Infinite Automaton

A Mountain of Gold Session 3 Report

What is almost certainly the last Dwarven clan marches onwards, stopping only briefly to mourn its losses lest the world pass it further and further by. See the previous session report, the gm's notes on this session, and the campaign masterpost here. For those who may be new, in this experimental game we play as 100 Dwarves with a hoard of 15,000,000gp ending a long period of isolation and to discover the age of magic is ending. We will not go quietly if we can help it.

Concocting a harebrained scheme to kidnap a wizard with me is once again Wolffian, and we pit our worst ideas against the magnanimous Ms. Quixotic. Last session, we lost our first Dwarves to attacking bandits. Having mourned their loss, we plan to kidnap a wizard to replace our dying one.

August

...continued from Hakim's visit, last session.

The nearest wizard to us appears to be quite close by. Down our mountain, up a trade road, and smack dab in the middle of a castle with double-ringed walls. Given that the wizard is not merely isolated we plan to spy first. A trade group consisting of Blitzen Bloodfist (Fighter 6), Spade Grimtooth (Fighter 4), and 10 additional dwarves are sent with horses and samples of wares to sell and open up trading. Most of the journey is spent on the ill-traveled mountain and path to the trade road.

Arriving after a few days, the gate guards won't let us in without the permission of their mistress, though we are assured she will be interested. We can't rest inside either, so the caravan posts up a few days while Sapphire the Wise returns to her 5-story tower. In the meantime we survey the fortifications (typical about-par human make) and chat up some guards from a caravan of Golden Riders. One woman gambles, and tells us how often they make the trip (often) and why (to store money in their vaults). Apparently Sapphire allows a merchant consortium to store their wealth here, as it is very well defended. She also lets loose that we shouldn't try and feed the wyverns. She's very happy to win a "Dwarven gold piece" off of us.

Sapphire arrives after a couple days atop a wyvern, and comes almost immediately to the gates to greet us. Mid-60s and greying to compliment her blue robes and conical hat, she asks us what clan we're from. We decide then that our new name for the age is simply "The Clan". We are the last, and will act like it.

Sapphire offers us a deal. She has something for us, but in exchange, we're to leave and never return. This rubs us a bit the wrong way, even though we are here to kidnap her. We manage to convince her that, while yes, we want to kidnap a wizard because ours is dying, times are changing and so can we. We don't have to make this difficult and can just trade or something. She goes along with it for now at least.

Sapphire takes us to the magically-sealed vault that houses the gold, gems, and miscellany that amounts to her protected hoard (approx value 500,000gp). We insist she show us how to release the door from the inside after they begin sealing us all in. All the way in the back is an extremely fine statue of a Dwarf, wielding a simple axe with both a splitting and hammer end. Despite the seeming lack of craftsmanship, the tool is actually so perfect that it is a masterwork beyond the ability of The Clan to produce in this age. Asking who leaves such a thing, Sapphire explains that another Dwarven clan left this thing with her master, some 300 years ago, and willed that it should be given to the next Dwarven clan to come if any should. The statue is the remains of the last dwarf who brought it. Spade wields it.

This is a steel axe. All craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality. This object is unadorned. This object confers a +3 bonus to attack and damage rolls, returns once thrown, improves the armor class of the wielder by 2, and provides the ability to speak with statues 1/day. This object may only be wielded by a Dwarf. From the item emanates a choir of Dwarven voices singing mournful songs. This object confers an effective bonus of 50 dwarves for the purposes of construction.

Spade uses the axe to ask the statue if their clan had any last wish beyond the axe. "Live." It sheds a tear. Sapphire does as well. We have taken a burden off of her.

We leave the vault to discuss over tea. We ask her for guns and gunpowder, the same as we have of Hakim Sand. They can't get a ton of them because they are controlled by the Jade Throne, and getting too many would at best raise eyebrows. We get a couple guns and a barrel of powder for now. She's neutral, like us, but war is coming to the region whether we like it or not. Both the Jade Throne and the Golden Riders have reasons to covet our position (money and location, respectively). We bond a little bit over our shared desire to not get involved. Sapphire warns us that the Golden Riders often make contact through traders who swear loyalty to them, and Hakim Sand might be one of them. We tentatively agree to give her the remains of our wizard once he passes.

There's another wizard around that Sapphire doesn't like. A bit of a "bastard who causes problems". Necromancer and diabolist type guy. She can't ethically endorse us capturing him (as he is a fellow wizard), but she's willing to give us directions and "wouldn't mind if he burned to death" and "doesn't know anything about a plot to kidnap him".

We return home and construct murder holes into our fortress walls.

September

20 carts and 40 people arrive up the mountain, headed by a man bedecked in fine silks and carrying an ornate scroll. They're from the Jade Throne, and want a loan of just 500,000gp, paid back with 5% interest in 10 years. They do not offer collateral, but are willing to provide many goods and services for the loan. We discuss, since this will be putting us more on their side than the Golden Riders. The negotiator helpfully chimes in occasionally with ideas for things we might ask of them, and we settle on the following with their help:

Given that we have asked for a "dope sword" and "cool ring" they now want 700,000gp instead to guarantee they can provide and we accept. We ask how we're supposed to know they're legit and not some elaborate ruse. We end up bringing the negotiator by Pegasus to Sapphire, who confirms he can represent who he says he does. She does tell us that this is likely a ploy by the Jade Throne to tie us closer to them more than for the money (though also for the money) but they can probably pay us back if the war goes well enough. This is satisfactory enough, so we return and keep the negotiator in our walls for the month.

Post-game thoughts

This was going to be a not-particularly-planned kidnapping originally, which I'm glad we didn't do since it seemed like it would be complicated (hopefully not too much prep wasted). I tend to want to negotiate in these kinds of situations and I think we came out alright here. Having a lead on another wizard and a bunch of help to get them coming makes me not too upset we passed on this one and even have a potential ally.

Contrast between the time we spend really zoomed in on an event vs blazing through stuff has been interesting, I wasn't sure if we were going to just resolve a single day's adventure or several months coming into this. It means either needing to go with the flow a lot more or have a decent overarching plan. We do not have that plan and it's been pointed out in-character even.

We've been treating Blitzen and Spade as mouthpieces for Wolffian and myself respectively, so we're sort of not acting as a gestalt at times? At the same time I'm perfectly happy to slip into the role of a random Dwarf to ask an in-person question and back out to the gestalt view