Vigilante Game Five: "We Were Wrong! They Can Fight!"

The hope of being joined by the same party from last week was a lost cause. Tonight our party consisted of June, our nature loving monk, Martin, our fearless leader, Hilda, who returned after going to GenCon (Paladin), Oranoak the half-elven cleric, Ereden the quick speaking bard, and two new people: Rosdove, another bard who said she was a wizard and Sora, a Dragonborn Barbarian.

We set up camp outside of the forge building. Sora and Rosdove set up for the first watch while the rest of us got some sleep following our eventful encounter with the dog Automatons. Time passed, Sora slowly walking the perimeter of our camp thought she heard something. She walked over to Rosdove and asked if she heard anything odd. Sora continued to listen and tells Rosdove she was clearly imagining things (Rolled a 3 on perception). Rosdove listened, subtle whispering seemed to be coming from the passageway. She launched dancing lights down the passage and she heard someone say, “Hey they are still alive! Be quiet!”

Sora rushed over to the rest of us, tripping and falling on top of Hilda making all sorts of unnecessary noise. This does get everyone else’s attention, we jumped to our feet and grabbed our weapons. Six figures illuminated by the dancing lights carried heavy crossbows. They all fired, most going wide, Oranoak received one directly in his chest and one pierced June’s arm. June ran towards them jumping into the air with a kick, she completely missed them… one of the bandits said, “uh, they don’t look like fighters to me.” Ereden cast bane on two of them, and since it didn’t hurt them they continued to believe we were not fighters… Oranoak let out a blast of holy energy healing the party from our fight earlier in the day. Sora wanting to redeem herself ran forward and cleaved one of them open. He yelled as blood streamed down his chest, “We were wrong! They can fight!” Martin blurry eyed and annoyed he had been woken after such a short period walked forward cutting one man in half, and decapitating the next. “No, Steve and Steven!!” The other bandits looked at Martin and decided it was best to attack the others first. Apparently, Martin is just too scary. A crossbow bolt caught Martin in the shoulder but he shrugged it off. A second bolt caught June on the side of her head and she fell to the ground. A sudden pressure appeared around Martin as a robed figure emerged from the passage who looked kind of like a bard but was clearly a wizard. With an iron force of will, Martin shook the feeling off, “Nah man, that ain’t me.” Clearly annoying the Wizard that was not a bard. Rosdove pointed at the Wizard and yelled: “Don’t fuck with me, I’m a wizard!” (She was not. She was a bard.)

Oranoak let out a battle cry, “Screw Steve!” And blasted the robed figure with holy fire. The robed figure looked displeased but mostly unphased by what just happened. Ereden rushed over to June and stabilized her.

June: “I get knocked down! But I get up again!” (If only she knew how true that statement was about to be.)

June was then shot with another crossbow bolt and instantly passed out. Sora let out a sudden draconic roar and blasted three of the bandits with lightning. Quickly following the surprise of this, Martin ran two more of the men through on his glaive. “Couldn’t have let us sleep just a little bit?” Their names were Joe and Steve, wow another Steve… someone's parents weren't very inventive. The last few again yelled, “They can fight!” Another man fell, apparently named Roy. The last man ran for his life. Yelling, “this is not what we thought we were getting into! Get away from me!” The robed figure was out the door faster than the bandit. Clearly, things were not going as planned at all. As they retreated up the passageway Rosdove ran forward and yelled again, “See! Don’t fuck with the Wizard!”

We revived June once again... and walked back to our camp. Being even more exhausted, we decided to attempt to camp again knowing that they could easily come back.

Martin: “June, my kill count is now eleven. What are your kills to getting knocked out ratio now?”

June: “I’m dead even at three and three.”

Ereden: “Why does a kill count matter?”

Martin and June just looked at him… “Bragging rights.” As if this was the most obvious thing in the world. The party managed to take a full rest and felt a hell of a lot better for doing so. It was now day three of being inside this ruined tower and it was getting old. We gathered up our supplies and began our trek out of the tower, hoping we wouldn’t have any issues getting out.

Going through the passageways and caverns under the tower weren’t any issue, we appeared to have cleared out anything bad which could cause us any harm. We reached winding staircase which lead from the spider web covered eye room back to the entrance where we had struggled with the “OPEN TRAPDOOR” puzzle. Before reaching the top, June told us to stop. She heard something above us, she advanced slowly peeking out over the edge of the trapdoor. She looked around the room and saw the remaining bandit, the Wizard and the two Ogre we had tricked into running away from the tower. Her eyes locked with the Wizards. They stared at one another for less than a second before June was out of the trapdoor rushing towards the wizard, snapping his neck before anyone else could move.

This clearly alerted the guard and Ogres. The last of the bandits looked at June and ran out the door. The first Ogre raised his club above his head and swung at June, smashing her to the floor. Once again, June was knocked out… The second Ogre shuffled towards June’s body and clubbed her… apparently making sure she was down. Finally, the rest of the party acted! Ereden jumped out and used Tasha's hideous laughter on the first Ogre, it fell to the ground rolling over June laughing hysterically. The second Ogre turned to the first, “What funny? You laugh but no fun.” Ereden ran passed the Ogres and out the door, clearly, self-preservation was on his mind. Rosdove succeeded in distracting the second Ogre by scaring it, also running passed June and the Ogres out the door. The plan it seemed, was to run and fight another day. Sora and Hilda ran for the door completely ignoring the Ogres. Oranoak ran for June lifting her body over his shoulder and running for the door. Martin stood there for a second and thought about what to do… “I suppose I won’t be Ogre slaying today…” He headed for the door then hesitated and grabbed the body of the deceased wizard. You never know, maybe he has something important concerning these damn cultists we keep encountering.

The party sprinted across the field heading towards the nearby woods. Ahead of the group ran the last of the bandits, clearly terrified. Oranoak quickly revived June once again, supplying a theme song to June in the future, ‘I get knocked down… and I get up again!’ realizing the situation we were now in, June sprinted after the last bandit. She managed to pin the man a lot more quickly than we thought. Seeing as she had probably lost a lot of blood in the past day from collapsing three times. We tied him up and headed for the trees, those Ogre were not going to let us get away that easy. With our combined efforts we managed to hide, remove the parties tracks and set up several spike traps with caltrops and alchemist fire in the surrounding area. Martin switched from his plate armor to leather to reduce noise and we waited. After some time we heard the Ogres near us, they seemed to be confused and lost. They passed us by without any encounter.

Oranoak carried our captive. We asked him who he was and why he had attacked us. He told us his name was Stu of the Stevenson Brothers gang.

Oranoak: “Oh, I’ve heard of you. You’re from Bastion as well. Why are you working for that robed guy? Also, I have a crossbow bolt with your name on it.”

Oranoak pulled out the crossbow bolt that had been stuck in his chest from our previous fight and twirled it in his fingers. Ereden asked Stu how on earth did he have Ogres helping him and his friends. Stu said the robed guy, he never got his name, threatened the Ogres with the wrath of the Sharpfeather Clan. Because of this, the Ogres went along with whatever the robe guy wanted. Oranoak then got a little too comfortable with Stu for the rest of the evening, the rest of us attempted to ignore it rather unsuccessfully.

Martin looked over the body of the robed figure, finding some gold, rations and other things. He also found a folded up piece of cloth, opening it Martin discovered the sketches of two keys. Pulling out the Key from the wizard tower he compared the three. He showed Ereden what he had found, Ereden pulled out his notes he had taken on the book. They determined the two other keys might have other properties concerning the anvil, just like the one they found. Clearly, this robed figure was after the book and key we had found. Rosdove walked over and looked at the body of the Wizard, “Shame someone else killed you, I wanted to show you that I was the better wizard.” She noticed something shiny on his finger, she pulled off a ring. Holding it she felt it have some kind of magic within it. It wasn’t clear what it did but she happily pocketed it. (Once we got back to the town she found a fellow adventurer in another group and had it identified. This was the first instance I had seen of the parties interacting apart from the Dream Council and I’ll get into that later.)

We slept without any disturbances and made it back to Bastion after two days of slow walking. We headed directly to the Guard House to report our findings to the Captain. He greeted us in his moody way, we finally found out his name! Roger the Guard Captain was pleased we made it back and very pleased that we had found a lead. The news that the Sharpfeather Clan and the Cultists were possibly working together worried him. The Sharpfeather Clan had been one of the leading forces that attacked Bastion during the battle for Bastion a few months ago. Several pockets of the destroyed city were still inhabited by the Goblins. If they are allied with the cultists then something needs to be done sooner rather than later. That is your next mission, search out the Sharpfeather Clan and continue to investigate the goings on of the cult. Bring any information you gain back to me and we will continue from there. For now, you will need to head to Lord Aethern’s guild office. There you will finalize your guild and receive an official adventuring charter.

So we found ourselves at the Guild office, we officially became the Multiplying Electrified Direbears. Martin was elected Guild Leader after a small discussion and some small insults towards Ereden from Rosdove. The office presented a Dream Stone to Martin, explaining that as long as he was within the range of an active dream tower he would be able to access the Council of dreams where all of Bastion’s Guild Masters meet and report to one another the findings and happenings of the region.

Dream Council Meeting: Martin arrived at his first Dream Council a little concerned since he had never experienced anything like this before. Looking around he was sitting at a long wooden table, every chair was filled by another guild leader. We went around the table filling each other in on what had been happening in the world. After Martin finished telling the tale of the Wizard Tower, two of the Members a brother and Sister named Jean-Ralphio and Mona-Lisa suddenly attacked each other. Apparently, it wasn’t normal and other members of the council stepped in and knocked them out, making them fade from the dream. The rest of the council looked around becoming aware of a dark aura permeating through the dream. A dark figure was at a distance, we approached carefully. Before us stood a humanoid body with an octopus-like head.

Martin: “That is an Illithid… I am way out of my element…”

The rest of the Council attacked and after a few strikes, the creature vanished from the dream. The Council seemed distressed. They believed that their meetings here were safe from prying eyes. Defenses would need to be set up in the future in case of further interference. We continued our updates. The most significant thing to happen was the discovery of a thieves guild called The Whisperers. They are apparently active in all three major cities in the area: Bastion, Aehra Hakesh (The Radiant Oasis), and Adorak (The City of Shadows). We also learned that Lord Aethern in Bastion was under investigation for the murder of the old Sultan of Aehra Hakesh… So these were things to consider going forward.

End of Game Five.

Thoughts on the game: We finally made it back from our quest to the wizard tower. Great, it’s always nice to finish a small adventure. It did only leave us with more questions that desperately need answers. Quests leading to bigger quests! Finalizing our guild contract opens us up to finally interacting with the other guilds. I don’t have all of their names yet but I know two of them are called Bardaritaville and Adventures AF. I’ll get the rest of them in time. The highlight of the night was the Dream Council. Getting insight into the larger story of Vigilante is awesome and really makes me want to keep at it. Oh! I’m level three now! Huzzah!

Again I’ll explain the game, the games at Vigilante are a combination of several D&D groups all active in the same world and all of them influence the events of the town of Bastion and surrounding area. I have a better idea of where this will lead but there are still a ton of things to do and uncover. The guilds allow everyone to exchange items and it also allows players to switch parties to pursue different quests and be part of events. Overall, I think it will continue to work out and I’ll keep posting updates of my weekly games!