So, this is a campaign write-up from almost a year ago now that I never got around to finishing because… Life Happened in a few major ways. The campaign has since been put on probably-eternal hiatus, but I cared for it dearly and also felt a stab of guilt every time I saw this report sitting my drafts. I’ve cleaned up what I already had written to the best of my ability and left the rest as notes. Huge, inexpressible thanks to my wonderful DM and co-player for this game; it was a fantastic experience and I wish we could’ve played more.
System: Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition – Eberron: Rising From the Last War
The Clouded Eye sees all…
Here’s our motley crew of scoundrels! We are playing with the Organization/Group Patron rules in the Eberron book pretty much as they’re written.
Steel (Andrew) is an amnesiac Warforged searching for his missing past. He assumes his memories were lost when he was damaged in the war, and recalls nothing prior to being repaired by our gang members. His analytical ability and mechanical expertise set him up as the Safecracker of the group. [Class: Artificer (battlesmith)]
Raen’llar “Raen” of House Aleanviir (Sab) Raen`llar is a Sulutar Drow who was recently ousted from his home and brought to Khorvaire. He misses Xen’drik and has little desire to adapt to life overseas. After getting into trouble with the law, Raen was promised sanctuary and assistance by the gang. He is the Burglar of the squad, providing stealth and agility etc. [Class: Monk (way of mercy)]
The Clouded Eye is the name of our venturous little gang; a crew of shadowy smugglers looking to carve out a foothold in the Lower City. We specialize in covert acquisition and retrieval, smuggling goods up to our lair in the Central Plateau via of our front operation, the friendly neighborhood Clawfoots Courier service…
Not long ago, these were but lofty ambitions. But now that the PCs have joined the gang, things are beginning to take shape… Could breaking into the burgeoning drug market be the big break the Eye has been looking for? [Patron type: Crime Syndicate].
(full AP report below the cut!)
Smoke in the City of Towers (session 1, 8/22)
Raen’llar, my character, is a young Drow recently displaced from his home in Xen’drik who has been picked off the streets of Sharn by a fledgling criminal gang called the Clouded Eye. We kicked things off in the gang’s basement hideout, where the head of the PCs’ squad—their handler, Zenaya—is laying down the details of their newest assignment.
Orders have come down from Callenar (the head of the gang)—the Eye is expanding: the time has come to stock up and sharpen our knives, and every squad is to get itself in order as quickly as possible, because we’re preparing to make our move.
Mission: Scour the underbelly of the city for some new recruits – we need to bolster our numbers before we can begin pushing other gangs out of the local territory.
Zenaya is not one to put things gently. She thinks the squad is incoherent and unimposing, and wants to bring in some new hires before things get rolling. We are quickly introduced to the NPCs that comprise the rest of the group, Zenaya herself (an affable and well-muscled Drow, Mastermind of the group) and Reed, the cheeky Halfling who runs the front operation and acts as the group’s Talker and fence, and the squad is tasked with heading into the city to scout out potential recruits.
Raen has been paired with Steel, a huge, inquisitive Warforged with no memory beyond joining the gang. The night is young, and having been given free reign on this task, the two of them head out to Olladra’s Kitchen, where they will hopefully encounter some entrepreneuring toughs at one of the local haunts.
However, being a robot with no “tact” software and an illiterate foreigner, they are wonderfully ill-prepared for this task. The pub they wander into shows them chilly hostility, and if not for some anti-warforged sentiment from a couple locals that very nearly evolved into a bar fight, they would have been ignored completely. They definitely picked the wrong neighborhood.
The group currently lacks any sort of bruiser
Rather than waiting around where they’re not welcome until the night crowd arrives, Raen suggests they head to Lower Menthis, where he knows of a roving fight ring which might have more of what they’re looking for.
Thanks to Raen’s experience living in the streets of the city, the pair pass their checks and quickly sniff out the location of the Burning Ring, an underground fight club that plays cat-and-mouse with the local authorities. They wind through the dark, seedy alleys of the Firelight district and arrive at the warehouse venue, where a bouncer guards both the spectators’ and gladiators’ entrances. Informed that the next round of fights is just about to start, they decide to pay the entry fee—a few silver—and watch rather than fight themselves or attempt to sneak backstage. They are just scouting, after all.
The Burning Ring
The burning ring smells like sweat and ash, and the air is cloudy with the grit that cakes the boots of the city’s downtrodden. Steel and Raen take their seats…
(A couple of unexciting rounds of combat pass. Raen makes the price of their admission back betting on these.)
and then, the camera moves to… The edge of the ring, where an Orc walks in with hooded figure in tow, held roughly by the elbow—
wait, this Orc looks awfully familiar…
On our way to the Burning Ring, a suspicious noise from the alleyway stops us in our tracks. “…’s nowhere left to run.” a gruff voice snarls from the dark. We peek in to see a large Orc all but crushing a smaller hooded figure in his grasp…
“What seems to be the problem, sir?”
Before I can react, Steel interjects, not missing a beat, in his tone of pleasant neutrality… A soon their assailant turns, startled, to look at us, the hooded figure slips from his grasp and ducks down the alley…
The Orc grumbles in response, baring his teeth:
“You let it get away.”
(We decide that’s none of our business and continue on towards our destination, not taking the obvious sidequest bait, to the visible disappointment of our GM.)
In the light of the ring, we’re able to examine the Orc’s clothing and notice that he is from house Deneith, a clan of famous bounty hunters. He threatens something into his captive’s ear before releasing them and retreating to the edge of the ring. To the excitement of the crowd, loosed into the field is a particularly nasty-looking beast the likes of which I have never seen (no bugbears on Xen’drik).
(author’s note: things start get to get messy from here… devolves into notes and nonsense drafting)
it happens really fast, hooded figure (we can see how that it is a human woman) does cool thing with arm, magical blades crackle in the air around her… we as players figure these are an aberrant mark and soul knives and get excited, but our characters have never seen anything like this. she starts to get the upper hand on the beast, people start chattering nervously, some begin to stand to leave… the orc, now surrounded by a couple lackeys, puts his hand on his blade…
Raen narrows his eyes and rises from his seat. Motioning for Steel to follow him, he starts
they have chosen to intervene. raen enters the ring and rushes one of the guards. confused, but seeing that these strangers are intervening on her behalf, the hooded figure jumps in to assist in the melee. as soon as she is out of immediate harm’s way, we go to make an escape. steel had busted the gate near the back entrance: “this way!”
they run through the alleys without looking back, until they can no longer hear the footsteps of shouts of their pursuers. when they finally have a moment to catch their breath…
introductions. she pulls down her hood, brief description. who the hell are you guys?
“Would you like to join our gang?”
raen pulls the business card out of his pocket. sorry about my friend. at her incredulity he scoffs: i dont mean to be rude, but it doesnt look like you have a lot of options…
you guys seem… really weird. but, caught between a rock and a hard place, she agrees to at least come back to our hideout with us to hide from her pursuers.
back to lair, zenaya… (and that’s where I stopped writing anything intelligible. from here, all we have to enjoy are my bullet-point notes taken during the session itself 🤪)
- She has… an aberrant mark? She’s a soul knife. The Orc’s definitely kidnapped her or something. He works for house Deneith
- Synona (girl’s name): being hunted for her mark
- Knows Zenaya? (both have something in common…seem to be communicating somehow?)
- She’s been offered a job with us, but isn’t sure. She said she’ll think about it. she’s allowed to stay for the time being.
- We’ve heard rumors about a sapphire star, an item many houses are known to be going after
Sweat in the Gutters (sessions 2-4, 8/22, 8/29, 9/15, 11/24)
Just for fun, my mid-game notes for the other sessions we managed to play:
8/29
- Synona is around 18-19, redhead and some freckles
- Deciding to start getting our name out there
- Zenaya thinks we should make a hit on Dura, the dock district, or Northedge, a residential area (or tabix landing, a refugee area)
- Dura – skydocks
- Looking for some info…
- Meet Zenaya in 1 HOUR
- Rumors in the bar: annoying shipments recently… coming in and out of the mines
- Come back in the morning to get dock work
- A group just discovered some strange magical items at the shipyard… needle in a box (dock number 4)
- Zenaya found a warehouse with a lot of guard
- Warehouse 4: maze of boxes, 4 guards inside, 2 working, 1 sleeping, 1 guarding a chest
- We made it out with the goods… but i threw up after the run 😦 crime is harder than it looks!
- turns out that run was just a sort of test. they didn’t really believe we were ready for real work yet, which hurt my pride… I hate not being taken seriously.
- We found… a magic needle! It’s a magical tattooing needle
- It glows different colors (smoky)
- Steel has been given the tattoo: he can cast disguise self once a day
- Callenar is also a sorcerer. So he identifies the items easily
- The scroll is: invisibility
9/15
- Morning: breakfast alone, sparring with callenar
- Gang wants to start dealing in drugs: choose one
- Dream lily: psychoactive, opiate, tastes like your favorite thing
- Too-strong painkiller: prescription drug, hard to get
- (euphoria, pain resistance, poison, immune to fear, survive w 1hp)
- Dragon’s blood: highly addictive stimulant. Illegal
- Magic enhancement, euphoria, but volatile/dangerous. new drug, engineered by Dask.
- **We decide on dream lily, and also decide to make it ourselves instead of stealing it. We have to acquire a sample in order to reverse engineer it (discern the ingredients). (available bc I have experience with alchemy/poisons from background/this will lead to way of mercy)
- Dream lily: psychoactive, opiate, tastes like your favorite thing
- Other gangs: i forgot to write them all down
- Broken mirror: half-elves who target and attack elves.
- Ive had run-ins… gotta hide identity in some parts of town
- Scurvy dogs: getting into drugs. Dunno who they’re aligned with these days
- The mourners: war veterans
- Weird cult: “the eyes”. (ugh. get some original material) wear weird cloaks
- Broken mirror: half-elves who target and attack elves.
- Sharn heights: in mid-city. The spot for illegal deals
- Little xen’drik: a human berating a war-forged servant
- Lost invitation to tain gala: annual party for the wealthiest citizens
- Getting our portrait drawn: by some sketchy elf…
- Hospital (no go)
- The Fallen… an old temple district which took huge casualties (tower crushed it)
- Have to pass through malleon’s gate
- Andrew is talking to Synona
- She’s on the run… from house denith mercenary
- He also talked to zenaya: shes worried about synona. Psyonics.
- Zenaya is a nomad… going where the wind blows her
- Shes actually trained: was in a psychic monestary
- Callenar: fellow Drow, taken a few years before i was
- His end… make a life. He thinks me childish, clearly, and tells me i should learn to live for myself. (great dialogue, there were some amazing roleplay moments here)
- I confronted synona, who angers me.
- She’s sitting around moping, freeloading. Her indecision irks me
- She should be more proud. She should decide what she wants to do.
- She took offense
11/24 (we didn’t get xp tokens)
- We’re heading out to malleon’s gate… to supply up! We have to pass through there to get to the fallen…
- While slinking through the city, steel is too conspicuous… we’ve been approached by a hooded man warning us and offering his services as a “guide”
- I’ve paid the lizard man to help us through (badass)
- While walking through Dask territory, we avoid confrontation!
- We’re in an underground passage (sewer), tons of goblins, etc…
- We found the quiet folk hideout (~side quest~)
- We’re in an underground passage (sewer), tons of goblins, etc…
- In the fallen, there are 2 sources of dream lily (gangs)
- Broken bridge brawlers (brelish vets)
- anti-warforged
- Mourners (siren vets)
- Broken bridge brawlers (brelish vets)
- We hear some people in the distance…
- Mourners complaining about brelish stealing their food
- Steel offers our services, somehow they’re desperate enough to say ok
- We arrive at a street brawl between the gangs (brawlers raiding a neighborhood)
- Brawlers wear orange/armbands
- We won. Steel electrified a guy to death with his bare hands pretty brutally
- The mourners are fed up after the fight. The leaders call for action
- We’re healing up in the camp
- We convinced them to wait and plan a night raid. We’ve offered to assist in the raid, with being allowed to take some of the broken bridge’s dream lily supply in the place of payment
*artwork of Raen used in his token was commissioned by the lovely Demi-Pixellated (tumblr.com) !
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