The characters become more proactive in their criminal enterprises in the sixth installment of Reavers on the Seas of Fate, “Three Days to Kill.” It’s based on a 3e Atlas Games adventure also called “Three Days to Kill.”
Sixth Session (14 page pdf) – One of the crime lord Clegg Zincher’s capps, Braddikar Faje, is headed out of town on the road to Roderic’s Cove to conduct some kind of sale at a villa in the hills. Jacking up Zincher’s day is more than enough motivation for Saul to send his favorite scum off to break up the deal.
But first, Tommy heads to the local whorehouse/temple of Calistria to see his favorite gal, Lavender Lil. He finds her hiding behind a tapestry; Captain Scarbelly and his orc pirate crew are visiting, and, as she says, “I like it a little rough, but not orc rough.” So Tommy tells her he and his comrades are headed out into the woods to try to find the secret Calistrian lesbian orgy they hear tell of, as a cover story for their real job.
It’s probably about this time I should share the rumors the PCs got from hitting the streets of Riddleport. It may explain otherwise bizarre behavior on the part of the guys. (The weird terminology is mostly Riddleport slang… As you can tell they are meant to be exactly as a random Riddleporter would relate them.)
Bonfires are sometimes seen in the mountains to the northeast. I hear a bunch of priestesses of Calistria gather there every new moon for secret all-lesbo orgiastic rituals, and they murder any man who glimpses them. It still sounds pretty tempting to try. Woooo! Man, I wonder if that Pamodae sideshow goes there… Mmmmm…..
When the missionary who founded St. Casperian’s Mission died, he left behind a treasure cache of the money he defrauded from credulous citizens. Although the building is dilapidated and overrun with grog-blossoms, there is a secret room beneath the ground where the priest hid his ill-gotten gains. They say it’s guarded by a magical protector that has disappeared everyone that’s tried to claim it.
There are orcs wandering the streets of Riddleport! Captain Scarbelly’s pirate ship, the Bloody Vengeance, is in town and the whole crew is orc. People say he’s killed twenty-nine men in hand to hand combat. He’s probably hooked up with Boss Croat, that snout-lover. I could totally take an orc. It’s about speed, not strength!
Gebediah Crix, keeper of the Riddleport Light, got killed by one of those devils he summons. His parts were strewn all over the lighthouse. The gendarmes have posted guards outside the place. I wonder if the devil’s still around? Hey, I recently came across some Vudran charms, guaranteed to keep evil spirits away. Wanna buy one?
There’s some kind of gang of whiskers that operates in the Rotgut District. I have a cousin who got robbed by a bunch of rats in an alley that suddenly turned into people. And the gendarmes don’t do jack crap about it, say they’re low on funding. The rats must be connected and that’s why they’re getting a pass.
Some guy, an out of town wizard, wanted to become a fancyboy, but when they wouldn’t let him in, he insulted Elias Tammerhawk, the Speaker of the Order of Cyphers. They had a duel in Zincher’s arena. Tammerhawk totally wasted that guy’s dumb ass in short order and magiced up a swarm of rats to eat the body. He said that was what he got for running his rathole. Haw haw haw!
There’s been some turf changes on the streets lately. I hear Avery Slyeg is totally Croamarcky’s bitch now and they’re consolidating and looking to squeeze competitors out of the gambling biz.
The completely false St. Casperian rumor is what caused them to go all SWAT team on the mission last session. Although their minds are going overtime, and they mentioned that “planting a rumor like that would be a good way to get someone to go in and kill off a rival gang…”
Anyway, they head out to the Trail’s End villa and get a lot more than they bargained for – besides Faje and his men, there’s Asmodean cultists, Marcello Marcellano (the Chelish son of Ox’s former owner from “Water Stop”), and a bunch of raiding Shoanti braves. They actually carve through the guards OK, but when the Asmodeans start summoning freaky demons from the mirror Faje is selling them, they decide to bail (over Serpent’s objections, who really really wants to kill Faje and everyone else, despite Saul instructing them not to kill him.)
The PCs for some reason thought they had done poorly, I guess because of the default D&D expectation that the only success is found in killing everything in sight and looting it. But Saul praised them – they killed everyone but Faje and one of his goons, who had to ride into town two to one horse. The Asmodeans got the mirror without paying for it. So Clegg is out like 8 guys, a bunch of horses, and the mirror with nothing to show for it, and Faje did NOT get killed and bring the wrath of Zincher and potentially other crime lords down on the Gold Goblin. The PCs kinda wanted to murder the Asmodeans, Marcellano, and the Shoanti (which Saul couldn’t care less about) and Faje (which would have pissed him off mightily).
But before they got back… They happened upon the secret Calistrian lesbian orgy ritual. Or, at least, Tommy snuck up onto something that might have been it and promptly got chased off by a manticore!
I was prepared to run an actual chase scene here, with the mounted PCs fleeing from the manticore, using chase rules from Adamant Entertainment’s Tome of Secrets for Pathfinder. It was not to be, however, as the usual D&D group problem emerged of one guy refusing to run and that making the rest of the party stand with him. We then had a weird start-and-stop chase as Sindawe stopped to fight. But when the manticore dropped his horse in one shot, he thought better of that and hid in the underbrush. But of course Wogan and Serpent had stopped to help him… They got away by popping obscuring mist and letting the manticore eat all their horses. Ah well, all’s well that ends well.
Once they got back, they went with the guy that they let live from the Splithog Pauper’s gang, Madrat, to hit one of Avery Slyeg’s couriers. Of course, Madrat was a mole working for Slyeg. So we left off with the PCs facing down a dozen crossbowmen and a crime lord in a warehouse. Will they sleep with the fishes? Find out next time, in Reavers on the Seas of Fate: Death in Freeport Riddleport!
Geek Related 
It is my recollection that fleeing seemed impossible. Its a flying creature which had already proven much faster than the us. It was dark, so carrying torches was necessary to prevent accidental injury or death to the fleeing PCs. But carrying torches makes it easy to spot us… and we have no idea if the critter sees in the dark, tracks by smell, has good hearing (how do you keep a panicky horse quiet?).
So, I decided to stop and fight. Then figured, “Oh, maybe the horse is much tastier than me. Run horsie! Be food!”