Campaign Log: Brothels, Archaeology, Mutants, and Other Questionable Elements. (PF)

[NowhereMan583]

A few months ago, I started a new campaign. It's the third campaign set in the same campaign world, albeit with a century's time difference, so the players get to try and deal with the changes they wrought during the last one, including some efforts to "civilize" the "uncivilized" parts of the continent, and the fallout from this business.

I made the unfortunate decision to give the players very loose guidelines for character generation -- I told them that we'd be avoiding the standard "murder-hobo" approach, and most of the campaign would be set inside a single town, so they were encouraged to roll up characters that actually lived in the town & were part of the community. Other than that, stuff like race, class, & alignment were totally up to them, and I'd just make sure to set the campaign in a town where their characters would be at home. This resulted in an Evil party (okay, half of them are Neutral, but they make little to no attempt to rein in the activities of the Evil characters) who have their headquarters in a brothel that the party leader owns. They make a number of questionable decisions.

Anyway, here's the introduction to the campaign, which will be followed by write-ups of the sessions, assuming that (a) folks here show interest and (b) I manage to motivate myself to actually type stuff up.

In the south of the Foolshand Peninsula, one will find the wealthy Nations of Dagon Bay, politically and economically dominated by Adamantia I, half-dragon Autarch of Capra. In the north, one will find the ancient and mysterious Arctic Empire. This story takes place between the two, in the vast uncivilized expanse known as the Wastelands.

For millennia, the Wastelands have been more or less unchanged, characterized by roving packs of vicious gnolls, goblin communities eking out a subsistence living in the virtually-useless soil, dangerous wildlife, and whispers of demonic activity. In the past century or two, however, the status quo has begun to shift. Pelorian missionaries have set up churches where the goblins would allow it, and the Autarchy of Capra has been extending its influence gradually northwards. (At the end of the last campaign, one of the characters was crowned Autarch of Capra, and part of her plan for reversing the nation's decline was to cultivate the loyalty of the "barbaric tribes" and establish Capran "protectorates" in the Wastelands. Her daughter Adamantia has continued this policy, so significant elements of this setting are the result of player decisions.)

At this point in time, the region is in a state of flux. New gods have arisen, and gain power to the dismay of the older religions. In addition to the old rivalries between tribes and species, the people of the Wastelands are now split between those who accept the "civilizing" influence of the southerners, and those who cling to the traditional ways. The influence of the Far Realms has taken hold in a blighted area to the south, resulting in some individuals being born strange, twisted, and alien. News travels slowly, since the only real contact between towns comes in the form of halfling trade caravans, but nearly all rumors thus received are disturbing.

This story is set in the town of Noroiras, founded by the goblin tribe Muck-Laugh, and in recent generations named a protectorate of the Autarchy of Capra. The Caprans have made a number of changes in their time there. On the northern edge of town is a fairly impressive villa inhabited by the human governor, who holds the Capran title Lord Noroiras; the Capran Royal Intelligence Corps has an office in town, just next to the headquarters of the City Guard, an organization whose existence is also due to Capran influence, the southerners being unwilling to trust in the loose standards of goblin “community justice” to police their land; and a small library has stood in town for a few decades now, despite most of the region preferring to rely on the oral tradition. Other than that, however, Noroiras is much as it has been: the majority of the citizens are dirt-poor but nonetheless manage to scrape by, thanks to a few farms and a herd of cattle maintained outside of town -- and the occasional raid in the ancient goblin tradition. The population as a whole is relatively amoral, and manages to get an impressive amount of bribery, corruption, theft, and black-market dealings done without the Capran authorities catching on. (Recruiting members of Tribe Muck-Laugh as intelligence-gathering agents was entirely the brainchild of one of the characters in the previous campaign, whose player now controls the hobgoblin inquisitor Hiddlebatch. So if/when the players get in trouble with the Royal Intelligence Corps, it is in large part all her fault for establishing the organization in the first place.)

Lately, there have been some unsettling developments in Noroiras. Strange men with hairy faces, bright blue eyes, and a feral mien have arrived, and conduct mysterious business. They wear heavy robes and leave no footprints where they walk. Four have taken up residence in the Broken Stone, the local tavern/inn and the oldest building in town. They have been seen huddling over mugs of ale in the common room, speaking to each other in an incomprehensible language of hoots and growls. The town is abuzz with rumors.

At this point, we should introduce our -- ahem -- “heroes”.

• Quimarel Smith is a halfling bard/rogue, erudite, well-educated, and respected in the community. She runs the local brothel, the Squirting Squid, and does a brisk business with both travellers and locals due to her excellent business sense & charisma as well as the -- ahem -- diversity of her -- ahem -- merchandise… let’s talk about someone else now.
• Makpov is a gnoll barbarian, and an… employee of Quimarel (and also a tenant -- unlike the rest of Quimarel’s -- ahem -- staff, he lives in the brothel full-time). Like everyone in the group other than Quimarel, he has been Tainted by the Far Realms, his mind and body twisted in subtle ways. This has a lot to do with Makpov’s choice of career: one of his more beneficial mutations is that sapient beings of all species and genders find him inexplicably attractive. The rest of his Far Realms birthright is somewhat less convenient: he carries with him at all times the smell of carrion, has a magpie-like fascination with shiny things, and has hallucinogenic saliva. Luckily, he has built an immunity to that last one, so the party doesn’t have to deal with the barbarian constantly tripping.
• Hiddlebatch, whose player probably picked that name just to annoy me, is a hobgoblin inquisitor who, as a result of a vision, is convinced that the hobgoblin deity Khurgorbaeyag sees the Tainted as a sort of “master race” and wants the influence of the Far Realms spread as far as possible. (Writing about Hiddlebatch is difficult, because in addition to half a dozen Far Realms mutations, Hiddlebatch’s player decided that Hiddlebatch had some kind of hermaphrodite thing going on, and it’s never really been made clear what pronouns we’re supposed to use for Hiddlebatch.) In service to this cause, Hiddlebatch spent some time wandering the Wastelands before building a small chapel outside Noroiras and proceeding to terrorize its citizens with rampant street-corner preaching and the brandishing of little carven idols H refers to as “terrors”. Hiddlebatch’s Far Realms mutations include butterfly wings (the entry on the “Tainted by the Far Realms” table just says “insect wings”, but H’s player decided they were butterfly wings) that give H a fly speed of 10 ft./round, the ability to lay eggs that may or may not hatch into horrible mockeries of nature, cysts that grow inside H with results very similar to the eggs, an inability to sleep within 500 feet of artificially cultivated plants, the ability to always know when someone else is saying H’s name (which is less than useful, since the crazy priest ranting on the street corner comes up in conversation a lot, and H doesn’t know who says H’s name or what they are saying about H), and something else I can’t recall without referring to the character sheet that isn’t in front of me right now. I think H spits acid once a day or something similar.
• Tamarie of the Gibbering Rock People is a half-elf alchemist. Or, more accurately, she’s a professional tailor with an alchemy habit. She was born to a human tribe of barbarians located not far to the south of Noroiras (the aforementioned Gibbering Rock People), but never really fit in and eventually left to seek her fortune elsewhere. Running a tailory in this part of the world isn’t especially profitable, since most of the locals can’t afford to have more than one or two sets of rough peasant clothing, and the nobility tends to import their finer garb from the south. As a result, Tamarie’s biggest customer is Quimarel, who often needs to order unusual costumes for… business reasons. Tamarie doesn’t talk much, but she has a number of nifty alchemical tricks up her many sleeves. She has probably the most visible Far Realms mutations of anyone in the group: in addition to her single humanoid arm, she has one enormous insect claw (which she uses as a set of pinking shears), and four small raccoon-like arms protruding from her torso. She also perceives a completely different set of colors relative to the humanoid norm, which amounts to an occupational difficulty. Also, she can cast Compel Hostility at will, which she tends not to do for some unknown reason probably relating to self-preservation.

The plot, which I’ll get around to writing up someday, I swear, begins with a mysterious disappearance. Krich the Xenophilic, a kobold employee of Quimarel, was at the Broken Stone on business last night. Both she and the halfling trader she was keeping company, Alton Brambleforth, vanished at some point before sunrise and have not been seen since...

[Arjhan]

Looks interesting please continue. Do you have a table where the mutations came from?

[NowhereMan583]

I should have the first session written up in a few days.

Also, Hiddlebatch's player has informed me that Hiddlebatch's preferred pronoun is in fact "it", and the mutation I couldn't remember is an "ethereal jaunt"-like effect once a day.

I wrote the table for the mutations. I went a little overboard, and it's huge, but I can share it if there's interest.

[NowhereMan583]

The following covers the first in-game day of the campaign, which in the real world covered about half of the first session. My attempt to make an audio recording didn't work due to faulty equipment, so this is pieced together from some hasty notes I scribbled after the game, whatever details I could remember, and some outright embellishment (mostly in expanding & developing "primary documents" like the conversation between the robed foreigners and the text from the Basketwild book). However, this is why NPCs like the barkeep don't get much dialogue -- I only remember the gist of what they were saying, and it seemed excessive to construct conversations between them and the PCs out of whole cloth.

Also, I'd like to apologize for my tendency to compulsively footnote whatever I'm writing.

Session One
The 7th Day of the Month of Obad-Hai
The 110th Year of the Second Ravensblood Dynasty

Krich the Xenophilic, the only kobold employee of the Squirting Squid, was out last night with Alton Brambleforth, a halfling trader and a regular customer. They met at the Broken Stone, where Brambleforth was staying while in town. At some point during the night, the two of them seem to have vanished completely.

This is very concerning to Quimarel, who can’t afford to lose employees like that, especially since Krich would be awfully hard to replace. There aren’t many kobolds in the area, and the… unusual niche market that makes Krich profitable to have on staff isn’t one she wants to lose. The local guard, however, aren’t taking this terribly seriously. They seem to have concluded that Krich and Brambleforth ran off together, and are making no effort to investigate further. Quimarel is therefore forced to look into this independently. In case of danger, she recruits a few of her more dangerous-looking acquaintances: Hiddlebatch, Tamarie, and Makpov.

The four of them go to the Broken Stone and speak to the goblin barkeep, Drugoz Tribe Muck-Laugh. He definitely remembers seeing Krich and Brambleforth drinking in the common area last night. (Krich is pretty hard to miss, generally. Not only is she one of only a few members of her species in town -- Noroiras is, after all, something like 75% goblinoid -- but her lineage goes back to gold dragons, and she’s inherited their gleaming scales & little facial tendrils. She stands out in a crowd.) According to him, the pair of them, after imbibing a healthy amount of alcohol, went out into the large field behind the inn. “Lots of couples like to go back there,” he explains with a wink. “Plenty of space to get away from prying eyes, look at the stars, lay down in the long grass for privacy… it’s a good spot for, ah, romance.”

So the PCs head out back, where there is indeed a large empty field. It’s sometimes used for religious festivals and other big town gatherings, but right now there isn’t anything there except long grass and the ruins of some old outbuildings & dry wells. (The Broken Stone is the oldest building in town by a sizable margin… over the centuries, a number of things have been built in the area behind it and later fallen to pieces.) They spend some time poking around, and find some blood on the ground, which Makpov’s gnollish sense of smell tentatively identifies as halfling. They try to track the scent (in addition to Makpov’s nose, Hiddlebatch has a slightly-tame wolf), but run into difficulty. There are some failed Survival rolls. Hiddlebatch tries to convince its (I checked with Hiddlebatch’s player -- she says that “it” is Hiddlebatch’s preferred pronoun) wolf to follow the scent trail, botches a Handle Animal check, and ends up bitten for its troubles. They decide to check out one of the wells located in the field -- one that hasn’t dried up -- and Hiddlebatch falls in. Luckily, Hiddlebatch can fly, though not very fast. The players are deeply amused by the image of the enormous hobgoblin slowly drifting upward on colorful butterfly wings, frantically flapping to support its weight, dripping with well water. (Hiddlebatch’s player has decided that her character flies like Watto from the Star Wars prequels: proportionally-small wings flapping absurdly fast to support its weight.) As Hiddlebatch is nursing its injured pride and the others are trying to figure out what to do next, they notice a robed figure skulking about the field some ways off. Naturally, they find this suspicious, and decide to go check it out.

At this point, I should say that I picked the species of the robed figures (they’re Kech, slightly reskinned because I thought long, tangled sloth-like fur was cooler than them just being bald) out of the Tome of Horrors for purely aesthetic reasons. They looked vaguely creepy but not demonic, they weren’t terribly nice people, and they were from the right kind of environment. (In this world, they come from a distant and largely unexplored rainforest-y region to the far south, which is why nobody has seen them before and they tend to wear heavy robes to cope with the northern climate.) The fact that they have a 50 ft. movement speed, a climb speed, and a permanent Pass Without Trace effect never entered my decision-making process. However, these attributes ended up screwing the players over all through the session.

The PCs go to see what the mysterious robed figure is up to. It spots them coming, and decides to get out of there, because mysterious robed figures don’t tend to like it when ragtag groups of heroes (or “heroes”) corner & interrogate them. Since it can move much more quickly than the PCs, it outdistances them easily, and once they lose sight of it, they’re pretty much lost, since they can’t track it by nonmagical means. Frustrated, they decide to head back to the Broken Stone and see if the barkeep can tell them anything about the creepy robed guys who are hanging around town, since they’re apparently not only involved, but doing something in the field right behind the inn.

Drugoz the barkeep has a few things to say on the matter. He is vocally dismissive of foreigners of all sorts, but allows that they pay very well, and a group of four of them are currently renting one of his rooms upstairs. They come downstairs for meals, at which point he can overhear them talking in gibbers and hoots; they hardly ever speak in plain Goblin. He only tolerates them because he is criminally overcharging them -- they pay in small emeralds rather than Capran coinage, and he has neglected to inform them that each of their gems would easily cover several months’ stay in his inn.

After some discussion. the PCs come up with a Plan. Like many of their subsequent plans, it is slipshod and not terrible well-thought out: they slip up to the room where the robed foreigners are staying, and try to break in. Naturally, they make no effort to determine whether anyone is currently in the room, or plan for that contingency in any way. Tamarie tries to pick the lock -- Quimarel, despite her rogue levels, doesn’t have many points in this kind of thing, since her character is more diplomacy-focused -- and fails. The PCs overhear voices inside the room, realize that scratching at the door’s lock has attracted some attention, and immediately stage a distraction. Quimarel and Hiddlebatch pretend to get into a huge screaming argument, in the hopes that the residents of the room will decide that whatever is going on outside is none of their business. Bluff and Sense Motive checks are rolled, and it works.

Their original plan having failed, the PCs decide that they’re going to hang around in the inn’s common area, drink some ale, and wait for the creepy hooded folk to come down for their next meal. They spend some time listening to local gossip, none of which is particularly interesting. Hiddlebatch’s player decides, apparently, that she hasn’t done enough to emphasize her character’s status as Evil, and ends up creeping everyone out through her method of talking one of the goblins into bed (to make more Tainted, of course, this being Hiddlebatch’s holy mission and all). Glossing over the details, she decides that instead of rolling Diplomacy to seduce this random bar patron, she’s rolling Intimidate. And… moving on…

Eventually, the quartet of robed foreigners come downstairs, order a meal and some drinks, and huddle together at a table in the corner to continue a conversation they were apparently having upstairs. This being a low-magic region (there’s exactly one known mage within a hundred miles: Lord Noroiras’s mother and predecessor, who is in retirement and rarely leaves her family’s estate) a ridiculously long way away from their homeland, they don’t seem to consider it a security risk to talk about their plans in the open, as long as they stick to their native language. So they’re in the corner hooting and gibbering (I decided they sounded kind of like howler monkeys when they spoke their native language), and Hiddlebatch suddenly realizes that it has Tongues prepared -- a necessity for someone who wants to evangelize at travellers and doesn’t speak anything but Goblin.

Hiddlebatch, long since returned from its deeply unethical tryst upstairs, tries to eavesdrop on the foreigners’ conversation, and picks up some of it:

Robed Foreigner 1: “Look, you want to scale the walls, Lu-Dingira? I bet crossbow bolts don’t hurt that much, right?”
RF2 (“Lu-Dingira”): “But, Illuvatum --”
RF1 (“Illuvatum”): “But nothing. These people may be savages, but they can at least defend a gods-cursed walled compound against someone trying to climb up the side of the building. It’s a bad plan, accept it.”
RF3: “See, Lu, I told you. Illuvatum’s right, we can’t just climb in and take it. That’s why we need to get the glaive first.”
Illuvatum: “Curse it, Buhazum, that’s just as bad. Why do you want to complicate things?”
RF4: “That’s what I’ve been saying. Why in the name of the Red Land do you think it will be easier to steal two things than to steal one?”
RF3 (“Buhazum”): “Because, Sin-Alshu, if we have the glaive, then the second theft is a trivial problem at best. And then we have two magical artifacts instead of one.”
Illuvatum: “Okay, so it’s a net gain. If it works, and that’s a big ‘if’.”
RF4 (“Sin-Alshu”): “And that’s assuming that the glaive does what you think it does.”
Buhazum: “We have it right here in black and white!” [Buhazum pulls a roll of parchment from inside his robes and brandishes it at the others] “Look, when they found it, they did some tests. The wielder of Golden Glitter can use the spell of Passwall. That’s why they locked it up in the first place -- they knew it would be useful for someone trying to do exactly what we’re doing now.”
Sin-Alshu: “That sounds awfully convenient. It could be a trap.”
Lu-Dingira: “They’re savages, Sin, remember. Even if they were canny enough to do that, they don’t know who we are or why we’re here -- how could it be a trap?”
Buhazum: “It’s not ‘convenient’; it’s kismet.”
Illuvatum: “It’s still a risky plan. If it’s locked up to keep people from doing exactly what we want to do, why do we think we can get it?”
Buhazum: “Their security on the Intelligence Corps building is only enough to keep out common thieves -- I did some reconnaissance, and anyone who has a reasonable amount of skill should be able to handle it.”
Sin-Alshu: “Well, I’m not going to try and break in and tip our hand just to get a trinket.”
Buhazum: “It’s not just a trinket; it’s a moderately powerful enchanted weapon.”
Lu-Dingira: “What kind of feather-pulling name for a weapon is ‘Golden Glitter’, anyway?”
Illuvatum: “Sounds like a gnome thing to me. Are there gnomes in this town?”
Buhazum: “Says here that the cottage where they found the thing was previously inhabited by a gnomish witch.”
Sin-Alshu: “What in the Red Land is a ‘gnome’?”
Illuvatum: “They’re the little ones that aren’t goblins or halflings. They come up a lot in the research.”
Lu-Dingira: “Whatever we’re doing, we need to do it soon. This isn’t a stable situation.”
Illuvatum: “True; the reports I’ve been getting from underground say that there’s only so long we can manage the workers and keep the barghest under wraps. Plus the problems with the local wildlife.”
Buhazum: “Then we need to go ahead and steal the glaive before things get out of control. Once we have that, we can take care of a lot of our problems much more easily. Passwall would be useful for more than just getting the shield.”
Illuvatum: “We still have a couple weeks at least. Let’s see if there’s any way we can make Buhazum’s plan work.”
Buhazum: “I can draw up a map of the building for you; it shouldn’t be that hard to find a way into the vault.”

With that, the robed foreigners finish their meal and head back upstairs. Hiddlebatch gives the rest of the party a summary of what it overheard, and they decide some research is needed. Most of the players are fairly new to the game, so they don’t recognize words like “barghest” off the top of their heads and need to rely on character knowledge. (They also don’t recognize “glaive”, since polearm names are fairly obscure outside of D&D, but I don’t make them do research for that.) Luckily, they do know both in and out of character (from the handy town map I drew up for them) that there’s a library in town, funded by Magus Katarin Stenholt, the aforementioned former Lady Noroiras, where they can do most of the research they need.

Hiddlebatch’s player tends to do most of the talking out-of-character, and so she ends up directing the research efforts. This is unfortunate, because for some time she seems to forget that they’re not in 21st-century Earth, and repeatedly insists that there should be some sort of blueprints on file for public buildings like the Royal Intelligence Corps HQ. Obviously there are not -- why would a tiny impoverished goblin village bother to keep copies of building plans, and even if they did, why would an organization of spies make the layout of their headquarters public? (Also, the goblin tribe who makes up the majority of the population is predominantly Chaotic Evil, albeit mostly in terms of petty malice and resentment, and such folks tend not to be big on documentation.) They get as far as trying to hunt down the craftsgoblins who built the place -- long since dead of old age, since goblins only live 30 years or so, and the Royal Intelligence Corps was founded during the epilogue for the last campaign, over an in-game century ago -- before they eventually give up.

They do manage to find out about barghests, though, since that’s not terribly obscure knowledge in evil goblin tribes out in the wilderness. The PCs find out that barghests are demonic beings of not-insignificant power that can take goblinoid or lupine form and occasionally feed on sapient beings. It’s not uncommon for a barghest to form a cult of personality in an isolated goblin tribe, a tidbit the PCs find interesting. They theorize that the robed foreigners have one working for them somehow, and plan to use it to control the goblin population.

They also roll especially high on an attempt to figure out who these robed foreigners are in the first place, and dig up a copy of An Expedition to the Uncharted South by a halfling wizard named Lavender Basketwild. This is another byproduct of the events of the previous campaign -- the same player who runs Hiddlebatch had a character named Laika Evenstar who went on a long voyage to the southern tropics; Lavender was her cohort, and apparently put in the effort to actually take notes on the previously unknown area they were exploring. Anyway, the PCs find a description of some people who seem a lot like the creepy robed foreigners:

I have also heard many tales of the ‘Kech’, a malevolent tribe of ape-folk who apparently inhabit an area of the jungle somewhere near the western coast. They are said to move with unnatural speed, and leave no footprints where they walk, a rumor that sounds to me like unwarranted embellishment. It is far more likely, in my opinion, that these Kech merely know the terrain well and have some basic skill in stealth. They are also said to serve still more malign masters, demonic beings who make their home on some nearby island. Description of these creatures is sketchy at best, and I suspect that it is merely some sort of libelous propaganda to make the Kech more villainous in the popular imagination, perhaps to cast them as a common enemy.

The PCs decide that they have enough background information for now, and that it’s time to call it a day. In the morning, they will decide what to do next.

Oh, and if anyone's interested, here's the town map I made for the PCs:

Spoiler: Map

Show

All the little boxes with an "X" in them are goblin homes, or homes for other Small-sized races. The rectangles with lines in them nearer the bottom represent a neighborhood where Medium-sized citizens live -- mostly bugbears. None of the PCs live there: Tamarie has an apartment above her tailory, Quimarel and Makpov have rooms in the Squirting Squid -- which is the unlabeled building near the top right, since they hadn't picked a name for the place when I drew the map -- and Hiddlebatch has to live in its chapel outside of town, since it can't sleep near artificially cultivated plants.

[NowhereMan583]

(Someone is reading this stuff, right? I'm not just wasting my time throwing words into the æther?)

[Rabidmuskrat]

I'm reading. Recently started. It's interesting, and I'm definitely getting the idea that your players are actually characterizing a bit and not just speedrunning a video game.

[NowhereMan583]

Since apparently I at least have some people lurking here, I present the continuation of this campaign, wherein Quimarel's player decides to take advantage of the fact that she has half a dozen NPC employees, and another Plan is conceived.


The 8th day of the month of Obad-Hai
The 110th year of the second Ravensblood dynasty

The next day, three of the PCs meet to formulate a Plan. (Makpov’s player is absent, so it’s decided that he’s recovering from an… occupational disease.) Once again, they decide to go the “reckless” route. (In my head, I’ve started imagining them talking like Baldrick from “Blackadder” when they do this -- “I have a cunning plan…”) Having discussed for a minimal amount of time, they spring into action, and head back to the Broken Stone. They have decided that, in order to confront the Kech conspirators, they have to ensure that the rest of the patrons of the inn (and, by extension, the tavern setup on the ground floor) are suitably distracted. Quimarel approaches Drugoz the barkeep and leverages her position in the community to get him out of there for a while. Specifically, she offers him a free sample of her… ahem… wares back at the brothel. He gets a few hours with the twins, and she gets free run of the bar while he’s gone, no questions asked. (The “twins” in question are Ztola and Uddylyna, goblin sisters who are described in the NPC write-up as being kind of creepy and off-putting.)

Drugoz takes the deal, and Quimarel escorts him back to the brothel, where she fills her employees in on the deal and gets one of them -- a halfling by the name of Foxglove Winemist -- to follow her back to the inn. Foxglove is described in the NPC write-up as having an eye for the trappings of wealth, so Quimarel figures she can get her to help out with minimal questions asked if she gives her a few extra gold pieces. She takes Foxglove back to the inn with her, and stations her behind the bar. “I’m about to buy a few rounds for the house,” she explains, “so just stay here and give a mug of ale to anyone who wants one, and I’ll give you a few extra gold pieces this week.”

“Right, right, sure,” Foxglove replies, as she examines her fingernails and takes out a little nail-file. It’s hard to find good help these days.

The PCs proceed to buy a few rounds for the house. (Since two of them own their own businesses, they’re some of the wealthier non-nobles in town, and can afford this kind of extravagance.) Eventually, everyone except the PCs and Foxglove is collapsed into a drunken stupor, and Foxglove is too self-absorbed to really care what the PCs are doing. (And the boss-lady said “no questions”, so that’s that.) The Kech haven’t come downstairs yet, so the PCs jump into Phase II of their Cunning Plan.

Phase II is as follows: The PCs will go to the Kech’s room upstairs, beat up the Kech, and then search the room for documents, plans, and any other clues. It’s a masterpiece of subtlety and Machiavellian misdirection. And, naturally, since their best fighter is taking a sick day, they assume they have the tactical advantage: a halfling madam optimized for social conflicts, a mutant tailor with an alchemy habit, and a priest with butterfly wings squaring off against four foreign operatives of an unfamiliar species and unknown capabilities. What could possibly go wrong?

So they sneak upstairs and break into the Kech’s room, taking the occupants by surprise. This is the only part of the plan that goes right. It turns out that the Kech are much more savage fighters than the PCs expected (I hadn’t planned for the PCs to take the “frontal assault” route), and the fact that Tamarie had forgotten to prepare any of her alchemical tricks ahead of time didn’t help.

Hiddlebatch, the best melee combatant among the three of them, rushes into the room and engages with the Kech directly. Tamarie hangs back in the doorway and swipes at them with her giant insect claw, while Quimarel takes potshots from the hallway. The Kech are initially stunned by this brazen attack, and none of them are armed. One rushes to a big chest in the corner, and starts fiddling with the latch. The other three decide they have no problems with unarmed combat, and turn to start pummeling the three invaders. The PCs are discovering that the Kech have very sharp teeth and no qualms about biting people when the third Kech finally pulls a longbow and a quiver of arrows out of the chest in the corner and starts firing into the melee.

Less than thirty seconds later, Tamarie and Quimarel are in full retreat, covered in scratches and bite marks and sporting a few arrow wounds. Hiddlebatch has been backed into a corner. Two Kech are pummeling on it mercilessly, and a third is nocking another arrow; Hiddlebatch is quickly running out of HP. It decides that it would really help to get away from the biting and clawing at least, so it shoves past the Kech in melee and leaps out of the window. Hiddlebatch attempts to continue the fight from its new position, desperately trying to hover outside the window. This lasts for about one round, at which point one of the Kech follows it out the window and tackles it to the ground ten feet below. Hiddlebatch uses Command and forces the Kech to flee, then follows it long enough to see it climbing into an abandoned well in the field behind the inn. (There was some face-palming at this point, as the players remembered I had mentioned that there were a few abandoned wells back there, but they had chosen to only investigate the one that was still in use.)

While Hiddlebatch is following the fleeing Kech, two of the others climb down the side of the inn and book it straight to the garrison of the town guard. After all, they were just attacked in their room by hooligans with unknown intentions. Even among a savage and occasionally xenophobic people, their actions would surely be interpreted as self-defense once the appropriate bribes have been handed out.

Tamarie and Quimarel check in with Foxglove and the drunken goblins downstairs. Everything there is much the same as when they left. They exit the inn, and run straight into a squad of town guards, accompanied by a pair of Kech. The sergeant insists on knowing what in the Nine Hells is going on here, and why these polite & affluent travelers were just assaulted without provocation. Quimarel responds by reminding the guards of her status as a pillar of the community (it’s become somewhat of a running joke that Quimarel is a “pillar of the community”, since her type of business is perfectly legal in this town, and she’s one of only a few independent business owners, making her fairly influential) and accusing the Kech of conspiring to commit some unspecified crime. Sgt. Donyul is unconvinced. Quimarel subtly reminds the guards that arresting her may lead to their ability to visit the brothel on their off hours being restricted. Sgt. Donyul and his men are substantially more convinced, and decide to let Quimarel and her friends go for now. They instruct Quimarel and Tamarie not to leave town, and say they’re going to talk to the Kech about this supposed conspiracy to commit… whatever. They head back to the garrison. The Kech go with them, looking unconcerned. About now, Hiddlebatch rejoins the group and tells them about the fleeing Kech and the abandoned well.

Off “screen”, a generous donation was made to the coffers of the town guard, and the Kech were allowed to go freely about their business. (I considered writing up a "police report" for the purposes of this campaign log, so folks could see this from the town guard's perspective, but partway through typing it, I realized it would be fairly out-of-character for a thirteen-goblin organization in a backwater town, especially a CE backwater town, to bother with written reports.)

At this point, Hiddlebatch, for reasons that I cannot possibly articulate, decided to go back to the Kech’s room and see if it could take the remaining occupant in a fight, despite the fact that Hiddlebatch had almost no HP remaining. Hiddlebatch was rendered unconscious almost immediately, and when Quimarel & Tamarie came upstairs to see what had happened, both Hiddlebatch and the remaining Kech were gone. So the end result of the first session was that there were three missing people instead of two, and the PCs had a vague, fuzzy idea of what was going on. But at least they knew where to start looking.

[LokiRagnarok]

The hijinks are really amusing :D Keep them coming!

[NowhereMan583]

You ask; I deliver.

I successfully got an audio recording of this session instead of having to work from notes, so there are more direct quotations now.

The 8th day of the month of Obad-Hai
The 110th year of the second Ravensblood dynasty

The last session wrapped up with Hiddlebatch’s apparent kidnapping. Felicitously, this left Quimarel and Tamarie alone in the Kech’s room, so in a certain light -- a very dim light -- their Plan could be considered a success. This session began with Hiddlebatch’s player justifying her decisions by claiming it was the will of Khurgorbaeyag that all this had happened, and Hiddlebatch was only trying to act in the best interests of its god.

Then the session proper starts, and Quimarel immediately begins searching the room. ‘Cause, I mean, you gotta search the room, right? It’s not D&D until you’ve searched the room (and looted it). Besides, they now finally have the opportunity to figure out what these creepy robed figures are up to without being bitten by foreigners. The first thing she finds is… a crude map of the Royal Intelligence Corps building, exactly the sort of thing they had spent a ridiculous amount of time searching the library for the previous day.

Hiddlebatch OOC: Aha! My plan was victorious!
GM: Yes, you found a map. By waiting for someone else to make one, and then having your friend stumble across it while your enemies are busy knocking you unconscious and kidnapping you. Great plan.
Hiddlebatch OOC: It’s called a sacrifice for the team.

The map is marked with potential points of entry, notation of guard schedules, and other glosses one would need if one were planning to burgle a place. Or, at least that’s what it probably means, because none of them can read the Kech written alphabet, but they figure it’s clear from the context. They also find some documents, which they likewise cannot read. They then turn to the two locked chests in which the Kech apparently keep their belongings.

Tamarie settles down to pick the locks, and Quimarel goes to stand guard outside. She successfully picks the first lock, but forgets to check for a trap beforehand -- of course there’s a trap -- because she is but a humble mutant tailor and not used to such skullduggery. As is pointed out at the table, checking for traps is actually the rogue’s job, and the only person with rogue levels is currently standing guard in the hallway. So she’s stabbed with a poison needle, botches her Fortitude save, and takes two Dexterity damage.

The trunk contains several robes of the style they’ve seen the Kech wearing, and the players notice that the fabric is so thick and heavy that natives of this climate would not even consider wearing them except in the dead of winter. They also find some more indecipherable documents, and a few small leather bags, which each contain a handful of small carved & polished emeralds, presumably what the Kech have been using to pay their bills (and their bribes). Tamarie, as a businesswoman, has some decent appraisal skills she picked up from her more high-class tailoring jobs, and estimates that the gems are worth about 50 gold apiece. There are forty-six of them in total, which means they just found 2300 gold. They are excited.

Quimarel comes in to see what the fuss is about, and after Tamarie informs her of the poison-but-then-gems situation, she goes to check the other chest for traps.

GM: What did you roll?
Quimarel OOC: 14.
GM: You don’t… find any traps…
Quimarel OOC: I hate when you do that!

Tamarie has as one of her Tainted traits -- which I think I forgot to mention in the prologue -- a minor mental quirk of relentless optimism in all situations. So she accepts at face value that, while the other lock was trapped, this one is perfectly safe, and commences to picking it. She rolls a 1, managing to not only activate the needle trap, but to get her lockpick stuck in the lock at such an angle that she can’t get the chest open at all. And she’ll need to replace that lockpick. (I have no idea why a tailor has thieves’ tools in the first place, but it’s written in her equipment…) Tamarie takes an additional five Dexterity damage from her new poisoning, and the team’s official sleight-of-hand expert is now working with a negative modifier.

Tamarie is reduced to tripping over her own feet, her head spinning. Quimarel takes a moment to decide that since the chest is physically larger than she is, she can’t possibly carry it home inconspicuously, so they begin to make their way out of the inn. Quimarel helping Tamarie navigate the stairs.

Quimarel: Let’s get you home, drunkie.

On their way out, they decide to collect their ad-hoc substitute bartender. Quimarel grabs her arm as she passes. “Let’s go, Foxglove.”
“But this guy said he’d give me an extra tip -- “
“Let’s go.” They are not here on business, after all.
“You’re messing up my nails… they’re not dry yet!”
“Don’t sass me.”

They head back to the Squirting Squid, where they find that Makpov is feeling much better now that Quimarel’s herbal concoctions had taken effect. (Quimarel bought Craft[herbal remedies] at character creation for exactly this reason.) Quimarel also casts Cure Light Wounds on herself and Tamarie, and Detect Magic on the emeralds. They are not magical, but they are still gems, so that’s cool.

They then make the decision to call it a night, since they just got beat up by “freaky sloth people”, and go check out that abandoned well in the morning. They make plans to get some armor and alchemical bombs ready for their Subtle Infiltration Plan, which they cheerfully describe as a “full frontal assault”. (The voice in my head that narrates their plans has gone from “Baldrick” to “Jägermonster” -- “I iz bein’ sottil”) Winking, nudging, and “heh, heh, you said ‘full frontal’” ensues around the table. (In case you’re picturing Beavis & Butthead here, I should point out that all four players are women.)

There is some brief discussion of subtlety: Quimarel wants to know if she can use one of the cloaks to disguise herself as some sort of very small Kech. Deciding that claiming a glandular disorder is not likely to fly, she then considers standing on another halfling’s shoulders as well, which would be very difficult to do while climbing down an abandoned well shaft. They abandon “subtle” and go back to “frontal assault”.

Quimarel: So we’ll sleep now, and in the morning we’ll go get our hobgoblin… racist… priest… thing. Um. Tamarie, you want to stay here in the Squid for the night?
Tamarie: My actual bedroom is, like, two minutes away.
Quimarel: Can you walk there okay? Actually, maybe we should wait for that poison to wear off before you try to assemble bombs.
GM: That’s going to be about a week.
Quimarel OOC: Well, until her modifier isn’t in the negatives, then.
GM: That’s three days.
Makpov OOC: Do you need to roll Dexterity to make bombs?
GM: I think it’s just an Alchemy check, actually… you just need it to throw them accurately.
Quimarel: I’ll do the bomb-throwing.
Tamarie OOC: Actually… um… [indicates “Throw Anything” feat on her character sheet]
GM: You’d have to take an improvised weapon penalty, so she still has the better modifier.
Quimarel OOC: What if I used a sling?
GM: … okay, that might work.

⁂

At some point after the others retire to bed, Hiddlebatch wakes up to find itself in unfamiliar surroundings.
Hiddlebatch is in some sort of underground cavern, manacles around its legs and wings, in a chain-gang formation with about a half-dozen unfamiliar sleeping goblins. A Kech is standing guard over the chain gang, looking bored. Over in the corner, there is a pile of pickaxes. Hiddlebatch subtly casts Cure Light Wounds on itself, and looks around the cavern. Most of it is stone and earth that looks recently excavated, but here and there it can see walls and bits of very old-looking buildings that appear to have been buried here, Hiddlebatch considers how to get out of the chains, and remembers her Tainted mutation that allows her to use Ethereal Jaunt… kind of. At this point, the table breaks down into a discussion of the word “ethereal” -- ¾ of the players are grad students in the English department, so unusual words are exciting, and I’d forgotten that “ethereal” is one of those words you don’t often see outside of D&D. (“You know, like the luminiferous æther.”)

Spoiler: The Ethereal Jaunt Trick -- details

Show

The Ethereal Jaunt thing was a lucky roll on H’s player’s part -- how the Tainted tables work is as follows:

• There are three categories: Minor, Medium, and Major
• Each has 100 different options with different levels of usefulness/inconvenience.
• During character creation, a player can choose as many Tainted traits as they want, but for each one they choose, they have to randomly roll one in the same category, so picking up Major mutations (like functional wings) puts you at risk of getting seriously crippling mutations along with them. Hiddlebatch got the Ethereal Jaunt trick as the random result that came with its wings.
• This is crazy good luck, as that’s one of the better options, and some of the others were things like:
  
  • You can only eat the flesh of sapient creatures (Int 5+).
  • You cannot touch wood -- you pass right through it.
  • Your tongue is a separate, worm-like creature with its own agenda & opinions.
  • Cannot speak -- produce only birdsong when you try.
  • Incapable of using proper nouns in speech or writing, including the names of your companions, the town where you live, &c.
  • Birds HATE you.
  
  

The Ethereal Jaunt trick is written up like this:

You can cast Ethereal Jaunt once per week. Except you don't go to the Ethereal Plane, but a different, previously unheard-of, overlapping plane. Things live there. They're hungry. Each time you do it, 10% chance something tries to eat you. GM is encouraged to generate a stack of random monsters with varied CRs for this purpose.

I currently have a document on my computer entitled “Abominations for [Hiddlebatch’s Player]” -- it’s a handful of randomized monsters from the Pathfinder Monster Generator. Hiddlebatch is currently very blasé about the risks involved, a situation which will likely change the first time it inadvertently leads some horrible abomination back into the Material Plane.

Hiddlebatch is looking around the room and strategizing, trying to figure out the best use of its four rounds of incorporeality. Since Hiddlebatch’s player is also glaring at a little map I’ve handed her and strategizing, we switch back over to the others waking up around this time...

[NowhereMan583]

In Which a Brief Foray into the Traditional Dungeon Crawl Scenario Begins

Note: I'm trying my best to keep this on the right side of the board's "Inappropriate" line. Someone please alert me if I slip up and cross said line.

The 9th day of the month of Obad-Hai
The 110th year of the second Ravensblood dynasty

Quimarel awakens and goes downstairs to check on the business. A few drunken/hungover goblins are being shooed out by her employees.

Ztola: Look, man, time’s up!
Uddylyna: Go away already!
Quimarel, to herself: Yeessss… go home to your sad little lives.
GM: Did you say “lives” or “wives”?
Quimarel: Both.

Satisfied that all is as it should be, Quimarel begins organizing her plans to go get “what’s-his-face… er, what’s-it’s-face… oh, I mean Hiddlebatch.”

***

Somewhere deep underground, Hiddlebatch is aware that someone has just said its name.

***

Quimarel begins listing her priorities. “Okay, first things first: someone needs to run the business while I’m gone.”
Makpov chimes in: “I’ll do it.”
“No, no, you’re coming with me, remember? I need some muscle, and you’re much taller.”
Quimarel continues, mostly to herself, “I should probably leave Foxglove alone for now, since I just had her help at the bar… Vlovvya is constantly hallucinating… Berimelwyn is really lazy… Krich is missing… Ulyna is too new… and Ruzvon likes to burn things. So I’m going to have to go with Rannveig.”
Rannveig of the Night Drinking People is a human from the far northwest. She has a distinctive accent, which is represented at the table by my truly awful attempt at a German accent that often descends into my moderately awful Russian accent. She vill vatch the business. Quimarel notes that her marketing technique needs work, but is otherwise satisfied.

Rannveig: You! You vant sexytimes? Ja?

Quimarel collects her weapons and supplies into a bag. Not far off, Tamarie begins doing the same, arranging her bombs and extracts for easy transportation, A discussion of how extracts work is interrupted by Hiddlebatch’s player doing a musical number from “The Little Mermaid”.

Back in the game, Quimarel and Makpov show up at Tamarie’s tailory. Makpov starts trying to seduce Tamarie, not having fully grasped what they’re doing there. (Makpov has an Int of 7.)

Quimarel: I’m just going to let the hyena-whore work his magic.
Tamarie, worried: What… what kind of magic are you trying to do on me?
Makpov: …charismatic magic. Charismagic.
Tamarie: I’m, um, going to go get my bombs ready.

Tamarie whips up a couple extracts: Disguise Self and Comprehend Languages. Quimarel makes plans to hit the general store for torches and rope, and starts trying to decide what spells she has that might come in handy.

Quimarel OOC: Does Obscure Object work on people?
GM: I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.
Quimarel OOC: What about Makpov? He’s a sex object.
Hiddlebatch OOC: Why would you want invisible sex objects?
[It becomes immediately apparent that Hiddlebatch’s player has missed something about the conversation, i.e., what Quimarel’s player means by “sex object”, and the table-talk rapidly veers into NSFW territory and general hilarity. It is concluded that Hiddlebatch’s player is suffering from “post-comps brain fry”.]
Quimarel OOC: The GM is regretting all of his life choices.

***

In the underground cavern, Hiddlebatch is ready to put its escape plan into action. It tries the Ethereal Jaunt trick, manages to avoid attracting the attention of any extraplanar predators, and steps right out of its leg irons. Hiddlebatch then bolts to the nearest door in the half-buried buildings that jut out of the walls of the cavern, and opens it as the effect wears off. H finds itself looking into a sizable room, filled with the wreckage of extremely old furniture, on which some sort of fungus is growing. At best guess, it used to be some sort of sitting-room. Two old wooden doors lead out of it, so Hiddlebatch starts heading towards one.

GM: Okay, hold on a sec. [starts going through notes]
Hiddlebatch OOC: Hey, when I did the whole Perception check thing, that should have covered, like, big holes and trapped tiles and stuff!
GM: Yes, I’m aware.
Hiddlebatch OOC: Okay.
GM: But the fungus is spitting acid at you.
Hiddlebatch OOC: Oh. Fantastic.
Quimarel OOC: Fantastic! Wonderful!

Panicked by the fungus’s unexpected self-defense talents (H has Knowledge[nature], but was rolling exceptionally low on it), Hiddlebatch tries to escape by flying up to the ceiling. Unfortunately, this does not get it out of range. After looking over the room, it decides to grab one of the torches and set the fungus on fire. The damp underground environment is not conducive to this strategy. Having obtained some new data on what it’s dealing with, though, Hiddlebatch rolls Knowledge [nature] again and finally succeeds, recognizing what she faces as a phycomid. I give her the description from the Tome of Horrors.

Hiddlebatch OOC: Do I know what it’s susceptible to?
GM: It doesn’t have any special weakness or tricky immunity or anything… but it is just a cluster of little mushrooms, so they’re probably vulnerable to being stomped on.

Hiddlebatch decides that stomping on mushrooms is not a good use of its time, so it grabs a big piece of broken furniture, uses it to block the acid globules, and rushes over to the nearest door. Cracking it open, H can see that it’s another big cavern with partially-buried buildings jutting from the walls. It goes to listen at one of the doors, and hears something skittering around. “Okay, not that door…”

***

Up in the harsh light of the surface world, the others are finishing their supply run. Tamarie and Makpov are in the Marketplace of Rats (see map in earlier entry). Tamarie bought some new lockpicks off of a shady-looking character skulking about the grounds, and Makpov bought a battleaxe and a morningstar from a somewhat more reputable-looking goblin who had a number of wicked-looking instruments spread out on a long table. They also picked up the stuff Quimarel wanted from the general store.

Tamarie OOC: I have ten pounds of rope. I don’t know how much that is.
Makpov OOC: That sounds like a lot of rope.
GM: You should really write that sort of thing down in feet instead of pounds... [shuffles through the rulebook] You have 50 ft. of rope.
Quimarel OOC: And I purchased it by weight.
Tamarie OOC: I purchased it by weight, yes.
Quimarel OOC: As one does.

They pile all their stuff into a backpack -- specified to be a backpack that Tamarie has knitted (yes, knitted) in her tailory for this purpose. It is also made clear at this point that all of Tamarie’s extracts and bombs are placed in knit cozies.

Quimarel: Hey, good idea. That could help with stealth, so the vials don’t clink together or anything.
Tamarie: … yes… that was my thought. It wasn’t my obsession with knitting at all. That was what it was.

They head over to the abandoned well Hiddlebatch had pointed out. It turns out to be just a dry well, about sixty feet deep with a solid earthen floor.

Quimarel: Huh. Okay, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a tunnel off to the side or something. Or maybe a trap door. We should go buy another ten pounds of rope in case it goes down farther than it looks.

While she’s fetching the rope, Quimarel remembers that she needed a sling so she could throw Tamarie’s bombs. Since a sling costs nothing, being basically just a length of cloth, Tamarie suggests that she could have made a knit sling along with the backpack and potion cozies. This goes over well.

Quimarel lowers herself into the well, and finds nothing unusual on the way down. Eventually, she’s standing on the dirt at the bottom.

Quimarel OOC: Now, still holding on to the rope, I test the ground.

She doesn’t find anything on her first roll. She checks for traps, and doesn’t find anything. She decides to take twenty. Tamarie and Makpov look down from the top of the well, watching as Quimarel gradually, meticulously pokes & prods at every stone she can reach, gathers up handfuls of dirt and sniffs them, watches a beetle, scratches at the mortar holding the well together, &c. Finally, she runs across a little switch right where the stone walls of the well meet the dirt floor. She checks for traps. Finding none, she flips the switch. and the stones slide away to reveal a steeply sloping passage down, with a torch in a bracket every fifty feet or so.

Quimarel: Makpov, you’re going in first.

A couple hundred feet down, the passageway deadends in a circular room, in the middle of which is a dark pit. Looking closely, they see handholds running down the walls. They remember that yesterday, two of the Kech climbed down the outside wall of the inn without apparent difficulty. And, of course, if one of your advantages over the ignorant savages is a vastly superior climbing ability, it makes sense to design entrances and exits to your secret underground complex that require climbing to access. Quimarel decides that she and Makpov are going to Fezzik-and-Vizzini their way down the pit. She casts Light on the backpack so they can see.

Makpov OOC: Does she need to roll for Hyena?
GM: “Roll for Hyena”?
Makpov OOC: Yeah.
GM: I don’t think she needs to roll anything… unless you’re resisting, in which case she might need to roll Grapple.
Makpov OOC: Roll for Handle Animal!
Quimarel OOC: That’s what I do every night, baby.

Since Tamarie has the glowing backpack, she goes down first.
Tamarie: I am confident that this will turn out okay.
Tamarie has some difficulty climbing with her non-standard array of limbs, but she makes her check anyway, and proceeds down into the pit. Makpov, burdened by his employer, has less luck.

Makpov OOC: I got a 7.
GM: Wait, a natural 7, or a 7 total?
Makpov OOC: Total.
GM: Huh. Hm… Tamarie, I need you to make a Reflex save to avoid the hyena falling towards you.

Tamarie manages to duck out of the way, while the other two plummet past her into the depths.

Makpov: YIPE yipe yipe yipe…

***

Hiddlebatch hears a loud, echoing THUMPCRASH! in the distance, and starts attempting to find a way towards the sound.

***

They land with a crash, the falling damage beating up Makpov pretty badly, and knocking Quimarel unconscious. Luckily, the cavern in which they land is currently empty. It’s much like the cavern in which Hiddlebatch woke up -- half-excavated buildings protruding from walls of rock and dirt. One of the ancient buildings is completely unearthed, and stands near the center of the cavern. Makpov slaps Quimarel around a little bit to try to wake her up, but it doesn’t work.

Tamarie: You know, I can use an alchemical healing bomb.
Quimarel OOC: “Balm”, as in “salve”, or…
Tamarie OOC: “Bomb”. Like “BOOM”.
Tamarie: It might make a lot of noise, though.
Makpov: We already made a lot of noise.
Tamarie: True.

Tamarie pulls some vials out of her backpack, pours some of them into each other, and shakes them up.

Makpov OOC: Wait, how does this work?
GM: It’s a semi-magical effect. It heals as much damage as one of her normal bombs does.
Makpov OOC: A normal bomb doesn’t heal any damage.
GM: No, I mean, the amount it heals is equal to the amount a regular bomb inflicts.

Tamarie drops the vial and it explodes, with a burst of light and sound that heals them for… four hit points. This is enough to bring Quimarel back to consciousness, though, and she can cast Cure Light Wounds.

GM: Wait, so… a bard’s spell effects happen when they use their Perform skills. What is it you’re DOING?
Quimarel: Nah nah NAH… nah nah NAH…
GM: What exactly is your Perform skill?
Quimarel OOC: I have Perform [seduction] and Perform [bawdy epic].
[There is confusion and giggling around the table]
GM: That’s “bawdy” with a “w”, right?
Tamarie OOC: Oh, I thought “body”...
Quimarel OOC: It IS epic.
GM: So... which one are you doing?
Quimarel OOC: The epic. Quietly.

Quimarel sits up and commences a quick storytime with the group. “Let me tell you the tale of the handmaiden and the bishop. You’ll feel better, trust me…”

***

Hiddlebatch searches the new chamber carefully so as to avoid any further fungoid encounters. The only fungus it finds seems pretty harmless, so it continues to the door closest to where it heard the noise. A Perception check tells it that there is something breathing back there. It sounds large -- the Kech weren’t kidding about that wildlife problem. It picks another door, and listens.

There’s definitely something going on on the other side of that door. Hiddlebatch doesn’t speak the language being used, which sounds similar but not identical to how the Kech talk. However, the inflection sounds like someone swearing angrily. Hiddlebatch casts Tongues, and hears the swearing in H’s native Goblin -- with an odd accent / speech defect it can’t quite place.
“CURSHÉD PLANT! MAY YOU NEVER BE REBORN! MAY SHEVEN GENERATIONSH OF YOUR SHPORESH PERISH!”
Hiddlebatch picks another door. Another excellent Perception check allows it to hear a faint noise on the other side, like a rope dragging across the ground. The peanut gallery starts singing the Winkies’ song from “The Wizard of Oz” for some reason. H decides to crack the door open a little and step off to the side. Nothing happens, so it carefully opens the door a little bit and sneaks in. Inside, there is some sort of plant-like thing attached to the ceiling, dangling tendrils occasionally sweeping across the floor. There’s also another door past it. Hiddlebatch rolls very high on Knowledge [nature], so I just hand H’s player the Bestiary entry on “Basidirond”. H makes the informed decision that she can’t kill this thing solo, and closes the door again.

Quimarel OOC: But the important question is, can you smoke it?
GM: Yes.
[laughter]
GM: No, seriously, it’s full of hallucinogens. It’s right there in the entry. “Hallucinogenic spores”.

Hiddlebatch goes back to the door where it heard something skittering, deciding it sounded safest. It opens the door, and sees a smallish creature moving around near the back of the room. It rolls very well on another Knowledge [nature] check, and having set the precedent, I hand H’s player the Bestiary entry on “Dossenus”. Hiddlebatch quickly determines that it probably isn’t supposed to be there -- likely, the Kech dug into its habitat and now it’s just wandering around looking for food. It also notes that they tend to swarm, so it’s highly likely that there are a lot more of them around the cavern complex.

H decides that this part of the complex is a dead end, and goes back to the cavern where she started. The Kech guard has clued in by now that there’s something wrong, however, and spots Hiddlebatch as it returns.

“Hey! You!”

Hiddlebatch sprints across the cavern and into a door it hasn’t checked before. It finds itself in a long-deserted forge, where there is more fungus, of a type it hasn’t yet run into. Knowledge [nature] identifies it as the unimaginatively-named “purple moss”. Oddly, the damp underground climate is not in effect here; instead, the room is very dry, and smells nauseatingly sweet. The scent of the purple moss forces Hiddlebatch to roll a Fortitude save, which it makes easily, and it spots another door on the other side of the room. However, it decides to hang around for a few seconds and wait for the Kech.

The Kech enters cautiously, covering his face with one hand… then botches his Fortitude save and falls asleep. Hiddlebatch cheerfully delivers a coup-de-grace and loots the body, taking a whip and a small pouch of polished emeralds.

Hiddlebatch OOC: How many emeralds?
GM: Let’s ask Mr. Twenty-Sider… twenty.
Quimarel OOC: Hey, why are all of your dice dudes?

Hiddlebatch goes back to the chained goblin slaves, who have been awoken by the yelling and running. It explains what’s going on and offers a bargain: “I’ll get you out of these chains if you help me escape.”
“Do you know the way out?” a goblin asks suspiciously.
“Look, do you want to stay here?”
“Well, one of the things they make us do is clear out inconvenient wildlife, and it sounds like your plan will mean doing much the same thing, and angering the people with whips.”
“You have two choices: either you help me get out of here, or I slit all your throats.”
“... lead the way, giant butterfly-winged creature.”

Hiddlebatch tries and fails to break the goblins’ chains, then decides they’ll just have to follow it while chained together. It goes and investigates one of the remaining door out of the cavern, hears a swarm of dosseni (dossenusses?) skittering about, then checks the other. It hears wood creaking and looks inside. There’s another weird underground plant; it looks like a leafless tree swaying in the breeze, but of course there is no breeze. Hiddlebatch identifies it as a kampfult.

Quimarel OOC: You found the Whomping Willow! Yes!
Hiddlebatch OOC: Is it friendly?
GM: Noooo. It probably wants to turn you all into fertilizer.

Hiddlebatch asks for guidance from the goblins. “Well, we were in there [points] yesterday, trying to get rid of some sort of plant creature so that the boss could use the rooms, but we lost a bunch of people, and didn’t get much done, so they pulled us back. We’ve been through there [points], and there’s another big cavern on the other side.” The latter is what Hiddlebatch is now referring to as “the sleepy moss room”.
“Where’s the boss?”
“I don’t [goblinoid expletive] know. We don’t see him a lot.” As is the way of goblins, after sharing a little information, they default to hostile and resentful.
“How well do you think you’d be able to fight?”
“Um, poorly? We’re chained together. And unarmed.”

***

Makpov is literally licking her wounds back in the other cavern. The others look around, and decide to go check out the building in the center of the cavern, the only one that’s completely unearthed. Quimarel checks the door for traps.
GM: You don’t find --

Quimarel OOC: I hate! You! With every fiber! Of my being!

There are no traps on the door. It’s not even locked. Inside the building, there is an enormous statue, at least ten feet tall. The statue depicts a man with the head of a vulture. It looks as though it’s been recently repaired and polished.

All players, more or less simultaneously: We should spit on it!

At its feet is some sort of horrible fungal beast that looks as though it’s been killed and just left there. Quimarel goes to examine the statue more closely, and notices that its hands are facing backwards. She then makes a Knowledge [local] check regarding people with vulture heads, and remembers something.
She’s heard someone mention that, several decades ago, when the current well was being dug behind the Broken Stone, the diggers found an unusual artifact. Specifically, a shield that depicts this vulture-headed person standing in the middle of an orchard. As far as she knows, the shield is still hanging in Lord Noroiras’s villa.

Quimarel, increasingly suspicious of this, casts Detect Magic. She sees a faint glimmer of… something in the statue, but it doesn’t really look like how she’s used to magic looking, and it’s so dim as to be almost nonexistent. She makes a leap of logic, and asks herself a question: would this be the kind of thing you might see at the shrine of a dead god who’s slowly reacquiring power? Her bardic expertise in matters of song and story leads her to think… that’s a pretty reasonable hypothesis. (The player came up with the idea -- a Bardic Knowledge roll supported it.)
Quimarel shares this thought with the others. “I’m thinking… this could be a problem.”
“Maybe,” replies Tamarie, “but on the other hand, it could be fine.”
“It depends on what the god wants.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing bad.”
“Okay, working hypothesis: this is some kind of cult. This building is clearly important, since it’s the only one they’ve bothered to unearth completely, and there’s a sacrifice at the feet of the statue. So we’re going to work on the assumption that this is important to them.”

There is a pause.
The trio considers.
“BREAK IT!”
“BREAK IIIIIT!”

[NowhereMan583]

In which our heroes' -- er, protagonists' -- brush with the traditional dungeon-crawl milieu continues, and someone is eaten by arachnids.

The 9th day of the month of Obad-Hai
The 110th year of the second Ravensblood dynasty

Makpov starts beating on the statue with his morningstar. The repairs aren’t very sturdy, so he easily bashes some large bits off.

“This’ll be fine,” says Tamarie, smiling serenely in her unnatural optimism.
“Yeah, we’re all going to die,” replies Quimarel. “I mean, it’ll probably be fine.”

They decide to get out of there before someone comes and sees them beating up the image of the god, so the three of them head to one of the other doors. It’s old and mostly rotted wood, and they push it open to find a scriptorium filled with broken desks and crumbling scrolls. Quimarel tries to read some of the scrolls, but their condition is far too poor. They search around the room to try and figure out what this ancient city they’ve found might be, but all they can gather is that all the furniture is goblin-sized, and the words they can make out on the scrolls seem to be somewhat akin to the modern Goblin language.

There are two doors out, and they pick the northern one. There’s a noise coming from behind it that doesn’t remind them of any language or any sound they’ve heard coming from a beast. They try the other door.

[Quimarel rolls Perception]
GM: You hear --
Hiddlebatch OOC: [completely incomprehensible sounds as a result of trying to tell the others something and eat snacks at the same time]
GM: -- that. You hear that.

In actual fact, all they can hear is the sound of muffled snoring. Quimarel makes another Perception check, and guesses that the people making the snoring noise are much larger than she is, but smaller than Makpov. Makpov suggests that he could sneak in there and lick them, inflicting his hallucinogenic saliva upon whomever the room contains. The others seem strangely on board with this, and try to open the door as quietly as possible. On the other side is a human chain gang, sleeping -- much like the goblins Hiddlebatch found itself chained to earlier that morning.

The characters who have lived in the Capran Protectorates for some time are more or less unfazed by this. A common sentence for criminals in Capra proper is several years’ hard labor in the Protectorates, so there are similar chain gangs working the nearby farms and digging out a mine not far to the north. This one just happens to be working for someone else -- and the jury is out on whether these are sentenced Capran criminals or just some folks the Kech kidnapped.

The team further debates the merit of applying hallucinogenic saliva to see what happens, but eventually Quimarel just shakes one of the humans awake.

“What -- blarg -- agh -- whaddayouwant?”
“Who are you?”
“Huh? Who are you?”
“We’re, um, a local rescue group.”
Sense Motive checks are rolled and failed.
“Um, hi. My name is Vinnheim.”
“How did you get down here?”
“Well, me and my… people here were doing our normal kind of… trade route… thing… nearby, We were just north of Noroiras… then these weird hairy people in robes jumped us, and we woke up down here.”

Sense Motive checks are rolled and failed. The prisoner’s inconsistent accent is discussed by the players, who declare that he sounds like he’s from “the Mississippi of Russia”.

“Hey,” says Vinnheim, “can you let us out? We had to kill this big spider thing yesterday because it was living in this room that the bosses wanted to check out…”
“Do you know the way out of here?”
“Well, there’s a big hole in the ceiling of the cavern over there. That’s probably the way out.”
The players are disappointed that there isn’t another exit.
“So, since you’ve been killing off the things infesting these rooms, you know which ones are clear and what’s in the ones that aren’t?”
“Yeah. Well, in the immediate area.”
“If you help us find who we’re looking for, we’d be happy to let you out.”
“Sure. Who are you looking for?”
“An employee of mine. She’s a gold-scaled kobold.”
“Oh, I have seen one of those down here. She’s in a different chain gang.”
“And also a racist priest with giant butterfly wings.”
“No, I think I would remember that.”

Tamarie picks the locks on the humans’ leg irons. As the humans get up and move towards the door, the group spots a dead insect/arachnid/crustacean thing in the corner, larger than anyone in the room except Makpov.

“Whoa,” says Quimarel, “how many of those are down here?”
“I think there are still a couple around.”
“And… do you know what the thing we heard on the other side of that door is?”
“Oh. You don’t want to go in there.”
“So you do know what it is.”
“Kind of?”
“Can you describe it?”
“No.”
Here the group stops moving and stares at Vinnheim until he explains. “It’s invisible.”
Cue chorus of “WHAT?!”

Hiddlebatch’s player, who ran a one-shot with a phantom fungus encounter a while back, chimes in at this point to warn them off, abruptly realizes she’s metagaming, and starts going, “No, I mean, I don’t know what it is. You should totally go in there.”

Vinnheim mentions that it also killed and ate a group of ten goblins yesterday, and they decide they’re not going to mess with that. He says that it’s actually a major concern for the bosses, because they thought they found something in one of the rooms around here, but when the invisible thing moved in, it made this part of the complex too dangerous for them to enter. At the suggestion of loot, the players begin planning strategies for getting past it, all with a distinctly pyrotechnic bent. Basically, they immediately decide that the best solution is to light the thing on fire, and then all their plans are about the best way to light things on fire with their current inventory.

“Oh,” says Quimarel, “you said my kobold was on another chain gang. Where are the other chain gangs?”
“I think the one she’s on is digging out a wall near here.” He leads them back to the large cavern where they started, and indicates a sizable building that’s about ¾ unearthed. “On the other side of that.”
“Mind sticking around until we find her?”
“Uh…”
“Just to make sure we can all get out.”
“I guess?”

Makpov decides the solution is to seduce this man. Whether Makpov has any kind of grasp on the situation is questionable. He makes his Charisma roll, as his player attempts to imitate “seductive” theme music.
Vinnheim is somewhat surprised, but rolls with it. “That’s very tempting… sir… but I think we’re going to have to put that on hold. Matter of life and death and all. Maybe we could get a drink later, though.” He goes back to his guide duties, and indicates a pair of double doors set into the large building. “Those doors will get you there, but you want to be careful, because I hear some of those spider things are making a nest in that building.”

Quimarel looks to her companions. “How do you feel about killing some spiders?”
Tamarie has some trademark optimism ready. “They’re real big, but I bet we can do it! Yeah!”

Quimarel begins formulating a plan that involves sending the former chain gang in first. The humans weren’t allowed to keep their weapons on them when they weren’t being watched, but she suggests they might be able to hit the spiders with the chains from their leg irons.

“Makpov,” she says, “you’ve got two weapons. We can give… Vinny here one of them. Would you help us if you were way better armed, Vinny?”
“... suuuuuuuuure.”
“He’s got a battle axe and a morningstar. Which one would you be more comfortable with?”
“You know, I think I can use an axe if it comes to it.”
Makpov decides to be motivating in his own innuendo-laden way. “Yeah you can.”
Quimarel OOC: Makpov is a motivational tool.
“Vinny, do you have any idea of approximately how many spiders are in here?”
GM: Let me check my notes… I say out of character, because the slaves don’t have notebooks.
Quimarel OOC: He barely has pants.
Vinny thinks there are only a couple.
Quimarel continues to pump him for information. “What’s the best way to kill them?”
“Hit them a lot? I don’t know; I’m not an expert combatant in spider-killing.”
Tamarie is skeptical. “You should be -- that’s what you do!”
“Not originally! Not until… um… I don’t know how long it’s been, because it’s always dark down here.”

Quimarel begins strategizing. “Okay, I’m small and fragile and my only decent weapon is this light crossbow, so I’m not going to be in the thick of this.” Quimarel’s strategies tend to focus around making sure nothing bad happens to Quimarel.

Vinny suggests that they just try to sneak through and avoid getting eaten by spiders altogether. “Not that I’m not willing to fight a spider!” The others decide this is a good plan, and go over to listen at the door. They can’t hear anything, so Quimarel opens the door as quietly as possible. Inside is an ancient ruined ballroom of some sort, with marble floors & wide open spaces & highly-decorative pillars. At the point where the pillars meet the ceiling, there are two spider-things crouched in a huge web, more or less motionless. There is some discussion regarding whether spiders sleep, and then they decide to “hug the wall and move quietly” until they get through.

The highest Stealth check in the party is a 10 -- their feet echo on the marble floor, and the spider-things start descending. For the first time this session, the battle mat is unrolled and set up.

Tamarie: I have a real good feeling about this.

The spiders get to act first, and they spend their turn reaching the ground.

Quimarel immediately instructs Makpov to pick her up and run for the door they’re trying to reach. “I move slow, but I won’t weigh you down much.” They then begin hurriedly trying to decide what they should do now that their plan of "don't get eaten by spiders" looks to be on the verge of failing.

Quimarel OOC: What does Mending do?
GM: Fixes things.
Quimarel OOC: Does it fill in holes?
GM: Yes.
Quimarel OOC: If I cast Mending on the web, would it encase the spiders?
GM: No. That’s not fixing it, that’s making it do something it’s not designed to do.
Quimarel OOC: There are holes in the web.
GM: In the same way that there’s a hole in the wall called a “door”, yes.

Quimarel, riding on Makpov, fires a crossbow bolt and misses by a mile. Makpov uses her turn to run to the door. Tamarie and Vinny runs after them. The spiders follow. Vinny is closest to the spiders, and one of them bites him. Its enormous mandibles tear a gaping wound in his side, and he collapses.

Tamarie OOC: WHAT?!
GM: He had, like, four hp.
Tamarie OOC: FOUR?
GM: He’s just some guy.
Tamarie OOC: But he fights spiders and stuff!
GM: Yeah, they lose a lot of people doing that.
Quimarel OOC: We collected a redshirt!
Tamarie OOC: Get that axe back from him.
Makpov OOC: Yeah!
Quimarel OOC: And lick him real quick, so his last moments are trippy.

The other spider bites Makpov, doing significantly less damage. Luckily, they are nonvenomous. Quimarel gives the door a quick once-over for traps, then Makpov opens the door and runs through it. Tamarie follows, and closes the door behind them.

They find themselves in another large open cavern, with a goblin chain gang over at the edge. The chain gang also contains the kobold, Krich the Xenophilic, and a halfling that is probably her client, Alton Brambleforth. A Kech is guarding them, and he turns towards the noise.

“Who are you people?” he demands. “What are you doing down here?”
Quimarel attempts to think fast. “We’re here to save you.” She fails her Bluff check.
“Um… no. Guards! Guards!”
Makpov tries the same lie. “No, really, we’re here to save you.” It doesn’t work any better the second time.

[NowhereMan583]

In which someone else is eaten by arachnids, loot is looted, the party is reunited, and research happens.

The 9th day of the month of Obad-Hai
The 110th year of the second Ravensblood dynasty

The overseer, realizing that reinforcements cannot realistically be expected at the moment, runs up to Makpov, and takes a fairly ineffective swing at him, Makpov, burdened by a halfling riding piggyback, tries to retaliate with his battleaxe, but overbalances and misses disgracefully. Tamarie, reluctant to break out her alchemical bombs for fear of hurting Quimarel (for she is “wee” and will not take well to further damage), joins in the ballet of incompetence by flailing around with her insect arm, and Quimarel adds a flourish by missing wildly with her dagger.

The Kech breaks the theme by nearly disembowelling Makpov with a well-placed claw, and Makpov, thanks to our handy critical-hit table, responds by slicing its leg off at the knee. The others beat on him while he’s prone -- Tamarie stabs him with a knitting needle -- and the screaming, bleeding Kech starts dragging himself away. The chain gang cheers from the sidelines. Makpov, in a rare burst of “good idea”, drags the Kech to the door, shoves him through, and shuts the door again. A few seconds later, they hear louder screams that abruptly cut off, accompanied by the sound of spiders eating.

GM: All right, you just threw the Kech overseer to the spiders. Now what?
Quimarel OOC: I take his robe.
GM: He’s being eaten by spiders.
Quimarel OOC: Crap.
Hiddlebatch OOC: We already HAVE robes. From their room.

Quimarel tries to disguise Makpov as a Kech; it’s fairly unconvincing, but they figure it will pass in dim light. The party assumes that any reinforcements that might have been alerted by the screaming Kech will be delayed by spiders, so Tamarie sets to picking the locks on the chain gang’s manacles.

***

Elsewhere in the cavern complex, Hiddlebatch has decided to check out the swearing she heard behind that door earlier. She opens the door as quietly as possible, and sees a room full of broken, rusty furniture & equipment. Another basidirond seems to be growing in the ruins, and a small humanoid creature -- the source of the swearing -- seems to be attempting to kill it. The creature resembles a blue-skinned caricature of a goblin, complete with a mouth full of enormous, unwieldy fangs (probably the reason for the speech defect noted earlier). It also has backwards-facing hands.

Hiddlebatch has more points in relevant knowledge skills than the others, and rolls above 20 on its check, so it recognizes the backwards hands as the identifying characteristic of a rakshasa, a creature of which it has heard rumors and stories.

Apparently, when giving Hiddlebatch’s player a quick rundown of what a rakshasa is, I used the phrase “pretty dang evil”. I need to prepare my exposition better.

The rakshasa notices Hiddlebatch, having beaten its Stealth check by a good margin. It turns towards Hiddlebatch… who closes the door and runs away.

Voice from behind Hiddlebatch: WHO IN THE HELLSH WASH THAT?

Hiddlebatch runs towards the room full of purple moss, yelling for the goblins to follow H and hold their breath. They go through the room, and come out in the same cavern that the rest of the party arrived in. Hiddlebatch cautiously proceeds towards a partially-buried building… and a darkmantle drops on H’s head. H casts Inflict Light Wounds, causing the creature to shriek and abandon its prey.

Hiddlebatch’s player rolls a Knowledge [nature] check to identify the beast as a darkmantle, and we have another conversation about whether this creature has any tricky vulnerabilities or immunities. (I blame myself for having them deal with fey in the last campaign -- now they’re always looking for the equivalent of cold iron.) Eventually we establish that they are, in my words, “just… THINGS”, and that they are vulnerable to being stabbed with pointy bits of metal.

After some exploration, Hiddlebatch decides to enter a sizable, partially-buried building on the grounds that there don’t seem to be any Kech or dangerous wildlife behind that door, just some rats. H flies above them, careful in case there’s another acid-spitting surprise in store. It leaves the goblins behind, attempting to take shelter from the darkmantles.

H ducks through a door on the far side of the rat room, only to find an enormous ballroom where a pair of spider-things are snacking on corpses. As it tries to decide what to do, a goblin with Makpov’s battle axe comes through another door, followed by an ablative layer of other goblins, followed by the PCs. (Quimarel’s plans are all about not hurting Quimarel.) A quick and largely silent reunion ensues, and the group slips past the distracted spiders to the original cavern.

They gather the human slaves Quimarel’s group freed and the goblin slaves Hiddlebatch freed. Tamarie picks the locks on the remaining leg irons, and Hiddlebatch decides to make an impromptu speech to the liberated chain gangs..
“You see? You doubted the great and mighty Khurgorbaeyag --”
“We did?”
“ -- I told you that he would see us through this -- ”
“You did?”
“I did! He has seen us through! You will go to the chapel to pay your respects!” Hiddlebatch rolls a 26 to Intimidate, and shows them one of her frightening little carven idols. They are intimidated, and consider attending the chapel, or possibly leaving town as soon as possible.

Once Hiddlebatch is done terrifying the populace, Quimarel tells her what they found out earlier -- there’s something valuable in one of the rooms nearby, but the Kech can’t get at it because of some sort of invisible creature that wandered in recently and took up residence. PCs being PCs, they decide to go check this out. They also are sticking to their original “set it on fire” approach. A quick inventory determines that they have plenty of flammable material, including rope, clothing, and goblins.

Quimarel suggests collecting a large quantity of blood, then splashing the phantom fungus (Knowledge [nature] courtesy of Hiddlebatch) with it to make it visible.

GM: Why do you go straight for blood?
Quimarel OOC: Well, what other semi-liquids do we have?
GM: Mud?
Quimarel OOC: There’s mud in here?
GM: You’re in a big hole in the ground!

Eventually, a plan is hatched. They take the robe they were using to disguise Makpov and light it on fire, then Hiddlebatch flies into the room with the phantom fungus (which turns out to be an old library) and drops the flaming robe onto the beast. There is much inhuman shrieking, and Hiddlebatch continues to the area beyond the library while it is distracted.

On the other side of the library is a small open cavern that contains a single mostly-buried building. Hiddlebatch avoids the predations of a cave fisher and enters the building. It proves to be empty, except for some sort of rusty metal display case that contains a grime-covered spear. A quick casting of Knock opens the case, Hiddlebatch grabs the spear, and then flies back out through the somewhat-on-fire library. The party agrees that it’s time to leave very quickly.

Hiddlebatch flies up, lowers the rope from the original well, and helps the others out of the caverns. There are no further falling-related adventures. The liberated chain gangs also follow them up, at which point they scatter. Most of them aren’t from this area, and they strike out for home. A minority decide to stay in town for a while.

The Brambleforth trade caravan leaves abruptly that afternoon.

The PCs head back to the Squirting Squid and start discussing how to deal with recent events. Hiddlebatch asks if they should go to the authorities.
“Hey,” says Tamarie, acting out this scenario, “we found some slaves…”
“The whole town is basically evil,” Quimarel reminds the others. “If the authorities are getting a kickback from this cult, or if they hold some sort of sway over them, they’re not going to give a crap.”
“But these guys are really suspicious,” says Tamarie. “Wouldn’t they want to know what these suspicious people are doing?”
“Remember yesterday?” Quimarel asks. “One of them was talking to the guard. I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but I could tell that they were talking, and the guards were real willing to let them go and look at us.”
Tamarie thinks about this. “I would not put it above the guards to go, ‘these people are causing trouble for the foreigners who are bribing us’.”

There is a pause, and an abrupt change of subject. Tamarie asks, “so what kind of spear did you get there?”

They don’t know. And then, once they realize there is stuff they don’t know, their grad-student instincts kick in. Quimarel starts making a list of things they need to research at the library, and they head over there. At the library, they dig up a couple books. Dunyz Tribe Far-Eye’s Taxonomy of Creatures has an entry on the rakshasa, which I cobble together from the Pathfinder Bestiary and my campaign notes. Hiddlebatch wants to know if there’s anything in there about emeralds, but Quimarel is pretty sure that the bags of gems are just their “petty cash”.

They also, when looking for anything about buried cities, dig up a scroll about goblin folklore that recounts “The Legend of Vyutommourt”. The players note that the legend of Vyutommourt fits into a pretty standard goblin-folklore archetype, i.e., “we used to be awesome and now we aren’t, but it’s not our fault; someone else screwed us over.” This sort of thing is pretty integral to the goblin worldview.

Spoiler: The Legend of Vyutommourt

Show

Hiddlebatch asks where the vulture guy fits in, and the party starts putting it together. In Vyutommourt, they worshipped the Lord of Life and Death, who made the fields and orchards grow in exchange for sacrifice. The vulture-headed god had a sacrifice on his statue when the party found it, and Quimarel recalls that the shield that was dug out of that field a while back showed him in an orchard… they begin to wonder whether there’s a way to force the dead god into reincarnation. Hiddlebatch is frustrated that there is no mention of the spear.

They leave the library and try to appraise the spear’s value. Brushing away the dirt and grime, they find intricate carvings along the shaft, and the spearhead proves to be solid gold. Hiddlebatch, possibly spurred on by the uselessness of a mundane weapon made of gold, casts Detect Magic and finds that it glows intensely under magical sight.

Quimarel comes up with a test to find out what the spear does. “Stab a live thing, then stab a dead thing. Then stab both things again.” They round up some verminous rodents for test subjects, and proceed. During the test, they notice that wherever they carry the spear, there seems to be a cold wind coming from nowhere, and the spear ices over whenever they use it to stab something. Some extremely low Knowledge [arcana] rolls result in them really not knowing much at all, but Quimarel’s Bardic Knowledge tells her that there are many stories about magical weapons with elemental motifs.

There is some discussion about the extent of the freezing on the dead rodents to try and determine whether the spear has been doing cold damage. They decide it probably has been. Quimarel begins speculating about the value of a Summon Ham spell to distract any giant spider-things they encounter in future, and the session ends.

[NowhereMan583]

In which gems are not sold, contracts are signed under duress, and felonious activity is plotted.

The 10th day of the month of Obad-Hai
The 110th year of the second Ravensblood dynasty

The next day, Quimarel and her entourage head to the Marketplace of Rats to try and turn their gems into gold. As it is, they’re more or less useless for any purchases of less than 50 gold or so, Since they live in a fairly poor community, there’s not much one can do with that kind of lump sum -- nobody deals in that kind of money, and nobody can provide change. So the only actual purpose they can find for these gems is what the Kech do with them -- bribery.

They find the only jeweller in town, running a tastelessly-overstated stall in the marketplace, and show them one of their gems. Nothing doing -- seems a lot of people have been trying to sell him these little emeralds lately, and he’s got all he can afford as it is. Some cajoling and bribery reveals that he’s bought several off of the town guard and the staff at the Broken Stone. He’s made some nice jewelry with them, but the price range means he hasn’t managed to sell any of those pieces yet, so he’s not anxious to make any more.

Frustrated and dejected, the PCs return to the brothel, where they are soon approached by the four Kech from the inn, and a fifth, much smaller, cloaked figure. It’s well before business hours, so they can talk privately.

The smaller cloaked figure throws back his hood, revealing the fanged, blue-skinned visage that Hiddlebatch saw in the caverns. “I am Lord Bashant of the Thin Bladesh, and I feel that we have shome mattersh to dishcush.”

Some minor panic ensues, but it is made clear that this is not going to lead to violence.

“The four of you,” says Lord Bashant, “have been caushing trouble with our operationsh here in town. We have looked into the poshibility of eliminating you, but…” he shrugs. “It would attract unwanted attention if the ownersh of two well-known bushineshesh were to dishappear… and shertainly people would notish if shuch a colorful local figure ash the priesht here were no longer sheen on the shtreetsh… and we have no interesht in antagonishing the ambashador from Mormanori by interfering with hish favored companion…” he indicates Quimarel, Tamarie, Hiddlebatch, and Makpov in turn, “sho we have deshided to conshider an alternate approach,”

The party look at each other nervously as Lord Bashant says something to Illuvatum, who hands him a sheet of parchment.

“We would like to exshtend to you an opportunity to work with ush rather than againsht ush. You are free to decline, but… in shuch an event, we would have to be lesh shqueamish about attracting attention, and shertain contingenshiesh would have to come to pash.” As Bashant reaches into his pockets for a quill, he ostentatiously brushes his cloak aside to reveal a selection of long, thin knives.

He hands the PCs the parchment and the quill, and they see that it has been written on in an unfamiliar hand. The text is in the same strange alphabet as the scrolls they took earlier, and a translation into Goblin follows. “You will read thish and shign in blood. You will cooperate with ush, or our relationship will change in waysh not to your liking.” He grins a predatory grin.

The parchment reads as follows:

Spoiler

Show

There is much negotiation regarding a salary. They will receive none, but Lord Bashant assures them that the gratitude of his masters is very valuable. There is discussion regarding getting out of the contract, and Bashant reluctantly allows that they may leave his service if they so choose, but he is not responsible for the consequences. Even if the consequences are inflicted by him personally, in a lightless room, with a selection of sharpened instruments, he forgoes responsibility. The PCs are very concerned about the punishments for violation, and there is much discussion. In the end, they sign.

Bashant also demands that they return the “Spear of the Harsh Winter”, which they do reluctantly. He then departs. Warden Illuvatum instructs the party to meet with him the next day for an assignment, and then the Kech leave as well.

The 11th day of the month of Obad-Hai
The 110th year of the second Ravensblood dynasty

The meeting with Warden Illuvatum is simple and direct. They discuss the map of the Royal Intelligence Corps that the party had taken a few days ago. Warden Illuvatum wants them to make use of the information by breaking into the Intelligence Corps vault and retrieving the enchanted weapon Golden Glitter. They have one week to do so, at which point they will meet at Hiddlebatch’s chapel outside of town.

In the discussion, Illuvatum assures the party that they have no interest in the other contents of the vault, so if the PCs wish to compound their felony by taking something else that catches their fancy, Illuvatum does not need to know about it.

The party is dismissed, and they begin to hatch a Plan in earnest.

The 12th day of the month of Obad-Hai
The 110th year of the second Ravensblood dynasty

“So,” says Quimarel, “the trick is getting into this guarded building and getting down to the vault. Apparently the Kech hadn’t decided how to get past the guards.”

“We could seduce them,” suggests Makpov predictably.
GM: This is always the plan with you, isn’t it?
Makpov OOC: I have a very specific skill set.
GM: You or your character?
Makpov OOC: MY CHARACTER.

The conversation moves on. “So, there are guards patrolling inside and outside,” says Quimarel. “And we don’t know how to get past them. But once we get the thing… we can walk through walls. So getting out is not the hard part.”

There is some discussion of the Passwall spell, which is what the weapon casts, and it is established that it causes the walls to physically open up, so there is no issue of what equipment or people you can take with you.

Tamarie has a new alchemical trick that they consider using -- Dust Form. This has some clear benefits when it comes to sneaking in and out of places. Eventually, though, Hiddlebatch brings up her Ethereal Jaunt trick, which is slightly more useful since it can actually go incorporeal. And slightly more dangerous because H could be eaten by horrible extraplanar abominations.

Hiddlebatch also pitches the idea of setting fire to the building and then pulling the glaive from the wreckage. This is seriously considered for some time, and eventually discarded because the vault is underground. They then consider the value of fire as a distraction,

They return to the seduction idea, and Hiddlebatch suggests that it could use its Intimidate skill to assist Quimarel’s attempts to seduce the guards.

Hiddlebatch OOC: I could just stand there and go, “HAVE SEX WITH HER!”
Quimarel OOC: It doesn’t work in my dating life; it’s not going to work in Pathfinder.

Eventually, they decide to pump the guards for information, figuring that Quimarel and her employees will be vastly underestimated due to their profession.

Quimarel: Step one is gaining their trust. Through their genitals.

So they decide that it would be least suspicious if they waited for a guard to show up at the Squirting Squid rather than seeking one out. They do, however, spread the word that discounts are available for law enforcement personnel, both in the town guard and in the Intelligence Corps. Quimarel, however, rolls an 8 on her Diplomacy check, so her efforts to advertise this discount aren’t terribly successful.

Hiddlebatch: Can I help spread the word?
Quimarel: I’m not sure I want you associated with my brothel. You are a distinctly un-sexy creature.
Makpov: What if I act as poster boy?
Quimarel: Each poster scented with his musk for extra potency!
[Makpov rolls a 19]
GM: Okay, your advertising campaign isn’t going so well, but once you have Makpov strolling around flaunting his…
Makpov OOC: Spots.
GM: …spots and shaggy fur and slavering jaws…
Quimarel OOC: And horrible stench.
GM: … and horrible carrion stench…
[Makpov’s player acts out panting like a dog]
GM: … for some reason, everybody’s way more enthusiastic about the possibility of discounts.

Makpov goes around town making sure everyone knows about their law-enforcement discounts, and generally talks up the brothel.

Quimarel ensures that at least one of her employees happens to walk past the Royal Intelligence Corps every night.

Out of character, Hiddlebatch’s player objects to Quimarel’s player referring to her employees as “girls” and “boys”, or collectively as her “stable”.

Hiddlebatch OOC: It makes them sound like horses.
Quimarel OOC: Makpov’s a hyena.
Makpov OOC: And I’m eleven years old.
(Gnolls have a short lifespan -- they hit adulthood at 8, middle age at 20, and rarely live past 50. In “hyena years”, Makpov is somewhere in his 20s, but in actual calendar years, he’s 11.)
Quimarel OOC: I think I need to go pray.

Hiddlebatch makes a point of taking strolls in the area where the RIC is located, so that when the time comes, nobody will find it suspicious that it’s near the building. As it does so, it corners passers-by and yells that they have not been to temple recently, then gives them a horrific carven idol and tells them Khurgorbaeyag is watching, The table is reminded that Hiddlebatch travels with a half-tame wolf, which makes this whole scene more terrifying for all civilians involved. H manages to convert a couple goblins to its belief system.

GM: Let’s ask Mme. Four-Sider how long it takes for a guard to show up at the brothel…

A few days pass. The Feast of Obad-Hai comes and goes with little fanfare, there not being many Obad-Hai worshippers in town. Eventually, however, a guard who works for the Royal Intelligence Corps comes into the Squirting Squid.

[NowhereMan583]

In which Corporal Motuy Tribe Muck-Laugh treats himself, and we see things from another point of view.

The 15th day of the month of Obad-Hai
The 110th year of the second Ravensblood dynasty

Corporal Motuy Tribe Muck-Laugh has decided that, after weeks of nightly guard duty, he deserves some time to himself. Before his shift starts on the evening of the 15th, he heads over to the Squirting Squid, which he has heard gives discounts to law-enforcement personnel. Sure, he’s a security guard for the Intelligence Corps, but that’s pretty close to law enforcement, and he’s been noticing the lovely exotic women who work there wandering around town at night. Motuy is even pretty sure one of them winked at him earlier in the week.

He walks in to find a large common room, with a well-stocked bar, expensive-looking wall hangings, and a few women of various species lounging about in harem outfits. The room is permeated by an odd sweet scent, and hookah smoke drifts through the air. “Hello?” At the sound of his voice, a large gnoll of indeterminate gender strikes a pose, but says nothing.

After a pause, a well-dressed halfling woman comes over to welcome him, “Can I offer you some booze?” She gestures at the bar.
“I would love some booze, yes. What are you offering?”
“Our best goblin ale for this fine gentleman!”
“Is that made for goblins or from goblins?” Motuy has seen some stuff in his time with the Royal Intelligence Corps, even if he’s not technically cleared to know about any of it, and he’s learned that this is the sort of thing you need to ask.
“For. And by! We only purchase local brews.”
“We’re stimulating the local economy,” the gnoll chimes in, with an eloquence completely at odds with… his? (yeah, that’s a male gnoll -- the females are taller, right?) … glassy eyes and lolling tongue.
“We stimulate a lot of things here,” says the halfling, regaining control of the conversation. She must be Madame Smith, Motuy thinks. He’s heard about her.

Mme. Smith seems to possess a practiced blend of charm and professionalism [Diplomacy check: 27], and Motuy relaxes onto a seat at the bar as the barkeep presses an ale into his hand. “Maglubiyet… why haven’t I come here before?” He takes a sip. “This is delicious. It’s just like mother used to make.” Mme. Smith gives him a funny look. “Mother kept a copper still in the woods outside town.”

Hiddlebatch OOC: I like that it’s his mother. [Other GM] is always sexist and all the NPCs are men.
GM: Isn’t that mostly because of a lack of female miniatures?
Hiddlebatch OOC: Okay, there’s that.

Cpl. Motuy is, as Quimarel puts it “wined and dined”. He finds himself pleasantly inebriated, and the gnoll -- “Makpov”, was it? -- is being very friendly, leaning on the bar with him. He’s even feeding Motuy little morsels of dire rat, which is nice. He may not usually swing that way, but what the hell, you only live once…

Makpov’s player has decided to act this out.

Quimarel OOC: Let’s hope the guard is making a less distressed face than the GM just did.
GM: I wasn’t expecting to be fed. Anyway, let’s fast-forward -- um -- fast-for -- quit trying to feed me things. Let’s fade to black on Makpov and the goblin.

Various innuendos ensue, and Makpov’s player spends a few minutes playing hyena sounds on her laptop and asking whether she should roll for this. I tell her she can roll Dexterity if she really wants to, and she gets a 7. Makpov just isn’t feeling it tonight. More innuendo ensues, and eventually the game gets back on track.

Cpl. Motuy comes back out (or, as I was forced to phrase it after the rest of the table spent some time cheerfully turning my narration into more innuendo whenever possible, “he emerges from the room, through the door, with his opposable thumbs”). Quimarel, having decided that the afterglow is the best time to get him to talk, asks what his job is like.

“Oh, I spend all night walking back and forth carrying a big pike… it’s like I’m an NPC in some magitech video game.”
“That sounds terrible; really a waste of your abilities.”
“Well, pike-carrying is part of my core skill set.”
“I like a man who knows how to handle a pike.” The table collapses into laughter again.
“...anyway, I spend my nights guarding a building that nobody ever tries to break into. I mean, who would break into a building full of spies who like poisoning and checking up on people and hunting down their loved ones and that kind of thing?”

The table spends some time being entertained by the idea of dangerous spies sitting around in the records room doing paperwork.

Quimarel OOC: But everyone knows they’re in there? That’s the opposite of spying!
GM: Everyone knows where the CIA building is, too.

Quimarel knows an opportunity to ply her trade when she sees one. “You know what would be fun… if we came by to liven up your guard duty.”
“That would be fun… but we’d have to make sure my bosses didn’t find out about it.”
“We could arrange that; and I bet your co-workers would like to have some fun too.”
“I bet they would… and that does sound fun, but we would have to be careful, because my bosses can be extra strict.”
“Who are your bosses? I mean, they can’t be watching you all the time.”
“Well, not all the time, but we do have to make reports… and they have a way of finding things out… ultimately, I guess my boss is Spymistress Zubynna. And she’s old and cranky, and I don’t think she’d be happy about us having whores over while we’re on duty.”

A note: in the previous campaign, the players recruited several goblin tribes to assist in a war effort, and Tribe Muck-Laugh, the tribe who founded Noroiras, was one of them. They assigned Muck-Laugh to intelligence-gathering efforts, and formalized a sort of spy network, Over the past century, that has evolved into Tribe Muck-Laugh running the local arm of the Royal Intelligence Corps directly -- the head of the tribe gets the Spymaster/Spymistress title automatically.

Quimarel: How old is she?
Motuy: She’s… about forty.
[The table is reminded that goblins are short-lived; they hit “venerable” at 40. Motuy is probably not yet 20.]

“I don’t know,” Motuy dithers. “It sounds really fun, but I’m just not sure.”
“Well, if you can get enough of your co-workers in on it, we can probably make sure no one bothers us.”
“That could work...”
“It’s not like your boss is going to actually be there.”
“She could still find out… she has ways.”

At this point, Quimarel starts having fun with the drunken, slightly-dazed goblin security guard. “Like… spies?”
“Exactly! It’s like she has spies… oh, right.”
“Do you think your co-workers might be spies?”
“Oh, Maglubiyet… they all are!” Pause. “The real question is, are they spying with me… or at me?”

Quimarel deflects the conversation back on track. “Isn’t it scary being there at night? I mean, with all the traps and stuff, you’ve probably got to be careful.”
“Well, I think the only trap is the one in the basement, and we don’t even go down there.”
“Because…”
“Oh, because we don’t know where the switch is to make it not kill us all. That’s above our pay grade.”
“That sucks.”
“Yes. But we just keep people from going into the trapped room.”
“That makes sense.”
“Yeah. It is kind of spooky in there, though.”
“What makes it so spooky?”
“Well, it’s dark, and there’s not many people there, and who knows what these people leave lying around. It could be, like, poison… or… I don’t know what spies have. You know, the things. The things that do the things.”
Makpov, entering the common area, chimes in. “You work for the spies.”
“Yeah, but I’m not cleared for any of this. I just carry a pike. I don’t get to do the actual spying.”
“So… if we were to stop by to break up the monotony, what time would be best?”
“Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, I guess. When there aren’t a lot of people around.”
“What if someone inside the building sees you? Aren’t there guards inside?”
“Yeah…”
“Where are they stationed?”
“They move around a lot… I think we’d have to get them in on it too.”
“We can do that. The more the merrier!”
“But how are we going to get them all in on it? I can’t just ask, ‘hey, y’all want to shirk your duties and bring in some whores?’”
“I think it would be different if there were already whores there. It’s easier to say ‘no’ to a hypothetical situation.”
“That could work. But you gotta not tell them that it was my idea.”
“I’m good at keeping secrets. Tell you what; if they’re not into it, you can lead us back off the property. And while we’re out of earshot…”
“Okay…”

The conversation drifts back to general small talk. Motuy eventually leaves for his shift on duty, sobering up as much as he can.

[NowhereMan583]

The 15th day of the month of Obad-Hai
The 110th year of the second Ravensblood dynasty

After Cpl. Motuy leaves, Makpov pulls Quimarel aside. It seems he has some moral qualms about sleeping with someone for information -- unusual, given that “seduce them” has been his go-to solution to most problems thus far.

“No, it’s okay,” Quimarel assures him. “You slept with him because he paid you. The information was a separate thing.”

Makpov accepts this.

Out of character, the game is derailed by some nonsense with a kitchen knife. Band-Aids are applied, and we return to the table.

Quimarel reviews, with the others, the information they have gathered on the trap situation,
“There’s a trap in the basement area where the vault is. The guard we spoke to says there’s a switch to turn it off, but he doesn’t know where it is because it’s above his pay grade.”

“Do we have any ideas other than just booking it in there?” asks Hiddlebatch.

“Well, we’re going to show up with whores and provide a distraction… while we are distracting them very thoroughly, you Jaunt through the walls.”

“I have to already be inside if you want me to be close enough to Jaunt into the vault.”

Tamarie suggests how she could help. “I could disguise myself, run in and say, ‘hey, whores are out here!’”

Quimarel finds this entertaining. “Whore delivery. Harlot-gram.”

Makpov OOC: Please tip your driver; whores carry less than $20 in cash.

Hiddlebatch makes sure Quimarel knows what she’s getting into. “If they aren’t distracted, you’re going to have to have sex with them anyway. Then the next night, we use fire. Those are our only real options. And if you get caught, blame it all on them. You’re a pillar of the community trying to raise the morale of the town.”
Having concocted their Plan, the party approaches the Royal Intelligence Corps that night. Quimarel approaches first, with several of her employees and some wine.

Quimarel OOC: I saunter, and… stuff… I don’t know how to do this sort of thing. And I go “Haaaaaay”. Is the guard from earlier one of the ones outside?
[Nonsense ensues, in which I try to get someone to hand me the coin I flipped earlier, locate it, then clumsily learn that half-dollars don’t flip well and make crappy d2s.]
GM: Okay… heads. He’s one of the outside guards at the moment.
Quimarel OOC: So we saunter up to him and go. “Haaaaaay”. But, you know, in a sexy way.

Cpl. Motuy is the picture of subtlety. “Hello, scantily-clad women I have never met!”

Makpov: And Makpov.
Cpl. Motuy: And scantily-clad hyena!

Quimarel takes control of the conversation away from those two. “We just thought you boys could use a little break. You work so hard.”
Motuy continues to be subtle. “We do work so hard. Is not… is not that right, Cpl. Bogdun?”
Cpl. Bogdun nods.
Motuy goes on, “Yes, we do work so hard. We should take these lovely young ladies inside.”
“That would be a fantastic idea,” Quimarel says.

GM: Are you… taking pictures of me doing the NPC stuff?
Makpov OOC: I took a video!
GM: You should delete that.
[Makpov’s player shows the others her cell-phone video]
Quimarel OOC: And the GM goes to drown himself in the lake in shame!
GM: I’m just letting the dog out.
Quimarel OOC: In shame!

The guards escort Quimarel and her employees into the lobby/common area. During the day, this is where people who have business with the RIC wait -- it’s the only room you can get into without having to talk your way past a guard. During the night, there are still guards, but there’s also lots of unoccupied furniture. The exterior guards start explaining the “ale and whores” situation to the interior guards, and Quimarel carefully ensures that the door is left open so Hiddlebatch can slip through.

Motuy goes up to his co-workers. “Ladies and gentlemen. We have these impromptu whores and booze. I suggest we not think about why.”

Quimarel OOC: Don’t look a gift whore in the mouth.

Motuy and the other guards discuss. “Should we get the upstairs folk in on this?”
“I don’t know, Specialist Ouryka still owes me five silver. Maybe we should leave her out of it.”

Tamarie: We could give you an extra five silver worth of services.
GM: You’re not even a whore! You’re a tailor!
Tamarie OOC: I have four raccoon arms! They are all deft!
GM: Are you even in here?
Tamarie OOC: I don’t know!
Hiddlebatch OOC: You’re outside with me. You’re just saying this to me and I’m very confused.
Tamarie, to Hiddlebatch: I have four raccoon arms!
GM: It’s an all-purpose sentence. It could mean anything.

After some discussion, Quimarel manages to convince them that all five of the guards need to be here, and also gets them to move this party to the scriptorium. “I can do a lot of things with a writing-desk.”

Hiddlebatch and Tamarie slip into the lobby once everyone’s gone, and start staring at the door to the basement, wishing the rogue weren’t so busy with her orgy so that someone could check for traps. So H considers using her Ethereal Jaunt trick right away, and hoping the map was accurate enough that she can navigate into the vault before it wears off.

[The game comes to a momentary pause while I go stop my dog from trying to eat an umbrella. The recording catches Makpov’s player talking to her dog.]
Makpov OOC: I just want you to know that you’re better than her.

After a brief singalong to the Proclaimers’ "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)", for reasons I cannot decipher, the game gets back on track.

Eventually, it is decided that they are going to risk that door being trapped, because if they don’t get through it, Hiddlebatch might not have enough time on its Ethereal Jaunt to reach the vault. Hiddlebatch gives some instructions to Tamarie in case something goes horribly wrong. “If you hear me screaming really loud, come get me. Our alibi is that we came here looking for the whores.” Tamarie tries and fails to pick the lock, then opts to take 20 to try again. She also successfully makes a stealth check to avoid attracting attention from the scriptorium.

Hiddlebatch slips through the door, crosses the records room, then Jaunts down the stairway into the vault. H runs through the wall, avoiding the attention of any horrible monsters from whatever weird demi-plane it’s travelling through. It begins looking around the room with its hobgoblin darkvision. There are a couple shelves on the walls, lined with preserved herbs -- H’s Knowledge [nature] identifies a sizable stash of probably-confiscated visionvine, a hallucinogenic drug common in this region -- and another shelf with a number of small curios. A cage hanging from the wall holds an old leatherbound book. A large, detailed ogre statue takes up one corner of the room, and there’s a birdcage hanging from the ceiling that holds a little winged figure who appears to be in a drugged stupor. Hiddlebatch recognizes the winged figure as an atomie despite its very low Knowledge [nature] roll to identify it -- it’s pretty easy, since a local tavern called the Flayed Faerie has a preserved atomie hanging out front as a sign. (Remember, most of the populace of this town are technically Chaotic Evil.)

H throws out a Detect Good, and finds nothing. It then tries a Detect Magic, and a number of things light up: the curios on the shelf, and a few things in the big trunk in the corner. H recognizes the items on the shelf (Knowledge [arcana] roll: natural 20):

• Candle of Truth
• 3 deactivated Eyes of Jak (these are from a previous campaign, in which Hiddlebatch’s and Quimarel’s characters participated -- they’re little carven eyeballs that essentially function as permanent Arcane Eyes, and were the preferred surveillance method of the now-destroyed lich Jak the Panoptic.)
• 1 Eye of the Sleeper (Another of Jak the Panoptic’s inventions -- it’s used to create an unknowing sleeper agent. It comes with Clairaudience/Clairvoyance, a 1/day Dominate Person, and a Flesh to Stone failsafe.)
• A quill that should be paired with an Inkwell of Authority, a communications device that the Cult of Hextor used to use before they were wiped out and their territory became the Black Sands. It’s no good unless you have both a quill and an inkwell, though.

Hiddlebatch doesn’t see the glaive it’s been sent here to get, but notices that the trunk in the corner is probably big enough to hold one, and it does have a few magical auras in it. H considers this. H considers that she can’t search for traps. H decides to hide behind the ogre statue and cast Knock. The trunk opens anticlimactically.

H goes to look into the trunk. It contains a number of containers with disturbingly-organic contents, A Knowledge [nature] check tells Hiddlebatch that it is looking at a small phial of basilisk bile --

Quimarel OOC: Worst Dr. Seuss book ever.

-- a pouch of powdered unicorn horn, a box of wyvern bones, a jar of viper teeth, and a few pickled troll hearts. H also identifies an egg in a glass box as belonging to a harpy. A Knowledge [arcana] roll does little for Hiddlebatch, as this is way outside of its field. H can tell, however, that a witch might use these as ritual components. The trunk also contains a stack of parchment scrolls, and what looks like the golden haft of a polearm. Knowledge [arcana] leads Hiddlebatch to suspect that the glaive has no blade because it is a Brilliant Energy weapon, and the blade will pop into existence with a command word. (This is then explained out of character as “magical lightsaber”.)

The parchments prove to be spell scrolls, none of which contain spells H has even heard of before. Assumedly, they were custom-made by the witch who used to own this stuff (or members of her coven.)

Spoiler: Custom Spells

Show

Ruinous Gift
Level: 7
Casting Time: One minute
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Range: Touch
Target: An item you own
Effect: Cursed item
Duration: Permanent
Saving Throw: n/a
Spell Resistance: n/a
The item on which this spell is cast will bring bad luck and financial ruin to the owner. The only way to end the effect other than breaking the spell through arcane means is to give the item to another, who must accept it of their own free will.
The spell must initially be cast upon an item you own, and then you must give the item to another.
The owner of the Ruinous Gift, in addition to taking a -5 penalty to all checks, is subject to the dire version of Murphy’s Law: everything that might go wrong, will go wrong, in the worst possible way, at the worst possible time.

Broneden’s True Empathy
Level: 4
Casting Time: One minute
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Range: One hundred feet
Target: One creature
Effect: Shared emotions
Duration: One hour
Saving Throw: Will Negates
Spell Resistance: Yes
For one hour, the target feels all of the emotions and physical sensations that the caster does, as they occur. The target does not actually take damage if the caster does, but they do feel the accompanying pain.

Serpentine Thief
Level: 5
Casting Time: One minute
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Range: Ten feet
Target: Snake or other serpentine creature with an Int of 5 or less.
Effect: Assigns a task to the target.
Duration: Ten minutes
Saving Throw: Will negates
Spell Resistance: Yes
When cast on a snake, this spell allows you to instruct the animal to retrieve one item that you can clearly picture in your head. The snake will unerringly go to the target item, and will attempt, to the best of its ability, to retrieve it and bring it back to you. It will stop only for biological necessities.

River Seed
Level: 8
Casting Time: Ten Minutes
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Range: One hundred feet
Target: 5-ft radius
Effect: Artificial spring
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: n/a
Spell Resistance: n/a
At a point you indicate, a hole is bored straight down through the earth until it hits a subterranean body of water, whereupon it reshapes the stone to cause that water to be continuously forced up, creating an artificial spring.
Magic is not required to sustain the spring’s existence, though the aquifer, subterranean lake, or what have you may eventually run dry.

Primordial Portal
Level: 9
Casting Time: One minute
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Range: One hundred feet
Target: n/a
Effect: Ten-foot-radius portal to pre-designated point in past
Duration: Ten minutes
Saving Throw: n/a
Spell Resistance: n/a
This spell, when cast, creates a two-way portal to a point in the distant past. Targeting a specific time is extremely difficult, and requires a caster level check. The margins of error are so expansive that it is ill-advised for the inexperienced to attempt anything too specific -- you are lucky to get within a few centuries of your target. The portal remains open for ten minutes, and then closes instantaneously. Anything that is partway through the portal when it closes is bisected, so keep your vital organs clear.
When the spell is cast, choose a target time and roll a check: d20 + caster level + Int bonus. Knowledge (History) provides a +2 synergy bonus. Then consult the chart. (Flip a coin to see if the portal’s target is displaced forward or backward in time.) Again, specific targets are very difficult to hit, so this spell is not advised for accessing an exact point in history.


Phoenix Oath
Level: 9
Casting Time: One hour
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Range: Personal
Target: You
Effect: Future animation of self as undead
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: n/a
Spell Resistance: n/a
When casting this spell, the caster must articulate an oath that they will perform a specific task. If the caster dies with the task incomplete, they will be instantaneously animated as an undead creature of the DM’s choice. The undead creature will be driven to complete the task above all else. If the undead creature is destroyed, they do not animate again. Upon reanimation, the power of the magic sufficiently warps and twists the body and mind of the caster that Raise Dead will not work on their remains -- stronger magic is required.

Nassim’s Scalding Skin
Level: 3
Casting Time: One round
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Range: One hundred feet
Target: One creature
Effect: Continuous fire damage
Duration: One minute
Saving Throw: Fortitude Negates
Spell Resistance: Yes
The target’s own skin becomes extremely hot, and begins to char & blister. The target takes 1d6 fire damage each round.

Grand Frost
Level: 6
Casting Time: One round
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Range: Personal
Target: You
Effect: Temporary access to cold-based powers
Duration: Concentration (see below)
Saving Throw: n/a
Spell Resistance: n/a
You tap into the energy of the Paraelemental Plane of Ice. For the duration of the spell, you have immunity to cold, your touch deals 3d6 cold damage, and you can cast Ray of Frost at will. In addition, two ice mephits are summoned and do your bidding for the duration of the spell.
This comes with some highly noticeable visual effects: frost forms under your feet, and inverted icicles grow up from your head to create a frozen crown.
In combat, you must make a DC10 Concentration check every round or the spell is dismissed. Out of combat, you must make the check once a minute. Failure means the spell ends.

Hiddlebatch pockets them, and tries to wake up the atomie.

“Hrm? Mblhrmbl. Grfkjbal” It doesn’t seem to be capable of functioning on its own.

H considers taking it along too, and stops by the book cage. “Hello?” The book does not respond. Since there’s no writing on the cover, Hiddlebatch has no idea what the book might be about. H decides to take the glaive, the scrolls, the candle, and the Eye of the Sleeper. The theory here is that someone’s going to notice that the place has been burgled anyway, so they might as well go for broke.

A Detect Poison and some Knowledge rolls tell Hiddlebatch that the atomie has been fed a concoction made with the blood of a Corpse Rook, and it will be in this quasi-responsive state for a while yet, until the poison wears off in a couple days. It takes some time for H to decide that it’s worth taking along as well. Hiddlebatch then gathers up her plunder, and prepares to cast Passwall with the glaive… then remembers that it needs a command word. And H can’t do the Ethereal Jaunt thing more than once a day.

Hiddlebatch OOC: I’ll just hunker down here overnight and regret all my life choices.

Then Hiddlebatch’s player remember she has one casting of Knock left, and suddenly things get a lot easier. The door swings open, and fires a storm of needles… towards the imaginary intruder on the stairs. The guards are still very distracted, and roll a 4 on their Perception check, so they don’t hear anything. Hiddlebatch kicks the needles aside so the guards will be less likely to notice them, and sneaks back out of the building.

At this point, Hiddlebatch botches a Stealth roll…

Yona Tribe Muck-Laugh is out for a midnight stroll to decompress after a long shift waiting tables at the Broken Stone, when she runs smack into the very-recognizable hobgoblin priest from the edge of town. Said priest seems to be sneaking out of the Royal Intelligence Corps with a suspiciously bulging sack over one shoulder. For a second, the two stare at each other in mutual surprise & incomprehension.

Then the crazy priest strikes a pose and booms, “the harlots in there refuse to repent! They will not listen!” Yona is too tired to deal with this crap, so she just nods, smiles, and tries to move on. (Sense Motive: 6) The priest isn’t done yet, though. “You should not be out at this hour either! You should be at temple!” Then it hands her a terrifying carven idol. “This terror will watch you! Do not lose it, or you will die!” (Intimidate: 24)

“O - okay…” Yona decides to head home.

Tamarie and Hiddlebatch take their ill-gotten gains to Hiddlebatch’s chapel outside of town.

[NowhereMan583]

In which comparisons are made between fairies and gerbils.

The 16th day of the month of Obad-Hai
The 110th year of the second Ravensblood dynasty

The next day, the PCs gather at Hiddlebatch’s chapel to try and figure out what to do with the fairy. They put it in their own cage, and Quimarel gathers up some herbs that she’s heard can be used to counteract many types of drugs, including this one. Tamarie uses her Alchemy skills to make… something… out of them. (Craft [alchemy]: 7) She seems unsure of whether she’s been successful, and Quimarel makes the call that if the alchemist isn’t sure, she probably shouldn’t feed it to tiny fairies. They decide to wait for it to wake up on its own.

Hiddlebatch goes back to its street-corner preaching, and is “surprised” to hear of an investigation being conducted over the apparent presence of harlots in the Royal Intelligence Corps last night.

Tamarie decides to wander into the Broken Stone for breakfast, where she can inconspicuously (riiiiight) knit in the corner and overhear any rumors that might be floating around. The bar-wench who brings her food, Yona, seems slightly shaken for some reason. Maybe she had a rough night or something.

Quimarel pre-emptively reports her entirely-fabricated side of the story to the authorities. She finds the Intelligence Corps operative assigned to look into the matter, a young-ish goblin in low-profile black & gray garments. “We were hired for an event… and it was quite an event. I don’t know who hired me exactly; it came through several different channels.” She gives a speech designed to convince him that someone else paid her to provide a distraction, and further insists that she was genuinely concerned about the morale of the people who defend our fine town. She is, after all, a pillar of the community.

She rolls a 12 on her Bluff check.

“Is that so, Miss… Smith?” The operative seems suspicious.

“Yes. We’re very good at what we do.”

“I’m sure you are. Can you perhaps describe the person who allegedly hired you?”

“He was a goblin. Didn’t give me his name, but he said he wanted to reward the brave soldiers at the Intelligence Corps, and I thought, ‘You know what? They do work very hard. They deserve a break.’” [Bluff: 22]

The operative thinks that she’s hiding something, but it sounds plausible. He spends some time grilling her and trying to get a description of this alleged goblin. Quimarel intentionally gives the most generic description of a goblin she possibly can.

Quimarel OOC: I’m not going to come out and say that they all look alike to me, but…

The operative eventually does a sketch of the “suspect” and decides his time would be better spent elsewhere.

The others settle down to wait for the Kech to come meet them at Hiddlebatch’s temple on the appointed day. Quimarel and Hiddlebatch, as the only spellcasters in the party, start examining the spell scrolls. There’s some discussion about how this works: as a divine spellcaster, Hiddlebatch can cast them from a scroll, but can’t learn them (house rule -- I think it’s more fun when more party members have access to consumable resources like scrolls). Quimarel, as a bard/rogue, could theoretically adapt them into bard spells if her arcane spellcaster level were higher -- she only has one or two levels in bard at this point. And there’s always the danger of a spell mishap.

They then debate casting Ruinous Gift on the glaive, on the basis that it would be funny to curse the Kech or their rakshasa masters. It is, however, decided that they will hold onto the scrolls until Quimarel can learn them, unless an emergency comes up.

Tamarie goes back to trying to brew up something to wake up their new captive fairy. It goes better this time (Craft [alchemy]: 21), and the atomie shakes itself into consciousness. “Hrml, hm, whoa. Who are you?”

[Note: everything involving the fairy is pure improvisation at this point. I added him into the vault at the last minute as window dressing, and didn’t expect the PCs to take him with them.]

Hiddlebatch replies, “That’s exactly what we were wondering about you. We found you, and, um, we were wondering what it was that you did that apparently upset some people.”
“Hm?”

Hiddlebatch OOC: Let’s see, do I have any spells that would help? I have… Blistering Invictus. [“Invective”, actually. Hiddlebatch’s player apparently can’t always read her own handwriting. She also notes that she has a spell called “Two Nes” -- i.e., “Tongues”]
Quimarel OOC: No! That sounds like a bad idea! I don’t even know what that is, but I think you shouldn’t cast it right now.

“My name is… Silvermoss.”
“And why would someone be upset with you?”
“I don’t know why anyone would be upset with me. I was just going about my business.”
“What is your business?”
“Okay, so I was going about my frolicking. And suddenly I was in a bag, and there were lots of colors…”

Quimarel OOC: How common are these guys?
GM: They’re not, like, ant-common, but if you were to wander around the wilderness for a few weeks, odds are you’d run into at least one of them. [Translation: they’re on my random encounter table.]
Quimarel OOC: How common are they as… spell components?
GM: … I’m sure you could use them for something.

Hiddlebatch continues the interrogation. “Have you heard of many of your people going missing lately?”
“No.”
“How important are you to your people?”
“I mean… I’m well-respected amongst my hive.”
“What do you do in your hive?”
“You know. Flit from blossom to blossom. I’m also very adept at playing amusing tricks on the larger races. And stabbing people.”
Quimarel sees an in. “So these tricks that you play. What’s the best one you’ve ever done? And by the way, can we offer you some food and drink?”
“I would love some food and drink.”
“What do fairies eat?”
“Got any honey?”

They bring him some honey, and Silvermoss goes on to tell a rambling story about filling some human traveller’s bag with poisonous snakes, which he considers hilarious. The PCs humor him.

Quimarel: Ah, the ol’ cobra-rope trick. Classic.

Hiddlebatch asks if he knows how long he’s been in that cage, which leads nowhere, since Silvermoss has only a rudimentary concept of time and he was drugged out of his mind for most of it. Hiddlebatch’s player takes some time to be confused by the fact that Silvermoss has no idea what date it was, but it becomes rapidly apparent that atomies don’t do the whole calendar thing at all.

“And you can’t think of any reason why anyone would want to take you captive?”
“No.”
The PCs decide this is going nowhere. Silvermoss demands and receives mead & nectar, and the PCs opt to keep him drunk and in a cage until they figure out how to follow up on this. The fact that they’ve rescued him from “drugged in a cage” into “drunk in a cage” does not pass them by. There is some discussion about what to do with him -- keeping him in the Squirting Squid is briefly suggested, but then Quimarel’s player says something about “the tiniest prostitute” and Hiddlebatch’s player makes an obscene comment about gerbils. They decide to keep him in Hiddlebatch’s chapel.

Quimarel: We’re going to go with our favorite standby: get him drunk and get him talking, then see what comes out.

They get a lot of “hilarious” prank stories, and really complicated stories about interpersonal fairy drama. The latter sounds like what you’d get if you put a bunch of sociopathic middle-schoolers in a Lord of the Flies scenario and dosed them all with hallucinogens.

Quimarel listens carefully to see if she can come up with any evidence that he played a prank on the wrong person or has any useful abilities that the RIC might have found interesting.

Hiddlebatch’s player has twigged to the fact that I’m making this up as I go along: “This feels like one of those times when the GM put some random thing in the description and we decided it was important. Like, ‘there’s a bell over here, and then we spend 48 hours trying to figure out what the bell does. ‘It just rings, guys, it RINGS!’ ‘No, it’s gotta be here for a reason.’ ‘Yes -- to RING!’”

From the stories Silvermoss tells, Quimarel is able to gather that he does have a few nifty fairy powers -- he can shrink people / objects, or turn invisible. She convinces him that he’s safest staying in the chapel with Hiddlebatch.

Hiddlebatch: Oh, and while we’re waiting for the Kech, Makpov should ask very casual questions to the people he’s having sex with.

Then everyone’s English-Department-grad-student reflexes kick in and they send Hiddlebatch to the town library to read up on atomies. Hiddlebatch spends the entire day there researching everything it can think of. It finds that atomies are generally thought of as a nuisance, that they’re extremely sneaky, and that there are very few reasons one would want to interact with them intentionally.

Quimarel OOC: Do we know any druid-ranger-type people we could ask about this?
GM: Not really, no.
Hiddlebatch OOC: Wait, no druids or rangers live in this town?
GM: They tend not to live in towns. It’s kind of their whole thing.
[Hiddlebatch’s player’s character in the previous campaign was a druid who started out as a rogue. She is generally referred to by Quimarel’s player as “the WORST druid”.]

Hiddlebatch decides to look up the history of the Flayed Fairy, and finds some local records. The story behind the name, apparently, is that while it was being built, a bunch of atomies kept harassing the goblins for giggles, and that eventually they got sick of it, caught one, killed it, and hung it on the building as a warning to others. They later dried and preserved the corpse, and still use it as a sign. As it dawns on the players that I mean there is an actual dead fairy hanging from their signpost, I have to remind them that this is not a nice town. The overall alignment is Chaotic Evil -- just in a very petty sort of way.

Hiddlebatch looks into historical records, and finds mention of atomies being pressed into service as scouts and spies. Specifically, goblins have been known to blackmail or extort atomies into working for them for as long as they can remember that they’re being extorted. It then goes back to its chapel and cheerfully relates the story of the Flayed Fairy, to Silvermoss’s moderate horror.

“Why are you telling me this? This is creepy!”
“I was just wondering if you’d heard of the place.”
“No!”
“Have you ever worked with our kind before?”
“I don’t think so.”

Quimarel and Hiddlebatch wonder if there’s something like the Eye of the Sleeper involved here, but Detect Magic turns up nothing. Tamarie knits him a little jumper, which makes him look slightly dorky and colorblind. (Craft check: 12) Silvermoss is not pleased with it.

Hiddlebatch OOC: We need to build him a place to live. Does anyone have Craft [home] or something?
Quimarel OOC: Or Knowledge [Martha Stewart]?
GM: I would not have given you this guy if I knew you were basically going to turn him into a gerbil. “Let’s make him a little home, with a plastic tunnel and a hamster wheel…”

The PCs put together a little house/prison/cage for him, with lots of mead.
Silvermoss: Thank you? This is a nice… gesture… though normally we live outside.
Eventually, the PCs decide to convince him to stay, unaware of his status as prisoner, until they can figure out something else.

Hiddlebatch OOC: Time passes in much this way?
GM: Time passes in much this way. Does anyone want to do anything not involving the… gerbil fairy?
Tamarie OOC: I want to knit a cover for his cage!
Quimarel OOC: Like a parakeet!

A few days pass, and eventually it’s time for the meeting with Illuvatum.

[Cromm10k]

This is an incredibly fun read! Please keep it up.

[NowhereMan583]

This is an incredibly fun read! Please keep it up.

Thank you -- I enjoy doing it, and it's actually very useful to go back over old notes and recordings. It's always good to hear confirmation that other people are reading & enjoying it, though.

[Cromm10k]

The adventures of your freak show party a real fun to follow. :) I am under the impression that you have to improvise a lot as a DM with this party. That is BTW what I enjoy most when DMing. It always makes the best storys and you will talk about them for years ...

Side note: I always try to get my players to write a log or diary. But like in my current Kingmaker campaign if I as the DM don't do it their attempts will die quickly. So I know how much extra effort this log is.

[Saaander]

Yeah! Well done. Keep it up!

[Rolero]

This is hilarious ^^
I love this kind of games where players get creative with their characters and the setting is far from the standar go and save the day because you are the heroes.

Keep up with this, I'm enjoying every word ;)

[NowhereMan583]

A brief update, in which the glaive is handed off and the PCs almost come to blows with Warden Illuvatum

The 19th day of the month of Obad-Hai
The 110th year of the second Ravensblood dynasty

Hiddlebatch has been spending the past few days following its normal routine: go into town, find a public area, try to convert anyone listening to H’s heretical sect of Khurgorbaeyag, frighten the citizenry, and eventually get ushered away by the guards. At this point in time, Hiddlebatch’s flock consists of about a dozen goblins, most of whom don’t even show up at the chapel, instead staying at home and being horrified by the carven idols H has given them. Only one of her flock is Tainted himself -- Zonnd, who is possessed of an unsettling set of translucent mandibles, and can eat nothing but the still-beating hearts of birds. They don’t show up in the story much thus far.

On 19 Obad-Hai, Illuvatum arrives at the chapel to take possession of the glaive. He wastes no time with pleasantries. “Have you… acquired the glaive?”

Quimarel replies, “We’ve acquired something.” She hands him the golden polearm-haft. “This is what we got.”

Hiddlebatch tells him, however, that they could not find the command word -- so it might well be useless to them unless they have some way of working that out.
Illuvatum waves his hand. “We have resources; we can figure it out.”

Quimarel makes an abrupt segue: “What do you know about fairies?”
“We try not to associate with them, because they’re annoying as all Hells.”
“We happened to find one of them in the vault… do you know what we might do with it?”
“Fricassee? They’re just vermin that can talk.”

The party start muttering amongst themselves, trying to decide whether there’s anything else they can ask him about Silvermoss, but he cuts them off. “I don’t want to talk to you folks about fairies. You got the glaive. That’s great. The gratitude of Lord Jithanver the Blood-Drinker shall rain down upon you, assuming we can get this thing working.”
Tamarie seems confused. “How does gratitude ‘rain’?”
“In a metaphorical fashion.”

There’s a pause, then Illuvatum continues. “I will bring this to Lord Bashant, we will discuss, and perhaps we will contact you again in the near future with another task.”
Disgruntled muttering from the PCs follows. “This is what we are now,” grumbles Quimarel.

Illuvatum seems ready to depart. “You may now go about your regularly scheduled… whatever you people do. Just leave our possessions alone this time.”
Hiddlebatch takes exception. “And you don’t kidnap any of our friends.”
“We are within our rights to kidnap anyone who is in the way of our work.”
“Uh-huh. And, just so we know, what exactly is your work, and what stuff should we not mess with?”
“I’m not going to get into an argument with you people about this.”
“You’re already arguing! It’s too late!” Hiddlebatch is highly skilled in diplomatic discourse.
Illuvatum’s temper is cracking slightly. “Look, your freaky little lizard-thing is the one who came up to us while we were going about our duly-appointed --”
“She has a name!” Quimarel objects.

[Pause, while Quimarel’s player shuffles through her notes.]
[Giggling from around the table.]
GM: You had to look up her name, didn’t you?

“-- and it is Krich the Xenophilic!” Quimarel continues.

Quimarel OOC: Krich of the Golden Crotch.

“Your freaky little lizard-thing got in the way while we were conducting our business. We were merely protecting our interests, and then you folks broke in and fed one of my colleagues to spiders. All in all, you’re lucky our relationship is as amiable as it is.”

A cacaphony of objections arises from the PCs.

Makpov decides that his skills are needed to defuse the situation, and starts giving Illuvatum a shoulder massage. “There’s no reason you need to be so tense about this whole thing.”

GM: You need to roll Diplomacy,
Makpov: [seductive growling]
GM: … or possibly Intimidate, depending on what you’re going for there.
Makpov OOC: Diplomacy. 21.

Illuvatum finds himself oddly charmed by the malodorous savage and his slavering jaws -- Makpov’s Tainted ability to be perceived as supernaturally attractive comes through yet again.

“Perhaps you are right, strange pointy-nosed creature.” Illuvatum rolls a 2 on his check to resist Makpov’s advances, and completely backs off on the whole berating-the-party thing.

Quimarel OOC: Good work. Have a rawhide chew.

“Perhaps we will come to some more pleasant… social… situation. I must get back to business. Perhaps I will visit you again soon.”
Makpov attempts to bat his eyes. “ALL of us?”
“Yes. Yes. I will… see you again soon.” Illuvatum then leaves quickly, possibly to try and deal with the psychological fallout of his unexpected attraction to gnoll men.

The party discuss amongst themselves what their next step should be. There’s probably something to be gained by getting involved with this weird cult-like organization, but on the other hand, they don’t want to screw up the town where they, you know, live. (Though Hiddlebatch argues that it will be easier to evangelize if the town falls apart and “everyone realizes their lives are empty and meaningless.”) Quimarel is more interested in financial gain and political power. Makpov plans to “screw around”, and Tamarie just wants to play with her alchemical tools.

[wicketman8]

I'm not fully caught up but this is hilarious so far. I would also love to see the tables for the mutations if possible.

[Captain Smugenz]

This is a fantastic read, and sounds like a fun campaign too. Would it be possible to get the mutations table? It seems well though-out and would be very useful in a number of campaign settings.

[NowhereMan583]

First: I apologize for the break in updates -- real life is intruding on both my chronicling of the campaign and the actual playing of the campaign. Long story short, I was hired for my dream job (12th-grade English teacher) at the absolute last minute, and I'm in the middle of an unfortunate overlap period where I'm both finishing out my two weeks' notice at the horrible graveyard-shift retail gig I've been working to pay for food and rent in the long job search & scrambling to get all my paperwork and lesson-planning done in a very limited amount of time. In a couple weeks, I should be able to pick this up again.

Second: By popular demand (i.e., more than one person has asked) I'm going to try and convert the massive Excel document helpfully entitled "So You've Been Tainted by the Unknowable Far Realms" into a form that can be read on the boards. See below...

Instructions for applying the Tainted template:
1. You gain True Strike 1/day.
2. Any spells or effects that target Aberrations affect you.
3. ECL +1
4. Choose as many traits as you like from the table below. For each trait you choose, you must also roll one at random from the same category (Minor, Medium, or Major). These cannot be rerolled unless: (a) The DM agrees that the combination of traits you have renders the character unplayable or (b) You roll a trait you already have, in which case you can choose to roll again rather than apply it twice.

Spoiler: Be Forewarned that the Table Below is Squamous and Rugose

Show

(Whoa -- trying to use the HTML tags for this apparently breaks a characters-per-post limit I was unaware of. I'll just give it to you as a list, since it looks like manually putting it all into the GitP "Table" function would take forever.)
Minor

1. 1d12 pairs of vestigial humanoid legs on torso.
2. 1d12 pairs of vestigial insectoid legs on torso.
3. 1d12 pairs of vestigial tentacles on torso.
4. 1d12 tentacles instead of legs.
5. 1d4 extra fingers & toes (roll separately for each limb)
6. A cluster of 2d12 small tentacles (about six inches long) can be found on your… [roll 1d6. 1: shoulder 2: knee 3: chest 4: neck 6: spine]
7. Acrid green smoke drifts upward from your apparently-empty eye sockets at all times. This does not affect your ability to see.
8. Alcohol is like acid to you.
9. All of your bodily fluids are replaced with quicksilver. It can be used for magical or alchemical purposes, but you have to purify the heck out of it first, lest you inadvertently open portals to places where you really don’t want to go.
10. All of your voluntary motions are accompanied by flickers of bale fire.
11. Ashen skin, milky eyes, gaunt appearance.
12. Batlike ears.
13. Beak.
14. Birdlike legs.
15. Cat eyes.
16. Chitinous segmented tongue.
17. Complex network of cartilaginous tubes in respiratory system constantly produces eerie music at the edge of hearing.
18. Compound eyes.
19. Covered in cilia. They keep you clean and occasionally pass morsels of food into your mouth. They do so completely autonomically.
20. Covered in protruding veins.
21. Cuttlefish eyes.
22. Double normal number of legs. Arranged in radially symmetrical manner.
23. Every so often, something twitches or wriggles under your skin.
24. Eyes are an unnatural color of the player's choice.
25. Hair replaced with chitinous tendrils. Yes, that includes body hair and facial hair. Yes, they grow at a normal hair-growth rate. Cutting them hurts like heck. They spasm uncontrollably at all times.
26. Hair replaced with chitinous tendrils. Yes, that includes body hair and facial hair. Yes, they grow at a normal hair-growth rate. Cutting them hurts like heck. You have complete control over their movement.
27. Hallucinogenic saliva.
28. Infested by symbiotic insects. 1d6 Con damage per day if they are killed off. Generally creep everybody out if they aren’t.
29. Insectoid abdomen.
30. Instead of eyes, you have a hole in your head the size of your fist that seems to open onto the blackness of space. Looking at it makes people dizzy. A natural wall of force keeps stuff from falling in. Oddly enough, you can see just fine.
31. Irritating buzzing noise accompanies you everywhere you go.
32. Lamprey-like mouths on your palms.
33. Legs atrophied and useless; you float a foot above the ground at all times.
34. Light pours from your mouth whenever you speak.
35. Light sensitivity
36. Mirrors don’t work when you’re within 100 ft.
37. Mouth can distend like a snake's.
38. Mouth full of long, thin fangs. Anglerfish fangs. So long they look like they can't possibly fit in your head. Your mouth distends impressively when you open it.
39. Neck frill.
40. No neck -- head hovers a few inches above body. You can rotate your head 360 degrees with ease.
41. No nose -- you breathe through a pair of wide, squat tubes on the sides of your neck.
42. No teeth -- you suck food through a quartet of stiff proboscii that resemble fangs.
43. No teeth, inconveniently small mouth. Cannot eat solid food, super good at lapping up nutritious soup with tongue.
44. Occasionally, tiny faces appear in relief on your skin, as if very small people were trapped inside you and were trying to push their heads out to the air. Usually they look humanoid, but not always.
45. One eye, cyclops-style.
46. Prehensile teeth. Or possibly a mouthful of thin, bone-colored tentacles about three inches long that can snap into a rigid position and chew food when necessary. Same difference.
47. Radial symmetry.
48. Radula.
49. Rivulets of fine black sand trickle constantly from all of your facial orifices.
50. Six eyes clustered at front of face.
51. Skin repels water.
52. Smell like smoke at all times.
53. Spots on your skin shift color with your mood.
54. Swarms of harmless but annoying insects gather whenever you stay in one place overnight.
55. The top of your skull has a ring of working fingers around it that form the appearance of a crown.
56. There’s a tiny mouth on the nape of your neck. You have no control over it. Sometimes it whispers to you.
57. Thick black blood
58. Thin spires of bone protrude from the top of your skull to form the appearance of a crown.
59. Third eye on forehead, fully functional
60. Third eye on forehead, nonfunctional
61. Third eye on forehead, seems functional but definitely does not transmit information to your brain.
62. Transparent skin.
63. Very large mouth takes up most of the space between your sternum and your pelvis. No mouth on your head.
64. Vestigial insect wings. Way too small to fly, way too big for you to cover them up with clothing. (They’re very tender -- compressing them is quite painful.) Player can choose what type of insect the wings resemble.
65. You are totally squamous.
66. You can squirt ink from an orifice in the small of your back.
67. You cannot perceive any of the colors others can. You’re not colorblind, though -- you see an entirely different range of color.
68. You exhale sulfuric gas.
69. You exude foul-smelling black slime from all your pores constantly.
70. You exude foul-smelling black slime from all your pores when asleep.
71. You have 1d4 extra mouths scattered all over your body. None of your mouths are on your head.
72. You have 1d8 extra eyes scattered all over your body. None of your eyes are on your head.
73. You have a pair of mandibles at the back of your throat. They are both visible and audible when you speak.
74. You have a second head. It’s vestigial and underdeveloped; it doesn’t move or do anything; it’s just there.
75. You have a song in your heart. By which I mean your heart is literally singing. It produces eerie chanting in no particular language audible to anyone standing within ten feet of you.
76. You have an overlapping pattern of bioluminescent rings all over your body. Player can choose what color they are. -5 to Hide.
77. You have seven long, thin tongues. They don’t quite fit in your mouth and tend to stick out the sides.
78. You only eat live plants. Right out of the ground.
79. You only eat tree bark. You need lots of it, though -- your daily rations weigh twice as much.
80. You shed your skin once a month.
81. You smell like death: -1 penalty to Charisma.
82. You take gelatinous form when sleeping.
83. Your body is bloated and pustulent. It’s not fat… it looks more like you’re full of tumors. This does not seem to pose a health risk.
84. Your eyes are large & bulging, and set on the sides of your neck.
85. Your footprints do not match your feet. Not even close. Player can decide what their footprints look like during character creation.
86. Your hair grows by 18 inches every day, then falls out at night.
87. Your hands and feet resemble those of a tarsier: +1 to Climb.
88. Your head is stretched vertically into a four-foot-long tentacle. Your facial features are still present.
89. Your legs bend the wrong way.
90. Your limbs branch into two at the elbow, knee, or other halfway point.
91. Your mouth is set vertically in your face rather than the normal horizontal configuration.
92. Your mouth is vertically oriented, and runs from your chin to the back of your head. Any eyes on the front of your face are moved to the sides of your head, and your brain is somewhere in your torso.
93. Your mouth wraps entirely around your head -- you open it by causing the top of your head to levitate a few inches with no visible means of support.
94. Your neck is three feet long. There's an elbow-like joint about halfway up that lets you bend your head forward.
95. Your nose is replaced with a cluster of tentacles.
96. Your shadow leaves smears of blood. Small ones, hard to notice. The blood isn’t human.
97. Your skin always takes on the color and texture of the last thing you ate.
98. Your skin and hair resemble that of a juvenile aye-aye.
99. Your skin looks like layers upon layers of damp, rotting cloth.
100. Your teeth are thick wedges of translucent keratin instead of bone. They require regular trimming.

Medium:

1. 1d12 pairs of working humanoid legs on torso.
2. 1d12 pairs of working insectoid legs on torso.
3. 5% chance of interrupting any conversation in which you are a participant with uncontrollable, somewhat sinister, laughter.
4. Antennae instead of eyes -- technically blind, but you get Blindsight as a free feat.
5. Bone spurs protrude from flesh. Add 1d4 damage to all unarmed attacks.
6. Born with no brain -- skull contains hundreds of tiny translucent silverfish operating as a hive mind. You are completely unaware of this condition, since you have no way of checking inside your head, so you generally behave normally. Unfortunately, you make the occasional social misstep due to a different set of natural instincts: -2 on Diplomacy. In addition, spells that target vermin tend to temporarily screw up your brain-bugs.
7. Compel Hostility at will.
8. Compulsive liar -- introduce elaborate falsehoods into every conversation.
9. Compulsively adorn yourself with bones at any opportunity.
10. Compulsively confirm veracity of mundane details -- "And we all agree that this chair is made of wood, right?"
11. Conflict tends to happen in your presence. All Diplomacy and Bluff checks made while you are observing are at a -5 penalty.
12. Covered in dozens of small spinnerets. They spin cobwebs whether you want them to or not. You tend to wake up inside cocoon-like structures.
13. Covered in thick, thick fur. Totally comfortable with non-magical cold; take heat penalties if it is over 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
14. Direct sunlight causes you excruciating pain and 1 damage per round.
15. Every night at midnight, every animal (Int 1-2) within a mile’s radius of you howls, bleats, or otherwise loudly vocalizes for exactly twenty-three seconds. It took you an embarrassingly long time to figure out that this wasn’t just what animals did.
16. Every time you enter a building, there is a 3% chance the walls start bleeding.
17. Exhale insanity mist 1/day, save DC = your Constitution score.
18. Exoskeleton -- you are always considered to be wearing half plate.
19. Exoskeleton -- you are always considered to be wearing leather armor.
20. Eyestalks: +1 to Spot.
21. Fingernails replaced with barbed stings -- 1d4 extra unarmed damage.
22. Gelid flesh -- can squeeze through spaces as if one size category smaller.
23. Gills -- take the Aquatic subtype and the Amphibious special quality.
24. Gnat-sized pterodactyls live in your sinus cavity, teeth, throat, &c. They help you digest food and occasionally sing heartbreakingly beautiful, wordless songs.
25. Hollow bones -- you weigh half as much and take a -2 penalty to Con.
26. Huge bulging eyes -- +2 Spot.
27. Huge frog-like legs. +20 Jump.
28. If any of your bodily fluids fall on the ground, the next day, strange thorny plants will grow there.
29. Intelligent centipedes live in your skin. People can see them moving around. If one is killed, take 1d4 Con damage.
30. Irrational phobia of [player choice / GM approval]
31. Magpie-like acquisitiveness.
32. Mold and mildew develop in your vicinity at a rapid pace.
33. Mouth can distend like a snake's, and you have the Swallow Whole ability.
34. No arms, but when needed, you can extrude up to [roll 1d4 at character creation] pseudopod-like appendages from the flesh of your torso that function as crude hands.
35. Obligate carnivore.
36. Obsessive stargazing, astrology-based decision process.
37. Other people always know when you are saying their name.
38. Pick a cosmetic mutation from the Minor list. That is the only aspect of your appearance anyone can remember.
39. Poorly-played music or other unpleasant sounds causes you physical pain -- 1 damage / minute.
40. Putrefy Food and Drink at will.
41. Ratlike tail.
42. Rats are constantly going out of their way to try and eat you. They think you smell delicious.
43. Relentless cheer and optimism regardless of the situation.
44. Rugose cone-foot replaces legs.
45. Sense of humor based entirely on horrifying cruelty.
46. Skeletal structure not properly built for bipedal locomotion -- it is very uncomfortable for you to walk upright, and you have to use your hands to knuckle-walk unless you make a particular effort to stand. +10ft speed.
47. Sometimes your shadow detaches itself and wanders off. It doesn’t do anything, but people tend to not like it much.
48. Spit acid 1/day
49. Spit contact poison 1/day. 1d4 Constitution damage, save DC = your Constitution score
50. Surrounded by unnatural chill.
51. Twisted, hunched, and asymmetrical. Half movement speed.
52. Unable to recognize value of sapient life.
53. Uncontrollable glossolalia several times a day. (GM is encouraged to roll for it whenever glossolalia would be inconvenient -- 10% chance.)
54. Venomous bite, as Medium spider.
55. Warped sense of aesthetics. Decay, destruction, vermin, &c. are beautiful to you.
56. Webbed hands and feet -- +4 Swim.
57. When you sleep, a shadowy form with glowing eyes, roughly the size of a housecat, climbs out of your mouth and stares unnervingly at anyone nearby. Its origin and motives are unknown, and it only shows up when you’re unconscious, so you’ve never seen it yourself.
58. Whenever you are asleep, anyone else sleeping within 100 ft. of you has a 10% chance of horrible nightmares that involve a colossal version of you cackling maniacally. You tend to get unpopular in towns really soon.
59. Whenever your blood is outside your body, there is a 10% chance it animates and crawls away like an ooze.
60. You always glow faintly, but once a day, you can emit a burst of dazzling light that functions as the Flare spell.
61. You always know when someone is saying your name.
62. You are incapable of intentionally breaking an oath.
63. You are incapable of storing fat. As a result, you appear skeletally emaciated, and starvation affects you much more dramatically -- skip right to the "lethal damage" phase.
64. You are invisible to living beings in their first year of life, with the exception of outsiders and aberrations.
65. You are poisonous, i.e., anything that eats part of you has to make a Fortitude save DC 10+ your Con score or take 2d4 Con damage.
66. You are supernaturally beautiful. Even if your other rolls on this table make you a half-worm monster with mandibles, you pull it off somehow. +2 Cha
67. You are supernaturally hideous -- whatever other symptoms of your tainted status you have are much, much worse-looking than they should be. If your other rolls on this table have no cosmetic effects, the player should assign some sort of mundane deformity; for some reason, it’s exaggerated in the minds of everyone who sees you. -2 Cha
68. You can hover up to three feet off the ground.
69. You can only sleep if you are hanging upside down. You have prehensile feet to facilitate this.
70. You can plant anything -- i.e., anything you bury in the ground puts forth shoots within a month. No guarantees on what grows out of it, though. GMs are encouraged to come up with their own sufficiently insane method of deciding at random.
71. You can produce 1 gallon of amber-colored resin a day. You have to eat/otherwise absorb twice as much each day you do this, though.
72. You can see bits and pieces of the ethereal plane. You have no way of distinguishing between ethereal stuff and material stuff without actually touching it.
73. You can taste and smell emotions, but otherwise have no sense of smell or taste. +4 to Sense Motive.
74. You cannot extract nutrition from food unless it died in agony.
75. You cannot sleep above ground. If there is no subterranean space available to you, you must burrow into the earth.
76. You cannot tell lies.
77. You carry a disease (player may choose from the rulebook) that can be spread by clawing or biting. Your travelling companions have to make monthly fortitude saves to avoid contracting it.
78. You compulsively poison food.
79. You compulsively record all of your actions in writing.
80. You corrode metal on contact.
81. You eat only live insects.
82. You eat only pearls. One a day.
83. You fail to understand the concepts of good and evil on a basic level, and are generally completely divorced from accepted humanoid morality. In a world full of ethical shades of gray, you are... orange. Seriously, your alignment is [Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic] Orange. Write that down. May or may not lead to hilariously tragic misunderstandings. Have fun roleplaying it.
84. You gain a horseshoe-crab-like tail, which gives you a 1d6 lash attack.
85. You have a second head. It does not have a mind of its own, but the extra brain mass gives you a +2 Int.
86. You have no head. Your facial features, brain, &c. are all located elsewhere on your body. (Player chooses where.)
87. You have the fragile, darkened, wrinkly skin of a bog mummy. You are always thirsty -- quadruple water rations, thirst penalties take 1/4 the time to take effect.
88. You know, instinctually, certain runes and symbols that, when carved into the face of a dead humanoid, cause its eyes to animate and crawl away as very small oozes. They don’t pay any attention to you or listen to what you have to say, but you can make them as long as you have a knife, a corpse, and about ten minutes.
89. You lay monthly batches of 1d12 eggs. (May result in some gender confusion if you are male.) If you have been -- ahem -- fertilized recently, each egg has a 75% chance of hatching into your biological children. If you haven’t, each egg has a 1% chance of spontaneous teratogenesis. Whatever comes out isn’t related to you by blood, and may or may not be harmless. Technically, each egg has enough nutrition to qualify as a day’s rations, but the idea of eating your eggs is viscerally horrifying to you, and you have to make a DC 20 Will save to force yourself to do it in desperate circumstances. Others may or may not have a moral problem with it, but the eggs do taste strongly of carrion.
90. You naturally grow small cysts inside your body. They do not harm you, but there is a 1% chance each day that one of them hatches and 1d12 creatures unknown to science crawl out of your mouth & wander off. If you forget to roll the d% chance yourself, the GM is encouraged to roll it whenever it would be incredibly inconvenient for you.
91. You only eat live animals. Swallowed whole.
92. You put down literal roots if you stay in the same place for an hour or more. You only need to eat ¼ of what you would if you didn’t get nutrition from the ground. Unfortunately, it hurts like hell to get up in the morning because you have to snap off all the roots that grew during the night. Or, you know, just stay there and see if you can get people to bring you snacks.
93. Your eyes are not attached to you -- instead, they hover a few inches away from your body, and slowly drift in circles around you. You can control their movement if you consciously think about it, but you can't send them more than three inches away.
94. Your head is actually hollow, and has a fire burning inside that can be seen through your eyes, mouth, and other cranial orifices. If the fire is extinguished while you are in positive hit points, you immediately drop to -1.
95. Your limbs are thin and spindly; -2 Str
96. Your limbs are twisted and malformed; -2 Dex
97. Your skin is one size category too large. It sags off of you and constantly gets in the way. -2 Dex penalty, +2 natural armor.
98. Your teeth and nails are made of cold-forged iron. Well, okay, technically they were grown, not forged, but they have all the properties of cold-forged iron.
99. Your torso is twice as long as it should be, and can bend and twist like a worm’s.
100. Your voice always sounds like a chorus of three talking simultaneously

Major:

1. 10 ft. Burrow speed. You secrete a slimy substance like a worm to aid in this.
2. 1d12 pairs of working humanoid arms on torso.
3. 1d12 pairs of working raccoon-like paws (with associated raccoon-size arms) on torso.
4. 1d12 pairs of working thri-kreen arms on torso.
5. 1d4 of your limbs are shriveled, useless, and constantly covered in some sort of tarry substance. Player can pick which limbs.
6. 2d12 working tentacles on torso.
7. A large illusionary creature seems to follow you around. It takes great pains to hide itself, so usually nobody notices and you’ve never gotten a good description of it. Sometimes people just see something in the distance… or watching them through a window… now that you think about it, you only think it’s illusionary.
8. Abnormally strong teeth and jaw -- you can chew through stone given sufficient time.
9. All facial features replaced by forest of tiny wriggling tendrils. No verbal spells, yes blindsight, yes constant creepy quiet whistling noises.
10. Amorphous -- though your "default" shape is whatever the other rolls indicate, you can, at will, revert to an amoeba-like shape and ooze around. You are immune to sneak attacks and critical hits when you do this.
11. Birds HATE you.
12. Bleed (1 damage) whenever you touch living things.
13. Breath weapon 1/day -- player can choose the breath weapon of any wyrmling dragon at character creation.
14. Cannot perceive temperature -- immune to heat and cold damage.
15. Cannot speak -- produce only birdsong when you try.
16. Cause Fear at random. (20% chance of activation whenever you are speaking with an NPC)
17. Cause Fear at will.
18. Centaur-style body plan, but instead of a horse, your lower half resembles a house centipede.
19. Centaur-style body plan, but instead of a horse, your lower half resembles a silverfish.
20. Centaur-style body plan, but instead of a horse, your lower half resembles an earthworm.
21. Consume metal as rust monster.
22. Every part of you except your head, hands, and feet is invisible, intangible, inaudible and otherwise undetectable. You get bonuses to AC and Stealth as if you were two size categories smaller. (These bonuses can be negated -- if someone tries to hit you with a ghost touch weapon, you don't get this special AC bonus; if you're trying to sneak past something that can see invisibility, you don't get the stealth bonus, etc.)
23. Exoskeleton -- you are always considered to be wearing full plate.
24. Gaze attack as Blindheim. Unfortunately, you can't switch it off. You might want to wear a blindfold when you're around people.
25. Gelatinous skeletal structure: you gain the "compression" special ability.
26. Incapable of using proper nouns in speech or writing, including the names of your companions, the town where you live, &c.
27. Insect mandibles instead of mouth. You can’t cast verbal spells or speak coherently (bet you learned to write at an impressive speed, though) -- but you get a 1d8 bite attack.
28. Instead of a normal nose, you are covered in crater-like nostrils (one every few inches or so, distribution apparently random). About once a minute or so, a tentacle shoots out of one and writhes around for a bit -- this is how you breathe. It’s really hard to suffocate you, but you also creep people the heck out.
29. It takes a genuine effort for you to make noise. +10 on Move Silently, but nobody can hear you from more than a few feet away, even if you yell.
30. Killing you would take a lot of work. Your skull is made of adamantine, and whatever is inside it (you assume brains, but who knows, right) can grow an entire body back from nothing. If you die, your body decays into goo within 24 hours, leaving just your metal skull & contents thereof. Your body grows back in 3d4 days, then comes back to life. Downside: you have to roll twice more on the Minor table each time this happens. 50% chance this whole sordid drama has already happened to you 1d4 times by the time the campaign begins. Oh, and if someone knows about your condition, they can totally kill you by just waiting for your body to decay then stabbing through your foramen magnum, so don't get too cocky.
31. Like a crow with a golden tongue, you have an unfortunate compulsion to speak in gnomic simile & metaphor.
32. Long arms and legs, flat ray-like body (no gills or sting, yes mouth on bottom and eyes on top). You crawl around in a manner not unlike a tree frog and have a climb speed equal to your walking speed.
33. Long, thin, prehensile tongue; can wield additional light weapon with -2 penalty (on top of any other relevant penalties); 5% chance of arcane spell failure when verbal components are involved.
34. Long, thin, transparent claws can unfold out of your mouth (giving you two 1d4 claw attacks). If you have no mouth, they come out of some other orifice. No, not that one.
35. Microcephalic; -2 Int
36. Mindless undead like you. If you come within fifty feet of them, they drop what they’re doing and follow you around like puppies. Like large, skeletal, mindlessly vicious puppies who won’t let anyone else near you under pain of being rent to shreds. They don’t listen to you at all, but their creator can call them off if they feel like it.
37. Mosquito-like proboscis coiled at back of throat. Once a week, you must drain large quantities of blood from a warm-blooded creature. The process takes an hour and leaves you too bloated to fit into your armor for one day. Otherwise, you don’t need to eat.
38. Mushrooms grow on your skin. 25% chance a given mushroom is poisonous, 10% chance it is hallucinogenic, 0% chance it is tasty.
39. No arms; Mage Hand at will.
40. No mouth. Can’t speak, can’t cast verbal spells, can totally photosynthesize.
41. Obligate cannibal.
42. Once a month, you spontaneously generate 1d4 thin white worms with six rows of translucent cilia. They crawl out of your mouth (or other orifice if you have no mouth) and burrow into the ground nearby. You may or may not be aware that they do this in order to spend the next year growing and molting. When they emerge, they are six inches long, have a thick exoskeleton, and dozens of razor-sharp claws. They will seek out a sapient being, burrow into their flesh, and spend the next five years growing into new Tainted, who are technically your biological children. The "hatching" process is definitely fatal to the host.
43. Replace one arm with large insect leg. 1d6 claw attack, can’t do anything that requires two hands with opposable thumbs.
44. Spit sovereign glue 1/week.
45. Suggestion as a spell-like ability.
46. The entire top half of your skull has been replaced by huge curling ram horns. (You assume your brain is in there somewhere, though.) You can use them to do 1d8 damage on a charge. Your nose & mouth had to be shifted down to make room for them, and your eyes are moved to your chin if they were still on the front of your face. Oh, and you have a really muscular neck to hold those horns up. FYI.
47. The taint of the Far Realms had a particularly unfortunate effect on you when you were in the womb -- the mutations it provoked in your body turned out to be non-survivable, and you were stillborn. You weren't allowed to get off that easily, though, and you're still kind of alive. Kind of. You look a bit like a zombie fetus, to be honest. It's not pretty, but you can still walk and whatnot. Take the Unbreathing subtype and reduce your size to Diminutive. Since the reason you ended up like this was because of serious physical deformities, roll on the Head and Body tables if you haven't already, and reroll if you get a result that doesn't indicate an obvious physical deformity.
48. Though you may or may not be horrifically squamous and tentacular, there's just something about you. Every time you meet a humanoid you have not met before, there is a 1% chance of them falling desperately in love with you.
49. Unusual body chemistry: you are immune to all poisons, but you find the following category of mundane items toxic. (Roll 1d6: 1 -- fruit (ingestion), 2 -- wood (injury), 3 -- silver (contact), 4 -- fungus (contact), 5 -- gemstones (contact), 6 -- fish (ingestion))
50. Weirdly light and flimsy for your apparent size. -4 Str, -4 Con, 1/4 weight.
51. When you die, the ground directly below you is tainted by the Far Realms, and children in the area will start being born Tainted.
52. Whenever your blood is spilled, there is a 25% chance it turns anything it touches to stone.
53. Working insect wings -- 10 ft. Fly speed (poor maneuverability). Player can choose what type of insect the wings resemble.
54. You are actually a hive-mind of 3d4 identical diminutive individuals who maintain a symbiotic relationship with the exoskeletal husk that is your "real" body. None of the components of the hive mind can go more than 50ft from the husk -- if they do, they pass out immediately. You still count as one person for all relevant effects.
55. You are always hungry. So, so hungry. You require quadruple rations, but you can eat anything flammable.
56. You are incapable of causing physical harm to anyone who knows your name.
57. You are one size category larger than you would be otherwise. You look swollen and disproportionate.
58. You are one size category smaller than you would be otherwise. You look withered and shriveled.
59. You are two size categories smaller than you would be otherwise, and you have a second, identical body. You can control both bodies simultaneously with ease -- basically you are a very small hive mind. Your two bodies cannot move more than five feet away from each other; if someone else forces them apart, you fall unconscious until this is corrected. If one is killed, the other goes into a coma until it is raised.
60. You are two size categories smaller than you would be otherwise. Once a week, you can burrow into the skull of any creature two or more size categories larger than you and control the body’s motions. The creature has to be alive but at negative hit points when you do this, and it decays too much to keep working after 1d6 days (roll separately each time you do this.)
61. You can cast ethereal jaunt once per week. Except you don't go to the Ethereal Plane, but a different, previously unheard-of, overlapping plane. Things live there. They're hungry. Each time you do it, 10% chance something tries to eat you. GM is encouraged to generate a stack of random monsters with varied CRs for this purpose.
62. You can curl up like a pillbug / roly poly / giant isopod. You also have segmented plates on your back like said animals. +1 natural armor.
63. You can only eat the flesh of sapient creatures (Int 5+).
64. You can only sustain yourself on a diet of the still-beating hearts of birds. Naturally, this involves vivisecting at least one bird a day at mealtimes. Packing rations is very difficult, and fancy dinner parties are generally out.
65. You can see people's true faces -- +10 to beat a disguise check, +5 to sense motive. Shaken if you see someone particularly evil.
66. You cannot sleep within 500 feet of artificially cultivated plants.
67. You cannot touch wood -- you pass right through it.
68. You do not eat, but instead gain energy directly from increasing localized entropy. The best way to do this, for your purposes, is to take something elaborate, complicated, & artificially constructed, and then smashing it to dust. You have to do this once per day. Your equivalent of "trail rations" is basically a sack of cheap objets d'art and a hammer.
69. The exact reverse of the above. In order to sustain your existence, you have to spend 2 hours each day crafting complex and elegant artificial structures out of whatever comes to hand. Scrimshaw, architecture, painting... whatever.
70. You don't sleep; you are powered by the dreams of children. This might sound kind of cutesy, but here's how that goes down. This incorporeal rat-monkey-thing lives in your head, where you are constantly aware of it perusing its collection of dreams -- meaning that, literally in the back of your mind, there are surreal dreamscapes running through your thoughts. Anyway, every night at midnight, rat-monkey climbs out of your head, runs off to the nearest sleeping child, and climbs into its head. The kid wakes up somewhat traumatized, and you feel quite refreshed. Rat-monkey then comes back to your head with new dreams for its collection. It scampers like heck, so it can cover about 100 miles in a night. If rat-monkey is killed while it's outside your head, you spend 1d4 weeks catatonic while a new one coalesces inside your brain.
71. You don’t breathe, but you do have to eat a pound of rust every day.
72. You don’t have to breathe, but you do have to drink a cup of tears harvested from a sapient creature daily.
73. You don’t need to eat -- once per day, you draw sustenance from the soil. The process takes roughly an hour, and turns about a cubic foot of soil into fine black sand.
74. You don’t sleep. However, you have to spend eight hours a day standing perfectly still while weird ethereal tendrils extrude from your face and collect… something… from the air. If you move during this process, the tendrils freak the heck out. You take 1d4 Con damage and have to start all over. Failing to do this means you are treated as though you have not slept.
75. You eat memories. Once a week, you have to come into skin-to-skin contact with a sapient being for thirty seconds and eat one day of their memories. They will pass out and awaken with no memories of the last twenty-four hours. The process is in no way seamless -- they’ll definitely notice the missing day. You do not eat otherwise.
76. You eat names. In order to eat someone’s name, you must maintain skin-to-skin contact with them for half an hour. They must be both sapient and alive. When you are finished, neither they nor anyone else (except you) remember their name. If they die before the month is out, you have to feed again within a day. You do not eat otherwise.
77. You exhale a vapor with addictive properties.
78. You feed on suffering. Once a week, you have to spend one hour causing a sapient being significant physical or emotional pain. You do not eat otherwise.
79. You have a second head. It’s fully developed, and has a mind of its own. It’s also an animal’s head, not a humanoid one. It has standard animal intelligence. Player can choose which animal.
80. You have a second head. It’s fully developed, and moves around under your control. (There is not a second mind in the head.)
81. You have a second stomach. You can control whether stuff you swallow goes into it, which is important because it works differently. Anything in your second stomach is kept alive (and aware) if you bit it off something that hadn't been dead for more than two minutes. You digest it over the course of a month. Yes, this means you can save on raise dead by biting off your buddy's thumb and bringing it to someone who can cast regenerate & doesn't mind mutants who vomit body parts at him. Your buddy's going to be fully conscious and aware the whole time, though, so he takes 1 point of Wisdom drain for every day he spends as a semi-digested thumb.
82. You have an instinctual understanding of the Runes of Thuurrlmn. If you are not an arcane spellcaster, choose 1d4 cantrips off of the spell list of an arcane spellcaster. Once a day, you can cast one of those by spending one minute carefully drawing runic diagrams. If you are an arcane spellcaster, you can integrate the Runes of Thuurlm into your item creation, and thus increase the effective caster level of the item you are making to whatever number you want. However, this takes much longer -- double the item creation time for each caster level above your own.
83. You have no eyes, but it’s cool, because each dawn the closest Diminutive or smaller animal/vermin comes and perches on your shoulder. You can see through its eyes for the rest of the day. You can send it sneaking about spying for you if you want, but its eyes glow bright green, so it’s kind of conspicuous. At dusk, it wanders off.
84. You have no sense of humor. This doesn’t just mean you’re boring -- you cannot comprehend, recognize, or intentionally produce humor.
85. You have no skin; instead, you exude a mud-like substance to protect your internal organs. Water tends to wash it away, so you take a temporary -2 penalty to Con during the rain, and a -4 penalty for 24 hours after any time you are fully immersed in liquid.
86. You have the brainworms. Yes, that means worms live in your brain. Take a 1d6 penalty to Wisdom. No, killing the worms doesn’t get your Wisdom score back, because they’ve already hollowed out little burrows for themselves.
87. You moult regularly. Replace your normal aging process with Tainted Ecdysis (see attached table).
88. You move absurdly quickly, and generally look as though you are living life in fast-forward. Double your walking speed.
89. You move absurdly slowly, and generally look as though you are living life in slow-motion. Halve your walking speed.
90. You must spend one hour a day immersed in liquid. If you fail to do this, you take 1d6 Con damage a day until you can immerse yourself again.
91. Your arms and legs can unfold and extend to impressive lengths. Triple natural reach, -4 Strength, +6 to Jump
92. Your legs are half as long as normal, and you move at half speed. However, your arms are twice as long as normal, doubling your natural reach.
93. Your legs are withered and weak, but your arms are disproportionately large. You have to knuckle-walk to move at normal speed, and you cannot do anything that requires you to stand and use both hands. However, you get a +2 Strength for your absurdly burly arms.
94. Your mind leaks: 2d12 random NPCs (decided by GM at character creation) are regularly assailed by your thoughts and feelings, regardless of distance or other obstacles.
95. Your saliva is saturated with dark reaver powder. Luckily, you are also immune to dark reaver powder.
96. Your skin burns if it touches stone -- 1d4 damage/round.
97. Your skin is always red-hot. You need to invest in fireproof clothing, but you also gain a Burn attack as thoqqua.
98. Your skin resembles twisted, blackened wood. Half move speed, -2 Dex penalty, +5 natural armor.
99. Your tongue is a separate, worm-like creature with its own agenda & opinions.
100. Your touch rots any vegetable matter -- plants get saving throw at GM’s discretion.

Note that the current PCs are very lucky that they didn't end up significantly more messed up than they are.

Credit where credit is due: a number of these entries were inspired by or stolen from here.

Oh, and I mentioned that up until now, I worked the graveyard shift, right? Yeah, the majority of these were scribbled down on receipt paper in the wee hours of the morning while hopped up on energy drinks, then copied verbatim into Excel after I got home... so you can feel free to blame any excessive weirdness (and all the disjointed commentary I apparently left in the Major table) on that.

Also, feel free to use this in your own campaign, on the condition that you have to tell me all about how it goes.

[JBPuffin]

Tamarie: We could give you an extra five silver worth of services.
GM: You’re not even a whore! You’re a tailor!
Tamarie OOC: I have four raccoon arms! They are all deft!
GM: Are you even in here?
Tamarie OOC: I don’t know!
Hiddlebatch OOC: You’re outside with me. You’re just saying this to me and I’m very confused.
Tamarie, to Hiddlebatch: I have four raccoon arms!
GM: It’s an all-purpose sentence. It could mean anything.

This is fricken' hilarious. Most of the tales so far have been amusing, but this was the best. Thank you for sharing, and congrats on the new job!

[wicketman8]

This table is amazing, I'm using it in 90% of my games from now on. So far my character is terrifying with blinking eyes all over him and he eats a beating birds heart once a day while covered in bones with rapidly growing hear. I would be terrified if I met him at night. The other players won't let me talk to NPCs during negotiation anymore unless it's intimidation.

[NowhereMan583]

For the first time since starting the teaching gig, I had time to run a game this past week. If I can finally get ahead of the advancing piles of crap-I-need-to-do (writing down lesson plans, mostly -- the principal insists rather strenuously on being kept in the loop that way) I should be able to start updating this thread again within the next few days.

Stuff to look forward to:

• Tamarie and Quimarel begin to, with increasing frequency, stray from "Neutral but self-centered" to "Definitely evil"
• The players travel to other settlements in the Wastelands for the first time
• Soul merchants in the employ of the Cult of Mephistopheles
• Ruins of an eons-old temple
• Goblin Nancy Drew
• Vengeful undead
• Upper-class twits

Not necessarily in that order.

[DM Nate]

Your Tainted table...it is a beautiful thing. The authors of "Tome of Horror" should have consulted you and the other source you mention.

[NowhereMan583]

The 20th day of the month of Obad-Hai
The 110th year of the second Ravensblood dynasty

When this session occurred, we hadn’t met for three weeks due to conflicting summer vacation plans among the grad students who make up most of my players. Hiddlebatch’s player was in China for some reason at this point, but the other three managed to get together and we declared it a quorum.

At this awkward time directly after completing their mission for the Kech, and without a specific mystery to look into (like the disappearance of Krich that started this whole business), I had been hoping the players would make some plot-relevant choices, or hatch some sort of madcap scheme. However, they seemed somewhat… directionless.

GM: So now that we’ve… kind of reviewed the last session, and --
Quimarel OOC: Discussed [Makpov’s player’s] dream.
GM: -- And discussed her dream, and eaten chips… what do y’all want to do?
Quimarel OOC: I wanted to become more prominent in terms of local politics. I wanted to make myself more important to the town.
GM: Yes, I remember you saying that.
Quimarel OOC: I have no idea how to do that.
Makpov OOC: Apparently I’m the favored whore of some politician.
GM: The ambassador.
Makpov OOC: You could use me as leverage.
[pause where a plan might be, but isn’t]
GM: I was hoping y’all might have fleshed out your plans a little bit in the three weeks since our last session.
Quimarel OOC: I was in Houston. Brain no worky.
GM: Does your brain shut down in warm climates?
Quimarel OOC: It does, it does.
GM: Like a troll?
Quimarel OOC: … yes.
GM: … have you read any Terry Pratchett?
Quimarel OOC: No.
GM: Oh. Well, you should. It has trolls whose brains don’t work in heat.

After some hemming and hawing, they decide to look around. Quimarel wants to know if she might have noticed any sort of “government thing happening” in which she might “make her voice known”. As it happens, there is a sort of legal/political kerfuffle going on, in which some miscreants have broken into the offices of the Royal Intelligence Corps.

Tamarie: (in tones of shocked outrage) WHO WOULD DO THAT?!

Quimarel decides she will be very vocal about the need for tighter security, but otherwise declines to get involved with this unsavory situation. After some minimal poking around, she finds that the Town Guard have noted a rash of apparently unrelated thefts this week, which they are blaming on humans.

Specifically, a group of human criminals whom the Capran government had sentenced to hard labor in the Wastelands and shipped north, only to somehow lose track of. The criminals in question had vanished for some time, presumed escaped -- their guards were found dead -- but have recently been spotted walking around town here in Noroiras. They are all dressed in rags, covered in minor scars & injuries, and have some fantastical tale about being held in an underground prison somewhere inside the town limits. Nobody believes this ridiculous story, especially since they credit the racist priest outside of town with their rescue.

The party makes uncomfortable eye contact with each other. “Who could that be…” mutters Quimarel. “I mean… I don’t know… um…”.

Makpov, OOC and apropos of nothing: I imagine the fairy we found looks like the GM.
GM: Right, and you still have a drunken fairy.
Tamarie OOC: He’s still drunk?
GM: That was how you decided to keep him under control.
Tamarie OOC: That’s horrible. That’s not what I remember. I remember making him a little house. And a sweater.
Quimarel OOC: A terrible sweater. It had three holes: two for his arms and… one for his wings?
GM: And none for his head.
Tamarie OOC: It was fine; the colors were just all wrong.
Quimarel OOC: Puce green.
GM: I thought puce was like pink.
[Digression follows, in which both the spelling and the meaning of “puce” are debated and eventually Googled, along with “mauve” and “salmon”, before returning to the game.]

“So,” Quimarel muses, “what I’m hearing is… if someone were to capture some of these criminal types and throw them into lockup, they might win the favor of the townspeople.”

Quimarel: Who wants to capture the people we freed? [pointedly, and very in-character, does not pause to hear opinions] Yaaaaaay -- let’s do the thing.

The players attempt to make some Gather Information rolls, and the GM realizes for the umpteenth time that Gather Information isn’t a skill in Pathfinder. They make Diplomacy rolls instead, which Quimarel and Tamarie both fail dramatically -- Quimarel rolls a natural 1, and Tamarie gets a total of 5. Makpov declines to roll.

The three of them find a reputable source. Well, he’s kind of dirty, but this ain’t no high-falutin’ Southern court -- reputable sources can be dirty. Actually, he’s really dirty. And scraggly. And it looks like he hasn’t bathed in several months.

Tamarie: He seems reliable.
Quimarel: Trustworthy. He’s an old soul.

They know this man, in fact. He’s kind of hard to miss, since he lives on the street. That’s not “lives on the streets”, note… he literally lives in the middle of the road.

Quimarel OOC: We’re asking… Homeless Steve?
GM: Sure. Homeless Steve --
Tamarie OOC: We could call him Bucky.
GM: Huh?
Tamarie OOC: Bucky.
Quimarel OOC: Bucky. Sad trash homeless prince. One-armed sex hobo.
GM: Did you just say “One-armed --”
Quimarel OOC: Yes I did. Those words left my mouth. Let us not discuss it.

Homeless Bucky informs them that he knows exactly what’s going on. It seems that the Intelligence Corps vault was robbed… by mole people. These mole people are in league with the Capran Mob, which is why there are all these humans wandering around. He proceeds to nod sagely, an air of ancient wisdom coming off him in waves.

Quimarel: You keep doing what you do, Homeless Bucky.
Bucky: [burrows into the road like a ghost crab]

Realizing that Bucky’s wisdom has given them no leads as to where these criminals actually are, Tamarie and Quimarel roll again, with slightly better results. A short period of asking around leads to the information that the human (pronounced Ferengi-style) criminals mostly steal from the Marketplace of Rats. This more or less makes sense, as the open-air marketplace in question is the only place where valuables can be found in Noroiras other than “under heavy guard in the mansions of the upper class”, so it’s a natural target for thieves.

(The Marketplace of Rats, if anyone is interested, is so named because of the artwork found therein -- several freestanding statues dot the field where it is located, all of which depict, fairly grotesquely, goblin were-rats in the midst of transformation. The theory has been floated that these are not statues, but in fact the work of a basilisk. Nobody, in the several decades since the statues were found, has made any effort to address this matter further.)

Quimarel, Tamarie, and Makpov skulk into the Marketplace that afternoon, hoping to catch one of the thieves red-handed. They roll Stealth, a skill in which exactly one member of the party has any ranks. Quimarel blends perfectly into the shadows, even in the late-afternoon sun. Tamarie and Makpov pretend, incompetently, to be statues.

GM: Tamarie and Makpov, you get a lot of funny looks. At one point, an exceptionally shady-looking goblin offers to sell you some drugs.
Tamarie: Cool.
Makpov: I lick him.
Tamarie: What kind of drugs?
Goblin drug dealer: (somewhat loopy from Makpov’s hallucinogenic saliva) I have… ALL kinds of drugs.
Makpov: I lick him again and then steal his drugs.

The drug dealer’s eyes are wide and rolling back and forth. He seems terrified of something behind him that nobody else can see. Makpov manages to grab several bags of unidentified substances off of him before he panics and bolts, trying to escape some hallucination or other.

Quimarel OOC: “Misc. Drugs.” Great.
Tamarie OOC: We can give them to the fairy.
Makpov OOC: YES!
GM: You seem way too excited about that.

From Quimarel’s more effective vantage point, she spots one of the humans who looks a lot like one of the ones the party led out of the Kech dig site. He is casually walking by stalls and stuffing small items into the folds of his shabby clothing. He seems pretty good at it, too: Quimarel wouldn’t have noticed if she weren’t expecting it.
The shabby human further shows off his rogue level(s) by spotting Quimarel in her hiding place. Curious but not inclined to call the guard for obvious reasons, he peers towards Quimarel and starts slowly walking over, as if trying to decide what to do.

Quimarel responds by pretending to scan the crowd, making eye contact, winking, and generally acting as though she is merely there to drum up business. The human sees through the act [Bluff: 7] and says out of the corner of his mouth, “What’s going on here?”

Quimarel: Looking for a little company.
Hoo-man: Riiiiiiight. Didn’t I see you down in that whole underground-slave-thing?
Quimarel: I don’t know about underground… [Bluff: 25]
Hoo-man: Never mind. I… I must have mistaken you for someone else.

The human starts to walk away -- and Quimarel tackles him, yelling for Makpov and Tamarie’s help. Makpov licks him, and he fails his Fortitude save. Quimarel calls the guards over as their captive descends into hallucination.

Cpl. Moryo: What’s all this, then?
Quimarel: I saw this man stealing things from various booths. I think he’s one of the escaped prisoners!
Cpl. Moryo: Sir, I’m going to need you to turn out your pockets.

As the human is busy hallucinating and convulsing slightly, Corporal Moryo has to forcibly search him, at which point he turns up a number of hidden trinkets on his person.

Cpl. Moryo: Did you pay for these? What’s going to happen if I go ask the vendors about these items?
Hoo-man: [shrieks, gibberish]
Cpl. Moryo: Sir, I’m going to have to take you off to lockup. [to Quimarel] And I’ll have to keep these items… as, um… evidence.

Makpov plants some of his miscellaneous drugs on the human, and the guard drags him off. These events have attracted the attention of a number of people who were just wandering the marketplace, so Makpov and Quimarel take the opportunity to name-drop the Squirting Squid and its soon-to-be-famous crime-fighting whores. The crowd is intrigued.

Quimarel begins to declaim to the crowd. “I feel that, as a pillar of the community, it is my duty to protect our town, which I love so much, In so many ways.” [Diplomacy: 22] Applause ensues. Quimarel goes on to answer questions, give directions to the brothel, and continue throwing around patriotic rhetoric.