Elgis Lankshire, Hamza Rashid, and Kiltak Bloodbane discover two babies have disappeared in Dunham. With Ash Turner, they stop a disguised harpy from stealing a third baby, but the harpy kills Ash. Messages at Ash's home and Gregor the Naturalist's Apocrypha suggest the babies could be fairy changelings. Investigating the Penance Stone missing from the Penance Chapel, they're accosted by three wire-fu fighting women and defeat them.
Ajer, Fayne, and Mike came to the game. Dan planned to start in Game 2.
The players introduced their characters. Ajer introduced Hamza Rashid (my notes):
Hamza Rashid: not exactly the most conspicuous guy, tattered dust covered leather armor and gloves. Hood over his head, but he ha a metallic creepy-looking mask on his face, which he always has on. He has a spear on his back and a little saddle bag. He has recently come into Hollin, originally from the Caliphate. Sort of a drifter.
Mike introduced Kiltak Bloodbane:
Kiltak: fighter with a sash and great sword, short brown hair, blue eyes, look of a seasoned warrior ready for battle. Parents killed at 14, becmae homeless, came across a man who was a great warrior who trained him. Kiltak swore to find the people who killed his parents. Goes around helping people, and will accept money for that.
Fayne introduced Elgis Lankshire:
Fighter as well. Most distinctive feature - purple pinkish hair. Starting to grey as he gets older. Bright green eyes. 6'1", 210 pounds, early 40's. Struggles to keep his temper in check. Ideals are glory and fortune; wants to surpass his father's station. Very few bonds but he would do anything for one of them. He is easily seduced, and also likes top shelf Hollin whiskey.
Background: born in Naumkeag on the continent of Kiln, raised among the iron trade, political leverage. The son of Garth Lankshire, top board member of the Anhault Charter Company. Former Representative of the Security Service. Groomed for influence, trained under martial masters. Insight into institutional power, but lacks personal charm. His volatile temper often alienates people. A scandal shook House Lankashire. Elgis was accused of freeing a prisoner under Company authority. Garth was then removed from his post, and Garth banned Elgis from the estate and from power. But he did get a little…but he's getting short on that stolen wealth. When not banished, he was a playboy bachelor, but now has to survive on skill alone. Goal is to rebuild his fortune and his father.
Fayne also said that Eglis came to Hollin at a young age, before his martial training - maybe as a teen or high school age. He also said that his martial master was named Terian.
I asked how the three might know each other - might Kiltak also have trained under Eglis's master Terian? Mike said no, his training was from the military, although he'd left the military to find his parents' killers. We decided that Hamza wouldn't know the others.
I asked where in Hollin they might live?
The characters all got a free healing potion from Chambers the Apothecary before the game started.
Elgis got a message from Terian, his former martial master, that there'd been a theft at the Penance Chapel near the Great Council Square in Dunham. Elgis grabbed Kiltak, suggesting they might make a little coin investigating it, and they headed there.
As an introduction to Hollin, I read a little travelogue of Elgis and Kiltak's walk there:
To get to the Penance Chapel from Braddock, you go south on Market Street a few blocks, to the Volm River and Glendower Square. Merchants in the square are packing up their stalls for the day, and sailors and girls are starting to mix it up at the Mooncalf inn and tavern there.
Market Street continues south across Lofton Bridge to the abandoned old town, but you turn left onto Quay Street, which follows the river's north bank through Hollin's commercial docks and warehouses. The street and sidewalks here are choked with longshoremen and shipbuilders. Everyone in Hollin knows Gregor the Naturalist, whose house is here, and you see Gregor hoisting some small animal cages up to a high window of his house on a pulley.
Continuing east you reach the Shipyards, where the Admiralty is building a new flagship, Harbinger. Harbinger towers above everything else here, and you come into its shadow as you reach Ballard Street. Turning left and heading north, you pass the Admiralty's main complex, just called "the Admiralty," and the grand old guildhall of the Very Fine Order of Barber-Surgeons.
As you leave the Shipyards and enter the administrative district Dunham, beautiful townhouses take over Ballard Street. Many of the townhouses have fine marble facades that come right up to the sidewalk, and wrought iron balconies looking out on the street.
They'd reached Dunham's Roundabout intersection south of the Great Council Square, and I put down a map of the area.
The Great Council Square
The Roundabout where they were was "O" on the map, and the Penance Chapel where they were heading was "A." As they reached the Roundabout though:
As you near the Great Council Square, you reach a hectic intersection, the Roundabout. Here horsemen, horse-drawn carriages, and horse-drawn carts enter at speed and then negotiate inside the circle to exit. It looks hectic and potentially dangerous.
As you reach the Roundabout, you suddenly hear frightened shouting from one of the townhome balconies above you - the shouting is "Luna! Luna!" You see a young woman come to the balcony and frantically look out every which way, then she runs downstairs and into the street where you are. She's shouting: "Luna! Luna!"
It looked like the woman was going to run into the Roundabout, but Elgis rolled a 22 and stopped her. The woman said she was Mia Whitman, and that her baby Luna had just gone missing.
The party went into Mia's house, Q. Hamza ritually cast Detect Magic but didn't detect any. Hamza and Elgis searched and found a very large feather, but they couldn't recognize the species. Kiltak suggested that a bird had taken the baby, and they did talon marks.
They weren't sure who to ask about birds, and Mia suggested Gregor the Naturalist, who Elgis and Kiltak had actually seen on the way. However, Mia also said that another neighbor had lost her baby Flora a couple of days ago - Zoe Shaw at P.
They went to Zoe's house, and found her talking with a guest, Ash Turner. Hamza asked about her baby being stolen, and said that Mia's baby was missing, and asked if they could look around. Zoe agreed, although she said she had looked and didn't find anything. They Investigated the baby's room, rolled a 21, and found another feather similar to the one they'd found at Mia's.
They suspected Ash knew something he wasn't saying. Hamza Intimidated Ash unsuccessfully; Ash seemed to have a kind of gravitas and wasn't easily pushed around. However, Kiltak threatened him, and Ash told him that both mothers - Mia Whitman and Zoe Shaw - were on the Company Board, as was he. He also said that a third Board family - the Volsteads across the street - also had a new baby.
They went to Gregor's house and Gregor - kind of a Doc Brown type with goggles pushed up on his forehead - answered the door and met them. They showed Gregor the feather, but Gregor had never seen one like it. They asked if he might have anything that could help them, and he gave Elgis his Naturlis Historia, Abridged:
Gregor's Naturalis Historia, Abridged
The Naturalis Historia, Abridged is a condensed digest of Gregor the Naturalist's encyclopedic Naturalis Historia. It's small with a leather cover, handy for the field. This copy is well-used - the leather cover is beaten and the pages are filled with Gregor's own pencil annotations.
The Naturalis Historia, Abridged gives +1 to Nature checks.
They returned to the Roundabout to talk to the Volsteads. They knocked at the Volstead's door but there was no answer, and they let themselves in. They heard fighting on the second floor and ran up. They were alarmed to find Ash fighting a beautiful woman near a crib, who had a baby in her arms. A man and a woman - Yorvick and Leona Volstead - were asleep on the floor nearby.
The players were already suspicious of Ash, and they initially said that Ash was attacking the woman. However, I metagamed and clarified that Ash was trying to stop the woman from stealing the baby.
The party and Ash fought the woman. One of the party members succeeded in getting the baby away from her, and they woke Yorvick, who took the baby to safety on the first floor. However, during the fight, the woman drew a dimpled iron dagger and thrust it into Ash, sending Ash to the ground instantly.
The party did defeat the woman, and went to check on Ash. Ash was dying, but told them with his last words:
Laurel...they'll kill Laurel...Ulm's Monument.
Kiltak searched the woman. He took a ring from her, and she transformed from a beautiful woman into a grotesque harpy. They identified the ring as:
Ring of Greater Pulchritude
Diplomat skill feat:
You master the arts of diplomacy, gaining the following benefits:
They also took the woman's dagger from Ash's body. The dagger was described in Game 2.
They asked Yorvick Volstead what the three families - the Whitmans, the Shaws, and the Volsteads - had in common, but Yorvick wasn't sure. They asked him about Ash, and Yorvick said that Ash had always been a strange character, and they hit on the idea of investigating Ash's house.
Leona Volstead said they'd seen the woman at the Black Cabaret a couple weeks ago.
They went to investigate - actually "loot" - Ash's house. Elgis and Hamza rolled Investigation together, scoring a 23. They discovered a collection of small rolled notes, the kind you would tie around a pigeon or raven's leg, and learned:
They also found some loot that I described in Game 2.
They took the harpy they'd killed to Gregor, who was thrilled to have the specimen. They asked Gregor about fairies. He looked in his notebook of dubious claims, the Apocrypa, and told them that "fairies exchange their changelings for human babies."
They didn't know where the Whitman and Shaw babies were, but they still hadn't investigated the theft at the Penance Chapel, which Terian had suggested.
They went to the chapel - "A" on the map of the Great Council Square. Just inside the door, they saw a pedestal toppled over onto the ground, and there was a dark mark on the floor where the pedestal had stood.
They met Merrick, the chapel's sexton. Merrick told them that the chapel's Penance Stone had been stolen overnight, and that the chapel's visitors traditionally touched the stone to do a silent confession.
They party asked about the stone - was it heavy, valuable, magical? Merrick said the stone was about the size and weight of a bowling ball. He wasn't aware that the stone was magical, or valuable except for its historical value.
They investigated the chapel, with Hamza looking for marks or scruffs or marks on the stone floor, from dragging. Hamza rolled a 16 Investigation, but didn't find any.
Hamza cast Detect Magic. A necklace pendant on a woman in a pew lit up, and the woman and two others immediately stood up and attacked. The party fought them; Hamza went down but the sexton Merrick brought him back up with Cure Wounds.
They defeated the women, beating two with nonlethal damage so they could question them after the fight. Kiltak took the necklace pendant from the first woman:
Talisman of Ajana
They did an Investigation to search the women further, rolling 20 on the die. They were disturbed to find that one woman had an extra eye under the skin of her scalp, and another had an extra eye under the skin of her shoulder blade.
Kiltak tried to Intimidate one of the women, but only rolled 11, and he resorted to killing her in front of the remaining woman. Terrified, the remaining woman did give them information, which I gave the players in Game 2.
They let the woman go but followed her, and tracked her to Ulm's Monument on Foundling Square about a mile away.
We discussed what they would do next, in the next game. Their chapel attacker had gone to Ulm's Monument, and Ash Turner had also mentioned Ulm's Monument with his dying breath, so they decided to go there next.
The characters went to level 2 after this game.