NC1 - 03

Last night was the third session of Renosia I. It's entitled "Silver Tongue."

Summary
We picked up where we left off, with the party sitting down to a banquet with Iron Horse and Black Snake. Iron Horse tried pumping the party, especially Arak, on the goblin defenses and such, but got very little practical information. Arak tried to learn more about the Orcs, but Iron Horse didn't trust him enough to say anything.

After the banquet, Iron Horse took Odessa away and had his son show the other three to their tent. There they waited silently for Odessa, who made some very lucky rolls and successfully slew Iron Horse and took the Silver Tongue. Now the original plan was for Odessa to whistle when she got the Tongue, but she decided not to--and good thing, too. That would have attracted undue attention.

Once she reunited the others by sneaking to their tent, Arak took some lamp oil and set the tent on fire. I did not make that up. The other three managed to escape in the chaos and head north, while Arak headed south. For some reason, Arak kept whistling, which attracted orcs to his position and nearly got him killed--but lucky for him, the party came to his rescue (the rescue of the guy who tried to burn them down!)

Once reunited, the party nearly got into a fight over the Tongue. Odessa wanted to return to Janus and Elam and Riadlus wanted to warn the goblins of the Orcs planned invasion. Arak seemed strangely neutral in the matter. The argument was diffused, however, and the four made their way to the Ames Forest. Once there, Arak refused to let the others enter and went in himself with the Tongue.

He returned a couple hours later with Gopo, the goblin shaman and some bodyguards. Gopo listened to what the party had to say, but didn't seem interested in their proposal to receive assistance from the Overlord. He told them that goblins deal with their own problems and sent them on their way. The party then returned to Janus and handed over the Silver Tongue for a whopping 600 gold pieces.

DM's Analysis
I was actually surprised the PCs were able to resist the temptation to keep the Silver Tongue for themselves. After all, that's one valuable and useful item for any of them to have, since they are all lacking so much in the Charisma department. The conference with the goblins did not go very well, because while I was translating the goblin for them, they were not translating for each other. For instance, if Riadlus said something in Goblin, Keith would tell me what it meant, but not Eyal and Matt. And the same for all of them. So it made things very confusing. That's why I ended up switching to Renosian again.

Character Analysis
Riadlus - His fear of fire manifested itself in this session. He also tried to attack Odessa and swore to kill Arak. Although his attempt to orchestrate a war between the Redwolves and Black Crows failed, I'm sure the effort was noticed by D'lokka.

Odessa - Odessa took a huge risk for the party's sake. If she turns out to be pregnant, it could wind up killing her with her health. Strangely, neither Riadlus nor Elam seemed to see it as a particular sacrifice at all, and Elam even complained she wasn't useful in the combat with the orcs. But she accomplished her objective, at least. Hopefully she won't give birth to a bouncing baby half-orc.

Elam - As usual, Elam served the part of negotiator between the four and tried to take the mantle of leadership several times, too. He seemed very suspicious of Odessa and was making several alliances with other PCs.

Arak - Arak tried to kill the entire party in one fell swoop, but failed. Despite this, the party still trusted him enough to take the Silver Tongue into his own people's territories and not betray them. A lucky gambit indeed.

We'll start the third adventure next week. It should be interesting, since the party's next mission will take them out of Janus (maybe for good?)