The Master of Revels is a one-shot adventure in the city of Hollin. Thanks Amy, Chris, Dawn, Kenandra, and Phil!
Altair, Luna, Rosy Claster, and Vitani meet their friend Burgess for dinner at the Mooncalf, but Burgess is attacked there. Investigating, the party discovers that Mr. Burbage's tontine has turned Hollin's rich against each other in a winner-take-all fight, and Rosy finds her uncle James on the tontine subscriber list. The party deduces that Phyla House attacked Burgess, and they find the Moonwell vampire lair and Temple of Night under Phyla House's manor. Altair learns that the goddess of night Vali is her Warlock patron, in a waking dream in the Temple. Lolani Phyla confronts the party there, but they defeat her, with Luna and her boar companion Borat delivering the final blows.
The players introduced their characters. Dawn was new to D&D, so Dawn and Chris played her character Luna together. My notes:
Phil: Altair is a human from desert cities and terrain. She's a criminal basically, her parents are dead and she's eighteen to twenty years old. She met her patron one night when she had found her father's scimitar and was planning on vengeance when a woman in a heavy dark cloak came to her and offered her vengeance. That's how her warlock pact came about...her patron is basically a version of the Raven Queen, from the shadow realm...from Fourth Edition, deals with shadows...a god of retribution...like Shar from the Forgotten Realms. Altair is a Hex Blade.
Kenandra (Kay): Vitani, from an unknown section of the world between sand and sun. It's a lush rainforest area, people on the coast have been trading specialized tropical imports and exports - fruits, mangos, and tobacco. Further south than the desert, but a lot closer to water. Her people have an atavistic belief system, aided by the presence of the fey in her village, and there is a very weak but ever present channel across the veil of the worlds, and the fey move between, and a fey can help a human do the move. Vitani is one of the village protectors, and one day got a vision of sorts, from the fey or not, basically to go out and discover beyond her imagining. She doesn't know exactly, but she'll know it when she sees it. Kind of a vision quest, self discovery. Very tied to ways of the land, the people, her dedication is to her many gods. As far as she's concerned everything has a god to it. Thus Oath of the Ancients, there's always divinity around her.
Sheltered hermetic life before leaving her home realm, has become used to some creature comforts that aren't naturally found in her homelands. Likes candy, grape wine, those are her vices now.
Amy: Rosy Claster: Somewhat like myself...not sure what's going to be happening, exploring. Raised by both parents, but spent the most time with her uncle...her father was an investigator for the police...her uncle was not such a law follower. She hasn't really stepped out of her comfort zone, but kind on the edge of that.
Dawn: Luna is a human from the mountains called Arcian, her ancestors hail from another country, master ship builders, that's all she knows about her ancestors. An individual came to the mountains to start anew, now she finds herself in the same situation as everyone in her family has died of some plague, and she's the only one left. She is following a calling back to her homeland, she's been living off the earth. Luna has a wild boar as a companion, they're best friends and loyal. They seem to have a sense connection. She has done a lot of gardening, knows plants, and uses them for medicinal purposes and can heal, and almost do sorcery on people when needed. Can run really fast.
Before the game Chris had sent me a brief background for Luna that said she was called by a dream, but Dawn clarified that Luna's calling was a "constant knowing," not a one-time dream.
A little later in the game, Kay also sent a sketch of Vitani:
I said that the characters had a mutual friend, Burgess Banks. Burgess was a patriarch in Lorentz House, an Admiralty supplier, but he retired from day-to-day operations two years ago. Burgess stayed active in retirement by volunteering with the Braddock watch, based at the Mooncalf tavern. Burgess sent the characters messengers saying that a flamboyant group portrait of his watch company had just been finished there, and he asked them to come celebrate with him there at 8:00. They agreed.
As Rosy was preparing at home, a second messenger came and asked if she would meet with Helmholtz, Hollin's Master of Revels, at the Great Council Hall in Dunham. She went, and Helmholtz asked her a little about her father's detective work and about her missing uncle, James Claster. Rosy was suspicious but answered Helmoltz's questions. Helmholtz said that Ella, his predecessor as Master of Revels, also hadn't been seen for a few days. He said he wasn't worried about Ella yet, but suggested that they keep an eye out for each other's missing friends, and generally watch each other's backs. As thanks, Helmholtz gave her his copy of A Brief History of the Anhault Charter Company.
A Brief History of the Anhault Charter Company
The characters assembled at the Mooncalf for their celebration with Burgess. Altair, Rosy, and Vitani joined Burgess at a table in the Mooncalf's open-air courtyard, but Luna was suspicious and kept apart, sitting down at a nearby table to watch.
A waiter, Vincent, came to take their drink orders, but Burgess was immediately pulled away.
You're just sitting down with Burgess when a gray-haired man, maybe a businessman, comes into the room. He looks around the room for a few seconds until he spots Burgess, then quickly walks over and asks Burgess if he's the watch captain.
The man says he's Giles Ulm. Giles says when he got home from work just now, he found his wife Selma dead. Would Burgess come right away? When Burgess hears this, he becomes alarmed and says, "My lord, a death at Ulm House? You know Tamir Rabi was found dead just yesterday at House Hanan."
And then:
As Burgess and Giles are talking, you notice a young woman come into the room. She scans the room for a few seconds, then approaches Burgess.
As Burgess replied, the woman suddenly raised a long device from her cloak and leveled it to attack him. After a long second of surprise, Amy, Kay, and Phil said they would intervene.
Using Ensnaring Strike, Vitani struck the woman across her two hands with her staff, disarming her, and Restrained her with the Ensnaring Strike's mass of vines. Rosy picked up the device and determined that it was a gunpowder weapon, but couldn't understand how to use it. She struck with her rapier, using the Advantage from Restrained to score a sneak attack. Phil attacked twice, scoring a critical on one attack, and doing 23 points of damage. They made non-lethal attacks so they could question the woman after subduing her.
Restrained by the vines, the woman summoned two Moon Shadows to aid her.
Luna initially held back but her boar Borat was itching to fight, so they attacked. They both hit the first Moon Shadow, and Altair finished it with an Eldritch Blast. Vitani killed the other with her Smite, scoring double damage because the Moon Shadows were vulnerable to radiant damage. Kay described the effect as (my rough notes):
Strange tattoos on Vitani's arm light up and go into her weapon, she makes a sweeping arc with the rounded end of her walking stick... light just bursts through like the end of staff is like a fist. The light goes from the head section through the body and it dissipates like a frog in the noon sun.
With her Moon Shadows gone, the woman now summoned two Luna Moths. Luna targeted the moths with her Hunter's Mark, but the party decided that the woman could continually summon more, so they focused on her and finished her in the third round.
Although the party was doing non-lethal damage, the woman transformed into a Moon Shadow and dissipated after reaching zero hits. One player said "Lame!" But on dissipating, the woman did drop something curious.
Bat's Head Sword
The players discussed the attack and who the culprit could be. They noticed a common theme between the Moon Shadows, Luna Moths, and Bat's Head Sword and asked Burgess what they could mean. Burgess said that the bat's head could suggest Phyla House, which imported bat guano from Hilde for making the Admiralty's gunpowder. He told them Lolani Phyla was the head of Phyla House, and that Phyla House's manor was at Quay and Drew in the foreign quarter west of Braddock.
Giles Ulm was still at the Mooncalf, and the party decided to go to Ulm House and investigate Selma's death. Giles led them there, and they found Selma's body was still on the kitchen floor. They examined her and found bite marks on her neck.
As they finished looking at Selma, a man in a green visor and a woman arrived together. The man asked if the body on the floor was Selma Ulm, and made a note when they said yes. He turned to leave, but when they asked who he was, he introduced himself as Mr. Burbage, from the Garlington, Helmin, and Gibb bank. Mr Burbage said that Selma Ulm subscribed to a tontine that he managed for the bank.
He explained that a tontine was an ad hoc insurance policy where several individuals each invest and receive annual interest payments. If a subscriber dies, their subsequent interest payments are divided between the surviving subscribers. Eventually, when only one subscriber remains, that subscriber receives all of the tontine's capital. So, the tontine could be very lucrative for the last survivor.
Mr. Burbage also said that his tontine had become extremely lucrative after the tontine bought Volstead House's coca powder business. He said he'd promoted the coca powder by giving out free samples, and gave samples to two of the characters. (TODO: which characters?)
Coca Powder Sample
They asked Mr. Burbage who else subscribed to the tontine, and if Burgess or Tamir Rabi were subscribers, but he said that the bank's privacy policies barred him from disclosing that information. However, they did buttonhole his assistant, Mira, who gave them some hints with her expressions, and told them that Lolani Phyla was a tontine subscriber.
Mr. Burbage and Mira left, and the party searched Ulm House for any more clues, but only found Selma's tontine papers. They asked Giles if Selma's participation in the tontine was suspicious, but Giles told them that Selma was the head of the household and handled the finances, and he didn't involve himself.
They learned that Tamir Rabi's body was at Meade Hospital Morgue and went there. They found Mr. Burbage and Miri already there, confirming that Tamir had died. The party found bite marks on Tamir's neck. Rosy also found Ella's body was in the morgue, and Ella also had bite marks on her neck.
They decided to pickpocket Mr. Burbage. With two working together, they succeeded on a Sleight of Hand check, and took the tontine subscriber list from him.
Amy said that Rosy did not like the list.
Rosy decided to touch base with Helmholtz. She was still suspicious of him, but reported that Ella was dead, that Selma Ulm and Tamir Rabi were dead, and that Burgess Banks had been attacked. Without mentioning the tontine, Rosy asked Helmholtz what those people might have in common, and he said that they were all heads of successful trading houses. Amy thought it was suspicious that he didn't mention the tontine, and we briefly discussed whether Helmholtz would actually know whether those others were in the tontine.
Helmholtz said that he'd been researching the Master of Revels role, and when he'd asked Rosy to keep an eye out for Ella before, he'd intended to give her his notes about the previous Masters of Revels.
It was late and the party took a long rest overnight. In the morning, they headed to Phyla House's manor in the foreign quarter. The streets there were busy with early risers, so they went to the back of the manor and let themselves in through a back door. They explored a kitchen, living room, and den on the first floor, and bedrooms on the second floor, but didn't find anyone.
The rooms looked suspiciously well-ordered and possibly unused, except for the den. There, the desk had some ledgers on the table and a shelf full of books that looked relevant to a guano import business - accounting, navigation, gunpowder chemistry, and others. Dawn asked if any of the books seemed out of place, and they found:
Hemophilia and Other Diseases of the Blood
When Luna took the book from the shelf, the shelf swung back to reveal a wide spiral stair going down, lit by silver light - the Moonwell. Luna received an inspiration point.
Going down a few turns of the stair, they found that the floor at the very bottom of the stair had a large relief carving of a full moon, glowing with silver light. The stair had about ten spirals down to the bottom, and each spiral had three or four landings with doors.
They didn't know where Lolani Phyla might be, and they discussed leaving and investigating other tontine subscribers like Miss Miller. But as they were discussing this, a man came out the door nearest them, his jaw dropping in alarm when he saw them. They subdued him and forced him back into the room he'd come out of, tying and gagging him.
Inside, the room was a workshop cluttered with elaborate devices, and a man in a cell with a workbench. The party deduced that the devices were astronomical clocks that gave sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset times, among other calculations.
The man in the cage was as surpised to see them as the first man, but said he was Manfred Unger, from the Admiralty's Morningstar Observatory. He said that Phyla House had captured him many years ago, and forced him to build astronomical clocks, with emphasis on phases of the moon.
Although Manfred was kept in this one room, he'd been there long enough to overhear a lot about Phyla House and the Moonwell. He told them that Burgess's attacker at the Mooncalf was probably Tamara Marshall, Lolani Phyla's enforcer. He said that Lolani would probably be at the bottom of the Moonwell, in the Temple of Night, and that she slept in a coffin in the Hall of Dreams there. Finally, he warned them that the Temple of Night included a sanctum of Vali, Phyla House's goddess of night, and that they would certainly die if they violated the sanctum.
They released Manfred, who thanked them before fleeing the Moonwell.
They continued down the Moonwell to the Temple of Night.
Although Manfred had warned them not to enter Vali's sanctum, he hadn't told them which room it was, but from the map's god's-eye view they quickly decided that the sanctum must be the east room. So, they went north to room 1 first and found:
This hall is 45’ wide and 85’ long, with three circular alcoves at the far end. Two columns of pillars run the length of the hall.
Immediately upon entering, a table to the right offers devotional candles ("C"). Some candles are already lit and burn with a silver light, on tables on the left and right of the hall.
In several places on the floor (marked with a simple skull and crossbones on the drawing), dusty iron floor plates cover graves beneath the floor, some with elaborate and morbid art.
At the far end, before the circular alcoves, there’s an elaborate device about 10 feet tall ("A.C.").
The floors of the three circular alcoves show a waxing moon, full moon, and waning moon.
They recognized the "elaborate device" as an astronomical clock similar to the ones they'd seen in Manfred's room, and tried a skill check to learn more about it, but only came away with the same kind of information that Manfred had given them. They repeatedly looked again for anything else in the room, but didn't find anything else.
They headed south to "2."
This hall is 45’ wide and 80’ long, with three circular alcoves at the far end. Two columns of pillars run the length of the hall.
Immediately upon entering, a table to the right offers devotional candles. Some candles are already lit and burn with a silver light, on tables on the left and right of the hall.
The floor of each of the three circular alcoves has a 5’ circle on the floor, surrounded by a ring of glyphs.
Altair made an Arcana skill check to learn about the circles on the alcove floors, and rolled over 20, learning:
Altiar immediately sat down in the circle and closed her eyes to have a waking dream. She soon started to see Prisoner's Cinema lights, which resolved into a white specter with dark hair. The specter said that she was Vali, the goddess of night, cold, rebirth, and dreams.
Before the game, Phil had sent me a backstory saying that Altair's Warlock patron was a "dark haired woman who promised her power and revenge if she would follow her." I asked if that woman could have been this same woman, Vali, and Phil said yes.
As Altair finished her waking dream, Lolani Phyla entered the hall, saw the party and cursed at them, and strode forward to attack.
Rosy responded with the Bat's Head Sword she'd taken from Tamara Marshall, dealing both sneak attack damage and the sword's Waking Nightmare psychic damage. Lolani responded with a Silver Fireball, Claw, and Bite on Rosy, then ominously, began to call on Vali for aid.
Vitani did a Lay on Hands to cure Rosy, then used her extra attack for a Branding Smite, which she described as "Tattoos light up, into the blade, radiant comes about with the slashing, astral radiance dealing 8 damage." However, Lolani was vulnerable to radiant damage, so received 16 damage. Borat Charged Lolani, Luna used Hunter's Mark on her, and Phil attacked with Hexblade's Curse and Witchbolt.
In the second round, Lolani's call on Vali failed, and Borat and Luna finished her, with Dawn saying "Borat disembowels her, while I take my dagger to her heart. You always kill a vampire with a dagger to the heart." Vitani also said in her righteous Paladin tone, "You have done things with evil intent. I am glad for one that the moon gods do not favor you."
With Lolani down, we concluded the game, but Vitani suggested the party could come back with reinforcements to clear the Moonwell of vampires. Amy also told the others that the James Claster on the subscriber list was her never-do-well uncle.
Vitani received an inspiration point after the game for Kay's theatrical descriptions of her attacks and paladin-speak.