Tales of Escia

TALES OF ESCIA: Running an OSE Hexcrawl 06

Player Characters

Melora Kriss - Human Druid
Myr’tacae Malenia - Elf Fighter

The Premise

As explained in my previous article, we’re running a modified version of Old-School Essentials in a minimalist romantic fantasy setting, which will be fleshed out as we play.
We began with our first session of B2 - Keep on the Borderlands and decided on a bi-weekly rhythm every second wednesday evening, playing for 2 hours.

For the play report of the previous session, click here.

Session 06 - Unintended Consequences

TL’DR: This session had the party return to the keep to negotiate a ransom and get their well-earned level up. They also unintentionally made matters worse for the local group of merry outlaws.

Hobgoblin relations

Picking up the game where we last left our party, they were approached by a female hobgoblin, urging them to come talk out of sight if their caves’ entry. After introducing herself as Makkad, it turned out she is one of the hobgoblin chieftains four wives and is hoping they could help her solve the current problems of the clan, as they are currently in a stalemate.
Their leadership has been problematic since the chieftain took his newest wife, because he is just a figurehead and now there are two wives who are pushing for pacifist and mercantile relations with Margrave Keep and two who are pushing for a return of the clan’s old ways of pillaging and raiding. The clan had been living a comfortable life in the encampment, but now it is starting to break up into the two camps, straining their internal relations. To top everything up, the agressive faction is now holding six hostages, which they plan to ransom back to the Keep for 100gp per hostage. According to Makkads description, one of the hostages is the missing halfling merchant’s wife.
A small party was sent to Margrave Keep to negotiate the ransom, but they haven’t returned yet. Makkad hopes the party could convince the chieftain to abstain from the return to the old ways, but doing so would most certainly require them to prevent at least one of the aggressive wives from attending the meeting, so the vote for the future course could more easily be swayed to her favor.
Makkad had to return to the hobgoblin camp at this point, and the party decided to return to Margrave Keep for the time being, hoping to get their hands on some narcotics and possibly the money required to buy the hostages’ freedom.

Back to the Keep

The return trip to Margrave Keep was uneventful, and the party arrived after two days to the still ongoing celebrations of Duke Albann’s firstborn son. New to the Keeps’ scenery were a couple of covered horsewagons which were clearly not mercantile carts.
The party proceeded to meet the halfling merchant Cori, providing him with a much-expected update on his wives’ whereabouts. He asked them to accompany him to the Guild House, where he procured the gold for her ransom and entrusted it to Melora and Myr’tacae.
Before seeking out Commander Margrave, Myr’tacae went to the blacksmith and invited Gobbli to accompany them, as she had requested.

Hostage negotiations

Inside the keep, they only found the elven advisor Woken-Too-Early, who proceeded to fetch the absent commander. In the meantime, Melora entertained Myr’tacae and Gobbli with bee facts, describing how they used “hot bee balls” to defend themselves. Gobbli seemed disturbingly interested if this could also be used against humanoid creatures, claiming she had a list of people she’d try it on.
Once Commander Margrave arrived, she bid the party accompany her to her office to talk. Melora explained the recent happenings, including the claims of the hobgoblins that the peaceful relations haven’t been ended by the demihumans, but by the keeps’ personnel, first.
Considering the conflicting point of views of the conflicts’ origin, Margrave agreed that there’s a possibility of everything being a grave misunderstanding, but as of now she is inclined to believe her guards’ reports, unless other incriminating evidence was provided.
Myr’tacae added that a third party could also be involved, showing her new shield with the exiled House Addercapper’s coat of arms on it, intended as an example for her claim, but not accusing them. Commander Margrave didn’t take it as only an example though, instead showing open hostility for the exiles and ordering Woken-Too-Early to increase patrols and round up the outlaws, as she feared she had been too indifferent about their continuing presence in the area.
The party and Gobbli were dismissed at this point, and they took some time talking about their next moves. Gobbli voiced her disappointment in the escalating development, she only wished to see the Commander lose their cool instead. She left Melora and Myr’tacae, claiming to make some calls to prevent bad things from happening. The party decided to head to the chapel to petition for money for the rest of the ransom, after Cori hinted at the local priest possibly being willing to help people out, earlier.

Scrounging up more money

At the chapel, they met father Arfred, an overly friendly man of the cloth and local human priest, as well as one of his acolytes, the breggle Amshred Barbicant, both clad in silver-white robes, the traditional garments of the church of St. Marcia.
Hearing of the hostages’ plight, father Arfred agreed to pay at least some of the ransom money, assuring them that the church always helps their sheep in need. Regrettably, he could only offer 300gp at the time, leaving the party with 200gp left to procure otherwise or pay themselves, if they so choose.
Afterwards, the party headed to the inn to spend the night, which is where we ended our session.

Closing thoughts

This session was mostly in-character roleplay, with the PCs reporting on information they gathered in the last few sessions. Up until now, the players encountered several conflicting viewpoints of the ongoing conflict, realizing there is a lot of misunderstanding between the different factions, but likely no simple solution.
The conversation with Commander Margrave surprised me the most, as Myr’tacae unintentionally added more fuel to the fire: The soldiers at the keep now have a new goal “Round up the Outlaws”, and I changed some random encounter table entries for the area, to reflect the Knights of the Blue Shield now actively looking for them. The outlaws now also have a new goal “Evade the Knights”, and I’m looking forward to which faction wins this one and how it plays out in the end.
Unexpected, but fun. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, after all. >:)
The new horsewagons in the keep are refugees from the village of Orlane to the south, adding a possible hook for future adventures. In hindsight, I regret forgetting to have them show up inside the keep looking for Commander Margrave or even in the chapel, pleading for help with the priest. I’m going to add that for a future session.

See you next time. =)