AAR: Copper Red as Blood [ 3M, Saturday Nov 13, 2021, 23:00 GMT / 7:00 PM Eastern / 6:00 PM Central / 4:00 PM Pacific ]

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Serespar
Posts:215
Joined:Fri May 18, 2018 3:53 pm
AAR: Copper Red as Blood [ 3M, Saturday Nov 13, 2021, 23:00 GMT / 7:00 PM Eastern / 6:00 PM Central / 4:00 PM Pacific ]

Post by Serespar » Tue Oct 26, 2021 4:35 pm

Copper Red as Blood
Difficulty: 3M
Date: Saturday November 13, 2021 [Rescheduled]
Time: 23:00 GMT [ 7:00 PM Eastern / 6:00 PM Central / 4:00 PM Pacific ]
GM: Drew

Image


During your canvassing for jobs in Throal, you have learned of, and learned to be wary of, a human reporter for “News of the Underground”, a woman whose pen name is Amanda Buehla Lance-d’Chaseur. She’s a gal with a “nose for news” and a vicious gossip with a poison pen who works freelance for the scandal sheet paper sold at select locations in Throal near YOU.

You were terrified at first when she hissed at you to “get over here before someone sees us”, but quickly realized she was more serious than you have ever seen her. She said “Look sport, I’m careful not to get involved, but these folks need some discrete help. You’ll do.” She then handed you a leather folio with a bunch of article clippings from the paper, and a note with a date, time, and address below the Name “Freddi”. She then whispered, ‘as a thank you prezzie, give me the scoop ONLY if it’s safe, if not, I never saw ya’. Ta ta darlin’, then looked around carefully and hurried off into the street as though nothing had happened, before you could even open your mouth to speak a word.

You are left with a folio full of old issue column cut outs and a bemused look on your face. The old gal looked both worried and resolved. Now what is THAT all about….? You glance down at the folio, then go somewhere private to look through the clippings from the old issues of News of the Underground. Freddi, huh….


<Adventure assumes one player will have this experience and pull together the others selected to play in the game session, meeting in a private location to go through the clippings before heading over to the place mentioned in the note at the appointed time. Please include appropriate character perspectives in your journals on how the story fits together.>


Standard Rewards for 3M adventure.
Alt reward of Skills training that could reasonably be provided by working poor folks living in Throal in thanks for your help (a market vendor could teach Haggle, a stable worker could teach Animal Handling, a message runner could teach Sprint, a beggar could teach Streetwise, etc.). Please let me know if you take the alt skills training reward and I will post the specifics in the After Adventure Report.

~ d

UPDATE: The folder of News of the Underground clippings is available. Sign up or send a note on discord for a copy.
Last edited by Serespar on Sun Nov 14, 2021 5:41 pm, edited 7 times in total.

Anoush
Posts:160
Joined:Wed Feb 22, 2017 10:53 pm

Re: LFG: Copper Red as Blood [ 3M, Schedule TBD ]

Post by Anoush » Wed Oct 27, 2021 10:50 am

Name: Keel
Image
ECR: 4
Last game played: July 9
Discipline: Sky Raider 4
Quote/Unique: De’abor abora!! (While we live, let us live!)
Notable Abilities: I bash things with my sword.
Downtime: n/a

Sharkforce
Posts:527
Joined:Thu Feb 28, 2019 8:39 am

Re: LFG: Copper Red as Blood [ 3M, Schedule TBD ]

Post by Sharkforce » Wed Oct 27, 2021 10:35 pm

Name: Garak
Date of Last Game Played: Oct 23 (probably more recent than most)
Circle: 3
Discipline: Archer 3
Unique: Failure is not an option - it is mandatory. The option is whether or not to let failure be the last thing you do.
Downtime: Nope.

sigfriedmcwild
Posts:335
Joined:Wed Nov 13, 2019 6:59 am

Re: LFG: Copper Red as Blood [ 3M, Schedule TBD ]

Post by sigfriedmcwild » Thu Oct 28, 2021 1:58 am

Name: Teyo
Last played on: 2021-10-23
ECR: 2 (840lp)
Discipline: Swordmaster 2
Quote/Unique: The truth is out there
Notable Abilities: Being aggravating
Downtime: None

Stenus
Posts:4
Joined:Fri Oct 22, 2021 10:55 pm

Re: LFG: Copper Red as Blood [ 3M, Schedule TBD ]

Post by Stenus » Thu Oct 28, 2021 7:23 am

Name: Kelek
Last played on: 2021-10-23
ECR: 2 (800lp)
Discipline: Weaponsmith 2
Quote/Unique: I don't do ranged...
Notable Abilities: alchemy
Downtime: training to circle two and forging weapon

marcrobitschek
Posts:18
Joined:Tue Oct 05, 2021 12:44 am

Re: LFG: Copper Red as Blood [ 3M, Thursday Nov 4, 2021, 23:00 GMT / 7:00 PM Eastern / 6:00 PM Central / 4:00 PM Pacific

Post by marcrobitschek » Tue Nov 02, 2021 12:46 am

Name: Kelenar
Date of Last Game Played: Oct 23
Circle: 2
Discipline: Thief 2
Unique: I am good at picking locks and using a sword.
Downtime: working to get good in with the thief guild
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Serespar
Posts:215
Joined:Fri May 18, 2018 3:53 pm

Reschedule Award

Post by Serespar » Thu Nov 04, 2021 11:48 pm

Etherial was kind enough to authorize a 3E award to the players and an "E" award to the GM since Roll20 was down when we went to play. Reschedule info above.

Standard 3E Award of 800 LP, 138 SP, 1 TIP, normal downtime, no alt rewards to Keel @Anoush (Bloodbeat/Keel) , Garak @Sharkforce (Zivilyn/Orlam/Garak) , Teyo @sigfried... (Norg/Elisen/Teyo) and Kelenar @marc. "E" GM award to be determined after deciding which character to apply it to.

Serespar
Posts:215
Joined:Fri May 18, 2018 3:53 pm

Re: AAR: Copper Red as Blood [ 3M, Saturday Nov 13, 2021, 23:00 GMT / 7:00 PM Eastern / 6:00 PM Central / 4:00 PM Pacifi

Post by Serespar » Sun Nov 14, 2021 5:48 pm

Hope ya'll had fun last night. Pretty impressive the way you rescued all of the surviving miners.

Standard ECR 3M Rewards to Keel, Garak, Teyo, Kelek and Kalandar.
LP: 1,400
SP: 275
TIPs: 3
Downtime based on time since last played as per standard WM rules.
Alt Rewards of half price training in peasant / working class skills available from the grateful folks of the Dahnat in Throal.
  • [Kelek: Haggle]
  • [Keel: Sprint]
Journal Award +5% LP (+70 LP) and +25% SP (+69 SP)
Last edited by Serespar on Fri Nov 19, 2021 3:02 am, edited 2 times in total.

Sharkforce
Posts:527
Joined:Thu Feb 28, 2019 8:39 am

Re: AAR: Copper Red as Blood [ 3M, Saturday Nov 13, 2021, 23:00 GMT / 7:00 PM Eastern / 6:00 PM Central / 4:00 PM Pacifi

Post by Sharkforce » Tue Nov 16, 2021 2:11 am

The Journal of Garak of Irondelve, Part 5: Copper Red As Blood

Ugh, my head. Worst. Success. Ever.

So a lady Elf Named Keel (a Sky Raider apparently) was looking for some new faces to bring along on some sort of job. Seems one of the big shot merchant houses around Throal has been a whole new brand of sleazy in how they exploit the mine workers which really grinds my tusks, the miner's guild is in on it which is all kinds of sick, and some reporter handed Keel a stack of papers with a whole maze of information full of not many details and a vague call to action. Lucky for them I got a soft spot for miners.

She came looking for those of us who had recently helped with that kree-an-in tomb nonsense, and lucky for her most of us were together at that headache-inducing candy shop Teyo calls a tavern. Kelek and Kalandar were there as well, maybe Elves just have a bigger sweet tooth than I thought, and I was wondering how Cesar managed to sneak away the lucky git. Personally I was mostly busy trying to keep from getting crayon all over my stuff, but the good news is we got to go someplace with proper drinks. 'Course I had to go there surrounded by three Elves and a Windling, but at least Keel made a good showing of herself and chugged down an entire tankard of the house special.

Anyways, we got to talking to some of the local mine workers and apparently they've been grieving and... sewing? Granted, I was never the most interested in hearing Gram's old mining stories, but that didn't add up to me. Anyways, This was a bit of a side-track, I guess, we were trying to find out more about the time and place we'd been sent to by that reporter lady and we didn't really even know what the job was yet... I just wanted to make sure we were going to be sticking it to the snobs that've been screwing the miners before taking the job, not sure what the others were hoping for.

Anyways, it wasn't a total bust (like I said, it got us someplace with real drinks, and good food at that), but we were still pretty much in the dark. We decided to check out the place the reporter had said we'd need to go, and long story short, the families of miners who had been caught in a collapsed mine a few months back had been pouring their grief into art that they wanted sent to the grave site. Specifically, the grave site that they couldn't visit 'cause the highborn trash wouldn't let anyone go to, even though it was supposedly no longer good for anything after they abandoned the place after poisoning the land and leaving the workers to rot without even a proper burial, after stealing the money they owed the workers' families. Like I said, a real piece of work. House Ueraven can kiss my hairy ass if they ever want me to so much as lift a finger on their behalf, I say. I'd gladly watch the lot of 'em fall off a cliff and have a grand old time laughing every time they crash into a rock on the way down.

Anyways, that wasn't what the gathering was about, they just wanted someone to take the grave goods to their lost family and give a proper send-off as best as could be done, and while I had been really looking forward to busting open some skulls it didn't feel right to say no. Didn't feel right to demand money for it either, so I was figuring I'd just conveniently "forget" to take their money afterwards, 'specially since this didn't seem like that hard of a job. These folks didn't need any more kicking while they were down, that's for sure, and frankly I don't think they could afford it.

So we took a few mule-loads of art and headed off towards the general direction of the mine (apparently it was some sort of secret, which is odd for a played-out abandoned copper mine that is less than worthless on account of the land is all toxic and the nature spirits in the area are madder than a nest of hornets after their nest has been set aflame, in both senses of the word mad). Not much happened along the way, just a bit of a tussle with some local wildlife that gave us fresh meat instead of travel rations for dinner, up until we got close. Plus it helped work off some of my Gahad hangover from getting so excited about busting some highfalutin scum's heads and then finding out that wasn't the plan at all.

There was a pretty nasty fight when we saw a good lookout spot we figured would give us a good idea of where to go, and we got ambushed by some spirits. Nasty business, that; the river was poisoned, which meant the land was poisoned, which meant they were poisoned as well, it took a couple days resting next to a spring we were lucky to stumble across so we could clean out our wounds (and our clothes, and ourselves) after being covered in all manner of sludge and slime from the polluted land. The main takeaway is that the spirits all seemed to be acting at the behest of some "Grandfather" spirit. I'll come back to that in a minute.

Anyways, we found the mine, looked like some fire spirits had gotten loose and burnt the whole place while some earth spirits must've collapsed the entrance real good. We weren't going to be able to get in there to a proper grave site any time soon, so we had a little ceremony at the mine entrance for the deceased. I was pretty distracted because I was pretty angry too, but apparently that was already starting to clear up the astral a little I'm told. I went and poked around trying to look for some way to at least hit the rich bastards in their pocket book when I noticed the records in the mine office looked like they'd been burnt twice, which was suspicious to say the least.

More importantly, remember when I said I'd come back to "Grandfather"? Well, the mountain woke up and told us to go in "the pipe" and rescue his grandson, who based on context was a Purifier who was understandably upset about the fact that the land was being turned into a barren waste where nothing could grow. Seems he was stuck in the mine somehow, with copper spears(?) stabbed through him, according to the spirit (I don't speak mountain, so I wasn't clear on all the details). Anyways, he said we could live if we rescued his grandson, which was a pretty persuasive argument to my way of thinking.

Sure enough we found a pipe still spewing corrosive waste from the mine, big enough to crawl in, and a ways in "Grandfather" must've opened up a shaft to climb which we were able to thankfully reach before another wave of filth dissolved us to nothing. Thankfully I had my new light quartz lantern with me and I could tie it to my belt, because I needed both hands. Eventually we came out to a large cavern filled with some wild contraptions, all of which led back to the Purified we'd been sent to help, who was pierced by far too many copper pipes and being bled dry by them, slowly. I'm not sure how the mountain figured we were going to rescue him from that, personally: I for one was fresh out of any sort of magic that could bring back the dead, and I don't think pulling out those pipes was going to leave him alive.

That turned out to be rather a moot point however, as the rest of the cave was filled with angry enslaved spirits, nearly-dead enslaved miners, and a madman turning blood into copper or some such thing. Later I'd find out he was called "Renfield" and had worked for an Elementalist who had come here to enslave the angry nature spirits, according to the miners. We got there just in time to prevent his orders to the nature spirits to kill all the remaining miners (about half of them were still in the mine after all this time being worked to death), but not in time to keep him from bleeding the last of the Purifier's life into more copper, turning into some sort of fiery thing, and burning a hole through the top of the cavern out into the sky as he escaped.

At this point, I'm a little hazy on the details. "Grandfather" didn't take the death of "Grandson" very well, and after a whole lot of stuff I'd rather not remember too closely, we wound up outside the mountain in a heap with all the surviving miners, and the mountain told us to leave in no uncertain terms and we could live. It was not a less persuasive argument than the first time, so we left.

The good news is that we actually did some good for the families. Also, as much as I hate to take anything from house garbage fire (which so far as I am concerned is both their name and my dream for the future of their vile cesshole of a family), I'd rather they didn't have it, and I didn't have to take money from a bunch of grieving widows and orphans who had no money to give, so I did get paid after all. The bad news is that it feels like my stomach decided to fill up with the poisonous waste from the mine, crawl up into my skull, and vomit all over everything.

sigfriedmcwild
Posts:335
Joined:Wed Nov 13, 2019 6:59 am

Re: AAR: Copper Red as Blood [ 3M, Saturday Nov 13, 2021, 23:00 GMT / 7:00 PM Eastern / 6:00 PM Central / 4:00 PM Pacifi

Post by sigfriedmcwild » Sat Nov 27, 2021 10:04 am

The following is an extract from a collection of notes left at the door to the great with no indication of provenance. The text was badly encrypted and contains numerous references to some kind of archive of information that the library has no access to.

Keel [A029] showed up one day looking for a team, she had an inside scoop on the House Ueraven [H031] business at their copper mine [G005][E1203]. I'd followed the coverage of the events on News from the Underground [PJN003] jumped at the change to strike back at the aristocratic pig dogs. Most of the folks from the previous run [R00] also showed up ([A018], [A019], [A20]), even if Garak looked greener than normal when we met in the Klava Mine [THTH246]. After going over the info Keel had gotten from mz Lance-d’Chaseur [N0952] we set out towards the meeting place with our contact, Freddi [N1350].

We moved long before the meeting time and stopped at an inn called the Ghost Pepper Hurgl [THTH293]. Keel made a good show of her drinking, Garak seemed to enjoy himself, and the orc bartender looked at me like he wanted to squish me. Pretty good all told. The clientele was mostly miners and we got some stories about incidents at the mine and how House Ueraven had managed to "absorb" the miner's union.

About an hour before the meeting time we left to scout the area and spotted several people failing to sneak up to a door guarded by an angry human woman with a pitchfork. Turns out she's the Freddi we're looking for and she's been sheltering relatives of the miners that died. They were sewing together quilts to remember their dead and wanted us to take them to the mine and burn them as offerings.

Not enough sugar in the world to quell my rage.

We took their mules loaded with the burial goods (is it burial goods if you burn them?) and took off in the vague direction of the mine, after Keel worked some contacts and found out a Purifier [A031] had gone up that way a while ago. The mules must have smelt tasty cause we had to deal with several wolf attacks, but thankfully no boars.

As we got closer we found more and more signs of extreme pollution (physical and astral), streams running green, dead plants, and crazed elementals ambushing us [Z0004]. The fight was rough with Keel getting hamstrung almost immediately, but we eventually prevailed. As the spirits dissipated they ranted about a "grandfather". We decided to pull back to a safe camp and wait for the next day before continuing.

The next day we reached the mine which looked like it had been set on fire by someone or something very angry and we found what Garak recognized as slave collars [I241], possibly used on the elementals. I did a quick recon of the main shaft, but could not find anything of interest so we proceeded with the ritual burning the goods and each of us offering our own eulogy for the dead. This seemed to clear at least some of the astral pollution.

And then Grandfather [Z0005] showed up, the very spirit of the mountain, royally pissed off. It pretty much demanded we go rescue his "grandson", the Purifier, who was trapped in the bowels of the mine and his soul being used for... something, something very bad. We were told to "look for the pipe" and that "a passage would be opened".

So we went and found the pipe discharging all the wonderful gunk from the mine, which was still spewing? Despite the fact that everyone inside should be dead? Better and better.

After some observation we figure out we had several minutes between each wave of toxic gunk, so trusting in Grandfather in we went. A few hundred yards in we found a shaft leading up from the pipe into a large cave.

Inside the cave were more crazy elementals, a whole bunch of namegivers in chains, a dude looking like the villain in a bad theater production, and, at the far end, the obsidifolk Purifier, strung up like in a butcher shop leaking blood onto a smelter. By the way Ueraven claimed to have done no smelting at this location, which is weird but rich people like wasting money, and smelting inside the mine itself seems super extra dumb.

Anyway, we didn't have too much time to ponder how big Ueraven's lies were cause the theatrical reject ordered the elementals to kill all the slaves since there was nothing more to "drain" here. We rushed into the room grabbing the attention of the elementals before they could murder anyone and started putting them out of their misery. Meanwhile Garak took a great shot (or so I'm told) at the creep of the year who was distressingly unfazed before jumping into the crucible.

Yep, full of molten copper and obsidifolk blood. It was one of those days.

On the plus side all the elementals crumbled away.
On the other hand mr "I like really warm baths" got back out, covered in flames.

And then it flew away, at which point the purifier's corpse also crumbled to pieces and Keel got some kind of vision of an airship loaded with copper (well copper and obsidifolk blood alloy) ingots flying away earlier in the day.

And then Grandfather decided to inform us we were no longer welcome and ejected us (albeit surprisingly gently).

We collected the mules, got back home with a whole bunch of not actually dead miners, and got to watch House Ueraven scramble to cover their arse and explain what happened. Not that they faced any real consequences of course.

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