A Mountain of Gold Session 4 Report
I arrive late to discover one of the heroes of the Last Dwarven Clan (henceforth The Clan), has gotten oddly into the whole "samurai" thing and has a greasy topknot now. 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.
Arriving on time before me is Wolffian, fighting a dire wolf with a katana that is controlled by the wonderful game master Ms. Quixotic. Last session, we made allies with the wizard Sapphire and a deal with the Jade Throne, in service of progressing with the new age and capturing a new wizard.
September
We finish a set of +1 plate. The Jade Throne starts to make good on their promise after our agreed-upon loan, providing us with some of our requested goodies. The list below includes all that appears this month and the remainder next month.
- 100 guns, 10 cannons, and enough gunpowder for the rest of the game.
- Three snipers to teach rifle safety, some cannoneers to teach cannon usage
- Three engineers to teach us some of their technologies
- Enough seasonings to last a lifetime
- A ring of water walking
- An old priest delivering the last existing blade of the master Ogura Kagakane: the Sacred Ten-Thousand Folded Blade +3
- Provides feather fall to wielder
- Cuts through stone (slowly)
- Detects evil
- Lawful, offers no surrender for chaos
- Can only exist within a mile of the dead master (now interred in the mountain)
- 5 samurai and 5 assassins (all level 5) contracted through the capture of the Necromancer Crassus the Black, master of the Inverted Tower
- An offer to teach us the secrets of their airships for 1,000,000 gp (declined for now).
Blitzen loves this and gets crazy into Jade Throne culture. He's practicing sword arts in our front yard and rambling about "Bushido". Spade is a little exasperated Human culture is suddenly beating out Dwarven culture. A scout team of a ninja and a dwarf is sent by Pegasus to the Inverted Tower and will return next month.
October
The second set of the Jade Throne's bounties arrives, finishing out the list detailed above. Blitzen decides to hunt down some Dire Wolves that appear in the area using her new sword. She's powerful enough that the wolf cannot pierce her armor but it can be pierced by the badass sword. I arrive in the game to discover that the wolf is now impaled and being dragged around like a trophy. The wolves are largely dealt with and left in our territory for now.
The scouts sent to the Inverted Tower return. Our dwarf bears a harrowed look while reporting Crassus' soldiers are dwarven skeletons. They number 150 defending the keep, half heavy footmen and half crossbows. There's a small building that the ninja couldn't penetratee that is likely the Inverted Tower's entrance. We begin planning a strike team complimented by a siege. Bringing the samurai and assassins in for planning, we come to the following:
- A hired group of mercenaries conducts the main siege, largely as a distraction for the many skeletons
- They will be supported by half our cannon, manned by dwarves (making sure we get some field experience)
- Our samurai, assassins, hero dwarves, and maybe some extra dwarves will use the new sword to cut in the back wall secretly and infiltrate the tower, with intent to capture the wizard.
- We'll brew a potion of undead control for their revenant captain.
So we just need mercs and to wait for the potion. We put out the call for work.
Sapphire shows up, the first of her new monthly visits with news. She's worried that she's less defended, and if anyone comes to us they'll come through her too. We agree to shelter her / her troops if possible and to store things for her if needed in an evacuation. She's asking if there's another way apart from up the mountain, which we're cagey about, but agree to take a message from a forward after which we can "direct them" to the secret passage up we found.
Taking a look at our new cannons, we apply our superior dwarven ingenuity to these new inventions and make a new one of our own. The first of many Dwarven Flak Cannons is developed, in anticipation of an aerial dragon or airship assault.
November
Hakim Sand shows up, and he's not particularly happy with us. He's got guns but we don't need them or him anymore due to the Jade Throne's deal. Blitzen's new Samurai ways draw a side-eye. We manage to talk him down from the idea we're picking sides, and he becomes a bit amenable to trade. He lets us know that the Golden Riders (his true patrons, no pretense now) have been skirmishing a bit with the thousands of goblins coming vaguely this way. There's clear signs they're allied with or under the command of the Last Dragon Zaynawab, and coming to take our rightfully earned fortress. They're not interested in fighting them, and suspect they'll be here "next year".
We end up striking a deal for a mercenary company contract for a while. We're buying out the Blue Banners from the Golden Riders, a company of 3000 headed by William Osprey and known for their cruelty (yet are honorable, Hakim promises). We have a lot of discussion about whether or not it's worth it (especially having that many around), but settle on building a keep near our mountain's base to have them weather the initial Goblin assault and having them as overkill against Crassus. They cost 21,500gp a month, and we need to buy out their contract for at least 6. Work starts on the keep before they arrive next month, and I plan to put an estimate together for what time/money that would cost us later.
Hakim shares that while the Golden Riders aren't thrilled we're doing business with the Jade Throne, it's not the end of the world. He notes that they're probably going to try and stage troops in the region, and that would be a bridge too far for them. The Golden Riders don't really want the area we're in, but if the Throne comes in, they'll also come in to clear it (and us) out. We promise to keep that in mind / keep them out, since we don't really want that either. Hakim also shares that they'd love the secrets of Airship Technology, which we establish would be more complicated. Blitzen feels like our deal isn't very sweet, so we ask bluntly for some "loot" (getting a rise out of Spade, who is already very "amused" by Blitzen). Hakim promises that they'll bring some Treasure of some sort, sometime. This is acceptable.
William Osprey arrives late this month (or next month?) with the Blue Banners, and we prepare to march on the Inverted Tower. Next Session!
Post-game thoughts
I was late, this makes me sad. I enjoy this game quite a bit but I got all mixed up this week. Very glad I was able to still play for a bit. Coming in to find out Blitzen was going "full weeaboo" was very funny and I enjoyed immediately jumping in pretending to be exasperated at it.
Last time we talked a bit about goals and I decided it would be cool to realize ourselves as masters of technology even if humans created some of the things. I think the flak is a good step towards that.
I'm glad we just got mercs since this game isn't long and it's good to push things forwards. Let's do some stuff! It's nice to just have the siege not be a complicated affair since we'll outnumber the skeletons 20:1. Ms. Quixotic asked if we'd get feedback from the samurai/assassins and having her speak through them to help through our plan was extremely helpful in getting something together quickly when we could have been planning in circles for a while instead of doing cool stuff like talking with Hakim.