The Shackled City: Introductory Episode

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, we had our first D&D session for the new campaign. Here's a recap of how the game went, with much more detail than I put in the first time. I'm going to keep a running commentary on the game as we play it, for those who are interested.

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For those who aren't familiar with the Shackled City, it was the first 'adventure path' produced by Paizo in Dungeon Magazine just as the switch from D&D 3e to 3.5 was beginning (they are now on 5th edition and switching to whatever they will be calling the 6th edition). The main locale is the city of Cauldron, a sub-tropical city built inside an extinct volcano with a deep lake in the center of the crater. It was originally given a generic setting, but was retroactively set in Greyhawk (particularly when the third Adventure Path, the Savage Tide, came out a few years later). I, however, have set it in Mystara, on the continent of Davania. Because, as everyone knows, Mystara rules.

There are six PCs, using Players Handbook rules and everyone at 1st level (no Unearthed Arcana yet except for weapon specialization, and I have house ruled a few things). Most of the characters don't have names yet; this group is mostly teens, and they're stuck in video game mentality where their avatars aren't named. I'll work on that with them. In the meantime, though, here are the PCs:

Half-elf fighter, on the bard path
Human paladin
Elf fighter/magic-user
Gnome illusionist/thief
Human magic-user
Ms. Taskerhill, Human fighter

The last one is named simply because she took the Nobility trait, and I gave her the option of which noble family to be affiliated with. There is no cleric, which made them a tad nervous at first. Note that only the last, Ms. Taskerhill, is a new player (the mother of the elf, in fact), and so she was learning as she went, and I gave her the fighter pre-gen just to save time.

So, the party is somewhat spellcaster heavy (eventually having four casters once the fighter gets to bard levels, plus the paladin at 9th level). But they have good fighter capability (the half-elf and Ms. Taskerhill have specialization in longsword and battle axe, respectively), and the gnome has decent stats for a 1st-level thief.

The game began as the party was traveling together back to Cauldron from Sasserine after several months away, and they spent the night at the Lucky Monkey. This was mostly a role-playing opportunity, which had mixed results. Ms. Taskerhill was the best at getting into character, while the magic-user was virtually silent throughout the game. He's shy; we'll work on him. While they spoke with the innkeeper, they learned that there had been a series of kidnappings in Cauldron over the past few months. There were no suspects, just rumors flying around, and none of the victims had yet been found, not even their bodies.

The highlight of their stay at the Lucky Monkey was when a very attractive woman entered and went to the bar; the half-elf made a crude pass at her involving a wolf whistle (my son insisted that he was doing it out of character, but I couldn't resist). In response, she touched the wooden tabletop with her finger, and the wood reshaped itself into a hand and slapped him across the face (no damage) before returning to normal. The paladin was much better at personal interaction, and she introduced herself as Shensen, a local druid who often visited the Lucky Monkey.

Not much else happened at the Monkey, so in the morning the group continued on their journey home. It was a dismal, dreary, drizzly day with grey skies. They arrived at Cauldron close to nightfall, but before the gates were closed for the night. With the exception of the elf, the party is comprised of Cauldron natives, so only the elf had to pay the gate tax (1 sp) to enter the city. The group was going to break up and go their separate ways when they heard the sounds of scuffling in an alley nearby. Being eager adventuring types, they all went to investigate and found three men wearing assaulting a man on the ground. The men wore jester-like masks, the identifying mark of the Last Laugh thieves' guild. When confronted, the jesters warned the party off, but their intimidation was more effective in a three-on-one situation than in a six-on-three.

The paladin swung his bardiche at one of them, but just barely missed as the thug dodged at the last moment. Ms. Taskerhill slipped on the wet cobblestones and fell, unharmed but for her pride. The bard-in-training fared much better, swatting one of the thugs with the flat of his blade and sending him spinning to the ground, unconscious. The gnome did him one better, hitting the two remaining thugs with a color spray and knocking them out cold.

Shortly afterward, a patrol of the town guard came by, alerted by some locals who heard the sounds of fighting in the alley. Led by Corporal Skylar Krewis, the town guard took their statements, relying on Ms. Taskerhill and the paladin as the most reliable-looking members of the party. As they were finishing, one of the town guards realized that the thugs were themselves town guards. Concerned and angered, Corporal Krewis took them into custody and marched them off to the nearest guardhouse for questioning.

Meanwhile, the party assisted the assault victim, a low-level priest in the Church of Diulanna, Ruphus Laro. Ruphus informed them that the thugs were warning him not to investigate the latest kidnapping: Four children had been taken from the Lantern Street Orphanage. They had been in a locked room inside a locked building, with the only key around the neck of the Orphanage's headmistress. There were no clues as to their disappearance, and when Laro had gone to the Orphanage to speak with the headmistress, he had been attacked on his way back to the church.

Laro asked the party to accompany him back to the Church to report to his superior. They agreed, and met with Jenya Urikas, the current senior priest in the Church as the high priest was away in Sasserine. Jenya informed them of the kidnappings, and explained that it was a city-wide issue; the orphanage was simply the latest place to be hit. She had used a church artifact, the Star of Justice, to cast a divination spell and asked where the missing children were being held. She received her answer in the form of a cryptic riddle:

The locks are key to finding them. Look beyond the curtain, below the cauldron. Beware the doors with teeth. Descend into the malachite 'hold, where precious life is bought with gold. Half a dwarf binds them, but not for long.

Jenya asked the party to continue the investigation on her behalf, since it was too risky for a single cleric such as Ruphus to undertake this task alone. The Last Laugh is a dangerous group, after all. They accepted her offer, and each of them received a healing potion from Jenya, and a promise of payment for successful return of the children. Ruphus would accompany them; the half-elf was particularly pleased, since that meant they had a cleric with them now.

In the morning, they all met at the church before going to the Lantern Street Orphanage together. There, they met the headmistress, Gweneth, an elderly woman who was suspicious about them until she saw Ruphus. At that point, she invited them in and answered all their questions as best she could. The group did some investigating, and the gnome tried to pick one of the locks just to see how good they were. It turned out that they were very good indeed (-25% to his lockpicking skill, meaning he had a 0% chance of success). Eventually, they discovered that the locks were made by a gnome artisan in the city, Keygan Ghelve. With no other leads, they went to the locksmith's shop to ask him some questions.

Keygan was welcoming at first, thinking they were potential customers, but as they began to question him, he became unhappy and uncooperative. After several minutes of fruitless attempts to get Keygan to talk, the elf surreptitiously cast a charm person. Keygan rolled a 1 on his saving throw, so he was done. He still wouldn't say much, although as he spoke, he kept slipping a gnomish word into his speech, a word that means 'in the back'. At first, the gnome illusionist/thief thought that meant there was something outside behind the building, but then he noticed the curtain behind the counter. To distract Keygan, he cast an audible glamer to make it sound like a window had broken elsewhere in the building. When Keygan went to look, the elf and half-elf slipped behind the curtain to investigate. The half-elf spotted the secret door under the stairs, but before he could look for a way to open it, something jumped from the top of the stairs and landed on him.

The timing was perfect, as we ended the session there, right at 9 pm. All in all, it went really well, although there were times when some of the players got a little too much into the 'out-of-character' banter, distracting from the game. Ms. Taskerhill, who has never played any sort of RPG before, said she had a great time and couldn't wait to do it again. The rest of the group also enjoyed the game, and everyone is looking forward to finding out what jumped on the half-elf, and what's behind the secret door.