Let's Play Hell's Rebels A01S11: Crackdown at Clenchjaw's

Intro

We continue our Hell’s Rebels Solo Adventure!

As mentioned last scene, I’m doing this week’s tactical mission on a separate file from the strategic turn, since that one ran long. Today, we’ll be running through “Crackdown at Clenchjaw’s”, which should be a nice and breezy affair.

I played this in January 2026, over a couple of days.

[GM] Mythic Bookkeeping

We’ll keep the Chaos Factor at 6 and all the Mythic stuff just as it was:

Threads

• The Path xxxx
• Find Shensen (Rosalia, Arcturus) x
• Contacting Ms. Docur (Jania)
• Get Organized (Jade) xx

Characters

• The Dottari
• The Chelish Citizens Group
• The Red Jills
• The Asmodeans
• The Three-Legged Devil (location)
• The Livery Grimples
• The Tengu Sisters
• Nan Comerivos & Friends

[PC] Crackdown at Clenchjaw’s

In the middle of the PCs’ various investigations, Laria comes to them with rumors that Clenchjaw’s tavern is becoming suspiciously rowdy, and that it might soon attract unwanted attention.

Rosalia knows about the place, a tavern near the docks. The establishment is named after a local species of oyster. Its owner caught the same nickname because he strictly forbids talk of politics inside the building, and kicks out anyone who breaks the rule. Nevertheless the place is usually frequented by people who might sympathize with the Ravens, especially since some of the more overtly anti-Thrune bars around town were burned down.

The thing with the rowdy patrons is new, however. Clenchjaw has been getting sleepy as the evening goes on, and when he dozes off the brawls begin. You can almost set your clock by them. Something’s off. This might seem like a small thing, but it would be in their interests to keep this place running and to prevent it from drawing dottari.

So one fine afternoon, our heroes decide to go bar-crawling. Our scene will consist of them investigating the weirdness at Clenchjaw’s.

[GM] Scene setup

Let’s check for altered or interrupted scenes, because our “player” has a walkthrough in hand and it’d be too easy to solve this case with the PCs’ skills.

A roll of 1 means we get an altered scene.

Let’s say that things have progressed further than anticipated. The titular crackdown is going to happen tonight. The dottari have already caught wind of Clenchjaw’s being a place where “dissidents” hang out and have fights, which gives them a perfect excuse to hand out beatings.

So there’s 6 dottari hanging out near the bar and as soon as anything resembling a fight starts, they’ll kick down the door and try to bust some heads.

The trip itself is uneventful, as the excitement is at the end.

[Player] At Clenchjaw’s

The group arrives there at around 5 PM, and what they spot is a relatively normal tavern. Other people are starting to stream in and soon things begin getting more lively.

Rosalia actually… kinda loves this? It’s been a while since she’s had the opportunity to party a little. She has Compulsive Carousing and I’m making her fail the resistance test on purpose. This is a -5 point disadvantage, so she will be a bit tipsy and have -1 to all rolls this scene. Urist will soon end up joining her, and will suffer from the same penalty.

The rest of the PCs will pace themselves a little better.

They spend their first hour at the tavern, looking around, talking to patrons, eating, and drinking.

By the end of that hour Rosalia is leading a few people in a tavern song, her awesome bard voice accompanied by a lot of tuneless revelry, including from Urist.

“… and the cow jumped over the – wait, is that a dragon?”

The dragon in question is about the size of a cat, with green scales and colorful butterfly wings, and is sneaking around the tavern’s rafters. Both of our tipsy delvers spotted it before anyone else, which was funny. The creature squeaks in panic and immediately begins to fade away as the other PCs and quite a few patrons look at it.

Jania knows the creature is turning invisible and begins casting her See Invisible spell… but rolls a 17, which is a critical failure! She rolls a 5 on the critical failure table, meaning that spell affects the wrong target. Since this was a beneficial step, it affects a nearby foe, and the closest thing to that here is Vendalfek himself.

Since Invisibility takes 3 seconds to cast, he has time to giggle at the goof before vanishing as he begins running away.

Unfortunately several of the tavern’s patrons also saw him, and the relatively small commotion caused by that is enough to draw the dottari in. They arrive with their maces and shields out, their commanding officer shouting to ask what’s going on here. Time to defuse the situation.

Jania and Rosalia step forward to handle them, acting all friendly and trying to reassure them no braws are happening here, mister officer, no sir. Meanwhile, the other PCs hang back a bit and prepare to “defuse” the guards should worse come to worst.

Rosalia takes the lead in talking, with Jania supplying the occasional “helpful” statement to further muddy the issue. With the drunkenness penalty, her reaction bonuses and the +1 from Jania’s successful aid attempt, we’re looking at an effective Fast-Talk skill of 19, which is awesome because the rule of 16 is only for supernatural effects. This should be a trivial victory over the dottari sargeant’s unimpressive Will of 11.

… and then she goes and rolls a 18, which is always a critical failure.

So what happens is that the sargeant becomes convinced he’s in front of someone he can pass off as a genuine rebel. He grabs Rosalia by the arm and drags her outside the tavern. Jania desperately keeps talking to defuse the situation, but the guards grab her too. The rest of the PCs see this unfold and soon follow them out. No one else does.

[GM] I Just Had The Most Wonderful Idea

These dice sure gave me some surprises. I expected this to be a mostly mapless social and investigative challenge, and here we are gearing up for a right against six dottari.

I actually made a map of the tavern’s exterior for this, but though there are some interesting terrain quirks in there this is mostly just another boring street map. It was boring to make, and I feel that as a player it’d be mostly boring to play through.

So let’s spice things up a little, because I have a downloaded map here that slots right into Foundry. It’s the one for the Unsanctioned Excruciation scenario.

You see, the dottari here aren’t very interested in due process. They want to be entertained, and the only thing that entertains them is cruelty. Now they could just beat Rosalia and Jania to death in an alley, but one of them decides to get clever.

Barzilai has been paying bounties for large dogs, delivered alive to the dottari, because he’s going to use those for official excruciations in the near future. If they’re gonna do that anyway, why not start early? Mr. Smart Guard knows just the place.

Our group is savvy enough to realize they’re taking the pair of them away from the tavern without harming them just yet, which ends up being good because they don’t want to draw heat to the place by murdering six guards on its doorstep. So even though Art has some trouble holding back his righteous anger, the rest of the group decides to follow the guards at a safe distance.

And as GM I’m saying they manage it because I don’t want to have a fight in a boring street.

The guards take Rosalia and Jania to a small square a ways away from the tavern, where an doghousing setup has just been built but not yet inaugurated. The dogs are already inside, and the process of starving them to make them mad is well underway. They chuck Rosalia and Jania in there after relieving them of their weapons, and stand around to watch for the rest of their shift.

[Player] Unsanctioned Excruciation

As explained in the book, “doghousing” is a public torture method devised by Barzilai. The victims stay confined in the “doghouse” at the center during days and nights, and they must spend this whole time sitting uncomfortably because there’s nails inside that will stab into them if they try to stand or lie down. At dusk and dawn, they’re let out to eat… if they can manage to steal the food from the two angry chained dogs.

Rosalia and Jania are still out of the doghouse, as they wanted to see them react to the dogs. The guards are hanging around to enjoy the view for a moment and plan to lock one them in later and feed the other to the dogs. Three of them are on the western side of the square, three on the eastern one.

Our group arrives at this point. They split up with Urist and Art on the west side, and Jade by herself on the east. The guards have not noticed them yet, and this gives Urist time to charge up a three dice Sunbolt to blast one of them with as an opener.

Turns 1-4

After the opener I rule the guards are surprised, because fuck ‘em. They’re mentally stunned and will need to succeed at an IQ roll before they can do anything, as usual.

Jade begins this “by the book”, stepping forward and verbally challenging a guard. Art runs in stabbing, though his knife ends up deflected. Urist draws his axe and begins closing in, though he’s considerably slower to get within melee range.

After some moments of fright preceding the fight, Jania and Rosalia realize that unlike the dogs they are not chained. They edge away from the dogs and towards the gate closest to Rosalia (and Jade). The dogs’ chains prevent them from reaching the prisoners.

While the fighting rages on outside, Jania decides to push her magical lock-opening trick to its limit. by taking a -10 skill penalty to open the nearest lock instantly. That’s a 50/50 chance for her, and she does it. The two prisoners just manage to squeak through the gate while barely keeping away from a dog’s jaws.

Outside some of the guards recover from the mental stun inflicted by surprise, forcing our PCs to engage them first. Arcturus manages to incapacitate a guard with his signature grab-and-stab move, while Urist covers his flank. Jade has no problem keeping her three assailants at bay but has some bad luck on her attack rolls.

The escaped PCs have no weapons, Rosalia is able to help Jade a bit by re-stunning a guard with her Song of Humiliation, while Jania begins charging up an Ice Dagger spell.

Turns 5-8

Things are taking a bit longer to resolve here than I’d like. Seems like these dottari aren’t very good at offense when compared to the characters, but their defenses are high enough to require some special handling.

Anyway, atfer a lot of back and forth, Arcturus folds a guard’s clothes with the guard still inside, then holds the other so Urist can axe him a few questions. Jade fences and then stabs the non-stunned guard, and then kills one of the stunned ones while Jania impales the other with a large-ish Ice Dagger.

After the Fight

All guards are down. The party quickly retrieves Rosalia’s and Jania’s weapons and then leaves the square. On their way out they hear a high-pitched voice calling to them from the a nearby barrel. “You guys are fun! Good thing the bad men didn’t get you!”

It’s the little dragon, who looks less frightened now. Rosalia steps forward to talk to him, because she’s just delighted to see it up close. His name is Vendalfek. He explains he lived in the tavern, which used to be a fun place until the bad men started hanging around and then it wasn’t any more. He had been trying to spice things up again, you see.

Rosalia invites him to come live with them and put his magic to work pranking the bad men, and that’s that. They all go home.

[GM] Ending the Scene

The party didn’t manage to handle the situation without getting into a fight, but they did recruit Vendalfek, so that’s 1 point to each PC. They do get another point for winning the fight, though. Their notoriety also increases by (1d4 -> 2).

[GM] Analysis

Dottari are really annoying to fight, because while their offensive skill is relatively modest, their defenses are high enough to succeed a lot of the time. And I think I might have forgotten the -4 to defenses for stunned characters several times in this fight, to boot, so it got turned into a bit of a slog at the end.