Belswick 18: blood sports

Another session via Skype, with a separate laptop calling in to run the battlecam. Worked fine for us, except that I couldn't see all the players' video feeds and the sound kept glitching on me. Looking back, I hardly remember that. Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds? Maybe at some point. Skype is fine for now, and allows me to keep playing with paper minis and Dwarven Forge terrain.

OUR PACK OF MISCREANTS

Currently entered into the Devil's Ring pit fight as the "Children of Winter". We'll see if it sticks.

• Tilbørd "Tilly" Miven Björnsson, human bard and knowledge priest of the Authority. Survivability of a wet paper towel and arguably the most dangerous of the entire party. Fervent maker of deals with warlock spirits, lich-priests, devils, ghouls, faeries and more
• Mike, human druid with mild psychic powers after a nightmarish cult sacrificed his entire village to raise their star god
• Shams, dwarf fighter/arcane knight from the Principality of Stone, opening a trade route with Belswick now that there's war brewing with the southern kingdom Arrayne
• Mr. Lomin Mor / Lady Olga, Elf from Arrayne who has been impersonating the (deceased) Lady Olga of the fief one over
• Guy, human diviner wizard with mild psychic powers after a nightmare-filled youth as heir to a lord in Arrayne

LAST SESSION

Last time in Belswick: Three months of winter, with the characters each taking care of their own affairs. Tilly undertook a pilgrimage to get his soul de-necrotified, Mike cut deals to regrow his left arm, Lomin/Lady Olga disguised their magic sword and arranged a marriage to head off a challenge to their rulership, Shams met with local rulers to talk about continued trade with the Dwarf Principality of Wild Stone, and Guy got information about his missing sister.

The group met up again at the winter festival of Candle Night / Devil's Dance. They got ready for the noble tournament, browsed the Candle Market and stepped into the illegal and possibly heretical Devil's Ring pit fight. The warm-up round saw the party take out a vicious manticore.

HIGHLIGHTS

I've asked the group to send in their high and low points for the session. Find the below by character name, as I'm keeping player names private. First, some comments that really made me proud:

Tilly: It was 'just an evening at the arena', but it had social encounters, background, depth, challenges, winnings and consequences.

Shams: Kick-ass setup by the DM. Session had everything from battle to social to background, with heartbreak and mystery, seriously cool!

Mike: Good setting of the scene by DM, never dull, always something happening.

THIS SESSION

"All contestants participate of their own free will", as the halfling barker Rennis keeps saying. The party druid seems relieved that any beasts they face in the Devil's Ring aren't forced to fight. Only later does it sink in that the barker was talking more about the adventurers stepping into the deadly fighting pit!

Shams: The best thing about the fair are clearly the snacks, and the wares on sale were really amazing. So much to see and do, when is the next one?

DM: you tell me!

Overview: are the ruined towers and cave bigger somehow than last night & session? On the night of Devil's Dance, they sure are.

PRE FIGHT

• Some shopping at Master Hildebrand's in Walden town. Mike orders a Bag of Beans, Guy buys a Wand of Binding.
• Shams asks about Lionel the Raven's magic ability boosting tattoos.
• Mike and Lomin take out bets on their group winning the Devil's Ring.
• Tilly is eyeing the sleepy looking cleric on the VIP balcony.

I'm getting a lot of mileage out of Dwarven Forge's mountain cliff pack.

The cave face was a handy way to screen my minis from the webcam. I shouldn't have bothered, the resolution was so grotty :)

Lomin's highlights: Shishkebabbing 2 heads with 1 arrow, leaving the goat’s head bleating miserably. Also seeing Mike jumping for a Frost Giants shield, like: What!? (Gonna miss that char.) Low point: Mike dying, good death though.

Guy highlights: fireballs :-), Tilly almost getting possessed, giant fight. Low points: Mike dying. Seeing a Vrock and a Slaad step into the ring. We're not ready for that.

Mike's highlight: Tilly trying to sell his soul, cool part of the session. Also: poor Mike, but great exit and we will meet again!

DEVIL'S RING SYSTEM

I'd planned out a three round structure against increasingly difficult opponents. Last group(s) standing split 2000 gp. Originally this was just going to be a couple of fights to fill this session-via-skype. Of course then I had to sit down and think about the history of the tournament, add some NPCs to chat too, and so on.

NPC groups have a fighting die and need to roll over the round number to win convincingly. Rolling equal to the round number means they get a strike (-1 to next rounds' rolls), rolling under means increasingly horrible defeat.

• Hateful Hammers: d3 - three guys with a hammer theme: Ordek, an oiled a dwarf barbarian; Clovis, a human cleric of the Black Hand order, and the green dragonborn fighter Radantor. RIP, you idiots.
• Autumn Shadows: d4 - a sneaky fishling rogue called Neftis, the two houndling fighters Frig and Bran, and the brash evoker Ermin.
• Grey Whispers: d6: a tactically minded bunch of veterans led by a noble eagling called Tyaak from barony Ballumbie, an elf and magpieling rogue and fighter working closely together, and the very careful abjurer Teybrand.

ROUND-BY ROUND

ROUND ONE

• Autumn Shadows handily defeat a two-headed crocodile (hello Dwarven Forge mini!)
• Grey Whispers take out a Bulette by careful positioning
• Hateful Hammers get hammered (ha) by a Helmed Horror
• PCs get to go up against three Carrion Crawlers. Guy vaporizes them via firebal straight out of the gate, then Mike and Shams use Thunderwaves to finish them off

Partial paper mini line-up from printable heroes. Subbed a Blue Dragon for a Wyvern. Star of the show was the frost giant in the back, truly a beast. RIP Mike.

All groups advance to round two, with the crowd going wild after first blood. Tilly notices a supernatural attention focused on the Devil's Ring, egging on the crowd.

ROUND TWO

• Grey Whispers manage to protect themselves and drive off a Wyvern
• PCs spot the Chimera spiraling out of the sky. Fiery breath from the dragon head rakes the group, but clever spells and arrows take down the monster without too much trouble
• Autumn Shadows just barely manage to fight off three winter wolves with icy breath

The crowd is blood-mad right now. Something's definitely up and Tilly senses an other worldly presence, waking, paying more and more attention.

• Hateful Hammers, still a bit wounded from last night, get surprised and curb stomped by a vulture-like Vrock demon. They roll incredibly poorly and I rule that not only does the Vrock surprise them, it paralyzes them with its wicked screech and Tears. Into. Them. Blood runs down the tower steps as the crowd suddenly wakes up from their blood-crazy chanting.

Tilly comments: Sure, we'll join your fight club. What's that, it was set up to feed blood to a sleeping elder spirit/god/monster? Let's talk to that spirit.

Lomin comments: not sure if that Vrock demon thing was a high or a low point, but definitely a showstopper.

INTERMISSION

Crowd, fighters and players try to recover from that mood whiplash. Mike spots the sleepy VIP cleric walking around backstage and walks up to her. Tilly, being Tilly, goes straight for the spilled Hateful Hammers blood and dips in his hand to try and commune with whatever is behind the magic bloodlust. Shams and Guy follow their deal-mad cleric.

Mike chats up the nature cleric Josella, a Sleeping Priest who keeps a godling of Nature Red in Tooth and Claw bound in her dreams for most of the year. Only at Candle Night does she let it wake a bit, so that it can slake its bloodlust and sleep easier the rest of the year. Mike is alarmed, but manages to weedle some info about the final round out of the priest: things that are not what they seem and can turn invisible, and something big and brutal.

Meanwhile, Tilly has gathered most of this by straight-up shoving his mind into the drowsy presence of the bound godling. While he's protected by creative use of charm person, he thinks he's communing just fine. Top-side, Shams and Guy look on in rising alarm as Tilly is choking on his own tongue and chanting dark bits of scripture. Lucky him, Shams is there to slap him out of it with mailed glove, and Guy has a circle of protection prepped to break the connection.

Shams: It was all a bit weird in hindsight, especially with the cleric doing - what I gather from my time with this group - his regular thing. Was great fun to slap him around a bit.

In the fighters' tent, Lomin is trying to psych the Autumn Shadows by playing on their insecurities. Sadly, the party's evoker has an ego as big as Lomin's, and isn't easily swayed. Too bad - could have saved their asses.

ROUND THREE

• Autumn Shadows went first, bunching up and making themselves easy targets for a cone of cold-spell from an invisible, flying Oni. They survive, because the demon-ogre thinks it's more interesting to knock them all out and steal their precious weapons.
• Grey Shadows went third, getting flustered and routed by a chaotically casting and teleporting Green Slaad.

The Children of Winter, our heroes, had been dreading their own opponent. Demon? Spellcaster? None of the above. With booming footsteps, an ice-blue frost giant strode onto the field and dared them to do their worst. In return, it broke the towers the group was hiding behind, kicked them across the field, hacked with its titan axe and weathered a fireball to the face. Bearing the brunt of this was Mike - I'd tried to kick him out of the way so the giant could focus on other targets, but the druid insisted on tanking the monster.

And so it killed him, hacking the guy across every column of my Death and Dismemberment chart. Mike saved the party: him keeping the giant occupied meant that the others could pile on the damage from afar. Earlier in the campaign, the PCs had some favors to cash in and save their skins, but this time, Mike was in debt to the Faerie Sisters of Winter. Player did a great job RPing his character's demise, as he described shifting into the shape of a giant wolf with an icy left paw and slinking off into the dark woods.

Tilly's highlight: the Giant fight. She started overconfident, kicked around terrain and characters alike, died just in time to prevent two more fatalities. Mike was tanking like a boss, got an emotional death scene.

I could've ended the session there, but then we would have missed out on Shams intimidating the bookie into giving her Mike's payout (even though he hadn't placed a bet this last round). We'll do denouement over Mike's death next session.