Green Pass Campaign IIIb, Session 11: Backtracking

September 15-16, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP

After some new arrivals and departures, the modified expedition roster now included:

• Zegzinu (and 3 henchlizards)
• D
• Bar Helm
• Boudica
• Aeryn
• Conan
• Bob the Explorer Wolfman (inactive)
• Grimdark (inactive)
• Lavi (inactive)
• and Zelmar Krackiss, a mysterious stranger who is (spoiler alert) a disguised Fright Knight in human guise

Greater Hellhound (Dave Allsop)

Torn between investigating the dragon-infested pirate treasure trove and the mysterious tower, the party eventually settled on scouting the tower first. An attempt to camp overnight below the tower attracted the attention of a disciplined group of greater hellhounds which staked out the top of the cliff several hundred feet above the campsite. Scouting by wing (Zelmar) and spider-crawl (Boudica) revealed that the tower itself was patrolled by guards, and the hellhounds seemed to be reporting back to it periodically.

In accordance with the longstanding party practice of throwing the element of surprise to the wind in favor of issuing ambiguous threats, the party decided to brutally murder the captured pirate captain and drop his corpse on the tower doorstep, while under the cover of invisibility. The hellhounds, being undeceived by invisibility, barked up a firestorm that resulted in a volley of angry arrows and doubled security details for the tower.

Unwilling to attempt to scale the sheer cliff under the scrutiny of a fiendish welcoming committee, the party instead retreated back down the river tower the path, with vague ideas of tricking/convincing the white dragonlings into helping them.

On the way down, they encountered a supply caravan of over sixty guards transporting several weeks worth of supplies (read: booze). Being outnumbered by only six to one, the party decided to charge suicidally into battle.

The lizards took the brunt of the damage without complaint during the initial charge, but then the guards began swarming around the outside of the formation, flanking into the rear. By the time the officers had been eliminated, both Bar Helm and Aeryn had been overwhelmed, and only sanctuary prevented the same fate from befalling Conan and Boudica.

After forcing the surrender of the caravan, the party decided to turn around yet again, this time relying on stealth and deception. Everyone hid in the covered carts, with the sole surviving lieutenant nervously continuing back to the cliff where (according to his description) the entire caravan would be drawn up the cliff face using a giant mechanical winch, one cart at a time.

Not to be confused with a wench!

Casualties
Bar Helm, spine broken at the neck by guards;
Aeryn, damaged knee (carrying capacity reduced by 6, cannot force march);
...and Bob is quietly succumbing to lycanthropy, not that anyone has noticed.

Treasure and Experience
Coins: 8000 electrum, 11,000 silver (=> 5100 gp)
Gems/Jewelry: 19 gems, 9 jewelry (=> 1814 gp)
Trade Goods: 1 crate sprite wings, 3 crates armor/weapons, 4 crates pottery, 33 bottles of fine wine, 5 barrels liquor, 1 jar dye, 4 jars lamp oil, 12 rolls cloth, 37 animal horns, 2 teabags (3014 gp)
Magical items: shield +2, sword +2, oil of sharpness (+1 to weapon, lasts 8 hours), wand of device negation (prevent use of one other wand/staff/rod for one round), ring of water walking
Unidentified items: suit of chain mail, wand, sword, bolt case with 9 bolts, 2 potions, 2 scrolls

Total nonmagical treasure value: 9928 gp
Shares: 7 + 3*1/2 = 8.5
Gold per share: 1168 gp (all as electrum/silver/jewelry)

Killed: 1 5th-level captain (200 xp), 6 3rd-level lieutenants (300 xp), 5 1st-level guards (50 xp)
Surrendered: 55 1st-level guards (550 xp)

Total experience from treasure: 9928 xp
Total experience from kills: 1100 xp
Total experience from exploration: 0
Total experience: 11028
Total experience per member: 1297 xp

(Note: Henchlizards get half-shares of treasure and experience.)

Green Pass Campaign IIIa, Session 10: Home Stretch

Placeholder for the escape from Green Pass session.

Green Pass Campaign IIIa, Session 9: We Shall Not Pass

This is a placeholder for the Footman's Notch session.

Green Pass Campaign IIIb, Session 8: River Pirates

September 7-15, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP

Some new additions to the party included refugees fleeing from the dark elven city in the chaos:

• Lavi, an elven spellsword
• Aeryn, a sylvan witch

The path leading out from under the mountains broadened into a large valley full of forests, apparently surrounded on all four sides by impassible cliffs and snow-caps. Rather than risk drow patrols along the main road, the party broke off to follow the river running through the center, discovering it quickly by virtue of the roar created as it plunged down to an underground lake.

The river wound north and west through the valley, passing through a swamp (where the party was warned about the presence of wyverns along the north fork) and then upstream toward a single high peak in the center of the valley. The peak was flat on top, with a watchtower that offered good visibility to the north, east, and south. From the river, a long track -- some heavy objecting being dragged over the ground -- led to the base of a sheer cliff up the side of the peak, and vanished.

The party bypassed an ambush of several spiders in the underground, and finally followed the river back to the abandoned road where it bridged across. Just on the other side of the road, a group of pirates had set up camp along the river. After some initial scouting (and magical intimidation) the party swept into the camp under the cover of summoned fog, clearing it out completely.

Regrettably, all the treasure (buried higher up in the mountains, along a glacial ravine) had already been lost due to a raid by white dragons. The pirate captain offered to reveal the location, but warned grimly that the dragons had already wiped out a group of his own men.

Casualties
None

Treasure and Experience
No gold or valuables this week, since the pirates had themselves recently lost their treasure to a dragon raid.

Killed: werewolf pack leader (450 xp), 5 werewolves (5x135 xp), 24 river pirates (24x10 xp)
Captured: pirate captain (600 xp)

Total experience from treasure: 0
Total experience from kills/captures/deceptions: 1965 xp
Total experience from exploration: 1035 xp
Total experience: 3000 xp
Total experience per member: 286 xp

(Note: Henchlizards get half-shares of treasure and experience.)

Green Pass Campaign IIIa, Session 7: Reaction Checks

This is a placeholder for the Woldwatch council session.

Green Pass Campaign IIIb, Session 6: Party Crashers

This is a placeholder for the Emru-Marol session report.

Emru-Marol Experience Calculations

So suppose a group of adventurers use a mirror of opposition to summon a army of evil duplicates, right in the middle of a drow spider festival. The 1st edition version of this item doesn't seem to have any limit to the number of duplicates it can summon, and it doesn't even require anyone to see the reflection in order to function. If you're reflected, you're duplicated! So presumably displaying it to a crowd would duplicate the entire crowd -- with murderous counterparts of themselves. How much experiences would the ensuing slaughter be worth?

First, note that the clones aren't particularly strategic. Each one wants only to mindlessly kill its counterpart. So the clones are certainly going to lose this fight, once the opposition gets organized. Let's assume that they can, at most, eliminate about 50% of those present, and that they'll always manage to kill at least 10%. Then we'll dice with d100 to see the exact fraction, keeping the first result between 10 and 50. And the drow get.... 11%! It's almost as if someone tipped them off to trouble. That's what comes of warning the heads of three major drow houses.

Now we need demographics of festival attendance. The city of Emru-Marol has 7000 families, but is part of a much larger realm (Emru-Marolvi) of more like 250,000 families. However, most of those "families" are slaves of the drow. The drow themselves are probably only about 5% of the total population of the realm. So we'll assume a base attendance of around 10,000, and assume that the other 2500 are staying home to keep the slaves in line. That seems like a sensible attendance figure for a major festival, given the physical dimensions of their temple.

All of these attenders are presumably leveled characters, since there are no "0th-level" adult elves. (We'll ignore children, since that's always an ethically uncomfortable subject, and just say they've stayed home. We'll also ignore the victims of their human sacrifices, since those are being brought out a few at a time.) The standard demographic level ratio for ACKS gives a distribution of something like

1 12th
1 10th
2 9th
5 8th
9 7th
20 6th
50 5th
120 4th
240 3rd
700 2nd
2000 1st

plus another 700 black widow spiders watching from above in hopes of snacking on a sacrifice victim. Here I've divided the ACKS numbers by 2 for all levels below 6th, since those soldiers are the ones staying home to suppress the slave revolts.

OK, now we need to check to see who lives. For all levels above 5th, I'm just going to roll randomly against the target of 11%, to see if they can beat it... and they all do, one after another! So no major drow leaders have been slain.

For lower-level characters, I'll just assume a flat ratio or 89% survivors. The 11% that die come out to...

2 6th x820 = 1640
5 5th x500 = 2500
13 4th x190 = 2470
25 3rd x80 = 2000
77 2nd x38 = 2926
220 1st x16 = 3520
77 spiders x80 = 6160

Total 21,216 xp

Divided over 8.5 shares (assuming 1.5 shares for each henchman) gives 2496 xp per party member, with the lizard henchmen getting a half-share of 1248 xp.

There were a few extra drow killed during the impromtu dance recital by Grimdark, but that's basically a rounding error compared to the list above. But since I'm a nice GM, I'll call it an extra 100 xp for anyone at the dance recital. That would be... Grimdark, Zigg, and someone else I forget. Will's one-eyed barbarian. I always forget him!

Oh, yes -- and to acquire the mirror in the first place, that took a win in the gladiatorial arena. So our two gladiators (Zigg and D) each get an extra

2 werewolves x135 = 270 xp

or an extra 135 xp each.