Drink Talk Roll Extended #18: Unaccepted

Session Recap

After taking care of the herald of darkness in the last session, we picked up with the aftermath. Amra was still dead set on collecting the ears of the herald to the disgust of just about everyone who witnessed it. He tried to convince the stage manager to send it off. The manager took it but his expression made it seem like he was probably going to get rid of them and take Amra’s money.

The next day, the party looked around the city of Khanya to find the base of operations for the Spring Court in the city. Thanks to some good Investigation rolls, it only took them about an hour to find the place but that just brought on their next challenge: Getting an appointment when they’re booked solid. Jedah was able to think quickly picking out the name “Abe Froman” on the appointment sheet and convincing the secretary that he was Abe. To keep from being exposed, they rushed through their meeting with the local manager saying they needed transportation back to the Material Plane to ensure the on-time delivery of sausages for the court. They get out of the office and get a guide to the Spring Court just missing the real Abe Froman getting angry in the front office.

They are quickly taken to the main castle of the Spring Court and briefly spy the Lady of Flowers and the Fox King on their way down into the basement. Inside the basement, they find another teleportation circle like the one they found in the cave on the Axida Plains that took them to the Plane of Earth.  Their guide activates the circle and sends them to a strange location filled with trees and flowers.

The party is met with the sound of guards mobilizing at their sudden appearance.  The party hurries to figure out where they are and using his knowledge of history, Khorr is able to figure out that they are in the city of Meridan. They are confronted by the head of the Palace Guard, First Prince Wayne al’Meridan. He and the guard ask him what they’re doing in the royal palace but doesn’t buy the explanation of the party’s time on the Feywild. Khorr just makes things worse until Ulrich is able to convince Wayne that he’s speaking nonsense and just needs some care. Wayne then agrees to let them leave as long as they cause no trouble.

Out on the streets of the city, the party goes exploring. They know that the School of Continued Progress which conducted the experiments on children in Ikana is located in the city so Amra decides to put the ring with the spirit of the dead researcher inside it to gather more information. He’s not that helpful but he does inform Amra that there was at least one female test subject in the city that apparently escaped at some point.

While all of this is going on, the rest of the party decides to get food at a place known as the Green Tavern for the ivy that grows along the building. They are shown up to the seating area on the roof where Jedah and Khorr spot a young man trying to write lyrics while kicking some of the ivy at his feet from the stress. They later learn his name is Reginald Taupin and he’s working on a song to express his feelings to the woman he loves. They decided to assist him and together they come up with the lyrics to “I Want It That Way.”

After finishing up their meals, they go with him to find the woman he wants to confess to and the party quickly realizes she’s Robin, T.K.’s apprentice that they also met when they encountered him in Ikana. She rejects Reggie letting him know that she doesn’t feel the same way. Khorr tries to talk to her but she says that they have never met. He also notices her weird way of speaking: She says a basic sentence and follows it up a literal narration of what she did like, “I’m sorry Reggie but I do not feel that way.  Robin says letting him down gently.” 

The party tries to dig further into Robin’s strangeness and learns that her master is at the SCP campus.  Around that time, they meet up with Amra again and journey to the campus in the middle ring of the city. As they enter the campus, they find Robin again except she once again says they’ve never met. The party puts that behind them pretty quickly and moves into the building with the Dean’s Office. They try to get a meeting with the dean but once again, the dean’s schedule is booked full. Amra tries using the papers from the experiments in Ikana and mentions the details out loud to get a meeting but instead that gets him thrown out.

With all of that out of the picture, the party starts spitballing other ideas including the possibility of just becoming students at the institute but that would take the best part of a year. Then, they hear the voice of a graceful god (aka the DM) telling them that there’s no way the dean stays in his office the whole day. He must have a house he lives in and restaurants or taverns he visits. With that in mind, the party goes back to the planning table as the session ends.

Go with the Flow

So, you might have noticed that the bit with Reggie went on a bit longer than I think anyone thought it would. After last session, the group talked about things including how I incorporate some of their shenanigans into the plot of the game so this week, I decided to play along a bit more.  

That’s why what was meant to be a throw away descriptor based on an Elton John lyric (from “Your Song” “I sat on the roof/And kicked off the moss/Well, a few of the verses/Well, they’ve got me quite cross”) became like an hour of game as I let them help him come up with a song and perform it. Obviously, it could have also just been done and not really hooked into any of the campaign’s greater plots but lucky for me, I had one that needed an intro: The Robins.

I think I’ve talked about how many times my plan for what will happen in any session and sometimes even the whole campaign is just a series of “I don’t know how but this event happens” and trust that the players will come up with something that leads into it. I knew the party would find one of the Robins as they walked the streets of Meridan but my original idea was just for them to pass by her randomly. So, when they started helping Reggie with his song I saw the dots I could connect and turned it into a love song for someone he wanted to confess to and let them work out the finer details.

It's a start to getting better at improving the smaller sequences as a dungeon master but that just means there’s more room to grow. I hope to keep this up in the future to improve my skills and hopefully help others improve theirs as well.

Anyways, it wasn’t much but that’s it for this week’s Drink Talk Roll Extended. Until next time, keep on rolling.

-J.D.