First Contact! or Ships in the Night?

 So the game may soon have its first Patron clash.

Confession, I made a mistake in how I adjudicated the Xanathar's quest for shiny magic items to steal. 

Unlike when Manshoon's man was looking for specific items, the Xanathars check was not Pass-Fail. He only needed to get a minimum of 16 to get the items of the quality he was seeking. Even with the Group Check results of [1, 8, 8] he still managed to hear about some uncommon magic items in the City.

Luckily, I caught this before it was to late to retcon.

So I rolled on the tables, he found leads to 4 magic items. One of which turned out to be a Saddle of the Cavalier. An item already owned by the Cassalanters, which I honestly thought would only see used for its material value when I initially rolled it. 

Not quite my own Jar of Wheat Pennies.

I wasn't sure if they were the same item, but after sleeping on it I realised this is exactly what I wanted out of the "Braunstein" aspect of the Patron game. So of course these saddles are one and the same.

I'm a little giddy at the thought of Patrons clashing, I have no idea how I'll adjudicate it if it happens, but I'm very excited at the prospect.

Now to throw in a further wrinkle, if the Xanathar goes ahead with his heist planning, the Harper spy within his organisation will relay word back to the Patron running Force Grey, and Jarlaxles spy might tip him off as well.

Its a four way intersection.

Now of course, if this were a scripted part of the module, or my own plot, I'd stoke the engines and watch this train reach its destination, but its not. This is something that materialised organically during play thanks to the decisions made by 3 different people and how the dice fell.

Which unfortunately means there is a higher likelihood of them not coming to conflict.

Either Xanathar picks a different item, Force Grey scramble to protect another target, Jarlaxle is Jarlaxle, and the Cassalanters never know how close they came to a little #BattleBraunstein on the streets of Waterdeep.

Or more likely, these items are below the Crime Lords notice and he decides to find bigger fish to fry.

Either way this confluence of factors has put a huge grin on my face.

[Update] - The Xanathar is aiming for one of the other magic items: a Potion of Hill Giant strength. He's trying to spread rumours to compromise security, it'll take 12 days (but will fail to take hold).

So its a 3-way rumble, with everything to play for.

[Next Poast]