After-Action Report: Road to Monsterberg - Mythras edition, session 2

The first session is here.

Now, just one thing I need to share: normally, when you read an AAR/APs (After Action Report/Actual Play), you are reading in the tone of the PC I'm playing, if I'm a player. When I'm the GM, you're reading what the NPCs saw.

It's point-of-view-centric, though Asen himself only gets a voice when I'm talking explicitly about the players.

However, this AAR is breaking with the normal. Why? Well, because I wasn't on this session. So you're reading what Jaroslaw never saw, but I was told by other players. So, mostly their words, not mine...my comments are in italic.

Also, correcting some names' spelling.

Last time in Monsterberg, we found out what happens when the travelling knight leaves his fellows unsupervised for 4 hours in Teschen.

While Jaroslaw and Kristan were off to meet Teschen's Vogt, the less privileged in the party (i.e. everyone else... :D ) had a threefold mission: 

1. Shake off the stresses of the road with drink and bath [i.e., recover some Tenacity]

2. Gather some information on the local affairs

3. Find a way to score some gear or spare cash.

The Teschen market was pretty busy. Estelle the bard was so focused on the people and dreaming up ways to profit from them (promoting businesses as a crier/musician? exploiting rivalries between traders?) that she ended up tripping into a donkey's trough and making an ass of herself. Had to get a bath to be presentable again.

Someone else was already at the baths, though - namely, Vuk and Elias. Vuk was getting the stink of his rancid clothing scrubbed from him and his beard cut at Elias' insistence, for double the regular price.

At least they let the stinky foreigner in, I guess?

Unfortunately, there was a misunderstanding between the Serb and a boy Elias had asked to stay behind and confirm that Vuk had indeed cleaned up before he would be allowed to leave. The language barrier played a big part in this misunderstanding, but Vuk and the boy got the same wrong impression of each other and the Serb ended up banned from the bathhouse. At least he was clean now!

As his players put it, he's used to Ottoman baths, so the boy asking to scrub his back was...ahem, not welcome.

Meanwhile, at the market square, Marzena had stumbled upon two squires to one Sir Vaclav of Nova Ves, hawking armor from a wagon. All the pieces had grand stories accompanying them, but they were mostly just second-hand junk that was obviously looted from whoever had been on the receiving end of this Sir Vaclav's business. 

Marzena tried to ingratiate herself to the squires by giving them some street-smart tips on how to sell more goods. They were actually pretty horrible tips that should have made the squires' job much harder, but somehow the squires made them work (by means of a very lucky crit). 

As sales started taking off, Teschen's arms merchants who had until now been very unamused were properly pissed off at someone breaking their monopoly. A bunch of craftsmen and apprentices came up and were about to start trouble with the squires and Marzena when Elias was passing by and managed to defuse the situation.

For their help, both Elias and Marzena got a few free pieces of gear on the down low - some bulky jack chain for one of Marzena's arms, and a garish (and kind of thin) gambeson for Elias that could be given to Vuk in place of his fouled gear.

No more Mr. Stinky!

Anyway, everyone spent some more time picking up rumors wherever they could (e.g., Elias visited the office of the local jewelers' guild since he was in that trade himself).

Eventually made their way to the big German tavern. Had a few drinks.
Got interrupted by a drunk journeyman from Tarnowitz who had overheard the party's introductions at the gates earlier in the day. He abused Elias for being a good-for-nothing northern pansy who was ruining Silesia by dragging in the scum of the Balkans back with him. Elias was pretty good at ignoring the provocations.

Marzena, on the other hand, tried to prove she wasn't pretending to be a noble by presenting her rondel with Zawisza's crest. The man from Tarnowitz asked her which knight has had his grave robbed by her knave father for her to have something like that, which was the final straw. There was a duel in front of the tavern after that.

Marzena scored a flawless win against the man, delivering several nasty smacks to his head before people started crying "peace".

After that scene, the party got called over to a table by a well-spoken man called Gerat. A searcher from the baker's guild, he had seen what they're about and figured they were rough/disposable enough to help him prove that one of Teschen's bakers was adultering his bread with sawdust.

All they needed to do was a little breaking and entering during the night, since the baker had the protection of the head of the baker's guild...

My own personal contribution: AFAICT, the city of Teschen is called Cieszyn in Czech, and here is its coat of arms.

I like its motto, too, which is "Amore et non dolore" ("By love and not by pain").

 

And that's where we picked up the next session.

Kind of short, but again, I wasn't there - and in fact, Jaroslaw never learned about this in-character.