Thug Muggers in the City 9/23/23
Table Talk:
A note I gave the players on magic items:
When thinking about items you might want to find or buy i would encourage you to look at a few possibilities
1. Go online and look at magic items that are cannon and are Common, Uncommon, or Rare. Dndbeyond has a good search resource for this.
2. Look at spells, feats, traits and abilities. I am probably willing to bend things around a little bit to make items that grant these since they already have established and easy to find rules.
3. Pinterest, Reddit and other social media groups. If it comes from another long running campaign and has had a bit of play testing i'm probably willing to consider it as long as it has good detailed information attached to it.
4. Video game items. Just so long as you can find a wiki page or other codified information for them, so i can have detailed specs to look over.
5. Going back to day 0 when we were just getting coffee and chatting about character ideas in 2021. For non-magical items and gear i will always reward specificity. Feel free to look up unique types of weapons and gear and i will reward that imagination.
6. Item card decks. Any local comic book store will have them, either WotC D&D 5e or Pathfinder or even the generic packs. These are all good resources for standard ideas with details.
Keep in mind this isn't a guarantee of getting something, it might not work in our world, or be game breaking for what i have going on, or just be too OP or too expensive for you. But i'm happy to consider any ideas you bring to the table, and i'm always willing to reward you for taking the time to look at things outside of our sessions.
If you are wondering why i have a preference for established items or things specifically from Wizards of the Coast D&D 5e canon, i can assure you it has nothing to do with brand loyalty. I just know that those stats have been carefully weighed and play tested inside the system we are using, so i know that they aren't way off base for everything else and won't knock the gameplay out of a fair balance.
The players asked about the other 3 ways out of the locked room that i had come up ahead of time. So here they are: 1) Cypress could go through the rat holes and get help, 2) the collapsed sewer pipe did lead up to the first level, but with a lot of crushing body horror and Con saves, 3) the smoldering acid in the cauldron could burn through the doors and the barricade. Just like the options they did find, all of these had their own costs and risks.
“Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”
-Red —Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone, “This Is How You Lose the Time War: 1”
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿
Chapter 14: ‘Cause I’m Back, Back in the City again!
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿 Chapter 14: ‘Cause I’m Back, Back in the City again!
Once again the ceiling shakes and rumbles, and the party looks up in apprehen-
Actually everyone, make a perception check. 19. 8. 6. 1. With a critical failure, Ari has forgotten where the secret door is, or what a ladder is. See Ari, a ladder is like a kind of vertical staircase, only you put your feet inside the stairs like a…
Rae looks up at the ceiling in apprehension. “I think we need to get out of here.”
“Why the rush?”
“Just a feeling,” Rae looks back at her friends, “it feels just possible that someone like Zaanth would leave a second trap in case the Rat King didn’t finish us off, doesn’t it?”
“Now that you mention it…”
Rae continues, “something that would also bury us so that no one would ask questions?” As she finishes talking, the roof shakes again, this time loosening some dust. A single brick falls to the floor.
Now with an air of urgency, Cypress turns to the gargoyle. “You said you can teleport us, right?”
The gargoyle makes a jerky nod.
“When you do, will you teleport with us?”
Another jerky nod. “I dunnot wish to beee crushed.” It says in a flat tone.
More dust falls between the ceiling cracks, and Sorin looks at the wooden statue, “Okay, Gregario, can you put us at-”
“Dat is not my naame!”
“Okay, but can you put us in one of the side streets by the grand court?”
“Yush.”
Ari chimes in, “What about the secret ladder, shouldn’t we find out what we can?”
As more bricks fall, Rae grabs Ari’s hand and tugs her towards the secret door, “You three teleport, we’ll take the ladder, and meet up once we know where it leads.”
With a ‘pop’ Cypress, Sorin and the Gargoyle disappear. Rae pulls Ari into the tiny closet. “Oh hey I remember this place…” Rae starts climbing and tells her to close the secret door just in case. Then, Ari climbs up behind her… moving one hand and one foot at a time from rung to rung…
There is a moment of silence in the room and the roof shivers again. The shaking sends clouds of dust raining down in between the bricks. WIth an immense crash the ceiling caves in, sending rubble, vines, and rat bodies in all directions.
There is a bone rattling wet roar from this new invader. Surrounded by falling sewer rat corpses, the Large Gelatinous Cube shakes with gooey rage. It is half again as big as the others the Thug Muggers have fought, and its normally pale blue flesh is stained blood red!
In the little alley behind the Grand Court, just north of the Faereck Church dust appears and swirls together, in the shape of Cypress and Sorin. No sooner than they appear a man in somewhat dirt clothing pushes past them, bumping into Sorin.
“Watch it, weirdos, make a hole,” he barks and pushes his way on down the street, leaving a wake of angry mutters.
Sorin immediately pats himself down, making sure nothing was taken off of him. When he’s satisfied that the man didn’t take anything (and that he’s too far away to hear) Sorin cusses and calls the stranger a few foul names, then turns to his shorter companion. “Where to now?”
“I think that we should head to the constabulary and see if we can talk to Bostra.” Cypress says ignoring Sorin’s cowardly road rage and tucking the gargoyle awkwardly into his bag.
After climbing for maybe ten full minutes, Rae and Ari have finally reached the top of the ladder. Above them is a simple wooden hatch with an iron handle. Rae slowly pushes it open. She pushes harder when it doesn’t open. Then she braces herself on the ladder and pushes harder still. Somewhere on the edge of the hatch a piece of wood cracks, then breaks, and the hatch flies up and open with a loud wooden thwack.
Cautiously, both Thug Muggers climb up into this new rooms and take a look around. We’re in an office somewhere in the back of a much larger building, and it looks as if it has lain unused for quite a long time. A thick layer of dust covers everything in here like an early December frost or a thin coating of gray snow. The hatch opens in front of a simple wooden desk with an out of date calendar on it, two lines of books on either corner. The walls are simple wood and plaster with some shelves built into the one on our left side. Some of the shelves have books, but most have little trinkets and dead plants in clay pots.
When Rae emerges, she is facing the desk and then stands up to look at the dusty windows behind it. At first she thinks there must be a curtain over the window, until a puff of air dislodges some dust and she can see the sunlight shining through. Rae wastes a crit’ 20 one cleaning the window. She blows away clumps of dust in the corner and looks out. The area beyond isn’t exactly a street, but it isn’t exactly a back alley either. She can see a few people walking back and forth, but it's mostly unpopulated, and unlike the other places she’s been in the city, she doesn’t see any stalls of people trying to sell anything.
Ari carefully climbs out of the hole and carefully sets the hatch back on the floor. With whatever piece of wood broke now, it doesn’t latch in place, so Ari grabs a book off the desk and wedges it in the gap so the hatch still looks closed at a glance. With a high Stealth Check she gets right up to the door in the wall across from Rae and the window. It’s a somewhat fancier door, with wooden slant blinds on it. She creeps up to them and peers out…then rolls her second critical failure of the day on her Perception Check. Back at the ladder, the book tilts, then slides into the crack and falls. The hatch swings back against its own hinges and bangs loudly into the ladder. After a long moment the quiet echo comes back up the long hole.
* A totem or demi god for constables, townguards, gatekeepers and city watch. It is a statue of a guard with a simple dented breastplate and a scared face (sometimes seen with an eye patch) and an ever glowing cigar in the corner of his mouth. It is hard to see his boots though all the vines slowly creeping up his legs. The story goes that this was the watchman of an ancient town, and when the people there gave up on common decency and all the other watchmen left, he stood vigil over the town day and night and reminded them of their humanity. He stood that way for so long that the vines grew up around him, and the people forgot his name, but remembered to be decent to one another when his stony gaze fell upon them. The superstition says that a smoke lit from his cigar is bad luck to your enemies, and that a LOST notice set at his feet will always see the lost item returning home.
Cypress and Sorin walk into The Tower of The Constabulary and are taken aback. When each of them was here last the main floor was calm and empty. When Cypress had come in, the Constable in charge was almost falling asleep. Now there are several people crowding the long counter near the center of the room and there are four constables in uniform talking to everyone. There are some people writing on boards tacked to the walls, but strangely there isn’t anyone over by the statue of the Viny Watchman*. There is also an officer leading someone down the stairs to the cells. Cypress looks up at Sorin; in a commotion like this, height will always be the advantage.
Sorin is looking around to find someone in charge of this chaos when he sees an opening at the counter. “Deep breath, you can do this,” he reassures himself. Then he assertively steps forward with his chest out and his best I-am-important-and-supposed-to-be-here face on. “We need to speak with Bostra.”
The guard sighs and finishes rocking a wooden stamp on a sheet of paper, then looks at Sorin. “And you are…?” he asks, leaving the question hanging in the air, open for interpretation… or accusation…
“Eep,” Sorin squeaks and looks down at his companion, “Cypress.”
The glare the Cypress gives the wizard could be used as a pilot-light for volcanic eruptions.
They turn to the guard and begin, “We’ve been working with Bostra for a couple weeks now. I don’t know how official it is, or if everyone knows, but it’s on a secret project underground.” At this the constable gives a oh-good-more-crazies look and jots something on her paper. “We were almost assassinated by a Rat King,” The sides of the constables mouth twitch. “ and we think the frog man with all the pockets in charge of the sewers was kidnapped.” The constable rolls her eyes without even looking up. “And it was a half dwarf-orc named Zaanth that used magic to dress up like Officer Bostra and tried to kill us after she sat on the frog and kidnaped him.”
Yeah Cypress, I’m not gonna lie, that all sounds pretty insane… and I spent days of college not going to class because of all the hallucinating so… I think you’re gonna have to roll for me.
The constable looks up and sees Cypress’s very lucky Persuasion Check - I mean - sees the official Nibiru Constabulary necklace hanging out of the cleric’s tunic. It’s one of the kind that they’d used to mark the Thugs in the sewers, and it’s enough to get this watchwoman to at least think it over. “You said this, ‘Zanty’ was pretending to impersonate a Constable?” She asks wearily.
“Yes.” Cypress’s answer is flatly monotone.
With a half concealed sigh, the guard stands up, “wait here,” and walks up the stairs behind the desk.
“What was that?” Someone on the other side of the door asks in a loud voice.
“Shit,” Ari hisses and ducks beneath the blinds.
“Did you hear that?”
“I heard, like a thunk.”
“I thought I heard a ‘thwack’ earlier, but I wasn’t sure.”
“Sounded like a banging to me.”
“Yeah like a door or something.”
“Come on!” Rae whispers to her half-demon friend, waving toward the window. 18 Strength and 17 Stealth. She slides the window up and open to just the width of Ari’s horns, and slides outside.
Ari dashes to the window and rolls out onto the short grass below. She reaches up and pulls the window closed. It sticks in its ancient unused runs and she has to tugs hard. Also, 18 Strength and 17 Stealth. The window comes down hard. Just before it bangs into the sill, Ari pushes it back up, leaving it open a crack but stopping it from making any noise.
The last thing they hear form inside before the window shuts is a couple of voices:
“What, you mean in the back?”
“That old office? I haven't seen anyone, but I can look…”
Rae and Ari look around at this unfamiliar back alley.
They step onto the little path and try to blend in. Rae draws something in the dirt with her staff, and Ari hums some popular old tavern bardsong.
We’re safe now… but where are we?
After a few minutes of waiting, a much more official-looking guard comes down the stairs and walks up to Sorin and Cypress. He-
Sorin: “Is he hot?”
The entire table: *groans*
Sure, i guess he is. He’s wearing one of those breastplates that's stylized to look like muscles.
Sorin: “Nice!”
The entire table: *groans*
“You two say you were working with Bostra?”
“YesSir,wewere,Sir-Imean‘are’Sir.Imean‘Aye’... Sir.” Sorin blurts out all in one breath. Causing everyone in a 50 foot radius rolls their eyes.
“Follow me.” The guard says, and he places his gloved hand on the counter. When he does, the section in front of Sorin and Cypress fades out of existence, and he waves them through with his other hand. Once they step through the counter, or rather the not-counter where the counter was, the officer picks his hand back up and the counter there shifts back into existence.
The officer leads the Thug muggers up a couple flights of stairs. The stairs curl around the outer wall of the tower and out the window we can see the ground falling further and further below us. They are stopped a few landings up at a floor with just a few simple chairs and a door. The constable opens the door and walks our two heroes inside.
This room beyond is a spacious office with 3 windows lining the edge. A man stands on the other side of the desk from us looking out the middle window. He nods with his back to us and the other officer retreats out the door, leaving Sorin and Cypress alone with this man.
The room seems familiar somehow to Sorin, though Cypress has never seen it. But this time it smells like sweat, cheap food, and exhaustion. We can see the sticks and hinges of a camp bed poking out from behind the desk, and a sack in the corner by the door that might be days old stale clothes. Clearly this man has been working here through many days and nights.
The man at the window turns around dramatically.
Sorin, make a knowledge roll. 4. Okay nevermind, you don’t recognize him.
This little alley-street runs east-west and neither Ari, nor Rae can see a path to a bigger street.
“Which way?” Ari whispers.
“Let’s go East and see if we come to a larger road.”
“Got it.” Ari starts walking west.
Rae follows and whispers, “I said we should go East.”
“Oh ‘East’! I thought you said we should go WEAST’.” Ari says and the two burst out laughing.
Down this alley-street, we come to a little widening where it turns North-South. It’s the gap between a few buildings, and while there still aren’t any people out selling anything, there are some people standing around. Mostly, they’re just taking a break and standing in the sunlight, or eating, but a few are talking to each other, and one is even batting out an old rug - oooooo scene dressing!
Ari and Rae jig north and then continue west until they come to an open plaza surrounding an unfamiliar church. This time the streets are thronged. There are people selling goods and blessings in the spaces closest to the big church building. There are people driving carts and pushing barrows in the middle lane around the church. And here on the edge of the plaza, there are hawkers of all kinds fanning the steam from good smelling food to tempt passers by.
Both our heroes' stomachs grumble and they look around. In this little corner there are a handful of small vendors with carts or trays, but there are also two bigger stalls. One with a yellow and red canvas awning, and one with a green and white awning. With a shrug, they head towards the white and green stall.
The man at the window turns around dramatically. “I’m Captain Gaibon,” the man says, looking down at Sorin and Cypress. “I met Sorin some time back when all this started, but you must be Cypress.” He extends a hand and motions them to sit. The chairs in front of the desk are custom built and look almost like stairs, they’re clearly made so that peoples of various races and heights can all sit comfortably at the desk and remain roughly at eye level with the captain.
Sorin takes a seat, but Cypress remains standing. “If it’s all the same, I’d rather stand,” he says, “I recently fell into an awkward trap when someone I didn't know asked me to take a seat.”
Gaibon thinks this over, then steps around the desk and sits in the chair himself, facing the other two in a triangle. “So, you say someone was impersonating Bostra. For how long?”
Cypress and Sorin exchange a glance, then Sorin answers, “Well Sir, that's hard to tell isn’t it? I mean if we’d known it was an imposter, we wouldn’t have worked with them…and they wouldn’t have really been a good imposter. So maybe just the last time we saw him… or maybe for a while now.”
Gaibon rubs his unshaven chin and nods. “When you did figure it out, how did you know it wasn’t him?”
“The food,” they both answer at once, then Cypress adds, “and not liking the cigar.”
“Can you explain?” The man asks with a raised eyebrow.
“The imposter was cooking stew. Just normal stew. Chicken or maybe turkey and potatoes, no weird colors, no weird smells, nothing weird in the pot, just stew. Every other time we’ve seen Bostra he’s eating some weird combination of those campaign meals that-”
Gaibon smiles and waves Cypress to a silence. “I believe you, I believe you, but let's keep any of my friend’s eating habits unofficial shall we? I’d hate to have to look into anything suspicious about certain military ration supplies…”
“So when did you last see him?”
Cypress and Sorin fill in the captain on the last few days, on Zaanth and the Rat King, and on everything they’ve done since they last left the real Bostra… At least they thought it was the real Bostra then…did he eat anything? I can’t quite remember…
The stall with the green and white awning has a banner of a bearded hipster merman and the name “Astral Deer” written around it. The merman and the circle with the name are also painted in the same 00704A almost pine green and white.
A lady grabs a cheap transmuted mug from the elven … bartender? Yeah i guess bartender. Somewhere in the stall, a machine lets out a hiss of steam and the lady and her friends walk off down an alley, complaining.
Ari and Rae walk up to the sill and are immediately intimidated by the bartender. She’s a fun ‘artsy’ looking elf with several piercings in her tall ears and a few in her nose. She’s sporting a multi-colored pixie haircut and wearing a green cloth apron with the Astral Dear logo painted on it. In a bouncing sing-song voice she asks, “Hi, welcome to Astral Deer, what can we get made for you?”
Ari and Rae are trying to decipher the unusual words on the chalkboard sign, ‘latte’, ‘mocha’, ‘frap’, and feeling the people behind them in line getting angry with impatience. Rae points to the orders she thinks she knows, “Uh, a peach, uh, coffee, and a spinach sandwich.” She hands over the 2 gold and leaves Ari in this strange intimidatingly hip lion’s den.
Ari points at the menu and blurts “Piepop, and PSL,” panicking and putting her 2 gold on the stall’s counter.
“Oh yeah sure, those are super popular right now. Coming right up.”
After waiting at the counter for a minute Ari takes a sip of her Physical Save Latte. It’s very sweet with a hint of pumpkin, and she gains a +1d4 to add to any Physical Saving Throws (strength dexterity, perhaps constitution, any physical attack, etc).
When Rae goe to take a chug of hers, she burns her tongue. Then after blowing on it and sipping slowly, she can feel the energy rushing into her, giving her an extra +5 speed for 1 hour.
Yes, i put a Starbucks in the game and gave it mechanics. This is who i am, what did you expect?
“I’ve read Bostra’s reports on your working down in the sewer,” Gaibon concludes as Sorin stares at him with simp-eyes, “But I haven't had a report for a day or so.” After a pause he asks, “So, what’s your next step here?”
Cypress thinks this question over waffling his hand back and forth. “Next we need to have a talk with our contact in the Church of Shadows.”
Gaibon looks taken aback, “A contact inside the Church? Bostra never mentioned…”
At this, Sorin glares at Cypress, rage welling up in him at the fear of his dearest friend being turned over to the law for questioning.
“And who is this contact?”
With a thoughtful expression, Cypress looks at Sorin’s angry-scared expression, then turns to Gaibon and rolls a nat’ 20 persuasion. “Who they are is confidential, and I doubt it’s very important. I suspect that’s why Bostra left it out of his reports.”
Gaibon is momentarily perplexed at being blocked like this. But Cypress refuses to bend or look away. “I see. Alright then.” he stands back from his desk and we get the clear suggestion that the important part of this meeting is over, but with more to come in the near future. “How long will you four be above ground in the City?”
“A day or two.”
“Where are you staying?”
“The Nort Gate.”
He smiles, “I should have guessed.” He picks up some papers and moves them from one stack into another, “I’ll send a constable to you when I know a little bit more. We’ll meet again in a day or two and-”
“How will we know?”
“What?”
“How will we know they’re your constables when they come for us?”
Gaibon sighs and looks up at the ceiling. “I wasn’t completely sure at first, but, yes, you must definitely be Sorin. Well Sorin, they’ll have uniform breastplates that don’t fit too well, a regulation City of Nibiru armory sword, and a badge. Oh and they’ll be fairly thick headed,” he says as an afterthought.
In a timid scolded-by-zaddy voice Sorin goes on, “It’s just that we’ve had some difficulty lately… you know with people pretending to be someone we were expecting…”
“That’s actually a very good point…” then standing up and showing them the door, Gaibon concludes the meeting, “I’ll see you in the next day or two, don’t let me detain you.”
Back on the street, Sorin and Cypress use their Dash Mobile sending stones to touch base with Ari and Rae.
Ari and Rae have been wandering north for a bit now and have come to an all too familiar well near the center of town. Raelle-the-no-longer-prisoner is furious to see graffiti in several spots around this exact well. One shows the familiar symbol we keep seeing on the Thug’s notes and says “He will rule!”, one says “Bango Skank” and one with a crown around an upraised middle finger.
Ari answers Cypress while Rae shouts at the well. With a brief exchange they agree to meet at the Nort Gate Inn, and Ari starts dragging her angry friend up the street and away from the offending well.
We’ve done the freaky desk worker bit a few times now, so we’ll skip that. The shared room on the brown side costs 8 Sp and as soon as they get in, they all immediately bathe. I made everyone roll a Con save from the bath, but they all got over 15, so don’t worry about why. Mwahahaha.
Ari spends some time before laying down to rest decoding, practicing, and learning the spell she found. It takes a few tries and she quickly learns to try it in the fireplace. The practice is fruitful, but it leaves her feeling exhausted enough that even her horns ache. She has a grasp of it now though, and is pretty sure she can do it again in the sewers.
Cypress spends most of his rest working with the Gargoyle. Learning its names and getting familiar enough to start bonding with it. It doesn’t seem to mind the idea of being a sort of familiar or companion. But, we just met so let's take things a little slow okay?
Sorin is spending time attuning himself with the Immovable Ball that Pulgrok dropped. He is casting his mind into it to feel the runic inscriptions carved there like circuit boards inside its shell. He slowly redefines the origin points inside this complex device and learns how to coax the magic, and operate the channels there to use it.
Rae is bored.
Cypress is talking to a block of wood, Sorin is playing with a ball, and Ari is just casting the same spell in the fireplace over and over.
She walks out of the room and down to the lobby. She walks over to the fancy model of the city (a 3d map like a diorama). After spending some time studying it, she figures out that the office Ari and her came up into, is a building attached to the Artificer's Mall. She pumps he fist and runs upstairs to tell the others.
Cypress is talking to a block of wood, Sorin is playing with a ball, and Ari is getting ready for bed.
With a sigh, Rae sits down and decides to work on decoding another part of Zaanth’s note.
And so we leave our loveable huggable kneecapping Thug Muggers here for the night. Turned in early for the first time in weeks, getting a long rest and preparing for a day of shopping and clue chasing ahead. Sweet dreams… I hope nothing bites you while you sleep… Mwahaha….
“Actually, it was more of a street cafe under a ragged awning than a restaurant, but that was fine because Blindboy and me weren't exactly dressed for one of those swazz places where the waiters hold their heads as if they're carrying a drip on the end of their nose.”
-HotWire –Garry Kilworth, “Cybercats: Chapter 9”
Table talk:
A note about the Gargoyle. This didn't matter much this time since we were just carrying it around as a sort of rescue, but now that Cypress has started the process to make it a familiar, i want to give a warning. The gargoyle will be upsetting to people if they see it moving in public due to its creepy stop motion nature and how little people understand of the species / how rarely they get seen. Similar to Sorin’s will rolls with Akris, Cypress will have to roll Animal Handling with the gargoyle at first to get it to do things until they build a rapport. The gargoyle is very slow on its own with a 10 ft movement walking or flying, but it is very smart and has some other exciting abilities.
The spell that Ari learned is “Chromatic Caltrop”, a homebrew version of Chromatic Orb. Instead of creating a large orb effect the spell is reduced to a handful of 1 inch high pyramid shaped caltrops. They have a save DC equal to the casters Spell Save DC + 1 for every spell level used. They last for 1 hour, and do 1d8 damage per spell level used to cast.
