Last time on the mystery campaign, the party planned for questioning Clover Loom and had a night out on the town. The session ended with the party calling it a night before the moon could transform Beor into a bear. This session saw the continuation of that planning and the actual investigation of Loom, which involved a surprising development related to the party's strategy.
Let's begin as usual with the information the party was set to discover and the notes for this session:
Secret to discover:The same mind control that was used on Clover Loom be can observed on a high roller who is
visiting Loom (Edgar Hillerman, owner of labor business)--they have also paid Sippikup Magee
to observe Cogswagon, but neither Loom nor Hillerman knew of the other’s agenda.
Developments: Dirk St. Patrick indicates that he knows something about Ais’ secret.
Setup: The party has three reports that Clover Loom threatened Cogswagon and intends to follow
up with Loom herself.
Characters:
First Guard - Portia Rockhammer, 160 dwarf, fighter
Inventor - Lyssbettonk Cogswagon, 189 gnome, wizard/artificer
High Roller 1 - Clover Loom, 84 halfling, rogue
High Roller 2 - Edgar Hillerman, 51 human, rogue
Thief/Spy - Sippikup Magee, 111 gnome, rogue
High Roller 3 - Lort Drenk, 40 orc, sorcerer
High Roller 4 - Riell Destin, 308 elf, wizard
Clues:
While interrogating Loom, the party can sense her remaining mind control effects with a roll of 14 or
more on Investigation, Perception, Insight, or Arcana; an Arcana check of 14 or more will identify
the spell as mind control. Loom acts differently when talking about Cogswagon.
The party is soon joined by Hillerman, Drenk, and Destin for a party--a 16 or more roll of
Investigation, Perception, Insight, or Arcana will indicate that someone else in the group is
affected by the mind control spell. A roll of 18 or more will indicate who, but Hillerman does
not believe that he is affected by the spell.
Drenk (construction company) and Destin (fine goods distributor) speak highly of Sippikup
Magee as a corporation agent, but Hillerman will resist telling that he too has paid Magee; Loom
admits it outright if pushed because she believes she has done nothing wrong.
Magee is free from signs of mind control--he hates the rich and fully cooperates. He says that
shadowing Cogswagon is an easy job and he hasn’t done anything, but he did witness the
turbanned figure breaking into Cogswagon’s lab.
Bonus for keeping personal secret this session: +1 Persuasion/Insight checks
Our session begins with the setup: the players are investigating Loom for her threats to Cogswagon two nights previous. We covered the developments section last night, when Dirk St. Patrick left a note on Ais' door. The big deal is the reveal of the mind control on Loom and later on Hillerman--this becomes the main emphasis of the mystery once it is discovered. Let's dive into what happened and how the clues came into play.
In the morning, the party made concrete plans for dealing with Loom. This plan involved posing as businesspeople with an idea to partner with Loom on a natural healing center; the party argued that people who preferred natural healing to divine healing would be an untapped market. They constructed false identities: Beor was Sam, a natural healer with an idealistic hope for helping people; Montana was Marshall, a savvy businessman with smooth-talking abilities; Ais was Doctor Miranda, a scientist behind the chemical compounds used to heal. Confident in their plan, the party set out for Loom's tower and began to climb its dizzying staircase.
After an hour of climbing, the party arrived at Loom's door. She readily let them in and offered them drinks--she was eager to hear their business plan. They offered their spiels, each in turn describing their role in the prospective business. I now had a major decision to make. The players had detailed in their strategy a plan B, in which they assumed they would be found out and would have to come clean as investigators. I could have had Loom suspicious of their approach and force plan B. But the players had worked hard on their plan, and they had executed it very well. Rather than have them roll Persuasion or Deception rolls, I accepted their solid performance at face value and decided that Loom heartily agreed to their plan. And so it happened; the roleplayers played their roles well, and they were rewarded. And as I suspected, it created a new narrative problem: what would they do now that Loom had bought in? They hadn't really planned for this eventuality, and now they will have to continue to work with Loom as their alternate personas. This is the kind of narrative wrinkle that really inspires roleplayers to get further invested in the story, and I am excited to see how the party handles it.
It was now that the party had accomplished their immediate goal in winning over Loom that I launched the plot development of the mind control spell. The players had not decided to roll any Investigation checks on Loom, so I waited until they rolled to investigate a detail about a specific moment; Montana wanted to know if there was anything fishy about the drinks Loom was serving (elven brandy, for those curious). I used this moment to pivot into the scene they may have otherwise missed: Montana noticed the residue of a magical spell that was centered on Loom's head. A further Arcana check revealed that it was a complex spell related to Suggestion, a spell which forces the target to obey a command. The revelation was set, and Montana was on-guard. When Loom left to draw up a contract, Montana communicated this detail to the rest of the party, and Beor contrived a way to inform Loom of the mind control spell, which she was oblivious to. She became shaken, feeling violated, and the party tried to cheer her up. They asked who might have cast the spell, and Loom was at a loss, but still named a few disgruntled healers from her healing center: Norris Anvilback, Yotul Lagahk, and Liddy Brenner.
Before long, though, the party was joined by an actual party: the characters outlined in the clues section of my outline appeared--Edgar Hillerman, Lork Drent, and Riell Destin. At first, the party was tentative about socializing with these members of the Above, but Montana soon noticed that Hillerman also had signs of the same mind control spell. Around that moment, Hillerman privately asked Beor as Sam whether he would be willing to kill Lyssbetonk Cogswagon for him. Beor played the situation smoothly, agreeing to the job and remaining calm. A chaos storm struck, and everyone in Loom's tower watched the storm from above; the high rollers clapped when it was over. The party had a few drinks with the high rollers, chatted about various people around town, and departed after Loom gave them a key to her elevator so they could visit more easily next time. The party set out for Ais' place again to resume.
I want to mention a small mistake I made to show how it can be resolved. I had forgotten in the rush of the party that Hillerman needed to mention his connection to corporate spy Sippikup Magee. I tried for a moment to come up with a way that I could deliver this information from some other source--perhaps a courier could arrive from Hillerman, mentioning the detail he had forgotten, or Hillerman himself could reappear and disclose the information, or Magee himself could appear and explain that Hillerman had directed him to approach the party. But I wanted Hillerman to still be brooding and oblivious to the world after the mind control spell had run its course. So I simply asked my players to retcon a brief moment: Hillerman would have disclosed his relationship to Magee to Beor under the reasoning that Beor could benefit from Magee's information if Beor was to kill Cogswagon. I further forget to add how the party would find Magee, so moments later, I added to the retcon that Magee could be found at the Icy Stare tavern. None of this was elegant. But it was also the cleanest way to depict the scene as it actually would have happened. Retconning is a delicate thing--you should never retcon something that negatively affects the wellbeing of a player character, and retconning plot elements can confuse a story--but a moment like this that simply adds a bit of necessary info only moments after a scene ends is okay. Generally speaking, if you try to retcon something and a player is resistant to it, it's a bad idea, but if players respond favorably to it, you're only helping yourself tell the story you want to.
Following the retconned moment, the party got into a minor argument over their goals as a team. Were they working to solve Hildy's murder and bring justice to her family, or were they on the hook to solve the mystery surrounding Cogswagon, or were they trying to help as many people as possible? Ais noted that she wanted to support Cogswagon and thought the inventor's fate was as important as solving the initial murder, but Montana and Beor were more of the mind that Hildy was their sole focus. Beor even floated the ideas of smuggling Cogswagon out of town to protect her and potentially killing her if the moment called for it. This moment was very telling for me as a DM. The mystery I have written begins with Hildy and grows in scale, and I want my players to be invested in dealing with the entire case in all its details; this moment with the players indicated that I need to do something to entice Montana and Beor to care about the wider issues. By the end of next session, we will likely be about halfway through the overall mystery, so my work is cut out for me in the final stretch to changes the stakes.
Back at Ais', where the argument occurred, a knock sounded on the door. A courier stood by as Montana answered the door, and they asked on behalf of Cogswagon what invention she could work on for the party while they investigate. Out of game, we had agreed as a group to call it a night, but I quickly slipped in this moment. I had asked the group a few sessions ago to make this choice, but it had slipped between the cracks. I rationalized that Cogswagon was eager to help, and reminded the party of her offer after about a day and a half had passed. The players mulled it over and selected a biometric scanner which could accurately predict whether someone is lying. This device, once repaired, will effectively allow the party to pass all Insight checks related to lying--this is a big swing to the statistical balance of the game, but I will compensate by establishing narrative reasons that this device is not a solution to every problem. I wanted to include this scene because I wanted my players to have Cogswagon's help, because Cogswagon would be insistent on helping, and because I didn't want to penalize my players for forgetting a small detail between sessions. I recommend being gentle with your players in this way--no one enjoys being penalized for missing a detail.
This was the end of our session, and as we look forward, we see that the players have choices; they can investigate Hillerman further, speak with Sippikup Magee, and check in with Portia (although the party decided in this session to keep Portia in the dark until they have more concrete information). And they of course have access to all manner of in-character decisions and roleplaying opportunities, which they will certainly take advantage of. All of this next time on the mystery campaign.
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