The following is the plot of last Saturday's game which I run. D&D happens to not only be my main obsession, but is also the basis of my only ability to socialize and feel "normal". If you're not interested in D&D then you should skip reading the rest of this. I hope others will also share the details of their special interests, because most of them are actually very interesting.... like the person whose special interest is meercats, I'd like to know about that for example, among other things.
*******
My party entered a big city which is all glitter and Fool's gold. This city is famous for being full of con-men and hucksters, though outright violence is strictly frowned upon and severely punished.
If you don't have piles of gold here you're considered worthless and suspicious, or just an idiot. Everything is priced at many times the normal price, and the customer is expected to haggle, connive or charm his way down to a reasonable price. The merchant is expected to cheat everyone and to be cheated in return.
The city features literally endless heists and sneaky plots. You can't take anyone at face value. Everyone's running a rigged game. Conning others is honorable and raises your social status, the sneakier and more outrageous the more status. Being conned also raises your social status, but only if you are a good sport about it and publicly praise the one who tricked you by declaring "A game well-played, you have out-done me once again, but when it is your turn I shall show no mercy!"
The party's mission is to procure 100 gold coins which they must swindle from the only honest man in this city. They feel uneasy at this apparently bad deed, and the Cleric feels especially wrong about it and outright refuses to cooperate. Friction develops between him and his adamant refusal to do it, and the rest of the party who feel they have little choice now but to do it. Everyone begins to wonder if the mission they are on isn't, in fact, an evil one.
After searching very hard for any information about him, "only honest man" in this city turned out to be a retired assassin who now runs a high-end thieves' escrow service, in which other people who don't trust one another can hand over enormous sums of money and priceless items and have them properly exchanged -- for a very high fee. The only reason he's now honest is because that happens to be the only way to run this particular sort of business. Immediately, the party's Cleric felt stupid for having all along refused to swindle "the only honest man in the city" and felt like he'd made an absolute fool of himself.
In order to swindle this very high-level and very experienced Thief, they first had to somehow arrange to meet him. This was very difficult and resulted in several failed attempts. The party became discouraged and were running out of ideas. Eventually the ultra-charismatic tag-along young aristocrat's daughter who has fallen in love with the Cleric used her feminine wiles to arrange the meeting. The Cleric doesn't trust her at all, and her way of constantly pointing out that "everything I do, I do for you" isn't making him like her any better; yet he keeps finding himself the recipient of her extremely useful favors and hasn't enough gumption to tell her "no" and risk her wrath. She's turning into the party's own Yoko Ono.
The party decided that they were going to swindle the Only Honest Man by selling him what they called a Candle of Instant Death, for 100 gold. They made this supposedly magical candle themselves in a hodge-podge way by pouring wax taken from a vile necromantic ceremony into a magical candle-mold; but not having enough of the vile ceremonial wax for an entire candle, they filled the inside with ordinary wax. Unknown to them, this candle became a semi-magical candle of random ill-effects.
After they presented this semi-magical candle to the Only Honest Man as a Candle of Instant Death, he told them they must demonstrate its magic. At this point, they were caught between their lie being exposed and themselves being killed by the "Mafia", or in bringing someone innocent to be sacrificed and hoping that it'd really kill him. They finally decided to bring in a leper who was close to death and was begging to die, to try to get away from the taint of possibly becoming murderers. The leper was instructed to light this candle, and its semi-magic of random ill-effects caused fungus (molds and mushrooms) to grow thickly over his entire body, which did eventually kill him in an extremely horrific and painful way; however, this was a random ill-effect and any other effect, or no effect, is equally possible when lighting this candle.
The Cleric wound up in some disfavor with his Deity and lost some spells because he had killed an innocent person in such a vile and evil way. But, the Only Honest Man was now impressed with the magical candle and agreed to buy it for 100 gold, believing it to be a candle of Horrific Death by Fungus. This misunderstanding was marginally sufficient to be considered a swindle, even though it was somewhat of an unplanned fluke. The party left that transaction feeling very lucky to still be alive and somewhat shaken by the whole experience, with the "100 gold swindled from the only honest man" they came for.
After surviving an attack on their carriage on the way to their next destination by a couple of horse-eating trolls, the Cleric healed the wounds of an overly-friendly and way too-happy warrior who happened to be riding with them. The warrior offered the Cleric a sip of his very special liquor in return. Failing his saving die roll, the Cleric became instantly addicted to what turned out to be something like liquid cocaine, making him intolerably cheerful and effective on days when he can sip at this liquor, and making him incapable of doing anything other than attempt to get some of it on days he doesn't have any. After resisting the Cleric's attempts to share a bottle of it with them for a few days, the Thief in the party finally agreed to have a sip too, and upon failing her saving throw she also became instantly addicted to it.
The party is now entering a land of mists and superstition with their next goal being to procure a dagger used to commit suicide by an innocent young woman. Two of them, the Cleric and Thief, are insanely cheerful yet more effective at everything they do, due to the liquid cocaine, and the other two of them, the Warrior and Magic-User, are anxious and increasingly pessimistic about the nature and difficulty of their quest and are now the only realistic people in the party.
20 Nov 2010, 11:46 am
