Stavanger Again, Now in July

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Continued from Loaded Down, Wealthy, July 20-21st

July 23rd & 24th, 1650

The DM: It is a clear, pleasant day, no clouds in the sky, no rain, with a light air barely blowing at two knots towards the southeast as you head off to Stavanger. At this rate, it will take you 11 hours to cross the bay, running with the wind ... but as noon approaches, windward shifts to the left, allowing the boat to reach and improve it's speed; the wind also increase to 3 knots, shortening your whole journey to 8½ hours. It's a beautiful day, with clear blue water, a warm sun and the gentle creak of the boat as you make your way. With nothing to bale, you kick off your shoes into the bottom of the boat, stretch out, enjoying the sun and appreciating this sea travel business, perhaps for the first time. Your feet don't hurt from walking, you're not sweating in your clothes and armour, nothing is moving on the water that can possibly threaten you. It's beautiful.

Sadly, by three in the afternoon, the wind dies again, this time nearly completely, so you have to row for some hours. That spoils it a little, until you find yourselves laughing, pausing in the middle of the journey to take a quick swim (the water is invigorating for Norwegians, gnomes and elves, bloody cold for a continental), and you're about four miles from Stavanger by six o'clock. There's nothing to do but to keep rowing, as the wind doesn't come back, though Nadia squeezes every inch out of the 1-knot wind blowing from the southwest. At last you see the headland of Ieten (the region about Stavanger), then the city itself. At nine o'clock, 12 hours from departure, you set foot on dry land again. It is still day; the sun won't set for another two hours.
As ever, you can find Embla and her parents, and spend the night with her. Begin with telling me what you want to do on the 24th. It is a Wednesday.
I draw your attention to these recent notes on Sea Travel.

Pandred: What are we offloading on this trip?

Lexent: I believe that our first order of business should be beginning the process of securing passage at least as far as Bergen. From there we can continue on northward, or make inquiries regarding Ross.

Vafrandir: Remember our timeline for the lighthouse fund. I suspect the Bronnoysond journey will take more than a month all told.

Selling Gems

Vafrandir: We have our gems to appraise, as well as a few extra weapons: a fine short bow, a fine mace, and two fine shortswords. Do we want to sell the lamp oil and vinegar?

Lexent: Well, if the gems, weapons, and adamantium do net us enough, we could send that back to Treborg with Nadia.

The DM: For selling, Vafrandir has access to Bargaining now. That page is organized for buying, but, for haggling, Vafrandir can make a charisma check to see if he can “increase” your sale price by 10%, or by 1-8%. If he wants to pressure bargain, he can attempt to increase your total by 15% to 30% (d4+2 x5%). That’s a risk, but for that, Vafrandir will get +3 to his charisma on account of the value of the gems.

The DM: The opening bid on all your gems is 533 g.p. Let me know if there’s some you’d like to sell and some you’d like to hold back. It’s complicated, but I have that info for every gem.

Vafrandir: A fine thought, Lexent. We will go get those things appraised.

Vafrandir: So I would need to roll under a 14+3=17, correct?

Vafrandir: I think we should sell all.

The DM: Correct. Or be banned from entering a jeweler in Stavanger for a year.

Vafrandir: I attempt to pressure. 16. Whoa.

The DM: The final number is 866 g.p., 9 s.p.

Vafrandir: That had my adrenaline up, I'll say.

The DM: Cool.

Weapons

Vafrandir: I'll move on to the weapons.

The DM: That’s how a good rule should work. Who wants to book passage? Someone with a good charisma can make a check to speed up the process.

The DM: Do you want to risk pressuring the armourer or the weaponwright?

Lexent: Is that where we would sell the adamantium rather than the puddler?

Vafrandir: I'll haggle with both but not pressure. If I understand, the risk of failure for haggling is largely of time spent?

The DM: No, you’d sell the adamantium to the puddler.

Lexent: It looks as though we'll have a few days in town before we can leave anyway. I think Vafrandir has the best chance of securing timely passage, unless my +1 to persons with 10 Charisma or lower applies.

The DM: You couldn’t know if it applies or not, until you actually tried to secure a passage; it might, it might not. I’d roll. Vafrandir is going to be busy today selling things. Remember, it is ½-hour per venue visited to buy things from, with a ten hour maximum; every pressure-bargaining Vafrandir does is an extra hour. Haggling requires 10 extra minutes. If he also wants to buy things from several different vendors, that will fill up the 24th for him and you’ll lose a day waiting for him to secure passage.

Arduin: Actually, that's me I think. 16 Charisma. I'll secure passage.

The DM: Roll, Arduin.

Arduin: 7 on d20.

Vafrandir: Haggling: weaponwright, 10. What would be sold at the armourer instead?

The DM: You have passage leaving tomorrow, the 25th, for Bergen.

The DM: Sorry, Vafrandir, I somehow thought there was a shield. We’re selling the bow, the mace and the short swords together?

Vafrandir: Correct. The remaining shield was given to Bjarni.

The DM: 63 g.p. for the weapons.

Vafrandir: Very good! On to haggle with the puddler: 14, a close one. About 50 lbs of adamantium.

The DM: 145 g.p. for the adamantium.

Lexent: That means we just need to figure out how much of our newly acquired wealth was promised to our hirelings.

Hireling Details

Vafrandir: Very good. Let's discuss the marked coins promised to the sappers. Are they ok with "clean" gold instead? We never explicitly talked it out.

Vafrandir: Lexent, do you mean the shares of today's haul?

Lexent: Well, of the profits from the jewels and adamantium, yes. I don't believe we promised them any shares of the weapons.

Pandred: I mean, should they care? Money is money, unless we're trying to sell these coins to a collector they're worth 1gp, marked or no. If we can replace their marked gold with regular stuff we just should do that, if we're committed to seeing the marked coins through together.

Vafrandir: I see no reason they should care. Spends the same. But it does mark us about 500 short so far if we're replacing it, which I think is wise.

Vafrandir: Am I just being too cautious with this stuff? Push back on me if so.

The DM: They’re okay with your choosing to exchange gold. Did you bring the sappers along to Stavanger? Did you calculate the weight the boat was carrying from Treborg to Stavanger with their extra weight aboard?

Vafrandir: Let me check the weight calcs. We did not say explicitly.
Vafrandir: Throwing on some food and supplies as well: roughly 2900 lbs

The DM: Okay.

Lexent: So then, how much do we plan to give each hireling? And are we planning to have them accompany us north?

Vafrandir: We currently have 1074 from today's activities. They currently hold 1400 in Ross gold. So we can either 1) convince them to accept much less, probably a tenth, due to the risk of the Ross gold or 2) let them assume the risk of keeping it. Again, am I making a mountain out of a molehill?
Vafrandir: Not even counting the cost of travel to Bergen.

The DM: You don’t think you can just explain the situation to them?

Vafrandir: I've been dancing it around it, I guess. I explain the situation; what do they think?

The DM: They’re surprised, but they understand and don’t think it has anything to do with the party's actions. Unanimously, they think that the money should be given to Hamish, whoever he is. Asger feels there’s sure to be a reward; and Bjarni supposes that if this Ross has been given some sort of title to land, then he’s probably a good person to have as a friend.

Lexent: So of the money from the jewels and gems, I calculate that Odds should get 77 gp, and 13 sp, and each other hireling should receive 38 gp, 14 sp, and 6 cp. That totals 389 gp, 1 sp, Leaving 685 gp 8 sp for the party.

Vafrandir: I have the calculation on the Cargo page. It's less than that. We can still give Nadia the 200 gp, as well as a bonus to our other hires.

Lexent: We could send Valda's portion and 200 g.p. back to Treborg with Nadia.

The DM: Okay, forward movement. Figure out any last things you want to do here in Stavanger, as well as how much tonnage in equipment you wish to take along with you and how many persons are going along. Your Captain is a Dane named Oliver Larsen. He owns a Carrack, a 3-masted ship; you’ve been given a stateroom for four of you and additional space in the orlop deck, a space surrounding the mizzen mast, below the crew deck and below the waterline. Out.

Lexent: I ask Nadia if there is anything in particular she would like for her upcoming birthday, as it seems we won't be in town for it.

Nadia: "A larger boat."

Before Embarking

The DM: What details do you want to hammer out today before getting aboard ship? How much are you taking with you, remembering you can store goods with Embla here in town that you don't want to take on with you right now.

Lexent: In.

Lexent: I think the biggest thing is figuring out our plans regarding the sappers. When we first hired them, I had imagined we were doing so specifically to deal with Grond's lair. Are we planning to continue keeping then in our employ? Are we planning to bring them north with us?

Vafrandir: Ah, good point. I think it can't hurt to keep on one or two. It's a job, sure, but we've been through a bit together. Nice to have a cook. On the other hand, we're not expecting to crack a lair on this trip.

Vafrandir: What we bring will depend on what the overland travel will be like. I imagine we can pack food on our persons and avoid having to use the cart.

Pandred: Maybe, but the cart is going to be an issue at some point. We know they're in a given area, but how far? Are we going ten miles or fifty? I agree that at minimum the cook stays around.

The DM: Arduin will confirm that the cart will be utterly useless in that country. I haven’t sketched the routes that exist there yet; I ought to do that, yes? In any case, apart from a possible cart track around Bronnoysund, anything off road will be so thick with trees and rocks that dragging a cart through it will be impossible.

Pandred: Oh boy! Bushwhacking!

Vafrandir: Is Trondheim is a market city?

The DM: Curiously, looking at the real world map and my invented map of Norway, I’ve placed my Bronnoysund 20 miles east of where it should be. I’ve corrected that. Bronnoysund is on the extreme coast of south Nordland. It could be walked to, but dragging a cart isn’t possible. Though curiously, I have video of the area you’d be walking through. This is a video of the train between Trondheim and Bodo, in Fall Season; it gives a sense of the land route north of Trondheim, though it passes 40 miles east of where Bronnoysund is (around 4:20 in).

The DM: Trondheim is a very important market town, four times more important than Stavanger. Stavanger is a comparative backwater. Trondheim is the second most important Arctic port in the world. The first is a place called Aenaria, elvish, in northern Ulthua.

Vafrandir: That's what I thought. So we can stock up on bushwacking supplies there if needed.

Vafrandir: Since Bronnoysond is on the coast, I recall Nadia said we might be able to get a boat from Trondheim. That would be my preferred option.

Vafrandir: The weight of the shield could be a problem.