Carousing for G63: No scrubs, No Manticores
Carousing notes to be posted here.
Hop-Frog Berbatov
Hop-Frog doesn't do hang-dog very well. The pudgy yet nimble dwarf has been moping around the unfinished Lodge long enough, and Hanna has had enough. "Hey, come, you oat-faced toadie! What's the matter?" Summer rains have prevented much progress in construction, not to mention the lack of attention paid by the Marais benefactors.
But that's not the full reason. The big dwarven heart inside Hop-Frog's deformed chest beats for the companions lost and turned beneath the forest floor outside the Quasqueton gates. He has wanted to attend the "Rusty" "Buckles" Memorial Cemetery. Not a lot of good he could do, but still…
Hanna's heart softens. Long has she been irritated by this guy's sheepishness, his bizarre deferrals to the magic-users, he need for 'permission' to do anything short of wiping his behind. But beneath her pearly, rock-hewn exterior, isn't she just a softie, too? Not everyone can be as beautiful, whip-smart, and impervious.
She gives him 250gp and unneeded 'permission' to dress the graves of the fallen (he now has over 500gp total). Wipe pine needles from their burrows. Dress them with flowers, what have you. He is a proud and noble soul, after all.
A tear in his eye, Hop-Frog packs his bindle and straps his sword and axes on. He'll return in a few days, he swears.
Carousing: Hop-Frog buys small ceramic statuary corresponding to the once quick stalwarts who now lay unmoving; and knick-knacks, and wreaths, small vials of cologne, and two swords to cross between them. He departs for Eastkeep, finds the graves, attends to them, before returning in time for Thursday's adventure.
Hop-Frog's journey to Quasqueton is an adventurous one. After dodging goblins hunting and gathering amid the wooded hills, he reaches the gravesite and begins adorning the graves… only to find himself face-to-face with a young mountain lion! He's gnawed on a bit, but he successfully drives the beast away and finishes paying his respects. (You rolled a 5, spending 500gp and earning 500xp. Your saving throw was a 12: success!)
Ja'
Ja', having finally acquired some funding for his religious studies, decides that it's time for him to start putting together a holy laboratory. In only one adventure he managed to acquire some undeadish dwarf blood, spider gunk, and the dust of some mysterious powerful neutral undead, but he has no practical way yet to begin analyzing them. He sets out to purchase as full a regimen of glass tubes, heating agents, miniature cauldrons, prayer beads and other similar religious accessories as Malinbois has for sale. Already, he has been humbled by the astounding variety of wounds the adventurers he has worked with have acquired for themselves, from being infected by dancing poisons to unhealing undead wounds to ghoul paralysis, but he is not discouraged by his inability to treat many of these wounds. His blood is boiling with curiosity, and a passion for adventuring is taking hold in his heart. It is a strange and wonderful world out there, and he counts himself lucky to have found a group of such bold and often-injured adventurers as the Company of Crossed Swords. Now is the time for him to begin his studies and hone his craft, but for that he needs equipment.
Ja'Tubis combs through the stalls of various passing merchants and traders on market day. Only a few items meet with his approval: a copper cauldron, various entertainingly-contorted bits of glassware, fresh water and some allegedly "sacred" wood. Bringing these materials back to the Company's residence, he sets them up on a table and admires his handiwork. What to do next… (You rolled a 1, spending 100gp and earning 100xp.)
Snickwick
Snickwick will carouse to build a fabulous new gnomish invention the “Auto-Retraculating Angler’s Bolt”. This device attaches to the top of Snickwick’s custom built Gnomish Crossbow, and allows him to fire a grapnel bolt which trails a length of line connecting back to a hand cranked reel. The Angler’s bolt can be used to grab and drag items from a distance, and even serve as a mechanism for pulling or lowering Snickwick bodily. In more detail:
- The apparatus is approximately the size of the crossbow body, it can be attached very firmly to the top of Snickwick’s custom built Gnomish Crossbow.
- The single custom steel bolt has a grapnel style head, which opens upon impact, securely lodging in most targets (wood, a sack of treasure, an enemy, etc).
- A reel sits in the top of the device, where the high tension line is stored (this looks very much like the reel on a modern day fishing rod). A hand crank projecting from the side allows the user to retract the line.
- The reel houses 100 feet of is high tension silk/wire weave line. Very light with a bit of stretch, the twine will easily hold 60 pounds of load (just a little over the weight of a moderately encumbered gnome), while being light enough not to impact the flight of the bolt.
- An optional attachment connects to the user’s harness in case the device will be used for climbing/rappelling.
Ideally, Snickwick will purchase time in the shop of Bretodeau ,a local machinist. His large-ish facility is the pre-eminent source for manufacture of the specific and costly custom mechanisms needed for the astrolabes, timepieces and measuring devices in demand from Glantri’s Philosopher-Wizards (indeed, the High Princess Genevieve used a “Bretodeau” in this year’s reading of her horoscope; for good or ill, the device accurately predicted her impending case of a rare and uncomfortable venereal condition associated with the practice of certain questionable enchantment magics).
Snickwick will work at night, while the shopmasters, journeymen and apprentices are away, quietly tinkering away. His gold will go towards rental of workspace, purchase of materials and limited custom fabrication for the pieces that are outside of his capability.
(It is possible that Quen will need to set a concrete cost for the mechanism, which may or may not be achieved in a single carouse, similar to magical research rules)
Snickwick begins his work on the Auto-Retraculating Angler’s Bolt. For hours he labors in Bretodeau's workshop in Glantri City, forging and hammering and contrapulating. Soon the frame of the device starts to take shape… (You rolled a 2, spending 300gp and earning 300xp. Your saving throw is an 18: success! You will need to spend an additional 1000gp and two weeks of downtime; no further carousing is required.)
Richard Loubeau
Exhilarated by some thieving success and a minor spell-bending triumph, Richard begins to imagine new ways in which the noble and revered craft of the arcane might be brought to bear on some personal difficulties. With his investigations of the Trianoman faith still in the back of his mind, he begins procuring notes and materials for something new- something they'll never expect…
Richard will carouse in an effort to learn a new spell. In the past, he has not intentionally researched specific spells; rather, he has researched magic in the margins and learned something unexpected (in dabbler style!). I like this aspect of the character, and owing to this I am instead going to nominate a couple of spells to be added to Quen's list of Glantrian magic elsewhere. We'll see if they turn up!
Richard sits alone in a shabby scriptorium, his rented cubicle lit only by a single candle. Around him are scattered jars full of strange and unpleasant substances. Before him, blank parchment, ink and a black quill. An idea strikes him! He begins to write… (You rolled a 1, spending 150gp and earning 150xp. You have a ways to go before completing the spell!)
Martín Le Black
Clever-addled, Martín Le Black swaggers through the throng of wretches, pilfereers and tarts. His veined hand points with index and pinky both. He is watching you. He knows what you’re up to.
If Ja’Tubis would witness the human condition in its most beset, there is no better place than the Low Waterside. Pulling at the priest’s sleeve, Martín plants a slobbery kiss on Ja’Tubis’ ear, “Go now, these are your people as they are mine…”
The young churigeon ogles this garden of disease. Pustulent carbuncles weep, fertile weals ooze, bent limbs shamble in this most sorry quarter of the Greatest City in the World.
Le Black was drawn back to this place in sore need of the strong stimulants and heady narcotics that are only found in this fell district. He recalls a fixture from his childhood, Mulhedin the Tumescent, a trader from the near colonies of Shazalmar, so named for the prolific warts that blossom along his swarthy visage.
Refined Troll blood. Mulhedin used to provide this dark ichor to the Leech Voiron. The beasts’ essence imparts a rapacious vigor which can heal men back even from the edge of death. Martin will carouse to track down Mulhedin, and buy from him a flask of troll blood, as much as he can procure…for now.
Martin meets with Mulhedin in a shadowy booth at a greasy, nameless tavern near the Bridge of Rats. The man's oily voice oozes out from beneath his cowl: "You are fortunate, Martin, in that I do have some of that which you desire. Those Torchbearers slew a troll not long ago and sold its ichors and sweetbreads to a certain alchemist, with whom I have transacted thereafter." After a long alcohol-fueled negotiation, Martin procures a vial of murky liquid — a potion of lesser regeneration. (You rolled a 5, spending 750gp and gaining 750xp. The potion heals one hit point per turn for its duration, except for injuries caused by fire or acid, and allows the drinker to remain alive even past the usual negative hit point limit unless subjected to truly drastic harm, such as death spells or dismemberment. There may also be unwelcome side effects.)
Pritchard Hood
Flush with cash from De Sang's Delve and with two weeks off from adventuring (the astrological portents suggest he should stay out of the dungeon for a fortnight), Pritchard would like to carouse in Glantri City. His aim is to learn the second-level Magic-User spell Web. To this end he has 1326 gp.
Not the most exciting carouse of all time, but maybe a useful spell.
Flush with funds, Pritchard pays sizable fees to visit some of the city's libraries and copy useful passages from the writings of renowned users of magic. Then he purchases various components — primarily several varieties of spider silk — and retires to a rented laboratory to begin his experiments. (You rolled a 4, spending 600gp and gaining 600xp. You need to spend another 1400gp to master the Web spell.)
Hanna Darrowkin
Hanna is intrigued by Neva's mention of Xiombarg, but not yet willing to explore cults of chaos. Chaos is often just as stultifying as Law. Surely the knowledge of life as both genders is yet another example of balance and neutrality?
With the Shrine of the Soft Bog in mind - which she visits from time to time, where the vegetation has already begun to cover the twin offerings to the light Yondallah and dark Dallah Thaun - she goes to visit her recent friend of the White Lanterns, the elderly halfling Harald Cheesemettle, in Glantri City.
She wants to ask him two things:
1) If he has any contacts among halfling and other neutral temple societies, halfling wizards, non-halfling wizards, who might understand how the moon (for example) changes but yet is constant… or something like that
2) If he knows anything of the suits of armor halfling knights wore when the Karameikos baron invaded the Five Shires, related to human field plate. Does he know of any smithys who know the secrets to their manufacture?
Gael Ur-Boss
Gael is delighted that the Boss has once again seen fit to reward her prayers with miracles. She has thought long and hard about what occassioned her fall from grace, and has decided that her sin was to put down the torch by which she gives light to the shadowy hearts of her companions and the cleansing fire that is proof of the Boss's love for the world. (Having swapped torch for mace to fight a wight is a mistake she does not intend to repeat.)
Accordingly, she will go back to the orcs of the Chateau and use her haul from De Sang's Delve to purchase many and varied things, which she will sacrifice to the Boss by dousing them in oil and setting them alight with her torch. She will seek to keep the flame burning until all her sacrifices have been consumed, and during this vigil she will ceaselessly chant the fearsome attributes of the Boss: his mighty thews, his death-dealing sword and gore-caked axe, the halo of fire that surrounds him as he trods lesser gods beneath his feet, his baby-snatching hands and other-faith-blaspheming tongue.
The spell she hopes to create is along these lines:
Chant of the Boss's Scion's Ineluctable Threateningness - Cleric, Level 1
To cast this spell, the devotee of the Boss must hold a lit torch in one hand and the Boss's holy symbol in the other, while chanting a description of the menacing qualities of one warrior within the torch's light: this warrior must cooperate by making bold cries and intimidating grimaces. Enemies who are within the torch's radius of illumination must make a saving throw in order to attack anyone who is not the warrior who is the focus of this spell. Clerics and zealots of other faiths suffer a -2 penalty to their save. The effect ends if any of the requirements fail (cleric's torch, symbol, and chant, warrior's active cooperation), and lasts no more than one turn in any case.
Despite attempts to bury this noble effort at Glantrian calibre carousing in forum dross… WE LIVE.
If any others wish to carouse their guys, edit to this page. Alternately, just post it in this forum and some more saavy nerd will traspostulate.
Paul, do you recall what xp the henchmen would have gotten? I'd like to add them into the wealth and experience page.
My understanding is that since the henchmen were paid 100gp each up front, they didn't earn any experience from treasure. The total monster value was 460 xp. I honestly can't recall if that was gobbled up by the player characters or if half-shares were set aside for the hirelings. Perhaps my official mapper and bookkeeper, naked samurai, might be able to help you?
The hirelings got half shares of total experience, but no actual gold. Hence each PC received more gold than actual experience, since they were sharing one but not the other. Each hireling got 1/16th of total experience for the night, or 1/2 of one full share. Wasn't this something like 800xp for a full share?
Yes, the individual experience awards for player characters were around 800 xp. I don't have the exact amount written down (an oversight on my part). If nobody has the exact xp award on paper, I'd just say the hirelings got 400 apiece and call it a night.
Hey, naraoia, I'm willing to chip in a wad of gold to help buy you Web. That's a terrific spell.
Quendalon: Thanks very much for getting to Pritchard's carousing. I'm a little confused, though. You say I need to spend another 1400 gold to get the spell, but it's a second level spell. I was under the impression that spell research cost 500 gp per level. Am I incorrect in this?
Spell research normally costs 1000 gp/level. There are a number of conditions under which this may be cut to 500gp/level, but as far as I know, none of those conditions apply in this case. Specifics may be found on the Spell Research page.
Ah, right you are. I guess I've never researched a wholly original spell before. Thanks for the clarification.
What are the 2nd level spells we have? Company Grimoire says, other than Cont. Light, we have Locate Object and Wizard Lock.
You could (maybe) retroactively assign your carouse to one of those spells instead, if Quendalon lets you. But Greengoat has this weird policy where his hoard of spells are untouchable by others. Frankly I can't see Wizard Lock as too useful, but Locate Object may well be.
I'll also point out Louis Lamont has been sitting on 3 unopened scrolls in a case for several months now.