Torches Sessions 19 and 20, March 11th and 21st 2023
General Summary
Session 19 had some loose ends and we had to bug out early so we wrapped up the loose ends with Session 20.
So Kormatin's Seven, plus the Eira and Brychan whom they rescued made it out of Swynfaredia and to Prophet's Pass.
Kormatin and his allies took downtime to sort through the notes they collected and to divvy up the loot.
Aleesia the Satyr took the book on plant lore and 1225 gold pieces. She traveled Eira and Brychan to King's Lake
Ujarek took 1025 gold pieces and 200 drams of scroll paper and a couple captured weapons. Ujarek returned to helping train his men around Wooly Slopes.
Noggra the Tengku took 1225 gold pieces, the weapons oils, and a couple captured weapons. He also returned to King's Lake, though he traveled ahead of Aleesia, Eira and Brychan. His plan was to drop off most of his gold with a relative in King's Lake to deposit then hang back to the main southern Fumayan army encampment.
Once Kormatin and company figured out from the notes that there were spies lingering in the Old Uwcharedian territories now rechristened Blue Peaks and Wooly Slopes, they reported the spies to the rulers of these realms.
It also turned out that Queen Janah Wiern was visiting around this time. Via messengers as proxies, the Queen confirmed that Lady Pallava was a budding sorcress (which Kormatin confirmed with Tacitus later) and Kormatin passed on a copy of the notes he had about spies in King's Lake.
During all the downtime, Brigid started crafting belt shaped wands of Augmentation.
Kormatin and his trusty companions Bendek, Ragani, and Brigid had decided that their next major goal was to assassinate the other three Gorisinod spymasters identified in the notes.
One is in the south of Swynfaredia near the coast, one is in the Swynfaredian capital, and one is in Old Talama. Kormatin decided to hit the one in the capital, then the coast, then Old Talama. The rationale being that the capital is the most dangerous location so they wanted to make their attack before Gorisonad has their guard up fully. Their target in the capital was named Lord Derwyn ap Gorisinod.
They had to bribe a border guard near the Fumayan border, but the party made into the Swynfaredian capital with an unprouncible name without a major problem.
Once inside, with intelligence from their new ally Brychan, they made contact with anti-dragonblood Lanterns who gave them shelter and intelligence. In return Kormatin shared the intelligence of the Gorisonad actions against the Lanterns, the spell lists of various sorcerers, and they gave the scrying aids to two dragonbloods on the Lantern's enemy list.
Bendek went to the wizard ghetto to learn a new spell or two. The Lanterns helped provide him with a fake Swynfaredian wizard's liscense. During this downtime, Brigid worked on her magic belts some more in the Lantern's workshop.
The Lanterns informed Kormatin that Lord Derwyn usually stated in a heavily fortified and defended walled manor district, but they knew he had a drug addiction that could be exploited.
Kormatin bought some magical cocaine to try to set up a sting to lure Lord Derwyn out to buy it but instead got one his minions. One of the Lanterns was able to pick pocket a piece of his clothes to scry with and from this they found out about Derwyn having a spy meeting at a seedy brothel.
Awkwardly, the next battle had to be put on pause as this stretched over two sessions due to an unexpected minor emergency.
Bendek tried to talk his way in as a John but botched his con job Titan AE style but they kicked down the door, and knocked out the guard.
Ragani intimidated the brothel security into not engaging, so Kormatin and his allies only had to overcome two Talon Warriors which fought well for a while but eventually broke (and were chased down and killed anyway) as was Lord Derwyn who attempted a fairly pathetic plea bargain when finally caught. The unknown confederate that Derwyn was meeting with managed to escape.
Ragani improvised a plausible cover making the attack on Derwyn look like a mob hit by [Hungry dragons] crime cartel.
Kormatin and company hastily looted three corpses (they didn't have a whole lot) and hid the bodies adequately in the short term and safely exited the city without incident.
We still had over an hour left to play, not enough time to go after another spy master, but enough time to deal with a couple minor loose ends from all the spy notes. The group traveled south to Swynfaredia's main port city without incident.
Kormatin's next sidequest was to deliver the intelligence he had about Gorisonod trying to blackmail House Cefnor to a high ranking noble of House Cefnor of high virtue honor, at least how a Keeper measures such things. The Count Kormatin wanted to talk to was on his way to the capital, so Kormatin wanted to meet with his trusted right hand. In this case an older and political savvy Fang Warrior named Ser Dafydd.
Brigid tried to make discrete inquiries to find out where Ser Dafydd was. She found out where he was but was not discrete. As Kormatin and his allies were debating what to put in a letter, Dafydd found them and assuming they were Gruffyl ambassadors, relucantly agreed to meet them but chose a meeting place that gave Dafydd a military advantage.
Kormatin revealed his true identity and passed on the information he had and explained how he got it. Dafydd chose to let him go peacefully and made a snarky comment about "My lord would like it if we collected the bounty on you, but we have to spend most of that money hiring new castle guards."
Session ended, we won't likely to be able to play this campaign for at least three weeks. It will pick up with planning and possibly carrying out the next assassination of a Gorisonod spy master, or in this spy mistress.
by Eron12 with Hero Forge
They knew that met Howell par Gruffyl, one of Kormatin's bastard half brothers, was working as a cargo inspector for the Arcane Registry and was a low level spy for House Gruffyl and House Gorisonod.
As politely as he could (though there was a hint of threat in this), Kormatin introduced himself to Howell and gave him 150 gold to keep him in the spy loop so now he is a low level spy for three people/groups. Brigid believes Howell is not a bad person and is just trying to live his best life.
Notes
Spy Stuff from the Captured Notes
Scraps of cloth and locks of hair for scrying on 26 people Rhydian was keeping tabs on (it looks like the ogre looted his actual scrying pool which usually go for around 500 gp). Notes on the presumed spells known for roughly 200 dragonbloods, mostly Numaness and Gareth. You have two names of two Gorisonad spies lingering in Old Uwcharedia. There are also future plans to eventually kill several squibs who have collaborated the new Blue Peaks/Wooly Slopes regimes. Names passed on by these spies. House Gorisnod is trying to find dirt on House Cefnor, but they are either keeping their noses clean or they very good at hiding their dirt. House Cefnor is one of the main houses that opposes an invasion of Fumaya. They are really trying to get dirt on all the anti-war houses, but Cefnor is both the largest and the most Teflon. They got some minor dirt on some others but only enough to embarass individuals not enough to shame a whole house or bloodlines.. House Selwyth (Gorisnod allies) are quietly housing a lot of closet necromancers and more than a few reserved undead troops squirrel away for emergencies and Gorisond is helping them cover it up but they do not trust their allies fully. They also have lots of bound ghosts and Rhydian seemed to be advising his house patriarch to step up anti-ghost protections on key Gorisonod locations. You have names (or at least aliases) and contact details for a great many members of Swynfaredia’s underworld. Gorisonod is very aware that Rohdri sires a lot of bastards and tries to hold on to the sorcerers. Rohdri is not the first Swynfaredian to have that idea, so they don’t view it as very important. They bribed one of Rohdri’s bastard sorcerers (that Brigid wasn’t aware of) and he has been acting as an informant for Gorisonod but the sorcerer is not particularly on Rohdri’s good side so he hasn’t gotten much. Very recently, Rohdri set a new policy to really encourage their youngest batch of squibs to seek apprenticeships in alchemy. While this is a common vocation for dragon blood squibs, he has really cranked this common Swynfaredian strategy up to extremes and is trying to do it quietly. Gorisonod is trying to recruit a number of bloodlines (remember bloodlines are like mini-houses) and you have a list of individuals and families they are trying to woo. This is a major front for their proxy war with Numaness. There is a conspicuous absence of notes on spy activity against Kovenoth and the various Fremiss offshoots. There are a couple leads for Gorisonad spies to ferret out in Fumaya. One is damn easy to find and arrest (or maybe try to feed her false info), a freelance Diviner wizard in king’s lake. Four are somewhat vague commoners with code names and vague geographic locations. You have three names of other Gorisonod dragonbloods that are handlers for more spies, both in Swynfaredia and Fumaya. Gorisonod has extended investigations against subversive Swynfaredian Lanterns and Testers. To a lesser extent they are keeping tabs on Swynfaredian Children that are less loyal to the dragonbloods than the mainstream ones.
Report Date
21 Mar 2023
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