Drink Talk Roll Extended #14: Meet Joe Blacktooth

S​ession Recap

After departing Jaran at the end of last session, the players made their way across the land bridge connecting the continents of Vendian and Kenor to the next major city of To’anata. On their way, they came across a mysterious watering hole with no animals around it. Sticking his hand into it, Amra found out that it wasn’t just a watering hole, it was a giant ooze. After escaping that once, Amra could have once again realized he could just leave things alone and be on his merry way but this is Amra we’re talking about. He decided to do it again and start a fight with the ooze. It captured him and got its oozy tentacles on Ulrich but with the help of the rest of the party, the ooze fell before any permanent damage was done.

After a few more days of walking, they crested a hill and got a view of To’anata. From the hilltop, they could see a new clocktower built by the Society for Continued Progress and the grand stadium near the center of the city with the giant statue of the eagle form of their patron deity Aliqua. Shortly afterward, they made it into the city proper and Talliyah broke off from the group to take care of some personal business. She asked them to pick up gear for traveling the Menagi Wastes south of the city and meet them at an inn called the Broken Bell. Shopping for supplies was a quick trek though the multiple marketplaces in the city.

When Talliyah finally met them with at the Broken Bell, she had a letter for Jedah marked with a special wax seal of a smiling skull with one Blacktooth. Jedah quickly recognized the symbol as his old captain Blacktooth’s jolly roger. Inside is an intimidating note with a small riddle: I have hands and a face, but can't hold anything or smile. The party takes a bit to discuss this in character before someone finally figures out that the answer to the riddle is “a clock”.  

They then traveled to the clocktower they noticed when entering the city. At the plaza in front of it, they find a few Blacktooth thugs who call him out for his crew getting caught, dumping his cargo and leaving the crew.  A fight breaks out. The party takes heavy damages but is able to prevail. Sadly, it’s not fast enough to escape the explosion of a hidden bomb placed in the plaza.  

In the wreckage, the party finds another letter from Blacktooth with the message: What goes in a birdbath but never gets wet? This one took another good but of thinking for Amra and Jedah both in and out of character until they realize the answer to this one is “The bird’s shadow” which they take to mean the shadow of the statue of Aliqua in the Grand Stadium. Heading there, they find Captain Blacktooth himself with a larger force of trickshots and raiders. He offers Jedah a chance to end this all if he just comes back to the crew but he refuses.  

Once again, combat breaks out and this time, members of the party come even closer to dying. Blacktooth himself seems to be a very skilled marksman firing off more shots per round that even Jedah. It gets so desperate that Ulrich summons a Shadow Demon to aid them which immediately draws the aggro of the remaining raiders letting the party focus on the trickshots and Blacktooth himself.  

Eventually, the party is able to take down the captain. The other members seemed poised on continuing the fight but Jedah is able to quell them by firing a warning shot and making a successful intimidation check. The crewmembers scattered and the session ended.

A Failure to Communicate

I’ll own up to it. I clearly failed to communicate properly with Warren about the exact details of Jedah’s backstory. From the way he wrote it, I made the assumption that his departure was not on good terms while he intended it to be on good ones. This came up pretty quickly in the session when he was wondering why the Blacktooth crew was so hostile to him. Luckily, I was able to communicate how I misinterpreted things and where I was going with it and we came to an understanding. Warren was kind enough to go with it for the sake of the session. So, this short lesson is to remind all you DMs to check with your players about their backstories when it’s about to come up in a session.  

I can’t remember if I’ve said this in DTRE before but I find it’s always better to have a player in on the secret of the session/campaign that relates directly to them than to not and have that miscommunication blow up in your face. That kind of stuff makes for good comedy on tv but no so good in real life.  

I’m reminded of a good use of this from the first adventure I ran for my other group while our regular DM was out of town. It was inspired by the movie Spirited Away where the party’s DMPC/companion got forced into servitude by a hag on the Feywild and the party had to get him out. If you’ve seen Spirited Away, you know at the end that the main character has to pick something out at the end of movie with a punishment for picking incorrectly. I did the same thing for this with the NPC having to pick out his polymorphed wolf companion from a group of pigs.  

This was after the regular DM had returned so I let him in the reveal: None of the pigs presented to him. My reasoning was that Ranger that he was, he would have an innate connection with this wolf companion and could find him in any form. I could have left this up to the dice but I’m also of the mind that they shouldn’t be involved when there’s no chance of failure (or success for that matter) unless there are varying degrees to it. This all led to a great scene where he berated the hag for trying to trick him until she finally gave him back his wolf companion and the party left. I think that was a good tradeoff for losing the sense of surprise that might have come from him.  

Well, that’s all for this week. We should have a session next week on the 21st. Until then, keep on rolling.

-J.D.