A Conclave of Cats

-


At the end of the last adventure, the party was gleefully patting themselves on the back for convincing Bast, goddess of cats, into sneaking them inside the Great Pyramid to force the Governor into providing an audience he had been reluctant to give. The Governor was the official empowered to grant the Writ of Passage, which authorized the Exile Queen and her entourage to travel deeper into the Holy Empire of the God King. While the Exile's case for such a writ was well established by precedent, the Governor seemed leery of the potential blowback of being the one responsible for allowing a shipload of barbarians carte blanche access to the Empire. Since he didn't wish to grant nor did he have grounds to refuse it, he had decided the pragmatic course of action was to delay any decision on the matter indefinitely. 

In addition to securing the Writ, several other notables in the city had asked the group to take advantage of a potential audience with the Governor in various ways. Ali's cousin, the Masriqi ambassador, requested they plead for leniency regarding a young Masriqi nobleman who had landed himself in jail after killing a local dignitary in a duel. Lucius Martelli, a Sea Lord of Haven, had requested the party do whatever they could to prevent the Co-Phong, a coalition of Mbo'ian merchants, from being granted a charter to manage foreign trade. 

All these things hinged on getting face time with the Governor, face time that was not forthcoming. 

Bast had offered her help to overcome the Governor's reluctance. All they had to do was promise she could play with the bard. A bard who didn’t seem even a little upset at the prospect. 

After the party agreed, Bast had transformed the entire party into cats, and, after leading them on a merry chase over the roofs and towers of Bawaaba, the mercurial goddess had eventually deposited them right into the middle of the Governor’s audience chamber inside the heart of the great pyramid. 

Cats being sacred in Mbo, not only was the troop of felines left unmolested by the guards, but warm milk and fish were provided by the temple priests upon arrival. 

However, when the sun rose, and the Governor arrived to begin the business of the day, Bast, feeling she had held up her end of the bargain, abruptly withdrew herself and her gifts, returning the party to their normal forms directly in the center of the audience hall, in front of the Governor, his guards and entourage. 

What seemed like a cunning plan rapidly revealed the flaws of a missing endgame…



















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

D&D and Pirating - Part 2 - Pirating in 5E

-
Image
  In our previous post on D&D and Pirating ( What is a pirate adventure? ), I decomposed the pirate narrative into it's core thematic elements, talked about what success looks like in a pirate campaign and walked through some of the obstacles that I needed to overcome to do achieve that success. In this post I will discuss key world building elements that foster the emergent thematic properties I want, then make specific suggestions around 5E game mechanics, specifically managing the magic system and ship combat.   Pirate Worldbuilding  The goal of this section is to provide a generic world building recipe that, if applied, should result in a realistic and internally consistent fantasy world that supports the key pirate themes I identified in the previous article. As I have discussed before, this is by no means the only way to include Pirates in your game. It's also not the only to generate a detailed and internally consistent fantasy world. It is however a ...
Read more

D&D and Pirating - Part 1 - What is a Pirate Adventure?

-
Image
  Dungeons and Dragons and Pirates! What could possibly go better together? It's like peanut butter and chocolate right? Well, as scores of failed supplements have shown, it's actually a trickier mashup then you would think. While the spirit and style of the pirating in the age of sail is a natural and additive match to Dungeons and Dragons genre, there are a number of complications that can easily wreck or divert such a campaign. Unless you as a dungeon master are aware and proactive in your world building and scenario generation, you are likely to miss the mark of your expectations. The purpose of this series of three posts is to share some of the learning from running such a campaign (now entering it's second year of continuous play) and provide a basic storytelling framework and toolkit for navigating the choices and trade offs presented.  First I will decompose what a pirate adventure IS into its core themes, what kind of gaming style and campaign world best suits it, ...
Read more

Dreams in Shadow

-
Image
Freddy's Dream That night Freddy dreamed. It started off as a good dream. He was back in Valoria during the heyday of Hot-Red and the Freddies , back before things had gone bad. He remembered the night vividly; they had just finished up a set at The Mended Drum , a set which had gone well. Very well. The crowd had been huge, way more than they had expected, people spilling out the door and into the alleys outside. The music was catching on. Word was getting around. Valorian Swing was becoming a thing.  They had been hanging out after the show at Hot Red’s crib in some getto ass part of Valoria, exhausted, but happy. Ozraeline was lounging on the couch, smoking something or other, and some unnamed drummer was passed out on the floor. They’d never had much luck with drummers; they came and mysteriously went with dizzying regularity. Freddy didn’t remember the names of half of them. Hot Red was pretty particular about the beat, never satisfied with anyone they hired for long. In hinds...
Read more