Spoilers for Empire of the Ghouls and Everybody Lies from Zobeck: Clockwork City…
8 of Thunders, Zobeck Free Year 92
A winterfolk halfling with tousled hair, a sleek black minotaur, and a brown haired elf sporting a shaped goatee knocked back ales in the Blackened Fish Tavern. The people here were strong, sturdy folk. Burly longshoreman, and muscled riverboat sailors, spending an evening eating or carousing after a long days work bringing cargo up and off the river Argent into Zobeck.
An unshaven man with unkempt brown hair joined them at their table. His clothing, though slightly disheveled like the rest of him, was of a higher quality than the other denizens of the dive bar. He ran a hand through greasy hair shakily.
"Thanks for coming. I'm Grigori.They say you all have a reputation for finding things and people that need finding. And I need some help. My girlfriend, Ilyana, has been missing for three days. I don't know what happened to her," he said.
The minotaur met and held his gaze. The halfling flipped his own touseled hair off his forehead and took another sip of his large stein. The elf appeared disinterested, instead continuing to survey the room, though a trained eye could have told that he was listening intently while looking around.
"We're gonna need some more information to go off friend. Not to mention--what's the reward? If you know us then you know work ain't free and ale ain't cheap in Zobeck," said Eirgrofan Frostbane, the halfling.
“She was last seen near this dump of a restaurant, the Rampant Roach. They say kobolds have been making people disappear, maybe the kobolds that own the Roach had something to do with it. She also worked at the Silk Scabbard.”
“Silk Scabbard? What’s that?”
The man looked uncomfortable.
“Look, Ilyana’s a good girl. Let’s just say that the establishment is a bit of a house of ill repute. If you go there, find her friends, Filipa or Iskra. If you tell them that ‘Grigori got them their jewelry’ they’ll know I sent you.”
The adventurers eyebrows raised slightly.
“So you want us to see who took her? Do you have any enemies? Asked Korwyn Belmont, the minotaur.
“Well I may have taken something important from the Cloven Nine a few months back…allegedly. A book, fully of infernal writing.”
“And what’d you do with it? Do you think they took your girlfriend?” Asked Frostbane.
“Nah, I keep a low profile. They probably don’t know about her. I need to get going though—can’t stay in one place too long as a second story guy,” said Gregori.
They asked him a few more questions then he slipped away. After finishing their drinks they set off to find the Silk Scabbard.
The trio soon arrived at the Silk Scabbard, and after coughing up the cover charge found themselves in a large, two-story building. A crowd was gathered around a pit on the first floor, and the sound of heavy blows and grunts met their ears. Other people sat at gambling tables on the lower and upper floor, and some watchers stood on the second floor balcony to watch the pit fight below. Throughout there also moved a few women, most in gaudy makeup, serving tankards of ale and occasionally slipping discreetly through a side door by the bar with a patron.
After exchanging a few words with the bartender and collecting their own ale, the adventurers moved closer to the pit to watch. Eirgofan looked on with interest as a thickly built hill dwarf exchanged body blows with a large, tightly muscled man. The dwarf was winning, weathering hits like the Ironcrag mountains when the wind beat upon them.
Watching from across the room, Rolan noted a group of bruisers watching the fight with tattoos up their necks and faces. The symbols twisted in a way that made one uncomfortable, but he couldn’t make any sense of their meaning.
As Eirgrofan moved around the pit he was bumped by a large man with a boxum woman on his arm.
“Watch yourself there tiny folk!” the man slurred drunkenly.
“Oh, beg pardon my good sir. Let me buy you a drink as apology,” said Eirgrofan, gesturing to the woman and passing her a coin. The man brightened considerably and patted the halfling on the head.
“What a good little feller. Much obliged,” he said as he stumbled off with the woman and disappeared through a door to the back rooms.
Eirgrofan then went to rejoin his comrades, who had found themselves an open booth near the fighting pit.
Korwyn called over a server. She had a slight build and dirty blonde hair.
“We don’t get many folk like you around here sir,” said the woman in a soft voice. “Welcome and how can I help you?”
Korwyn ordered drinks and then asked the young woman, who they discovered was named Svetlana, about Illyana and her friends.
“I didn’t know her too well, but I can get Filipa when she finishes up with her client. I think you ran into them earlier,” she said, looking at Eirgrofan. “I’ll be sure to send her over.”
About fifteen minutes later the woman they now knew was Filipa walked over to their booth. "Who are you and what do you want?"
"Grigori sent us. He said that he got you your jewelry. We're trying to find Ilyana," said Korwyn.
Filipa immediately seemed to relax slightly and her eyes glistened. "So, what do you want to know?"
"When's the last time you saw her? Where was she? Did she have any enemies?"
"Nah, Ilyana was a nice girl. Except for that loser Grigori. But he's harmless. Last I saw her was about a week ago. We were walking back to our apartments in Lower Zobeck. She left us to take a shortcut through an alleyway. The only way to tell which one it was is that the alley has some Kobold restaurant called the Rampant Roach. Haven't seen her since."
"We heard something about kobolds being behind disappearances. What do you think happened?"
"I don't know, but if you want to talk to kobolds, they live in a slum in the South of Zobeck."
After finishing their drinks, the adventurers departed.
As night fell, they arrived at the gate to the Kobold Ghetto. It was a flurry of activity, as the working kobold population of Zobeck left for their nocturnal shifts, keeping the gears of commerce literally grinding on.
Some uniformed kobolds collected a toll and looked through bags as others entered and exited. Rolan felt someone push against him and touched his coin purse just before a scaled and clawed hand removed it from his belt. The erstwhile thief disappeared into the crowd as quickly as he appeared, but was not able to take Rolan’s money.
“Guard yourselves. They’re pickpockets in the throng,” he said.
Korwyn reached reflexively for his coin purse, and found that someone had already lifted two gold pieces off of him while he had surveyed the crowd.
“I hate this city,” grunted the minotaur.
Although most kobolds they attempted to talk to simply avoided eye contact or only spoke draconic, eventually the adventurers were able to pull aside one of the inspectors who spoke common. He had green tinged scales and seemed impatient, looking at the crowd behind and around them.
“How can I help you?”
“We were looking for a girl that may have come through here."
The kobold looked at the minotaur like he was a cow: "Only kobolds come through here on the regular. I can't help you." He turned and moved off to rap a young kobold on the head as the adolescent clumsily liberated a pocket watch from an elderly kobold shambling off to work.
"Perhaps we ought to check out the Rampant Roach," suggested Rolan.
Soon the trio found themselves in a dark alley, where they came upon a small eatery with a faded wooden sign out front depicting a cockroach. The proprietor was an enthusiastic kobold who before they could blink ushered them in and began serving them a five course meal. They discovered this kobold was named Skirtal, and he began to recount to them how his nephew, Brik, who sat in the corner flanked by two female kobolds, had been accused of involvement in the disappearance of a blacksmith's daughter. Skirtal offered them a reward if they could clear Brik's name.
Intrigued by the offer, the trio decided to also investigate this disappearance. Skirtal also asked if they could protect Brik as he went on an errand to the black market in the Cartways, under the city of Zobeck. They readily agreed, and followed the kobold on a dizzying journey through the streets and tunnels under the city (Korwyn was the only one able to keep his bearing because of his maze navigating ancestry).
In the Cartways Black Market, the adventurers discovered some bad news, and found themselves enraged at the trafficking in people they discovered. But they did not have the power to upend the slave trade--yet. They found a Darakhul ghoul slave broker named Radu, who upon checking his ledger found that a woman matching Ilyana's description had been taken to the city of Vanderkhul a day or so prior. Ilyana was gone.
9 of Thunders, Zobeck Free Year 92
The night was now well upon the city and the adventurers needed a place to rest off the streets after dropping Brik off at the Roach. Not far from Crown Square they found the Seven Bells tavern where they stayed the night and purchased breakfast and a midnight snack.
Feeling tired and discouraged but rested the next morning, the adventurers decided to continue investigating the unresolved disappearance and visited Straic’s Smelter, the blacksmith shop belonging to the victim’s father.
At Straic’s smelter they found the proprietor, a balding middle aged heavyset man with red beard and hair edging his thinning scalp. His son-in-law, Viktor Turnyr worked the bellows, and was a much younger, thinner, sandy blonde hair man.
The conversation with Straic was tense. It was obvious that he was incensed regarding his daughter's disappearance, and he placed the blame squarely on Brik. The red haired man angerly brandished Brik's knife, which he had found near the window that Rozalyn Turnyr, his daughter, had been taken from.
Their experiences in the Cartways, and interactions with the kobolds only increased the adventurer's unease with Straic's accusations. But setting this aside for the moment, they decided to contact Grigori again and report their findings.
Grigori was struck sullen and quiet by the news, but did not doubt the truth of their findings. He paid them the promised gold and said in passing that he planned to leave town.
"This town is great, isn't it?" Quipped Frost sarcastically.
GM Reflections
This adventure has an interesting story. I had initially planned to follow the lead author on Empire of the Ghouls, Richard Green’s lead from his own play through and use Everybody Lies (available in Streets of Zobeck, and Zobeck: Clockwork City) as an intro adventure in Zobeck. Then about two days before my game as I finalized my prep I decided that I didn’t like the adventure as written, nor did I much enjoy the first section of Empire of the Ghouls. Thematically it also felt weird to run these two very different mysteries as completely distinct railroads. Also, while this session had no combat encounters I preferred this to the original story for Everybody Lies (beat the first level characters to a pulp three times and expect them to still feel like they have efficacy and choice?)
So I blew up both adventures, took the locations and NPCs from both and mixed them together. Because of the time limits on my preparation due to my procrastination and pickiness, I needed to keep my prep simple but effective. So I noted and numbered all the locations in both mysteries, along with the important NPCs there that could hold clues. Then I drew a web map showing the connections I wanted to make between nodes. Finally I generated three clues for each location that pointed towards nodes I had connected. This enabled the adventurers to explore, solving one mystery at their own pace and discovering the other organically. It also showed the darkness that exists in Midgard and the stakes of the campaign. It may also have increased their desire to leave Zobeck behind!
Altering Ilyana’s fate also allowed me to highlight the evil of the ghouls and give a glimpse of the future of the campaign. The one thing that was a bit difficult and new for me was the sheer number of NPCs I role-played as the party moved through the city. They covered ALOT of ground as you can see by the length of this write up. There were so many plot points it literally took me over three months to write all of this.
However, I’m excited for the party to get on the road, because while Zobeck is cool, it isn’t my favorite part of Midgard.
