Father Jupiter smiles on us!, Pt. II

...continued from Pt I...

Yes, yes, splitting the party. But it was the only thing we could think of.

The chaplain sent us with a letter to the magistrate and one of his acolytes as surety of the veracity of our claims. It was decided that the thieves (Serge and Candy) would stay in the Keep and keep an eye on the smithy to see if the missing die was discovered. It's only three says (round trip) to Arz, so we figured we had everything well in hand. Wrong.

Corporal Nargus (remember him?) and a gaggle of confederates ambushed us on the road to Arz. He called our paladin out and or paladin critted him on the first hit! Not enough to severely hinder him and must assuredly did not have the upper hand.

In short, it was hard fought battle. I dropped to -2 HP at one point, the dwarven berserker fell to about -22 or some such (very, very dead) and the paladin had to take on 3-4 survivors of teh ambush party single-handedly (the Pixie Fairy was out of spells). However, the quick application of a healing potion brought me back, and we captured one alive to drag to the magistrate in Arz. Said magistrate agreed to relieve the prefect and began the journey back to Frandor's Keep with us. Cut back to the day previous....

Meanwhile at the Keep, the thief has noticed nothing wrong. However, while keeping observation of the smithy, a hand grabs him from behind! It's the former keep commander, Hollman. Apparently the prefect had learned of the adventurers and their "investigation" and had arrested the chaplain, Greytar, and Ledra. The had to get out of here and the commander knew a secret way!

The thief decided they were probably going after Candy as well and got the commander to follow him to the Inn. They were too late and a squad of four men had Candy in custody! The thief made the ballsy decision to rescue her, and the pair shadowed them and took them as they turned a corner. A brief fight and the the trio made it to the commander's secret escape route and met up with the party returning on the road from Arz.

At this point, it was very clear that they were on to us. We decided to ensconce the magistrate and his soldiers at our "claim" (in Hackmaster, members of the Adventurers' Guild can stake claims to dungeons--we had already cleared the kobold caves). Meanwhile, we would infiltrate the keep from the caverns beneath using a route known to Hollman and capture the prefect and return to the magistrate with him.

Well, we worked our way up and, as we were nearing the actual dungeon level of the keep, we heard a strange chanting coming from a room just pst the stairs leading up. A 01 on my religion roll identified it as a chant to Yigor, the god of subversion and treachery! During the aforementioned Twilight War, the one god who caused the most ruin to Father Jupiter was Yigor. So, with an attitude of "screw the commando raid" I led a charge against the foul worshippers!

When we threw open the door to the room there was a bunch of skeletons ("who doesn't love smashing skellies?"), 2 acolytes and our friend Harkus, the supposed priest of Shona!

Initiatives were rolled, actions stated and in the ensuing melee, I managed (with a yell of "Traitor!") to throw a hold person on Harkus. Which is GOOD because as Ramsey later told us, he was a lvl 7 cleric. Serge managed to douse him with a Greek Fire Fire and waiting a couple of rounds to set him on fire...anticipation, good! :) The rest of the room was fairly anti-climatic.

Making our way up to the keep, we manage to catch the prefect with 4 guards and carts full of gold ore, obviously preparing to make a break for it. A brief battle ensues in which our hidden thief, with an expert use of caltrops and shots to the back of the head with his crossbow, is able to keep runners for going for help. The prefect is captured, and Erig arrives on the scene to find out what the hell's going on? ("I hate to tell you this, Erig, but your lover is a traitor and a thief.")

All-in-all everything turned out well. The magistrate came in, settled arrives. The prefect comes from a senatorial family in Fangerie, so he escaped with a demotion and a reposting. Fines were paid, some merchants had to leave and Hollman was reinstated as the commander. We still have a lot of work to do against the humanoids, so now we get to go into "hack 'n' slash" dungeon-crawl mode! Yay!

Several more thoughts....

My poor misguided and gullible cleric also had the enabler flaw. I wonder how far I can get away with pushing the whole "gay" with Erig? Maybe keep introducing to handsome men with certain proclivities? lol, yes, I'm terrible, I know.

Louie, our paladin (Sir Jordan), also does a lot more than comes across here. HE's the most charismatic member of the party and keeps everything and organized and pretty on track.

Cliff was buried in the mountains near our claim with all the rites of the Church of Jupiter. It was his wish not to be resurrected. He merely wanted peace and rest.

Father Jupiter smiles on us!, Pt. I

Well, the culmination of a couple of month;s hard work finally paid off in last night's Hackmaster game (the true 4th Edition!). It was an epic struggle that lasted a full 9 hours (we usually only game 4-5 hours at a stretch--Wednesday night game and all that) and could have ended "very badly" for the party. I had this feeling of trepidation because I've been reading George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones, and this most assuredly had the type of Machiavellian backstabbing that brought down the ill-fated Eddard Stark. Let me explain.

One of the subplots in Little Keep on the Borderlands involves a cabal of military conspirators who have created devalued counterfeit gold coins and worked them into the economy of Frandor's Keep. Our party became aware of this several weeks ago and managed (through blind luck, as it happens) managed to bypass the conspirators in the keep and go straight to the only people in the Keep who were not part of the conspiracy. Maybe a bit of a recap and party introduction is in order.

GM: Ramsey Williams

Marcus Ironfist, Cleric of Jupiter the Mighty (NOT Zeus the Diminished!), lvl 3: Yours truly

Sir Jordan Iscariot, Paladin of Jupiter, lvl 3: Louie

Serge (Sarge, Surge...his name seems to change in my mind), Thief, lvl 3 (4?): James

Al (sort for something very long and rambling), Pixe-Fairy Evoker, lvl 2 or 3: NPC

Cliff, Dwarvan Berserker, lvl 2: NPC

Candy Applebottom, Thief-Acrobat (with COM 19!), lvl 2 (?): NPC follower

Elroy, 15 y.o. torcher bearer: hireling

and a couple of other hirelings...our party banner bearer, my 1/2-orc valet (!), animal handler, etc.

Marcus and Jordan are members of the Church of Jupiter...due to the effects of the Twilight War amongst the Gawds, Zeus lost some power and shifted to the LG alignment. Jordan is actually the first known paladin of Zeus in our campaign. Even though we're both LG, we tend to play our PCs more like Roman aristocrats and less like ascetic Christian monks. Not ~too~ epicurean, but also not too stoic either. :)

Our PCs had been sent by our Church to the Keep to check on Ledra Moss, a lvl 2 cleric and (according to the module) also a cleric of Zeus (we prefer Jupiter for obvious reasons...the Church is "restructuring" due to a "unfavorable religious climate"). We also had no clear orders rather than to perform the "work of most Holy Jupiter" and to "increase his standing in the eyes of the inhabitants of the lands to the west." So, we started adventuring in the area.

Well, anyway, about the same time the debased currency started showing up in the keep, we recovered a ledger and some gold nuggets in an abandoned mine. The ledger was a sort of paybook noting transactions and payments of some sort. We lucked out, and rather than taking the nuggets to the gem dealer for appraisal (a member of the cabal!), we asked the keep's paymaster (not in the cabal; the fellow who pays out the humanoid bounties). He told us to not flash that around and went into some detail about the gold problem and the fact that it might draw too much attention of the wrong sort (he had a favorable reaction to us due to our paladin...go figure!).

So, we headed off to Ledra who confirmed that this looked suspicious and contacted Greytar the sage and the Keep's chaplain, both not listed in the book. They assigned us the task of trying to gather more information.

I should mention that prior to this, we had solved the mystery of the "Mad Hermit" who was actually the keep's previous commander who had been driven mad by the influence of an evil magical artifact. He had been recuperating in the chapel and the whole thing had been kept quiet to avoid embarrassing Hullman (the commander/mad hermit).

We had to find more info to directly the current prefect to the conspiracy. And that's where tonight started...sorta.

The night began, as most adventures do, in a tavern where we were quietly meeting with Ledra. "Meet in the open?" you ask. Well, he is a Cleric of Jupiter, so what's more natural than us all hanging out? Hey, my cleric is gullible and misinformed!

Ledra insisted that we do something (Gm prodding!), so we decided to get Candy, our delectable NPC companion, to ingratiate herself with the prefect at a social the next evening and learn what she could from him. After looking at the list of conspirators, we decided that the dies for the coins had to be in the Keep. Of they were hidden in the Wilds, then a group of adventurers (like us!) might stumble upon them. Logic dictated that they had to be used near a forge. We decided that the Smithy was the possible best choice and decided to have our thief infiltrate and search.

Well, I won't go into the heretos and the whytofors, but, after Ledra left, we had an altercation with Corporal Nargus, one of the main conspirators, and a brawl ensued! We handed out a stunning victory, kept property damage to a minimum (one chair, courtesy of our berserker) and stayed out of the stockade. We also made the acquaintance of an "apparent" cleric of Shona (LN god of fair play) named Harkus during the fight.

At the social the next evening, some good roleplay occurred. My gullible misinformed (and toga clad--in the best Roman tradition!) cleric learned that the prefect had recently had a conniving shrew leave him for greener pastures. He had stole her from one his sub-officers one Erik, (Erig? Erag?--something like that) who he was now "buddy-buddy" with. (My cleric wrongfully inferred that the two were now "special friends"--I won't relate it all, but my PC made various inappropriate, yet funny, comments for the rest of the night about the two).

Candy insinuated herself with the commander and they disappeared together as the evening was winding down. Plan 2 immediately went into action. Short story...apparently the smith and his wife were out at the tavern for the evening and out thief was able to infiltrate and find the dies and the gold. He left half of the die set. Our thoughts were that maybe we could by with it and they might not check the stash every die. (Poor planning on our part, but what else could we do?). Plus we wanted to leave some evidence for a hopeful search.

Candy returned the next morning and was able to abscond with papers from the prefect's desk showing that he had went in debt to refurbish his rooms in the keep for his former lover. He embezzled money from the keep's treasury to pay for it and was apparently replacing it with the debased currency.

A quick meeting with Ledra and the chaplain confirmed that we would have to ride t0 the town of Arz and meet with the magistrate there. He was the only one with the authority to launch an investigation of this magnitude.

Thus it was that we made one of the most fundamental mistakes that a gaming group can ever make....we decided to SPLIT THE PARTY!!!

....continued in Pt. II....