Guest Writer Alert!

I work remotely from my home in Michigan but my company has offices in Phoenix and Saskatoon, SK. Unfortunately, that means with the time change, conference calls can really mess with my schedule. This is one of those cases. So while I was on a video conference with the team in Arizona, the guild carried on without me. And, well, as the saying goes, when the cat’s away, the mice will play. Any play they did. Looks like Heyou will have some heads to crack when I return to the table in two weeks.

Fortunately, my friend and fantasy games artists extraordinaire, Stefan Poag, was able to join the last session and provide the write-up. Stef has done illustration work for Goodman Games, Kenzer & Company, Game Developer and others. He’s also a really gifted writer. Check out more of his work here: https://stefanpoag.com/

A write-up of our biweekly Dungeons & Dragons campaign from the perspective of my character, Heyou, a teenage elf barbarian. Heyou was kidnapped at a young age by bandits. His family was murdered and his face disfigured, including the almost complete removal of his ears, before being sold to the orphanage where he grew up. Orphanages are big business in our fictional world as they produce the laborers that power the economy. The disfigurement means it was impossible for any extended family to identify and claim him. As a result, Heyou has a very jaded world view but also sees the ability to make money by perpetuating the kidnap-and-sell scam. He is not very bright but considers himself so and thus he frequently uses words incorrectly. Heyou and several of his fellow orphanage mates have reached the age where they must leave and go find jobs in the fields they have trained all their lives, however they have chosen a different path and have overthrown the thieves guild that once ran their small corner of town.

Session 9: N.K.O.Y.B.

(I’ve been away for most of the summer and missed the past several meetings of the campaign… so I don’t know a lot of background on this stuff… we join the adventures in progress - Stefan)

We left the Regency (which is apparently some sort of fancy hotel where mob business is transacted using the mysterious black coins). Since whatever we were doing there happened last session, I’m not sure what it was but it apparent lt had something to do with finding out that a mob boss named Jill had hired weretigers to attack us (an attack that backfired and resulted in Viggo getting a new tiger-skin rug). It should also be mentioned that there are food shortages in the town – that comes into play later.

Night Sky Yellow disguised himself as a drunk and pretended to be passed out in front of our old home, the orphanage, in order to keep an eye on the place while Mayella went inside to talk to Peyton, the administrator of the orphanage.  She spoke at length of her insecurities and the fact that her doll judged her a lot but Peyton was accustomed to such crazy talk and took it in stride. Mayella also warned Peyton that there might be some fallout from the violence between us and other mobsters. Night Sky Yellow found sleeping in the rough to be to his liking and made a night of it.

The next morning, Night Sky Yellow performed his “Coming of Age” ceremony which gave him some sort of ability bonuses for his upcoming actions and could only be performed once.

I (Caladryl, priest of Sutter Kane --- Have you read Sutter Kane?) went to the Church of Sutter Kane and tried to find out all I could about the magical children which were somehow being used in the manufacture of magical items but just got a lot of reductionist justification mumbo-jumbo about divine magic being good and arcane magic being evil ergo the magic children were evil and I shouldn’t think about them… so I got out of there before Father Flanagan could try to convince me to sit on his lap. We don’t know if the magical children are being used as raw material in the manufacture or if they are manufacturing or what but believe the Rose gang is involved.

Veego, meanwhile, walks the streets listening to rumors and innuendo and discovers we have a golden opportunity --- the territory formerly occupied by The Candy Cane gang is now unclaimed (since the Candy Canes are all dead or gone) and since it is adjacent to our territory, it is meant to be… We briefly consider calling ourselves the ‘Cul de Sac’ gang since we live on a cul de sac but I reject that name since I think it will encourage people to call us ‘The Sacks.’ Someone (was it Veego?) suggests “New Kids on the Block” since we are the new kids and if we add the Candy Cane territory, we will have nearly a full block. It sticks --- much to the delight of Heyoo who climaxes with joy when he hears the new name (I reject this work of pure fiction and will remedy this libelous assassination of character in the next session - Ed.).

We first go to the former HQ of the Candy Canes but discover the doors are barricaded and the building collapsed. OK… we start visiting businesses to let them know that we will be taking over… the first place we visit is a taxidermy shop. The proprietor tells us he is not interested in protection services. I tell him, “Boy, it would be a real shame if something bad were to happen around here,” as I knocked a stuffed marmot off the counter and onto the floor. He seemed unimpressed and whistled for 2 henchmen who came in hefting heavy sticks meaningfully. I knocked another marmot off the shelf and asked him if he had seen what The New Kids on the Block had done with sticks in the past (a reference to some horrible defilement of corpses performed in my absence --- all the broom and mop handles in our home had to be replaced). The shopkeeper said, “Do that again and there will be trouble.” Veego whacked a third marmot off the counter, the shop keeper told his bully boys to “get us” and Jillian sliced them up before they could do anything with their not so impressive sticks, causing them to soil themselves.

The proprietor told us he would pay us 4 gold… we thought 6 was better and finally a compromise was suggested by Mayella – 4 gold for 3 months, then we go to 6 gold (Jesus Christ….I miss one session and ya’ll let Mayella make decisions???? - Ed.). They could use the 2 coins they saved to launder their pants. To show that there were no hard feelings, Night Sky Yellow healed them, too.

We visited some other shops and got them to sign up as word of the events at the Stuffed Marmot shop spread. We visited a shop where healing crystals were sold and discovered that about 25% of the former Candy Cane territory had been claimed by a gang of ladies calling themselves The Grove. Since no one in the crystal shop had any idea of how to contact the Grove, Night Sky Yellow wrote a note that said, “Dear Grove: The New Kids on the Block would like to discuss business – amicably, signed, N.K.O.T.B.” He tacked it on a tree in hopes that The Grove would get in touch.

Sanjay, our humble servant, told us that we had gotten a message from the Regency that Red and Big Ulp want to do a meeting. We went to the Regency and set it up for Friday. We were requested to then meet in the bar where we sat down with Scrotes, one of our informants. In exchange for one black coin, Scrotes told us of the blockade of the harbor by privateers --- this was the reason for the food shortage. These privateers were working on behalf of some foreign power. If we could travel to the waterfront via the sewers and then sail out to a certain location in the harbor under the cover of night, we might be able to assault one of the privateer ships – the HMS Goodberry – and recover considerable loot AND help ease the blockade that was causing so much misery. Scrotes could give us the exact location of the ship and told us it had a crew of 37 but we had to strike tonight and finish before dawn.

After determining that rowboats and canoes were out of our price range, we provided ourselves with boards and nails and built a raft. We hiked down the sewer and stealthily rowed out towards the Goodberry. Suddenly I was pierced by a harpoon and dragged overboard! Fishmen or mermaids were attacking! I managed to pull my boot knife and cut the line for the harpoon and tried to flounder back to the raft. Other harpoons whizzed through the air and as I climbed back up onto the raft, Jillian got skewered and dragged overboard. I was the only one with a missile weapon but I was too busy pulling multiple harpoons out of my flesh to use it… the others tried hurling daggers and spells or closing the gap between us and the fishfolk. One of the merpersons swam over to the raft and clawed me to bits (what they have against me I don’t know) but finally we drove them off and I got healed up.

We now had 3 harpoons--- 2 with finely crafted seaweed ropes attached. We rowed a little further out and saw that all appeared quiet on the HMS Goodberry. Excellent.

Drawing up alongside the ship, I cast a Silence spell and Night Sky Yellow used his axe to noiselessly smash a hole in the side of the ship. As he crawled through the hole thus created, he discovered he was crawling through the blood and entrails of a sailor who had been unlucky enough to have been sleeping against the side of the ship and had been cleaved in two when Night Sky Yellow chopped his way through. The room was full of bunks of sailors but my silence spell was still working. The other quibbled over the morality of it while Night Sky and I drew our daggers and slit their throats… after all, these pirates, ah, ahem, excuse me, privateers, were starving the city for their own profit --- as a follower of Sutter Kane, I do not shy away from spilling a little blood so the children can eat.

As the silence spell wore off, two sailors entered the room and saw us, covered in blood and their fellow pirates, ah, ahem, excuse me, privateers all dead in their bunks. Using his powers of fascination, Night Sky convinced them they should cooperate with us in exchange for a bit of treasure and their lives.

We then proceeded to the captain’s quarters where we roused the captain from his bunk and Night Sky again used his magical powers to convince the captain to surrender without a fight. We bound and gagged him and looted the ship. Night Sky took a fancy captain’s hat and robe. We gave the pirates, ah, ahem, excuse me, privateers who had cooperated with us a chest of coins and we took a large number of gemstones, several armloads of food, some liquor and the captain’s weapons. We loaded everything (including the captain… now our prisoner) into one of the ship’s longboats and the pirates, ah, ahem, excuse me, privateers who had cooperated with us got into the other and we parted ways. 

Our plan was to somehow turn the pirate, ah, ahem, excuse me, privateer captain over to the authorities (perhaps anonymously) so the remainder of the food aboard the HMS Goodberry could be recovered and used to alleviate the hunger and the captain could be interrogated for info that would help break the blockade. Taking several trips along the sewers, we carted our loot back to our hideout.