Okay, here we go; we covered two days (2 and 3) this session:
Day Two - There's a Monster in my Basement!The following morning, Zinnia woke up after a rough night's sleep. The shared room was noisy and completely lacking in privacy. People were talking, coughing, snoring, reading by candlelight, etc., which made it hard to sleep. Zinnia goes into the common room and encountered an older woman, around 50, talking the ear off the innkeeper about this crazy dream she had where a ghost proposed to her. She is Norada, the alchemist, who lives a few hours out of town. She just stops by twice a week for supplies and to deliver any potions that were commissioned. Norada talks nonstop about everything. She tells Zinnia about her business, about how one of the guild wizards ("Kryi") was in love with her and tried to woo her, but her heart belonged to another, about her ring of cantrips (one of her treasured possessions) and a bunch of other things, too.
Zinnia manages to extract herself from the conversation and bumps into Nine-Fingered John again. He mentions rumors that the zookeeper is looking to hire adventuring types for something. He isn't sure on the details, but thinks it must be something bad if she needs adventurers.
Zinnia files that away for later, gathered up Darrin and Aldair, and headed for the church to meet up with Normand. She walks in on the priest trying to calm down an older farmer who is ranting and raving about the 'evils' of the wizards in this town, and how they're all a bunch of scheming necromancers. After the man departs, Normand explains that many of the folk in Old Northbank blame the wizards for things getting so bad for them. Normand leaves Lura in charge of the temple, and has Darrin and Aldair carry some of the supplies. The four them head for Old Northbank. Zinnia is eager to go straight to the brothel, but learns Normand has other plans. They spend the entire morning with him, bringing food and medical supplies to those in need, and listening to Normand's many, many sermons. Eventually, around noon time, he takes them to the abandoned brothel.
Aldair manages to parkour up to the second floor and get in through an open window, letting them in through the front door. The place seems abandoned; but there is evidence that some people squat here at night (dirty bedrolls, etc.). They don't find anything of interest on the first floor, so head up to the second. There are ten doors upstairs, similar to the layout of an inn. The few that are unlocked are a mess, but the locked ones are in better shape. Aldair isn't able to open all of them (I kept rolling 3s, 4s and even 1s). But they do manage to get into two of them. One seems to be decorated with a pirate theme. Zinnia finds a pair of high heels that are still in good condition, and a few corsets, and takes them to sell later. She also finds a hollowed out peg-leg. Inside is a scroll, which is a letter addressed to someone named 'Bella' and from someone named Surrisk. The author sounds a bit clingy and desperate, and seems to be begging Bella to take him back. Zinnia concludes 'Bella' must be her mother, Arabella.
The other room they break into seems to be done up with a sylvan theme--nymphs, dryads,faeries, that sort of thing. But Zinnia doesn't find anything of real note there.
She decides to try and find some of the women who used to work there. A successful investigation reveals there is an old halfling woman, Sandra, who used to work at the brothel and now runs a hostel for young women with nowhere else to go. Sandra knows of Bella (she points out that's what everyone called her; nobody used their real names, obviously), and that she was very popular and very exclusive; her client list was probably only a handful of names. Two were wizards (Surrisk and Kyristan), one was the former mayor (and father of the current mayor), Harold, another one was a wealthy widow named Elena, and the last one was a mysterious traveler who kept his identity a secret but would come into town every month or so to see her (the rumor was he was a prince or noble of some kind, and was hiding his identity to avoid scandal).
Zinnia thanks Normand for her help, returns to the inn for lunch, then takes Darrin and Aldair over to the zoo. There, they meet the zookeeper, a middle-aged woman named Rosetta. She offers a tour of the zoo for one silver per person, but Zinnia explains she's there about the job. Rosetta brings them to her office to speak privately, explaining she wants discretion. She tells Zinnia that the local ranger-in-training, Joran, helps her find and trap animals in the wilderness for her exhibits. He found a strange creature recently, one she didn't know of. By the time she researched it and learned what it was (a dog-sized rodent called an '
osquip'), it had burrowed its way out of the zoo and was now raiding people's cellars and basements for food. Worse, it accidentally freed a
large scorpion, as well (although thankfully, its' poison sac had been removed). Rosetta offers to pay Zinnia 20 GP for each creature she returned alive.
Zinnia heads for the inn again, and looks for Joran. He's a young man, laid-back, but clearly quite knowledgeable about local wildlife and the surrounding wilderness (he often hires himself out as a guide, in fact). Zinnia asks for his help, and he agrees...for half of the reward cash. Zinnia reasons 20 GP is still a pretty good deal, so agrees. True to his word, Joran is easily able to track down the first beast--he manages to trace the rumors to a woman named Glenna Torn, who claims a "horrible, yellow monster with lots of legs and big teeth" was spotted in her root cellar. Or so she thought; she didn't exactly get a good look before fleeing.
Joran offers his rope, and agrees to start tracking down the second beast while Zinnia and her companions capture the first. Lighting a torch with magic, she sends Darrin and Aldair down into the cellar first. A scorpion the size of a large dog emerges to attack. Zinnia wounds it with her crossbow, then Aldair knocks it out. They quickly hogtie it and carry it back to the zoo.
They meet back up with Joran, who has found the second beast, in a local's basement. This time, Zinnia tells Darrin and Aldair to wait upstairs, and goes down to face it alone (likely because she realized the XP was much lower with two companions at her side). She extinguishes the torch, relying on her darkvision. The osquip, however, also has darkvision. She sees a small pile of shinies in the middle of the room (some silver coins and a dagger) and when she approaches, the osquip leaps forward to defends its treasures.
Things don't go well. Zinnia loses initiative and gets bitten a couple of times, dropping her to 1 HP. She calls out for help to Darrin, but as it's totally dark down there, he's unable to see her or the osquip. Fortunately, she manages to knock it out, with a little help from Tides of Chaos, before it can finish her off. Well, at least she got full XP for it. She uses her own rope to hogtie it, and they drag it back to the zoo, as well. As promised, she offers half of the 40 GP to Joran.
By that point, it's getting late. She stops by a clothing store to sell the shoes and corsets (which gets her about 5 gold total), then uses that gold to rent a private room. She also invites Varni to share the room with her (to Aldair's chagrin). She then heads to bed to recover and rest.
NotesThere was a lot of improvisation for Day Two. The entire sequence with the brothel was not in the module, so I just made it all up on the spot. I don't know how well I did, but I haven't improvised much in a long time (even my homebrewed games are pbp, so I can take hours, even days, to come up with something if I need to), so it's a skill I definitely want to work on.
The zoo stuff is from the module; it's a side-quest that becomes available on Day Two. If it is ignored long enough, Joran eventually tracks down the animals himself, but Zinnia jumped right on it. Translating the monsters into 5E was a bit of work. It turns out the osquip has never been officially converted to 5E, but luckily I managed to find someone's homebrewed rules and just borrowed them. No idea how balanced they were, though. The large scorpion was tougher. In 2E there is a variety of oversized scorpions. There's 'large' (about 2' long), 'huge' (about 4' long) and 'giant' (about 5-6' long). It turns out, 5E only ever translated the giant ones. So I used the stats for a giant one, and scaled it down to 1/8 CR (which was about as tough as the osquip). It went down really fast, so I'm not sure if I made it too weak or not.
Anyway, Zinnia almost died, just to get some more XP. This is why you don't metagame.
Day Three - Haunted HouseThe following morning, Zinnia wakes up much more refreshed and well-rested in her private room (although Varni did toss and turn a lot during the night). She gets some breakfast for both of them, and finds the entire tavern is abuzz with rumors about ghosts. Allegedly, the haunted house in town was active again--strange lights and noises coming from it. Also, there was a story going around that the alchemist, Norada, fought a ghost. Funny how that story got so twisted around. Zinnia was amused, but Varni found all of the ghost-talk frightening and once again asked if Zinnia would teach her some magic to protect herself. But again, Zinnia insisted she could not, but offered to introduce her to Kitta instead. Disappointed and reluctant, Varni agrees.
The pair head for Kitta's house, and she again welcomes them into her home. Kitta explains about her research into Zinnia's...issue. All she's managed to come up with so far is that the only instances of people spontaneously acquiring magical power involved demonic or draconic blood in their veins. A thought that Zinnia found disquieting. Zinnia asked if Kitta would take Varni as an apprentice. Kitta wasn't sure, as she had never had an apprentice before. First, she confirmed Varni could read and write (which she could), then she offered to try and go through the very basic fundamentals of magic with her. Varni was nervous, and asked Zinnia to stay with her. So they spent the whole morning going over how arcane algorithms are used to channel energy from the planet's core into spells which can alter the fabric of space/time. It was all pretty boring for Zinnia, who really didn't understand any of it.
The pair returned to the inn for lunch, then Zinnia heads out by herself to the mayor's house. The mayor was a kindly man named Oswald. He and his wife Gwendolyn invited her in, and Zinnia could tell from the decorating (glowing dagger on the wall, boar's head mounted over the fireplace, etc.) that Oswald likely used to be an adventuring type. Zinnia bluntly tells Oswald she believes his father, Harold (and former mayor) was a frequent patron of her mother at the brothel and she wanted to talk to him about it. Oswald didn't really appreciate the accusations of adultery (as Harold was married to Oswald's mother at the time), especially from a stranger and during an election year, at that! Zinnia back-pedaled a bit, then suddenly changed the subject and asked if Oswald would consider raising funds from the locals to fix up the old brothel and turn it into a homeless shelter. The mayor said he'd consider it and bring it up at the next town meeting, but mentioned how off-putting it was for a stranger to show up, accuse his father of adultery, and then randomly ask to build a homeless shelter.
Although he was very reluctant, Zinnia managed to persuade him to let her speak to Harold, but only on the condition Oswald supervised to make sure Zinnia didn't upset him. He escorted her upstairs to Harold's room, where the old man was basically bedridden from advanced age. He seemed more or less lucid, though. He claimed he never visited the brothel and actually worked hard to get it shut down during his administration (and in fact, succeeded). He also claimed he did know an elven woman named Bella, but she was a scullery maid who worked for his family, but they had not known each other well.
Zinnia wasn't sure what to make of any of this, as all of it directly contradicted both what Nine-Finger John and Sandra had told her. Harold did not appear to be lying, as far as Zinnia could tell, but he was a former politician, so he might have been a very accomplished liar. Who could say?
Zinnia returned to the living room with Oswald and asked him if he knew of a pair of mages named Kyristan and Surrisk. Surprisingly, Oswald did know those names. "They used to live here!" he exclaims.
"I know they used to live in Northbank, but..," Zinnia started.
"No, no, you misunderstand," Oswald interrupted. "I mean they used to live
here. This house belonged to Kyristan before my family moved in." Oswald explains that Kyristan was, in fact, the former leader of the Northbank Mage Guild. There was a falling out with him and his fellow mages--Oswald wasn't sure on the details--and the guild disbanded shortly after that. He explains there are a few magical features in his house, and also shows her a painting in the dining room of four men in robes. He says he found it in the attic when he moved in, and he hung it as a sign of respect for the guild, since Northbank basically owed its existence to it. He points out two of the men in the painting are Kyristan and Surrisk. He isn't sure who the other two are, though. But Dar might know, as he is the only actual guild member still in Northbank.
Zinnia then went to Dar's tower again. Dar had a few 'theories' on Zinnia's condition, but was still looking into them for verification. Zinnia asked him if he knew of Surrisk or Kyristan, and the older mage visibly flinched at the latter's name. A bit reluctant, he eventually explained that Kyristan was the reason for the guild disbanding. He and his apprentices (Zinnia learned the other two were named Darwin and Cornelius) were secretly kidnapping villagers and experimenting on them in order to unlock the secrets of life and death...and learn to become a lich, an incredibly powerful and immortal undead wizard. Dar was the one who accidentally stumbled upon these experiments, and exposed Kyristan to the rest of the guild. Kyristan was expelled, as were his apprentices, but the fallout led to the guild itself disbanding entirely.
Disturbed by this new knowledge, Zinnia returned to the inn for dinner with Varni. She then got Darrin and Aldair again, and this time went to scout out the so-called haunted house in town, now that the sun had gone down.
Aldair managed to unlock the front door, so they all stepped inside, Zinnia lighting a torch with magic again. The first floor had three rooms--a kitchen, a dining room and a living room. The living room was bare, just a single overstuffed chair. The kitchen was empty, too, except the cupboards--Zinnia found a strange waterskin in one of them. Shaking it made a sloshing sound, suggesting it had liquid in it. Zinnia decided to take it with her.
Inside the dining room was a simple table and a few chairs around it, but nothing else. Zinnia commented on the lack of anything interest, when suddenly a silhouette of a person made of pure light manifested and started to gracefully dance around the table. This scared Zinnia so much she practically leapt into Aldair's arms, something the rogue did not complain about. After a bit of experimentation, Zinnia learned the figure appeared whenever someone in the room spoke, and it would dance for five minutes and then just vanish again. She set up a ritual to cast Detect Magic, and found the table was enchanted. She also noticed Darrin's axe was, too. She pulled out the flask again, and determined it was also magical. A successful arcana check revealed to her that the dancing woman was actually a Dancing Lights spell. This must explain the 'strange lights' people claimed to have seen from outside the house.
Upstairs there were three rooms, as well. One was just a walk-in closet, completely empty. Another one was an old study; there was a desk and an empty bookshelf. But Zinnia saw a magical aura in the desk drawer. As soon as she stepped inside, however, a haunting and lonely tune began to play, seemingly coming out of nowhere, but loud enough to be heard outside through the room's broken windows. Again, Zinnia practically climbed up Aldair in fright. Once she calmed down, she checked out the drawer and found an enchanted music box. It must be designed to play music whenever someone walks into the room. This explains why people were hearing strange sounds from outside. But who was coming in here to trigger it? As she placed the music box back into the drawer, she noticed another magical aura...coming from the floorboards beneath the desk. She had the boys move the desk and pry up the loose floorboards. Within, they find a beautifully crafted long sword, wrapped in cloth. It incorporates holy symbols of both Gonto and Octhanus in hits pommel, which causes Zinnia to deduce it might be a holy weapon. She takes it and heads for the third room.
The final room is a bedroom, or was. There's nothing inside now but an empty bed frame with no mattress. However, she spots a trapdoor to the attic above it, and sends Darrin to open it. She then has Aldair go up there. As soon as he does, she suddenly hears the sound of a scuffle. Rushing up, she finds Aldair fighting with none other than Nine Finger John, dressed in black leather and carrying a short sword! He put up a decent fight, and managed to bloody Aldair. Zinnia hit him with a ray of frost, and then Darrin cut him down with his magic axe.
Searching the room, they found a small hoard of treasure--coins, gems, jewelry, and other knickknacks that had obviously been pick-pocketed and burglarized from the various folk in town. Zinnia figured the entire bundle was probably worth a couple of hundred gold, if not more. She was very torn between returning the items to their rightful owners...and keeping them to sell off for cash. She gathered them all up for now, to decide later. Searching John, she found a journal. It looked like someone else had filled in the early pages, then at some point John found it and started using it himself.
The early entries seem to have been written by the owner of the house. He was a mage, and a lonely one at that, so set up some enchantments to help make the place feel more lived-in, including the dancing light woman and the (in his mind) soothing music. At some point he passed away, and John--who actually lost his finger in a trap, not from a catfish--found the place. John was originally a fisherman like he claimed, but he turned to thievery when he realized it wasn't paying the bills. He used the 'haunted' house because people avoided it, so it made for a perfect hideout.
Zinnia and the others left. She alerted the authorities of the truth of the 'haunted' house, told them about the body they found there, and turned over a quarter of the stolen goods, keeping the other three quarters for herself in secret. Then she retired to her private room with Varni for the night.
NotesThe stuff with Harold was not in the module, but everything else was. The Haunted House was another sidequest, this one to become available on Day Three. There was no real time limit on this one, though. The locals would get more and more worked up about the haunted house, but none of them were actually brave enough to do more than complain about it.
We learned the secret of the magic guild and how it disbanded, if Dar is to be believed. The mystery of Zinnia's heritage, though, only raised more questions than were answered.
Nine-Finger John was a level 4 thief; not much of a serious threat in 2E, and even in 5E, not all that strong without an ally to help him flank people. But that did make him the strongest opponent Zinnia has faced so far.
The journal was something I came up with. Everything in it is explained in the module, but I didn't see any other way to communicate that to the player. Otherwise, the whole haunted house thing just comes off as super random. A journal is sort of a cliche way to offer exposition, but it was the best way I could think of.
The magic flask turned out to be a Decanter of Endless Water--
HorizonsDream didn't seem terribly impressed by it, though. But it is the first magical item she's obtained so far.
According to the module, the PC gets 100 XP if they learn the haunted house is caused by magic, 200 XP if they expose Nine Finger John as a thief, and 500 XP if they find the magic long sword. At first, I was going to offer these rewards exactly as, but then realized this would shoot Zinnia from level 1 to level 4 (in 2E, this would not even put her half-way to level 2!). So I'm going to come up with a lesser reward, to get her to level 2 but not beyond it, and I gave her inspiration to help make up for it.
Horizon surprised me by deciding to roll for her second level HP. And then surprised me again when she rolled a 6! She took Thunderwave as her new spell.
Back in session 0, she was going to take Shield instead of Detect Magic, but having read ahead, I suggested that might be more useful to her, and this session, it really turned out to be. She likely would not have found the sword otherwise. Granted, she isn't proficient with it, but she might find something useful to do with it.