Ok, now it’s time to see what Valery and her new companions do after their first fight together. They agreed to join up and they found a quest on the quest board. Will things go according to plan for these newbies?

The Story

Split into 3 audio files this time because I had to take a few breaks to deal with some bread I was baking. The audio is much better. I have to think about what I might do to get it that extra mile over.

• Part 1:

• Part 2:

• Part 3:

Summary

Valery decides that she wants to help get the barkeep transformed back into a human. They go to the university and get someone to transform him back into a human. It’s an easy task since the spell was cast by a drunk student. After that they go pursue the quest they found on the quest board.

They meet a construct from the Library of the Keeper of the Keys. After he informs them that they need to the mansion of a deceased member of their order (Keeper of The Keys) retrieve an important book, get the keys to the locked doors, find the owner’s will, and disable any traps, they accept the mission. He opens a portal to The Smithy and takes them to the house they need to investigate.

Once there they thoroughly investigate the house, finding the keys by looking around as well as replacing the gears to a mechanized statue. They also find a safe hidden behind a painting that shows that the owner of the house’s twin is in need of money. In one of the rooms they fail to heed the warnings of a guardian construct shaped like a demon. It attacks them. They are able to defeat it and continue their exploration. They meet a dupladron who tells them to find Yeager, the construct that acts as the majordomo for the household. They also eventually have a very short conversation with the ghost who tells them they can find Yeager upstairs. They repair him, learn that the twin most likely stole the book they are looking for, and get the will.

From there the team confronts the twin and finds out he sold the book to a collector. After a bit of badgering, he tells them the address of the warehouse where they can find him.

They enter the warehouse and are confronted by a gate. Interestingly enough, they decide to yell into this warehouse that they are looking for a book. This attracts the attention of some of the folks in there who are dressed like cultists. They battle through the bars (meaning only ranged attacks) and eventually they kill all the cultists. Storm is knocked unconscious during the fight, but Valery uses Spare the Dying to stabilize him. They take a short rest while they try and figure out how to get deeper into the warehouse. Storm decides to perform the Unseen Servant ritual to open up the door. Once they enter, they explore a bit, including being very convincing to some cultists that they are warehouse inspectors - avoiding a fight.

Eventually they enter a room that tries to entangle them, but they are all dexterous enough to avoid capture. They see that a demon (the person who bought the book) is performing some sort of ritual. They kill some cultists and almost kill the very exhausted demon, but he finishes the ritual. This obliterates him and the other cultists. A ripper comes through and begins to warp reality around it as the room seems to be sucked towards it.

Beatrice quickly grabs the book and the party escapes as the warehouse implodes.

They tell the Keepers of the Keys what happened and the Keepers contain the ripper. The party gets their rewards from the deceased owner’s sister as well as 5,000 GP from the keepers for retrieving the book. They decide to use this money to buy some property as their headquarters now that they are ready to continue to be professional adventurers.

GM Notes

Scarlett’s roleplay of Valery cracked me up. We had spoken a lot before about what she wanted to get out of Valery and I remember one of the key points was to have a character that was a little more cheerful and a little less tragic than in the past. But I was not expecting hilarious naivete. I don’t know if this is part of the plan, but I think it’s going to go pretty well with the subclass she’s planning for - no spoilers! (hehe)

Compared to when we started playing a few years ago, the kids did incredibly well investigating the house. Previously they would have just blazed through the rooms. This time they investigated and took note of what they found.

I also loved Sam’s use of the unseen servant. The adventure had a few ideas for getting past the door, and I thought maybe they would try attacking it - but unseen servant was a great use of magic outside combat. I hope the kids keep being creative about using their abilities to solve puzzles.

I tried to signal that an easy way to disrupt the ritual was by killing the cultists and I think eventually Stella picked up on the hint, but they were also just 1 HP away from killing the demon, anyway, so they did a good job. Since it was a level 1 adventure, the writers included an escape clause to prevent a TPK and so I think that was great writing on the part of Kobold Press as well.

• Tales-of-the-Valiant
• Labyrinth