Session Report: A Wretched Hive Of Scum And Villainy

Campaign Date: March 31-April 30 1630 CE

Location: Abingdon, a medium sized village to the North, between Rosewood and Leylanton

With the events of the Pale Lady concluded, the party spoke to the citizens of Rosewood, who

decided to abandon their town. The abductions were clearly going to be an ongoing problem, and the party seemed to have made the whole thing worse: the abbey that supported the town through their brewing had been massacred, townsfolk were dead, the inn was destroyed. They had heard of an isolated town to the North called Leylanton, rumored to have avoided the ravages of the English Civil War, which at this point had torn the country asunder and left the Royalist army battered and bedraggled, whilst bandits and deserters from both Parliamentarian and Royalist forces terrorized the country. These events did not occur until 1642 in the real world's timeline, but a combination of Referee historical error and adventure synergy (1630 is smack dab in the 30 years war across the channel), because that conflict is ripe for the picking, gameability and adventure-wise.

The party accompanied the refugees of Rosewood to a town called Abingdon, where they had a haven turn (for the unfamiliar, they're downtime turns one month in length which allow the PCs to pursue actions such as carousing, recovering, investing, etc. It originated on the necropraxis blog here). The players chose to carouse. Each rolled a die on a table, and several interesting results were achieved. Bartholome, the replacement for the deceased Errick, found himself in bed with a handsome plague doctor...'s body. Unsure of how this occurred, he covered up any signs implicating him and pillaged the doctor's outfit, which he thought was pretty awesome. He was slightly anxious that he may have contracted the plague, however... Hadrian had a similar experience, finding himself wed to a rotund merchant man, whom he promptly made arrangements to leave. Mystery, Rose's sister who happened to both be nearby enough to encounter the party as well as being a similarly qualified and demeanored assassin, spent the time helping them fence some of the goods which could possibly be traced back to an abbey massacre. Seigjagt drunkenly got a tattoo of a strange runic symbol on his throat, which, while atypical, didn't distress him because he would simply cover it with his edgy face scarf. Peter the True XXIV, on the other hand, started a barfight in one of the two inns in Abingdon. This resulted in a grand melee, the results of which I will attempt to relay below.

Peter, being a Lucky Idiot, determined that he was creeping under tables and using a hand auger (pictured left) to drill through the table and the bottom of patron's beer mugs so that he could drink for free. He was caught and yanked from under the table by an angry customer, who threw him onto the table and slid him down it whilst beating him with his fists, resulting in several spilled drinks and more angry patrons. They began to attack the offender, and Peter the drink thief as well, which then resulted in more folks being pushed and punched until the entire crowd of about a dozen and a half rough customers were all engaged in a no holds barred fight. Not all of the fury was directed at the party, it was all out chaos.

Highlights include a thief taking advantage of the confusion to steal everyone's coin pouches before making a break for the upper level to escape via a window but being gunned down by one of the PCs, a crazed Halfling rolling a critical hit with a drinking horn, resulting in stabbing into another combatant's esophagus, allowing the horn to fill with blood, and chugging it, and a traveling acrobat entertainer doing a maneuver which involved pushing the massive brew barrel behind the counter off its braces with his legs, sending it on a route to crush Seigjagt and the innocent, beleaguered inn owner, who barely escaped. And in all the confusion, the psycho Halfling also set the whole place ablaze. After much carnage, the inn burned to the ground, consuming the bodies of all but the PCs, innkeeper, acrobat, and Halfling. The PCs consoled the innkeeper, who was heartbroken at losing his livelihood, which had been in his family for generations, and told him they would help him find a job. He immediately got shitfaced drunk, a condition in which he would remain in perpetuity.

The result of the barfight and carousing was approximately 700 xp for each party member, resulting in all but a few of them reaching second level. It was decided by the Ref that what happens during a haven turn stays in the haven turn, and that barfights were allowed and encouraged to employ cartoon physics and ultraviolence. A good time was had by all.