Last time on the mystery campaign, the party assembled a device which multiplies liquids with the aim of producing mass quantities of healing potions. They also learned that murder victim Hildy Analeth's employer was seen speaking with a turbanned figure just before her murder. This time, the party works on their business goals and deals with repercussions of the chaos storms that plague the city. Read on for the full details of their adventures.
The session began in the mid-afternoon; the party intended to go to the tower of George Turnbuckle, Hildy's employer. But on the way, a chaos storm struck, and both Montana and Ais were affected. Montana transformed into a grey macaw, and Ais suddenly began speaking with "Back in my day" at the beginning of every sentence. The party recognized that their ability to successfully question Turnbuckle would be impacted by these chaos effects, and they resolved to change plans and not risk messing up their investigation.
I want to take a moment to call out this scene. I really wanted my players to speak with Turnbuckle--there's an exciting moment I have planned for the end of this chapter, and I wanted my group to get to experience it. When the chaos effects were chosen, I thought, "These will be fun challenges for the players to deal with." But they didn't go that route. They've become cautious and prudent, and so the chaos storm actively set the story back. It's not what I ideally would have liked, but it is a detail of the setting that I cannot change at this point. If you're the kind of GM who wants their players to always be pursuing the story, you'll want to think carefully about mechanisms like the chaos storms. But I am okay with the campaign stretching longer, and I really enjoyed the effects on roleplaying that were created, so in the end, I am happy to have my players attending to other goals because they're taking the story seriously.
So instead, the party returned to the site of their business. There, they checked in with Nyrill, who was painting the interior of the building with elegant designs; he also made plans to return to the business with a professional painter who could provide portraits of calming scenes for the business's private rooms. Davil was also making considerable progress on the public housing the party had asked for; he was nearly halfway done with the four housing units when the party checked in. Davil talked a bit about what life was like before the chaos storms, which he said started about 300 years ago, when the town was still growing.
An idea suddenly struck the party: Montana, as a bird, was still able to use his voice as though he hadn't transformed at all. The party decided to have Montana perform an impromptu musical show on a busy street corner in an effort to raise some funds. Montana ended up playing three songs, each thematically related to being a bird, such as a blues song about being stuck in a cage. As has become the norm for Montana, the audience loved his performances and the people of Yamseth tossed coins to the party for their show. The party made a considerable amount of coins from this show, and in the end, Montana transformed back into his orcish form.
With money in hand, the party decided to investigate a member of the Above they have heard is a powerful mage--Polly Bridgerman, head of the Yamseth College of Magic. At her office, the party asked a few questions about the chaos storms (Bridgerman revealed that magic cannot counter the storms as the storms as pure chaos energy and not magical in nature) and quickly realized they had forgotten to develop a strategy for questioning Bridgerman. So they cut the conversation short and prepared to leave, but Beor asked a series of questions about mind control before they left. Bridgerman also leant Beor a book on natural healing to help with the development of the business.
After leaving the College of Magic, Montana decided to scry Bridgerman using the borrowed book as a focus to see what she does when people are not around, hoping for some damning evidence of wrongdoing. But watching for ten minutes, all Montana saw was Bridgerman taking notes and developing theories on the chaos storms. Content that Bridgerman was innocent enough for now, the party agreed to spend their efforts elsewhere for the time being.
The party had heard from Nyrill that a weekly meeting of healers and apothecaries would be happening later that evening as Sebastian Cliffracer's Tavern. The party hoped to discover a few healers they could hire for the natural healing center, and indeed, they found a small circle of healers debating methods and materials in the tavern. Beor asked a handful of questions of the healers and described the business; Montana opted for a more stressful interview, and cut both his forearm and his leg badly to provide the healers with a way to prove their skills. In the end, they hired Josephine Glass, a halfling druid; Nicole Fyrra, a half-elf druid/cleric of Ehlonna; and Grat Sharn, an orcish generalist with abilities from most every class--the first two would be dedicated healers, and Grat would be the caretaker of the liquid multiplier. Content with their new hires, the party agreed to meet with everyone at the business the following day at noon to show them the building and talk about responsibilities.
Worried about the setting sun and Beor's potential transformation into a werebear, the party decided to call it a night and returned to Ais's place. There, Montana prayed to Fharlanghn for guidance, and his prayers were answered. He appeared suddenly in a beautiful scene, walking alongside the god of journeys. Fharlanghn told Montana that the case was important and that he was uniquely qualified to help resolve the case and find justice. He also told Montana that whatever was waiting at the end of the journey would change the world and help many people. Montana found himself back at Ais's place, and everyone turned in for the night.
I mentioned that Beor borrowed a book from Polly Bridgerman; it is called Natural Healing and Its Applications. In order to transmit the knowledge of that book to the players, I will be writing a series of notes that Beor took on the book. I've covered document creation before, both shorter texts and whole books, but another route you can use is notes. For now, you can view the notes Beor wrote. Soon, I will publish a guide to creating notes in this style, but the basis of the idea is this: rather than providing a glimpse of complete information like we would with a full book or a comprehensive document, we provide bullet points of the information that would be relevant to the player character reading it. There are plenty of ways to make this interesting, and I'll cover that soon. But for now, this is how the 11th mystery campaign session took place.
That's all for now. Next time on the mystery campaign, the party will investigate George Turnbuckle and continue to build their business. Until next time, happy gaming!
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