Last night saw me return to the Skull and Shackles adventure path to continue the journey of the Wormwood. The players at the end of the night came up 48 experience short of second level so I agreed to take them through another day of the ship meaning they have been aboard the ship now for 15 days and allowed them to reach second level to which there was much rejoicing!
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| I forgot my hat for the night! Doh! |
Well, while my players were rejoicing and rolling hit points for next level (two of them got ones, ouch!) I was rejoicing at some of the clever play that the players have used in their “passive” resistance to the reality of waking up press ganged! The first game we had there was active defiance, and active defiance from the weakest member of the group, the Drow Necromancer known as Daranis Skyborn (played by +scott desmond ). He received more lashes in that game than any player has yet to accumulate and began a long history of ire from Master Scourge and Mister Plugg!
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| How far from getting on board their own ship are the players? Only time will tell! |
The second day the players faced four members of the crew intent on waylaying them from answering the work call, headed by Fipps Chumlet who called out the Drow again. What they had not expected was the series of great rolls and entertaining combat actions by Lem the Halfling ranger (played by +Cam Mcloughlin ), Claude the Tengu Summoner (played by Mark Desmond) and Skye the Vishkanya fighter (played by Courtney Knights). Daranis relied heavily on his companions, Lem taking out a couple with some dirty tricks and Claude getting a critical on a peck plucking Fipps Chumlet’s eye from its socket. getting to deck in time it was three of the four assailants that got the whip in bloody hour!
Claude has spent a lot of his time persecuting those that annoy him by sneaking around and stealing stuff from lockers. He stole the key from Tam ‘Tate’ Narwhal as he slept with a great use of mage hand and cleaned his locker out. He then used the vial of acid he found in his locker to steal from the locker of Master Scourge (this was random and a great lead up to it sneaking past Owlbear Hartshorn) and then planted some of his stolen goods in and around the lockers of the pirates that had hit them earlier! He had also spent a good bit of time intimidating Fipps and attempting to make him belittled in any situation.
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| The first of six modules for the Skull and Shackles adventure path from Paizo |
After Master Scourge’s locker was hit there was an immediate locker search (with Daranis the main target) but finding nothing in the players lockers (Claude stashes his stuff in a hole he has found) they opened Fipps’ locker. None of the equipment was in it but an earring that was in Tate’s locker had been put in the locker by Claude. When they found Scourge’s bedroll hidden among crates nearby Plugg asked the question of who stole it and Tam said he saw Fipps with it, thinking that Fipps had been the one to clean out his locker earlier. Fipps protested his innocence but unfortunately he was keel hauled anyway and is now “sleeping with the fishes”. Very clever play. Risky but clever, because if Claude gets caught he may be looking at a keelhauling himself.
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| Our departing player Cam. |
Lem has been busying himself making friends and the group has found that the always helpful Sandara Quinn is worth her weight in gold as a cleric. This is because Daranis and Claude both have filth fever (Claude beat it this game but Daranis still has it). Without Sandara’s Lesser Restoration spells Daranis would now be dead from the fever. So all in all the players are beginning to get set up nicely for the game changer that is coming. They have some allies amongst the crew (in fact quite a few) and are beginning to work out what skills they need to beef up. One thing is for sure though, they have the idea of passive resistance down to a fine art!
Unfortunately there is only another two weeks that we will be able to game in this format as one of our players ( +Cam Mcloughlin ) is heading off to the bigger smoke so Lem will slip from PC to NPC. It will leave a big hole at the gaming table unfortunately reducing our four player and a GM table to three and a GM. So I will put out the call now, fearing that it will fall on deaf ears. If you live in the North West coast of Tasmania (around Burnie) and want to play in a roiling, swashbuckling game on the high seas email me. Use mark.knights “AT” gmail “DOT” com. We would love to hear from you!