of local dragons and then stat them up in advance so that things won’t slow down so much for them.  

When I rolled for giant bats, I originally rolled up giant owls, but could not find giant owls in the bestiary and eventually gave them a species change.  Similarly, we used the hawk stats for the giant eagles, though I am unsure whether I should have actually been using Roc stats at small.  

It is not at all original to comment on the brutality of the injuries on the wound table.  It is also amusing that there has been no need to consult it until this point.  All cases of one party members going down has resulted in a total party kill.  I am thinking we will see more proficiencies in healing be selected by the players, but perhaps not.  Cosoricalta has really been an absolute killing field.  On the last session of the week, I will attempt a casualty report, for my own amusement.