A journey through a land of fantasy…

I have quite a lot of work to do today at my job, but I did promise an update on what happened last night, so here goes.

First, I have to admit I was quite a wuss.  I didn’t want to kill Sparrow, so I gave him all the chances I could.

I recapped what was happening, and underlined that Sparrow, alone of the rest of the party, had not indicated what he planned to do during the next two weeks (during which time two of the party were going off to get a magic item made).  Since the new wizard, Mahdi, was heading to his home in Silverleaf to take care of business and the party was going to meet there, Sparrow said he’d go to Silverleaf and “hang out.”  I asked him where he was staying and what he was doing, and he said, at a tavern, and he’d wander the town while he was idle.

At this point, I allowed Sparrow not one, but two Wisdom checks, one for specific danger and one for general danger, but as the dice sometimes roll, he failed both miserably.  (They were rolled without his knowledge and behind my screen.)

Mahdi asked Sparrow to come by his residence early in their stay in Silverleaf, because he needed his assistance with a few things, so on the day after they arrived, Sparrow showed up.  Now, Mahdi had a very interesting thing he needed Sparrow for, but I’m not going into that here; you’ll just have to wonder.  After they had a long conversation, I gave Mahdi an Intelligence check regarding Sparrow’s safety (there was something in the conversation itself that warranted this), which he succeeded at, and I told him that he is concerned for Sparrow, since the last time they were in Silverleaf, it seemed that the group’s reputation was pretty bad and Sparrow in particular had been wandering around in disguise.  Mahdi then brought this up with Sparrow, who assured him he was in no danger. (argh!)   Mahdi then contracted Sparrow to do some travelling around and meeting with nobles in the city.

During this travelling around, I gave Sparrow one last chance — a Spot check to notice that he was being tailed.  A natural 20 saved the day.  I informed him that he noticed that he was being followed, and after losing the tail, he was convinced that he was in danger, and he and Mahdi came up with protection and contingency plans.

After all this, and after the rest of the party arrived in Silverleaf, I gave them a speech, telling them that they need to be more cognizant of where they are and what they’re doing.  I told them that if any of them had been caught, that would probably have been the end of the character.  I suggested that they keep notes as to what happens in which city.  (It occurred to me later that if they did such a thing, maybe they’d start seeing some patterns…)

It turned out that Nathan had thought that the big fight when the Obsidian Guard had come to arrest Vryn, Sparrow, and Zoriya had happened in “some other city.”  I’m not sure I believe that, but I suppose that’s beside the point.  I also told the players that I’m sorry if I’m not painting the world black enough to make them feel the danger, but I did make a point to say that they need to pay attention to this kind of thing a lot more.  So, hopefully this will help.