Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Part 1: The Inquisitors | Starter Kit - Advanced D&D

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

A squad of City Watch detectives in the Free City of Greyhawk catch a case that turns out to be more gruesome than anticipated. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Cayman Jack, America's number one margarita. Kamen Jack is a premium malt beverage with flavors. Please drink responsibly. Kamen Jack beverage company, Chicago, Illinois. Welcome to your starter kit. I'm Jason Charles Miller. And every time I introduce a new player to the world of role-playing games, my heart grows just a little bit bigger.

This time around, we're returning to Dungeons and Dragons. to explore the game a little more deeply with an adventure for fifth-level characters that takes place entirely in a huge city. Our dungeon master for this urban adventure is my friend David Nett, head writer for all our editions of Starter Kit thus far, who's been playing D&D as long as I have. David. Hey, Jason.

Hey. Hey. Good to see you. So you've been playing D&D a long time. Yeah, yeah. I did the math because we're doing this. It's been 33 years. Wow.

Yeah. When I was 12, I was at a science fair and the guy next to me at the science fair asked me to play Dungeons & Dragons with him. And it's how all good nerds are born. Of course. Yeah. Awesome. You know, with this game, we're actually doing it in sort of a classic setting of the

world of Greyhawk and then in the city of Greyhawk, right? Yeah. Yeah. The first world that I ever played in when I was 12 was Greyhawk. It was the big Dungeons and Dragons world at the time. And since then, I've continued to play in that world as I took over a game. was Dungeon Master. And so I've got this living version of Greyhawk. It's not a lot like the published version. When we were little kids, we didn't have all the books and stuff. And so we made lots of stuff up.

We're playing in the Free City of Greyhawk, which I think in the beginning was it was a big medieval city like 60 or 70,000 people. But now my free city of Greyhawk is a bustling metropolis of a quarter of a million people, like Kings Landing and Game of Thrones, this big sprawling city inside and outside of the walls with all the history that all my games have brought to it. Lots of intrigue and mystery. Lots of all of that stuff. And a lot of things that, again, if you think about the Greyhawks setting as it was published, that have nothing to do with my game, the names of the guards and things like that are very different now. Now, in season one, we did a classic dungeon crawl. Doing an adventure in a city, what are the differences?

Well, I mean, the dungeon crawl is sort of when you think of Dungeons and Dragons, that's the classic thing. We did first level of dungeon crawl, kick down doors, fight monsters, find treasure. We had to do it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's how you start playing the game. In a dungeon crawl, most of your solutions are, let's fight that thing. And in an urban adventure, you're filled with, I mean, you've got these five characters in a city of 250,000 people. Most of your adventure is interacting with non-player characters, learning things, figuring things out, in this case of this adventure, solving mysteries.

So it's a different set of skills to bring to bear, and a little bit of a different twist on the game. So we handled character generation a little bit different this time. Season one, we started at level one, like how a lot of people start. But there's sort of a newer trend where you can start at different levels and, you know, whether you're doing a one shot at a convention, or if you just have one night to play with your friends, and you want to have some cool power, some different, you know, more advanced things to do, and that's what we're doing this time around.

Yeah, yeah. Fifth level is where a lot of characters come into their own. The game's a lot more balanced now than it was when I started playing. When I started playing fifth level is where a wizard gets a fireball. Everything changes, right? Suddenly you're not running and hiding anymore. And so what we did is we took first level characters, kind of mostly pre-generated first-level characters because we've already done Starter Kit at first level.

And then spent some time making the decisions to level them up all the way to fifth, making the decisions that we needed to make in order to move them to that place. And those videos you can find here on Alpha. I can't wait to dive in. Can't wait to meet the rest of our party and try to solve this mystery. The table is yours. Thanks. I'm David Nett, your dungeon master for this adventure,

and this is your starter kit. Welcome, everybody. I'm glad you're all here. It feels like a thousand years that we've been working on these characters and planning for this, so I'm so glad we're all here together. Yay! So for today's adventure, as you guys know,

you created your fifth level characters. We all did it individually. Your characters have all spent some time together before now. So we're going to do some things in the beginning here that establish that and let you know a little bit about each other's characters, other characters so we can play as though we've been friends for a while. So you guys are all members of the City Watch and the Free City of Greyhawk. Now, if you've played Greyhawk before, this is probably not the Greyhawk you've played.

This is the Free City of Greyhawk that's been living in my campaign world since I was 12. So it may bear little resemblance to the Greyhawk that you know if you know Greyhawk. Let's burn it down. Exactly like the Greyhawk guy now. I'm glad at least we're on the same page down. So there are three branches to the City Watch. There are the Crimson Cloaks and they're sort of the beat cops. They're the on the ground, foot soldiers, the guards you'd see on the street.

There are the griffin guard who are the elite strike force. Some of them actually ride griffins. When big trouble is afoot or somebody's attacking from outside the city, the griffin guards come into play. And then there are the inquisitors. And the inquisitors are the detectives, essentially, the people tasked with solving complex crimes usually of a magical nature. And you guys are all a squad of inquisitors.

So we're going to get to know each of those characters in a second here. But the first thing is, let's take a look at your starter kits. Oh, as much as I've been looking forward to playing with you all, I've been more looking forward to opening this little baby. So feel free to paw through that, look at what you got. Oh, I need it! Is it too early to cry? If you put your name tags out in front so people can see your names, yeah, awesome.

Little pencils. It was in the back. There's a small paper, too. So you may need that pad, you may need a pencil. What color are my dyes? They're perfect! They're perfect. These are my perfect, Wormat colors.

This is great. You can never have too many dice, right? Never. A thousand percent agree. This is my first time playing and I've already got a dice clip. These are my first. Oh, Ash's first dice! Yay!

Oh, your first day! That's awesome. That is awesome. All right. The next thing we want to do is introduce our characters to each other. So while you have all been working together for about a year on The Inquisitors, we don't actually know each other yet or have introduced our characteristic characters. So we'll start with Jason.

Tell us about your character. Name, race and class, anything else that you will. if you've got like a core principle or a personality quirk that your friends or your coworkers would know, you can say that right now. My name is Narlak. I am a Githzerai. I was born in the plane of limbo.

I am not from your world. I am a cleric and a sorcerer. I'm a multi-class character. And I believe that I am better than all of you. Come down, Narlaq. I have one more gift for you, Narlaq. That is yes. Yeah.

Ooh, awesome. Oh my gosh. Wow. So as a gift too, he's got sort of like a skeletal face and yellowy skin. Yes, he's got yellowish-greenish, brownish skin. Oh my gosh.

All right, Denise, let's go with Shywin. My name is Shywin. I am a half elf ranger and I look more human facially. I do have point to your ears, but I can cover that up. and sort of pass for both, which actually has come in useful in the whole going undercover thing. I've sort of been on the outside,

on the outskirts of society because we aren't accepted in one world or the other. So I'm a little reserved when it comes to being with a new group because I've been burnt so many times. Gotcha. And I have a present for you as well. This is a child one. Yay!

Look at my bow. Oh, oh. Excellent. I wish this were my first time playing D&D. My first time I'm playing D&D was so much less. Don't get too excited because I don't actually have a mini for you. Oh my God. Speaking of not belonging,

Shywin and I would get along. So Amy, why don't you tell me about your character then? Yes, okay, so my character's a raveal, and she is a, she used to be part of her version of police force, force back in her woodland home. And I say used to because she was charged with taking her crew into battle. And she was the only one of the squadron left alive.

So she made it out alive. But in that, since a lot of death happened in this battle, she kind of accrued this demon spirit who communicates with her through fibers of plants and that kind of thing. She started to call the demon cha-cha. Just based on the words and the sounds that this demon maids, it makes it kind of like in a video game when you hear like your controller rumble or something,

it's kind of like that. She'll hear a, cha-cha. And she'll say, oh, I've got to look at plants. I'm getting a message. And she's very by the book. She comes from a police force, so this is an easy fit for her. But she does run around with a whole ton of guilt, survivor's guilt. And she'll do anything to protect her crew.

And she just wants to follow protocol as much as possible. as possible. And what's her race in class? Yes. Her last name is Kartanilir, which is Eleventh for Yesterweave. And she is a warlock wood elf. Nice. And I lied, I do actually have a miniature for you.

Yeah. Oh, yes. Oh! The flail. Is that a flail? That is a flail? Look at her. Finding a miniature with the flail, by the way, seriously hot.

I imagine. Thank you so much. Yes, she, yeah, and she's as pale as pale as can be blonde, pale face. and even more since her demon, she started to take on a pallid green sort of skin color, but this is amazing. All right, Jay, let's go on to you.

I am igneous. I'm an earth genasi, so that's the offspring of a genie, an earth genie, and a human, mortal. I'm a druid, and I've lived here. I'm tied to the ground underneath Greyhawk, tied to the bedrock of the town itself.

So I used to live in a little cave where I sort of spent my like formative years, alone. There are very few of us. So similar to you, I've often lived outside of society, though I'm a lot more comfortable with it, though recently I've accepted my role as protector of the earth and the woodland creatures of Greyhawk, and I've emerged from my cave to, like, help out. And I'm pretty quiet. I don't talk to people a lot, so I'm not going to say a lot of things. And I'm probably pretty direct. And Jay, I've got a present for you too. I didn't even know this was a thing that could exist.

Oh, my God. This is amazing. Wow. With the little cape and the hat. This is great. I've got a staff. Perfect. Yes.

And Ashley, finally, your character? I am Leona Amblecrown. I'm a human. I know. It's pretty impressive. I am a fighter class, and I'm actually a legacy in the City Watch. My father was a crimson cloak. I have a brother who's a crimson cloak,

and a brother who's become a griffingard, but my grandmother was an inquisitor like us. And so that was my goal for a long time, and I worked my way up here, and I've become a very formidable fighter. I even have my grandmother's magic sword, in addition to my chain mail, and, of course, my cloak.

I'm basically a super badass fighter. I don't know how to use any of this stuff yet, but I'm not what Leona does. So it's important. When you rolled your stats, you rolled crazy high stats. I'm good at rolling. Oh my gosh, we need bad at running time, just so everybody knows.

And we have one last miniature. Here's my magic sword. Oh, that cape is gorgeous. All right. All right, so that's who you are. One of the things, because you have been on the same Inquisitor squad for a long time, you've got lots of shared experiences and shared stories.

You sit around the tavern at night sometimes. Some of you may be less often than others who are more antisocial, kind of telling stories of your old exploits and everything. So I asked each of you in order to kind of simulate this playing together before to think about a story that you might tell in the tavern about your squad life, about something that happened to you in the past.

The important thing about these kind of bar stories when you're in your cups a little bit is that they may or may not be true. Your friends may not remember them the same way that you do and may object to your story. So I actually want to start with Amy, with Araviel. What's the story she always tells when you get in your cups a little bit? Well, this has to do with Shaiwin and

I'm sure you all remember that time when the wretch, urchin, Tammy, one of those poor blocs who just got in with the wrong people, they decided to get out. And in Greyhawk, they came to us. They came directly to the Inquisitors and said, hey, I'm getting out of this gang. I've got some illegal materials and substances hidden right here. You guys do whatever you want with it. I want no part of it anymore. Protocol says we've got to report it, but if we report it, well, we're getting Tammy in trouble.

If we don't report it or take it, that it might re-enter into the black market and people might be doing these substances under our noses and continue the crime spree. So we take it, we play a little hot potato until a few weeks later when we're able to take it out into the planes and really get rid of it. All we've done on paper is just burn it and destroy it. And that's all we do with those illegal substances, because we are honorable and nothing else happened. That is 100% what happened.

I can attest that that is they are gone. They're totally gone. I don't remember anything different. They are gone and it was fine. It all worked out fine for every month. Excellent. Excellent. So Shywin, what about your thoughts?

What about your story? Mine is actually about this super amazing bust that Igneas and I had together. We were undercover and we were trying to bust this illegal, exporting of griffins. Oh, wow. Which is bad news in the city since the griffin guard uses the griffins. Yeah, yeah.

These guys were bad. And they dealt with, I know, they dealt with a lot of other, you know, terrible animals as well. But this actually is something that got us commendation because we did so well. But something that I don't tell

is that Igneas saw me in like this sort of small kind of tender moment talking to an injured Griffin. And because I'm so guarded, it was kind of an embarrassing moment, so we don't bring it up. No. No. It was very sweet. I'm very kind.

Secret maternal nature. All right, Leona, do you have a story that you tell when you're at the bar? I like to tell a story about Shywin. Because everyone thinks she's so quiet and unassuming. But I was leaving the tavern with her one night. And we weren't in our cloaks. People didn't know that we were City Watch. We were just walking down an alley.

And these two drunk idiots start yelling things at us. We're not paying any attention to them. One of them sees Shywin's ear. Greetings, adventurers. Spring has sprung here in Los Angeles. And that means it's a brief period where it's only 75 degrees instead of 95 degrees. I'll take it.

And that means I've been outside a lot more. Walking around, occasionally galloping after a toddler hopped up on juice boxes, traveling a bit. You know the vibe. And after doing some spring cleaning, my wardrobe, I got to say, looking a little bit sad. I want clothes that can keep up with me and my son, but updating my wardrobe every spring sounds pretty expensive. So that's why I wound up signing up for Fabletics as a VIP. It let me overhaul my springtime outfits without obliterating my bank account.

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And he says an elf slur that I will not repeat here. And she wordlessly whips out her bow, shoots an arrow across this alley, pins the shoulder of his garment to the wall he's pinned, stunned silent, and then she just turns and walks away. Awesome. Classic show. Yeah. All right.

Narlaq, what about you? I often recall the tale of when I joined the Inquisitors. I was wandering in the thieves quarter. Don't ask why I was there. I came upon a Ravial overrun by a band of brigands. And I single-handedly destroyed all the brigands, saved Aravial, and realized that the city watch definitely needed my help.

So I graciously volunteered my services. I think about one phrase in there was correct, was actually accurate. That is not how I remember that story. But you did wind up in The Inquisitors. Yeah, I think I've heard you tell that story, and it's so different. How many bandits were there at the beginning and how many at the end, like as you go through the year?

I believe there were at least 40. Yeah, mine started with eight. And I was fine. Perfect. by the time you walked by. Perfect. And Igneus, your story last? My story, Igneas, was as about my emergence from my cave,

to hunt down a group of poachers as well, who were going after deer that live in the city that are among my charges. And in tracking them down, I encountered Leona, who very graciously and very kindly helped this creature that basically no one had ever seen and no one realized was there to hunt them down and to stop them from poaching these deer. And at the end of that, I thought, this seems like someone that I would want to work with and work that I, is needed in the city. So these are things that you talk about when you're at the tavern together. Again, you've been working together for about a year. Your squad of Inquisitors is actually one of the premier squads in the city. Your squad leader

is Leona. Not just because she's a legacy, but her grandmother was a captain in the Inquisitors. She's worked very hard to build her leadership skills. And while most of the Inquisitors, actually, most Inquisitors in general, actually have some kind of magical powers. You often investigate magic. Leona is a fighter, a battlemaster, and has no actual magical powers, but nonetheless has studied and worked hard and has come up in the ranks. And so she is your sergeant. And I commend your magical power.

So, the Free City of Greyhawk. You see a map of it before you. It's a very old map of Greyhawk. The picture is when I hold deer. This is 250,000 souls crammed inside of its walls and in little shanking. city. It's the jewel of the flayness, the center of civilization as far as the people who live here are concerned. And as evening falls in the city, you arrive at your precinct office. It's in Clerkburg. So what I would love for you to do is, Clarkburg is right here. If you

would just drop your miniatures in that part of the map for me, and that way we can kind of see where you are. And as you travel throughout the city, we may move them around. The building that you're in, it claims six squads of Inquisitors. And this month, you've drawn the short straw, so you're on the night shift. Until you catch a case, you're sitting there at night. It's not super glamorous work, mostly paperwork, piles and piles of paperwork. But when something does happen on the night watch, it's typically bloody business. So this night, you arrive at your offices, and after several long hours of paperwork

and sort of sitting around waiting to catch a case, the doors of the precinct fly open. And an exhausted crimson cloak stands in the doorway, his chest is heaving. Captain Smiles, he says. Shywin points to the door of Captain Smiles's office, and the runner strides across the room, goes into the door, closes the door behind him. After a few minutes, the door opens again, and Captain Smiles is standing in it.

Smiles is a halfling. A small, round, spectacled halfling of indeterminate age. She is your captain. She is very well respected in the Inquisitors as a thoughtful, incredibly intelligent problem solver. She's not much, she's not very formidable physically, but her mind is what's valued so much. She turns to you, Leona, and says, Sergeant, gather the team. There's been an incident.

Now, when Smiles says incident, it could be anything from a minor burglary to an attack by a drow army. So she kind of keeps it close to the vest. You're unsure exactly what's happening. Team, gather up. As you turn, you actually bump into me because I already have. standing at attention, like right at your elbow. Calm down. Whatever you demand, Sergeant, I'm at your back and call.

Smiles go back into her office, and you all follow. Did Smiles notice how attentive I was? This is actually a hard thing that you've been working on for a year. Smiles doesn't really even think about those kind of things. Her uniform is always kind of rumpled. Her cloak may or may not be on. Catching her eye in this respect is something you've been trying to do a year. Yes, it is. And she has yet to have noticed. So, but you will get it. She goes back into her office and you all follow her in there. Her office is small, sort of cramped. There's books everywhere. It's pretty dusty. There's stacks of papers and books and things. She's got a big desk. She's sitting behind it. And in one of the chairs kind of pushed off to the side of the room sits this crimson cloak guard who you saw in the beginning who ran in. It seems to be a little bit calmer now. But as you get a good look at him, he's a relatively young guard, 18 or 19. Obviously somebody, their first years in the watch.

Often people of this age are used as runners. So, and it seems like that's what he's done. Whatever happened, he is run over here to find you guys to communicate to you. Smiles climbs up on the chair behind her desk and looks at this guy who's sort of like looking down really nervously. And she says, you best tell them. And he sort of stutters and launches into this story. And he says, I just got sent. I didn't see any of this, but I just got sent from one of the mansions in the garden district.

and there's been a murder. I didn't see inside, but it's a bunch. A bunch of people are dead. The guards were walking on their route, and they usually call out to the guards of this mansion, and nobody answered, so they went to check it out, and they found bodies inside. And so I was sent right away to come get you.

That's what I know, and I'm supposed to bring you back to the mansion. Let us go. Smiles asks one question of me. He says, did you see the bodies? Did you see the bodies inside? And he says, no, no, no, I was outside. I didn't see anything. I just, I ran as fast as I could here to get you.

But someone saw the body. Yes, yes. When I left, there was a whole squad of crimson cloaks arriving. Everybody's going there. It looked, it was bad. I think it was bad. I guess we better get going before they trample the interior. As much as I want to get going, I defer to my sergeant, Leona,

and I will do what she says. And give Captain Smiles a little smirk. Then troops. Shall we go? We shall. All right. Smiles, motions to the runner and says, Tam, you best, take them and he's like says out of, oh, sure, yes, okay. You can follow me. It's just right in the

garden district. Follow me. And he takes off at a deliberate pace out of the precinct. You follow him out along the wall into the upper city to the main road. You're moving into the garden quarter right here. The garden quarter is a very wealthy part of town. It's in the high part of the city, past the last gate. There's lots of mansions, lots of very wealthy people live here. And as Tam leads you down the streets, end up to a pretty substantial mansion. kind of in the middle of the nice part of the garden district, good, nice lawns, beautiful trees, and you can see some lights on in the neighbor's mansions and then a lot of light on in this one. As you approach actually, Leona, you actually know this mansion.

You guarded a party here. One of the things that the rich people of Greyhawk often do is hire city watch to guard their parties. Not that anything ever happens, but your presence there is always like kind of elevates the party. So you were here just a couple of months ago. You know the owners. They're called the flagstaffes. And but they, right now, the party that you were actually at a couple months ago was an engagement party for their daughter. But you know their daughter's getting married in Voluna City and they are not in town.

They were, had left town for this long wedding or that you expected they wouldn't be in town anyway. Now typically these rich people will hire guards to guard their mansion while they are out of town, but these mansions are often targets for burglars, things like that. What are you guys doing as you approach? Everything all right there, Sergeant. I nod and say, I know this place. They shouldn't be here. No one should be here. Why?

They're out of town for their daughter's wedding. Whatever happened here. Hopefully it wasn't them. And then we go inside? Yep. As you guys approach, so as you get closer to the lawn, you can see there's a lot of city watch kind of scurrying back and forth on the lawn. People moving back and forth, you know, barking orders to each other. As you approach a little closer up the walk, you do see there are two bodies slumped right outside the front door kind of against the wall.

And there's a couple of crimson cloak standing around them. You get a little closer and you can see, It looks like these are two hired guards, both of them wearing leather armor, carrying maces, and there's a pool of blood around each of them slumped outside this door. Sergeant, should we take the statements of the city watch guards and clear the area so we can determine what happened here? Please do. So I take those city watch guards aside to take their statement.

These guys are pretty freaked out. I mean, both of them tell you they haven't been inside yet, but they know it's a bad scene inside. They were actually the two guards. They were on the street doing their... regular patrol of the garden district, they usually call out, they know that the flagstaffes have been out of town for a while and so they've hired some extra guards to guard the mansion and so usually when they're coming down the street they will call out a little call in response make sure everything's fine that's

kind of you know quietly of course not to wake people up it's after midnight. The classic caha! Basically yeah it's always the little bird noises and stuff. So have they been inside? They haven't been, they didn't get a response from these guards so they came up the walk and they found these two. How do they know I guess I'll start asking them like You said they feel that there's a worse scene inside. How do they know that? Just because a couple of people that come out

said that it's a bad scene inside. Other people have they. Who has come out? Where are they? He actually points and there's a couple of city watch kind of down at the edge of the lawn near the street. One of them looks like it's maybe ralphing in the bushes and the other one's comforting that one. I briskly walk over to him and say,

What did you see in there? So as you walk toward them and you're about to call it, you see you realize the person comforting the other person is somebody that you actually know. Oh. This is Lieutenant Wayne Rennard. A fairly by the book, intimidating presence. The kind of cop who doesn't like it when the detective

show up at her crime scene but knows that's your job. She's standing there with a younger officer who is indeed vomiting into the bushes. She turns around and she says, oh, Narlaq. Looks like the Inquisitors are here. Yes, we'll take care of the situation now. She says, fine, here's the rundown, two guards knifed at the door, seven more bodies upstairs.

Are they guards? In various states of torn apart. Are they other guards? They are most certainly not other guards. I want to look at the knife. Uh, Sergeant, permission to investigate these knife wounds on these guards out here. Please take all the time you need

to investigate the knife wounds. Can we also determine how long they've been dead? Well, that's a good question. So we'll start with that. So if you guys want to look at these two bodies, try to figure out how long they've been dead, how they were killed. Do we recognize them if they're, watch? You actually don't recognize them.

So these guys aren't watched. These are private guards. They're not people that you've seen before. As far as how they were killed exactly where the wounds are and how long it's been, You've got a handful of skills that work, they're your observation skills, basically. These are the skills that help you find things and see things.

They are insight, which is how you read other people, whether you can tell if they're lying or if they're holding something back. Perception is how you are able to spot things. They're just, you know, you're looking for things. You've got survival that you use sometimes for observation, survival if you're going to track something. And then you've got investigation. An investigation is if you're looking at a situation and trying to determine sort of what happened or how the pieces fit together.

So for this one, I would say use your investigation skills and try to figure out, you know, how they were killed and how long ago. Now, since you both went over there to look at it, you can help each other in this. And the way that that help role works is you decide who's going to be the primary on this. And usually you look at your investigation skill, find out who's got the biggest bonus. I have a plus three. I have plus four. Okay. So you're probably the primary here.

Okay. You're going to be the helper. Okay. So what you'll do is you're going to roll your investigation scale. What that means is you're going to roll a D20, and then you're going to add your investigation to that, and you're trying to hit a 10 or better so you can help Shywin do this investigation. Okay, let's see what happens. Here comes my D20 roll, and she got a 16.

All right, so then you add your bonus to that? Which is plus 3, so that's 19. So 19, you needed to hit a 10, so you definitely can help. So what that does for you, Shywin, is when you roll now, you get to roll your D20 twice. That's called Advantage. So you roll with advantage, and you can take the higher. of the two rolls. And you're doing the same, rolling your D20, adding your bonus to it. And I'm not going to tell you what the difficulty is for this. But the higher you roll,

the more you're going to know or the more accurately you're going to know about this. Okay. So that's okay? What you did you go? Is it a two? Okay. Fortunately, you're being helped so you have advantage, so you get to roll again. Thanks. Thanks for that. I believe in you. Come on, baby. More than I'd like to admit. Your very first D20 roll. Oh my God. It's a nine. So you get rolled a nine. You add your bonus to that.

Okay, so that's plus four, so 13 total. Okay, so you can tell pretty quickly. These guys, they were both knifed, one of them throat slit, like it's clearly somebody coming behind them throat slit. The other one, it takes you a little bit longer to find the knife wound, but it's pretty professional. It's in the back, near the top, a couple of quick stabs in the back.

These guys were put away pretty professionally. As far as how long, you're not really sure. There's a lot of blood, it's not completely dried yet, but it's also not super fresh. you're not sure. Sometime within the last few hours this happened probably. Is there a way I can see which brand of hired mercenary they are? Is there like an insignia or emblem that they're wearing? Oh yeah. They're not wearing any emblem. They look like they're probably freelancers.

There is a guild for mercenaries and bodyguards and you're guessing they're probably a member of that guild. In this district they wouldn't just hire chumps. So they're probably member of the guild but they don't carry any special insignia. Okay. I think, yeah, after that, we should probably hit inside. And as you guys head in through the big door. It's kind of a bustle of activity inside as well. A couple of crimson cloaks leaning against the banister of this giant staircase that kind of goes up the middle.

As we walk through the door, do you, this is something we need to roll for? Does it look like the door was kicked open? Was the door unlocked? So the door, you can tell right away it wasn't kicked open. It isn't damaged in that way. Do you want to examine the lock and see? Yeah.

Okay. But this is another investigation check. You're going to kind of take a look at this thing and see if you can figure out if it was, if the lock was Jimmy, if they had a key, right? I've got a plus one on my investigation. Perfect, so roll it and see what you get there.

Oh, roll a 1. So it's not a big deal. One actually always fails in this game. So if you roll a natural 20, great things happen. If you roll a 1, it always fails. Now, in my home game, I have extra things happen when you roll a 1. In the game as written, it's just always a failure. And so we're going to play the game as written today.

So that one just means, when you look at this lock, you aren't able to determine anything. It's a very fancy lock. It's not something that you've done. dealt with before. You can't tell whether it was jimmied or anything. Got it. So you continue into the house. You see this big staircase heading up to the second level.

A couple of Inquisitors kind of moving around. When they see you, all of them kind of come to attention, especially when they see you, Leona, like they're giving you some serious deference. A couple of them look pretty pale and ill. They look away from you. But they're kind of trying to keep it together. It's a lot of young, you know, basically beat cops essentially that have pulled the night shift that are here in this place.

You head up the stairs. And at the top of the stairs, there's a long hallway, doors on both sides of the hallway going, both directions, some tables under some windows and things. As you round the top of the stairs and look down the hallway, what you see is a gruesome scene. There are seven bodies sort of strewn across the middle of this hallway lying in pools of their own blood. You can see, not only do you see the slump shapes, they're all dressed in black, cloaks and clothes. There's blood everywhere, not just on the ground either, like spattered on the walls all over the place. There's a big sack laying on the ground near one of the bodies and as you step up the stairs the smell is horrendous and you do see Shy

when you actually notice this as you look around the corner there is an arm that is not attached to a body leg quite near the stairs themselves and there are a couple of crimson cloak sitting around but they're pretty much standing well away from the bodies up the stairs behind you Lieutenant Wayne Wright appears and kind of looks between you and says this is what we found does the smell is that a more of a decomp smell, like maybe they've been here for more than a few hours. Well, you don't even have to roll anything for this. You guys have been around enough bad incidents.

It's a bright, bloody smell, and the smell of bodies being torn open and, you know, it's not a long decomposition smell. Inners. Yep, but it's not anything unusual, like sulfur or something like that. No, nothing like that. The cloaks that they're wearing, does that denote anything special? Do you want to go look at them? Yes.

Okay. Is anybody else looking around here? blood on the walls, you're gonna look at the one of the bodies, anybody else doing anything here? Yes, I'm looking at the walls to see if there's anything unusual about how there's blood everywhere. Okay. I kneel down to look at the nearest body.

Okay. I have a full-blown flashback. Oh, sure. And I just kind of blink and shudder, and they start reciting names of my fallen compatriots and also my flail flickers in and out of existence in my hand. But I'm kind of like just holding the wall. So you hold back a little bit.

I hold back a little bit. Let's play yourself together. Ignis, what are you doing? I'm looking at the severed arm. Okay. I look for any identified marks and try making sure, see if it belongs to any of the bodies that are here. Okay, cool. So with the exception of Araviel, I want everybody to roll an investigation check-in.

We've already done that. We know how it works. You're looking for your investigation skill. You're going to roll a D20, add your investigation bonus, and then I'll come around to each of you and ask what you got, and we'll figure out what you saw. Oh! Oh, you're a binary man. So we'll start with Ignis, since you were super excited about that. Yes.

Well, the 19 with my plus one a natural 20. Not a natural 20, it's a modified 20. So a natural 20 would be if 20 came up on the die, but it's still exciting, it's a big role. So you've been down to look at the arm, and your instincts were right, looking for marks on this arm. A couple of things that you learn. The first thing is it looks like this arm was torn from the body.

Not cut, which is what you'd expect, but rather torn. And you kind of like pull aside the remains of a sleeve that's on this arm. And you find there's a tattoo across the elizabeth. elbow. And this tattoo is a pretty crude, like almost jailhouse tattoo of a harpy, woman's body with wings and bird claws. Have we seen that before? Yeah, do I recognize it? So yeah actually so roll for me a, let's say a just a straight intelligence check so you're gonna roll and add your intelligence

modifier. Two so close. Plus one. Okay so you actually don't recognize this tattoo but when you get to time to come and tell everybody else somebody else might. Right. But definitely, there is definitely a distinguishing mark on this arm. We go on to Leona. What did you roll?

I rolled a nine, and my investigation bonus is two. Okay, you rolled an 11. So you can see this particular body was stabbed. Looks like, there's a couple of short swords lying around, and it looks like it took a short sword. And that's probably what killed them. They're wearing all dark clothes, blacks and browns. The clothes are a little bit raggedy.

There is leather armor underneath, but it's in pretty bad shape. Kind of pulling the body, pulling things back, and you actually find a tattoo on this person's elbow as well. This tattoo is a little bit different than what Igneus found. What you find is a tattoo that looks like, I'm just going to show you here quickly. It's three squiggly lines with two dots above it. So I'll just give that to you.

And do I recognize that symbol? Roll me an intelligence check. 16 plus two. You actually do recognize this symbol. So there's a couple things about this. First is that you know, because your brother who's in the crimson cloaks, his beat is the thieves quarter. He spends a lot of time down there. And you know that the gangs, the various thieves gangs in the quarter, mark themselves on their elbows.

Their allegiance is marked there. They can cover it up with sleeves, but you can always tell their allegiance. It's just partially that's evolved over time in Greyhawk. This, however, the only reason you even know this is because you make it a point to check in with your brother regularly and find out what's going on in the quarter. and he's told you that there's a relatively new gang coming up in the Thieves they call themselves the Rivers and that's the symbol that he described to you interestingly enough that symbol is also on the wall oh oh just for no reason at all I'm sure that has no relation somebody in the crew he's part of that gang well good

that's right I know who it is so Shaiwin let's go to you I got a 10 plus four so there's That's 14. Okay, and you were kneeling down next to the body, kind of doing the same thing. This body has been, looks like it's been raked with some claws, torn open a little bit. You don't find any stab wounds or anything, but you do find around the body's neck

and a little bit on the face. There's almost like ligature marks, like somebody's pulled a rope around it or something, and they have, they got like a burned texture to them with the arm in the face. You do the same thing, you can kind of see everybody else looking at the sleeves and stuff, you pull up the sleeves, you spent your time in the Thieves quarter, you know where the

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slash price match for details. A harpy. I know about this. Roll me an intelligence check. But you just said I spent all my time there. Well, I'll see if you know about this day in particular. Yeah, but are you smart? Um, yes, I am. So let's roll that guy right here, right? Yep. All right. It's a six plus one, seven. Okay. So you, you recognize the symbol because you've seen it in the quarter. You actually you didn't work a lot with gangs when you were patrolling down there. You know that this is the symbol of the harpies, and you know that they're an important gang in the thieves quarter, but you don't actually know much more about them.

You've kind of removed yourself from that world. All right, Narlaq. I got a total of 17. So you went to investigate the blood spatters on the wall. So everybody else is kind of with the bodies over here, and you're down the wall a little bit, kind of looking at the blood spatters, and you realize that while it looks like there's just a bunch of bloods

that's kind of sprayed out from whatever happened in the middle of the hallway here, There's a second mark on the wall that looks like almost like a deliberate somebody taking a paintbrush and touching the wall, moving along, sort of away from where the combat is here, down the hallway to a door that's on the left side of the hallway. Follow it to the door. All right. So while these guys are over here kind of talking amongst themselves looking at the bodies, you follow down to that door. And you can see the door is a little bit open. You peek through it, and it looks like this leads to another hallway. the carpets in this other hallway are much duller.

They're more used. There's no, it's not like fancy carpets or anything. You think this is probably the hallway into the servants' quarters. I go back to my compatriots and say, I've discovered something. What did you find? I followed the trail of blood down to a door.

He's good. Oh, you found a door. Was anything to get away from this carnage? It's open. I think you should investigate. You should. So as you guys approach the door to the servants' quarters, do you, there's,

Only one person can go through a door at a time. Who is, how are you moving? What's your marching order, we would say? Who's first? Who's after them? I'm the leader. I'm the best fighter, I'm first. Okay.

So Jason, would you do me a favor and make sure we put the minis in the right order so I can see that marching order? So we've got Leona on the end right here. Who's after Leona? I'm right behind her. I'm getting the F away from these bodies. Okay.

Then who do we got? I can go next. Okay, so should I win? Or should I take up the rear? I mean, we're not really, there's people. Don't think. Mostly I'm illustrating, this is something that we'll do periodically as get a marching order from you, so I know what order everybody's in.

Yeah, that seems about right. So we move to the door. Leona, as you move the door, you open yourself onto a hallway. There are three doors along this hallway and then stairs that go downward. Does the blood trail continue? When you come around the corner, the blood trail actually stops. So there's a little blood dots kind of leading to here. And then once you get around the corner here, there's a small puddle on the ground, just a little bit of a bloody puddle.

and then there are no more, there's no more blood. Let's open the first door. Okay, so you push the door open on the left. What you find is a small, neat bedroom, bed, chest, pretty plain furnishings. This looks like a servant's room. It's made up neatly. There's a little desk there.

Nothing out of order, very tidy and neat. Now, this is what you see at first glance. Do you want to look more deeply into the room? Yeah, I'd like to clear the room, make sure there's no one hiding in there. So we'll use another of those observation skills we talked about. We'll use perception this time. Well, for that as well. Please. So you'll roll a D20.

I rolled an 11, and my perception is two. So you look around the room and just kind of step into the room. You don't see anything here. Nothing looks out of order to you. Clear. Move on to the next room. Does anybody else open the door in the next room? Yeah, I think I'll feel like, hey, Sarge, I'm going to check out the next room. So you push open that door, peek into the room.

Why don't you roll a perception check for me? Thank God it's alphabetical. Ooh, 18 plus 5. So you're looking around this room. You don't find anything in this room. Again, it's a small, neat room. However, as you're looking, you hear a bump in the next room and the door flies open.

So you're in this room. Leona, you're in the first room. So the three of you are in the hallway, and the door at the far end flies open. And a figure dressed in a black cloak flies out of this door and starts to head down the stairs. Just at a full run. Right behind him.

So you guys are gonna try to. Yes. Oh yes. You there stop! So what I need to do, this, we're gonna move into combat rounds now. Even though we haven't fought anything, we're going to move into combat. So for the three of you first, we'll get the two of you later because you're doing something else right now.

But for the three of you, we're going to roll initiative. Initiative is, sorry, for Narlaq and Raviel and Igneas, because you guys, both Shaiwin and Leo and are doing something else right now. We're in empty bedrooms. You're going to roll a D20 and add your initiative bonus to it. That's at the top center of the page. And we'll come around, and I'll start with Narak. What's your initiative? Nine.

Me too. All right, nine for Arviel and Igneous. A natural 20 or? Not a natural 20. Not a fight 20. So, well, you hear the bump and the door flies open. You guys are kind of peeking into the other rooms where these guys are looking. But Igneas is just kind of looking around the hallway, paying very close attention.

And you see him first. So as he heads down the stairs at a full bore, you're right there on top of him. So you... Stop! You race after them? In the name of the city watch, yeah. Okay. So you race after, tumbling down, running down the stairs, taking great leaps down the stairs.

The two of you follow kind of close together, but you're just a few seconds removed. You see this person run down the stairs and at the bottom of the stairs is a hallway to the right There's also a door to the outside. This is the door to the servant's quarter and bangs the door open and bursts out into the night Now you're fast. He is also pretty fast But as you move down the stairs with them you can make your move action and then you can make one other action and that action can be an attack You're a little ways away, but you could make a range attack against this person You could try to tackle them you could make another move action try to get in front of them I want to run after them

Okay I've got the sling. Do you want to pull the sling and try to whack him? I'm not going to knock him off his feet. So you pull out the swing and just as you start to swing it, this person hits the stairs and stumbles kind of to the ground and falls on the knee and you're almost right on top of him. Oh, now that'll just tackle.

And so you, okay, so you drop the sling to the side and just land on the body. You know how to do anything. He's fallen to the ground. You're wrestling with him. He's kind of scratching at you with his nails. You can see his clothes are torn. He's got a couple of flex of blood on his face. You can see there's tears in the corners of his eyes. kid, 18 or 19 scruffy beard, and you're holding him down, telling him to stop, tell him that you're with the city watch. And he, the tears rolled on his face and he says, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't

mean it. And he opens his mouth like he's going to tell you something. And you see coming from the back of his throat these two mandibles that just like start to stick out and these tentacles crawl on one side of his face, the other long tentacles like sticking out from his throat, reaching toward you. You can see the tears streaming down his face as something starts to emerge from his mouth. Oh, no. We're gonna stop for this session. Oh my god. So if you wanna find out what these tentacles are

and what happens next, join us next time on Starter Kit. Next time on Starter Kit. Does tendrils lash out at you as you try to move away? I guess I have to run down there. She's gonna do some work. Igneas has just frozen there on the ground. You handle this, I don't.

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