Keeping track of the necropolis exploration game I’m DMing.
The Suspects
Sarro the Wandering Swordsman: searching for a beast to bind to his service
Joaquin the Monk: sent to retrieve the soul of a saint from the city.
Ankara the Skull Elf: looking for a particular necklace lost in San Serafín
San Serafín is a giant cursed city sunken into a mountainside, inhabited by Devils and the Dead. Our intrepid adventurers arrived early in the morning, and upon entering the city from the east, decided to follow Sarro’s lead and head north. They very quickly encountered a huge ursine figure wearing a mask, with a basket strapped to its back. Sarro proposed a pact and the creature approached, speaking in a language that made everyone’s noses bleed. When nobody understood, it produces a chained human translator from the basket, who explained the beast was the 72nd Sky Devil, and it was interested in forming a pact, but first required Sarro to demonstrate his worthiness with a task.
Sarro instead demanded that the devil prove its power. It responded by summoning a torrential downpour. When Sarro pressed it for yet more demonstration, the 72nd Sky Devil proposed to prove Sarro’s worth and demonstrate its own power through combat, and then attacked. Sarro’s companions helped him fight the devil, but they ignored the growing glow of its internal fire until it vomited a fatal torrent of flame on Sarro, at which point Joaquin and Ankara surrendered.
The Devil demanded 100 days of service, and after some hedging, the surviving party members agreed. The 72nd Sky Devil gave them directions to “one of this city’s nobility” and told them to kill the aristocrat and retrieve a certain scroll in their possession. On the way, they stumbled across a small band of humans, but Ankara got off to the wrong start by mentioning they were working for a devil, and the band attacked. A crossbowman (Sarro’s replacement), sent by the 72nd Skt Devil to aid them, intervened, but the party was outnumbered and quickly fell, despite some impressive maneuvers on Joaquin’s part. The party rolled up new characters and we called it a night.
For next time
The Background/skill system I posted earlier worked nicely, but I think I need to include a canonical list of backgrounds.
I have no good way of seeding treasure throughout the city. Need to make a generator for that.
I need custom equipment tables. Six-shooters, flashlights, radios. I think I want to base armor on brands, so like the Gatiko label makes light armor and Dolores makes all the plate.
A good rumor table would be really handy also. The players don’t know as much about San Serafín as their characters should.
I need to flesh out the town that’s a sort of base camp for San Serafín explorers. Right now it’s empty and boring.
The city needs to be a little denser, I think. Too much going on in empty streets. I do like how the monsters as written all have immediate and easy to DM motivations, so even simple encounters complicate the PC’s relationship with the city. The very first encounter landed the party in hot water and 100 days of servitude to a fire-breathing jaguar devil.