Growing Pains (Threads of Fate, Session V Recap)

Session V of my ongoing Lamentations of the Flame Princess Campaign. Start with Session I here.

The party's newly christened Pink Pearl is finally open for business. I was worried about how I was gonna fill out this Session with material but luckily improvising is one of my stronger skills and I think everyone had some laughs. Alright with that said, Brothel Simulator is officially starting...now.

The Cast

Aki Ashina, Fighter 1:

A young woman hailing from the far eastern lands of Japan. Wears a eyepatch, speaks broken english and is looking for something or someone...

Cillian McCleary, Specialist 1:

Irishman in a hostile land.

Mildred Hubble, Magic-User 1: 

A horny 12 year old girl from a very secretive school for young spellcasters.

Richard Islands, Fighter 1:
Ex-soldier, now poor mercenary. Looking for work.

Downtime Activities

A month passes before opening night and the party finishes work on their brothel called the Pink Pearl. During this month they completed the following tasks:

1. Built a small wall around the brothel.
2. Furnished the Brothel.
3. Hired two guards
4. Spent some coin on advertising.
5. Built a opium den.
6. Made some deals with the local farmers for deals on food.

The night before the brothel opens the party receives a letter from their business partner Vespero saying he'll arrive on opening night with a rich potential client. The party is skeptical of this.

Opening Night

• Aki claims the title of Madam of the Pink Pearl and prepares the working girls for opening night.
• The guards posted at the gate tells the party their first guest is coming up the road in a beautiful black carriage pulled by two pales horses. Ominous enough?
• OH YEAH, Otto's player didn't join us this game so we had his character out of town running business errands. 
• The carriage pulls up to the Pink Pearl the horses neigh and whine before coming to a stop. The driver dressed in expensive clothes for the time tips his hat and drops down from the drivers's seat and opens the carriage door for his passenger.
• Out steps a beautiful woman dressed in a large white flowing dress of obvious Eastern European descent with strawberry blonde hair. She smiles at Aki who steps out from the porch to greet her. They exchange pleasantries and step inside. The woman never says her name and the party doesn't ask for some reason...
• They sit their guest in the parlor and bring her cheap wine Richards & Hubble managed to cobble together at the last minute. The women are brought out before the client. 
• The Noble woman chooses the best looking one and they are escorted to a room upstairs.
• Meanwhile, 3 men are pulled from some bushes by the guards and brought to Aki, they say they heard there was an opium den here and wanted to partake. McCleary who is in charge of the den is introduced to the men and he takes them upstairs. Much opium is consumed.
• The party discuses their new client and start to ask some questions, such as payment, which wasn't given...
• A while passes and they go up to the room to check in. They knock, no response. They knock, again and the client replies with a low "Yes?" We just wanted to make sure everything was alright..."  Aki asks, "oh yes, everything is fine. I was just about to head out." the client says.
• A minute passes and Aki opens the door to find the client just finishing to get dressed and the prostitute on the bed, pale and breathing slowly. The woman passes Aki who goes to the girls side to check her. Hubble and Richards stop the highborn woman at the door. "Oh you want your pay of course" she says. "I'll have my man servant bring it form my carriage." Aki sees the prostitute is slow to respond to stimulus and asks the client what she did. "Oh, how embarrassing, shes just exhausted is all." She begins to leave and the party watches her seem to almost glide down the stairs, though that must be a illusion from her flowing dress...
• Richard meets the manservant outside who has pulled a small chest from the carriage. He opens it and finds a wealth of silver coins. He counts it out and finds it to be 500sp. The manservant helps his mistress back into the carriage but not before she thanks Richards for her time here. The manservant slides into the driver's seat of the carriage and stirs the horses to move with a loud "Yah-Yah" and down the road they go, into the dark of night.
• The party seems confused for a moment before Aki reamerges with the girl in her arms. "She needs to see the Doctor" she says.
• They bring the girl to Girnnot and place her on the table in the center of the room. The doctor demands privacy for his examination. 
• Meanwhile the guards inform the owners that more guests have arrived. A standard white carriage pulls up with Vespero in the driver's seat, the party greets him and tell him that they just met his rich client and were paid quite well. Vespero tilts his head in a mockery of confusion and says "Interesting but I drove the client out here myself tonight, I'm afraid I don't know who you dealt with." (Ref Notes: lol)
• Vespero introduces a Fat Noble man whose name I have since forgotten. Its not that important anyway, he just buys one of the girl's time and offers to buy Aki's as well for a shitload of coin. Aki refuses. 
• Meanwhile McCleary and the three men are dancing in clouds of opium.
• Girnnot takes Aki into the doctor's quarters and recants that the girl has lost a lot of blood and will not survive the night and proceeds to shows two small puncture wounds on the girl's inner thigh. 
• Vespero sits in the parlor with Richards and Hubble to discuss future business. (Ref Notes: Let me remind you that Otto made the deal with Vespero for 15% of all profits in exchange for Vespero brining clients, which he has. The party is not happy with this deal.) Richards offers to buyout Vespero's stake, which he refuses. Richards then offers to sell Vespero a vampire. Vespero says he's not interested but would like to see it.
• Richards, Aki, Hubble and Vespero pile into the doctor's quarters to "examine the vampire" the real reason being the party wants to kill Vespero. Vespero examines the girl and again says he isn't interested. Hubble attempts to sneak behind Vespero in a small room and fails her stealth check. Vespero sees this pulls a  pistol from under his sleeve and shoots Hubble point blank, killing her. Initiative is rolled, the party wins and swiftly snuffs out the antiquarian. (Ref notes: *sighs*)
• Vespero's body bursts into greenish flames and begins to spread. Suddenly the girl on the table convulses then floats two feet into the air, wakes with a sickening grin and laugh then lunges at Aki. Initiative is rolled again and after two rounds the vampire spawn lays decapitated.The two swiftly try and put the fire out and barely manage to contain it before it spreads.
• The Noble comes down satisfied and asks where Vespero has gone, the party tells him that he had sudden important business to attend to and that the Pink Pearl will have his nobleness driven back to London. After a reaction roll check, he agrees.
• McCleary comes to after his drug laden dream and robs the three men and has them thrown out on to the road.

And that was pretty much it for this Session. Thanks for reading, let me know what you think in the comments. Also R.I.P Mildred Hubble, she who never cast a spell despite being a M-U.

Read Session VI here!

The Bawdy House of Nonsbeck (Threads of Fate, Session IV & 4.5 Recap)

Session IV of my ongoing Lamentations of the Flame Princess Campaign. Start with Session I here. The party is dead set on starting up this brothel. They bought some prostitutes in London and now journey back to Nonsbeck to start up their new business. Yes I'm super behind on these recaps, life(laziness) happens.

The Cast

Aki Ashina, Fighter 1:

A young woman hailing from the far eastern lands of Japan. Wears a eyepatch, speaks broken english and is looking for something or someone...

Otto Kuchin, Fighter 1:

Nobleman's son, turned sellsword, turned monster hunter. From Prussia.

Mildred Hubble, Magic-User 1: 

A horny 12 year old girl from a very secretive school for young spellcasters.

Richard Islands, Fighter 1:
Ex-soldier, now poor mercenary. Looking for work.

On the Road Again...

The Party buys a wagon & two horses and make their way back to Nonsbeck with the *sighs* merchandise. It’ll take 3 days from London. A suggestion is made by one of the more rational characters to hire some more experienced prostitutes before they leave but decide the girls are, “good enough”.

On the second night some of the younger children attempt to flee into some nearby woods but are subsequently caught and tied up. (Ref Notes: These retainers have low as shit loyalty scores, I hope the party isn't betrayed...)

The night before arriving in Nonsbeck the party is ambushed by the "possessed" girl they saved from the basement of other Nonsbeck's nunery. She has two bandit looking men with her and she yells "That's them misters, they have lots of treasure!" then runs off down the road. A quick combat encounter ensures and thanks to some good cover choices the bandits are quickly dispatched without damage taken. The party agrees to kill the girl should they see her again.

Work, Work, Work...

As they come up the road they hear the familiar sound of hammer against metal coming from the local blacksmith. The following is a quick recounting of what they did, this session was mostly brothel prepping so meh to me trying to narrate it.

• The party splits up with one half taking the girls to the brothel & the others to dawdle in town.
• They go to the church to see if they can hire a cleric to heal the prostitutes of any future diseases from work.
• Some roleplay with the residents of Nonsbeck, the Blacksmith's apprentice, the innkeepers, the farmers...etc, etc. (Ref notes: I'm writing this months later so the details are hazy. Yes I'm lazy)
• They meet Deacon Girnot and he agrees to come work for them as a healer.
• Otto arrives at the brothel and begins inspecting the women. The younger kids are trained for  kitchen work and the women are inspected for diseases. They discover one of women is biologically male. Her name is Luca and Aki immediately takes her as her retainer and trains her in the way of the blade. The others are fine with this.
• Otto begins work on a wall around the brothel.
• Deacon Girnot is given a small office in the brothel and confesses that he stole a colleague's spellbook and is on the run. He's also not a cleric but Magic-User with only one minor heal spell. The party say they will protect him if he does his medical duties of cleansing the whores. He takes the offer. 
• I tell the players it'll take the players a month of work and expenses to get the brothel up and  running. 
• Aki & Luca exchange knowledge over the course of the month. Aki finally learns English & Luca learns how to fight.
• Mccleary gets in touch with some old contacts and begins work on an opium den for the brothel.

Session 4.5 was a small play-by-post I ran between Session IV & V. Richards, Hubble, and Luca plan to go to Norwich to find a musician and hire some experienced prostitutes for the newly christened brothel the Pink Pearl.

• 2 days travel to Norwich, no random encounters rolled.
• They stop at an inn called the Golden Goose to rest for the first night of travel.
• They meet Olga, a Prussian immigrant whom the party immediately gets attached to.
• Richards offers to do some work for Olga and she has him wash the dishes in the back. There's at least 3 turns worth.
• The others see a man with cloak obscuring his face sitting towards the back of the inn by candle light....
• Hubble & Luca approaches him and essentially asks him what his deal is.
• The man smiles and says he's a traveler from the far east, and calls himself the King of Games
• He offers to play a game for some coin and Luca aggress much to the dismay of Richards in the back.
• Eventually Luca loses more coin than they all have combined and the Gambler says that unfortunately he must take his leave but must be paid first. Richard finally finishes those dishes but intervenes too late.
• Seeing they don't have enough coin, the Gambler offers to settle the debt by taking Luca's name. She agrees and signs it away. Suddenly the rest of the party can't remember her name. The Gambler folds up the name, nonchalantly puts it away and takes his leave.
• Richards chastises No Name, now called Nanachi. They party thanks Olga for the meal and rooms and turns in for the night.
• The party arrives at Norwich.
• Experienced prostitutes are hired.
• A very good musician is found and hired called Beatritx de Dia.
• Satisfied the party returns to Nonsbeck, again no random encounters occur. 

I finally got to test my Gambler monster and the players finally get to work on building their brothel, THE PINK PEARL. I'm not sure how I feel about running a business simulator but that's what the players want and I'm sure there are plenty of ways to mess with them to entertain me. Thanks again for reading!

Read Session V here!