Kadmoniah Sessions 1 and 2

Well, so much for always writing a session report prior to the following session! I’m going to do a 2-for-1 here.

Session 1, Sept 28

We ended up short two players this week, which is a bummer since there was such a short intro last time. But, on to the report!

The disembodied hand that flung the driver skyward ended up being a Nephil, a four-toothed subterranean star-gazing giant whose contemplation of the heavens had been disturbed by their noise. He seemed to react neutrally to the party with the driver gone, so he spoke with them discursively for a bit until they convinced him to open the cage for them. He crumpled the steel door like it was paper, then balled it up absentmindedly and disppeared into the dark, muttering and gazing up.

The PCs quickly manned the wagon and the horse, pushed the intact remains of the cage off of the wagon, and recovered the balled-up door. They had realized while imprisoned that the cage was made of ibsteel, which is a sacred substance to the B’nei Zoharim, and the fashioning of which was known only to them in the beforetimes, knowledge now lost. So not only did the B’nei Zoharim of the party register that being imprisoned by a material considered sacred to their people was almost certainly intentionally offensive, they also figured that even a useless hunk of ibsteel would be worth a pretty penny. They re-equipped all their gear and, using the one lantern left on the wagon by the driver as a guide, took the path north into the deep night.

After a couple of hours, the path moved down off of the rolling hills they’d been traveling into a dry river bed. From their path beside the dry, tumbled stones, they happened to spy a rill of water sparkling in the spare moonlight, coming down from a gap in the rocks to the east. Following this on foot, they found a door in the valley wall with water dribbling out underneath. A pent-up ankle-deep flood of water came pouring out when they opened the door, revealing a chamber full of bull motifs in bas relief. What looked like a handwashing basin in the center of the room was constantly circulating water. Cracks in the side had caused the leak down the valley. The party proceeded forth into the gloom.

They found more bull statues and motifs, and some loculi (or “kokhim” in the language of the region) in the walls housing long-decomposed bodies. They balked at four giant beetles crawling the walls and backtracked. They then entered a most curious chamber off the first room. In it, a metal or metal-plated 10’ in diameter cow skull jutted from floor to ceiling, nose pointed skyward. Around this skull were 10 humanoid skeletons, doing an elaborately choreographed dance and completely ignoring the party. They were in varying states of decay, and many of them had odd mutations to their bones – horns jutting out of their foreheads or cheeks, hands half-turned into hooves.

After some more exploration and many, many more bull motifs, the party entered a room with a sarcophagus and ceremonial tables and jars. As they entered, a crowd of Targumi traders wheeled around from digging in the sacrophagus and started acting very shifty. They had also run into the skeletons but seemed to think they had run after them. The party didn’t manage to intimidate them out of whatever it was they’d seemingly recovered from the sarcophagus, but did manage to scare all but two of them off. The two remaining wanted them to escort them out of the dungeon, to get them past the skeletons. They assented, but not before stopping to trigger an obvious tripwire trap that seemed to be concealing some treasure, as well as check back in on the skeletons. This time, though, beyond the dancing corpses, a large figure and four smaller ones turned around at the lantern light. They were Ashtoki, although what they were doing here no one could guess. They yelled out at them, and the whole party booked it out of the dungeon back to their hidden wagon. The Ashtoki tried to get an arrow off at them but it went wide.

We left our heroes at the crossroads, where the two traders left them to keep heading home, to the north, while our party decided to make for their Beit Malon where their Ba’al was awaiting the treasures they’d brought home.

Referee notes and lessons learned

The Nephil ended up being boring, because I’d originally planned on having him, through misunderstanding of what they wanted and his trying to be helpful, throw the party and their cage, crashing through the ceiling of the dungeon. I balked because I was worried about the horse being hurt, but I couldn’t manage to ad-lib anything more interesting. His NPC wants weren’t well-rounded enough to assist me here.

I wanted a little more tension with the traders, especially because they had some majorly sweet loot, including an Eye Tyrant Ring, but it ended up falling a little flat. I think this is me still feeling out the group and where their motivations are. It was fine and fun, though.

In writing this, I realize that a more detailed summary than my post-session hastily-written notes is key, because I would’ve guided the following session a little more clearly, calling back to the traders and ad-libbing some better hooks. I am committing this to the internet so I feel a little more compelled to bang these out faster.

Session 2, Oct 12

All players present! Let’s gooooooo

I reunited the party, having one missing PC (Zerubavel) from last time emerge from the Cloud Of Imperviousness And Ineffectuality, and the other (Pubert) just meet them on the road, having fallen asleep. There is nothing to be gained, in my experience, from overthinking how to reintegrate a party. It’s not what’s fun about the game.

Along the road home, they ran into Yitzchak, a Nitzuri border guard, of whom Jack HaKohen was deeply suspicious. The guard was gregarious and joking, but had a veiled air of disapproval at the party’s treasure hunting.

They got back to their Beit Malon¹, which sits at the eastern foot of the Ramat Adamah, the great plateau of Nitzurei. There they were greeted by their Ba’al [read: patron], Matan Ben Ein. He brought them in, heard their stories, and went through their spoils, taking them all and paying back half. The other half went to the debt they owe him for training and equipping them as adventurers. Matan and his staff, Udi the scholar and Gadi the fence, were exceedingly interested in the balled-up ibsteel door. Udi in particular upbraided the party for having left the cage out in the wilderness. They decided to head right back out and retrieve the it, because they could sleep in shifts on the way.

They miraculously ran into no one and nothing on the way to where they’d ditched the cage. Oleander had opted to carry a couple of spell books thanks to putting starting points in INT, one of which is a chaos spell book, whose spell is rolled randomly every day. They happened to have rolled Pull, which was enough to allow them to get the cage onto the wagon without too much bother. They slipped through the countryside of Zoharai with a fortune on wheels with not so much as another peep.

The cage ended up fetching 15,000 coin, of which the party got half. This knocked their debt down to 10,095 coin (from the original 18,000). They all hit second level as a result of this boon.

They ended up wanting to go up the plateau to the capital city of Metzudat Adamah. Jack especially wanted to find the patron whose holy symbol he’d inherited, so he ventured to the bazaar of shrines and managed to find the shrine to Ein Panim. He lit incense and heard a voice reverberate through his brow: “Find the child who has forgotten the face of his father² and blunt his teeth³, and you will have my blessing.” Jack is intent on decoding that mystery.

Oleander, having seemingly nothing better to do with their money, and being a fae Tzlali, decided to buy 30 rabbits. Where, exactly, these rabbits will go is a problem for Tomorrow Oleander. Zerubavel tried her hand at gambling, and doubled her money to 20 coin, which is enough to feel like you won without actually having risked anything.

We ended the session with award voting, which we’d failed to remember to do last time. Jack got 400 extra XP for being voted the MVP and the Embodiment, and Oleander got Workhorse (presumably for the clutch Pull spell).

Referee notes and lessons learned

The player who’d ducked out early for Session 0 and missed Session 1 had (surprise!) failed to roll his character at home, so we had to do that in situ. I wasn’t able to babysit him on it since I was covering other front matter, and he ended up basically ignoring the instructions, but to no real ill effect. I have to figure out how a goblin PC will work, but I will probably push it toward the fae end of goblindom, contrasting with the Ashtoki, who I’d had an underlying conception of as goblinoid, although it seems a little trite. I will think on it.

I got a little flustered with the wilderness travel to retrieve the cage and fell back to OSE rules, which is an encounter on a 2-in-6. I did this for each of the three hexes they traveled through there and back, and yet rolled nothing. I realized later that a. I should be using the Necropraxis loaded encounter table that Knave 2e uses and b. I needn’t worry about railroading to simply put some likely encounters in. The end issue is that the whole episode felt a little boring, in spite of the excitement over the use of the spell, so even a minor NPC encounter could’ve broken up the monotony. We also had a good deal of rules lawyering and math over casting haste on a horse to cut the travel time down. I didn’t help when I mistated the travel rate for a horse (120’ per round is not overland travel speed, duh). Ultimately, I cut it short and gave them a couple hours off the time spent, which ended up being meaningless anyway. All told the whole caper was maybe 5 minutes clock time, so it wasn’t a disaster by any means.

I calculated the value of the cage and couldn’t (fairly) come out with anything less than 15,000 coin, which felt a little game-breaky, but if our little community of sickos has taught me anything, it’s that broken games can still be fun if you play them right. I think giving them the level bump will end up paying off, so they’ve got some more oomph. They were definitely excited about it.

I attribute all of the above rough edges to jitters. It’s my first new campaign in a while, my first with this group, and their first with a non-5e ruleset, and I’m letting it get in my head a bit. With the benefit of this session report, and some mild planning, I will settle down. I have plans to ratchet up the tension on the party, with pressure from different factions and even a rival group of adventurers. As much as it’s easy for me to live and die with every decision and misstep, for these kids it’s still fun with friends (and a weirdo old for a GM).

I’m also floating the idea of adding a session to our calendar so we can pull 6 sessions before winter break. The regularity of it will help smooth things out, as well as allow me to get to know the players better, which in turn helps me give them the space and encouragement to make their own fun.