Spoiler: Session 3
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The session begins with the party going to the alchemist’s house. After heavily banging on her door a passerby mentions that he thinks he saw her leave to help out a client and she’ll probably be back later in the day. The party decided then to break into the house, and proceed to do so very obviously, in plain view of the citizen they were just talking to. And then fail on multiple different entry points, including getting the bard stuck inside the top of the chimney before the muscle wizard broke most of it. Before any of them manage to get inside the police show up and the party submits to their custody when they are caught quite obviously in the act of breaking apart the house/failing to get inside.

Zaffrin is rescued by Verandra from the community center where he was being held. She destroyed some organic looking constructs and finds out they had been about to harvest him for ‘quintessence’. Verandra goes off to report this to the regional governor and asks for Zaffrin to report this to the police. Zaffrin heads to the police station.

Constable Burke takes the rest of the party prisoner and has them relinquish their weapons and while bringing Verge into the interrogation room from his cell asks for his armor too, given their actions and how close they were to the exploding Bob case. Zaffrin is directed to a waiting room as he arrives. Upon giving up his armor, it’s taken and put in a chest in another room and Burke proceeds to surprise attack Verge while the other four officers attack the rest of the party (sans Zaffrin). The party is caught off guard without their weapons, and the police are able to use their longspears to attack them through bars even if they back up to the ends of their cells. Jorvaskyr breaks out of his cell fairly quickly and Zaffrin hears the commotion and gets involved as well with Verge trying to flee Burke and get to his stuff. Verge doesn’t get far but does manage to disarm Burke and take Burke’s rapier for himself, which leaves Burke to start spitting out poisoned darts at people. Those left in the cells try to use their magic and supernatural abilities/items to strike back against the guards while still trapped in their cells. The battle is a long and gruelling especially with the other officers revealing they can be triggered to regenerate, their veins bulging as their healing is triggered, two of them even exploding as their healing seems to overload (Burke heals too, but his doesn’t seem to have any flashy effects like that). This and their comments about praising Thoon help put together a lot of pieces about the true culprits behind this crime. Eventually the party is very beat up, but all of them manage to survive and get out of their cells.

They loot the jail and get about a thousand gold for everyone. Burke has his stuff looted and the other officers/cultists have their necks crushed by the Muscle Wizard who was worried about the veins bulging on their necks (nothing happens, just an excess of blood flows out). Most of the files they find give no clues as to the Thoon cultists, but several files have been burned recently (mostly seeming to relate to the missing persons/objects cases) and they find that the rest of the officers have been slain in the barracks. Detective Mara Onyx and Regional Governor Leroy Von Howitzer arrive at the precinct along with Verandra.


Spoiler: Session thoughts
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A good tough 'boss' level battle and a satisfying conclusion to the exploding man investigation arc. Player actions ended up having this battle be confronted earlier than expected so it wasn’t actually the fight that leveled them up, but it was quite good. The players were all beaten up and it was a hefty struggle (especially since I made a mistake and the officers ended up having over double the hitpoints they should have – I did make sure to adjust the xp and gold rewards at the end accordingly), but it was so satisfying for them to wring out a desperate victory. Verge’s character was stuck in tough position losing his gear, which was difficult, but they made the most of it, and seeing a disarm used on a non-disarm focused character (and fisticuffs from Burke for a moment after being disarmed even without any training in it) was neat. The map I made for this battle ended up being far larger than was needed, a somewhat recurring theme when I set down map tiles rather than no tiles or the erasable roll out mat I have. Helped give the place a proper feel to it, which was good.