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Let’s continue our reading of Dance of the Damned! I expect this to be the second of three posts for this adventure. In the last one, we covered two chapters of the book. Let’s aim for two more here.

Chapter 3: The Vyre Accord

Vyre is a city located in the same province as Kintargo. There’s a whole mini-guide on it attached to the book, but the only thing we really need to know is that it’s pretty much Fucked-Up Fantasy Venice.

Though technically part of Cheliax, Vyre is almost entirely independent. Cheliax tolerates this because the city is a prime vacation destination for Chelish elites. On the other hand, Vyre’s slice of coast makes for a shitty port, so they’re almost entirely reliant on nearby Kintargo for the sea trade that gets them most of their food and luxuries.

Vyre’s government is extremely self-interested, but Cheliax has good reasons to maintain good relations with them, and they have good reasons to maintain good relations with Kintargo. If Vyre backs the rebellion, they can exert pressure on those Chelish elites to back off from the province.

Allies and Information

Advance information on the city comes from two sources. Captain Sargaeta, whom the PCs befriended in Adventure 02, can tell them the basics, and give them a ride there on his ship. Molly Mayapple can provide them with extensive and invaluable advice on their actual goal in the city.

The PCs haven’t met Molly yet, but they should have recovered a bunch of documents belonging to her from the Lucky Bones. These are deeds for a set of waterfront warehouses, which were stolen by the extinct Gray Spiders decades ago. Even though Molly has since rebuilt her fortune (she owns a successful hotel), she’s still going to be extremely grateful when the PCs hand the deeds back to her, and will provide a lot of insider information and help. They can track her down from the information on the deeds.

The Basics

Vyre is ruled by five monarchs, each tasked with an aspect of government. The one they want to meet is Manticce Kaleeki, the Queen of Delights, who is in charge of the city’s economy and foreign relations. Vyre’s laws are simple yet baroque, creating an environment where non-lethal duels and eternal feuds are common, all sales are final, but prejudice of any sort is frowned upon. However, you can get away with anything if you follow the last and most important rule: don’t get caught.

The Queen of Delights is set to host a banquet in the near future, and that will be the PCs’ opportunity to talk to her. The GM determines how long the PCs have until the banquet. Most of this time is probably going to be spent looking for outfits, gifts, and information, but the GM can also introduce a few Vyre sidequests to spice things up.

The Banquet

The Banquet might be an entirely non-violent scene, but it’s as difficult to navigate as any dungeon. Vyre high-society etiquette is weird, and the Queen of Delights heaps even more weird on top of that because she’s basically Morticia Addams as a Tiefling in Fucked-Up Fantasy Venice.

Molly’s help is absolutely vital here. The book doesn’t even mention how the PCs get invited to the banquet, but I assume she’s instrumental in arranging invitations for them and for herself. She’s also an excellent source of information on the complex etiquette surrounding the event.

This starts with what to wear and what gifts to bring. Molly knows what the Queen likes, and PCs good at gathering information might learn about Manticce’s less well-known preferences.

There are nine other guests in the banquet aside from Molly and the PCs. We get personality notes for each one. Most are only sources of roleplaying color, but one of them will be important in the next adventure: Hei-fen, former guildmistress of the Gray Spiders. Tough it’s been decades since she escaped the destruction of that guild, she’s still a spiteful old wererat and is angry at the PCs for stealing “her home”. She’s here to size them up for future reprisal.

The other “special” guest, not counted among those nine, is the Queen’s long dead husband, whose skeleton adorns one of the table’s chairs. The correct move here is to not acknowledge poor Gomez in any way. To do so is considered crass.

While roleplaying should be first and foremost in this scene it also has a mechanical component. The banquet is effectivelly a long and colorful skill challenge. PCs get a number of starting “banquet points” depending on how they dress, what gifts they bring, and whether or not they participate in a standing ovation when the Queen appears (they should!). After that, each course in the banquet allows them several opportunities to learn more.

The first is a knowledge skill test to identify the dish in question and how to eat it (probably Area Knowledge, Current Affairs or Savoir-Faire in GURPS). Careful PCs can just wait for one of the other guests to start eating and skip the skill test, but succeeding shows they know what they’re doing and earns them a point.

The second is a series of tests to actually eat the course, which varies with each dish. There’s no way to skip this one, though the PCs doesn’t need to succeed at them all to earn a point. If they do, they earn extra. If they fail badly enough or just decide to forgo rolling and eat the thing wrong on purpose, they lose points.

The third is a social skill test to do well in the conversation that accompanies that dish. This would likely be Fast-Talk, Diplomacy or even Public Speaking in GURPS, modified by what the players actually say. Success makes them come off as smooth operators and earns points. Failure loses points and leaves them embarrassed. Again careful characters can just keep quiet and skip this part, but it earns them nothing.

The dishes range from the merely bizarre to the horrific:

  • We start with quicksoup, a bowl of boiling hot soup accompanied by a water bowl containing five small live fish and a set of peculiar utensils. This requires tests involving manual dexterity to properly poach the fish in the soup and eat them. Probably plain DX modified by Manual Dexterity in GURPS, though I’d also let a daring PC test Surgery instead.

  • Next is Galtan Squash, which looks like a severed head but is just a carved pumpkin full of extremely spicy red soup. This is a straight-up Fortitude save/HT roll to endure the spice. A bad enough failure leaves your face swollen and penalizes your talky rolls for the rest of the feast! I’d probably let it be modified by Resistant to Poison and other advantages that include it.

  • Then you get the Unseen Feast, meat pies made from the flesh of an invisible stalker. I’m pretty sure invisible stalkers are sapient, which makes this the most horrific dish of the lot. It’s quite possible some PCs will refuse to eat this one on moral grounds. Those who decide to forge ahead need to be fast and perceptive. They have to eat the invisible meat before it turns visible and loses its flavor. PCs who can see invisibility can pass this one automatically, though it’s considered crass to cast a spell for it while at the table. Others must succeed at a difficult Perception check, which I guess I would modify for Acute Smell/Taste.

  • Finally, you get Sweetfats With Honey Sauce for dessert. Sweetfats are candied spiders - this is an Underdark dish. The most difficult thing here is opening the honey sauce container, which is a mundane replica of a Hellraiser-style puzzle box. Time to break out the Thaumathology and Hidden Lore (Demons) skills, though I guess Traps or Lockpicking might also work.

Whether Vyre allies with the Silver Ravens or not depends entirely on how many banquet points the characters manage to get. They need at least 20. A party of 5 who arrives properly dressed will start out with 10, and might get a few more from bringing optimal gifts. Even so, they will still need to take active part in at least some of the banquet in order to succeed at the mission. I’d probably give them a sign that they succeeded once they get enough points.

If the party succeeds, the Queen might invite the individual who gained them the most points for an intimate night. Ties go to the prettiest or most charismatic PC, and if they’re still tied she invites all of the tied PCs. If the party has more than 30 points and the propositioned PC(s) accept Manticce’s invitation, she will also offer the group her personal alliance, providing extra mechanical boosts to the strategic rebellion layer.

Notes and Impressions

This part is very different than what you would expect from a standard dungeon fantasy adventure. It can be really fun for PCs who like role-playing, so even in a condensed approach I’d recommend keeping it. If you want to make the Unseen Feast part less objectionable, you could perhaps say the “meat” is gelatinous cube jelly, which is almost as hard to see and doesn’t come from something sapient. And if you don’t want to feature sexual themes at all in the adventure, you could remove Manticce’s invitation at the end and just say that the party gets her personal support if they get more than 30 points.

The downside when using GURPS is that if your PCs are overly focused on dungeon delving they might not have the skills necessary to cause a good impression here. In this case I suggest being generous: if none of the delvers has the most appropriate skill, ask for a roll on the closest skill one of them does have, or perhaps even roll against DX or IQ. That said, characters who followed the tips from the Player’s Guide or who used earned points to become a bit sneakier and more social shouldn’t have too much trouble covering their bases.

Part 4: Breaking the Menador Gap

The Menador Gap is a mountain pass in the mountains separating Ravounel from central Cheliax. It’s the only viable route for marching an army through those mountains, so it must be closed. The PCs start the adventure at level 7, and the book says they should be level 8 before tackling this chapter.

The gap is protected by a fortress named Menador Keep. It used to be an old dwarf fort, but is now occupied by Chelish military. Rexus, who studied those old Silver Raven documents extensively, can tell the PCs that there’s a dwarven self-destruct mechanism deep within the bowels of the fort. The PCs’ goal here is to get to that mechanism, activate it, and get out. This will demolish the fort in a way that ensures the pass is completely closed.

It’s theoretically possible to demolish the fort from a distance using spells like Earthquake, but a) this might not block the pass completely and b) it will bury all the sweet loot located inside the fortress.

Dungeon: Menador Gap

The fortress itself has two above-ground floors and an underground level. Its ground floor contains a courtyard with two large gates on either side, which blocks the mountain pass. Inside the building are a large number of guard posts, utility/storage rooms, and a couple of monster pens.

The fort is defended by a garrison of 23 soldiers, commanded by Lucien Thrune, a wyvern-riding cavalier. He also has a bound erinyes devil with him, and a very unhappy bound jann servant. Another devil acts as a stationary sentry at the entrance to the treasury. The soldiers are weak individually, but dangerous in large groups. They wear mail and are armed with halberds and crossbows, favoring ranged attacks over melee.

The best way to handle this might be as a Metal Gear-like stealth mission. The PCs are very likely to have the necessary magic to turn the whole party invisible and levitate them for a short time. Clever PCs might find the entrnce to the wyvern’s stable down on the cliffside and enter through there, bypassing a lot of the security measures on the surface. The same technique might allow them to land atop the fort’s battlements and begin from there, bypassing the courtyard kill box. Even if they immediately go loud and begin a frontal assault, they’ll begin doing that from a hugely advantageous position.

The third-best option is for them to disguise themselves as someone authorized to cross the Gap and ride into the courtyard, from which they can force their way into the fort. It’s less than ideal because they can be targetted by crossbow and ballista fire from the battlements.

Starting an overt assault will sound a general alert and have every soldier converge on the party’s position. It’s easier to deal with them piecemeal, though that might require magic to prevent the sounds of fighting from spilling out. Stealth might also allow the party to fight the “elites” (Lucien, his wyvern, the devils) while they’re alone and isolated. The jann servant, Zorumar, is a potential ally here. He can’t do anything against his master directly, but he can give all sorts of information about enemy locations and the layout of the fort, including all secret doors. Killing Lucien will set Zorumar free, and he will return in the future to gift the party with magic items in thanks.

There’s a secret door in the fort’s armory leading to the ancient dwarven mechanism in the “basement” level. The only one of its current inhabitants who knows about this is Zorumar. The device, called the Anvil of Unmaking, is protected by ancient guardians and traps, some of which can be bypassed by proper prayers to the dwarf god Torag and by diplomacy. Activating the contraption will cause it to completely destroy the fortress in 10 minutes. The PCs have that long to run away and get clear. Also the tremors and rumbling will definitely put every remaining enemy in the place on high alert, if they weren’t already.

Loot-wise, the most valuable places to hit here are the treasury (obviously), the war room, and Lucien Thrune’s person. Lucien has a sweet flaming sword, lots of bling, and the key to the treasury chest. The treasury has a bunch of magical gear and the fort’s payroll. And the war room has an extremely valuable dagger lying around next to a pile of important strategic documents full of classified Chelish military info.

Notes and Impressions

A good old tactical espionage action romp, with the potential to turn into a wonderfully chaotic battle if the PCs trip the alarm. It’s likely to be the most time-consuming scene in the entire adventure, and could conceivably take more than one session to resolve.

I suggest playing the enemies with a modicum of intelligence here, but remember that raising the alarm is not an automatic action. If a single guard spots the PCs, the rest of the fortress won’t automatically know they’re there. An alarm must be raised, which takes time and is susceptible to disruption from the PCs.