# Suzail (final update)



## Morte (Jan 23, 2003)

This is the story of a campaign run using the Neverwinter Nights computer game, which is based upon (but by no means identical to) 3e D&D. It’s my first attempt at producing my own campaign, after a string of reworked modules. It’s set in Suzail, the capital of Cormyr in the Forgotten Realms.

I have been DMing this “group” since they were level 1, but what with players and characters coming and going there remains only one player/character who’s been with me since day one. They’re up to level 6 or 7 as the campaign starts.

NWN is sufficiently different from D&D that I’m not going to post character sheets and the like to avoid causing confusion. But there are a few things that seasoned D&Ders will need to know:

1. There’s no scrying, flying or teleporting in NWN. [To my surprise I actually rather like this.]

2. Most of the roleplaying oriented divination spells (e.g. discern lies) are missing. All the social/RP skills like Knowledge, Bluff and Intimidate have been compressed down to “Persuade” and “Lore”.

3. A six second combat round actually takes six seconds, with the computer doing the donkeywork. Battles rarely last much over a minute and nobody knows exactly what’s going on. Player tactics have to be good, honed to the point of reflex.

4. Everything in the module has to be built before the first player logs in. You can’t spontaneously add a courthouse halfway though the session if somebody gets arrested, you have to foresee that sort of thing.


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## Morte (Jan 23, 2003)

*The characters*

Here is the starting cast for the campaign; all of them started at level 6 or 7:

Mabel Ann Gary. NG halfling cleric 5/rogue 2, domains Air and Trickery, cleric of no particular deity. Mabel has the coolest head in the party and the best grasp of the necessities of a situation – e.g. she was the only one who headed the other way when they sent an iron golem hostile, and she got the other 5 back from the dead. She originally set off in search of her wayward nephew Archibald Gary III and his renegade twin Archibold Gary, who has brought great shame on the family by practicing magic as an adventurer instead of something respectable like theft. Her adventuring is largely incidental to the search.

Padreic Ciardhe. LG human paladin 6 of Helm. Padreic is a recent recruit, he heard that the party were battling the Cult of the Dragon in a recently unearthed Netherese ruin and went in to help out. Quiet and affable, he seems to have misplaced the arse-shaped stick which is normally issued to paladins of Helm. He lets his halberd do the talking when appropriate.

Lia Amakiir. NG elf ranger 6. Lia is another quiet one, more interested in sticking unnatural things full of arrows and getting the job done than talking about it. She is friends with a bear, that follows her into the strangest places.

Lafajet Le'Blak. CG elf bard 6. Perfumed fop and endless fount of tactically useful knowledge upon which the party can generally be relied to not capitalise. Favourite phrase: “nobody ever listens to me”. Another a fairly recent recruit, they found him hiding from the rain during their last adventure.

Griseld Oggerman. CG human barbarian 5/fighter 1. Griseld is big and blonde and comes from somewhere cold and northern. She actually did adventure in a chain mail bikini (OK, hotpants and halter) for quite a while, before she found some nice full plate and took a fighter level. Griseld’s main interests are mead and boys. She has been chasing Lafajet, who flees like a kitten. When things get complicated, Griseld writes a list of who/what needs killing on her arm and crosses them off as they fall.

Merlinda, just Merlinda. NG elf druid 7 and worshipper of Mielikki. Merlinda is a nice druid from the high forest with a bit of an attitude when provoked. She’s very elf and very druid. I can’t really sum her up any more than that, she’s just… very elf and very druid. Currently pining for one Lomir, a ranger of the Dalelands who recently captured her heart before they had to part ways. The only original in the party, been here since level 1.


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## Morte (Jan 23, 2003)

*This space reserved*

This space reserved for future expansion


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## Lazybones (Jan 23, 2003)

Hey, Griselda made an appearance in my recently completed Underdark NWN campaign as well--chain mail bikini and all.  Good player. 

Once you get this going, you might want to post a link at the NWC main boards.


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## Morte (Jan 23, 2003)

*Session 1 part 1*

_The party had been hired to do a job for Lord Blake, head of the one of the great noble families of Cormyr. They were to investigate the trolls which had recently started raiding on his land. He suspected to a rival lord, but had no proof and wanted to find out more before he tackled the rival in some way he might regret. So he decided to hire some adventurers to investigate without visibly involving him.

An old friend of Lord Blake's, a merchant and wizard called Gert Fyne, ran into the party during their previous adventure in the Dalelands and made the offer. He told them to travel to Suzail, capital of Cormyr, and meet up with a man named Ahmed in or around the caravan park for further instructions._

The party reached Suzail after two weeks on the road. They arrived at the outer gate to St Aelax field, the walled caravan area tucked against the outside of the main city walls, at about dusk. Everybody was ready for a drink and a bed. Most of them were desperate for a bath as well -- they had a strange obsession with baths.

The main gate into the city had just closed for the night, and it would be closed through the following day for a military drill, but the watch sergeant pointed them to an inn serving the caravan trade. Correctly pegging them as adventurers, he also pointed out a "Services Wanted" notice board.



> WANTED
> 
> Lost cat. Contact Mrs Miggins if you find Snookums.
> 
> ...




The guards grinned at each other as the party exclaimed over the cat. They'd seen this before... The party moved on a little and discussed what to do next.

“So what are we doing?” asked Merlinda.

Griseld half-replied, half-mumbled “So many things to do... Let's see if Ahmed guy is around, den go to da inn... den check out da temple... den look for da cat. Sound good?”

They looked around, getting their bearings. Even the commercial outskirts of Suzail were impressive. A twin line of streetlights, made by students at the Cloaktower using permanent light spells, lined the avenue between the outer and inner gates. The caravan park, a great field of cobbles, opened out to the right. Few wagons were lined up since there were no caravans in town. The splendid temple of Waukeen faced it across the road, and sundry buildings and few market stalls lined the walls.

They wandered trough the caravan park, ignoring a drunken dwarf, until they came to the inn. Lafajet took perfumed foppery to new heights by balking at entering an inn called “The Old Boot”, but they went in anyway. They ate, bathed and slept. The next morning Griseld had a bit of fun by dumping a bath full of cold water over Lafajet and his bed to wake him. He vomited in response, and after breakfast and settling the bill the barkeep told them to find another inn in future.

They met the dwarf drunkard outside again and asked him if he knew an Ahmed. He told them he did, Ahmed was a good chap who slipped him some food occasionally to wash his ale down, and he whilst he hadn’t been around lately the bartender at the Boot would know where to find him. “But we’re barred” said Mabel. “Oh aye? Mishelf tae”, said the dwarf, “there wash shome mishundershtanding over a bill. Ale, ale, I need more ale…”

The party weren’t really into initiative or lateral thought this side of noon, so rather than looking for Ahmed they went to the Temple of Waukeen to see about the advert. Merlinda (who had a record of blowing the party’s cover) was true to form – she told the first priest they met that that they were working for Lord Blake. It wasn’t a complete disaster -- impressed by the name, he took them to the high priestess Soippi Bine straight away.

Soippi, a gnome who clearly brooked little nonsense, eyed the party keenly and said “Yes, I think you might do. Your equipment speaks of experience. As you know, we wish to hire some adventurers.”

Griseld studied her own armour intently. “It talks?” She frowned to herself.

Lia uttered a cautious “Yes…” and the party all waited for the priestess to go on. Well, all except Lafajet who exclaimed “I am not for hire, that is dirty.”

Soippi seemed incensed. “Dirty? Who is this fool? Do you know sir that you are in the temple of Waukeen, goddess of trade? Fair work for good money is a pillar of our credo.”

“And?” said Lafajet. She glared at him, challenging.

“Lafa, please behave” hissed Lia. “Don listen to him. He mad today” added Griseld.

It happened that Lafajet was mooching around at the back of the group occasionally juggling healing potions, while Griseld was stood at the front. Soippi leaned towards the barbarian and looked up. “Can you control the brat?” she hissed? “Oh ya” said Griseld.

“Very well, I will outline our proposal.”

She explained that an artefact known as known as “Cool Judgement” had just been stolen from the temple. It was not magical and had no particular powers, though it would be worth a fair amount as a gem. But it was priceless to the temple, since it was formed from a tear of joy that Waukeen had shed at the end of her imprisonment by the demon prince Graz’zt. It looked somewhat like a large pearl set in gold. She had communed with the goddess, and showed them the results.



> Was Cool Judgement stolen by servants of a rival deity?
> NO
> 
> Did they steal for financial profit?
> ...




Soippi explained that the last question was ritual, habitually added to the end of all communes with Waukeen, but she interpreted it as advice that the temple should hire professionals to recover the artefact. She added that they had no idea who would have stolen it, but that they must have been able to cast Dispel Magic to get past certain wards.

The Waukenites offered highly specific rewards: 5000 gold for the return of their artefact, 1000 gold to find out who did it and why, and another 1000 to make sure whoever did it “couldn’t try again”.

_to be continued..._


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## Morte (Jan 23, 2003)

*Session 1 part 2*

Session 1 part 2

Swiftly establishing that the high priestess had not seen a cat called Snookums (“How would I know what a cat was called?”) they headed outside. On the temple steps, they tried to figure out what to do first. It was tough. So they went shopping. Fifteen minutes of inconsequential um-ing and ah-ing later, they noticed a sewer entrance just up the road from the merchant’s stall. Well, the commune had said Cool Judgement was underground, and they hadn’t explored any sewers lately…

They headed down into the sewers, killed a few rats, picked a random direction, killed a few dire rats, picked another random direction and ran slap bang into a half-hidden crack in the wall, tucked into a dark alcove, with a slope of rubble leading up beyond it. [In the distance, a DM screamed in outrage at their luck.]

They ignored it, much more interested in the rusty iron door across the corridor. Mabel scanned it for traps, opened it, and put one eyeball round the doorframe. The room was empty. It was also quiet, showed no signs of recent use, and had a single metal door which could be barred from the inside. Plus it didn’t smell as bad as the rest of the sewers. They pegged it as a place to retreat to and rest, and promptly headed off to explore some more sewer. Padreic stage-whispered “Ahem” and pointed to the hidden passage they’d all forgotten in the space of five minutes…






_the dungeon level_

They clambered up, and found themselves in a dark and unnaturally cold ruin. It looked like a crypt, or catacomb, with a few old coffins in niches in the walls. Everything was covered in a thin rime of frost. In a few places, they found cobwebs under the frost but no frost under the cobwebs. Was the presence of moisture in the air a recent thing?

They were in a short corridor, with a serious metal door at the northern end. A trap and a lock later they walked into a large dark chamber, where a bizarre group stopeed talking and turned to look at them. There was a human woman in full plate, accompanied by a dire wolf, who wore a holy symbol of Silvanus but had the most extraordinary vacant look in her eyes. Beside her stood a minotaur, a very big minotaur with a very big two handed axe. It stared intently. Behind them were another human, obviously a mage of some sort, and an oversized goblin with twin daggers which nobody recognised as a barghest. Off to one side were four thrones set around a brazier, the room’s only source of light.

The staring went on for a few moments, as the party edged into the room and sidled into something resembling a mêlée formation, before a challenge rang out from the cleric.

“*Who invades the ministry of frost?*” Her voiced oozed command and menace.

Griseld was quick off the mark as usual. “Da what? We here for da rats. You pay your rat tax?”

Lafajet affected insouciance. “Who cares to ask?”

The cleric was unfazed by Lafa’s careful tone of voice, it failed to penetrate her insanity. Once more, her command rang out and echoed off the stone walls. “*Bow down in the presence of your betters.*”

“Pardon?” asked Lia, as the party exchanged glances. The cleric looked back to her companions. “*Meddlers. Kill them.*”

Lafajet rapidly began to regret wandering forward to talk, as the minotaur surged into his face with its axe swinging. The barghest slunk behind him looking for a soft target, choosing not to switch to wolf form, and the cleric’s dire wolf companion slammed into the party’s right. Behind them, the cleric and the mage began to cast.

It was over inside 30 seconds. Padreic did what Padreic did best, ignoring attacks of opportunity and charging around the left to get at the mage who went down in three or four swings of the halberd without ever managing to complete a spell. The cleric did get spells off, her Hammer of the Gods slamming into the party twice and hurting them; but someone dealt her a blow that stopped her summoning a dire spider and that was the end of her heavy battle spells. Meanwhile lightning flashed as Merlinda started to unload, blowing half the thrones to pieces in passing. Arrows flew, and a general melee scrap centred on Griseld and her greatsword took the minotaur and barghest down. Most of the party were between one and two thirds of their full health, which meant they could gang up on the cleric and finish her off.

“Ouch!” said Lafajet. “Boy, dat quick” added Griseld.

The rest didn’t waste time talking while they could be looting corpses. They found assorted weapons and armour, not so different from what they had already, and Griseld loaded it up to sell. Lafajet collected a couple of wizard scrolls, but there was no Cool Judgment. There was, however, a key. And there were metal doors east and west.

_to be continued..._


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## Morte (Jan 24, 2003)

*Session 1, part 3*

Session 1 part 3

They tried the east door first. There was a trap on it, a fairly nasty electrical trap that would blast all in range if disturbed. Mabel couldn’t quite figure out how to disarm it. She drank a potion of Fox’s Cunning to see it that did the trick and, ack, it all seemed clearer, but she still couldn’t quite work it out it. Padreic suggested throwing Lafajet at the door, since he’d been moping all day. This seemed to pull him out of his funk for long enough to play a tune. The music crystallised things in Mabel’s mind, and her suddenly nimbler fingers put the insight to good use. The trap soon ceased to function.

Any door like that had to guard something nasty. They buffed, and stood back out of sight to let Mabel open it stealthily. Mabel found a treasure chamber, devoid of enemies. Well, it was a grotty old crypt room with the walls collapsing at one end and rubble all over the floor, but it had a chest in one corner so it was a treasure chamber. Cool Judgement was in the chest, along with assorted valuables. They had it. The party had bypassed any defenders who might be in the crypt thanks to the secret entrance from the sewers. They had their main objective. They could leave and get paid without raising a weapon.

“OK, let's clear dis place out,” said Griseld, “den go back to da temple”.

The other door off the throne room was just as solid and the trap on it was almost as nasty. There was a tangle trap on the floor just inside it as well – it looked like somebody had prepared this room as a place to retreat to and make a stand. They wondered of they’d already dealt with that somebody, or there were more enemies out there in the crypt. The door opened and Lafajet went scouting ahead, his natural elven ability to move and search at the same time speeding things up. After he’d spotted three or four traps and trodden on them before he could bring himself to a halt, they figured a slower moving halfling scout might make more sense.

At the end of a long cold corridor, they found a door with viciously, supernaturally cold air seeping out around it. They discussed casting Protection from Elements as much as they could, but decided to save it. Mabel opened the door and crept in. It was a long, long gallery like room, extending further than she could see, with alcoves off each side. In each alcove stood a zombie, motionless, lightly dusted with frost. She pulled out, and they whispered tactics.

They agreed that Mabel would try turning undead which would either kill the zombies, or scare them back into their alcoves to be casually shot full of arrows, or at least provoke them into attacking the party who could hold the doorway and gang up on one at a time. This plan worked well for the first few seconds – Mabel completely failed to turn them, but they clobbered the first two in the doorway quite successfully. Then they felt that old urge to roll forwards… And roll forwards they did , wading into more and more zombies so that they were eventually fighting five or six at once. The zombies were unarmed but their blows did cold damage. As Solothys, Merlinda’s panther companion found out, they also carried a nasty disease.

Still, the party were more than a match for the zombies. It helped that Griseld’s greatsword did fire damage, which seemed to count for double against these particular creatures. They chewed their way forwards without too much trouble.

At the end of the gallery, three ice zombie lords awaited them.

Each wielded a pair of kamas, with blades that shimmered with cold. As they jerked into life and lumbered towards the adventurers, their spell like abilities manifested as Stoneskin and Spell Mantles[1]. They shrugged off blows and arrows, but heavy pounding from Padreic and Griseld with support and healing from the rest of the party eventually battered their stoneskins off and took them down. Padreic looked the worse for wear at the end, but took it well.

Silence fell. There was nothing left in the room, apart from the remains of the zombies and a few kamas which had lost their cold damage as the zombies died. It was still phenomenally cold, killing the zombies had not lessened the supernatural chill, and they were happy to leave.

That was the last opposition they met, from here on it was exploration and a few traps until they reached the front door. They passed a room filled with metal placards covered in some strange pictographic language. Nobody had any idea how the translate it, and Lafajet’s lore failed to turn anything up for once, but the pictograms seemed to major on ice and storms and snow. Mabel, whose sharp eyes had seen a few crypts before, spotted that while most of these were hundreds of years old one was new, perhaps a year old. It looked like this place had been abandoned for centuries but reoccupied in the last year.

The party really needed to rest but it was just too cold. They found the stairs up, which led into a small tower that seemed well preserved. There was a chain ladder leading further up, but they left it for later and cautiously headed out the heavy stone door. Outside, they were amazed to find themselves back in St Aelax field. They were stood outside an abandoned looking tower in the northwest corner that nobody had really noticed before. The caravan park was just south, people were wandering around the streets, and the party tripped over their pet drunken dwarf who was sleeping in the doorway. He seemed terrified, and rambled something about them walking out of a building with no door. They dismissed his ravings, currently more interested in moving than thinking, and went back to the Temple of Waukeen.

High Priestess Soippi was delighted to receive her artefact. She listened to their story and paid them 5000 gold for retrieving it. She also told them the story of the tower. Apparently, it had once been home to the “Ministry of Frost”, a group of four wizards specialising in cold magic who had been killed 250 years before. It had been sealed up in some way that was meant to trap their spirits (implying that somebody knew there would be spirits to be trapped). Nothing had been heard of the Ministry for 250 years, but when they mentioned the new placard Soippi remembered a minor earth tremor the year before. Perhaps it had opened the entrance from the sewers and somehow freed these spirits.

She speculated that they had possessed the sundry adventurers and ne’er-do-wells – everything from a cleric of Silvanus to a minotaur – who’d wandered in since. If it was the ministry, or rather their spirits, who’d stolen Cool Judgment then their reasons were unfathomable. Apparently the wizards were not noted for their sanity whilst alive, so guessing their motives now would be futile.

She also mentioned that the doors and windows to the building were false, and there was no entrance to it from St Aelax field, but local legend had it that the door somehow became “more real” in extremely cold weather. The party didn’t mention that they’d left the building via the front door.

Griseld seemed to think that they’d earned the other 2000 gold, but Soippi reminded them that they hadn’t cleared the whole building and were only really guessing at the nature of their opposition. The priests of the merchant god drove hard bargains. She offered to pay the other 2000 more if they’d thoroughly clear out the tower and bring back any other evidence they might find. They were welcome to rest in the temple first.

The party sold off their loot, and prepared for their return to the tower.

[1] Meta: Spell Mantle is an NWN level 7 mage spell absorbing the next d8+8 levels of incoming spells. The zombies were rigged to wield kamas with 1d8 additional cold damage, but to drop plain kamas on death.

_Next week, session 2_


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## Lazybones (Jan 24, 2003)

*Re: Session 1, part 3*



			
				Morte said:
			
		

> *The zombies were rigged to wield kamas with 1d8 additional cold damage, but to drop plain kamas on death.
> *




Gah... such a simple idea, why didn't I ever think of that?  I use a _lot_ of tweaked monsters (I liked the ice zombies  ), but this had never occurred to me.  As it is, I often don't engage drops for monsters that occur more than once, otherwise the party inventories fill up fast with loot.  

*yoink!* *yoink!*

Another fun thing to do is to put a permanent VFX effect on a monster at the end of its OnSpawn script.  With creative use of effects, you can effectively get a lot of new "looks" off a tried-and-true model. 

Finally, do you have a script that keeps a log of the conversations in-game, or do you just keep notes/have a good memory?

Great to see a NWN story, looking forward to more. 

Lazy


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## Morte (Jan 24, 2003)

*Scenes from pre-production*

Sion Jr'enesh, twinked out level 20 master rogue used for testing the module logic, casually dispatches the ice zombie lords...


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## Morte (Jan 24, 2003)

*Re: Re: Session 1, part 3*



			
				Lazybones said:
			
		

> *Gah... such a simple idea, why didn't I ever think of that?  I use a lot of tweaked monsters (I liked the ice zombies  ), but this had never occurred to me.  As it is, I often don't engage drops for monsters that occur more than once, otherwise the party inventories fill up fast with loot.*



*

Yep, though I was more concerned about money. Those kamas are worth about 10,000gp each at toolset prices. Dropping six of them in a module where the merchants buy at 50% would have tripled or quadrupled the haul for this subquest. More money than I wanted to give out for the work done. So I made it that their additional cold damage was some supernatural power of the room they were used in, and dropped plain kamas.

I did inch the zombies' challenge ratings up a bit to allow for the fancy weapons, so the players got some recompense via XP rather than GP.




			Another fun thing to do is to put a permanent VFX effect on a monster at the end of its OnSpawn script.  With creative use of effects, you can effectively get a lot of new "looks" off a tried-and-true model.
		
Click to expand...



You haven't met my 14 year old ghost paladin?






Well, she's the 150 year old ghost paladin of a 14 year old half-orc girl who was given as a sacrifice by her village to ensure that the rest of the village could have children. Built as an adult female gnome with a permanent ghostly visage effect in her OnSpawn script. The left hand version is from the toolset and the right hand version is from my module "Peaceful Silence" which I never ran becuase I realised that it needed about 4 DMs.




			Finally, do you have a script that keeps a log of the conversations in-game, or do you just keep notes/have a good memory?
		
Click to expand...



The v1.27 patch added an option for users to log client chat to the "logs\nwclientLog1.txt" file. The setting in the nwnplayer.ini file is:
  [Game Options]
  ClientChatLogging=0

Chnage the 0 to 1 to enable logging. If you have everybody on party talk, as I do in my Tuesday game, you'll get all dialogue.




			Great to see a NWN story, looking forward to more.
		
Click to expand...



Thanks. I'm about half way through your Wild West story, BTW, and enjoying it.*


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## Lazybones (Jan 24, 2003)

*Re: Re: Re: Session 1, part 3*



			
				Morte said:
			
		

> *
> The v1.27 patch added an option for users to log client chat to the "logs\nwclientLog1.txt" file. The setting in the nwnplayer.ini file is:
> [Game Options]
> ClientChatLogging=0
> ...




Thanks, this is one of those bits of information that I never got despite following the boards at NWC and Bioware.  It'll be very helpful.


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## Morte (Jan 26, 2003)

*Re: Session 1 part 2*



			
				Morte said:
			
		

> It was over inside 30 seconds. [....]
> 
> “Ouch!” said Lafajet. “Boy, dat quick” added Griseld.




Pretty easy, huh? A little note... I actually run this game twice, on Tuesdays and Thursdays for two different groups. The Tuesday group are the basis for the story hour (they use different NWN chat settings which give me a better log).

When the Thursday group had this fight, they ended up with four dead, two of whom are still dead on the battlefield, and an unknown number of enemies left standing. The difference? They fought it from the other side of a doorway. 

The Tuesday group used a bit of dialogue to get themselves into the room and into position for a charge. The Thursday group decided to stay outside in the corridor, use the available cover, and to try and draw their enemies out with ranged weapons and spells to gang up on them as they came through the door. That would have been a perfectly good tactic, except that the opposing sorcerer had a scroll of cloudkill. He dropped it on them while a summoned dire spider blocked the doorway and penned them into a couple of 20 foot corridors for several rounds. Then the cleric of Silvanus managed a successful Hold Person on one of their tanks in the cloud, too.

In the end the last two left alive fled back to the sewers, the rogue returning stealthily a bit later to relock/trap the door and reclaim the two bodies on their side of it. They're going to try for the other two next week. I'll have to work out what happened to the bodies in the meantime. Hmm, they left the crypt a bit short of zombies... 

All that difference, for one doorway.


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## Morte (Jan 29, 2003)

I added a map of the ministry dungeon level captured from the NWN toolset into the story of session 1. We played session 2 today, I suppose I better go write it up...


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## Morte (Jan 29, 2003)

*Session 2 part 1*

The party went back into the sewers and decided to search around before returning to the ministry. Here under St Aelax Field, which was mostly an open expanse of cobbles, there were some quite large rooms opening up off the maintenance corridors. They might perhaps have been used for equipment storage once, but they all seemed empty now. … Until, that is, they found one room with a fenced off enclosure at the back. Stood in the enclosure were three or four trolls, who seemed to be keeping warm around a campfire.

The trolls immediately rushed up to the fence snarling and poking their long arms trough the railings to claw at the party. Everybody unlimbered their ranged weapons and opened fire, except Merlinda who went for lightning and Lafajet who, yes, walked up to the bars and started to try and melee two trolls through a set of iron railings with a spiked ball on the end of a chain. He changed his mind quickly, and backed off to fire magic missiles. When Merlinda’s third and final Call Lightning blew the gate off its hinges, it also finished the trolls.

Trolls. They had come to Suzail for a mission to investigate troll attacks outside the city. And here they were in the sewers. What could this mean? They searched around. There was another door on the far side of the room, which led out the back of the troll compound. It opened… right onto the main sewer. Half the party nearly ended up swimming. “I think the trolls may be linked to our quest for Lord Blake” said Mabel.

“Yes, I think they may be linked too” said a voice behind them.

They turned rapidly, and found a man stood in the blasted gateway watching them. He was dark-skinned, wore leather, his head was shaven except for a black topknot, and he held a composite short bow in one hand. 

“And who might you be” asked Lia, as casually as she could.

“You are the group Gert recruited, yes? I recognise you from his descriptions. I am Ahmed. Which of you is Merlinda and which is Lia?”

“I’m Lia. Good to find you at last.” Lia exhaled visibly.






“Well, somebody has been, ah, storing monsters in the sewers for the last week or so. We have no idea why. Or who. Though they may be delivering them by boat, because they always seem to end up in rooms with access to the main sewer channel. But that's for later. I understand you have been working for the temple of Waukeen?”

“That we are” said Mabel.

“Well, you should finish up with that then. When you’re done, come and find me in the cellar at the Old Boot.”

“Oh, will they let us in again?” asked Lia, hopeful. “We are erhm barred sir. Small vomit incident” added Merlinda.

“Yes, I gather you managed to impress Silas. Don't worry, the secret passage in the southwest corner of these sewers leads up to the cellar. You can use it safely today. You won't meet anyone you shouldn't. I’ll have a friend with Silas later, or your bardic friend can try his luck.”

“Luck!?” exclaimed Lafajet, frowning. He fumed quietly as the party said their goodbyes to Ahmed and headed back towards the Ministry of Frost.

_to be continued…_


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## Morte (Jan 30, 2003)

*Session 2 part 2*

Session 2 part 2

Their return to the ministry dungeon was undramatic, apart from the fop failing to persuade them that 2000gp wasn’t enough to enter any smelly sewers[1]. They found no new opposition, hardly any loot, and there was nothing stood in the summoning circle in the sorcerer’s bedroom. They moved upstairs to the ground level, which was empty as before, and Mabel snaked up the chain ladder to the upper floor. She arrived in a small anteroom with a single door and called the others up behind her.

Opening the door disturbed the room’s occupant, a strange lizard like creature sat writing at a desk in the far corner. It looked like a nightmare version of the lizardmen they had fought in the wet caves under the Dalelands and attacked unarmed with blinding speed. It would have given any one of the party very serious trouble, but six working together were too much for it. Once they’d had a chance to catch their breath Lafajet gathered his thoughts and consulted his lore. “That was a Xill. It’s a being from the outer planes, it must have been summoned here.”

It seemed that somebody had summoned the Xill to act as a clerk and scribe, for the floor around its desk was littered with thousands of sheets of parchment all covered in dry records of comings and goings in St Aelax field. In the desk was a summary, which would probably be worth money to the right (or wrong) person. Then somebody sat in the Xill’s chair, and the walls suddenly became transparent to give a panoramic view over St Aelax Field. So that was where it got the information… but what for?

They were finished here. It was time to report in. Soippi at the temple of Waukeen paid them the remaining 2000gp for completing the job, and said she’d put in a good word for them with the merchants’ guild who had some sort of joint project coming up with the Cloaktower. It might mean more work for them.

Then they went to see Ahmed. Everybody started heading for the sewers to use the secret entrance to The Old Boot’s cellar, except Lafajet who headed straight for the inn and dragged the others behind him. He failed to talk his way past the receptionist (insulting her as he walked in the door probably didn’t help), so they went back to the sewers and found the secret entrance.

Ahmed was waiting. He briefed them in greater detail.

"About 25 or 30 miles north of here, my Lord Blake's land borders on land owned by a Lord Wyvernspur. It's near the shore of the Wyvernwater. The two families are old rivals, and it doesn't help that their town mansions face each other across the road. About 3 or 4 weeks back, trolls started raiding my lord's land. His land doesn't border any troll infested areas, so he was suspicious. Rather than wiping the trolls out he has contained them, under pretence of his knights being busy elsewhere, since he wished to investigate whether they were acting for anyone else. But what he needs is someone who can investigate _and follow up on what they find_ without appearing linked to him.”

“Mmmm and that's where we come in?” asked Merlinda.

Ahemed nodded. “Now adventurers are known for tackling trolls for the hell of it, so we thought we'd hire some to do it and pretend they are acting alone. So if the job leads them onto Wyvernspur land, it's adventurers following trolls and not Lord Blake invading his neighbours.”

“Yes, very clever” said Lia.

Ahmed continued. “When they first arrived, the trolls did a lot of damage. They killed several innocent people. That was stopped quickly, and the area was evacuated. Well, evacuated apart from a stubborn halfling called Jack Salt who 'refused' to leave his dock and business. He actually works for us, he's keeping an eye on the place. He's your contact."

“Has he found anything useful?” asked Padreic.

“The mere fact that the trolls have stayed there for 3 weeks without much in the way of booty suggests they have some other source of food. He also has an idea of the general direction of their lair. But mostly I've told him to keep his head down and stay inside his stockade. He doesn't have the sort of firepower you lot have.”

It was three in the morning, but the outer gate was open for a caravan to enter the field. They headed out of Suzail immediately. It took about a day and a half to reach the small stockade on the shores of the Wyvernwater.

_to be continued_

[1] Lafajet’s player asked for a persuade check to persuade the rest of the party not to go in the smelly sewers. One of my more unusual “think of a DC” moments. I went for 30, since they’re a party who habitually finish quests and they’re used to ignoring him whining. He rolled a 7 on top of a skill of 19 and failed.


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## Morte (Feb 1, 2003)

*Session 2, part 3*

They passed the caravan as they headed north, with the merchants looking subdued and the guards looking tense. Apparently it had had a bit of trouble. Things were settling in Cormyr, since the death of King Azoun IV on the battlefield, but there was still plenty of trouble. This lot had been beset by Orc brigands raiding out of the King’s Forest, in a well-timed and well-planned raid using a ballista and a light catapult throwing alchemists fire. There were sinister things afoot in the King’s Forest…

About a day and a half later, they arrived at the shores of the Wyvernwater, to find a burnt out wagon sitting outside a small stockade on the lake’s edge. They approached the gates, which were closed and apparently locked.

“Who is it?” yelled a deep, thickly-accented voice from inside.

“We are here to help” replied Lia, taking her turn at blowing the party’s cover.

“Just travellers, sir” called Merlinda, getting it right for once.

“Well, which is it?” came from inside.

“Both” called Merlinda.

“What do you want?”

“Nothing ... just to be good citizens.” Lia’s voice trailed off as the party realised that, as usual, they had completely forgotten to prepare for a conversation and get their stories straight. About twenty die/raise cycles in the Dalelands had more or less taught them to scout and buff before battles started instead of afterwards, but guarded speech  was going to take a little longer.

The gatekeeper decided that he was obviously dealing with a bunch of helpless wandering lunatics who shouldn’t be allowed out in the wilderness on their own. He obviously needed to get them inside as soon as possible. “What are you talking about? Do you want to come inside or stand out there for the trolls to eat?”

The gatekeeper was revealed as a young Uthgardt barbarian, many many miles from home. He was covered in tattoos with the Elk as a major theme. “You want talk to Jack? He on dock. He talk to shipper. Maybe you best wait for finish.”

He walked down to the shore, where a small ship was tied up to a fairly substantial dock. There was a cabin and a grain silo off to one side, and the area was scattered with crates and barrels and fishing nets. The Wyvernwater was a shipping route as well as a major source of fish and crab.

A halfling in leather armour stood on the dock, talking to the two people on the ship. The Elk tribesman briefly interrupted to say “People. Many. Armed, friendly.”

Jack Salt nodded and resumed talking with the shippers. Merlinda butted in to say hello.

“Just a minute you lot. I’m doing business here. Don’t you know to wait?”

“Me say wait Jack, but they no listen” said the barbarian.

“Oh never mind, I'm finished here anyway.” The halfling said his goodbyes to the shippers and gestured for the party to follow him towards the shack. “So, what do you lot want anyway?”

“Ahmed sent us.”

“Ah.” His manner changed completely.

“He mentioned trolls.”

“Yep, we got a regular bunch of them. A small tribe or war party, anyhow. When they come near here, which they don't do so much since Erdic got a bow, they come from the stream to the north. If you go look up there you'll pick up tracks. Now, as for cover... If anyone asks, you're not working for me but I gave you some information.”

“Of course, we would not dream of saying anything else” smiled Lia. [In the distance, a DM snorted.]

Jack gestured to the two shippers over by the dock. “Those two will be alright, they’re off for a fortnight to get another load of lumber. I diverted the last lot to build the stockade.”

They headed north out of the stockade, and found the stream and the tracks. They led west to a small crag. Mabel scouted the crag and found a cave mouth, to which she lead the party (dispatching a grizzly bear along the way). She cast invisibility and looked inside, then came back to report a long tunnel sloping steeply downwards and opening into a large, wet, chamber.

Meanwhile Merlinda examined the cave with a druid’s eye, and declared it unnatural. It was new, the stone un-weathered. It had seemingly just been dug out of solid rock by something that left only fine dust as evidence of its passage. This was outside their experience, so they cast a frenzy of buff spells (five of the six were casters of some description) and prepared to enter.

_next week, session 3…_


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## Morte (Feb 5, 2003)

*Session 3, part1*

Inside the cave mouth, a tunnel twisted and sloped downwards. Again, the stone was freshly cut and unweathered. Merlinda spotted what looked like claw marks in the stone. Whatever came through here had _big_ claws.

Mabel came back from scouting. “At the end of the tunnel, there’s a doorway opening up into a bigger cave. It’s part flooded, with a causeway through the water. To the south there is a cave with what appears to be an umber hulk.”

“Hope he doesn't smell yeuchy” said Lafajet.

Padreic ignored him. “Tuneller with big claws...makes sense.”

Griseld had her priorities sorted. “OK, we gonna kill it?”

“I hope so, otherwise it kills us” said Merlinda.

“I will try a sound blast on it. Let me cast the spell and try to stun it” said Mabel, ever practical and on the ball. “OK, den we charge?” said Griseld, ever Griseld.

They moved into the cave, and Mabel fired her Soundburst at extreme range. She fired another for good measure as Griseld charged and Lafajet shouted “EEEEEK!”. Padreic was still trying to clamber past the group of adventurers who’d spontaneously decided to stand still and block the doorway in front of him when Griseld killed the stunned and weakened umber hulk with two mighty blows of her greatsword.

The creature’s den was empty. Mabel started to explore along the causeway, spying a doorway into a cave at the other end. She saw a troll wander past the doorway inside the cave and came back to tell the others. “You wanna shoot him and lure him?” asked Gris. “There may be more, we should try to lure them across the bridge” said Mabel.

Lure them they did. Mabel and Lia shared the shoot and run duties. The trolls rushed in clumps of two to four, all that could fit on the causeway, about fifteen or twenty of them in total. There were plain trolls, troll berserkers, troll shamans with fear spells that foundered on Protection from Evil, and a nasty looking troll chieftain that Padreic and Griseld hacked to pieces. They fell to sword and halberd, scimitar and bow, Magic Missile and Lightning, and Merlinda’s favourite Flame Lash. Every troll in the caverns came out to fight two against six at the wrong end of the causeway. Not bright, those trolls.

[DM note: ah, I remember the start of the campaign when I got half a dozen CR 0.25 goblins to kill off half the level 2 party with tactics like this. Those were the days…]

They explored carefully, but met no more opposition. There was a treasure chamber, which turned up a sapphire and a ring of scholars amongst lesser bits and pieces, and a standard issue troll altar which they smashed. And there was a store room, with a set of uniform crates in one corner and piles of junk including wrecked crates in the other. The crates mostly held meat and fish, preserved as trail rations, and in one case potions and trap kits. In one of them Mabel found a note, or rather packing list, wedged in a crack out of sight. It could easily have been left there by accident.



> Crates for SP:
> 
> 4 of meat
> 4 of fish
> ...




They went back to Jack Salt. 

_to be continued…_


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## Morte (Feb 8, 2003)

*Session 3, part 2*

Jack quizzed them, paying particular attention to the crates, the standard manufacture of the trap kits, and the packing list they’d found. It seemed to tell him what he wanted to know, though he wasn’t saying exactly what that was. Lia seemed keen to press the matter, but she got distracted when Lafajet used the final conversation with their immediate employer as an opportunity to try flirting with Merlinda. Jack, who was getting pretty fed up with the party goofing around, sent them back to Suzail to meet Ahmed in the same place as before.

Back in Suzail, they tramped though the sewers over Lafajet’s continued whining and headed through the secret entrance to the Old Boot’s cellars to meet Ahmed. He thanked them, deflected questions about what was happening next, and offered them a choice of payment for the work they’d done and their continued discretion. They had the choice of 10,000 gold in cash, or the same amount as a tab at the Cold Chisel Smithy with the ability to jump the queue for custom work. They chose the latter.

The same notice board that had brought them the job for the temple of Waukeen had an advert from the Cloaktower, home to the mages’ guild in Suzail.



> WANTED
> 
> Lost cat. Contact Mrs Miggins if you find Snookums.
> 
> ...




A guard confirmed that the Cloaktower, the Cold Chisel Smithy, and the famous equipment store known as Adventurer’s Mart were all grouped close together in the city’s shopping district. So off they went to the bright lights of Silvertown, shopper’s paradise for a metropolis of over 40,000.

Merlinda seemed determined to get her enchanted armour, made from carved elm scales hardened with the Ironwood spell, enchanted even further.[1] Three different vendors advised her that raising an enchantment from the second degree to the third would be very slow and expensive and she would get better value by enchanting her more mundane shield or simply buying a ring of protection off the shelf. But she was determined.

Adventurer’s Mart said it was likely to take a fortnight and cost around 5000 gold; they told her to go and see Toilir the Chisel at the Cold Chisel Smithy for a firm quote. She immediately complained that they were trying to rob her, then went into the smithy and said that Adventurer’s Mart had quoted her 4000 gold for an upgrade.

“Balls he did,” said Toilir, a formidable female dwarf, “he said I will examine it and give you a quote like he always does”. The store and the smithy had a long working relationship, and had seen more than a few adventurers before. Toilir had heard this line so many times before that she didn’t even throw the party out, just examined the armour and told Merlinda to come back in the morning for a firm quote.

Over the road in the Cloaktower, they enquired about the job advert. The receptionist told them to “talk to Hilldale across the library. He's the, ah, big one.”

Hilldale was an ogre mage. “Big” didn’t really capture him. He was almost twice their height. He greeted them politely, and introduced his halfling apprentice, as they did double and triple takes. Griseld cautiously asked “Hey dere... you a friendly ogre...?”

“Usually, yes, why?”

Some of the party felt that they needed to sit down. Eventually, Mabel questioned him about the mission. Meanwhile, Lafajet mewled over something or other in the background and the party chattered and missed half of what the ogre said. But Mabel, who was only adventurring as a sideline, was her usual professional self and took notes as Hilldale told the story:

“For the last few months, people have been vanishing whilst travelling through portals. They usually seem to be on a route that crosses the northwest corner of the Dragonmere. Interrupting a portal transfer is... difficult. An interesting phenomenon... But I digress. Now, there is a tower that has appeared suddenly at the west end of the Dragonmere. It wasn't there six months ago, which implies magical construction for something that size. It has a shining light on top which is causing shipwrecks when it’s mistaken for a sign of safe harbour. That’s how we heard about it, via the merchants’ guild. We suspect that the tower, which is clearly magical, is somehow related to the portal problem.”

So the guilds of mages and merchants were looking to hire a party of adventurers to sail to the tower, check out what was going on, and put a stop to it if it turned out to be nefarious. After Hilldale questioned them a little about their abilities, and they questioned him a little about the fee, agreement was reached. They were to sail on the morrow.

_End of session_

[1] Under the ironwood cosmetics, Merlinda’s armour is scale mail +2 which is worth 3024gp at NWN toolset prices. Scale mail +3 costs 6912gp. Add a fee for working with ironwood instead of normal metal, and I planned on a firm quote of 4500gp for the upgrade. Hence the “finger in the air” estimates of “about 5000 gold and two weeks” from the other merchants. For 3656gp she could have bought a ring of protection +2 off the shelf, which would do her twice as much good. I’m not sure if Merlinda’s player is roleplaying extreme fondness for her unusual armour, or she simply hadn’t realised how expensive +3 gear is compared to +2.


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## Morte (Feb 8, 2003)

*And that's a wrap...*

Well, that's the end of the story hour since I'm bringing the campaign to a close.

As I said, this was my first attempt at running a module completely of my own construction, rather than adapting those written by others. I only did this because I was forced to -- the NWN modules available off the shelf all have canned dialogue and scripted plot logic. Scripted modules are no fun to DM, and less fun to play since they pretty much prevent any improvisation.

The only people building freeform NWN modules are DMs making them for their own use. Now that I've tried it, I've found that building the stuff from scratch just takes too long and I don't want to do the work to keep up a couple of weekly campaign games. So I've decided to call it a day for the campaign, which of course means an end to the story hour.

Oh well, I got them from level 1 up to level 8 or 9...


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## Lazybones (Feb 10, 2003)

Nice story, thanks for adding some exposure for NWN...

The obvious solution to your current dilemma would be to share with those aforementioned DMs who have built open-ended, non-scripted settings.  If only there was some place where such folks congregated, perhaps with some sort of built-in scheduling service to help find games... 

I just finished an underdark campaign that had a default "plot," but which had no major scripted NPCs, and there was a ton of places for improvisation/plot twists.  As soon as I get off my lazy butt I'm going to upload it to the Vault, and I'm sure there are other DM/builders who have done the same and wouldn't mind working with others to increase the number of good campaigns being run out there. 

Lazy


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## Morte (Feb 10, 2003)

Lazybones said:
			
		

> *Nice story, thanks for adding some exposure for NWN...
> 
> As soon as I get off my lazy butt I'm going to upload it to the Vault, and I'm sure there are other DM/builders who have done the same and wouldn't mind working with others to increase the number of good campaigns being run out there.*






Actually, I do share and even document(!) my DMO modules, and they are occasionally run by other DMs at "a certain site". I'll be putting Ruins of Netheril DMO up once I've run a party through v2 for sanity testing. Eventually I'll also document "The Blackrock Brothers" and upload it as well (my DMO one shot, converting a P&P module by Keven Simmons).

But as far as I'm aware, nobody has documented and released anything in the DMO line for a party of 6 at around level 9, which is what I need right now. Hell, hardly anyone _plays_ at level 9 at NWC...


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