Hello Morpheus, Its me Televon. Im all alone.

Group and personal narrative within the games setting is always a focus for me in tabletop RPGs, or nearly always. Sometimes you just let the moment take you where it will, just like in real life. What happens when in game cues lead your character down a strong personal narrative path but really start to erode the group narrative?

Case in point. Televon, if he were smart and playing it safe, would remove Wolf and Adessa from the party, as they have some how been corrupted and their souls are now rife with evil! Certainly he wouldn't kill them, He couldn't physically, nor could he philosophically justify their deaths. He could however, drug them and put them on a boat to Stygia. If Televon were a character in a story, he would try that. his other option would be to re-enter the dungeon and try to convince them they needed to return to the alignment changing room and switch back to good. This doesn't seem wise. Two evil characters, in a dungeon, not happy to cooperate, alone with a cleric. Seems like it could go south real quick with no where to run to!

So, if Televon drugged them, he would also take all their stuff. Why? They would just use it to pay the crew to turn the boat around! or fight their way off. Far too dangerous. Within the confines of the story, Televon is more than justified in doing this. In player view, I'd be a huge bastard if I did this! I'd be pissed as a player if someone did this to me! Of course I'd be trying my darndest to get back to the alignment switching room in the first place. Sure it would be contrived but much better than getting into brawls with other characters or robbing them or just walking off, never to be seen again.

Its a precarious balancing act between being focused on personal narrative and making sure that your personal narrative complements or adds to the group narrative. Do whatever makes the story more compelling, complete or thought provoking. I think it can be done and figuring out that balance is the best part of RPGs, no matter what system you are playing in.

Delving into the Drow filled Depths

It has been quite some time since our last update and so much has transpired. Saul turned on us and whats more is he was linked to some of the Chaos Doomsday Cults that have brought about a falling star! Ultimately it sealed his doom at the hands of unknown arcanists, which irks Cordelia to no end. You don't squelch on a deal, and you especially don't set up your partners to be murdered. Now that is just bad business and very rude to boot.

Our party now finds itself on a nearby island investigating the fallen star. We are to recover any star metal we find and rescue some mages from the Inverted Pyramid. Some after arriving at the island we encounter a troop of dwarves. they seem beleaguered and more than ready to leave the island. They tell us their tale of harrowing adventure and unrelenting terror! Their party was decimated and whats worse is many of their companions were dragged off and returned as some form of mindless undead! Plague Zombies we suspect. This doesn't bode well for us.

We set off for the Wizards Tower as there are periodic signals, Pyrotechnics we suspect, coming from it. Drow ambushers attack us soon after we set off! Curious, indeed. We dispatch them quickly and continue on our way. Finally, making it to the small hamlet in which the tower resides, we immediately search fro survivors in the outlaying buildings. We finds signs of pitched battle, people feebly attempting to fortify the buildings and being broken into. Whoever was in these building met a terrifying end. Making our way to the Tower, we discover the remnants of the wizarding enclave sent here to investigate the fallen star.

The mages are very happy to see us. Their supplies and resources are running very low. The sun is starting to go down and the head apprentice, the highest ranking mage left alive, is very nervous as they tend to be attacked at night. By what we ask, and she tries to describe the nightmarish alien creatures that soon launch an all out assault on the tower. Fifty of these dark blue creatures, similar to a black lion and with stubby tentacles instead of a mane, rush the Tower. We find out that the creatures can scale walls with ease! no level of the tower is safe and soon they are breaching multiple windows on multiple floors.

Its dark, we are being overrun and did I mention its raining? Oh yes its been raining for days. and the combined weight of the creatures, the wet soil and the precarious placement of the Tower directly on a ledge over looking the water is enough to send the Tower sliding down the hill! Its magical construction is all that keeps it from crumbling apart and us from being crushed to death! Some of us are thrown clear, some of us brace ourselves, and many of the magelings are mangled, crushed or otherwise killed.

Its when the Tower reaches the water that a curious thing is revealed. The creatures are dissolved in Sea water. Its acts as a powerful acid on them. Lucky for us. The remaining creatures are destroyed when the tower reaches the water. We confirm our suspicions about the sea water on a corpse and it holds true. Everyone takes a skin of Sea Water, just in case, before climbing back up to the trail to head East.

The east houses a few small dwellings on the tip of the island. We want to make sure there aren't more people in need of rescue. The impact crater is only an hour or so north of us but we decide to check out the towns first and on our way back to the boat that is to pick us up, we will search for Star Rock. We aren't too hopeful about this as a group of dwarves weren't able to find anything, so why should we hope to?

After dispatching an angry hydra we stumble upon a camp of men. They have half a dozen tents up with a large pavilion tent and lots of cages. We approach cautiously and it turns out to be a monster hunting expedition headed by none other than Klegg Zincher! Zincher was Saul's sworn enemy, at least that's what they wanted us to think. Seeing as how Saul was playing us for suckers, who knows what their real relationship was. Was Zincher in on it the whole time? Or was he just meant as a distraction? To get us killed before we had a chance to discover Saul's true intentions? It certainly seems that was Saul's intent, to get rid of us in round about ways. Remember the missing money courier? A clearly blazed trail to get us to attack a money lender. We didn't take the bait.

Now things are different. Zincher is our competitor with The Gold Goblin, but thats business. Here we seem to be more allies, at least in the short term. His men have been being killed by the different creatures and zombies on the island and needs all the protection he can get. This proves true on the night we make camp with them. Plague Zombies shamble out of the darkness and kill many guards before we can destroy them. Checking in on Zincher we find he is gone, and shouldn't be. We are able to track him though.

Zincher's tracks lead down a narrow ledge along the coast and what turns out to be a shoddily hidden secret door. Upon opening it we are beset upon by Drow! and worse some shadowy demon! Our party manhandles the Drow but the Shadow Demon proves far more tricky, it hides inside the walls making hit and run strikes against us. We ignore it for now.

Pressing further on, we run into an ambush by more Drow. A heavily armored Drow throws spells, likely a cleric. Another flanks us between with a large albino gecko, a druid? While two more shoot poisoned darts from afar, and yet another walks a top the water and clings to the walls with ease, a augmented fighter? or perhaps cleric? Strangest of all is they have an Orca in the waters below us, which our summoned crocodile finds out all to well!

We down the druid. They down our Inquisitor with poison. We down the dart hurlers. The Shadow demon returns, attempting to Magic Jar one of us. We shrug it off. The Cleric and Wall Walker close for combat. How will it play out? Which side will win? We can't be certain until next we meet!

Are You There Morpheus? It's Me, Televon.

This is an excerpt from the Dream Diary of Televon Van Der Beek.


"Dear Morpheus,

These are but a few recollections from the latest dream you have sent to me. A grand vision of terror and bravery that you unfolded before me in your blessed walking slumber. I twas a sublime story you wrought for me my Lord and I am shamed at repeating it back to you, in that I can only recall insignificantly the perfect detail and clarity of what you created.

The intrepid band I have traveled with since a league outside the stark city gates of Blackmoore delved within the Tower of Zenepus once more! What a terrific place rife with danger and treasure, a perfect mix my Lord Morpheus, of putrid nightmare and extravagant fantasy! You have outdone yourself here in this dream construct.

Within the depths we followed the trail of blood left by your imaginative craft, the things called crotch goblins, after dragging off some would be grave robber (as a side note, our band succeeded where the unknown rake failed and the treasure now lies with us, my many thanks on that good twist of the Ether!). We followed the trail and felled many of these goblins of the crotch, most horrifically did the rogue Die Baug castrate via the mouth one of these goblins that I was more sure than ever that I was aslumber and within your realm.

From there we continued on in the maze of tunnels, twisting and turning and climbing up and down deep within the earths cold grasp until finally we came upon a room most filled with your breath my Lord Morpheus! Deep green ether! Wisps of the Everstuff of dreams! Surely a good portent!

No sooner had I thought it and Tie Baug was lowering himself into a great hole in the center of the caverns of mists. No sooner had we thought that a great treasure was ours for the taking, that a grisly troupe of walking cadavers beset us from the south! Tie Baug would have to climb his way out of the hole for now was the time for the faithful to show these abominations the truth of their existence! Televon the dutiful walker in dreams, faithful carrier of the word of the Lord of Dreams, Morpheus, is called to sacred arms! I strode confidently forward Brandishing your Holy Eye, Lord Morpheus! and the foul creatures did know then, who their true master was! Such shame they felt at having lost the gift of dreams, that they ran from your Hallowed Eye! All, save for one!

The corpse clawed the face of the quiet dwarf, whom Im told is very different than the great dwarf Gedleesmote that gallantly gave his life to save his companions from a fiendish lava spewing golem. Everywhere I turn I seem to hear tale of this amazing dwarf Gedleesmote Hammersend, I only wish I could have met him, but oh well such are dreams. I am looking forward to seeing if Maudlin the dwarf can fill his shoes, and perhaps she is, as she was paralyzed by the foul beasts wicked claws, much in the same way, I hear tell, that the brave Dwarf Gedleesmote Hammersend was in one of his first ventures into the Tower of Zenepus. It was little concern for us though as we surround the ghoul and Wolfhier smote it low! Maudlin quickly composed herself and we ventured on!

Quickly we moved to chase down the ghouls that had fled your Sacred Eye, Lord Morpheus! Soon we found ourselves surrounded my more ghouls and once again I strode forward to reveal the truth of their heresy but it was for not for the Lord of Dreams was himself slumbering, and the day belonged to the weakling follower of Mithra, so misguided.

We roused, this time the barbarian, who had succumb to the ravages of the ghouls, and followed their rotten band. We pursued them until a large cavern ahead filled with the cacophony of  a pitched battle, fought between the ghouls we sought and a legion of crotch goblins! We thought it best to let them wage death upon on another before we made our move. While our tactics were sound we quickly found ourselves overrun!

We enacted our secondary plan and began to withdraw after Maudlin the dwarf was dismembered right before my eyes! What a grand vision Lord Morpheus! I shall not soon forget the sight and shall cherish it always as one of most vivid dreams! The grand Druid Gnarly and I drug the body and he laid his staff low and healed her body as I held the pieces together. She'll bear a shield of the High Lords of the Mountains once again but not this day, there is still much healing to do.

Falling back to the end of the tunnel, we surrounded the entrance to the cavern and waited for the onrush of diminutive devils. We lit oil and stood shoulder to shoulder, an immovable bulwark of flashing steel and flesh. Finally the Halfling Skwanky roused himself from his marathon rabbit and cabbage feast and stood with us, surely a windmill of howling death did he become! The steel cage of the felled unbeliever I now wear kept me from harm as did your ever present hooded gaze, Lord Morpheus! Between us all; Tie Baug, Gnarly, Maudlin, Wolfhier, Skwanky, Prophia, Nadrak and myslef we felled 60 or more of the wee nightmares!

Triumphant we stand at this dark precipice. Death and Doom to one side, Fame and Fortune on the other, and we, my Lord Morpheus, stand ever in the middle. All praise the Lord of Dreams!"

Cordelia's Future Self

One of the big reasons I think Pathfinder is the Bees-Knees, is that there are so many combination's and tweaks you can do to your character, to get it right where you want it. Im finding that with Cordelia there are a few really cool prestige classes and class combos that are shaping here up to be a great character and one I had envisioned from the beginning.
She's built on a Fighter/Sorcerer platform, so has those sorts of strengths and weaknesses, a little better than a glass canon, she's more of a Pyrex canon. which was obvious when she went down in two hits against the Otyugh! Dang! That wasn't good. To proof her against such things I can go in a few directions: 1) become a Bow/ranged battle focus type 2) take more fighter levels 3) take more ranged spells 4) find a good Prestige Class that helps me out a bit.
Those are all good ideas and taking more bow specific things seems good and wouldn't break her core concept. But then why oh why did I take Weapon Focus in Great Sword instead of long Bow? dang. I have zero bow feats, Point-Blank Shot, Precise Shot WF: Long Bow! and starting over for those is pretty gross. I'd be 12th level or something before I top off those feats! so it isn't practical.
Taking a Fighter level would give me a free Feat, more HP and BAB but that gives a hit to my spells. Not the greatest of solutions but might be necessary.
A nice Prestige Class I ran into was the Dragon Disciple. It gives me a huge Hit Die D12 and some nice saves and BAB, but blows my spells. At second level spells kick back in. It gives some nice Natural Armor and Ability Boosts, so might be nice to swap back and forth between DD and Sorcerer. Good times.
If I had over to do again I'd would swap WF: Greatsword, Power Attack and Cleave, for WF: Long Bow, Point-Blank Shot and Precise Shot. That would get me more into line for where I want to be.
Spell selections are so limited for Sorcerer so for 2nd level I will get Bulls Strength or Cats Grace.

so many choices

In the Sewers, the mutant filled sewers

Our group had gone into the Sewers following a trail of death and mucus left by the Infected. The initial infected had returned to their homes unaware they were slowly mutating into horrible plague spewing death-machines. When we journeyed to their homes to check up on them we found the small borough devoid of life and chalk full of corpses and mucus which led into the sewers. Along the way we encountered an aberrant 'rain' fall consisting of volcanic rocks. My Amulet Stone given to me by the beggar in the Warrens vibrated softly.

We ran into many infected and a Minotaur born of the lower planes! it nearly destroyed the party and fearing for our safety we returned home to heal. Saul informed us that he was hearing chatter from the underground that Clegg Zincher was going to make a move, a big move against the Gold Goblin! We were on edge and ordered tighter security and more guards. Then returned once more to the Sewers!

We quickly retraced our steps and found our selves in the room with the Devil-Minotaur, or at least it's corpse. What lay beyond the tapestry door? we dared to look and found not but a room with all its spoils taken! Curses! Someone or something had come and taken our loot we were so very close too! We searched the room again and found a false bottom to a chest with 3 scrolls contained therein! ha the fools hadn't discovered it. They must be of low standing. Perhaps Ratlings?

Indeed, if the tracks left behind were real, than ratlings had been about! Stealing our loot no doubt! We could not let this stand and followed as best we could through the sewers. We came upon a damn built across one arm of a four way intersection and fearing the worst we intended to cross it one at a time. The damn was nothing more than a festooned heap of refuse and garbage that looked more rotted than stable but the tracks went across, so then, shall we.

First to cross was our intrepid paladin, strong of heart if not of footing and slip and fall he did into the rotting muck, heading not my call to poke with a stick the heaping mounds of decay. As the paladin stood clearing his eyes of disease infested grime the heap of the damn began to shake and come alive! Tentacles both hooked, barbed and eyes protruded forth as a dagger-toothed maw revealed itself and beset the paladin.
Of course I would not stand for such things and at once cast a might ray towards the vile thing and weakened it of its sewer engorged strength. Then lept boldly into the water whole and gave it what for with my two-handed blade. This was not the best of ideas for it turned out the beast was not alone, perhaps a mated pair, the thought sickens, inhabited the refuse pile!

Tentacles from everywhere seemed to strike out at me and surely I was drug into the maw of the second beast where thought I was dead! heroically my party sprang into action and saved me from a gruesome fate!
I awoke just as the killing blow felled my would be killer.

We thought surely this must be more than just an incidental construction and searched high and low for any sign of the Ratlings or Infected and our prayers were answered when we stumbled upon a hidden door!
Laezol the thief carefully searched the portal for traps of any kind and being assured there were none the paladin bravely opened it and received a gut full of javelin for his trouble. A few sideways looks at the thief and trepidatiously moved inward, to the Ratling's lair!

Worldwide Game Day, Darksun edition

Saturday August 21st was worldwide game day and WoTC was throwing a big Darksun release party with running an encounter. This is basically part of the Encounter series they've been running the last month or so.
I met up with my gaming buddy Zach at Heroes & Villains and joined in the game. We had us two, two other guys that were friends, and a women and then the DMs son. That filled all the available slots, and we began right away.

I am an old school sweetheart of Darksun. I had nearly all the books and boxed sets. The psionic book The Will and the Way still remains one of the greatest game supplements to come out! The setting of Darksun was very compelling, at every turn you are struggling, whether you are in a city or not, everyone is vying for survival and its often on the backs of others that you do. Slaverly, dead gods, dead races, psionic powers, deadly new classes, even more deadly new creatures, whats not to love?

On to the adventure. We started as a group that had known each other for a while and were approached by a government official of the new free city of Tyr (which I pronounce TEER, but others including our DM, do not) to follow a map to a magical cistern that was created by some Preserver many moons ago. We promptly agree and away we go! But wait! We are approached again, and then again by other 'interested' individuals. This creates some tension between who we should trust and how we should screw. we mull it over and head into the desert.

Travel in Darksun is generally very dangerous, one could easily die from exposure to the elements and being from Tucson, I can attest to how easily dehydration can sneak up on you. We make some checks, others fail and loose some healing Surges and continue to fail and loose some hit points. One party member tries to use the Heal skill to some effect. Not to bad so far! Then we spot a man at an oasis or sorts inviting us over. Of course its a trap.

The man is a dune runner elf, and he and his men are here to steal our map and in the process make us all dead. In the end he fails horribly and dies a miserable arrow filled death thanks to Zach and his Thri-Kreen priest. We gather some loot and head off towards what we hope will be a worth while expedition into the dunes.

More Fort checks and more Heal checks and we are at an outcropping of rock with a cave entrance. Cautiously we entered the cave and this appeared to be the magic Cistern! A hole atop the cave pulled in wind and stripped the moisture from it and it dripped into a hole in the floor where we immediately went to check out. Doing so proved to be painful.

A crazed beast jumped out and attacked us! It appeared to be a super angry Tiger bear thing that claw claw bit at people, but it did so very strangely. It would swipe at people and bite at other people and a claw would send us flying, no die check from us. This thing had a ton of hit points and we all got taken to half our hit points. It retreated down the hole and we took a moment to heal, and it returned to hammer us some more!
I missed nearly all my attacks vs this creature, which really sucked. Eventually we took it down. The entire time it was using some sort of Death Field on us, was horrible.

We healed up again and started to head back after looting/looking around and of course were attacked by some bad guys. These were mercs from the City State of Urik, a rival town. The leader was apparently a mage or something and we made pretty quick work of him. He died as he jumped through a portal (dimension door?).

We hurried back to Tyr and tried to make the best of a bad situation. We had three parties interested in our find and some were willing to kill for it, so we tried to give everyone a little something. This got us bum rushed into an arena where we surely will meet our end. At least that was the end of the adventure!

Analyzing the Adventure: I'd give this a B-, its pretty straight forward, its built for having limited time and limited player experience, which it did well. Running it outside of this event you could easily slip it into a game and expand on the RP portions of it. The pregen characters were OK, but severely lacking in some skills that seemed obvious, no sneak character and no healing character, despite having a priest, he had no healing! There was also only one character with Arcana, which means you can get stuck a lot.

Purpose of the Adventure: I'll rate it at a D. The whole point is to showcase Darksun. Besides the heat/exhaustion checks what would a total newbie player note differently from any other game setting? Not much, some crazy ass monster, yes, but then again if you are a newbie, any monster is gonna be crazy, Rust Monster? CRAZY!

The elements of Darksun are very easy to encapsulate and the adventure didnt do very well at capturing that. The whole Free City of Tyr is a huge thing, at least in the OG version it was. A living god was killed by slaves! thats Huge! and there was no talk about Kalak and his fall from power! there are huge hooks in this game and none of them seemed present. Preserver/defiler magic was only mentioned in passing really, and the cataclysm of Darksun was glossed over quickly.

Showcasing 4e: C-  The 4E wasnt presented very well either. There is so much new stuff here that its crazy they just sit you down and shove you out into the water. Good Luck! this might have been the DMs thing but it seems like they just send you an adventure and so OK now play and people will just get it. Shouldn't there be a little oversight and a boiler plate text for new features? Seems very short sighted.

DM: I forget his name, I'll give him a C+ to B-. Im uncertain how well he knew 4E, I know he didnt know the Darksun setting very well at all, he didnt know Urik was a city state and it was one of the old school adventures Road to Urik! Come one! Not being familiar with 4E beasts, I not sure he was playing the Tigerbear thing correctly. Can it just auto-knock you down on a hit? can it attack Claw and Bite, move and then do it all again in the same round? that cant be right. How do you place its second move? Its curious. He did some weird stuff. Like the last encounter with the Wizard he jumped through a Dimension Door but I got an attack of Opportunity as he moved towards it and killed him, but he still got through it. Shouldn't it have blinked off? Our wizard couldn't ID the spell with a Arcana 23 roll? I suppose its flavor really, but was a little annoying to have a body get away after getting your ass kicked. right?

Anyhows, Im not convinced 4E is worth a damn, it really seems like its $E, so many damn books, so expensive, tons of extras and no end in sight! A slew on 'new' books including the Red Box Edition, which is playing with my heart strings, is coming out in September! Can the money sucking juggernaut be stopped? If this years Ennies awards are any indication WoTC is sucking wind hard core at least form the fanboys perspective. Pathfinder and its 3.5+ is kicking all sorts of ass. It will be interesting to see where the next year will lead these two systems.

Best of luck to both of them!

Session 08/22/2010

Cordelia
Our group of adventurers had returned from the Warrens/Slums after following a Locate Object spell looking for a bag from a Gold Goblin. We had thought better of entering into Vai Assassin territory looking for this bag, and instead returned to Saul to update him on what we had found and the involvement of the Vai. He thought that was dire news and we more or less connected that bag with the opening day attempted heist at the Gold Goblin and not the disappearance of Larur the money courier.

While talking with Saul a note came in about a few bouncers becoming sick and missing work. This coincided with the Town Criers noting a strange plague in the docks affecting porters and laborers. We decided that we should check up on them. Saul also told us we had a shipment of liquor that had arrived but with the plague, there was no one to off load or transport the shipment to the Gold Goblin. It sounded like we could get the shipment and check up on our bouncers and the plague all in one big trip.

Bouncers house #1. We found our bouncer being taken care of by his wife. He was genuinely sick and Azzgrimmur the White Dwarf administered to him as best he could. He was able to identify the sickness which worried us all. We wished him well and moved on to the next bouncers house.

Bouncer house #2. We knocked and no one answered so Laezol skillfully picked the lock to the front door. Upon entering we were shocked at the filth and disarray the house was in. It stucnk and no one answered our calls. We intrepidly opened the kitchen door and were engulfed in a wave of noxious fumes! A thick stinking cloud of filth filled the room and caused me to start heaving and retching up my breakfast. We retreated to its edge back by the front door and I thought I may as well investigate the foggy nasty cloud as I was already affected.

I could hardly see 5 ft in front of me and when I was nearly through the kitchen to the back door a grotesque figure emerged from the fog and attacked me. It was the bouncer, but he had been transformed into a pustule covered plague zombie! The noxious gas seemly emanating from him. The zombie missed me and I retreated back to the front door while the others rushed forth to fight the thing.

Ankazzar, the half-orc Oracle, stayed with me near the front door and just as she ventured near the second floor stairs the bouncers wife appeared; a Zombie as well! She was not the same kind it seemed and Ankazzar fought her off bravely on her own while I continued to vomit.

Our party traded blows with the accursed things and could see their flesh mending itself against our blows. The battle it seemed might last longer than we wanted. One by one the group in the kitchen fighting the bouncer within the cloud succumb to the vapors. All except the stalwart Dwarf Azzgrimmur! He fought off its effect at every turn.

Meanwhile I was able to clean my nose of the stench and join Ankazzar against the wife zombie. Together we were able to bring her to her knees. Ankazzar pressed the advantage and releaved the wife zombie of her head. Seeing all things well in hand I charged into the Kitchen and aided the dwarf in felling the Bouncer. We searched their row house for clues, and money, and found nothing of real interest. Only questions about what had really happened and what fate may await all those affected by the plague.

We sent word via messenger to Saul about the bouncers death, next of kin and warning the other bouncer as well as a note to the Church of Lothian and seeking their divine assistance with cleansing the house or further identifying the Plague!

We pushed on worried about the wounds we had incurred against the zombies, towards the docks. Would the bites and scratches be enough to infect us? Could the same fate await us? We hoped luck was on our side as we approached the transport ship The Foam Runner. The ship was captained by a rather brash and flamboyant dwarf with an outrageous accent and giant tattoo of the sun on his chest, which also bared a close resemblance to the Holy Symbol of Sol, the god of light and goodness. He may have been able to talk with us at length about the religion had he not already unloaded our liquor to some unsavory looking gentlemen that we just passed.

We rushed to head off the cart and men. They demanded that we get out of their way and we demanded to know who they worked for and what they thought they were doing with our booze. They said the booze was theirs and they wouldn't let us stop them. I tried to intimidate them and vowed murder them all if they didnt give up. Their apparent leader a man dressed in Imperial Guards arms and armor, order them porters to attack. I cast a Charm Person on the man,a nd pressed my intimidation. Is it really worth dieing for?

I order the man to remove all his things and put them in the cart and while doing so tell us how he came to be stealing our hooch. He complied and let fall that Zincher order his actions, a hefty bribe to the Harbor Master and here he was, a few coin for the porters and the rest we knew.

A Color Spray blew two of the goons into Stunned and Blinded fools. Laezol skewered one of them and here I pressed our advantage. "20 gold if you surrender!" and the remaining goons did just that. After borrowing most of the gold to pay off the men and they gladly ported us and the booze back to the Gold Goblin, where we further interrogated the leader of the booze heist, Bradacar.

Bradacar, it turns out, is a disgraced ex-Imperial Guardsmen, who was caught involved in a protection racket and works for Klegg Zincher now. With Saul's help we may be able to glean more information out of him but he didnt know anything about Larurs disappearance or the Cinder Snakes that appeared in the kitchen of the Gold Goblin.

Surely we will continue to pump him for info. What we do with him after that is yet to be seen. I could just let him go. I could try and convince him that despite what I've done to him he better off than being dead. Zincher isn't his friend. Any time he moves against the Gold Goblin he is moving against us and the lives of the men involved are forfeit. Expendable. Zincher knows that, if fact he is counting on it. Zincher's entire scheme is to get us in trouble and remove us from helping Saul. He probably wont be as happy go lucky once the Charm Person wears off but perhaps he is a man of reason and can see the truth in what I say. Being our ally will extend his lifespan considerably.

Another option would be to sell him to slavers. Seems mean, but also kind of funny and puts some jiggle in my pocket.

Yet another option would be to take him back to The Foam Runner and pay Captain Puck to take him to the next port, or better yet give him a job as a boat hand. I fear he inst cut out for thuggery, although Im sure under Captain Pucks tutelage he could go far in that arena.