We had three solid days of Adventurers League at Gaelcon, running regional previews of The Folded Time Trilogy, the season 7 Epic Peril at the Port and The Xanathar’s Guide to Everything tie-in Rats of Waterdeep. The wandering monk Fai Chen was also present with his Fantastical Faire.



Players new and old were in attendance and the convention was a great success – if you were lucky enough to be there and have a story to tell, leave a comment below!



For those who missed out we will be running The Folded Time Trilogy modules in Gamers World soon and don’t forget to sign up on Warhorn for our next regular game on November 12th.

Fai Chen’s Fantastical Faire

Fai Chen’s Fantastical Faire was in session at Gaelcon and as popular as expected. Characters were free to trade items, purchase curiosities, enter the fighting pits or gamble away their hard-earned gold.

Fai Chen had many items for trade and sale, but he had barely opened for business when he had sold out of Flying Snakes, specially imported from far off Chult and with a statblock more lethal than most level 2 characters!



Adventurers League characters are also charitable and kind to animals it transpires as a record number adopted stray Alley Cats from Waterdeep. It is everyone’s civic responsibility to keep the feral cat population down after all. But please ignore the rumours that these cats are being used by their owners to escape justice when caught red handed. Throwing cats at guardsmen to distract them is a preposterous idea, and would surely never work (at least not more than once per adventure!).

The First ever purchase from Fai Chen in Ireland

Fortunes won, fortunes lost… mostly fortunes lost. The gambling downtime activity was popular with some legacy characters who’d built up a stash pre-season 8. Alas, that stash was diminished after three days of heavy gambling, Val and Romaine‘s purses notably lighter after some high stakes betting. Word of advice, don’t roll against Oli when gold is on the line!

Many characters with time on their hands also visited the fighting pits, earning a nice bit of pocket money. Most of them. Alas, poor Eddie, halfing mage extraordinaire. Eddie the Edge they called him, and how the crowd cheered as they watched him get his head kicked from one side of the arena to the other – at first! Soundly beaten by his opponent, the crowd smelled something fishy, how did Eddie the Edge lose so easily? Did he throw the fight? Probably!



Eddie’s reputation in tatters, he reentered the pits and turned his fortunes around, with win after win. But not everyone was happy – the rumour was Eddie the Edge had made a powerful enemy, one that was most unhappy that Eddie didn’t lose his fights. People put two and two together quickly – Eddie threw his last set of fights – the dirty cheat – his ‘sponsor’ clearly expected him to do it again. But Eddie’s a prideful one and couldn’t face another loss, no matter how much he was being paid. He’ll be found dead in a river by years end, say the mob, that’s what happens to rats like him!

EPIC – Peril at the Port

Where were you when Port Nyanzaru was besieged by demon pirates set loose from the Abyss? Well, our brave adventurers were in Port Nyanzaru doing there best to save their sorry hides!

Captain Smoke and her fleet were back from the Abyss! Someone had gotten their hands on her booty (Quiet you!) and she wouldn’t rest until this wrong was righted. Her proposition; turn over the rapscallion Pelican Jake or Captain Smoke would claim one soul for every coin he stole from her.



Our heroes had three hours to either find Pelican Jake and hand him over, or discover a way to defeat the demon captain. Easier said than done, especially if your go-to plan in times of crisis is to release the dinosaurs!



Our heroes plans to drive the pirates into the sea on the backs of dinosaurs was certainly epic – and who amongst you wouldn’t turn up the chance to ride a T-Rex? – but they didn’t act quickly enough, and the port fell victim to a barrage of cannon fire from Captain Smoke’s fleet. None of our defenders were seriously hurt in this bombardment, but it was a sign of things to come and they were on the back foot for the rest of the assault.



There followed a frantic scramble amidst our four parties to bring the pirates to heel. Some groups opted for direct action; slaying Captain Smoke’s champion, a minotaur by the name of Walhorrow, or attempting to burn her flagship to the waterline. Others were more devious, seeking ways to break the pirate curse or pose as pirates to infiltrate The Banshee and talk directly to the pirate queen. Sound plans indeed, but there was a complication. Captain Smoke, growing impatient, began stalking Port Nyanzaru herself, attacking any defenders she happened upon in her search for Pelican Jake.



Scurvy Dogs stalk Port Nyanzaru

The Black Spot was the first sign of her coming, found about the person of one of our heroes. Then, in a torrent of steam and water she would appear before them, calling out for Pelican Jake. Her voice was enough to freeze the marrow in most right-thinking folks’ bones, but her appearance didn’t help. After many long years in the Abyss, her skin had become blackened scales, her teeth jagged and metallic and thick horns curled out from her head. The parrot on her shoulder didn’t look much better. Only the strongest of attacks pierced her Abyssal hide, and she took pleasure in toying with the defenders of Port Nyanzaru, throwing a grenade, fuse lit, to our nearest hero before departing to continue the search for the traitorous Pelican Jake. In all cases our stalwart champions dropped this hot potato at their feet and many of them spent the following days picking shrapnel out of their rumps.



Though it looked like the tide was turning against them, at the eleventh hour the defenders of Port Nyanzaru managed to push the pirates back. There were losses of course, at least one adventurer was reduced to ash under the final bombardment from the pirate fleet in the harbour, and one of the port’s voodoo priestesses claimed that as he was immolated she heard the sound of rolling dice as a cruel god made him his own executioner.

There was foolhardy daring-do also. What better way to convince a pirate queen that the buccaneer’s life is for you than by chopping off your own hand and eagerly getting fitted for a hook!? Alas, what was intended to be a temporary setback became a long-term stump when the auto-amputee learned that reattaching or growing back a limb was a little outside of most clerics’ bailiwick. Those regeneration spells are hard to come by!



Pelican Jake had been found, cowering in the merchant quarter and the defenders were all ready to hand him over to Captain Smoke, but their captive offered them an alternative solution. Captain Smoke was ‘killed’ by Arameg, the Dragon Turtle that lurked in the Bay of Chult. Pelican Jake had the means to summon him. Arameg would surely lay waste to the pirate fleet and send Captain Smoke back to the Abyss.



It was put to the vote, and whilst strong arguments were made to just hand Pelican Jake over to the demonic pirate queen, more foolish heads prevailed and Pelican Jake was allowed summon Arameg. As predicted, Arameg went on a rampage, pulverising the pirate vessels and reducing them to driftwood! His rage was not sated however, and he soon turned on the Port itself, thankfully the defenders of Port Nyanzaru had defeated the pirates and had strength remaining to fend off the Dragon Turtle before he could do too much damage to the Port City.



The pirates were gone, Arameg had retreated to his lair in the bay, and somewhere in the city, Pelican Jake was counting his cursed doubloons. The defenders it seemed, had saved the day, but they probably still had a busy few weeks ahead of them wrangling all those dinosaurs back into their pens!

The Folded Time Trilogy – Wrinkle In The Weave, Hero of the Troll Wars, Purging the Blood

The Blackstaff, Waterdeep’s premiere magus, had a problem; her magic ring had gone weird. No, really. The Weave, the source of magic, had gone a bit wobbly and the flaw seemed to be focused on this ring. The ring was ancient and out of warranty, but the Blackstaff was old school and hates throwing things out if they can be fixed so rather than just buy a new ring of mind shielding she sent the party back in time on a series of seemingly random adventures that quickly got out of hand!



Flung over one-thousand years back in time, our heroes found themselves at a cocktail party hosted by the Shoon Emperor and before long got themselves embroiled in an assassination plot! It wasn’t hard to get mixed up in this plot- at least two groups had party members walk up to the Emperors brother and either outright accuse him of planning his brother’s assassination or just straight up attack him. This worked out okay for one band of ravening sociopaths, but at least one poor soul spent the night in the dungeon.



The soirée quite quickly descended into debauchery, bagpipes and bloodshed and before long our heroes were rescuing people who had technically already been dead for a thousand years from assassins’ blades before fleeing into the night. Whilst they did happen upon the original owner of the Blackstaff’s ring, nothing could be resolved before our band of temporally misplaced adventurers were sucked up into another time vortex and found themselves deposited a few hundred years into the future (still their past!) right in the middle of the Troll Wars!

Trolls were attacking old Waterdeep, so the only sensible way to protect the fledgling town was to burn down most of the countryside! You’d think with trolls on the rampage it would be time to sharpen steel and gird your loins for battle, but no! There were puzzles to be solved! Your barbarians and sorcerers got to take a break here as the party was sent scrambling around town to gather up Halastar’s old arcane wards and reactivate them. Along the way people begged for diagrams, learned Umberlee really is the Sea Bitch and got to push a troll off of a hill. But for the guidance of Sister Chickentenders they never would have made it.



There were a few hints of fishy behaviour (And I’m not talking about the merman) when our heroes bumped into someone they had met at the party a few hundred years ago. The word ‘vampire’ may have been thrown about. But they got sucked forward in time again before they could do the usual things you do with vampires. Steaks, garlic, pepper sauce etc.



Touching down in Waterdeep once more, a few hundred years ahead of their own time they were shocked, shocked I say, to hear that vampires were on the prowl! That is to say that the latest fad amongst the local nobles was to dress up like vampires and do some bloodletting. But no smoke without fire, no fangs without anaemic young women!



The task was clear; go house to house and drum up every piece of information on these parties and run the real vampires out of town! Our heroes went about this with gusto – some groups opting to just kick in doors and beat up nobles, others were sneaky, and some just pretended to be representatives of the Open Lord of Waterdeep carrying out a vital survey on all aspects of health, lifestyle and infrastructure with respect to upcoming rezoning (and also punching nobles). Quelle surprise, vampires and cultists of Shar were in cahoots but our heroes quickly dealt with that problem! Mission accomplished.



Oh. And seemingly completely unrelated; there was a cult worshipping a creepy tree with some time vortex in it. After they were done in and the tree chopped down our time travelling adventurers were returned to the present day in the Blackstaff’s tower, the problem with the Weave and her magic ring apparently all sorted.



The moral of our story? When buying magical rings always get the extended warranty or things will get weird.

Rats of Waterdeep

Intrigue. Murder. Fedoras. The Xanathar!? There’s a mystery needs solving in Waterdeep and with the help of Bogarte Locks (Yes, really) our adventuring heroes were the ones to solve it!



Plague was running rampant through Waterdeep’s Dock Ward. And not the usual plague that you just drop on down to the temple to get cured. No, this was the Rat Pox. Was it spread by rats? Maybe. Did it turn the infected into rats themselves? That’s the rumour.

The Rat King, an underground figure that was said to control rats and look out for the down and outs of the city had gone to war with someone called the Lady of Plagues. An obvious pair of suspects for a Rat Pox. Maybe kill them both and let the gods sort them out?

Following a lead our PIs in training entered the Quarantine Zone and turned up a fresh corpse, that of a retired captain who was said to know all about the Rat Pox and how to stop it. Terribly inconvenient, but our heroes will leap at any excuse to toss a room for clues and did so with aplomb, finding all sorts of newspaper articles, bloody rat footprints and boxes of cheese. The game was afoot!

Rushing to hunt down more clues involving safe deposit boxes and by-appointment-only apothecaries that weren’t taking bookings our heroes met a strange sight indeed. Floating down the street, with a retinue of thugs and at least one mindflayer, was the Xanathar himself. A beholder crime-boss, he was only rumoured to exist, and certainly never came out of his lair in Undermountain; yet here he was ordering his thugs to beat up our noble investigators.

The thugs were no trouble of course, but the beholders presence was a head-scratcher. Perhaps they hallucinated it? At this stage none of our party were feeling well and were beginning to show signs of the Rat Pox, beady eyes, whiskers, creepy little rat-hands – that sort of thing.

But there was no time for self-reflection; mysteries don’t solve themselves! They tore up the Quarantine Zone finding clues, killing cultists, growing little rat muzzles, and with the aid of a decoder wheel and a solid twenty minutes managed to unlock the key to the mystery!

The murdered captain’s daughter was the Rat King! The Rat King was romantically entangled with the Lady of Plagues! Using a pet mindflayer and a swarm of cranium rats, the Xanathar’s guild turned them against each other so they’d go to war and the Xanathar could do some slave-trading in peace! A diabolical scheme indeed. Perhaps a little too complicated – why not just bribe some guards? But diabolical all the same.

Our heroes managed to get the Rat King and Lady of Plagues to call off their war and make nice again, curing the rat pox in the process – they shall miss those sensitive rat ears and strange little whiskers. They also took out their frustrations on some of the Xanathar’s slavers – mystery solving is fun, but sometimes you just want to burst out of the mud and slit someone’s throat ya know?.

Another case solved!

The Xanathar has eyes everywhere, but we don’t. These retellings can’t cover everything that happened at our tables, but we want to hear about them. Leave a comment and share your story!