Session 1 summary

[chadsansing]

Key NPCs

• Root Stoneshaper, Magmatic magnate and patron
• The Silver Mask, handler
• The Red Mask, bodygyard
• Petra Bladebender, the first artificer to leave Magmatic with stolen technology

Key locations

• Portia, capital trade city of the wasteland; walls separate its districts; brutal architecture.
• Stoneshaper Keep; feels like you're underground inside; a treasure trove of dwarven art and artifacts.
• Market district.
• Port district.
• Warehouse safehouse.

Key events

• PCs witness a Risk Eater attack on 3 dwarven cloaks wearing Magmatic gear.
• The last cloak standing seems to stutter in time before stabbing the Risk Eater; says, "Gotnafisker," with his dying breath.
• PCs kill wounded Risk Eater.
• Magmatic guards take PCs to Stoneshaper Keep.
• Root recruits PCs to replace his dead cloaks.
• PCs agree to work for Root Stoneshaper and to track ex-employees, artificers who fled with stolen technologies.
• Each PC accepts a red shard crystal from Root. These crystals connect to a private shardnet for Magmatic executives, lieutenants, and agents. They are also status symbols like badges of office in Portia.
• Each PC accepts an individual reward from Root for killing the Risk Eater.
• PCs talk with the Silver Mask and choose an abandoned Magmatic warehouse for their safehouse by the port. The warehouse is too far off the optimal Golem delivery routes to make any kind of economic sense to maintain as a warehouse.
• The PCs' first assignment is to track down Petra Bladebender, secure the technology she stole, and bring it back to Root.
• Petra is rumored to have fled north.
• PCs receive unencrypted invitations to a party for the Friends of Petra on board the ship The Weeping Angel.
• PCs discover The Weeping Angel outside their safehouse. The angel masthead wears a necklace of glowing shards.

Key understandings

• Kilvar is quick to take credit for things he didn't do. He knows how to get through the mountains to cross from the wasteland to the elvish wood. He has a recreational soma espresso habit.
• Ob was on a mission to assassinate Root. He is gross.
• Faelin is an expert at stealth and speaks fluent ancient Elvish.
• Psalt is a stone cold killer.
• Wally knew Petra from when they both worked at Magmatic and likes her a lot.

Key decisions

• What to do about The Weeping Angel.
• What to do about Petra.

Players, add your insights and questions below to get ready for session 2!

[cryptomancer-actual]

This session was great! Good mix of drama, intrigue, and ultra-violence. Excited to explore the setting and continue the hilarious interactions between the party. I do enjoy the contrast between Faelin's skill/utility and the dwarfs' seething contempt for him.

It may not effect anything, but the setting's interpretation of Shardscape shards make them more portable and user-friendly than the giant "phone booth" versions that are discussed in the rule book. In preparation for the next session, Chad, you can assume that Salt will cast Tracer to enumerate and geolocate all the red shards, and then cast Shard Scry to look through them like a CCTV network.

[chadsansing]

Got it, @cryptomancer-actual. I knew about the big ones, but conflated the functionality of the two types within the smaller ones. I think I'm fine with that, though, in the spirit of more disruptive tech in Portia and the wasteland.

Let's posit that the wasteland dwarves have found the technology, methods, and magic to create small shard connections to the Shardnet, and that humans would love to have that tech, as well. It's a value-add thing. Make sense?

Still, this tech is relatively new and expensive and you and your party members should recognize the worth of the gift Root gave you. You have only ever seen - or heard rumors of - the functionality on some super high-end private shard networks and on the red shards. Old private shards == long range walkie talkies; red crystal shards == hand terminals with Shardnet access usually reserved for larger crystal terminals (like a phone booth or library Intel 486).

[chadsansing]

@cryptomancer-actual, give me a Willpower roll against an 8 difficulty, eh?

[cryptomancer-actual]

@chadsansing Do you want me to roll to resolve each spell separately?

[chadsansing]

@cryptomancer-actual, yeah - let's do Tracer first.

[cryptomancer-actual]

@chadsansing I rolled in Roll20.

1 success on Tracer, -2 successes on Shard Scry.

[chadsansing]

Okay, @cryptomancer-actual. Thank you!

Tracer

You count 60 red shard crystals in the network. You and your group hold 5 in Portia, and there are another 39 within the city's walls, mostly concentrated in Stoneshaper Keep. Some in the merchant and port districts. I can break it down further if that's useful. We are at the tail-end of business hours. There are another 13 spread out between the wasteland (7), elvish forest (3), and human-occupied homelands (3). The other 3 seem to be off continent, but you have very little frame of reference for where they might be.

Shard Scry

You get caught in a loop between scrying two scenes: a Magmatic sales meeting right out of Glengary Glenross and Faelin looking for signs of elvishness.

[cryptomancer-actual]

Awesome.

For everyone else's reference, Tracer is just a snapshot in time. If we're every actively tracking people, it requires multiple uses of Tracer.

[chadsansing]

@cryptomancer-actual, you also wanted the names of previous invitees to the Friends of Petra party. There seemed to be two sets of invitations sent out before yours, a larger set (7) sent many hours ago and a smaller set (4) sent a few hours ago.

Larger set

• Kar Batkin
• Dema Inkscar
• Alendra the Climber
• Dim Jarls
• Jotah Kegshaker
• Nerok Darkhall
• Kip Fallowfield

Smaller set

• Young Skycutter
• Wenna Gnollstringer
• Lebby Rotfist
• Brutus Sootbeard

[cryptomancer-actual]

@chadsansing

Then we need to get the names from the cloaks who got murdered and make sure this isn't actually a hit list. Someone needs to chat with our employer over the Red Shardnet.

[chadsansing]

Let's do that at the beginning of session 2 as part of figuring out The Weeping Angel. Y'all can figure out how to spin the inquiry together.

[chadsansing]

Moved to https://github.com/chadsansing/cineris-campaign/session-notes/session-1.md