|
Author
|
Comment
|
ashampine
Human
(4/18/04 5:22 pm)
Reply
|
Infiltration of Rastor
Players surprised me yet again. In my campaign, the Temple fostered Rastor a hundred years ago when they first moved in. The dwarves, destitute without the diamond mines, and ashamed at how so many of them became collaborators, turned into an dirty, poor inbred town populated mostly with tanbrosh addicts. Tal Chammish is the supplier and logistics coordinator, with Rastor supplying most of the Temple's food and equipment needs, along with requests for mercenaries and orc replacements and the like.
The party (which is all elves) came in disguised as Dunrat and company. They got the lay of the land, charmed Tal, then assassinated him in his home by feeding him a drink spiked with water from the obelisk room at the moathouse. Their bard (who is a master of disguise) then took Tal's place in the town. The party wizard, with his genius intellect, has taken charge of Tal's books. The bard (who is disguised as Tal) smooth talks any difficulties, combined with detect thoughts and the like to keep him from making any important missteps (although, with control of the tanbrosh, the dwarves aren't going to make any great ruckus no matter what he does). The ranger and the rogue/assassin lurk in the shadows and keep an eye on the comings and goings in the town and with the Temple.
Basically, the party has done to Rastor what the Temple did to Hommlet. I find the irony quite delicious, although I am disturbed at the amount of writing I'm going to have to do to fill in their info base now. They've got 35 years worth of Tal Chammish's books on the drug supply and logistics traffic to and from the temple. Whenever the temple orders something, Tal places an order with the appropriate dwarf, then arranges for transport from Rastor to the temple. And it's all there, in black and white, with names, dates and amounts.
On top of it all, the party wants to start skimming, which might be their downfall. 
|
 Infiniti2000
Night Beast
(4/18/04 5:36 pm)
Reply
ezSupporter
|
Re: Infiltration of Rastor
That is awesome! Where the heck is your log?! 
|
msherman
Briar Beast
(4/18/04 7:32 pm)
Reply
|
Re: Infiltration of Rastor
If you're worried about giving the party too much info, you might consider that most organized criminals keep two sets of books. The party might not (yet) have discovered the real books, and the "official" ledger probably doesn't account for any of the temple stuff. Though there probably would be some missing inventory type discrepancies that they could discover in the books they have to lead them down the right path.
|
ashampine
Human
(4/19/04 6:15 am)
Reply
|
log
I'll post the log later. As I said, the party keeps surprising me.
The two books idea is a good one, but I already told them he only kept one set (and they charmed him and used detect thoughts on him to give him a thorough grilling before they offed him).
I don't really have any problems with handing the PCs a lot of information. Besides, a lot of it's deduction on the part of the players. What they'll get is a lot of names and the types of orders they've been placing (like D'Gran insists on getting lots of melons every summer, and the earth temple has stopped placing orders months ago). But the people who bring the orders are just flunkies, and Tal's never been into the temple in any meaningful way -- that is, he's been inside the air temple entrance and main entrance a few times for special deliveries or pick-ups, but that's about it. They will, however, know Rastor inside and out.
The party's even thinking about using their drug-addicted army to attack the temple by telling everyone that the temple is cutting off their tanbrosh supply. In my campaign all the tanbrosh is supplied by the temple. The temple doesn't trust anyone in town to manufacture it, and won't ship too much out to the town to keep people from stockpiling it.
|
N1njato
Staj
(4/19/04 6:18 am)
Reply
|
Re: Infiltration of Rastor
Also take a look in the actual module and there are similar instances just like this. You can find entire journals and books full of information. Be honest with your players, and say 'it's not worth spending game time on, BUT, after a few months of pouring over the books, you find a few things of note" and add/take away important clues as you see fit. Meaning, if they haven't taken enough time to peruse or not all the books were found etc.
You could conceivably write volumes and volumes of information on all sorts of things like the Tanbrosh dealings, but the point is, why bother? Give the important information and fill in the rest with a simple explanation "The book(s) take (x amount of time) to study, and here are the most interesting items you found". You don't need to make it too easy for them either. This is a good place to put in misleading red herrings, and make the entries obscure, but don't try to write 35 years worth of events!
Edited by: N1njato at: 4/19/04 6:20 am
|
ashampine
Human
(4/19/04 7:45 am)
Reply
|
journals
Good heavens, I had NO plans on actually writing 35 years worth of journals. No, the players will get a few pages of names, notes and items of interest. Just the juicy stuff, really.
|
|
Okay -- Your Turn
Email This To a Friend
Topic Commands
Click to receive email notification of replies 
Click to stop receiving email notification of replies