This week we return to Kintargo, a city under the oppressive rule of Barzillai Thrune. Our heroes have just cleared out the Wasp’s Nest, a small network of rooms beneath the basements of the Longroads Coffee House, and are beginning to establish their organized rebellion.

My players were informed that they had gained enough XP to level and came to Session 2 with 2nd level characters. There’s not much to be said about build options at this level. And so the founding members of the Silver Ravens consist of: Banderlay – an unchained rogue, Callie – a tiefling haunted oracle, Ferron – a dwarven terrakineticist, Petronicus – an aasimar cleric of Cayden Cailean, as well as the NPCs Rexus Vitocoria and and Laria Longroad.

The first round of Rebelmaker (what I’m coming to call the Rebellion Subsystem) had some mixed results. the Silver Ravens made a bit of coin through the employ of the Fushi Sisters – allies gained recruited last session. But they failed to entice anyone else to join the cause. Humbled by this, the PCs discussed at length the best ways they might make a nuisance of themselves. But first, it was off to search the wreckage of some notable sites that were burnt down during the Night of Ashes.

Behind the screens, this is accomplished mostly through a hazard table and a random encounter table. The PCs arrived at location x, searched it for y number of hours and I rolled a z% chance of them finding or encountering something. Actually, it feels like much of the exploration of Kintargo is handwaved in this fashion. I wasn’t prepared for this this time around. And I would encourage any GM looking to run Hell’s Rebels to write a few encounters that can be interspersed anywhere that might need a bit of excitement. This can help flesh out your game and avoid the handwaving I was forced to do. Had I thought about it some more, I would have liked to have a group of patrolling Dottari (Chelish city guard) stumble upon the PCs mid-search. Let’s see them try and explain their way out of that! Ah, well… another time.

After their little scrounging escapade, the PCs floundered a bit as to what to do. There was a suggestion to attempt to subvert Lord-Mayor Thrune’s bodyguard, Nox (won’t they be in for a surprise!). But ultimately the fate of those disappeared persons during the Night of Ashes garnered more interest. Plans were made to infiltrate Castle Kintargo using one ruse or another. I let them talk about it for a bit. But that material is actually covered in a later book (when the PCs can actually deal with Level 5+ Hell Knights).

Fortunately, book 1 of Hell’s Rebels has a lower level rescue-type adventure suitable for lower levels. This is the Sallix Salt Works encounter titled, “Prisoners of Salt”. I’d made the observation before that most of the encounters written in this adventure seem to be APL+2 and very few to be APL or lower. I think the reasoning is that most groups will take a “one-and-done” approach to their adventuring day. Which is to say they’ll go in, deal with their encounter using all of their allotted daily resources and then retire until the next day. “Prisoners of Salt” is an example of one such encounter. It’s listed as CR 3 to 5 and if I didn’t pull some punches it could easily have resulted in a TPK.

Sallix Salt Works is a salt processing facility that Thrune agents have been utilizing as a place to keep dissidents busy and under control. Laria Longroad suggest that freeing any prisoners here would make an excellent opening gambit to flout Thrune authority. Freeing the prisoners would get the attention of the citizens of Kintargo but the status of the prisoners is not sufficiently high to get Thrune’s person attention.

The Salt Works aren’t even guarded by Dottari. It’s inhabited by the Thrune loyalist Kossrani (dwarf fighter 3) and his eight mercenary thugs (warrior 1). The thugs take turns watching the prisoners in shifts of 4 with Kossrani taking the day shift. Attacking the place at night would have given the PCs a pretty sizable advantage. But my group – for whatever reason – decided to pull off a heist instead.

Secreting Banderlay the Halfling in a bag of salt, the PCs smuggled him in. The plan was that he wait until he was left alone so that he could unbar the door and take the guards by surprise. Unfortunately for poor Banderlay, no one thought about what was done to salt in a salt processing facility. Banderlay nearly gets tossed into a kiln along with the rest of the salt in his bag. But he managed to get a warning out to his allies outside and they rush in.

A fight ensues and – much like any low-level fight – lots of rounds are spent where dice are rolled but nothing happens. That seemed like the case for the PCs anyways. Kossrani is a fairly optimized fighter for level 3. He’s heavily armored and hits like a truck. His thugs also hit very hard and there were a lot of them. The fight took most of the rest of the session to resolve. But it was nail biting. With some clever tactics on the part of the PCs, Kossrani and his thugs were forced into a narrow corridor where the terrakineticist was able to separate them. Isolated, the thugs went  down and Kossrani was eventually felled by sneak attacks.

After the battle, the PCs had next to nothing left. Almost all their daily abilities had been used and both the Callie and Petronicus were out of healing. But the prisoners were saved and the Salt Works evacuated, so the Silver Ravens chalk up their first mark in the win column.

We wrapped up Session 2 with another round of Rebelmaker. It went about as well as the first. They’d gotten enough supporters to reach Rank 2 and again gleaned a little more income. But they failed the recruitment of another team badly enough that their Notoriety score increased which, in turn, lead to an Event being rolled that resulted in twice the number of usual Dottari patrols for the next week. So it seems that the Dottari encounter of which I dreamed up in hindsight might get to see the light of play after all.

 

Anyways, so ends my second Hell’s Rebels report. I hope you’re having fun following along with my group and I. As always, questions and comments are welcome – either in the comments section below or on the forums.