Session 3 (August 14th, 2015)
Day 2 in New Sarnath (Evening)
The end of a dungeon
The battle versus the custom "Daddy" allip, his little girl, and her doll doesn't prove to be much of a challenge to the party, especially once Daddy goes down and the little wax golem girl runs crying back to her bed and tries to hide under her blanket; Thanus's summoned eagles show her no mercy.
There isn't much more to loot beyond what Thanus had already stole and there are no more enemies except the mostly non-hostile crying mother fye in the next room: Dungeon cleared!
The party debates the merits of resting in this creepy shrine room, but the fact that it is a creepy shrine room plus the fact that there is the fye not far away makes the party decide to just leave; they figure they can make it back to town and rest there.
Before they go, Braggor examines the fireplace with the magical actual ever-burning blue fire; once he becomes certain he can't take it with him, he lights a torch off of the fire and is convinced that he now has magic fire of his very own. Note: It's just regular fire now.
Out of the sub-basement, back to the ghoul's lair, out into the sunken courtyard, and back up the rope to the canyon-esque shattered boulevard; time to head "home"!
Just trying to walk home in peace...
It is nearly dusk and the party makes their way back toward the city when they suddenly hear the sounds of combat from not far away! They decide to investigate!
At a a narrow four-way intersection of alleyways they see two people, both clearly battle hardened mercenaries but one a woman with a bow and the other a man with a sword. They are surrounded by many small earth elementals and at their feet are four dead mercenaries, clearly allies slain by the elemental onslaught. Things aren't looking good for the duo, but now reinforcements have arrived!
The party joins the fight against the elementals and they fall easily, but as they do they dissipate into nothingness: Thanus has seen that effect enough times to know they are killing summoned creatures, and as he thinks this more elementals appear and renew the battle. As those elementals fall, more and varying kinds take their place.
The man with the sword (a new player character in fact) seems to only be holding it for show as he punches and kicks summoned creatures to devastating effect, but not devastating enough to actually kill them; the women with the bow (NPC) is more than happy to cherry pick the wounded elementals though and she earns an impressive kill count; the party begins to think that they should try to recruit her after this fight is over, though the man will have to find other employment.
The battle proceeds and eventually Thanus is able to use Detect Magic to pinpoint where the summoning is coming from: Down one of alleys is an invisible caster, a master summoner! Thanus casts Web to cut off his escape and the party begins to move down the alley, slaying summoned hell hounds, and attacking blindly to find their invisible foe.
Long story short: His invisibility pops as he goes for an offensive spell, he gets grappled, he tries to surrender, things happen and he struggles, and he dies. Battle complete!
After battle exposition
The party makes the acquaintance of the two people they had just saved. The women is Kira, leader of the Silverstriders... the rest of the Silverstriders are the corpses laying around, so in retrospect she isn't really leader of anything any more.
The Silverstriders were out this way following a lead they had on a good spot for looting, but it was a dead-end. On the way back they were ambushed by swarms of summoned elementals under the control of that dead summoner guy over there.
The man introduces himself as Elmsworth, a humble sellsword who is new to the city. He and one of the dead men were recently hired to the scavenging crew and this was their first outing with them. It clearly didn't work out and now he is back to being unemployed. The party thinks they can solve that issue and offers him a job: Elmsworth has joined the party!
With all that out of that talking out of the way, Braggor goes to start looting the corpses of Kira's dearest and most trusted friends, but she rather firmly states that those men had families in the city so their stuff isn't for the party to loot; she will liquidate it, give the family what is theirs, and then after she will give the party a share for their efforts.
The party agrees to those terms and the corpses go into a Bag of Holding Kira produces; she lets the party loot the corpse of the new guy though as she doesn't really know anything about him.
She is also cool with the party taking what they want from the corpse of the ambusher, so the party does just that. Vlad recognizes an emblem on the man's armor; he had belonged to a Northern company, but that was clearly before he went south and turned to banditry.
On the corpse they find something rather interesting: A map showing the route the Silverstriders would be taking along with notes about when they would be likely to be passing and with how many people.
The Silverstriders were setup!
The note on the maps says 4 targets, but Elmsworth and the other new guy were added at the last minute and no one could have expected the party to randomly show up.
If it wasn't for those unknown factors then the ambush would have been a fairly simple and straight forward task for a skilled summoner. Unfortunately for him, it didn't work out as expected.
Revenge!
Kira is understandably pissed and she asks the party if they want to make some more gold; they of course do. She tells them to follow her then, because tonight they have a score to settle; she knows who set her up and he will pay!
As they walk, the party learns that Kira purchased the intel about loot spot from an information broker by the name of Drebin; he sold her the info, therefore he was the one responsible. And now they will kill him. She knows just where to find him too, but he moves around a lot beyond the barricade so if they are going to do it, it needs to be know.
Vlad realizes she is describing the underworld contact the bartender Lucky told him about, the one he was trying drunkenly find the night before, the one with the blue lantern. Small world.
Elmsworth is not so sure about Kira's assessment, especially her increasingly angry rantings against the man reveals hints of some past bitterness between them.
What Elmsworth knows: Drebin is a fairly successful independent information broker and routinely sells leads to scavenging crews (among other services) and he makes good money doing so. He also supposedly has a keen mind for business.
Selling out low level groups like the Silverstriders wouldn't be a good investment given the fairly low pay off compounded by the risk of what would happen if his clients learned he had been betraying them. A man like Drebin going "crooked" that way doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
No, Elmsworth thinks Kira may be incorrect in her assessment of the situation and as she rants and leads the way to Drebin's current place of business, he quietly explains so to the party. Instead of kicking down the door and trying to straight up murder the man, maybe they should confront him with the map they found and get his side of the story.
The party agrees. It is now nearly midnight as the party and Kira approach an alleyway marked with a glowing blue lantern (looks like Drebin is still here tonight and open for business). Kira is still ready to go in metaphorical guns blazing, but the party (lies) tells her that if she goes in then Drebin will immediately know that she found him out and things could get messy.
Why doesn't she stay out here and watch to make sure no on escapes while the party goes in and catches him by surprise? Kira is in a murderous rage, but she still understands tactics so she agrees; she gets her bow ready and covers the alleyway.
Now it is time for the party to do their part and figure out what the hell is going on here.
To be continued...
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