Scaled Continent Session 2

Report:

• PCs were bladedancer, amazon, fighter, assassin/pirate, and bard
• Set out from Voltager to Port Maw to sell cursed / fake snakeman relic sword.  Lost at sea, made it to Port Maw eventually by good luck.
• Found a buyer for the sword for 8kGP in Port Maw.
• Sailed north to Rat's Nest to solve their dragon problem.  Attempted to drop a (giant) tree trunk on dragon laired in ancient ape temple with large hole in roof, missed badly.  Mercenary crossbowmen very effective, but suffered terrible casualties.  Breath weapons are terrifying; fighter, fighter's cleric henchman, and amazon's giant eagle henchman felled by corrosive gas before dragon shot to death.  Falling damage from temple roof also terrifying, but bladedancer/amazon/cleric-hench stack and good mortal wounds rolls resulted in no fatalities.  Stacked Bless from multiple deities with Inspire Courage is pretty substantial.
• Recovered 210-lb solid gold idol of a smiling four-armed ape casually carrying the globe on one shoulder.  Party decides that this was probably a fun god, pirate considers getting religion.  Also found magic shield, two scrolls, three potions.
• Returned to Rat's Nest, healed up, told by elven priests that idol is primitive superstition with no actual deity behind it.  Unable to find buyer for idol.  
• En route to Port Maw for RL&L, ran into merchants at sea, sold idol for 20kGP based on value as bullion.  Some sads were had.
• At Port Maw, RL&L for mortally injured.  Took on cargo of coffee and furs for return to Voltager.
• Avoided encounter with fleet of uncertain motives at sea.
• Arrived at Voltager, sold coffee, unable to find buyer for furs.
• Made plans to explore haunted Castle Haven next session (or to pursue one of Tim's maps)
• Seven weeks elapsed, most of which was seeking merchants for trade goods, rest of most of which was travel time.
• Upon return to Voltager, fresh news is that a pirate captain has escaped from the dungeons...  He may want his ship back.

 Sticking points:

• Still somewhat slow; rusty players (only two players overlapped between sessions) and lack of video continue to induce lag.
• Technical difficulties continue.  We got roll20's flash voice/video working, but lag to the West Coast was horrific and some voice connections just didn't work (ie, I could hear Tom, Tom could hear everyone but me, and everyone but Tom could hear me).  Fell back to skype again.  Conclusion is that I need to switch distros so google hangouts work (currently have issues with audio devices not appearing properly).  Further work required.
• Figuring out XP and GP shares for items found one session and sold the next with an overlapping set of PCs is hard.  Party treasury would make my life a lot easier, and make it easier for party to go "Oh man, a scroll of cloudkill is something our party's wizards should definitely have, but none of them are here this session to make it happen" when something good comes up on the market.  Does generate some risk of mishandling of party finances, however.
• Mercenary pay, morale, and levelling - contentious outside of DaW unit scales.  Surviving crossbowmen of dragon fight should almost certainly have levelled to Fighter 1, probably deserved hazard pay, but PCs did not want to pick up more henchmen, and uncertainty about shares for henchmen-of-henchmen abounded.  As it was, ruled that they left service after being denied spoils of victory, market now flooded with jaded veteran crossbowmen.  Need to find a good solution to this; probably warrants a separate post.
• Market classes too small to be useful for mercantile ventures or to sell magic items and giant golden idols.  Should probably boost Port Maw's class to III on basis of being on trade routes / important river-mouth position.  Willing to leave Voltager a IV on basis that while an important supply point, it's too far from anything to qualify as being on a route even if it were a class I market.  This also has the effect of pushing players towards a mainland base of operations; will probably boost Stillwater to III likewise for some symmetry / choice about best base on Continent.
• Probability distribution of goods for sale by merchants should be influenced by market modifiers at current location, rather than a universal percentile table.  Need better scripting on mercantile in general.  Volumes/values of trade goods pathetically small in class IVs.  Currently a much less potent income source than was last campaign.