Allright, one more round:
Session Four:The heroes rise early in the morning to quit the village inconspicuously. Vadania produces a crest of translucent crystal which is the key to a nearby shrine set up for when the twins are ready to realize their heritage. She says they don't have to go until they are ready; they decide that they're ready now and purpose to visit before journeying on to the Dwarf lands. Vadania assignes them Aramil as a guide to the secluded shrine, and they set off. In the village commons, they catch whispered gossip directed at them, "always knew something off about that Shirlak. . .look who he's brought to the village. . .probably spies. . .well, I never," etc. The Gnome pranks them and the group moves on. Hung spots Silence slipping away from the group into the meeting hall, but decides she's not worth following and they leave without her.
They trek through the woods till nightfall and make camp. While building a fire, Aramil starts to open up about his insecurities and inadequacies in light of his adopted rival turning out to be royalty. Shirlak listens but doesn't respond much; the Gnome meanwhile was setting up a prank with Shirlak's assistance. The prank (flash powder on a piece of firewood) goes off in Aramil's face and everyone plays dumb, and Aramil turns sullen.
In the middle of the night on Hung's watch, strange piping wafts through the trees. The gnome's familiar wakes her, and Hung wakes Aramil. Aramil tenses with concern: it is the piping of the Satyr. They all resist its charms, and investigate. The gnome sneaks up and holds it at crossbow-point--it's a female satyr! "Oh, he's yours, I'm sorry, I didn't know!" gasps the creature. The gnome is puzzled and the Satyress babbles on about how "he" resisted her charms and now everything's ruined. "Please, you have so many males, can't you spare just one?" Then Hung, Aramil and Scotti (Shirlak's still asleep) come upon them and the Satyress is aghast and ashamed. She sobs and squirms and it becomes clear that she's fallen hopelessly in love with Hung, and is miserable now that he has resisted her and has no interest in her. Hung, Scotti and Aramil return to camp, and when they're alone again the gnome whispers , "hey, you can have him--he's yours." Gleefully the Satyress bounds into camp and hugs Hung. "It's OK, you can come with me!" "Er, what?" "Go get 'er, Hung!" cries the Gnome, laughing. "See, she releases you! We can be together now!" Hung lies and tells her he already has a girl back home. "You're a thief and a liar, Gnome!" she spits with a look of hatred, and flees sobbing into the night.
They go back to sleep, sleeping longer into the morning to recover fropm the night's excitement, and so do not come upon the shrine until nightfall of the next day. The entrance is a large hollow tree, but it's guarded by. . .a pair of Gnolls? The place seems to be infested. The group sneaks up and ambushes the Gnolls, dispatching them without raising any alarm, and then are ready to dare the complex below.
Behind the curtain:A minor problem came up at the start which thankfully didn't spread to the whole session. When Vadania was revealing the Shrine key, something about the way I said it made it sound (to the players anyway) lke she produced its case from her vagina. Much joking and giggling. I continued, but then when she opened the box the key became a crystal dildo, and the fact that it "opens the hidden shrine" didn't help a bit. I was kinda frustrated, and Shirley said "I thought we agreed that kidding around is OK," referring to the Survey I mentioned in my reply to Lee. I said sure, it is, but it's so bad right now that I can't get a word in edgewise. Things calmed down and we were able to continue.
First: No Tommy tonight. I had emailed him, which my browser said he'd read, but I haden't actually spoken with him. He doesn't have his own cellphone, relying on his mom's and girlfriend's phones, so he's tricky to get ahold of. And he didn't show. So I had Silence split off from the group (I had thoughts of both her looting the hall and possibly running afoul of the King's Man) and let the party decide what to do about that. As it happens they did nothing. Which is at least convenient in the short run. I've since contacted Tommy and learned that he opened but didn't read the email. :raise: But he's also clarified that he's got a lot of shit going on and realistically can't really play. He says to give it a month or so and he'll probably be able to rejoin the campaign. So it's good that that's clear.
I stuck them with Aramil for the reason I was mentioning to Lee: it's the only way to keep relationships relevant to a party on the go. I wanted to try and develop the sibling rivalry and see where it could go, and I thought I had Shirley pegged as wanting more interaction along those lines (i.e. as opposed to fighting). But Shirley didn't really take the opportunity when Aramil started spilling his guts, and took advantage of his vulnerability to prank him with the Gnome. Shirley even commented that "the conversation was getting boring." So it's not entirely a "in-character" thing. Not sure what do do about that, I can't
make them care about a character, but I'm kinda tired of players in whatever game I run being so dismissive of NPCs.
The Satyr encounter was tons of fun. I had, pre-game, pulled out my Monster Manual and told Erik "roll me a D317." Just hoping I'd turn up a page with a Dragon or the Terrasque or something, to joke about siccing it on the party. I ended up with the Satyr entry, though, and the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. Highlights the dangers and mysteries of the woods, shows that not all encounters have to be the fighty kind, and made a really fun event in the story to boot. I had a blast playing the naive, overemotional would-be temptress, and now there's a Satyress out there in love with Hung and hating the Gnome. Heh heh heh, what potential!
I made a point after the encounter that getting a full rest (for spell recovery) would delay the trip and they'd arrive at the shrine later in the day. I wanted to introduce those little questions of resource management that D&D revolves around in an unintimidating way. They opted to rest, and so arrived at nightfall--meaning they DIDN'T catch the nocturnal Gnolls sleeping.
Shirley had a bit of a tough time in the Gnoll fight. She first thought to climb a tree to use her sling while the rest of the party either charged or flanked the gnolls, but in practice by the time she got her turn the gnolls were in melee with the party and she couldn't really hit them well. So intead she used a Jump spell to leap[ out of the tree and close with the Gnolls. She got one attack in next round before the fight was done. i thinki it was good that it happened because it sort of demonstrated the tactical subtleties of D&D combat and allowed Shirley to learn from her mistakes without getting hosed on anything really crucial. 4 LVL 2 characters against 2 Gnolls is a pretty safe place to screw up. And I tried to play up the spell (jumping twice as far as natural human ability while trailing magical glow) as something truly spectacular.
The AP thing progressed interestingly. Nobody's
used their APS yet (as I'd expect, there hasn't been anything yet that's important to them, or sufficiently difficult), but the AP awards took a turn or two. Normally, I've been giving the Gnome CN APs for her pranks--they're just harmless annoyances--but this time, I gave her CE points on two occasions: pranking Aramil while he's trying to bare his soul to the half-brother he can never quite open up to, and in playing with the poor Satyress's feelings, both of which seemed to me to fit the concept of "casual cruelty" pretty well. I wanted to do something with Shirlak and Hung for their assists in both those cruelties, but it didn't quite fit. Shirlak's NG, the opposite would be NE, and her behavior wasn't really
selfish, just indifferent. I could make a weak case, but I didn't want Shirley to be the first person
penalized AP without a strong reason. And Hung's LN, the opposite is CN, not quite the CE required for "casual cruelty." So I had to let both instances go as mere non sequiters to their alignment (and thus, not penalized
or awarded).
So that's that. Next session is tonight, so if anyone has any absolutely
pivotal advice hopefully they'll post it quick.
Peace,
-Joel