Sorting The Smugglers With Samdar

Scribe Notes

Summary

Adventure: Sorting The Smugglers With Samdar
GM: Chris C
Season: Winter 803 WK
Night: Someday
Level: Level

Party

• Rez (Mil Sci)
• Melisande (Leader)
• Sam the Ork
• Jazmyn
• Pym
• Roderigo (Scribe)
• Cournot

Employer

Turf and Saydar

Mission

Find a missing endless wine jug and deal with smugglers.

Original Scribe Notes

Media:Snwi0303.zip

Scribe Notes

Session 1

The party is as follows: Rez – a self-proclaimed master of everything who is tall and handsome and well dressed. He is our military scientist. Melisande - an elven witch with a magic sword. She is our leader. Sam the Friendly Orc – who doesn’t like to fight Jazmyn - a Star mage who rides a broom & claims to be able to turn into a tiger (this information seems to invoke excitement in Sam the friendly orc) Pym –a hobbit sneak - allegedly a boy & owner of a smooth skinned strawberry roan alleged pony with stumpy legs and no perceivable mane. Apparently knows a few e & e spells. Roderigo - (I) a garishly dressed & much less handsome than Rez, (in fact even less handsome than Sam) hobbit sneak who knows a few e& e spells and looks like he could skulk about a bit. Cournot – an elven fire mage – apparently of nicer disposition and appearance than Sauté Melisande is declared our leader, Roderigo the scribe. Our Employers: (Both Inactive Guild members) are: - Saydar, Baron of Erewhon (an orc) & necro. - Turf, Sheriff of Erewhon (an elf) We are told as follow s Our Mission: - Find the Endless Wine Jug that was stolen from the sealed cold iron room. - Identify smugglers and shut down their operation or point them out for the guards to come in and shut them down. But if the guards do the killing we get minimal salvage rights. - Same for possible slavers operating in the area - may be the same people as smugglers or may be rumour. - Establish informants for Turf/Saydar if we can. Payment: - 6,000sp each up front in the form of a Rk 11 “Greater” or in coin. 2 - 4,000sp each in coin on completion. - Good retrieved / salvaged from pirates & smugglers will be costed and charged the appropriate excise/customs duty and we will get 20% of this value as our share. - General loot items will be party treasure as per normal guild practise. e.g. if we raid a smugglers hideout and find 50000sp of goods such as wine/beer/silks etc we will get 10000sp to share between you all. If in the same place we find a few swords, shields etc then they are our party loot. If we find smugglers and deal with them ourselves then we are entitled to the 20%, if we find them and pass the job to the guards of dealing with it then we will be given a substantially less value for the goods recovered and none of the loot. Everyone except Rez takes a greater enchantment as payment up front. We agree to meet Turf at the Skull Tavern. In the mean time provisions & equipment including We get camping equipment Taros Sleeping rolls warm winter furs 1 x 4 person tent 1 x pack horse 2 x 2man leather tents cooking gear At the tavern the booze & food flows freely. Various mighty feats of eating, drinking & boasting are performed. The party does however manage to make it to the ship which is ready for us. The ship, called the Grinning Shark, has 2 x cabins – one commandeered by the women folk & Pym (the sneak) and another one. There are three days sailing in which we practice weapons & study or learn to sail. Turf teaches the silent tongue. We are told about the endless wine chalice by Turf. It was kept in the basement of a farmhouse. The wine flowed through steel tubes to where undead servants in a cold iron surrounded room barrelled the wine which flowed to them . The magic chalice was switched for a non magic one. We will get a chance to see this. We will arrive at Fleecemount whereupon we will commence a 40 mile ride through the barony, which is run down, to Castle Erewhon. Day 4 Frost, 3 We arrive at 5.00 a.m. There are 7 horses including Pym’s “horse” & also a large warhorse(Turf’s) & a packhorse waiting for us. We ride all day eventually hitting g the hills before the castle. It is a 30’ wide path through the woods. Saydar is expecting us in the throne room - 100 long. With him are two bowlegged mean looking tribes men form he Lunar Empire. We encounter a 9 foot tall heavily armoured bone gollom who announces that he is the “voice of Samdar” – very grand. The party introduces themselves- Rez as a fearless vampire slayer & Roderigo as the voice of Roderigo. Saydar tests us to see if we are worthy of receiving certain invested items. The men all fail initially and then the women are whittled down to Pym. Saydar provides him? with a 2 charge rank 20 necrosis ring, rk 2 scouring terrain, 2 x rk 2 agony, putrescence x2 . He gives us a scroll of rank 16 quickness and offers us all bone armour. He then plays a mean truck on us by giving us a drink alleging that it will increase our endurance. What it really does is make us all spew! Very funny ha ha ! Our rooms upstairs are good quality double suites and very clean - unnaturally so for an orc. The chalice room is 10 miles away. We dress in our best clobber for dinner and are served by a butler who speaks eleven & orcish. An enormous feast is laid on & we all pig out big time. Accompanied by some very big guard is a 5’ orc well dressed followed by a 4’8” less than impressive grungy orc who introduces himself as Saydar. We talk about guild rumours and the latest with the dark circle. He has been unable to use a locate spell on the chalice. He suspects that the smuggling operation is in the South West at Gullet Hollow. An agent who works in a bar believes that the smugglers use ships (wow – he is doing his job well!) The smugglers have a cave up the coast. There are the usual rumours of slavers, ghosts & pirates… . Session 2 The next day, Rez & Jazmyn duel while we eat breakfast, with Raze, the self proclaimed Master, extracting a succession of alarmingly larger & larger items from his seemingly flimsy rapier scabbard. Rez then insults Turf saying he is Saydar’s consort. They duel. The result is, it appears that Rez is no mere windbag. 4 We discuss a plan. Sam decided that he is in fact really “Samdar” (son of Saydar). A spell is cast & it is determined that this is not in fact correct & despite the voracious proclivity of orcs there is no blood relationship. However we do now have a cover story. Rez then describes a very elaborate & confusing plan wherein we break out from Saydar’s palace, with Samdar. Apparently this will make the pirates/smugglers like us & explain our feasting in the Palace. We will pretend to mug Turf & Saydar. Barak, a Lieutenant of Saydar invests our life force so that they can trace where we are if there are problems. This is a kind of binding magic involving a large black sphere, which we all put our hands on. We are told that the pirates have a number of mages in the smugglers employ. We are given the name of a contact - Jim McLeod at the Laughing Gibbet bar. Inexplicably he is known as “Lucky Jim” despite being bereft of one leg & one eye. The passwords: We ask about the spring tide. Next we ask if Swallows come by. Sam casts strength of Stone on us all and lesser enchantments. We eat grub & then plan our “escape”. Cournot casts a smoke spell on the stable – thick black smoke & flames everywhere. We leap aboard horses & the “strawberry roan” (which as planned are saddled & waiting for us) with varying degrees of success. We then charge across the courtyard in a fearsome manner. Melisande casts a spell causing various guards to drop their weapons. Sam attempts a spell, which backfires & turns his hair into a small furry animal, which then runs off. He is as bald as a badger - literally! He then gets off a wall of stone across the gate. No one follows us. We note a large winged creature overhead – 20’ across. Rez, the Master, covers our tracks with lost of doubling back and so forth. We get to Gullet Hollow. There are about 50 buildings around a small port with various fishing boats and a pier. We leave the horses and the “strawberry roan” and we find the Laughing Gibbet and sit at a corner table, where we discuss our Plan in a very loud manner hoping to be overheard by the inhabitants – who we hope will then tell us they are smugglers. Brilliant! The barman reveals there are in fact three Lucky Jims around but the amputee one works here at a later shift. Ale is ordered until some of the more travelled in the party - Jazmyn & Sam? decide to order “Champen” from some backwater no one else has heard of - called Frans. The bottles are very old and dusty & 10 GP each. Some of the more astute party (Rodrigo?) members are horrified to discover that they are attempting to foist old stock on us at some quite extortionate rates & demands new Champen. In the bar are various races & persons. Roderigo and Rez approach a group of persons – possibly merchants and after nudging, winking suspiciously and hinting 5 that we are up to no good and wish to avoid the attention of the guard, agree to meet us aboard a boat at 12 a.m. at the dock and transport us. (we are not sure where we want to go)! Pym & Roderigo decide the best thing is now to sneak after our new friends and suss them out. Pym goes invisible. Rodrigo walks unseen and follows them to a warehouse. Sam throws a false trail by visibly pretending to follow but giving up. Pym sneaks unsuccessfully & breaks a small window – she then wisely bails out being a bit more experienced than her co-sneak. Roderigo, less captious, decides to continue sneaking about but does not do it very well & is busted by someone who apparently has a see invisible spell (and also notes his hobbit footprints everywhere in the mud). He flees. He is ordered to stop but flees still & is zapped by some serious magic spell for all his fatigue. He is taken inside the building & accused (rightfully) of sneaking & (wrongfully) of busting a window. Despite his attempts climb upon a high horse (difficult for a 9 pb hobbit) and to appear outraged, they don’t buy it & charge his money for the window, threaten to call the watch and now refuse to transport us as arranged. Roderigo, feeling as sick as a dog, skulks bag to the Laughing Gibbet where he tells the party that he has successfully concluded that the “merchants” are an untrustworthy bunch & advises that under no circumstances should we meet them tonight. The party concurs with this startling wisdom. So, Plan B. –it is all down to Lucky Jim. We make contact and he drops a note that we are to meet at the blasted oak on the other side of town in 2 hours. Directions are given including that there is an inn nearby called the Dark Sabbath which is full of werewolves. After going on a round about route for about 45 mins we arrive. There is a half ruined all nearby and a beach. Lucky Jim arrives & he tells us there will be pick up by smugglers bout 6 hours from now. He gives us a map of their meeting place at sulphur bay. Another ma reveals how the smugglers have down from the cliff top to waiting boats. They include “Alfred the Earthmage & an air mage – several small bands of smugglers have come together. S Suddenly a number of arrows come out of the darkness – several hitting & killing the allegedly “Lucky” Jim. His dying words are: find the hill door…be ware the web of…” and then.. “I leave everything I own to Roderigo..” Roderigo determine that there is some poison – probably sea snake on the arrows. The fletching is purple and gold – some sort of vanity signature arrow. The assassin cannot be seen. We all remain under cover. We search Jim’s body & find various things including: 6 A new map, a gold ring with the symbol of a dolphin on it, an earring, 10 sp, a silver dagger in his hollow leg, a gem hidden behind his patch (24 gp), a key. We go to where the boat is. It is guarded by a number of orcs. The boat is 40’ long. It is 10 30 pm.