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The Doubley-Doos ex parte, at the request of the Grand Chancellor in Biel, travelled to the half-orc settlement of Gjohammer to speak with Gneboch Mawt, the local Hearing House representative, and attempt to gather intel about one of Klaas Shrillbeast’s lieutenants, Nuggdig. They arrived to find the army already stationed outside of the walls of the city. The Doubley-Doos joined the battle, and with the assistance of Yzzod, the young gold dragon they freed in Blackmoore, they were able to fend off the invading goblin forces.

In the aftermath of the battle, the Doubley-Doos escorted some peaceful goblins being held prisoner by Nuggdig’s forces into the city proper while the city’s best arcane specialists tended to a mysterious goblin device that Nuggdig’s men had set up at the city gates. In the city proper, it was clear that although the bulk of the battle was kept outside, enemy troops had still managed to scale the walls and wreak havoc inside before being struck down. Priests walked among the wounded and dead to perform their rituals while bearing the 8-pointed star composed of spears and maces that serves as the symbol of Kord, the God of Strength and Courage.

After meeting with Gneboch as well as Captain Urdor, high priest Zanzor, and mayor Lan Stite, the group informed them of the imposter in Blackmoore and the Grand Chancellor’s call for all representatives to return to the capital. Gneboch wants to send his response right away and requests that Dormin accompany him to help fill him in on the situation in Blackmoore. Meanwhile, high priest Zanzor requests Shelby’s help in tending to the wounded, and Captain Urdor requests Shump help with reinforcing the weakened parts of the city walls in case of further assaults.

After Gneboch sent his communication to the Hearing House, he asked for privacy while he composed another private message. Dormin attempted to listen in and heard him speaking to someone. He mentioned his disdain for the Hearing House’s decision to utilize military action against goblin tribes and how he hoped to begin working against that initiative.

While helping Zanzor with the wounded, Shelby overhears him speaking to another clergy about the captain. Zanzor thinks that he’s weak and doesn’t deserve the position that he’s in.

And while helping Urdor, Shump overheard him speaking to one of his fellow officers about how much he disliked Gneboch and how he wanted to replace him.

Once their tasks were completed and they reassembled, the Doubley-Doos were invited to a celebration feast for having fended off the goblin attack. At the feast, the captain gave a speech about how proud he was of everyone, and how thankful he was for the Doubley-Doos assistance in the fight. He then exited the stage. Not long into the feast, he vanished. Soon, an assistant to the mayor came to fetch the Doubley-Doos, reporting that they’d found the captain dead, his body dismembered. They were able to identify him by his uniform.

The Doubley-Doos joined the mayor, the head priest, and Gneboch in the mayor’s quarters to discuss these changes. Initially there was a lot finger pointing — Shelby in particular didn’t trust Zanzor. Eventually Gneboch was able to cool everyone’s heads somewhat. He suggested before they go pointing fingers within, they should rule out whether someone managed to slip by undetected — perhaps some of the goblins that made it over the wall were hiding out and waiting for the opportunity to strike. He suggested they split up into pairs and search the village.

Shelby insisted on travelling with Shump because she didn’t trust anyone except her friends. Dormin agreed to go with Gneboch, leaving the mayor and the head priest as the last group.

They all split up, heading in different directions. Shelby and Shump decided to investigate where the captain’s body was found to look for any potential clues. It took them roughly twenty minutes to find it, but when they did, Shump saw claw marks scoured into the dirt and stone and recognized them, having seen them before. They were slaad claw marks.

Meanwhile, Dormin and Gneboch stumbled across the priest, bloody, scared, claiming the mayor attacked him. Dormin asked to be taken to where the priest last saw the mayor. When they arrived, a green slaad made itself visible and attacked, critically injuring both the priest and Gneboch and knocking them unconscious. Dormin used his Goblin Amulet of Control to Dominate the Slaad and made him chain himself to a livestock pen.

Dormin knew the amulet would only last for ten minutes, and since he was only able to carry one person, he did his best to camouflage the priest, hoping to return as fast as he could, and carried Gneboch back to the mayor’s quarters. Shelby and Shump had already returned, and started to inform him what they’d discovered, but Dormin stopped them and filled them in on his own encounter. They decided to leave Gneboch in the mayor’s quarters to rest and mend. Shelby wanted to lock him in, but that was abandoned as they needed to leave immediately to try to save the priest and kill the slaad before he could get away.

When they arrived, the slaad was gone, the stable was in shambles, and the priest was missing. They searched the area, finding slaad footprints that slowly shrank into human sized footprints heading back to the mayor’s quarters. As they made their way back, Dormin saw something move through the fog to his left, but before he could mention it, Shump spotted a figure to his right running toward town. Shelby used her monk abilities to race ahead to find Gneboch fleeing to the banquet hall. He claimed that it was actually Dormin that attacked and tried to kill him and the priest. Shelby didn’t believe him, immediately grappling him.

About the time Dormin and Shump arrived, another Gneboch arrived as well, this one moving much more slowly and more obviously injured. He looked about confused, which turned to horror as the grappled Gneboch swelled into a slaad. The other Gneboch screamed and fled.

During the fight, the slaad cast fear on Shump, summoning the worst thing that Shump could think of — caterpillars. With Shump fleeing and cowering from his vision, it was left to Dormin and Shelby. The slaad turned invisible, but revealed his location when he cast fireball. Shelby and Dormin avoided most of the damage and were able to work together to bring the slaad down, killing it in the battle.

As they stand in the aftermath of the battle, they still don’t know where the priest or the mayor are or if they’re still alive.

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It’s been a hot minute since we’ve played because first we were preparing for the OBA Stephen King event, then preparing for Ozark BookCon, then recovering from Ozark BookCon, and then we were preparing for Thanksgiving, and the holidays just torpedoed everything, and they’re not really done yet, ha ha.

Also: this update comprises two games because I wanted to keep some information from my players until it wasn’t necessarily relevant anymore, and they read this blog (sometimes).

I got the idea for this from one of Matt Colville’s videos. He did something similar with The Chain, and I’ve always been a huge fan of John Carpenter’s The Thing, as you might be able to tell from the title of the post, so I wanted to try to play that out. I’d already done something similar with the start of this campaign, so it was a familiar set up with an additional twist I got from Matt’s video: when the group split up, I took them into my office one at a time and went through their specific scenario, handing them cards that either said, “You are the imposter” or “You are not the imposter.”

Initially, I just wanted them to think that one of them might be an imposter, so I gave everyone cards that said they weren’t imposters, but depending on how the next split up went, I had the slaad stats ready in case one of them got impersonated. I tried to get them to fully split up a second time, but Stephanie was having none of it, so she stayed with Brandon. But since Jaz was with an NPC character, I figured I might be able to leverage the situation.

And then Jaz used that amulet! Ha! I’d been waiting for them to use it, and it was the perfect time to do so. It bought them just enough time to get away with one of the NPCs, but they wouldn’t be able to grab both, so it gave me options.

I’m a little disappointed that I couldn’t get the players to turn on each other really, but I think that’s partially because the group is so small, so I had to stack the deck with more NPCs than I would have with a normal sized party. It was also partially a failure of planning on my part. I was intimidated at the idea of planning the scenario out too much because the instant someone did anything off book, my plan would go off the rails anyway, so I figured it was better to keep things loosey goosey. That said, I think I could have done more to engineer more circumstances where they could have gotten impersonated. I should have laid more traps.

But I’m happy with how things worked out, and I think everyone had fun. There’s still a lot of pieces rolling around to work with, so I’m interested to see how things play out next.

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