Month: May 2025

Skies Shall Sunder Session 4

This is written by my player and friend Will F.:

Daytime

  • Ainewyn visited the Lyceum, puts her name down, learns that you must be an accredited mage to check out a library book.
  • Everyone else does reconnaisance on the Severed Hand Bathhouse
    • Construction workers hanging out
      • Raedmund and Avery pay to enter the spa,Avery spends 100g to be treated well, and does drugs with a servant girl to get info:
        • Visit the bathhouse chapel during the New Moon, ask to Look into the Mirror of the Silver Lady (i.e. the moon), for illicit worships…
          • Servant girl confirms that Seraine Malcorven was taken down under the bathhouse, but doesn’t know what’s down there.,

Nighttime

  • We staged the break-in as an attack by the Bloody Crown gang
  • We climbed on the roof to get into the bathhouse via the skylights.,
  • We attempted but failed to avoid a guard dog. We killed it, but it gave away our position.
  • After a round or so, three severed hands emerged from the basement and attacked. Raedmund took a brutal shoulder injury. Ainewyn managed to put two of the enemies to sleep; the other one was killed retreating.
  • We kept one severed hand thief alive, interrogated him
    • Got a rough map of the hideout
    • Told us of a secret entrance from the sewers through the armory that the thief could guide us to.
  • Avery hired the thief as a hireling,

Skies Shall Sunder Session 3

This was written by my friend and player Rob L., posted here with permission:

Went to Moldy Unicorn to inquire on owner of the purse + wooden nickel found at the bookshop. Barkeep Gorra identified “Latch” as the man with the scar, member of the Severed Hand Gang. Approached by “The Sage” of the Bloody Crown gang who claimed to know the way to the bathhouse that was the head quarters for the Severed Hand Gang. Super trustworthy, 10/10, no notes. The Sage lead the party into an ambush. Rosie and Theodred injured. Acquired crossbows from thieves. Party pushed on to the bathhouse, Theodred swapped out with Raybrid. Infiltrated bathhouse to find secret entrance behind the shrine to Elana which is opened when a small silver statuette of Elana is placed on the plinth. Door opens for one minute and then closes. Three guards down inside. Party moved on to question Temli. Telmi lets party into the store, and he feeds the cat. Party learns that Magister Baiene may be (TB) on the library card and Veric may be (VC). The bookstore owner (Seraine Malcorven), Veric, and Baiene summoned the demon and when the bookstore owner was at her weakest kidnapped her and took her to the bathhouse. V.C. is likely the character Latch was seen with by Temli.

Our heroic adventurers start today’s adventure in the Cats Lantern Tavern, which is in a working class area of Crodeux. We learn from our larger adventuring team that a blind beggar said there was an entrance by the Ink & Ash bookshop. The owner of which hasn’t been seen in 12 days. Our teammates earlier broke in and stole almost everything. Among the finds were a wooden nickel with a moldy unicorn on it, and a bookmark that said V.C. authorized by T.B. of Lyceum academy.

Ran from specter/ghost. Early in the day, we head to the Moldy Unicorn, in the Warrens, a rougher part of town, over the Saint’s Row Bridge. We meet some friendly guards who inquire if we’re there to solve the issues with the poor. We have no idea what that’s about.

Moldy Univorn is 3 stories tall, placard actually moldy with unicorn on it. We meet Gorra, a burly eye-patched woman and see a few straggler patrons. We can tell through reluctant conversation she knows the scarred person as Latch, he lost his coin purse 2 days ago. We pay her 4 GP for the info because he’ll be violent with her if it comes out she’s talked about him. She doesn’t know the cowled fellow with dusty cloak except he’s a student of Lyceum. Latch may be at a nearby Scaldworks bath house.

One of the patrons introduces himself as the Sage. We ask if the bath house is a thieves guild, he says yes, and can take us a shortcut through the sewers. We agree and then notice he’s taking a roundabout route that’s confusing so we mark our path between buildings.

Sage leads us into an ambush, 8-9 people with crossbows. We engage, 2 of our team nearly die, but they are no match for us. We gain their crossbows and coin. Their group is called the Bloody Crown, Sage ran away when the fighting started.

We learn Latch is part of the Severed Hand guild and bath is one of their fronts. Rumored to engage in foul sorcery, as well as abduct and eat children. We learn that the guy with robes is called Veric. We go back to our tavern and exchange a PC with a Barbarian.

We go to the Bath house, which has some goddess architecture around the entrance. Latch shows up with a cart of supplies and helpers at the house help to bring supplies in. Latch is a brawny guy with a scar that looks like it was the result of a fight or torture.

We talk to Latch, try to buy our way in, then enthrall him, neither works. We can see inside a bit and see a marble statue of Elana, ancient goddess or Purity. One in our party distracts the clerk, another sneaks in behind the serving girl bringing in supplies. He finds barrels with supplies, many small silver idols that are illegal to have. Takes one, gives to our member Rosie. Rosie pays to go into the baths.

A serving girl comes up to Rosie and mutters in thiefspeak ‘Unchained is the hand that is severed’ and shows her an idol. Rosie fails the response, and then tries the same tactic on another girl. She learns the response ‘To be severed is to be liberated’ but is confused by the next interaction, and tells Rosie to take the statue to the chapel area with the statue. Rosie finds a spot to put her if. Secret door opens, she goes in, realizes people are downstairs and she’s out of her depth, so she heads back to us and lets us know what she found.

We then go to the alley by the shop and don’t find anything. We go to the warehouse and talk to the attendant, Temli. He tells us what he saw including Latch and Veric leaving with a body-sized bag, and earlier a professor, Magister Baiene, dropping off a book. We go into the shop with Temli’s help, one of our party talks Feline to the cat, named Ser, stole a ring from Veric, gives it to us, one of us puts it on, it’s magical and is a ring of protection + 1 or equivalent. We also find a paper that says ‘on request if T.B.(Magister), summon demon with Veric’ (or something similar)

Skies Shall Sunder Session 2

This report is written by my friend and player Peter P., I have posted it to my blog with permission, with a few NPC name spelling corrections:

Following the rumor of: “There is a hidden entrance to the Spiral Archives in the Ink & Ash bookshop in the Coppergate district of Crodeux. But the door was sealed a long time ago, and the shop owner rarely seems to open for business these days. ” our party of ventures to the bookshop owned by Seraine Malcorvin. We found the store and as the rumor said, it looked to not be open, despite being the middle of the day. There were warehouses around and we bribe a worker to tell us what he saw, and he reported seeing 2 figures enter the store. We decided to return at night to break in with less eyes upon.

Come night, the party breaks in through a window on the 2nd floor in the back to get in. We find that the place is unoccupied and no one is around. We take a look around and find several magical artifacts.

Some of which we take. Some if which we don’t take, by leaving it in the glass cases. Some of which teleport us to rooms right next to guard dogs that bite your arm. Some of which blind you by just opening them. Fun times.

Oh and there is a black cat named Ser. Who is friendly.

Still searching for the Spiral Archives we find a basement next to the dining room and venture inside. On the ground we saw clear boot prints and dust turned about, signs of a scuffle and a Library card for a “Codex Relgor”. There we find an archway, that has been mortared closed, with the word “cherished” written in Sunlander above. It was clear to us this was a secret entrance. Now a smart party would have taken the time to try and figure out what the words meant to get through. We are not that party. (The password was the black cat’s name: Ser. Cherished was he) We choose to simply break down the wall with hammers, the constant banging of which attracted a gang of rat mutants living in the sewer connected to this basement.

There was battle with the mutants, but they were no match for us. After the battle we dispose of the wall as well and we ventured inside to find 2 magic circles. One being a protection circle, the other being able to summon the demon Relgor at the call of his name. Doing so we try to talk to Relgor. However Relgor just wants to be free, and he can’t leave the summoning circle so long the circle of salt around it is unbroken. Finding him unwilling to cooperate with us we decide to dismiss him.

He however appears to be guarding a secret. behind his circle is a rotating wall. We can’t rotate it all the way though, or else we will damage the salt circle holding Relgor in place. But we can peek through and we can see a door with spiral patterns on it.

Gaming Update and Skies Shall Sunder Session 1

I have been very busy with Blight Upon Sombreval, but I have been getting a lot of gaming in, fortunately. I’ve been doing a bunch of cons, but I have also been hard at work organizing my local meetup.

I have been running a BRP game called Cosmic Wound in a long-time setting of mine, as well as Gradient Descent in Mothership. Both are open tables and through the local adventure game meetup. Mothership has been running strong, although it does seem like we’re approaching the end of the module sooner than later.

Cosmic Wound has been great, but it struggled a bit with the open table format. It was also a every-other game, and it had a few unfortunate bouts of getting a few sessions in a row cancelled.

After talking to a bunch of friends at GaryCon, I decided to try utilizing the numbers of the meetup to run an actual West Marches. I have ran and participated in West Marches in the past, some more successful than others, but given my past experiences and recent open tables, I feel like I have a good setup for the campaign. I will do a post on how I set it up in the future, but for now I want to post actual play sessions.

The above is the back of the flyer (sans contact info) for the West Marches campaign. This is a sequel to both the Doomed Reach and Cosmic Wound campaigns I have ran recently, although every campaign always gives an opportunity for a bit of a retcon, as well as trying out alternative takes. This particular take is to shift the setting to be more AD&Dish than I typically run. People often showed up to prior campaigns looking for many of the AD&D or later classes, and it can become difficult to sell people on the 3LBB perspective of “if you want to be a thief, just steal something.”

With the flyer and a bit of cross-group posting, I got somewhere around 30 bites expressing some form of interest. Out of those 30, 16 folks signed up for the kickoff. Here we met for pizza and discussion at an FLGS, talked about the campaign, and made several characters. As this campaign will require the use of downtime due to the utilization of 1:1 time, everyone was recommended making two to three characters.

Once we wrapped up, I wanted to at least try playing a bit, as many folks were either new to tabletop adventure games entirely, or they were new to the style. So I started everyone in front of a recently-discovered dungeon, in search for a ring of some ancient star-mage that the Church wants recovered. 16 characters entered into this cavernous dungeon They found rooms with amphora bearing the symbols of winged serpents. They dug through the sarcophagus of ancient astronomers. A halfling was obliterated by a hammer trap, and the party gave most of his corpse to stalking mountain lions. They fought animated statues, and found a hidden entrance to a deeper dungeon complex before we ran out of time.

Running for 16 people is an interesting experience. I have had 11 and 12 player tables in the past, and obviously every person you add in above maybe 6 or so kind of compounds the chaos. It was a fun experience, but I obviously had to abbreviate a lot of the procedures and systems just so we didn’t get too bogged down, but I think we were able to make sure everyone experienced that traditional adventure gaming experience.

Upcoming is the session report for the first player-scheduled session.