Sundered Empires Session Report 8

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In town, while the two priests decided how to finish clearing the castle, they were approached by a dark-haired, beautiful woman and a massive Nar (lizard/dragon man) warrior with a slave brand on his face.  The pair identified themselves as Lilith and Rage Claw, and they were looking to hire on to an expedition.  Long Tom said that while they were happy to have new blood, they had a bit of a ‘thing’ against slavery (slavery is legal in the Lawful lands of the Empire, but not everyone agrees with it).  This was interesting because a) it’s incredibly fitting to a Sethian’s outlook and b) I’d never actually told the player that it doesn’t entirely jive with Sethi’s philosophy, so it was cool that he picked that up on his own.  Anyway, Lilith immediately said that Rage Claw was her friend, not her slave, though he had formerly been one.  That made the party relax a bit and agree to have them join the party.

New Friends: Rage Claw
Image by: Williamsquid on DeviantArt

New Friends: Lilith the Sylvan Witch…replace the fox with a giant intelligent dragonfly, oh and dark hair too!

Returning to the castle, they decided to methodically check every room as they came to it, to catch any treasure they may have missed previously.  When they came back to the statue room, they asked it where all the remaining hostile creatures were, where all the valuables in the castle were, and something else along those lines.  Armed with a rough idea of where the monsters and treasure were, they began to clean the place out.  Rage Claw quickly proved his worth, turning out to be a terrifyingly deadly combatant (claw/claw/bite and a 16 strength…and Cleave for potentially 4 attacks a round).  They fought some monsters but forewarned, none of them proved too difficult.

They did nearly run into a problem when they asked Bri to open a chest and she got caught in a poison gas cloud.  Kenan-Tal managed to save her, but her nose and throat and longs were horribly scarred by the poison, so now she speaks with a deep, smoker’s voice (trying to interpret the result from the Mortality table in ACKS, which should have had her ‘horribly scarred’ to the point of being unable to pass herself off as someone else…so I went with vocal scarring which was close).  Lysander has zero interest in opening a chest now thanks to that!

They found one door they could not open and the statue told them it was beyond their current capabilities to do so.  Then, they turned their attention to the statue and whether they could remove it without harming it.  Turns out they could, if they were careful.  They also made the mistake of asking the statue for its complete history.  It proceeded to tell them of everyday of its life, since its creation until now.  Some quick math made us realize it could average talking about 28 years a day, and it was old…so very old.  So they just let it talk, after they realized it wouldn’t shut up.  Some of the party remained while the rest trooped back to town.  They hired a stone mason and some heavy lifters and trooped back.

Getting the statue took most of the night.   One of the players wanted me to speed up the acquisition, but I didn’t, saying that if they wanted the statue, they’d have to earn it.  Once they had it, they still didn’t know what to do with as they have yet to buy a house or anything.  They ended up boxing it up and buying space in a bank vault for the moment.

If you want the prize, you got to do the time!

I don’t think they’ve quite figured out what they are going to do with the statue, whether to sell it on a big market or donate it to the Church of Law, or what.  I also don’t think that everyone wants the same fate for the statue…

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