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fatherofgiants · 5 years

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Kagers Krew: Paragons of Crime

So, my 13-yo and his two buddies wanted to start up a 4e campaign, but as evil PCs.

Of course I immediately went to @thatboomerkid and his loyalty subsystem.

(As a side note, they asked me this while I was ordering pizza for the sleep over, so I had to improvise madly. Maybe I should have asked him repeatedly in the days leading up to the sleep over if he'd want me to DM something...)

Anyway, they are 15th level PCs, because they didn't want to grind and I'm tired of trying to make goblins interesting. They're a human monk, a deva invoker and a shardmind avenger. Their crew has a decent rep but has just stopped being pure freelancers and started subcontracting for the Boomtown Bangers (I suck at improvising names), laed by the ominous, ambiguously species-ed Marcellus (when I hear evil PCs, I think Tarantino, sue me).

They are based out of the fortress city of Bremerton, near the Middenhelm Mountains. Marcellus runs things out of his club, The Bloody Unicorn.

Their first job? Track down the group of yuan-ti cultists who stole a briefcase, er, chest of Marcellus', get it back and send a message letting everyone know that ripping off Marcellus is a poor life choice. So yeah, more Tarantino. They mopped the floor with the cultists, and accidentally/negligently torched a big chunk of the docks. The monk is _that_ player, so they opened the chest and discovered it held Marcellus Wallace's soul, I mean uranium, no wait, quintessence, yeah, that's the ticket. Quintessence. Which is, um, Pure Magic. They told Marcellus that the cultists opened it up, which he seemed to accept.

Next contract? A train job, a la Solo or any Western movie I watched as a kid. Marcellus had intel that some do-gooders we're returning from the Astral Plane with a load of quintessence via the Ghost Track which acts as a connection between this plane and that one. Since the Ghost Track didn't go directly to the Shrine of the Shining One, they intercepted the shipment as it moved onto the Hairfoot Rounding. That's the path that the halfling caravans follow through the countryside. They used a tribe of goblins and an illusionist to make it look like a dragon was ravaging the countryside to the west, to lure away the paladins and such from the Shrine.

There's not a ton of Good creatures in the 4e Monster Manual, so I wanted the train, er, interdimensional coach, to be protected by an adventurer party. However, that would have taken too long, despite the online generator I found at http://chaoticshiny.com/full4e.php. So it was angels - of battle, protection and valor. The Kagers did quite well, trashing the angels and the coach, but not damaging the quintessence.

Flush with victory and gold, they started buying stuff. Magic items. Stocks. A forge to start making gear and launder money. An alchemy/drug lab. (I am uncomfortable with this for many reasons. Many.) A warehouse and shipping company, for smuggling.

I have no clue how much any of this costs. Or makes. Presumably I can get some help in my old DMG, the Pathfinder campaign stuff

or the Spells, Weapons and Tactics setting by

Anyway, they're gonna need some more buildings cuz they had a run in with a rival gang that ended ... poorly.

While the boys were in their blacksmith shop they heard an explosion from their warehouse. Turns out The Blood Angels were pissed about The Kagers showing up in their territory. They sent a whole menagerie over: wax, straw and glass golems; a fiendish terror bird, pterodactyl and Andrewsarchus (basically a prehistoric predatory giant warthog); a skeletal mammoth; a frosthorn minotaur; a blizzard worg; a troll hound; and an awakened hyenadon.

I may have overdone it. At some point all three PCs ended up below 0 HP. After sending the monk off to get help from Marcellus and the other two were unconscious or faking it, the Blood Angels tagged the remains of the warehouse and bailed.

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