I Provoke a Riot: Behind the Screen

This chapter needs a lot of work. It offers players an open-ended problem but gives the DM only one solution. The big question: how the fuck do you steer the party towards evacuating residents, and then towards the Ubiquitous Wayfarer?

In hindsight, what I should have done was frame it this way: Daniphe wants the players to help her evacuate around the church. Daniphe tried to do it herself but was ignored. News of the players’ deeds regarding the old church has spread around the area, so if they help, surely the evacuation will succeed. Plus if they find her sister they can fight yadda yadda yadda.

To flesh things out, consider stalling with RP encounters. With it being the Athar’s month, I included an encounter with some Athar evangelists of sundry races and personalities, doling out free mulled cider to passers-by and trying to spread their philosophy. Some are more amicable than others. The Halfling running the operation made all the mulled cider himself. The dwarf is especially easy-going and friendly. This encounter will encourage your players to think about their characters’ respective faiths and beliefs, or lack thereof. Plus it can give players insight into the Athar’s philosophy in a low-stakes environment. Secondly, consider stalling with stalls! Flesh out the surrounding area. I used an Android app called DM Screen to randomly roll what was in the shops/storehouses around the old church. The shop nearby was a shop selling trinkets and curios. While I’ve called both of the above ideas “stalling”, it all adds to the colour of your setting. Plus, slowing down the players a little bit here will give you more time to feel out their intentions and plan accordingly.

With Daniphe’s “plague”, decide how easy it is for your players to discover her ruse, and add some points of interest accordingly. For me, it was possible the players could discover the Signers ahead of time. Make the party roll a group Perception check with a high DC (18 ish) when they got to the front of the church. If they succeed, someone notices the Signers’ movement on a nearby rooftop. I used an abandoned tavern on the local map for the home of Daniphe’s “sister”. The tavern, ransacked and ruined inside, features a corner containing a blanket, a statue of Aoskar, and some dangerous exotic flowers. Daniphe can identify the two-headed flowers as Demogorgon’s Rot. If burned/ingested, the victim needs to roll a DC14 CON save or suffer madness until they finish a long rest. Have the player roll on a madness table (I used the madness of Demogorgon table from Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes).

Riot in the Lower Ward

Once things get out of hand, the following short encounters will give an extra riot feel to the proceedings:

Someone fleeing tells the PCs to run. Bladelings have arrived from Acheron and are spreading Steel Plague. Run for your life or you’ll be turned to metal!

An opportunistic thief attempts a quick burglary from a nearby house.

A burly artisan jettisons a large and extremely heavy piece of equipment from a 2nd-storey window, collecting it as they flee.

Using the riot as a cover to settle an old grudge, two old dwarves circle each other wielding hammers, locked in a battle to the death.

This was about the sum of my prep. At the table, the transition from “prowling the Lower Ward” to “caught in the middle of a deadly Faction battle” was a bit clumsy, but the session was still a good one on the whole. The Demogorgon Madness was improvised in the moment, and was a really fun curveball for the plot. The RP encounters were all fun too. The party strongly suspects they’ve been played, which is true, and were taken aback by how wildly out of hand things have got. The weak plot of this session was saved by the high quality distractions, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of.

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