Campaign Interlude: Azin the Flying Merchant

 

From our summary of Session 16:

This is the first appearance of Azin in this campaign. he is an NPC that first turned up in my 3rd edition Greyhawk campaign featuring Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil and it seemed appropriate that he reappear here. He is partly here to provide a source of outside news and possibly rumors but he is mainly here to be a trading post for magical items and truly exotic things. Operating out the village means there is not a great way to do anything with excess magic items and super-expensive stuff without a trip to Verbobonc at least. In 3rd edition there was a need to be able to trade out and upgrade magic and I thought it would be interesting to try that option here and see how much the players would use it. Short version: They like it a lot ...

So in 3E (and subsequently Pathfinder) it was handy to have a way for characters to be able to craft, modify, and trade magic items as a lot of the system's math assumed magic items were present, especially in combat. Now in a big enough city or maybe an extraplanar setting this would be easier to justify but I was running Return with the PC's hanging around Hommlet and running around out in the wilderness much of the time so I needed a way to work in this option - enter Azin.

He appears to be human (he is not, not that the players know this) and uses a flying carpet and presumably a bag of holding or three to transport magical items and occasional exotic goods. No he is not going to bring you a ballista but he can manage a sword or a suit of armor. I have him making the rounds on a pretty set schedule so my players know when he will show up and this gives them one more reason to care about the passage of time in-game, so he's a nice little enhancer there as well.

When we decided to play this campaign using Tales of the Valiant I realized it would be a good opportunity to bring him back. ToV has prices and rarity levels on all of its magic items and crafting rules for them as well so now we have a hard value on everything and several ways to compare one thing to another. It has been 20-odd years since that prior campaign but a few of my players were around back then and they did remember him and were pretty happy when they realized what that meant.

So here's how Azin works in this campaign:

• He comes through Hommlet once a month (adding it to his usual Greyhawk - Dyvers -Verbobonc route)
• If they are interested then I roll up "What does Azin Have?" for that visit and the haggling begins:
• 4x Common items 
• 2x Uncommon items
• 1x Rare item
• He doesn't do potions & scrolls - just hard items
• Azin starts at double the book price to buy something but he is willing to trade item (or items) directly as well and he will even occasionally offer to buy something if it catches his eye but that's not really his main interest.

ToV has random tables for all categories of magic item so that's the universe of what could be available and I moderate it a bit if something really stupid comes up. 

That's really it - he's turned up 4 or 5 times in the 40-ish sessions so far and some visits are more productive than others. It gives the party another reason to head back to the village or to wait longer in it which breaks up the dungeon crawling a little more. It also lets them tune up their characters a little and try out the occasional odd item they might not otherwise find or know or care about. Attunement requirements keep a lid on the "real" magic items so a lot of what they end up trying out are the lesser items like lucky dice or anklets of alacrity. Most of what they have comes from the temple and if they want something custom or to pick and choose from more sellers they have to go to Verbobonc - which they do!

As far as magic items in this campaign I tend to run Greyhawk as less heavy on the magic than the Forgotten Realms, but while people may think the old school stuff had less magic in it if you look at the old modules they are absolutely stuffed with magic items. From Keep on the Borderlands to this one to Against the Giants and beyond there are a ton of magic items in there and (even if you consider the larger party sizes we tended towards in the old days) any party that makes it most of the way through will be absolutely decked out in magic gear. So there is quite a bit of magic to be found, despite my preferred take on Greyhawk. Oddly enough the modern 5E-type games' attunement rules keep this under control pretty well as even at say 9th level you're only allowed to attune 4 items. Most of the "good stuff" requires attunement, then there's a bunch of "OK" stuff that does not, and there is a very narrow range of "very good and does not require attunement" and my players pounce on those hard when they encounter one.

So there it is - Azin and magic items in our campaign in general!