The Thieves Guild (played 12/04/2024)
System: The
Black Sword Hack
Adventure: The Darkness Over Nijmauwrgen (from The Chaos
Crier issue #0)
Players: Faaya (Capingreen), Kvam (Janitor911)
GM: Me (Feirsteax)
Session length: 2h30m ish
Report
After reading Grove of the Gourd Dwarf’s report of his Mothership session a few weeks ago, I have been inspired to keep this one brief!
We left off last time after the party met with Mazelius, the king’s representative. He sent a crow (raven, pigeon, something winged) over to the encampment of Knights just outside the city. The crow held a message telling them to bring the ancient trident, Roodr, to the old necropolis south of the city, where Alcantor of Zisyphus was resting up, having his memory curse fixed.
Another job ticked off the to-do list, our terrible twosome (and the mighty Sfen) headed off to the One-Eyed Cat, a tavern that held a secret of some kind. It turned out the Thieves Guild leader, Zvoorinius, was holed up here, waiting for them to show up. They’d heard of Faaya and Kvam by reputation and knew they could be counted on as allies in the fight against their common enemy, the tyrannical cult of The Black Sun of the Deep.
This bit was pretty hard to run, I just had to wing it and improvise a tavern scene on the fly. The description of the bar was a few lines and an NPC stat block, but I wanted to give the scene a bit of gravitas, so I coloured in a few extra details. For example, I put a creepy guy staring at them from across the bar. They distracted him with conversation and began asking loads of questions I wasn’t ready to handle, so I had Sfen come over and draw his attention away while our two unlikeable heroes went off to do Thieves Guild stuff.
The thieves were another ally in the fight against the Black Sun, so Faaya and Kvam asked them to help by providing any intel they had on the temple. In return, they promised to bring back Alcantor along with the legendary trident, Roodr, which the Thieves secretly have their eye on. Some money was paid for insurance, too.
A funny situation came up where Faaya’s player pocketed the gold without Kvam getting a chance to have a look at it. We all know each other pretty well so it was taken in good humour, but I made sure to check out-of-character if this was okay with both of the players.
On their way home, well past midnight now, the town was oppressively quiet. Doors and windows shuttered, the rain pouring down and the crash of waves in the distance was all that could be heard. However, turning down a side street, the gang ran into a horrible scene: six burly, grey-skinned men with rubbery skin and fish-like features were shaking down the residents of a small home.
The party sprang into action immediately and showed absolutely no mercy. By the end of the scene, the six human-fish hybrids were lying dead in a heap. The family that was being roughed up thanked them and promised that their deed would be remembered in times to come.
This was just a random encounter roll on the nighttime encounters table. I rolled it once for the walk home from the pub and, unfortunately, they triggered this encounter.
This is the point where I realised throwing one or two level 1 enemies at the players at a time is not a challenge to them in the least. With their various abilities (including assassination strikes and invisibility), they made short work of the Hybrids even without Sfen’s help. I must up the ante for the next battle and give them a bit of a challenge.
They also just left all the bodies lying round the street, again. I think the anonymity die needs adjusted down another step. Good thing it was already extremely low anyway! On the upside, this little region of the neighbourhood will be more supportive of any potential resistance campaign launched by the players.
Finally, they went back to the Babaselem and Faaya cast dream message. She used her sorcerous abilities to remotely tell Duke Taineri that a Knight of the Dominion would be meeting up with them soon to give Alcantor the Roodr. Then they can just hop back on Julovern’s flying machine and zip back to the city in no time.
Finally, the gang took a long rest in the ship. When they awoke the next morning, an ominous sign was stapled to the nearby buildings and fences…
Thoughts
This was one of those sessions where I came away feeling like I’d barely been able to push the game forward at all. In retrospect, that’s not actually true. I’ve said elsewhere that this is the first adventure I’ve run that’s lasted more than a handful of sessions. I am still getting used to the slower pace of the narrative compared to things like one-shots.
We’re also only able to play for two and a half to three hours at a time, since we usually play on a weeknight. This is a nice length, but it does mean that sometimes you don’t achieve a whole lot during a session. A random encounter can take up a solid half of the game time.
In the weeks since I’ve really come to appreciate the shorter game times and slower pace of this campaign. I’m feeling a lot more positive about it than I was in my previous post.
Thank you for reading,
Feirsteax