Session 14 Recap: Routin' Reuben and Recuitin'

We jumped right into battle this time, following another of Caesar’s ambitious schemes. He ordered some of Reynaldo’s architects to sneak into Fort Elbridge in Greydell and sabotage the construction going on there, causing massive flooding in the castle. Once that was done, a group of dwarves served as decoys to draw all of General Reuben’s forces out of the castle so we could ambush them. The plan went just as expected, and we cut off their retreat. Royce’s rival Felicia was defeated once again, and Harold’s brother Henry fled when Reuben surrendered after Daisy’s attack (many thanks to Harold’s battle advice and everyone’s combined spells and skills). Marcus came with us to help convince his old mentor to defect, and eventually join us he did, albeit reluctantly. Reuben was a major Harmonian strategist who trained half the current Priest Generals, so this should come as a major blow to our enemies.

We discovered upon our return to Liberty castle that many of the major construction projects had been completed during our mission, and the place was starting to shape up into headquarters we could be proud of (i.e. Castle Level 2). With so much extra space to work with, we knew it was time to look for more people and launch another recruitment drive to liven up the place. We returned to Westhollow and found that Farmer Zelda had finally finished her chores, so she agreed to join us (she seemed surprised at our enthusiastic recruitment efforts, clearly not realizing how much we truly love our vegetables). With our farmer recruited, we turned next to Gloria’s request that we find her old crew. Our search began and ended on Dreidred mountain, where we first met Gloria during our short-lived partnership with poor Miles. Gloria’s #2, a fancypants-turned-bandit named Byron, was still there along with a few dozen bandit soldiers from Gloria’s old gang, and they all happily joined our army for Gloria’s sake.

To our surprise, a female Winger was waiting for us back at Liberty Castle. She introduced herself as a traveling saleswoman named May and asked to know who was in charge of this magnificent castle. Daisy took the credit (with much protesting from Royce) and invited May to set up shop at Liberty Castle. She readily agreed and mentioned that she was traveling in order to make a name for herself far away from her annoying brother… right before Daisy and Harold, both from Dunan like her, asked if she knew Chaco. Poor May appeared a bit disgruntled that even way up in Harmonia she can’t get out from under her brother’s wing.

Acting on a tip from Ramza, we teleported up to Prymount city and stepped into an explosion of color. Harold spotted his fancypants friend Roxie, who we ran into a while back in Coldwall castle harassing some soldiers for their fashion sense, being dragged away by the city guards for her graffiti. Her bail was 5000 potch. Royce tried without success to bribe the guards with a free dragonback ride, so we just paid the bail and took Roxie away from there. Never one to pass up recruiting a fellow fancypants, Harold offered to pay her to decorate our castle for us. Overjoyed that someone actually wanted to pay her to decorate as opposed to paying her to go away, Roxie rushed straight to the castle.

We happened to stop by Snowview on our travels and heard some commotion coming from the village of the dwarves. A human man was ejected bodily from the blacksmith’s to shouts of “You’re the worst blacksmith I’ve ever seen! Get out!” Poor Massa explained that he tried very hard to be a good blacksmith but had a tendency to get clumsy and make mistakes (in this case, he “accidentally” broke a sword over a dwarf’s back). Daisy suggested that he might not be cut out for this blacksmith thing, but he insisted that he had to do it because his father did it, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather… Taking pity on him, we offered him the chance to work at our castle and gave him the Brass Hammer to help get him started.

Since we were in the area, we decided to finally check out the mountain path near the dwarf village. The team stumbled across a few nice treasures and, strangely enough, a penguin (with a face!). Daisy patted it on the head and then hugged it, followed by Sciath and most of the party. With no way to communicate with it, though, we had to say goodbye and continue exploring. At the end of another path was a lone dwarf fighting a group of goblins and losing, so we jumped in and saved the day. Miner Marco explained that he was been checking out the dwarven guardian statue at the end of the path. It was apparent from his surprise at our story that he’d been in the away from the dwarven village for some time, so he left to join his fellows back at Liberty Castle.

A sad scene was playing out over in Lorin village, where a crippled woman was being harassed by a group of bullies. As we watched, one of the bullies kicked her crutch out from under her and we saw that she had only one leg. Royce came roaring to her rescue with his fire-breath and spear (we still don’t know what he did to those bullies). Serena thanked us for our help and said that she was once a first-class citizen and an adventurer, but the loss of her leg reduced her to less than nothing in Harmonian society. Daisy pointed out that (with the possible exception of Harold) no one among us was exactly a good fit for Harmonia’s idea of first class society either, and she accepted our invitation to go to the castle. Since she could no longer be an adventurer (though we hope the healing springs and bath house will do her some good), she opted to open an appraisal shop instead.

Finally, another rumor led us back to Merridwell castle, where Daisy led the way to the bar. A woman named June was running a game of Chichorin and attracting a crowd of gamblers. A woman back in the small village of Marid once told us to keep an eye out for her missing daughter June, so we asked if it was she. June agreed to tell us anything we wanted to know and even go set up shop in our castle if we could win 5000 potch from her. Harold lost some and won it back, and Royce lost a few potch too, but Daisy got lucky and won the required amount. June went to our castle as promised, but she still doesn’t want to go see her mother.

The party returned to the castle to finish up a long day of recruitment. Massa upgraded the weapons for Sciath and Kuarjav, since the Brass Hammer lets him go to Level 5. We dropped off our seed collection with Farmer Zelda and Royce made sure to stock up Rosalita’s bar with Dwarven Ale. Daisy found she’d developed a taste for gambling and won another 18,000 potch from June on a lucky streak.

Caesar had important news for us as well. Spies reported that some sort of peace deal was apparently struck between Harmonia and the Grasslands and allowed Harmonia to reallocate their troops, but even that wasn’t enough to win against Camaro. The knights of Camaro were in serious danger of crushing Harmonia’s forces and taking over the Crystal Valley in the near future, which wouldn’t give the Union Army enough time to grow and gain support from the people. Caesar proposed that a small unit disguised as Harmonian soldiers go cut off the Camaro supply line to buy us more time, and though Daisy wasn’t happy with the idea of turning on people who once helped us, everyone agreed to the plan in the end. Next time, we will be undercover agents on a secret mission. Better brush up on those acting skills!

Recruited: Reuben, Zelda, Byron, Roxie, Massa, June, Serena, May

Investigations: Reuben, Massa, Roxie, May

Session 9 Recap: An Exploration Explosion

Time for our first recruitment drive! We had lots of towns to visit for the first time and lots of faces to see. We visited the town of Prymount first, where our only discoveries were a Tomato Seed and Recipe #31 “Nachos”. A stop by Lorin Castle won us a Potato Seed and Recipe #24 “Omelet”, but also a barkeeper named Rosalita who was looking to open up her own place. The dangerously placed town of Delon contained only Recipe #5 “Clams” and some Whiskey, our first item for Rosalita. The town of West Hollow had Recipe #39 “Eggroll”; we also met a farmer named Zelda who seemed inclined to join us, but still needs to finish up some chores before she can join (i.e. need castle level 2).

In the kobold village of Highcrest, we discovered that Monty the trader has no interest in joining yet. We had no incentive for him, so we decided to leave him be for the time being. Also, the mayor/elder kobold may be missing; this bears more investigating in the future.

Coldwall Castle was a colorful stop, and not just because of Recipe #20 “Lasagna”. Harold made the acquaintance of another fancypants Narcissist, Roxie, who we found harassing some uniformed Harmonian soldiers about their lack of fashion sense and color. Harold hammed it up with the flamboyantly dressed woman and impressed upon her our need for a fashionista in our drab new castle. She seemed intrigued, but insisted that she can’t be tied down to one place while the whole world still needs her fashion advice and ran off. I wonder how many times we’ll meet her before she gives in?

The small town of Marid appeared to be in very poor shape. A small child sold us a duck for a high price, thanks to Harold’s soft-heartedness. We were also awarded Recipe #26 “Pie”. One of the villagers told us her daughter June is missing, and Harold remembered the name from one of his investigations. Nathan helped a girl named June escape from prison about two years ago, but all we know is that she may have gone north from there and was originally imprisoned for pickpocketing. We will be keeping an eye out for this young woman.

Our return to the Crystal Valley was brief but very entertaining. We found Ramza the drunk beggar exactly where he was sitting the first time, drinking away his troubles on the street. It didn’t take much for Daisy to persuade him to join us (free room and board tends to do that), but he still wouldn’t tell us what he used to do for a living or how he ended up where he was. Daisy assured him that he would find something useful to do around the castle soon enough. We were about to leave when we noticed a gathering near the Academy, where a woman named Lilly was regaling the crowd with a story of how she stabbed Yuber in the face. The lady adventurer and her bodyguards Reed and Samus agreed to join our effort because Lilly and Harold were old friends from their grassland days (apparently that was one crazy party). Plus, when she found out that Viktor’s daughter Daisy was involved, Lilly guessed that something big and exciting was probably going down.

With all possible exploration completed for the moment, we finally made our way back to the Sindar ruins to name our new castle. After some debate, we flipped from Unity Castle and Liberation Army and settled on Liberty Castle and the Union Army, because we “would make this war as severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till [Harmonia] begs for mercy.” – William Tecumseh Sherman

After handing over the whiskey to barkeeper Rosalita and confirming that our prized healing fountain was still in place, we decided to pursue the plot and flew to Lindermill. Everyone in the factory town was talking about the disappearance of little Sam, the young son of Katherine and Luther. We learned that he had been missing for several days now, and neither the worried parents nor the one-eyed detective Xander had found any trace of where he had gone. Royce did some scouting and found tracks leading from the child’s window to the largest factory in town, which had been barred to us before. The goon guarding the door was most uncooperative, but he ran inside screaming and kindly left the door open for us when Royce threatened to feed him to his dragon. There was plenty of treasure to find and few guards, just the way I like it. We claimed a Mega Med x3, Rum, Medicine x6, Bandana, Old Book Vol. 7 “Intro to Trading” by J. Collins, and a Mega Med x3 before running into the bandit from the front door again, who was trying to steal some treasure for himself in the commotion. We started to kill him, but Daisy took pity on the single bandit and convinced him to surrender to us before he got himself killed. And that’s how Bandit Bill joined our team, not one to be held back by the absence of a face. He explained that “Bandit Bill’s boss is Bandit Bob” and that their group had kidnapped young Sam for ransom money, but the kid kept getting away from them.

With Bandit Bill in tow, we fought some bandits and collected more treasure:a Thunder God Hat (+1 MAG, +1 Lightning)(Sciath) and a Sticky Fingers accessory (used by bandits/thieves only, increases all talents by +1 grade). In the final room, we found about a dozen bandits and Bandit Leader Bob trying to capture little Sam again. One massacre later, we took Sam and the rest of the bandit treasure as our prize (Meg Medicine x3, Trickster Rune, Phoenix Plans #2, Bandit Tunic (+1 Steal skill)).

Katherine and Luther were more than happy to assist the war effort when we returned Sam to them and explained who we were, so the two of them are now recruited. Recipe #30 “Picnic Lunch” and the Play Script “William Tell” were discovered. Finally, we tracked down Xander the detective and paid 2000 potch to hire his services and recruit him to the team, in spite of his irritation that we had solved Sam’s case before he did. We will now be paying him 1000 potch per week (session) to get five extra investigations on top of what Harold gets to do, which will make gathering information on our stars that much easier.

Before ending the session, we spotted a deserted building with the name Renaldo’s Architecture posted and made a note to come back. And Harold begged a lady named Amelia to design our castle bathhouse, which we will hilariously pursue next Wednesday. You better get ready!