DF Whiterock Session 1: Follow That Cat

Date: 

2018-04-27

Weather:

Cool, with light rain

Player Characters:

Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 150 points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 150 points
Durkerle (M.C. Warhammer) Dwarf Cleric, 150 points
The Redcap (Humabout), Gnome Bard, 150 points

Significant NPCs newly met or first mentioned:

Quintus, Human Wizard and Alchemist
Lady Chauntessa, Human Sorceress and Inn Owner
Rufus, Human Druid
Dodger, Cat Familiar
Brie, Half-Elf Bard
Arien, Human Drunk
Ulan, Human Stableboy
Lord Granger Flitwick, Human Noble
Lyssa, Human Apprentice Wizard


The potential heroes were sitting around the Inn of the Slumbering Drake in Cillamar, listening to a bard named Brie, hoping for interesting work to turn up.  In barged Quintus the aged alchemist and alleged wizard, followed by a big black cat.  Quintus got the serving ladies to summon Lady Chauntessa, owner of the Inn, and then told everyone in the Inn that the cat was his apprentice Lyssa's familiar, that Lyssa was missing, that Lyssa was never separated from her familiar, that something horrible had therefore probably happened to Lyssa, and that the cat almost certainly knew more, if anyone in the Inn could speak to it.

Disappointingly, nobody in the Inn could speak Cat.  Chauntessa suggested Rufus, a local druid, who lived in a grove about a mile outside town.  She sent Ulan, a stableboy who knew the way and could run, and asked that anyone else who would also run fast accompany him so that he'd be taken seriously.  Failing to take the hint about speed, all of the PCs decided to go, including the slow dwarf and the very slow gnome.  The cat went too.

After some minor harassment by a guard at the King's Gate who didn't much like Half-Orcs, Ulan led the party to Rufus's grove.  Rufus was cooperative and cast Beast Speech.  He then was able to relay Dodger's story: Lyssa had been gathering alchemical ingredients in the woods a few miles east of Cillamar, when she was abducted by evil humans and shoved into a wagon with cages and manacles under covers, clearly some kind of organized kidnapping operation.  Dodger followed them all the way to the ruins of Castle Whiterock, a two-day wagon ride away.  The slavers then turned Lyssa over to some orcs, who tied her up and gagged her, then threw her into a slave pen with some other kidnapped people, under the ruins of the castle.  Dodger then slipped back out and ran all the way back to Cillamar to get help.  Rufus also mentioned that Lady Chauntessa was known to have an interest in Castle Whiterock, and that the party should check with her before heading out.

After the group made it back to the Inn, Quintus implored anyone who could to follow Dodger back to the Castle and free Lyssa.  Lady Chauntessa also encouraged them to hurry, and provided some provisions for the journey, but had no significant information.  Redcap had some questions about payment, but Quintus convinced the party that there was no time for dickering and that they would be appropriately rewarded when Lyssa was safe, and they didn't press the point.  

The party then began a long and intricate process of moving items from one bag to another and bags from one person to another in an effort to make the party able to march a bit faster.  While they were playing with their inventory, they heard the local drunk Arien mention that the exact same thing that happened to Lyssa had happened to him, but he had eventually escaped, and nobody believed the story.  Lord Granger Flitwick rolled his eyes, having heard this story before, but Durkerle and Redcap both thought the story sounded pretty good.  Durkerle went as far as casting Compel Truth, but unfortunately the spell failed horribly, causing Arien to start singing a childhood nursery rhyme, then pass out in his beer.

The group set off on a long walk toward the ruined castle, late in the afternoon.  They spent the first night outside without a fire, in cold rain, on the edge of a small forest.  Redcap had a one-Gnome tent and a sleeping fur, and invited Dodger in, but the rest were fairly miserable with only their shields for shelter.

The next day, the group continued walking through the forest, until they were ambushed by a couple of bandits, right after fording a stream.  They were well-hidden in a tree branch, and planned tried to jump down onto the point-Elf Seépravir and club her with surprise, but they completely failed to execute the plan.  The first one missed her completely, broke his leg from the fall, and was out of the fight.  The second one almost hit her but didn't account for her ability to Levitate back over the stream, also took some damage from the fall, realized he was outnumbered, ran away, and then went down due to a very well placed thrown knife from Garreth.  Redcap killed the knifed bandit with his sickle, while the party interrogated the one with the broken leg.  The PCs commenced a good-dwarf, bad-gnome routine, with Redcap wanting to do terrible things to the prisoner and Durkerle wanting to heal his wounds and send him back to Cillamar to repent his sins, with an extra silver piece in his pocket.  The dwarf won the argument, his Major Healing spell fixed the broken leg, he threw in a free meal he'd just made with Create Food, and the bandit was grateful enough to warn Durkerle of two more ambushers a bit further into the woods.  That was enough to make the remaining two bandits break and run.  Meanwhile, a raven harassed Dodger, but no damage was done and the bird flew away.  The total profit from the fight was two suits of light leather armor (one immediately used by Garreth), two daggers, two clubs, and 2 copper coins.  Minus the silver coin that Durkerle paid the surviving bandit.

The PCs continued their trek toward the dungeon, eventually reaching the top of a hill and seeing the ruins of the white castle on the next big hill over, overlooking a small lake.  It would still take a few hours to get there, so they decided to camp out another night in a gully near the castle, and attempt a pre-dawn ambush against hopefully sleepy enemies.  It wasn't raining anymore, but two nights of sleeping rough in cold weather took its toll, and everyone except Redcap and Dodger (comfortable in Redcap's tent and sleeping fur) was down 1 FP until they could get more restful sleep.

They awakened a bit before dawn, Seépravir cast her medley of scouting spells (Hush, Infravision, Keen Vision, Lighten Burden), and then they followed the switchbacks of the wagon trail up the hill.  It eventually led to a tunnel into a sheer rock face, with the castle entrance inside the tunnel.  After a brief discussion, the group decided (for meta-game reasons) that it was probably safer to go through the tunnel than for Seépravir to Levitate over the cliff.  They did so, and eventually found a door.  After much searching for traps, they continued on down the tunnel to another door, this one with a 1' square panel in the center of it.  Both the door and the panel were locked.  Redcap tried picking the lock, and failed.  Plan B was Seépravir casting Silence on the door, and then Garreth beating on the lock with a club.  This plan worked remarkably well; despite Garreth's lack of Forced Entry skill, it only took him two whacks to break the lock.

Gazing through the hole where the lock had been, Seépravir saw another room, some kind of gatehouse, with murder holes and a trap door in the ceiling, a ladder leading up to the trap door, and double doors on the other side.  While she was minutely inspecting the room for other dangers, Redcap got bored and decided to just open the door.  This annoyed Seépravir enough that she tried to Levitate Redcap to keep him out of trouble, but the spell failed.  Garreth was visibly pained by the lack of cooperation, but fortunately no enemies noticed, and the group eventually moved into the gatehouse room.  Where Seépravir noticed three covered pit traps on the floor, between the party and the other doors.

And that's where the would-be heroes stopped for the (real-world not game-world) night.  The meta-game pact to return to Town after each session was overruled, since they just got to the castle and didn't want to repeat that walk.

GM's comments:

The whole first session was taken to find the quest and get to the dungeon.  Which seems a bit excessive.  The time was consumed by a combination of factors: talking to people in the Inn, finding Rufus the Druid and getting him to translate Dodger's story, a lot of fiddling with inventory to try to get the party from Move 2 to Move 3, a lot of very cautious travel and camping, a rather underwhelming combat, an interrogation, and then some very careful sneaking up to the castle.

The PCs will probably make that trip many more times, and it will probably take a fraction as long in the future: they'll know the way, and either something interesting will happen (like the ambush) or it won't.

They had a lot of intra-party conflict, mostly over how to treat the surviving prisoner.  Redcap wanted to murder him, Garreth was mostly okay with that, Seépravir wanted to pump him for information and didn't care beyond that, and Durkerle wanted to save his soul.  Somehow Durkerle won.  The group was clearly four individuals with their own opinions, not a cohesive team.  Which kind of made sense, since it was their first mission together.  But will they get better at working together, or will they keep squabbling?

This session was played using text only rather than voice, due to a combination of one player's preference and two players' technical difficulties.  I'm not sure which I prefer.  Text is a lot of typing, and sometimes it takes a while to get all the players to answer "yes" to a simple question.  On the other hand, voice invites technical problems and also people speaking over each other.  And text provides the ability to scroll back -- if someone needs to take a short break when they're not the focus of the action, they can do so and not miss anything.  And text leaves a great log.  So, I think we'll vote again at the start of the next session on which to use.

This session used 3 Roll20 maps: one of the Inn of the Slumbering Drake, one of some random woods with a stream where the ambush happened, and then the entrance to Castle Whiterock proper.  The biggest Roll20 annoyance for me was needing to copy player tokens from one map to another.  (There might be a copy-all paste-all command, but I don't know it, so it was [copy, switch map, paste, switch map] times five, each time we switched maps.)  Also, there were some glitches with dynamic lighting leading to some accidental dark areas on the Whiterock map.  Hopefully I'll get those sorted out before the next game.

I wanted players to return to town after each session, but it would have been silly this time, because they were right at the entrance to the castle, uninjured (except for three of them being down 1 FP due to bad sleep), and with the time pressure of needing to save Lyssa before something bad happened.  So, if we end up adding or subtracting any players next week, I'll need to do some handwaving.  That's fine.  Any added PCs were clearly late volunteers sent by Quintus and Chauntessa who made better time than this group, due to faster Move and less careful travel and not getting ambushed.  And any players who don't show up will have their characters assigned to guard the group's back, or possibly (if Redcap) something worse.  (They do all have Sense of Duty: Friends and Companions, so probably not that much worse.  The threat to leave him Levitating and Silenced was probably just a joke.  Probably.  Actually, if that didn't cause an extra -2 for 2 more spells on, Seépravir might not have been kidding.)

Next time: the party actually attempts to breach the castle.