Roger Le Douche, 2nd level Paladin
Pillsen, 2nd level Magic User
Jop, 2nd level Frogling
Ffraid, 3rd level Cleric (of the Old Gods)
and Slimey, 3rd level Thief
The session began with Slimey and the gang meeting with Halfdan the Black, resident wizard who lives just outside of Nightwick Village. Slimey had heard that Halfdan had a hatred for the Bishop of Lichegate and wanted to share his recent antics with him. Halfdan was rather aghast that all of these feats had been performed by one man, as the bishop and his men believed them to be committed by a veritable gaggle of satanists, or so Halfdan's sources said. Halfdan offered to identify the bishop's ring, though he admitted it would take some time. Still he gave Slimey a huge discount due to the terror Slimey had wrought on Lichegate.
It seems that Halfdan originally operated out of Lichegate itself, but the bishop drove him away due to his need to exhume corpses. Halfdan assured the party this was just to get a better understanding of the body, but the party seemed unconvinced. While Roger was off on other business, Slimey decided that he would begin a campaign to make the bishop more terrified than ever. After some debate with the other pagan PCs, and many Life of Brian references, the Slimey decided to spread the acronym PLF (Pagan Liberation Front) on anything he could. Of course this was not a "movement" yet as it only consisted of one man.
I say it only consisted of one man because even the other pagan PCs seemed to abhor the idea of getting involved in politics. It will be interesting to see what happens with this in future sessions.
At this point those who were discontent with the idea went to join Roger, who was near a gathering in the village commons. Apparently Lord Echard had been called back to Lichegate to route out the vile pagans who were harassing the good bishop. His departure was met with nonchalant-ness by the party; however, Slimey, who was now done with his meeting with Halfdan concocted a plan.
He tricked Lord Eckhard into believing that his horse needed to be shod, and offered to do it himself. Using slight of hand he made it appear that his lie was the truth, and took the horse to the dumbest blacksmith in town. After teaching the smith two letters (P and L, he already knew F), he had the smith make a PLF mark on the shoes so that it would be left along the muddy road everywhere Lord Eckhard went. He explained to the smith that it was for Paladin Lord Fitzgerald, which he seemed to buy.
After all this, the party headed back into the abbey, much to the relief of those players who didn't wish to get involved in the political arena. They debated whether or not they should go tangle with the Wight that had been created from their fallen comrade several sessions back, since they now had a staff of power, but Roger's player believed that none of it's offensive capabilities would have any affect on the creature.
After some hints from me, they realized that they had little hope of ever "clearing out" the first level and since they were beginning to outpace the challenges it posed they should head down to the second. The felt that first they should go and see if the zombie painters whom they had given paint in an earlier session had actually painted anything. Unfortunately their route was blocked by a number of shadows, six to be exact. Five of them appeared to be the current party, but one looked like the long dead Mo'ongo who had fallen into the Swamp along with his magical sword.
They decided to beat feet rather than fight them, since Jop's player assured them they didn't want to close into melee and they have ranged magical weapons. He also assured Ffraid's player that her turn undead ability would not work on these strange figments created by the Abbey. They through torches down at a choke point to discourage the shadows from following, which seemed to work.
Eventually they found the stairs they were looking for and began exploring the initial corridors of the 2nd level. They seemed to expect monsters around every corner, but found none. We had to wrap it up just as they had explored the initial area due to the late hour.
This was an interesting session. For the first time DMing for this group I saw the oft talked about problem of monster memorization. While one of the players had earlier questioned how a monster worked, he was far more familiar with 3e and was therefore incorrect. Now, the players did not test any of their theories in the game, so they could be wrong, but one of them knew what was going on because he had used the creature in his own LL game recently. I must admit that this makes me wonder if I should run Uz or the Underworld for these guys just to make everything a bit less clear cut.
While we did decide that we'll pick up immediately where we left off next time, the week after that or so I'm going to be running a DCC playtest to see how it goes. One of my players is very interested in the game, and I want to put her through her paces myself. I'll probably be using the Village of Hommlet and still have it be set in the Dark Country, but we'll see how that plays out.
Now what you should do is have a wandering paladin called Lord Fitzgerald show up in town.
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