OD&D Session 12: Yet Another Snake Cult

     This should catch us up before the game this evening. An eventful session, but one of primarily intrigue and scheming as opposed to danger and adventure. Sets the stage for a lot to happen tonight, but we'll see if they can stick the landing. 

This session we had:

    - Bard the Cleric 3

    - Blony Tair the M-U 2

    - Han the Thief 4

    - Akaviri the MU-2 (Elf)

    - Seamus the Fighter 3

    - Brockhaus the Dwarf Fighter 1

Concerning the New Snake Cult

I swear these guys keep cropping up

    The party was offered substantial reward for finding the location of Siegfried the Wizard a few sessions ago by the Vampire Ramsugra. The pursuit of magic items was high on the priority list for Han the Thief, who in a bold move as a player elected to act directly against the interests of his faction (He plays Siegfried at the Patron Level), and set about a plan to find the wizard and cash that reward with the vampire. 

    I find it somewhat ironic that around the same time I began once again obsessing over investigative games and mystery design, the players organically initiated an investigation. Spending some time and money around looking for clues about the location of Siegfried, they came up with 3 leads:

    1. There have been sightings of Undead in the jungle north of the city

    2. A man claiming to represent Siegfried tried to hire an assassin from the thieves guild last week

    3. There have been snake symbols cropping up, carved into doorposts, under tavern tables, etc. 

    After a great deal of dead ends and cold trails, they gave up on lead two. Whoever this representative was, he has not been seen by anyone since then. Then they turned their eye to lead 3. Lead 3 led to the discovery that a new snake cult had cropped up among chaotics in the town, a secret society that met in houses late at night. Blony Tair, being a chaotic man himself, decided to go undercover and attend a meeting. What he saw there cannot be posted yet, for many secrets unfolded, but while he was there he did encounter some woodsmen who indicated where in the jungle the undead generally are seen. The party set out in the morning to find the wizards hideout. 

    They crawled through the jungle before seeing a scouting party of goblins ahead. They hit the dirt and watched, the goblins vanished from sight as though walking through an invisible wall. Han the thief snuck up to check it out, and sure enough, the goblins had passed into a patch of Hallucinatory Terrain. When Han passed through, what he saw staggered the players. There was a goblin village, with soldiers and patrols, and several cave/tunnel entrances. There, just at the base of the mountain in the centre of the village: the foundation and nearly finished first floor of a tower, being tirelessly worked on by skeleton labourers taking direction from a handful of Dwarvish supervisors. Siegfried was nowhere to be seen, but they felt confident that this was his hideout. 

    More importantly, they had to run. Han poking his head through the terrain meant that a "hostile" had hit the illusion and it was dispelled. Not immediately noticed, but soon the alarm was sounded and the party booked it back to town, got aboard a boat and paddled upriver to inform their undead employer. 

    Ramsugra was quite happy to receive the intel, and informed the party that their rewards would arrive to them in a few days, pending confirmation of the intel. Han attempted to negotiate immediate payment, the Vampire was unflappable. Several members leveled up with the experience they received from the magic items, and as the session wound down they started talking about how they were going to go about assassinating Lord Barotha. That is going to attempted tonight, and I have to prepare some things before the session, so I will let this be the end of the post and I look forward to writing up what happens this evening! Stay tuned!