Post date: Sep 02, 2016 12:28:39 AM
These session summaries were originally posted to The Piazza in October and November 2014, and have been edited to remove spoilers for future sessions. Out-of-character commentary is in italics.
Session 26 (10/12/2014)
The Great Hunt started just before the Half-Pint returned to Freeport, so the party has decided to get involved for some fun and profit. With a druid in the party, they're more interested in slowing down the other hunters than just killing animals, but the possibility of capturing something live to sell to Fang and Claw definitely has their interest. Omar Nkota has warned them about a deadly bulette who's still at large in the jungle. If they meet it, he advised them to either kill it or run like hell--it's long past being trainable, but its young might still be, if they haven't yet tasted humanoid blood.
Their first bounty was a leucrotta (whose mate sensibly fled before dying itself). They then tried to poach a kill (a peryton) from a Rolland Musketeer and his guides. In a short, nasty fight, they managed to knock out the elf lord. His two servants immediately surrendered and negotiated their release, at the cost of the bounty and their purses. The PCs wanted to demand more, but the guides convinced them that trying to ransom the Musketeer back to the Moon King would be too time-consuming and dangerous.
Session 27 (10/26/2014)
Harissa's new cohort (Mirrissarr, a catfolk rogue) was introduced last session, but after being reminded that Inacio's archetype gives him trapfinding, we decided to retcon the cohort to be a nagaji bard with the arcane duelist template. Virali is from Naranjan, where her race reveres nagas. This makes her an outcast at home (thanks to the sinister Naga Cult) and in Freeport (for her resemblance to the feared serpent people). Naturally, she makes heavy use of mundane and magical disguises to hide her real identity.
With minimal resources expending dealing with the Musketeer's party, the PCs continued on their hunt. Inacio came across strange tracks, and led the party to a clearing where a couple of baby bulettes were mock-fighting. They decided to catch them alive, because Omar Nkota had expressed an interest in acquiring more young for training. While the party discussed how best to do this, and moved closer, the bulettes noticed them and headed their way--one charging on the surface, and the other burrowing underground. The first baby was immediately downed by Issalia's slumber hex, and promptly tied up by Inacio. Then the second one burst out of the ground to attack him.
Then things got interesting, as a larger bulette burst from the ground next to the wagon, savaging the mule (leaving it with 1 hp!) and injuring the nearest PC. Issalia healed the mule, who then bolted, drawing a bite from the bulette. The mule staggered away, disabled, and then fell unconscious from the effort. Issalia was knocked down by the wagon, leaving her an easy target for the bulette, who mauled her badly. In the luckiest moment of her life so far, her slumber-hex worked at point-blank range, and the bulette collapsed. Meanwhile, Inacio managed to subdue the other baby with nonlethal attacks.
But they weren't out of danger yet. Larkspur noticed the ground rumbling with the approach of something large underground, and warned the other in time for several of them to ready attacks just before the mama bulette burst forth. Damarak let off a sleet storm spell, which foiled the monster's intent to charge the center of the party. Virali cast a grease spell in its path at the edge of the storm, causing it to lose a turn falling and standing back up. Between Harissa and Inacio's blades, and Larkspur's call lightning and summoned earth elemental, the party managed to slay the brute beast before anyone took any mortal wounds. They then spent some time with weapons (and leftover lightning bolts) making sure that it and the middle-sized one were most sincerely dead. As they did so, Damarak channeled some energy to heal the PCs' wounds, as well as the mule's.
The mama beast was a standard Huge bulette from the Bestiary; I borrowed the official D&D mini from one of my players. The Large bulette had the young template applied. For this one, I used one of the same cheap plastic toys that inspired the original monster in the infancy of D&D. The babies were more dramatically reduced in power, being Medium-sized and only half normal HD. For them, I used Shark Warrior LEGO minifigures (from the Atlantis theme) bent down on all fours.
The party put the two babies in the cage on their wagon. They also wanted to collect the bounty on the larger bulettes, so spent some time constructing sledges to drag them back to Freeport. Larkspur loaned her muleback cords to Inacio so that he would be strong enough to drag the 3-ton mother beast. Traveling at a crawl, they didn't get very far before they had to make camp for the night. Larkspur used hide campsite to conceal the bulettes, while the party made camp outside the spell's effect.
During first watch, Issalia's owl detected movement in the trees. Inacio cast about for tracks, and found some very confusing disturbances on the ground that led to a very large tree. The hadozee climbed up to investigate, but then started to feel distracted and disoriented. A large wooden mask extended from the tree's trunk, breathed smoke at the ranger, and moaned "Leave...." Inacio was briefly nauseated by the smoke, but hurriedly climbed down and went back to camp. He and Issalia woke Larkspur, so that the druid can go talk to the tree...which we'll deal with next session.
Session 28 (11/16/2014)
Larkspur talked with the masked tree monster [a kapre, from Bestiary 4], and wisely showed respect for the creature and its territory. This led to the thing agreeing to let the PCs stay in their camp until morning, provided they made sure the bulettes would never return to the jungle. At the end of the conversation, it was willing to let Larkspur return to its domain, but not the others.
The next day, the party left the jungle. Inacio, muscles bulging thanks to borrowed muleback cords, and dragging a dead mama landshark behind him, made quite an impression with the bounty officers! The PCs negotiated a bounty for the dead bulettes and peryton, then took the young to Fang and Claw to sell to Omar Nkota. They celebrated that evening in their usual way: drinking long into the night. while they were at it, they gathered some gossip about their competition in the Great Hunt. (The Musketeer they fought and ransomed had apparently been one of the early leaders but had recently dropped out of contention.)
They had been told that the Hunter's Cup would be awarded the next day, so sobered up in time to attend the presentation. As a preliminary, several hunters were publicly praised for their exploits, including the PCs for bagging the landsharks. The winner was Arturo the Black, a human of immense girth, who apparently hunted alone but for a pack of hunting dogs. [Arturo comes from the adventure idea "Hungry Man," in Tales of Freeport.]