Plateau Wizard

February 16

Tarlis is pleased with the assistance, and the group learns of a dungeon entrance at the bottom of a well in the town square. Tarlis has demanded a riddle for access. Either an answer to his, or someone posing a new riddle for him. When he can, Tarlis denies access to evil creatures or groups seeking access. Tarlis does not state why he is guarding it. There is something in the dungeon, but he will not divulge.

The PCs are free to explore the village or have access to the dungeon, but they need to pass the riddle requirements.

The PCs and the halflings all head back to the halfling village of Stonestrand.

February 17-18

The PCs stay with the halflings to celebrate the victory and honour the fallen halfling Faleon Lunarsong.

February 19 – March 4

Back to Bellde

The PCs plan their next steps.

Fléau the Cleric and Wandie the Ranger have enough XP to level up to level 2. They will head south to Casthtown for training. They will be gone for 11 days, coming back to Bellde on February 29.

Costs. The PCs have a total of 5150 gp (this is including the electrum from the ogre lair).

Training is 1500 gp each, so the PCs will be at 2150 gp.

PC gold: 2150 gp.

The rest of the party decides they will search to ruined village for anything useful. They feel they have a limited time before someone else does, or something else moves in. Although, having an Androsphinx in the area may scare off certain non-friendlies.

The PCs will ride each morning to the village to search and possible recovery of treasure.

For the ruined village of Liquemarglen, I calculated there are 84 remaining structures. Using data from fantasytowngenerator.com and the Ruins article from Dragon Magazine #54 I determined the types of structures and how long it would take to search them.

Roughly 324 turns, 3240 minutes, or 54 hours. With about 8 hours per day of searching and some leeway,  decided it will take 9 days of active searching, and an additional 5 days to organize the transport  of goods, so 14 days, meaning they return to Bellde on March 4.

Transport of goods? Yes, using the Ruins article the PCs find 100 gp in the ruined Church. That was it for straight up coinage. From the ruined residences of 4 merchants and 1 politician they find a total of 3450 gp in the form of large, hard to transport items. These are mainly furnishings from the residences (furniture, statues, art, kitchen items, etc.)

But this is hard to transport, so the PCs are obliged to buy a wagon (150 gp) and two draft horses (60 gp).

Encounters. Using the Chance of Encounters from p.47 of the DMG, I checked for encounters in the morning on the plains (PCs heading out), at noon in the hills (PCs are searching the ruins) and again in the evening on the plains (heading back to Bellde).

There was 1 encounter in 14 days, and it was a patrol. Lucky!

PC gold: 1940 gp

March 1 rent -900 gp

March 4 haul 3450 gp

PC gold: 4490 gp

And with the XP from gold (not for Fléau or Wandie) two more PCs level up, Odalf and Trent.

So, Odalf the Magic-User and Trent the Fighter head off Casthtown for traiing, and will be back on March 11.

PC gold: 4490 – 3000gp (training costs) = 1490 gp.

This is getting costly all at once. The remaining PCs will think about what to do. Go exploring? Not having Odalf with the Wand of Illusion is risky. That ploy has saved the PCs several times. But they have some time to think about it. Maybe Sournois will have to sell her Studded Leather +1, but I think she will not want to do that.

Not sure how I feel about AI art.