Diversity Hires, part 1: Boat Trip

We played the Warhammer FRP adventure, The Thousand Thrones.  Well, kind of.

The campaign makes certain assumptions about the party, not least of which is that there's at least one human player character.  This was not the case.  In fact, the reason I played a halfling is that I wasn't there for the first session and it became very rapidly apparent they needed someone in the party who had a personality and could do stuff like talking to people.

The GM gave us a lot more XP than the campaign says.  This did not in any way result in our characters becoming overpowered.  He also skipped some bits that he didn't think were interesting, plus there were times we made party decisions that the book had not accounted for.

And we only actually played as far as the end of chapter six, for, um, reasons.

Anyway, spoilers ahead for The Thousand Thrones.

The party:
Kazgar - a dwarven mercenary. Unusually slender for a dwarf, occasionally mistaken for a halfling. Has tattooed letters on his knuckles, but being illiterate, doesn't know what they say. Literate members of the party feel no need to enlighten him.
Burlok - a dwarven miner. One of the least tough dwarves ever born, despite being more conventionally built than Kazgar.
Mormacar - an elven mercenary. Gay and fabulous, absolutely lethal with a longbow.
Gildiril - an elven scribe. Gets very excited about books.
Frida - a halfling barber-surgeon. Roughly spherical. On a mission to remove everybody's eyebrows, while keeping their hair looking fly.

The team work for a witch hunter by the name of Roderick. Recently there has been a bit of a skill drain in the local area due to a lot of peasant types heading off on a crusade with a child who they seem to think is Sigmar reborn but who is quite clearly a manipulative demon in disguise. As such, a lot of basic jobs like policing are not getting done.

Enter the team.

So far the more martial team members have been on an investigation mission (which completely coincidentally led them through several pubs and an opium den) while the barber and the scribe, who both have the kind of personalities that allow them to interact successfully with other people and the ability to write down anything they hear have been off attending parties on the witch hunter's behalf.

However, the martial team needed to investigate a possible cult in an old fortress in the swamp, and having someone capable of having a conversation with them seemed like a good idea (not to mention the benefits of an extra longbow and the suspicion that Frida's talents might extend beyond conversation and hairdressing.)

Step 1 was to recruit a guide through the swamp, given that nobody had any idea how to survive outdoors. Jekel was friendly and incredibly cheerful, despite (or perhaps because of) having a large chunk of his brain missing. Gildiril purchased one of his pamphlets on the many wonderful and exciting things to be found in the swamp, and everyone went to buy rations. Gildiril bought a selection of alcohol for the journey. Frida brought her own personal barrel of beer on top of that.

They set out through the swamp in two boats. The two elves got in the front boat with Jekel, while the dwarves and halfling (or 'team normal height', as they styled themselves) brought up the rear. Jekel regaled them cheerfully with tales of the many horrifying monsters they could expect to be eaten by in the swamp. They stopped off briefly at some interesting flowers surrounded by bones. Frida was initially going to collect some of their nectar herself (she reckoned it would be useful for medicine) but realising that she was likely to succumb to their effects due to being a fragile halfling asked for someone else to do it. Burlok volunteered, and promptly fell asleep after collecting the nectar. He was dumped back into the boat and the journey continued.

Stopping off at a small island to spend the night, the party were lucky enough to get a good night's sleep thanks to Jekel remembering how to build a proper shelter out of boats and a tarp. Frida spent her watch attempting to shave Gildiril's eyebrows, but unfortunately woke him up and had to stop. She also spotted a large white worm curled up between Burlok and Kazgar for warmth, but having woken up Burlok to deal with it, didn't bother staying awake any longer.

In the morning, Gildiril went to investigate the rotting corpse at the other end of the island, and narrowly avoided being horribly diseased as he retrieved the corpse's equipment.

The second night passed less comfortably, as Jekel had forgotten how to build shelters. Fortunately there were no interruptions, and the next morning they continued to the fortress to investigate the cult.

Three normal looking people were walking past. Attempts to have a conversation with them were hampered when the elves decided to open said conversation with arrows, culminating in Mormacar shooting one man's arm right off. Attempts at interrogation went poorly. Whether they were actually involved in the cult could not be established. Frida patched up the two men who weren't dying from sudden loss of limbs.

They paid a brief visit to the men's fishing boat, which proved similarly unenlightening, then headed back to the fortress.

Inside the fortress they saw a man covered in hair with big crab claws for hands. Aha. Now they were on safer ground. These were definitely mutants and could therefore be killed.

Or at least, they could be killed if you were Mormacar, Gildiril or Kazgar. Frida completely failed to hit anything with her sling, and even Burlok was finding it remarkably difficult to hit anything. On the other hand, the mutants completely failed to damage Frida, while making a substantial hole in Gildiril. Frida patched him up, resisting the urge to remove his eyebrows in the process.