Black Hart

To Kill A King

DM's Notes: Chapter 3 - The Wolf and Halberd

Enter stage left, Eloi the drunkard, Eloi the lech, Eloi the card shark. Within the Tarskling Eloi is in his element, and nowhere more so than The Hanged Man. By now the threads of a union were forming in my mind. I had recently started developing the latest incarnation of the 'Brotherhood of the Knot', the extremist Brotherhood faction that is trying, in this scenario, to kill Shabass T'Lann.

Shabass himself has his deep, dark secrets - he is a worshipper of Tharizdun, and a member of the 'Black Hart' after which this campaign is named. He is in Niole Dra to begin pressurising Fimuth and Lominstrall to persuade King Kimbertos to accept the Pact of Greyhawk, or to kill him. Later, as we will see, Shabass hatches an even more sinister plot.

Kro Arribal is an old PC from the Fax days of my campaign. He adventured within the town with Sheyr Bn'Griz in a lot of solo adventures there I used to play with Johnny Morris during the week, but never really made it into my campaign mainstream. He is a thief-acrobat (some would say a token one at that) who likes the good life, with a bit of adventure, but not too much danger.

As can be seen later in the story, in Book 2, the Orgsworth and Docklands guilds of Gradsul are real entities. Halykk also figures, in a minor role, later on, as he is in fact the second-in-command of the Orgsworth Guild (a matter of coincidence, unless you are a follower of Istus...). His role at this time is to give Eloi a scare into thinking that the wench has poisoned the wrong person, and it worked well.

I toyed with the idea of having the simpleton at the bar as being the BotK member who had arranged Eloi's hit, but decided he was too well known as a local to be such. Who arranged it is as yet undecided, but a feat such as this would not be beyond our friend 'Whisper', who is mentioned in The Shriven Oak, and finally makes an appearance as he kicks Cinion off a roof in Gradsul.

After the incident is over, Eloi and Akhan relax into some catty banter that soon becomes all-too-familiar as they try to outdo each other with witticisms. One of my favourite parts of my game!

The Scarlet Brotherhood assassin who followed the carriage, as we find out at Torrisz Keep, was called Ganmaar.

Overall I enjoyed this chapter, as we moved from scene-setting into the game proper. Player interaction increased adn the dialogue was more interesting. A few good calls were made - Bermen halting the fight, Eloi's plan to administer the 'sleeping draft'. All was boding well in the Tarskling that night...