Pathfinder : Streets of Magnimar - Plague!
Kibitzing before the game this week - cannibalism on the set of the African Queen. Also, Red Dwarf.
GM: There was a reason the entire cast of characters was male, and heterosexual.
Me: Hence that conversation in one episode about the Flintstones 'Well, I'd go with Betty - by I'd be thinking of Wilma.'
Gillert's Player: Ah Betty, the town bike.
What long-term objectives do the PCs have?
Zin: I want a safe place for the kobolds. Filled with impassable traps. Where I can charge money to train parties of adventurers.
Harshal: That's not training adventurers, that's farming adventurers.
Gillert: 'Here, sign this waiver'. 'Why is it so long?'
Harshal: I'll write up the waiver for you. Basically you want a giant mulching machine, with a sieve underneath to catch the coins that fall out?
Gillert: Knowledge for the sake of knowledge, and doing good.
GM: You are SO in the wrong campaign.
Harshal: I want to be indispensable to anybody that wants to seem legitimate in Magnimar.
GM: Tricky - you'll always have competition.
Ys: I want to be deadly enough to kill anybody I want.
All: ...
Zin: Simple.
Harshal: And straightforward.
Harshal: We need to come up with a heist that can't be immediately traced back to us - by the guards finding a pile of stolen goods in our spare room, for example.
Ys: I just want to be in a position where I have the power of life or death over people. I don't mind if I'm working under somebody for that.
Harshal: You just want the job satisfaction.
Zin: Are we going to be the Mission Impossible team?
GM: Dun dun, DUNDUN, dun dun DUNDUN
Harshal: It would help me become indispensable. We already have our disguise expert *points at the Kobold disguised as a Halfling disguised as a gnome*.
Tannis: We need legal authority to go around beating up people - I mean, be adventurers.
Tannis points out that we need premises.
Harshal: As the case of Sala No-name exemplified, we need a postal address.
Ys: I am not volunteering my place.
Harshal: The non-sex dungeon might be a problem.
GM: You could always clear out the sewer goblin nests, but that would leave a power vacuum.
Harshal: So we install kobolds. And then Zin can become the Underlord.
Ys: We could always capture some goblins alive..
GM: Who are you?
Ys: I'm not finished. Then we dump them over the wall into whatever district we want to buy property in. That would lower property values.
GM: I'm not sure that's what people had in mind when they invented the term 'social engineering'.
GM: I'm just glad none of you suggested dressing up some kobolds as goblins and assassinate an arch-duke.
Tannis: Plagues aren't difficult to synthesise...
GM: I'm glad we're not playing poker.
Because people are starting to get sick in Magnimar - ships are already diverting to Riddleport rather than risk whatever mystery disease is at work.
Zin's player: Given my familiarity with John Snow...
GM: Hmm? I'm not up to speed with...
Zin's player: The Broad Street Pump.
Harshal: Oh, THAT John Snow - I thought you meant Game of Thrones too.
GM: I decided against the one that causes buboes, swollen glands, and eventually bleeding under the skin. Be grateful.
GM: It responds to magical healing, but they're having trouble isolating the vector.
Harshal: Do people have mosquito screens in Magnimar? That can stop Stirges?
The disease, which causes skin ulcers and eventual death, started in the port district but has spread up-cliff, so it's probably not sewer-related.
Ys: At least the increased chaos in the streets gives us opportunities.
Harshal: For 'random stabbings'?
Ys: Yes.
Some of the wealthy families have been hit harder than others, but are covering it up. This includes Tannis' relatives. Suspiciously, all these families are ones wealthy in real estate outside the city.
Harshal: I suspect Druids. It's always the Druids.
Ys: Kill all the cats, it's the Druids.
Harshal: If some insane hippie Druid has taken offence at the concept of land ownership, they could easily unleash some kind of plague on the city.
Zin: I blame the humans.
Ys: I'm an elf.
GM: 'You all look the same to me'
It doesn't seem likely they caught it at a day's fox hunting either - that would have exposed landowners AND nobility. But it IS infecting farmers, and miners.
Zin: Everytime you mention miners it jumps out at me.
Gillert: Well, you are a burrowing species.
The fact that the Alabaster District uses endless fountains as a water supply seems to rule out a water-borne illness too. And hitting the Dockways first seems to rule out something that came in with the collected harvests, since that district gets most of its food from the sea. Tannis's family are pretty sure their outbreak started with the kitchen staff first - but if it was the food it would have infected everybody at the same time.
Harshal: It's invisible whistling spiders that came in with the bananas.
The disease IS infecting livestock as well. Are the slaughterhouse workers coming down with the disease even more often than the rest of the population?
Tannis: Why don't you go ask?
Harshal: Oh sure, I'll go right down. AFTER I find a plague-doctor outfit.
Tannis: I can't do everything!
Harshal: Oh, alright, I'll go down. I'll take a posey of strong-smelling herbs to hold under my nose. Disease prevention being somewhat amorphous in this era.
The GM came up with this plot because he knows his players have wide geek interests, and could probably identify the disease within seconds. It actually takes us much longer than he expects.
GM: Oh, that's why nobody has IDed it yet - it's a strictly fictional disease.
Actually he's wrong - he was just given an obsolete name for the disease when he looked for ideas. Harshal does notice that the abattoir guild-members all enjoy bathhouses next to the slaughterhouses. So they'd be resistant to infection anyway. But his questions do reveal that new grazing land was opened up recently, after a mine got transferred to new owners who had tenant farmers adjacent.
Tannis: I'm sorry guys, but it looks like we'll have to go out of the city.
Harshal: I don't DO nature.
Ys: I keep getting dragged off to do things I don't want to do, thanks to Tannis' family.
Ys' alchemical testing has already ruled out a poison, and her torture-chamber-slash-forensic-lab further rules out a blood-borne disease.
Harshal: Who would have guessed that all those blood-letting instruments would actually be useful?
Gillert: So, what bits do we actually have to cut off?
Tannis: You're not thinking big enough.
Zin: You can sell the test.
Harshal: No, that's not how to do it. You give the test away free and get prestige that way.
Ys: *twitches violently at the mention of doing anything for 'free'*
Tannis: You're still not thinking big enough. People are diseased - what do you do with the diseased?
Gillert: Shoot them.
Tannis: ... No. You put them quarantine. So we fake test results and profit that way.
We complain endlessly about having to leave town.
GM: It's half-a-day's ride! If you stand on one of the towers -
Tannis: - we can see where we're going to.
Gillert: I keep forgetting I have a whetstone.
Harshal: Well it's standard equipment.
Gillert: It's more useful to those adventurers that actually use pointy things.
We arrive at the suspect farm, where they've already had to put down half their cattle. Ys searches, and finds somebody's stash of 6 silver coins, which she pockets.
Gillert: You monster.
Ys: Yes, and?
Time to examine the silver mine, which apparently was transferred to new owners to settle a debt.
Tannis: Zin? You go in first.
Zin: *sigh* Of course I do.
Mine Overseer: Well, we got a new donkey. And then it took sick. Then the workers took sick. They can barely swing a pick-axe.
They got the donkey at the Archer's Feast, which is about when the plague started.
Tannis: Where did you bury it?
Overseer: We burned it. It took sick.
Harshal: Well, at least you didn't eat it.
Overseer: ... No sir. It took sick.
But they haven't opened any new seams lately, which is evidence against them exposing themselves to something new and infectious. The old time miners, farmers, and foresters certainly haven't heard of anything like it. The overseer does have a receipt for the donkey, at least. And that eventually leads us back to the docks, and the livestock pens. But it can't be coming in one the ships, since incubation times would lead to plague ships arriving at Magnimar.
Gillert: Could a Hag be living under the livestock pens?
GM: Possibly. They can certainly infect livestock.
Gillert: Either that or we've got a Typhoid Mary.
Harshal: Really? And what, exactly, would this Mary would have done with all the livestock to infect them?
GM: I should probably have mentioned that some of the infected are coming in with *various respiratory symptoms*, and some with *various gastro-intestinal symptoms.*
Gillert: It's not Black Death is it?
GM: No, but there is a metal band named after it.
Ys' player: Ah. Well, that Ids the disease.
Harshal's player: Oh for FUCK's SAKE - it's Anthrax.
And it's soon apparent that somebody is deliberately planting the spores around the docks to implicate the incoming ships. But who?
Ys: OK, we follow the money - who benefits? Who ISN'T getting infected?
GM: Underbridge.
Tannis points out that doesn't actually implicate the denizens of Underbridge - they can't afford livestock anyway. Who benefits from the chaos? The Silent Circle, for one. The muckrakers have been very heavily hit by the disease. Gillert gets lucky as we make our inquiries.
Muttering Lunatic: ... Just because. It's walking don't mean it's alive... I dun telled them... Just because it's up and mooing dun mean it's alive.
Gillert: What's not alive?
Muttering Lunatic: I told 'em! Deathwalker knows, the Faceless Five know.
Gillert: I'm trying to get an answer from him.
GM: Sure, but you don't speak the same kind of crazy.
Lunatic: Too late, too late, the Deathwalker planted his seed.
Harshal: We're getting back to that 'Typhoid Mary' innuendo, aren't we?
Gillert also knows that there are spells that conceal the undead status of a creature. So this 'Deathwalker' apparently sent at least one undead cow to infect the livestock trade.
GM: Anthrax spores are most efficiently spread from a decomposing corpse.
Gillert: Those sneaky fucks.
GM: And it works even better if the corpse is still up and walking around.
Just as well Gillert has Detect Magic - if the zombie cow hasn't been sold yet, the traders are unlikely to mention it's odd behaviour.
GM: They are trying to sell it - bit of a conflict of interest there.
Harshal: What would a zombie cow be called anyway?
Gillert: Day Z?
GM: ...... Oh god.
Gillert eventually locates the cow in a question - and the enchanted cowbell that maintains the transmutation. Wisely, we make inquiries about who is selling the cow before drawing attention.
Tannis: It's targeting the nobles.
Harshal: It's targeting everybody - it's just that the nobles buy more meat.
Gillert: That cow's been there for weeks. Why hasn't it sold?
Harshal: Because it looks fine, but it's not behaving right. The buyers can take one look at it and think 'that animal ain't healthy'.
The cow has a brand that matches the rest in the pen - five interlocking circles.
Gillert: Of course it is.
Ys: Why don't we steal it?
Harshal: OK, you can, but we're going over here and never associating with you again. You're going to be associating with a plague cow. Every time you go near it you'll be picking up more spores.
Ys: Hear me out, I'm not going to go near it. And a plague cow could be useful. I'll just keep it underground somewhere until we need it.
Harshal: OK, to wipe out an Orc nest somewhere - we tie the cow up nearby.
Tannis: And some day a priest casts Healing Surge nearby, and the undead cow lurches, lows, and collapses. 'Wait, what?'
We consult those Necromancer morticians about the identity of the transmutation, and the Carrion Compass spell that can lead to the less socially acceptable necromancers responsible. The spell requires an organ from the cow, which will float in front of us.
GM: 'Is that an eyeball?'
Ys: Easy to explain - we're Rastafarians. I and I.
GM: *groans*
Ys goes and hires some labourers to dig a hole in which we can stash the undead cow. Alternatively, nail it into a crate, fill it with mud to stop spore release and reduce decay, and store it in a warehouse.
Tannis: And if somebody puts their ear to the crate they'll hear a soft 'moo'.
Zin: Why is the lynchpin of this adventure a magical cowbell?
GM and Tannis: Because it needs more cowbell. *high-five each other*
Everybody else: *howl in pain*
Ys: I have named this the Undead Cow-ruption Caper.
GM: There was a reason the entire cast of characters was male, and heterosexual.
Me: Hence that conversation in one episode about the Flintstones 'Well, I'd go with Betty - by I'd be thinking of Wilma.'
Gillert's Player: Ah Betty, the town bike.
What long-term objectives do the PCs have?
Zin: I want a safe place for the kobolds. Filled with impassable traps. Where I can charge money to train parties of adventurers.
Harshal: That's not training adventurers, that's farming adventurers.
Gillert: 'Here, sign this waiver'. 'Why is it so long?'
Harshal: I'll write up the waiver for you. Basically you want a giant mulching machine, with a sieve underneath to catch the coins that fall out?
Gillert: Knowledge for the sake of knowledge, and doing good.
GM: You are SO in the wrong campaign.
Harshal: I want to be indispensable to anybody that wants to seem legitimate in Magnimar.
GM: Tricky - you'll always have competition.
Ys: I want to be deadly enough to kill anybody I want.
All: ...
Zin: Simple.
Harshal: And straightforward.
Harshal: We need to come up with a heist that can't be immediately traced back to us - by the guards finding a pile of stolen goods in our spare room, for example.
Ys: I just want to be in a position where I have the power of life or death over people. I don't mind if I'm working under somebody for that.
Harshal: You just want the job satisfaction.
Zin: Are we going to be the Mission Impossible team?
GM: Dun dun, DUNDUN, dun dun DUNDUN
Harshal: It would help me become indispensable. We already have our disguise expert *points at the Kobold disguised as a Halfling disguised as a gnome*.
Tannis: We need legal authority to go around beating up people - I mean, be adventurers.
Tannis points out that we need premises.
Harshal: As the case of Sala No-name exemplified, we need a postal address.
Ys: I am not volunteering my place.
Harshal: The non-sex dungeon might be a problem.
GM: You could always clear out the sewer goblin nests, but that would leave a power vacuum.
Harshal: So we install kobolds. And then Zin can become the Underlord.
Ys: We could always capture some goblins alive..
GM: Who are you?
Ys: I'm not finished. Then we dump them over the wall into whatever district we want to buy property in. That would lower property values.
GM: I'm not sure that's what people had in mind when they invented the term 'social engineering'.
GM: I'm just glad none of you suggested dressing up some kobolds as goblins and assassinate an arch-duke.
Tannis: Plagues aren't difficult to synthesise...
GM: I'm glad we're not playing poker.
Because people are starting to get sick in Magnimar - ships are already diverting to Riddleport rather than risk whatever mystery disease is at work.
Zin's player: Given my familiarity with John Snow...
GM: Hmm? I'm not up to speed with...
Zin's player: The Broad Street Pump.
Harshal: Oh, THAT John Snow - I thought you meant Game of Thrones too.
GM: I decided against the one that causes buboes, swollen glands, and eventually bleeding under the skin. Be grateful.
GM: It responds to magical healing, but they're having trouble isolating the vector.
Harshal: Do people have mosquito screens in Magnimar? That can stop Stirges?
The disease, which causes skin ulcers and eventual death, started in the port district but has spread up-cliff, so it's probably not sewer-related.
Ys: At least the increased chaos in the streets gives us opportunities.
Harshal: For 'random stabbings'?
Ys: Yes.
Some of the wealthy families have been hit harder than others, but are covering it up. This includes Tannis' relatives. Suspiciously, all these families are ones wealthy in real estate outside the city.
Harshal: I suspect Druids. It's always the Druids.
Ys: Kill all the cats, it's the Druids.
Harshal: If some insane hippie Druid has taken offence at the concept of land ownership, they could easily unleash some kind of plague on the city.
Zin: I blame the humans.
Ys: I'm an elf.
GM: 'You all look the same to me'
It doesn't seem likely they caught it at a day's fox hunting either - that would have exposed landowners AND nobility. But it IS infecting farmers, and miners.
Zin: Everytime you mention miners it jumps out at me.
Gillert: Well, you are a burrowing species.
The fact that the Alabaster District uses endless fountains as a water supply seems to rule out a water-borne illness too. And hitting the Dockways first seems to rule out something that came in with the collected harvests, since that district gets most of its food from the sea. Tannis's family are pretty sure their outbreak started with the kitchen staff first - but if it was the food it would have infected everybody at the same time.
Harshal: It's invisible whistling spiders that came in with the bananas.
The disease IS infecting livestock as well. Are the slaughterhouse workers coming down with the disease even more often than the rest of the population?
Tannis: Why don't you go ask?
Harshal: Oh sure, I'll go right down. AFTER I find a plague-doctor outfit.
Tannis: I can't do everything!
Harshal: Oh, alright, I'll go down. I'll take a posey of strong-smelling herbs to hold under my nose. Disease prevention being somewhat amorphous in this era.
The GM came up with this plot because he knows his players have wide geek interests, and could probably identify the disease within seconds. It actually takes us much longer than he expects.
GM: Oh, that's why nobody has IDed it yet - it's a strictly fictional disease.
Actually he's wrong - he was just given an obsolete name for the disease when he looked for ideas. Harshal does notice that the abattoir guild-members all enjoy bathhouses next to the slaughterhouses. So they'd be resistant to infection anyway. But his questions do reveal that new grazing land was opened up recently, after a mine got transferred to new owners who had tenant farmers adjacent.
Tannis: I'm sorry guys, but it looks like we'll have to go out of the city.
Harshal: I don't DO nature.
Ys: I keep getting dragged off to do things I don't want to do, thanks to Tannis' family.
Ys' alchemical testing has already ruled out a poison, and her torture-chamber-slash-forensic-lab further rules out a blood-borne disease.
Harshal: Who would have guessed that all those blood-letting instruments would actually be useful?
Gillert: So, what bits do we actually have to cut off?
Tannis: You're not thinking big enough.
Zin: You can sell the test.
Harshal: No, that's not how to do it. You give the test away free and get prestige that way.
Ys: *twitches violently at the mention of doing anything for 'free'*
Tannis: You're still not thinking big enough. People are diseased - what do you do with the diseased?
Gillert: Shoot them.
Tannis: ... No. You put them quarantine. So we fake test results and profit that way.
We complain endlessly about having to leave town.
GM: It's half-a-day's ride! If you stand on one of the towers -
Tannis: - we can see where we're going to.
Gillert: I keep forgetting I have a whetstone.
Harshal: Well it's standard equipment.
Gillert: It's more useful to those adventurers that actually use pointy things.
We arrive at the suspect farm, where they've already had to put down half their cattle. Ys searches, and finds somebody's stash of 6 silver coins, which she pockets.
Gillert: You monster.
Ys: Yes, and?
Time to examine the silver mine, which apparently was transferred to new owners to settle a debt.
Tannis: Zin? You go in first.
Zin: *sigh* Of course I do.
Mine Overseer: Well, we got a new donkey. And then it took sick. Then the workers took sick. They can barely swing a pick-axe.
They got the donkey at the Archer's Feast, which is about when the plague started.
Tannis: Where did you bury it?
Overseer: We burned it. It took sick.
Harshal: Well, at least you didn't eat it.
Overseer: ... No sir. It took sick.
But they haven't opened any new seams lately, which is evidence against them exposing themselves to something new and infectious. The old time miners, farmers, and foresters certainly haven't heard of anything like it. The overseer does have a receipt for the donkey, at least. And that eventually leads us back to the docks, and the livestock pens. But it can't be coming in one the ships, since incubation times would lead to plague ships arriving at Magnimar.
Gillert: Could a Hag be living under the livestock pens?
GM: Possibly. They can certainly infect livestock.
Gillert: Either that or we've got a Typhoid Mary.
Harshal: Really? And what, exactly, would this Mary would have done with all the livestock to infect them?
GM: I should probably have mentioned that some of the infected are coming in with *various respiratory symptoms*, and some with *various gastro-intestinal symptoms.*
Gillert: It's not Black Death is it?
GM: No, but there is a metal band named after it.
Ys' player: Ah. Well, that Ids the disease.
Harshal's player: Oh for FUCK's SAKE - it's Anthrax.
And it's soon apparent that somebody is deliberately planting the spores around the docks to implicate the incoming ships. But who?
Ys: OK, we follow the money - who benefits? Who ISN'T getting infected?
GM: Underbridge.
Tannis points out that doesn't actually implicate the denizens of Underbridge - they can't afford livestock anyway. Who benefits from the chaos? The Silent Circle, for one. The muckrakers have been very heavily hit by the disease. Gillert gets lucky as we make our inquiries.
Muttering Lunatic: ... Just because. It's walking don't mean it's alive... I dun telled them... Just because it's up and mooing dun mean it's alive.
Gillert: What's not alive?
Muttering Lunatic: I told 'em! Deathwalker knows, the Faceless Five know.
Gillert: I'm trying to get an answer from him.
GM: Sure, but you don't speak the same kind of crazy.
Lunatic: Too late, too late, the Deathwalker planted his seed.
Harshal: We're getting back to that 'Typhoid Mary' innuendo, aren't we?
Gillert also knows that there are spells that conceal the undead status of a creature. So this 'Deathwalker' apparently sent at least one undead cow to infect the livestock trade.
GM: Anthrax spores are most efficiently spread from a decomposing corpse.
Gillert: Those sneaky fucks.
GM: And it works even better if the corpse is still up and walking around.
Just as well Gillert has Detect Magic - if the zombie cow hasn't been sold yet, the traders are unlikely to mention it's odd behaviour.
GM: They are trying to sell it - bit of a conflict of interest there.
Harshal: What would a zombie cow be called anyway?
Gillert: Day Z?
GM: ...... Oh god.
Gillert eventually locates the cow in a question - and the enchanted cowbell that maintains the transmutation. Wisely, we make inquiries about who is selling the cow before drawing attention.
Tannis: It's targeting the nobles.
Harshal: It's targeting everybody - it's just that the nobles buy more meat.
Gillert: That cow's been there for weeks. Why hasn't it sold?
Harshal: Because it looks fine, but it's not behaving right. The buyers can take one look at it and think 'that animal ain't healthy'.
The cow has a brand that matches the rest in the pen - five interlocking circles.
Gillert: Of course it is.
Ys: Why don't we steal it?
Harshal: OK, you can, but we're going over here and never associating with you again. You're going to be associating with a plague cow. Every time you go near it you'll be picking up more spores.
Ys: Hear me out, I'm not going to go near it. And a plague cow could be useful. I'll just keep it underground somewhere until we need it.
Harshal: OK, to wipe out an Orc nest somewhere - we tie the cow up nearby.
Tannis: And some day a priest casts Healing Surge nearby, and the undead cow lurches, lows, and collapses. 'Wait, what?'
We consult those Necromancer morticians about the identity of the transmutation, and the Carrion Compass spell that can lead to the less socially acceptable necromancers responsible. The spell requires an organ from the cow, which will float in front of us.
GM: 'Is that an eyeball?'
Ys: Easy to explain - we're Rastafarians. I and I.
GM: *groans*
Ys goes and hires some labourers to dig a hole in which we can stash the undead cow. Alternatively, nail it into a crate, fill it with mud to stop spore release and reduce decay, and store it in a warehouse.
Tannis: And if somebody puts their ear to the crate they'll hear a soft 'moo'.
Zin: Why is the lynchpin of this adventure a magical cowbell?
GM and Tannis: Because it needs more cowbell. *high-five each other*
Everybody else: *howl in pain*
Ys: I have named this the Undead Cow-ruption Caper.