The Session

So, if you need a quick refresher, Barrai, Kip, and Bokken had all just come back from the 6th layer of hell. Narduk had been swapped out with Barrai’s sister who now looked like Narduk and was running her shop. This was all after Barrai the previous session had been killed, turned into a puddle and brought back as a gnome, a blue gnome.

Thrain joins the group quickly. He didn’t know where they’d gone but after his day of resting he figured they had likely gone to the tower. Of course, there was a bit of an issue as he came out in the courtyard through the trapdoor that Barrai had put a trap on. The group isn’t too worried about him, instead they are worried about what happened to Karl and the cloak that Bokken had previous and had traded for the sun sword, because, well, Karl was still in the cloak.

Kraig is sent up to scout and spots the cloak and someone talking to it. They look elf-like and have antlers or branches coming out of their head. Kip sneaks up and hears a conversation between Karl and this fey creature. He hears that Karl is basically telling the fey creature of his exploits, Karl’s not Kip’s, and that Karl wasn’t sure what had happened to Kip and the others.

Kip makes himself known to the fey who turns out to be The Oak Lord, third in command in the Summer Courts. Bokken soon steps out as well. They talk for a little bit and the topic of the tower, the sphere of annihilation and more comes up in the conversation.

The biggest thing is that the winter courts do not like the three ravens of the crescent moon. That is the organization that Addrus and Nahzir belong to. Mainly because Adanac, the nation that the Three Ravens of the Crescent Moon are based out of won’t work with the winter courts. The fey realm is being drained, slowly, of energy and the same with other realms. That energy is going into the tower. And the fey can’t go into the tower themselves which causes an issue with them trying to get rid of or figure out the tower.

The Oak Lord decides that the group of the four of them were fairly competent. And that since they have had dealt with the winter court, rainman, an arcane stalker and more. He offers them a 15 year contract at a gold a day, 5 silver while they are in school). They won’t be assassins upon graduation, so much, they’ll be adventurers of the tower in employment of the Summer Court. And that’s where we ended.

Behind the DM’s Screen

I’ve known that I wanted to tie in the fey somehow. Mainly because I have the Fey Monster book from Cawood publishing. It’s a really fun book. I normally don’t recommend third party books for players or GM’s because there is so much content. But as a big fan of the Dresden Files where the winter and summer courts play an important role, I wanted to give it a whirl in a game. It is a good book with a lot of different characters I like. I think you’d be able to play a Dresden Files-esque game with it. And while in this case the Tower is obviously the McGuffin for the game, I can still play around with it.

Do you have any third party D&D books that you like to use?

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The Session

It was finally time to bring Dorin back to his home. After a few days of carrying him around with them everywhere that they went, and trunk becoming more and more disgusting, they all decided to take him back. They rented a wagon for the trunk and hooked it up to Thrain’s donkey. Assendial, however, had questions to be answered and they decided to leave Kip, Karl, and Kraig behind, maybe to catch up with them later.

The travel started out pretty uneventfully as the group was just heading towards river that they’d have to cross. It was early in the year and the snows had just melted from the mountains. Their choice was to add a day or so to their journey in able to find a ferry to take them across the river instead of ford it. They figure if the water levels don’t look too bad, they can always follow the shorter route on the way back.

They reach a glade near a small brook where they decide to stop for the night. Barrai cleans out the clothes that Dorin had packed and cast mending on them, Bokken cleaned out the trunk down stream and Dorin was rinsing himself off. An owlbear with a rider on it charges out of the thicket and grabs at Thrain with it’s beak. A fierce battle ensues as Barrai tries to keep Thrain up, and Bokken charges in to stop the fight. Meanwhile Dorin rushes for his trunk and flips into it and starts floating down stream. The donkey spooks and runs back towards the town. Barrai heals Thrain and heals the owlbear which Bokken decides to keep as a pet, naming it Fukuro Kuma.

It takes them a while to realize where Dorin has gotten off to and knowing that it’s going to take some effort and that the ford is in the direction that Dorin will drift, they decide to go after the donkey. They take the owlbear with them, and they find the donkey a little ways down the road in a meadow where it’s headed more directly towards the town, but having pulled a wagon all day it has stopped to eat. As they get to it another group of goblins get there as well.

The party again faces off against goblins. This time Bokken and Barrai take the brunt of the attacks, which works out fairly well, though Barrai starts to get low on hit points. The two of them, mainly, manage to slash through everything and eventually, the time being around 10 PM decide to take their cart, donkey, and owlbear back to the road. Bokken keeps watch since he can just go into sentry mode, but comes out of it when he hears a siren off in the distance. He wakes the others but they aren’t sure if it’s a dragon siren off in the stance or maybe it’s the sire Kip has used before, but they decide to go back to sleep.

Behind the DM’s Screen

Honestly, not much for this time. I’m experimenting with something I normally don’t do. Since we’re not in the town, it’s less about social encounters and more about possible combat. So I wanted to see what stringing together a number of combats might be like. It’s interesting to do that and to see how quickly players spend resources.

How do you string combats together? Do you have a lot of little ones, a few medium ones, a little and a big one per day? Or do you do less combat encounters and more social encounters?

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The Session

So last session the group deciphered the code, and by that, I mean, they figured out how the code was going to work and I sent what they’d translated to them via e-mail, the information is at the end of the post.

They decide to take some of the information to Assendial, though they decide to hold a fair amount back just in case they need it. After a little bit of convincing, Assendial agrees to let them talk to Addrus. A few good rolls happened here, and some decent enough reasoning. Assendial, however, came along as an observer on the outside.

She cast zone of truth on the room where Addrus is, it also gets the area that she’s watching from. And half the party makes their saving throw against it and half fails. Barrai and Thrain are no longer able to lie, but Bokken and Kip take over with the interrogation with Bokken leading the way into a bloody mess. They slowly figure out that Addrus doesn’t seem to know anything about the dragon attack which they’d begun to expect from the notes that were passed back and forth between him and Kazhir. Things go sideways as Addrus decides to use a poison capsule after Bokken stabs him in the eye with a needle.

Assendial decides that was enough and goes in and casts cure wounds, but they tell her that he’s poisoned himself and she casts a lesser restoration on him to cure the poison. And she pulls Thrain and Barrai aside to question them, because their line of questioning had dropped the name of Kazhir and the fact that Addrus might not be from Adanac as originally thought.

Bokken and Kip continue their questioning and find out that Addrus and the people he was working with, their plan was to figure out how to make the towers go away. Bokken thinks back on what he knows about Carlsbekistan and what side they were on in the war. They were a loner country that really fought for itself during the war. While Adanac teamed up with a few other countries as the war went on, and they mainly opposed another two countries who allied together, Carlsbekistan always worked on it’s own until the four countries were able to beat the two countries, at which time Carlsbekistan fell into line.

Meanwhile, in the other room, Barrai and Thrain are asked questions about how they know this all and where they got the information. Assendial eventually gets most of the information out of them, because they have to tell her the truth, or not answer. But they manage to keep from her that Addrus had a medallion for the Crescent Ravens in his lock box as well.

As the interrogation wraps up and they head back to the school, they decide that it might be time to take Dorin back to his people and finally drop off the trunk with him in it. But of course, they decide to deliver it themselves. They also think that maybe what Addrus was dealing with and plotting might be less to do with their dragon issues and more to do with something at the national level. So it’s side quest time, that the players chose.

Before they head out, there are some fights that Bokken takes part in at the bar they attend, sanctioned fights. Barrai makes some money doing some fortune telling. And they decide to go buy some fancy clothes. They fine a shop that looks extremely fancy and has a long name, Lincoln Montgomery, Frazier, Alheim, Ostervold. It seems familiar to them and Bokken realizes that it’s the initials that were sown into the cloak that they’d found that the wizard, whom they now believe to be Kazhir, had dropped. They go in and it’s expensive but Bokken and Barrai get some fancy clothes and also get an address from the store for where they might find Kazhir, but that information cost them even more.

The Coded Messages

Kazhir
In place will contact shortly nothing to report
Addrus

Addrus
Keep an eye out there is rival as well
Kazhir

Kazhir

Any details who should I be looking for
Addrus

Addrus
No details keep an eye out prepare for phase one
Kazhir

Kazhir
Phase one is started the dragon attack messed things up will need to meet with contact again
Addrus

Addrus
Continue as planned I will look into the attack
Kazhir

Kazhir
Phase one is complete will await directions for phase two there are three students who are aware something might be wrong
Addrus

Addrus
Keep an eye on them hold off on phase two until I give the word
Kazhir

Behind the DM’s Screen

This was very much a wing it episode. I could have seen this going a number of ways. And I wanted to give them some options. Now they picked going to Assendial immediately, I could have also seen them trying to track down Kazhir somehow, or just deciding to take Dorin to his home, which might have had a name before but is now Castleveinea.

I also didn’t expect Bokken to immediately escalate their interrogation, though they have been prone to violence. It was an interesting thing because my first roll against their deceptions, persuasions, and intimidations was okay and then I went 1, 1, 20, 19, 20, 1, 16, and 20. So I hit extremes everywhere on my rolls, though that last 20 Bokken used an inspiration because it was his charisma (which is -1) Addrus which is +2 and it ended up being natural 20’s facing off and thinking they were about done questioning the player decided to use it and got up to a 24 (so rolled a five) which caused him to be Addrus’s check.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens on the side quest that’s coming up. I need to figure out my plans for it, because it could just be a straight up side quest where not much happens, there could be things happening at the school in the town while they are gone that will progress the story, it could be that the side quest yields some very useful information, we’ll just have to see.

So kind of a different session, but would you play in one like this?

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The Session

We jumped into the game immediately after the battle and conversations from last time with Assendial, Castillia and Parrag about what had happened with Addrus and his group of friends. The party decides that their next, best, course of action is to try and find out what is in that extra bank lock box that Addrus had. In his stuff they had found the matching piece of paper they would need to get access to his bank account, minus the fact that none of them looked at all like Addrus. They are a Tiefling, Gnome, Dwarf, and Warforged, Addrus is a human.

But Kip, the gnome, does have the spell disguise self, granted, that won’t make him tall enough to look like a grown adult male. Bokken crudely fashions him some stilts and the following morning, they go out to put their plan into action. Kip leaving Karl the squirrel with Bokken and his new raven familiar Kraig with Barrai outside to watch what is going on, heads into the bank. Thrain conspicuously waits out in the front waiting area pretending to read a news paper.

Things actually go quite smoothly as Kip is able to, without any issue, get into the waiting room area and into where the lock box is. Bokken follows to the desk to meet with a banker about opening a lock box of his own. At this point in time, things start to go sideways for the group.

Outside the bank, Barrai spots the adult who had been with Addrus and his group and cast fireball on them all. However, he doesn’t seem to have noticed Barrai, so Barrai just drops back into the shadows using the spell message to give everyone a heads up that things might be getting dicy.

Inside, Kip fails a check for noticing something, but is able to get the lock box unlocked with their copy of the fifth key that Addrus had. Inside he finds a medallion on a string that basically looks like fishing wire. The medallion has three ravens on it with a crescent moon behind them. It looks vaguely familiar to him, but he can’t quite place it. There are also two notebooks, he grabs them and goes to ring the bell to let the banker know that he’s done and to put the lock box away. The reflection of the bell, however, shows Kip, not Addrus, and Kip realizes that there was a dispel magic spell cast on the whole room, probably for situations like this one.

Using his new familiar, Kraig, he warns Barrai that things have gone sideways and that he needs to a distraction to get out. Well, the bird really just mimics back what Barrai had said earlier, which was “red alert”. Thinking quickly Barrai messages both Bokken and Thrain to let them know and gives a merchant selling cabbages from a cart on the street 20 gold pieces and grabs the card and starts running pushing it through the bank doors, hopping onto the cart and blasting thunderwave out from the cart causing cabbage confetti to go flying everywhere.

With that, Bokken gets very upset that he’s having to wait to get his lock box, and Thrain follows Barrai who has ditched the scene outside. Kip discards his stilts and takes off running. Thrain and Barrai make it outside in time to get confronted by Addrus’s friend. They try and fight against him, but he blasts them with a chain lightning spell and then drops a fireball on them taking Barrai down before the man disappears.

Thrain casts spare the dying on Barrai and Bokken picks him up and they head towards Moody’s Bar. It’s not open yet, much to their dismay, it was about 8:45 in the morning, but they take the tunnel back to school. Karl along the way steals most of Barrai’s rations and drops out most of Barrai’s money onto the ground, but Thrain picks it up and gives it back. They make it back to the school and think about going to their barracks but spotting Castillia going back there, they hide out in the cellar beneath the cafeteria, which connects to the tunnels and while waiting for Barrai to come to start to look at the notebooks. Eventually cracking the cypher. Barrai also helps them identify that the three ravens and the crescent moon are a symbol of a secret organization from Carlsbekistan that Adanac, their country, has been at war with.

Behind the DM’s Screen

This was an episode where I basically decided to wing it. I thought there was a chance that they’d decide to deliver Dorin so I’d done minimal preparation on that. But it was still a blast of a session.

They cypher was interesting to do. They still don’t know what it says, because I hadn’t figured out what it said yet. This is mainly because the notebooks and cypher were created on the fly. One notebook has 10 pages with letters on them. The other has lots of pages with numbers on them. It wasn’t until they had gotten a few decent rolls in that they started to piece it together. Thrain noticed that the numbers would have breaks between them. Like it would go down half a page and then nothing until it started at the top of the next page. And that the last 18 numbers were the same between two of the chunks of numbers and then were at the start of a couple of others. They started to narrow it down finding a repeating 9 number chunk, eventually finding the most common three letter chunk. This was a nice puzzle for them to solve because it was blend of player knowledge on how cyphers might work and then rolls in character. This meant that I didn’t have to do anything before hand to come up with the cypher, which is good because I didn’t. Had I not given them rolls, this would have taken much longer. I think to note of how this worked is that it didn’t overstay it’s welcome, it maybe took them 20-30 minutes at most with the rolls to figure out what was going on. That seems like the right amount of time for a puzzle, unless they have their hands on it and can work it physically and it’s all about the player ability, even then, I think the rolls for hints are always a great thing for puzzles.

So that was the bank heist, what do you think of that session? Does it sound like something that’d be interesting to play in?

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The Session

We start with them finishing their search of the half-orcs room after the latest dragon attack. But people are starting to show up, so they realize that it’s a bit suspicious with what they are doing and they decide to pursue other means of investigating this latest dragon attack and not really where the missing scarab from the first attack is. It makes sense to them because this dragon attack was also caused by a scarab.

They talk quickly with a few towns folk seeing if they can figure out if this is something that’s happened before. A few of the old timers tell Thrain a tale about how there was, about 60 years ago, a large dragon that came out and it was killed. That is corrected on them though as it turns out unlike this ancient black dragon, that was a young dragon. So Thrain doesn’t really think that there’s much of a connection.

The rest of the first year students are now out of the cellar and are looking around as well. The group spots that both Addrus and Dorin are missing from the group. Considering how suspicious Dorin has been acting, they decide to check up on him and see where he might be off to. Barrai finds him in his barracks hurriedly packing a steamer trunk and talking to himself about how everyone is out to get him. He tells Barrai about the threatening and disturbing notes that he’s been finding. Barrai feels a bit bad about it as he watches Dorin climb into the steamer trunk and close it while giving Barrai instructions as to where to ship him so he gets home safely.

Barrai messages every basically saying that Dorin probably isn’t their guy. Bokken heads to the meeting location but everyone else goes to where Barrai is. They decide that they’ll help Dorin get sent where he wants to go later, but right now they need to continue their investigation. They give Dorin some more food so that he’ll be slightly more comfortable and then go down into the tunnels where they are hoping to catch someone after the fact. They consider going down the the the direction that leads to the tower, but Kip is able to investigate and figure out that no one has gone down there in a long time.

At this point in time, they start piecing together some of the odd things that have happened in the past with the tunnel. How Barrai tried to put Sanphire to sleep but got someone else in the tunnel instead the first day they’d found the tunnel. How there had been someone skulking around in the shadows by the tunnel. How Sanphire had told them that Addrus and Parag were the only two first years he’d seen the day before. The group splits up with Barrai and Kip going to find Castillia and Thrain and Bokken going to find Parrag in hopes that they will know where Addrus is. Neither of them do, but Parrag wants to ask Addrus some questions. In particular he wants to know why he borrowed his shirt, but also with both of them being spies, why it appears that Addrus did another mission. Parrag completed all four of his and had four keys from each mission, but Addrus had five keys. Castillia, on the other hand, doesn’t know anything about what’s going on or where Addrus is.

Grabbing the steamer trunk with Dorin in it, they set off into town to go to the bank. Kip tries to get information or access to Addrus’s account and find out information on the account. He learns that isn’t that easy to do, and casts friends in order to make it easier. He claims that he is a joint on the account and he needs to get access. He finds out about the documentation for a joint account and is disappointed that he likely won’t be able to forge it as there is a magical element to it and it requires blood from both people on the account. Kip does find out that Addrus was last there two days ago. They go to the bar again to get some late lunch and ask around if anyone has seen Addrus there. No one has seen him there recently as he hasn’t been in, in three days.

And at this point in time they decide to fill in Assendial on everything that they know. Instead of doing that this session, we’re giving them a little bit of time forget everything and see what they find as useful information for Assendial. Oh, and Bokken is still carrying around a steamer trunk with Dorin in it. They do feel slightly bad about making his life so hard.

Behind the DM Screen

***** PLAYERS DO NOT READ *****

So, I had plans for this session that generally went according to what they should have. I’ve been laying hints for quite a while that Addrus is up to more than previously thought. At the original dragon attack he was talking to someone in the shadows and then unseen by the players made it to the cellar before them. He also was in the second interrogation that Barrai was in for people who lied or misled in the Zone of Truth. The additional key also was called out before by Parrag when they accused him of being a spy and found the ring of keys in his stuff. And most recently, Addrus was back before everyone else was back from the Tower the day that the scarab went missing. Did he steal the Scarab, who knows, but the players should figure that out soon and definitely now realize that he’s been acting suspicious.

I had to give some prompts to the players to move them along in the right direction right now. They caught onto the fact that Addrus and Dorin were missing and hence suspicious, but they really like Dorin was someone who is trouble, whether or not that makes that much sense. They definitely should know that they have broken Dorin with everything that Barrai has done at this point in time, it’s certainly been implied enough times.

Do you like sessions without combat, we’ve had a few of those recently? If you’re the DM, how to you run investigations, do you just sit back and see where there players go, or do you have planned clues?

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Where we left the crew, they were at Moody’s Bar for some of the duels which Bokken had entered himself into. Barrai and Thrain had beat up a guy at the bar and left only to sneak back in to watch Bokken fight as they didn’t really remember that they were there looking to find where the tunnel that went under Strawgoh came out in Moody’s Bar.

Bokken is facing off against a half-orc who has an okay record in the ring, but isn’t one of top duelists. Bokken comes out of the gate swinging, rushing to cover the ground and pulling out his odachi and getting a hit on the half-orc. The orc swings back hard with his mace connecting, but Bokken continues to press the advantage until he knocks the half-orc down. They get back up again and wallop Bokken pretty well. But Bokken gets through their guard and brings them to the ground where they stay. The healers come out and heal Bokken some as well as take care of healing the half-orc.

After the fight Barrai starts searching for the trapdoor but finds nothing. Bokken, taking a more direct approach asks an older fighter, Jermaine the Wind Storm, if he knows of any tunnel or trapdoor. He says that he knows pretty often students use one that is back by the latrines, but he doesn’t know where it is himself. Bokken passes off that information to Thrain, like Barrai is still searching, but when Thrain goes to look he finds nothing.

They head back to the school and spend more time doing school work, and trying to figure out what is going on with the final. After there has been a little work done to the school, Castillia and Addrus are moved into the barracks which houses Barrai, Bokken, Thrain and Parrag since theirs had been destroyed. They spend some time chatting with them, and Bokken tips Castillia off, since he’s paying he to keep an eye on Narius, about Addrus being one of the spies. Barrai and Thrain spend some time talking with Addrus and find out that there are actually maps of the tower and that the floors, after the proving area, don’t actually change. So if you have the right connections, have enough money, or are in the right guild, you can actually know quite well what you’re going to find on the first nine floors.

Bokken learning about these maps decides to hang out with some of the fighters from the duels, and joins into a group that is hanging out with Sanphire. He asks them what they know about the third floor of the tower, and gets back some general information. One of the fighters tells him that there’s a lot of fire on that floor. Another says that while there are some monsters, there aren’t as many to fight on that floor, and Sanphire lets him know that this floor of the tower is less about fighting and more about stealth and using your head, which isn’t ideal for Bokken who is not the most stealthy of characters. At that point the other duelists start to swap stories about the tower and pester Sanphire as to when he is going to go back into the tower and try and get past floor 25.

All of the characters spend some time shopping with Barrai buying a number of items, a light crossbow and bolts, chalk, ball bearings, a flask of oil, lock and 10′ of chain, a steel mirror, and after some searching, manacles. Thrain also basically gets himself some jars with oil in them and creates Molotov cocktails. Thrain also spends some time trying to figure out the best ways to not start on fire, and Bokken grabs a jug from the kitchen at the school and fills it with water because he is partially wood.

Also during this time they spend some more time trying to figure out who the other spy might be. Thrain decides to go through Addrus’s stuff now that they are in the same barracks and finds one interesting thing, a chain with five keys on it. This seems out of the ordinary but doesn’t help them get any further into figuring out who might be the other spy. Barrai does spend some time tracing the keys, and then with money he gets from his sponsor he get copies of the keys, from those tracings made up.

Bokken decides that following Addrus around might be useful as well in figuring out who he is working with. He is able to follow him around, he seems him meet with an older man and three students from other schools in the area at an open market, he seems him go into a bank and then into a backroom at the bank and then get a few drinks and watch a few duels. Bokken reports back to Barrai and Thrain and they are a bit surprised that Addrus is going to the bank because it’s a nice bank and unless you have a lot of money they wouldn’t probably accept your business and it would be fairly odd for a student to have that much money. They decide that it’s worth staking out the two locations, the market and the bank to see what activity that they can see from other students.

Barrai watches the bank and sees a few other students go in there, most notably Narius, Edzial (female dwarf barbarian whom hasn’t done much to this point), and Parrag. At the market, Bokken wanders around for a few days and he sees Castillia and Cordon shopping. Narius shopping and then losing his temper when he can’t get stuff for the price he wants. And Dorin actually visits a fairly shady looking stall with occult items. They decide that Narius makes sense to bank at the fancy bank since he comes from a noble family, but Edzial and Parrag that’s a bit odd.

Thrain first follows Edzial and sees her do some shopping picking up trinkets of glass that are of birds, clouds, the sun, and other stuff that you don’t see in an dwarven town. Then she takes them to a courier and gets them loaded into a package. He convinces the courier after Edzial leaves that she had put the wrong address on it and that he was sent to take it to her to get it updated. He takes the package back to the barracks and snoops through it, it’s addressed to Dasthian Corath in the Marthack District, Edfifle, Coldwater Mountains. Thrain knows that Edfifle is a Dwarven town in the Coldwater Mountains, and he finds a love letter form Edzial to Dasthian who is her fiancé. Thrain feels a bit sheepish about that, and returns the package to be sent. He follows Parrag next, Parrag just goes to a bar and has a chat with the bar tender, goes to the bank, and then goes and watches the duels placing a small bet which he loses.

Thrain thinks that’s suspicious and so with Bokken blocking the door, they sit down Parrag and Addrus one evening and accuse Parrag of being the other spy. He tells them that he’s not, but when pushed on it, some of his story about why he banks at such a fancy bank doesn’t make a ton of sense. They don’t get too far with it until Bokken decides to go through Parrag’s stuff and finds a key chain with four keys on it and comparing the keys to the copies that they had made from Addrus’s keys, there are similarities, like they might be for the same sort of location or the same location if that’s why Parrag and Addrus were going to the bank, for a spying reason. Parrag tells another unconvincing reason for going to the bank and it’s when Barrai offers a deal, where they will help keep his cover for him if he admits it that he eventually does. They do some things, like put a lock on their barrack door so that they all have to carry around a key chain, and still keep on acting like they are trying to figure out if Narius or Dorin are spies.

They, and Castillia, go and talk to Assendial and tell her how they figured out who Parrag was and how the small bet after going to the fancy bank first aroused their suspicions. Thrain also asks about the dragon attack and the items that they were shown. Assendial lets it slip, since she thinks they deserve to know a little bit and because they’ve promised Parrag a level of discretion that they can probably be discrete about this, that the scarab item was found underneath the barracks that were destroyed. It seems like whatever the enchantment was caused the dragon to be enraged and want to destroy it, so it attacked the barracks over and over again with acid until the acid ate down to where the scarab was and getting hit, it broke the enchantment on it. They ask for more information, but she sends them off to prepare for their final.

Behind the DM’s screen:

As always, I did limited planning, I basically had planned out the fight, and that was about it. I was curious to see what they would spend time on, and it was actually a really fun session.

With the bank, I knew once I gave Addrus keys that there was going to be something at the bank that the spies needed, most likely a drop or pick-up location for assignments and missions. I also made it so that it made sense for Narius, kid of a noble, to bank there, but it didn’t make sense for the other three, or so it seemed because they didn’t know much about Edzial, hence why I picked her. I tried not to make it too obvious that it was Parrag, and had been planned for it to be him from the beginning, but they did a good job of narrowing things down with their actions.

I also wanted to see what they’d do to prepare for tower test, and they did some fun things with that.

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Thrain and Barrai spooked by the noise decided to book it towards the direction of the mess hall. There they run into a stone wall and Barrai thinks it’s a dead end but Thrain, with his dwarven eyes study it and see that there appears to be a single stone, large, that looks like it’s loose that he could push out of the way. It takes some effort and Barrai’s help but they push the door out of the way and they see that they are in the cellar where they were supposed to have gone for shelter during the dragon attack.

Bokken thinking that everything is good leaves Sanphire up in the tower after their dagger throwing competition and heads back into the mess hall through the kitchen. In the kitchen he is caught by Narius. But Narius, after having gotten beaten up by their group once decides not to fight him and just finishes drinking his water. Bokken settles down watching the door for the night.

Thrain and Barrai thinking that they are being smart decide to loop back around, sneaking outside to see whom they can see who was following them down the tunnel. They make it to a corner and they see Sanphire, out of the tower where he had been keeping watch, going to pick up the two daggers. One of the daggers is lying by the trapdoor which is propped ever so slightly open by a piton. Barrai, thinking quickly, decides to try and cast sleep on Sanphire. However, the spell doesn’t seem to have an affect on him, instead there is a thump from down inside the tunnel and Sanphire notices the trapdoor and the piton. He throws open the trapdoor and messages Tormin. Tormin sees the trapdoor and looks surprised by it. He wakes up the other teachers and they all come out. Barrai, watching the proceedings notices that neither the teachers Dadellous or Linken seem surprised or as surprised as they should be by the trapdoor. Or at least as surprised as Assendial and Tormin did. Barrai and Thrain sneak back inside.

Inside they go back to sleep and are awakened early in the morning by Assendial and Tormin who wake up all the students. Tormin tells them about the secret tunnel and that something was found underneath the barracks where the dragon had attacked and where Castillia had gotten her leg broken. They then tell the students that they are going to question them one by one and start on that process while Linken and Dadellous continue to study the tunnels.

Bokken is the first to go in to be questioned. He steps in and realizes that the room has had some spell cast on it, a zone of truth, and that he has to tell the truth, not Liar Liar style but he cannot right out lie. Assendial is sitting there and she asks him if he knew about the tunnel or any secret passage prior to Tormin telling them about it. He answers truthfully that he did. She asks him what entrance to it he knew of, he answers truthfully. She pulls out four items, a necklace, a scarab, an amulet, and rock with runes etched into it, she asks him if he knows which was found down in the tunnel underneath the barracks. He answers truthfully that he doesn’t.

Barrai is next, and he also fails his saving throw against the zone of truth. Realizing this he hems and haws a bit about it. Assendial asks him to clarify if he knew about it, and he hems and haws some more. She next asks him where an entrance is, he gives a vague answer but not a lie about how a place as old as this there are probably several entrances. Finally she asks him which of the items was under the barracks. He guesses that a dragon would probably want the items that have the most value and that the necklace, amulet and scarab are all golden. Or maybe it’s the rune covered rock because that’s different.

Parrag goes in next followed by Thrain. Thrain who has a very high charisma doesn’t fail the saving throw and he and Assendial know it. She asks him if he knows about the tunnel, he answers truthfully that he does. She asks him if he knows where they are or if he’s been down in there. He successfully deceives her that he knows less about the tunnels and where they go then he actually does. She pulls out the items and asks him about them, about their origins, which was found under ground, what he knows about their magical properties. Thrain is 100% truthful with her that he really doesn’t know much about them. She believes him.

Everyone else is sent back into a large group except for Narius, Addrus, Barrai and two second year students. They are all brought into one room together with all the teachers and are asked a couple of questions, the first that they had to write down was how many different directions the tunnel splits at it’s single junction point. Narius says outloud 4, but had written down 2. Addrus says 4 and has written down 4, Barrai says 4 and has written down 4, one second year has said 4 and written down 4, the last one has written down “?” and says 4. Next they are asked where the four directions of the tunnel go. The first 2nd year just writes down “I don’t know” and says “I don’t know”, the next one says “Moody’s Bar, the field, the cellar, and the tower” and has written that down. Barrai has written down “Not not the field, not not the cellar, not not somewhere fun, and not not somewhere awesome” and says that. Addrus gives the same answer the second year who knew all the directions. Narius, on the other hand, gives all the right answers but only had written down “the field, the food, and the drink”.

The two second years are let out of the room as is Barrai while Narius and Addrus are kept in the room to answer more questions.

The group decides to go to Moody’s bar, since they assume that the trapdoor and the hidden door into the cellar will be blocked off for good now, and they should try and find another way in. Moody’s Bar is the one where the fighting circle that Barrai and Thrain had made some money before, and they had seen Sanphire and Esmelda fight. Bokken decides to give them a good cover as they search around. Barrai and Thrain spot Zaphir, an older student from another school whom they’d swindled before in a fixed fight. They go up to him and see if he wants to bet with them on the Bokken fight. He recognizes them and knowing that they had taken his money before, he orders two beers, plus he has one in front of him. When the beers arrive, he takes one in each hand and smashes them into the faces of Barrai and Thrain. A bar fight ensues and Thrain unleashes an eldritch blast on him, plus hex damage and takes him down. The bartender kicks them out of the bar so that they don’t get in more trouble since technically Zaphir started it, and they head out just until Zaphir is gone. Then they sneak back in wearing fake moustaches (a Dwarf and a Tiefling) and join the crowds who are getting ready for the first fight. They get their program which has the betting odds and see they can get 5 for one on Bokken, slightly worse than normal first time fighters. So Thrain puts down two gold and Barrai puts down 10 gold, that he’d stolen off of Zaphir. And the announcer came out….

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to the week night fights…. Let’s get ready to rumble………”

Behind the DM’s screen:

Most of this session was ad libbed. I had some plans for them down in the tunnels, but because of choices that were made, mainly Bokken heading back when he did and not picking up the daggers things changed. Had he picked up the daggers even, they could have gone through the cellar, come back around, and repeated the process. I’m assuming they would have been the ones to find the odd object in the tunnel under the barracks, instead of the teachers. And that was going to be my main plan, things clearly went differently.

One thing that was a lot of fun was the Zone of Truth just to see the different tacts and different successes for passing. I like how Zone of Truth works where you know as the person who is in it what is happening so you can talk around the truth, but the caster also knows if you pass or fail. It makes for some interesting moments in gaming.

And Zaphir being at the bar was totally something the players asked about. So the fact there was a bar fight is on them, Zaphir survived to fight another day.

We’ll have a few weeks off now from any more Tower of the Gods. I’m in the midst of moving and seeing as this is remote, I’m not sure when I’ll have my computer and full set-up ready to go again.

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Things pick up immediately with Assendial calling up everyone from the cellar. Dorin tries to sneak into that group, but Barrai spots him coming out of some bushes that he had been looking in last time and had been hiding in during the dragon attack. Barrai calls that to everyones attention and Dorin tries to convince everyone that he was trying to be helpful and out of the way, not just cowering in the corner, but Barrai calls him out on that.

Meanwhile, Addruss comes out of the basement where Bokken knew he hadn’t been before. They call out Addruss on that and he says that he had come in after that fact since he had been outside and with a second year student when the attack had occurred, he hadn’t realized he was supposed to go to the cellar until later. Barrai calls him out on that, but he says that Barrai was probably unconscious when he came in so he wouldn’t have known.

Assendial, having enough off all of this, sent the rest of the students to the mess hall. Parrag and Cordin help Castillia to the nurses station to get her leg treated. Once everyone else has left, she gets the truth from Dorin that he’d been looking for threatening messages in the bush like he’d found before and that he’d just gotten scared. Addruss says that he came in a side entrance which is why Barrai, Bokken, and Thrain wouldn’t have noticed him. Assendial doesn’t look fully convinced, but sends them all into the mess hall.

About half an hour later, Tormin comes in and informs the students that they are going to be sleeping in there for the next few nights just for their protection in case something comes to attack again. Barrai has a lot of questions about what they should and shouldn’t do if something attacks and what the biggest things to attack are from the tower and if they are as targeted as this one was. Tormin says that most attacks haven’t been targeted and that this was an adult dragon and he’s seen ancient dragons come out of the tower before, and if the players see any sort of dragon, to run to the cellar. Barrai asks a few more clarifying questions and they all decide to call it a night.

Once the lights are out, Barrai and Thrain sneak out through the kitchen and Bokken, after losing his plate armor exoskeleton sneaks poorly after them. They notice that there is something up in the watch tower on the campus that is glinting every thirty seconds and Barrai uses minor illusion to create an image of Addruss sneaking. The illusion is spotted and after a few seconds Tormin comes to the door and tells Addruss to get back inside and then mutters under his breath, which Bokken hears, that they wonder why they had recruited an idiot like Addruss. They decide not to sneak to the trapdoor that night.

So next morning, Bokken, to get sunlight to recharge, goes to the top of the tower and meets a flashy half-elf who is smoking a cigarette. They chat for a little bit and Bokken finds out that he is one of two adventurers hired by the school to keep watch just in case something else happens. They chat some about dueling and Bokken is able to get some lessons or sparring with the half-elf. He finds out from Barrai, later, that the half elf is likely Sanphire whom Barrain and Thrain had seen fight in the duels.

They go about their school day until they can get a hold of Parrag and have him join them in talking with Assendial. They tell her that they know that Addruss is one of the spies and that they had found that out from Tormin. Assendial is pissed off at Tormin for letting it slip, but generally keeps a pretty good poker face. Parrag, after the initial shock is pretty pleased that the group has brought him in on that for the credit. They ask him if he’s a spy and he tells them, unshockingly, that he is not.

Barrai interested when the watch shifts sees that there is a female dragonborn up in the tower and goes up to find out who it is. It is Esmelda from the duels whom he’s seen before. He has a brief conversation, and he gets the information that he needs for Bokken that Sanphire will be taking over the watch at midnight.

They wait until midnight and put together a plan where Bokken has grabbed some dried meats and beer during dinner and he’s going to take those out to Sanphire to chat more and learn some fighting skills. Meanwhile, Barrai and Thrain will sneak to the trapdoor and go and explore down there. The party decided to split themselves, not me. It works well, and Bokken goes out and is sent a message by Sanphire to hurry up to the watch tower before any of the teachers spot him. He goes up there and they start to talk about his past and about how he wants to learn skills with throwing knives. He shows off some good dexterity to Sanphire and he suggests that they throw at a target to practice their skills, the target happens to be the barely propped open trapdoor.

During this time, Thrain and Barrai sneak over to the trapdoor and get it open. Barrai stick a piton in to hold the trapdoor just barely open and they climb down the ladder in pitch dark. At the bottom Barrai lights a candle and they can see that there are three passages, one leading under the messhall, one leading away from the tower and one leading towards it. They start out heading down the one leading to the mess hall to see if they can find an easier access when there is a thud and an echo in the tunnel from something hitting the trapdoor.

Behind the DM’s Screen:

Life has been busy so I didn’t have much time to plan. This is a reason that I like to end my sessions on a cliffhanger or in the middle of a scene. It means that even if I don’t have the full session planned out that I can then have a few minutes as we wrap up what was previously going on.

Also, I think I rolled dice twice or maybe three times in the session, it wasn’t much. This was heavier role play and playing off of the role play from what happened in the previous session.

All role play sessions or heavier role play sessions are interesting because it gives the characters chances to interact more and develop what is going on and gives me a chance to see who they care to interact with and what they are thinking. Doing this allows you, as the DM, to figure out which characters they think are important and give them a bigger role in the story being told.

So what can you take away to add into your own game?

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• Players take the test of the tower to become adventurers
• Players enroll in Strawgoh, a school of dark arts and assassination
• They find out that there are spies in their midst
• They run into issues with one of their classmates who was supposed to be part of their group
• Player start their mid term going through the first real floor of the tower competing against the other squads

So that catches us up quickly to where we our. The player characters, Barrai, Bokken, and Thrain, along with the fourth member of their group, Parrag, have burst through the tree line and see the island, covered in moss with three of the professors standing on it. About 60 feet away from them, Castillia, Narius, Addrus, and Cordin have also burst through the tree line. Thrain fires off an eldritch blast at them, but misses, and Castillia draws her bow on him.

The Bokken decides that while a fight on the shore could be fun, it might be smarter to try and get to the island first, since that is the objective of the test. Glancing at the water he notices that there are some monsters moving around in it but he takes off towards the shoreline anyways. The other group decides that is a better plan and Addrus gets to the water first and dives in and he is immediately grabbed and batted at by some giant purple tentacles.

Barrai, the next up, decides to take a little bit of time to figure out what is going on and sees that the island is not actually an island. Instead it’s a giant monster that has moss growing on the top of it that is sticking out above the water.

Things go sideways when Bokken decides to take a running jump onto one of the tentacles and is hanging off of there. Barrai seeing that decides to try something fancy of his own and uses a great acrobatics check and his whip swings most of the way to the water. Unfortunately Barrai is not good at swimming and starts to sink towards the bottom. Meanwhile Bokken, seeing how that has worked, tosses a rope to first Thrain and then Parrag and tries to whip them across some of the water with varying degrees of success, but eventually the whole party is in the water, some of them having been grappled by tentacles.

During this time, Narius has been taking pot shots at the party from the shore while Castillia, Cordin, and Addrus are dealing with tentacle issues in the water. Thrain getting fed up with that fires off an Eldritch Blast at Narius and drops him in one hit and Narius starts making saving throws to avoid death. Thrain gets dragged under water by a tentacle and being annoyed he can’t cast Eldritch Blast on the tentacle underwater, when he surfaces shoots the downed Narius again and takes him out. When they all finally reach the head of the monster they are able to get up without issue and are the first group from their class to get there as Castillia’s group was still in the water and Dorin and Domon’s group had just come out of the forest.

The teachers commend the group on doing a good job and they level up to level 2, which gives them some new fun toys to play around with, including Barrai getting Dissonant Whispers. After they level up a teach suggests that they could have tried animal handling on the squid which Bokken never would have thought of. They also go to poor Narius who has been lying there and a teach casts reincarnation on him, causing him to come back as a Hill Dwarf and we ended the session there with them going back to school.

So behind the DM’s screen:

This was an odd session to run because I was controlling eight tentacles and four NPC’s throughout the fight. In the future, I should have written up a basic HP, AC, Attacks for the four NPC’s and handed them off to the players, but I was able to keep it moving quickly. It just would have been less downtime.

With the eight tentacles, at least the player playing Bokken assumed you couldn’t destroy them, because it was a giant monster, which is a fine assumption, they couldn’t have taken down the monster proper had they tried. But each tentacle had an armor class of 14, 16 HP, and +6 to strengh. But they didn’t do a ton of damage. The monsters attack plan was always to drag someone under water and drown them, which wouldn’t have worked on Bokken, but knowing the monsters plan made it easy and fast for me to run eight tentacles.

Finally, when Narius was shot down by Thrain, I wasn’t sure if I’d bring him back or not. But since the class size is fairly small decided it’d probably be worth it to do. I was going to cast something like resurrect or revivify, but I stumbled across reincarnate first. And I thought that would be more entertaining. And I like that the school would use that as almost a punishment if someone dies in a test or during a class.

So thoughts on the session, it was a good time, lots of things going on, would you want to play in a session like this? How do you handle a lot of bad guys in a battle?

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A quick recap, Bokken, Barrai, and Thrain took the test of the Tower and ended up with new powers, and got into Strawgoh, a school of assassination and dark arts. There they were told that there were a couple of spies in their class that they could find and get extra credit if they properly identified them. After messing around with that, they came at odds with the fourth person in their group, Dorin, a halfling and fought to get him out of the group and another person in. That fight just went okay but they ended up with Dorin leaving the group.

That took us to the first half of the first semester, before midterms. They studied well with Barrai spending too much time with watching Dorin and struggling in classes but Bokken and Thrain focused pretty well and Domon was the top of the class. Barrai does find out that Dorin is really concerned about getting kicked out of school.

Thrain and Barrai worked together to scam over a few bars and their patrons taking money in staged fights as Thrain wants to save up to get plate armor and Barrai wants to get studded leather armor, they made some progress but it was slow. They also got kicked out of three bars and made an enemy, Zaphir. Barrai also goes to some fights, which are the entertainment in the area, and notices two of the top competitors, Esmelda Dean and Sanphire, whom he starts to think that he might right ballads about.

Bokken spends some of his time breaking into teachers offices and trying to track down who might be a spy, but doesn’t find out much information on them. Instead of finding out who the spies might be, he does find some information, that while the people who were spies did go through the tower just like and at the same time as everyone else, they were recruited ahead of time.

Then comes the first part of midterms. So midterms takes place in the Tower but not in kind of the training section, where they were before, but on the first floor, which doesn’t change, and where the monsters respawn every night. So after going through a couple of empty rooms with their class, they are brought to a larger circular center room. The three barracks are brought to spots around the center, equally as far away from each other and are given instructions. They are to race to an island at the center of the room, whichever team gets there first gets the best grade, but grades can go down, depending on how much the party is damaged.

At the sound of the horn all of the groups take off, and Thrain, Barrai, Bokken, and Parrag, the fourth in their group, take off into a dense forest that surrounds the lake. They decide to stealth their way through, but Parrag does horrible on his stealth and stumbles across a couple of giant rats and three smaller rats. They manage to just about take him down, but Barrai is able to cast a spell to heal him. Meanwhile, Bokken and Thrain are chopping the rats with an odachi and blasting them with Eldritch Blast. Thrain keeps backing up and stumbles across a swarm of rats. Just as Bokken finishes off the last of them by Parrag, Thrain gets swarmed over and goes down. Bokken and Barrai go to help with Parrag following behind. Then they get close, Bokken starts hacking away and Parrag fires off a healing spell bringing Thrain back to his feet and then helps finish off the swarm of rats.

To make up for lost time, the group starts booking it through the forest as fast as possible, and they are making good time, when a group of three flying snakes drops out of the trees and takes down Bokken. Parrag casts another spell getting Bokken back to his feet. Barrai casts a spell making the sound of a predatory bird and scares off one of the snakes. Thrain and Bokken then make quick work of the other two and they are off running again. This time stumbling across some elk who don’t want to tangle with them and take off running towards the lake as well. Bokken angles the barrack group slightly to avoid the elk and they make it to the shore without further incident.

When the hit the shore, they see an island about 40 feet out into the water with two teachers on it. Busting through the edge of the tree line as well is Castillia’s group with Narius in it as well. Thrain immediately takes a potshot with an Eldritch blast, but on the run, the blast goes wide, and Castillia notches an arrow on her bow and pulls it back aiming at Thrain.

That’s where we ended do to internet troubles. And that’s one of the downsides of playing on Zoom instead of in person, but it worked well for the most part and we got a lot in.

Behind the DM’s screen a little bit, I was actually using a website to just generate random encounters for me in the tower. I had one picked out ahead of time, but the rat swarm, flying snake, and elk were all randomly picked out. It worked well for the most part, and the party while having a couple of members go down, actually was in pretty decent health by the time they reached the shoreline.

Some of the stuff that we did at the beginning was just narrated. I had asked the players to send me things they wanted to do, so stuff like the money making venture that Thrain and Barrai did with staging fights for people to bet on was part of that.

Finally, the first floor of the Tower is the test basically for the midterm. So next session the players will be leveling up, so we’ve basically had one session at level 0, and now three plus part of one coming up, at level 1.

What do you think of the game thus far?

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