Campaign Report – Evard’s Black Orchestra*, Second Symphony

*the greatest musical show that hasn’t happened yet, name subject to revision (it is noted as such on all their posters).

As our GM is still recovering from being sick, we moved forward on the EBO game this week, adding a new player and thus a new character (also a child of Alamarian Dulcimer):

• Jet Sexual-Magnetism Dulcimer, baddest of the bad boys, on the outs after a disastrously failed solo tour.  Vocals and mandolin.  (Tiefling Warlock 1, played by B1.)

L arranges for Jet, who arrived too late to board the ship before it sailed and whom L has good reason to believe is being pursued by Paladins of the Sun, to be ferried via pegasus to the Silver Eagle.  Serasala Swiftwind, the pegasus rider, unceremoniously dumps Jet on the deck of the ship with a terse “Get off my pegasus”, tosses Amethyst a bag of messages from L and flies off.

Amethyst and Jet have a long history of rivalry and their reunion is not a happy one.  But, it does mean that they have someone to play the lead of Cedric in their song cycle.  Amethyst, Lewis and Jet spend the next several days, and indeed the rest of the journey, arguing music, lyrics, staging, casting, just about everything and anything.  Ren takes to training with the dancers and climbing the rigging to keep in shape and, later, sparring with Conscience.

One night, Ren is up talking with the night watchelf in the crow’s nest, when suddenly, Flying Monkeys attack!  They whip by Ren and the lookout landing on the deck, some of them grabbing what they can and flying off, others heading deeper into the ship searching for more plunder.  Ren scrambles down while the lookout sounds the alarm.  Two of the monkeys burst into the room where the other Dulcimers are arguing music and staging.  Amethyst tries to talk them down but then Jet unleashes crackling electric doom, which succeeds only in blowing up part of the cabin.  The monkeys grab Amethyst and try to drag her out of the cabin, managing to get her outside before she wiggles free.  Ren arrives to try and stop them, Jet’s black blast of death bats sadly misses, Lewis manages a deadly dagger throw killing one and the other one tries to fly away with Amethyst but she slips from its grasp.  The rest of the surviving flying monkeys wing off into the darkness.  Distantly, the character see . . . something floating in the sky with light masquerading as stars, something huge.  The band wants to go after it, but the Captain insists that it is best to just stay the course and report it to the authorities.

Disappointed, the band double down on their performing preparations even staging a music event for the crew and passengers of the Silver Eagle.  Which goes off well except for Jet performance of Blood which fails to strike a cord with the audience (Sorry, had to have a least one music related pun in here) and Jet blames on someone attaching a monkey’s paw, cut from the flying monkeys, to his mandolin.  But Lewis’ heartfelt rendition of “I’ll only come once, so won’t you come with me” seems to move even the stoic Conscience.

Arriving at the Imperial Free City of Zrieste, they load themselves into several coaches for the week long trip to Vine, taking the opportunity to polish their act by performing at the coach inns along the way.

Next time: After a detour in Grossdeunkleweg,  to Vine!

Notes: When, and if, we get back to this game I intend to actually have a set of events for Vine for them to interact or ignore as they choose.  These first too sessions ended up being a lot of feeling out of the characters and a little bit of playing with the system.

Flying monkey image by clipartcotttage and used under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.