The Fearless DM

I pulled a bunch of tricks out of the bag for the startup of this campaign- new campaigns are hard to pull together- you have to maintain some kind of creative cohesion amongst the players, meet expectations (this is a Planescape campaign- certain features and quirks have to be met), and still take the players someplace new.. and I didn’t have prior knowledge of what the PCs were going to be.

So the setup is this:

The players (right now) are amnesiac members of a mixed interplanar adventuring party that was tricked into going on a disastrous heist.. I should say survivors of the party. Some (former) party members seem to be working against them.. and they begin the game with an unlikely rescue (from a former party member who might be a turn-coat) as they were being marched into a time-void**.Their apparent enemies are the Harmonium and the Mercykillers.

So the structure of the adventure- without spoilers- is the PCs  struggle to remember clues from their past. Meanwhile they are being pursued by the heavily armed Mercykillers.

After an initial battle with Mercykiller guards  in the Lower Ward, they escape to the Market Ward, encounter a few of the myriad sights and sounds of Sigil.. witness a procession of Dabus, talk to a weaponsmith who reveals some clues of the past..  eventually they get jumped in an alley by beggars but they polished their attackers off easily.

At one point the amnesiac players (who have been forced to reintroduce themselves to each other as new- thus accomplishing a cohesion trick for the campaign) turn out their pockets to find certain key items- a pair of Vistani fortune cards (a “Suicide Jester” and a “Performing Dolphin”) , some crushed rose petals, a handful of tigers-eye gemstones, a glittering orb, and a singing teacup.

Oh, and they have a mimir.

The Teacup is the first clue they acted on- they learned it belongs to a collection in a specific teahouse called the House of Thirren- located in The Ladies Ward of Sigil. Getting into the Ladies Ward, though- will be a challenge without the proper clearances, and the Mercykillers and the Harmonium run the show there. Instead- the party opted to move in through sewer tunnels- and the Mimir off-handedly suggested the most reliable sewer-experts as goblins.

One of the PCs had a vague recollection of having been to the Goblin Ward before, and so they made their way through to try and secure passage to the Ladies Ward. Which worked- they also found out through a flashback sequence that their rescuer in the opening scene (who was also a goblin) had a name. Doing some research revealed only that the goblin was now a high roller and no longer welcome amongst the lowly goblins.

What followed afterwards was a trek through the sewers and a battle with abyssal scavengers (during which their goblin guide abandoned them)  in the sewer. They finally found themselves back on the surface in a Victorian park filled with clockwork birds and animals. We finished up there. 

Looking forward to the next adventure!

**Victims of the time void are spun back in time and then shot out through the quasi-elemental void-plane, where they are destroyed..and having never existed, their lives potential energy goes to feed the factories of a certain villianess called the Lady of Shadows. This is all important for a later plot.