The Session

At the end of last session the group had just killed off the Arcane Stalker, found another scarab, and found that someone was keeping an eye on Nahzir’s hotel room. So, they had a lot of things to take care of. They started out by heading out and taking the scarab, in a nightstand drawer, and the Arcane Stalker, in a trunk with them. Kip sent Kraig, his raven familiar, to follow the guy.

Thrain catches up with them as they have ditched the hotel and are trying to figure out their next move. They decide to split up with Barrai and Kip following after the person keeping an eye on Nahzir’s hotel room. Bokken and Thrain would take the drawer and the trunk to the school and Assendial.

Barrai and Kip track the mysterious figure to the bazaar where he seems to be meeting up with random people. They sneak up close enough so that Barrai can cast read thoughts. He basically finds out two people whom the guy is interested in finding and that this person, while they seem to be working with Nazhir is also frustrated with Nazhir. Things go really well for them and they are able to snag a couple of notes of the guy before spooking him. Kraig follows but loses him in a dark alley way, but the guy never comes out.

They light up the alley way in just enough time to see some dust settling. They find a trapdoor that reminds them of the one on the school. They fail to pry it open so they send for Bokken, being the strongest by sending Kraig to find them at the school.

Meanwhile, at the school, Bokken and Thrain see Tormin and Daedelous talking to a familiar looking figure to the one Bokken had seen in a flower shop, in fact, the same wispy and pale looking elf dressed in finery who had tried to buy him. Bokken goes and talks to them for a moment. She is a bit confused and they make some connection to the flower shop though Bokken denies being the display. It ends with him asking where Assendial is, and Tormin lets them know and to send her out to join them.

They show Assendial everything and she is more interested in going through everything in the drawer and studying the scarab than going out to meet someone She sends them to find out who it is and it turns out that the woman is a member of the Unseelie Courts which rule over Autumn and Winter. And the Arcane Stalker was part of the Winter court. So now they have another issue.

Assendial has them take Nazhir’s trunk to their barracks in order to avoid suspicion or make it obvious they’d murdered a member of the winter court. Kraig catches up to them there and gives them directions to the alley way where Kip and Barrai are. Bokken doesn’t have to pry open the trapdoor like Kip and Barrai were trying to do, but finds the spot that releases the trapdoor. They realize that the tunnel they are about to go down into leads from the school to the tower. But towards the school no one has gone recently. The tower on the other hand, there is definitely more traffic that way.

Behind the DM’s Screen

Not much to talk about behind the DM’s screen. There was some made up on the fly and some that I had been planning. The person the roof was always going to work with Nahzir, not be Nahzir himself. And the Lady of the Winter Court, that was something I decided to add. Some of it is because I don’t know all the answers to everything myself, so this allowed me to add in more things I can use.

Players also are now level 5, so the fighter has his extra attack, we’ll see how combats go now.

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Last time we were looking at Demons and Devils and their Blood War. This time we’re going to look at the Seelie and the Unseelie courts. The Fae Wilds play a large part in D&D as another plane that you can go to. And all Elves have some fae ancestry, though it might have been long long ago.

In this game, the material realm is where the players are from. The world is going to start to change. Mainly, the Unseelie Court is going to start changing the world around the players. They are going to be causing basically an incursion into the material realm.

Now, a first level adventuring party isn’t going to be able to deal with a Fae Queen, but they are going to be able to start to deal with the incursion. It’s going to be the small fae creatures who are slipping through the cracks of this incursion. However, that’s not going to be the big issue. But it’s going to be pest for neighboring villages and houses, where the fae creatures are pulling pranks and playing tricks.

The crux of this campaign is going to be how the players deal with the incursion. Mainly, because it’s going to be hard to fight their way into the Unseelie Court and deal with the Queens of the court. However, even the more chaotic and malevolent parts of the court will respect a mortal if they behave honorably. So if the players behave with honor, don’t kill everything and everyone, they might be able to stop the incursion without bloodshed.

But in classic form, there is always a bigger bad guy. There is going to be someone, some deity, probably Lolth the Drow Goddess who has influenced the Unseelie Court. Her plan and those of her followers, since you most likely won’t be fighting Lolth herself. You’ll be fighting a priestess and some acolytes of hers at the end, but a powered up priestess that is going to have some of Lolth’s own spell list, resistances, and lair actions. But, again, if the players have played to the courts right and not offended the Unseelie Court, and for that matter, the Seelie Court since they’ll have to deal with them as well. If they have managed to keep the courts “happy” and earned the respect of the various Queens of the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, they might have more help or some boons that they will be able to use in this final battle.

Probably the final thing for this game, I would make it a game that has a lot of rigidness to it. The interactions with the courts and the Queens, those should be expected to go a certain way. Also play into the Dresden Files like thing where the fae creatures can’t lie, but they also don’t have to tell you the truth as you’d expect and they will find ways to skirt around questions. Also lean into making deals, the fae creatures, especially more powerful creatures, shouldn’t volunteer information. The adventuring party should have to agree to certain conditions for that information. If you can even have them negotiate with intelligence rolls and allow your players to lawyer it up somewhat as they word out deals with the fae creatures.

I think that you can build quite a campaign out of it, have the players fight the way to where the incursion is coming from and probably even have a mid-level interaction with one of the Queens of the Seelie Court. So at that point the game can transition from it being a situation where they are fighting a lot of fae creatures to where they are now having to investigate and infiltrate to figure out what is really going on in the Unseelie Court. Even before that, I would hint at honor and rules that the court has when it comes to torturing for information (since your players will probably try and do that), and set-up the rules for the court and how a fae expect a captured creature to be treated.

This idea isn’t as fleshed out as the other, but I think there are some interesting story options there and a good progression as the players learn more information, how do they deal with the changes that are happening? Do they continue on a combat focused route, and how does that change later interactions?

Would you want to play in a Fae game? How would you role play some of the interactions with the queens?

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