First - Second Level Campaign History DM Perspective

FIRST - SECOND LEVEL HISTORY

The party joined together under the banner of the Jupin-Naga Club, founded by Crusio as their sponsor. Crusio leads the party to the Ryosuchi Headmaster, who informs them that their Jupin-naga groups doesn't have the official charter necessary to gain entry into the academy and for that reason much undergo the entrance exam of the Fire Caves.

Ryosuchi informs the party they must find their employer, the Lady of a nearby river mining town which controls the Fire Caves. Ryosuchi seems to be intentionally sparse on the details, and after the Players are kicked out into the hallway, Crusio and Ryosuchi have a heated discussion about Crusio's undisciplined behavior -

Ryosuchi - "What the hell is the deal coming in here with a bunch of snot nosed middle-schoolers, are you trying to get those boys killed?"

Crusio - "Don't crack a scale you old lizard, I'm just having a bit of fun don't worry so much."

Ryosuchi - "Watch your mouth! I don't care who you work for, you'd best remember who is the headmaster around here kid."

Crusio - "Aw, ha ha, but remember there honorable lizard you work for them too." opening the door and finding some of the players attempting to listen in.

Only parts of this conversation actually were communicated to the party because of their checks - but, at this point it won't hurt to have the whole thing laid out.

Crusio exits the Headmasters office and walks the party a little way down the hall before being confronted by another student who challenges Crusio - a battle that ends before it begins with a single thrust of Crusios thumb into the challenger's chest, nearly killing the opponent in a single blow.

A female student (Lissera) arrives semi-scolding Crusio, "You must be more careful I won't always be around to put them back together after you break them."

Crusio - "Oh, you and I both know you will always be around, won't you Lissera?" he says with a stoic face.

Crusio after looking out the 2nd floor window down at a beautiful young girl (Sharina) walking through the school yard says, "I've got some things I need to take care of, good luck on the exam boys, I'll see you around." With that he leaps out the window landing gracefully to the earth and walks after Sharina who is several paces ahead.

Lissera stands from having treated the wounded class men, looks out the window with a longing sadness that Insight checks revealed. She takes the time to explain a bit that battles between class men happen often and so long as they are not fatal are overlooked as skill training. But for the time the Players should be very cautious challenging any of the students. She says, "I would help more but I'm neglecting my duties, please take care of Crusio for me." She too leaps from the 2nd floor and lands uninjured upon the earth walking off in the direction of Crusio and Sharina.

This leaves the players alone in a combat oriented academy to be mocked by the upper-class men. Though the challengers are met with the Players defiance no battles occur on the grounds.

The Players with an obscure directive, lend themselves to the question - does anybody know where we're going. At which point each pursue their own ends, family, library, stableman, cartographer or etc. in pursuit of where is this mining town. The most productive is a Father's directions follow the river out the east gate north, or the copied map from a cartographer.

Then it was "how do we get there and complete this trial in 3 days without horses, because it is a day and a half on foot just to get there?"

Horses is the answer, but the problem soon becomes, I won't rent a horse to a minor, I need and adult to sign for it. The potential answers were bribe and adult to sign for the players, get someone's family member to sign for the players, or less so - steal the horses but don't get caught.

The party having some trouble with what to do end up in front of Crusio outside the school who tells them "why haven't you left yet, if it was my exam I would have already have been gone." when asked "but we can't get horses" he replies "You're ninja aren't you, use your skills find a way. Lets just call it a race shall we, the first one there gets to be the leader."

One Player immediately hearing race and leader takes off at a dead run, making endurance checks after a couple hours, hoping his impetuous RP might pay off.

One Player takes that to mean I know how to steal as a rogue therefore he must mean steal them - which is possibly true of Crusio, but it would be with the stipulation of if you do it you don't get caught, this is the ninja way.

While the Player himself didn't get caught, he stole the horses behind the back of the stable master who was in the middle of negotiations with the rest of the Party. Thus he immediately had the Party detained as accomplices to be brought before the Hokage.

After explaining the situation that they had nothing to do with the theft the Hokage asks them to deliver the message of severe fines and shackles to their party member that stole the horse. To remind that member that the village is lawful and there are consequences for his actions.

Those that were restrained end up renting horses by finding and adult to sign for them and take off after the other party members.

The runner and the horse thief catch up to one another at which point they are soon after attacked by predator panthers stalking the river side. They have a much tougher battle than the rest of the party being only two players.

The two out front choose to rest and wait for the rest of the party to catch up, at which point those with the shackles present them to their party member and convey the notice of the fines he must pay, amounting to about 2 levels worth of wealth.

As the Party continues on that day they discover an overgrown path that leads to an ancient altar ring which they discover to have a trap door beneath the altar, the party rogue refuses to help with the traps without compensation from the party (his way of recouping the loot lost by his fines) and so the party proceeds to use brute force to break the trapped doors and chests of the ritual site. Also because the rogue didn't participate in the trap opening there was differential xp and gold awarded to those players who participated.

Needless to say there was some party cohesion issues arising from the differential and debate both in game and out as to what makes a party function and what constitutes cohesive party behavior.

Both issues finding some resolution with those siding for helping the rogue because of their characters alignment and those that say he is on his own simply playing it out in game and it becoming what it will.

Fortunately the party doesn't fracture and they reach their destination, what is described as a run down deserted mining operation with drunken miners littering the streets with their stuppored bodies. The only thing open in the town is the bar and the manor. The general store and nearby estate house are boarded up.

The party is attacked entering the streets of the town by drunken miners who are looking to get some donations for their dry mouth syndrome. The party defeats this initial encounter by the paladin contributing to their fund. The miners retreat to the bar, and tell them the Lady of the town is probably in the manor.

The party meet with a nearly histerical well dressed middle aged woman who admits to be the Lady of the manor but has no time to talk with the party. The party tells her that she hired them and they need to ask about the mine. She tells them she didn't hire them but because they are there and are ninja perhaps they can help her find her daughter who went missing last night.

The Lady offers the only thing of value her family has left, Dwarven Gauntlets. An heirloom of her current second husband. She says he would be furious if he knew she had used them as payment but she will do anything to get her daughter back.

The Lady informs the party she was the one who shut the mines down do to safety concerns and too many explosive accidents, she couldn't bare anymore of her people dying in the unsafe conditions, and her husband (a dwarf, who lives for mining and drinking) now begrudginly only has his drinking to drown his sorrows.

The Party searches the grounds finding a pair of muddy foot prints in the soft garden behind the house under the daughters second story window. Looking as though someone had been climbing up the wall into the daughters room. The party then tracks the foot prints through the soil over the river and down into the Fire Caves, where all the mining had been taking place until what they deduce to be about a year ago.

The tracks look to be two creatures dragging a third smaller person, then after the river where because of the rocks the tracks became harder to find, it appears that the daughter must have been walking with her shoes on, and then back to being dragged through the dirt entering the Fire Caves. With some sort of scuffle happening outside.

The party enters the caves avoiding a series of webs left by the creatures that presumably now enhabit them. They eventually find the daughter covered in a cocoon of webbing behind a iron-bar cage. Above their head Ettercaps swing from their webs, watching the party as they open the cage and cut the webbing from around the mouth of the daughter.

The party questions the daughter, not certain if they move her whether or not the ettercaps will attack. The daughter beligerently tells them to get her the hell out of there, those creatures are going to kill her. The party deduces if they were going to kill her they would have done so already. She claims that she hired them and they work for her, they have to get her out of there. After awhile of miming with the ettercaps the party deduces that the ettercaps and dwarven miners were once allied and it seems that the ettercaps actually want their dwarven friends to return to mining.

At this point the party doesn't quiet know who their working for or what they are supposed to do, so they decide for now to not chance a battle with the ettercaps in which the daughter might be killed, and head out of the caves to discuss things with the Lady of the village to see exactly what else is going on there.

After exiting the mines a Gnome emerges from the shadows wearing emblems of a mist village shinobi/ninja. "Don't trust that little witch, she would poison her own mother if it suited her purpose. Which, as it happens it does."

Gnome - " you should know that I work for her, she hired me to shut down these mines, poison her mother, and fake her kidnapping. Unfortunately for her I got a better offer from a certain dwarven miner along the way. I had hoped those ettercap would kill her once they found out what she had been up to, but sadly they didn't have what it takes. So here's the thing, you go in there and bring me her head and I'll let you collect half the reward from the dwarf. I trust you'll bring me my half later."

Party - "how did you shut the mines down?"

Gnome - "Easily enough, with a few of these" (explosives disguised as rocks, to set off the methane in the mines)

Party - interparty debate as what to do

Gnome - "just think about it, but do it quickly, we are on a bit of a time crunch here."

While the party debated, the Gnome was able to slip by them and kill the girl. The party re-enters the caves to find the daughters throat riped out by the bit of an animal. The ettercap describe the gnome then it in mime as some sort of dog or fanged creature.

The party immediately gather up the daughter and take her back to the Lady of the town, while the paladin to his detriment, confronts the Lady's husband the Dwarven miner, who says to the paladin that he doesn't answer to him because he is the law of the town (with regard to hiring a ninja to kill his stepdaughter.) This gains the paladin a 10day trip to jail that is resolved willingly later.

The Dwarven husband hearing the Lady's screams as she is presented with her daughter next door in the manor, rushes to her side.

At which point the party tells the Lady of her husbands hiring the gnome to kill her daughter, and he is forced to come clean, confessing he did it to protect the Lady from the truth, that her daughter was trying to poison her. The party tests a few wine bottles and finds the poisoned one, proving the mother was being poisoned, but didn't prove that the dwarf wasn't responsible.
Because it seems the one that has the most to gain from the daughter and the mother's death is the heir to the mines the dwarf who would be working in them still even with the conditions as deadly as they are.

Then while arguing someone bumps the body of the daughter, and a clank sounds as the husbands family heirloom the gauntlets fall to the floor from her corpse. This the party believes would have been the last straw to set the mother and father against one another and perhaps leave only the daughter behind to rule the town. The family seems satisfied with the answer that the daughter was responsible, and true to their word give the party the gauntlets, saying they only wish to start new with one another, and now that the mines can reopen they will bury the past (literally).

The paladin serves his 10 days in jail, the rogue trades the gauntlets as payment to the gnome. The gnome praises his wisdom in bringing it to him so he did not have to hunt down the party for his reward, and splits the value of the gauntlets in gold with the rogue. The rogue on the way back to town finds the bodies of several mist ninja with one missing his emblems, suggesting the gnome wasn't who he said he was.

The party leaves town, not really sure who they were working for or if they did the right thing, but they know the mines are reopened which they see is clearly good for that town, so they return to the village seemingly better off.

The party on the way back to the village encounter a group of mist ninja gnomes who have laid a trap for them, blocking the river with two hidden wire mesh nets to box in a kill zone. At which point I proceeded to misread the invisibility reactive ability of the gnomes and unwittingly cheese the combat, nevertheless the party was victorious and awarded a small extra amount of extra xp for the mistake - with one gnome escaping with potentially rewarding wand of magical loot.

The party reports back to the Headmaster, at which point are berated for not having put together that when the Headmaster said Lady of the town, that there could be more than one, and when the first Lady of the town says she didn't hire you, that the second who said she did, must have actually hired them. So the mission technically ends in failure, because not only did they not work for the person who hired them, but that person was killed in the process.

Crusio tells the old Headmaster to stuff it, because they both know that town is productive again whether or not they did their mission is pointless as they outcome is better for the village anyhow. "just give them their charter you dried up gnewt." The headmaster gives the party their charter and mission rewards.

At which point the Rogue goes to settle up with the Hokage, who tells him sternly but kindly, that those manacles are not for his imprisonment, but to remind him that this village is only as strong as the laws that govern it, the people that support them, and the leaders that bind them together. The links of that chain are a symbol for the unity of the villages common laws, and for the consequences for breaking them. The Hokage reduces the fines to half what they were and accepts what the rogue presents as full payment, forgiving the rest as lesson learned.

This concludes the DM's memory of 1st to 2nd levels, though I'm sure because of how many months ago that was I've left a bunch out.