tl;dr: Tamrin’s Outlaw Friends drove off 11 Crookhorns, felling almost half of them but at a cost.
This was after clarifying the map. Crookhorns had run all over the place. There were arrows hither and yon. It was a confusing mess.
Princess and Madame fell but held on (1 round for every point of Constitution felt more right than 0 = death). I’ll have the other characters say more and add more personality to the combat. I felt like I was giving too much energy to getting the procedures just right.
Princess used her Grimalkin ability to turn into a near-invisible blur of claws and teeth behind bloodshot-berserker-eyes before falling.
Spiro tried to backstab a Crookhorn but missed, resorting to a desperate head-butt before the battle ended. He spent much of the battle near-death.
Morain made herself a big target and took the brunt of the damage, bleeding frozen blood as she almost fell.
Ebbi rained death from atop the willow tree and saved both Princess and Madame Pusskin’s life when she rushed to find her mushroom-loving friend and get a second dose of Ghost Shroom. Princess gave Ebbi her shiniest marble as a thank-you for saving her friend.
In the end, the Crookhorns failed a morale save and ran. One of them protested, “But I was about to burn down this willow tree!” Still, they ran.
tl:dr: Ebbi makes a skeleton friend and then the group runs into an old enemy and a mob of Crookhorns…
During the week I asked if the group wanted to move north along the lake or take the more direct route through the forest. The forest-lovers seemed to take the day. Off we went.
We started a touch late and we were tired, so we ended a little early, getting a little less than an hour to game. It was short and that was okay. I could use the time to flesh out my thoughts on Hoarblight Keep. As usual, the encounter tables and hex details of Dolmenwood delivered. That said, looking for Getting Lost rules was a little frustrating, ping-ponging me back and forth between PDF’s in a way that would’ve been frustrating with a book too. For some reason the miro board I set up with lots of screen shots of the PDF was coming up really blurry.
Ebbi got nice spotlight time picking some Spirithame mushrooms (which we quickly renamed Ghost Shrooms after I couldn’t find the description and just winged it, saying they glowed with a ghostly blue light) and doing a successful foraging dance. Tamrin, Princess, Madame and Spiro looked like they were unhappy in the cold spring rain. Moraine was feeling the Faery Malaise of the area – Ebbi seemed in her element. While in the midst of a great day, Ebbi was a touch ahead of the group, looking for shelter, as they were hoping to end the travel day early amidst miserable pouring rain.
She ran right into Colly, a polished white animated skeleton with an armful of mushrooms and a strange rune on her skull. Ebbi and Colly quickly started talking mushrooms (Colly communicates with understandable teeth whistles) and became best friends right away.
Moraine, Colly and Ebby headed out while the rest of the crew set up camp, started a fire and sought to dry off under the cliff overhang Ebbi had found for them. I forget why I decided I had to roll a random encounter. Someone had rolled something and it seemed clear that they were about to run into something dangerous. They did.
Sir Blackchurch came crashing through the underbrush without a weapon, shield dented, brow cut, horns covered in someone else’s blood. “Crookshanks!” he exclaimed, “We need to fight together or we are doomed. They are sworn to Chaos itself!”
Moraine assessed, making sure it wasn’t fae trickery (the player asked me some questions and I answered – it did seem wildly unlikely but they soon realized they could trust what they were seeing) and handed the Breggle knight who had been taking Tamrin to be beheaded, who had been hunting all of them, who had been their mortal enemy her spear, took out her sword and banged it against her own shield, being able to hear the approaching Crookshanks.
Having heard the Crookshank’s hunting horn bellow, Spiro put on his jacket and took out his knives, Princess ran to help her friends, Madame drew her blade – saluted no one and followed Princess and Tamrin ran after his friends to do whatever bards do when Crookshanks attack.
We’ll start there in a few weeks.
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We decided the city’s big money-maker is the polishing, charging and activation of Ioun Stones in the 3 arcane-industrial castles. Each castle is held by a different faction who, all together, sell the Ioun Stones through a mercantile consortium.
Other details: Long-term stone use causes some kind arcane mutations Adventuring is profitable because it keeps the gem mines clear Ioun mining brings out the strange monsters City Watch called something like Order of the Spindle; focused on defending trade
The group is made of a Mage (fresh out of Carcass Crawler #1), a Thief (with d6-based skills, also out of CC#1) and a Fighter (perhaps with the optional mechanic flourishes). They are known as the Dullgray River Rats, having grown up skipping rocks on the river – went their seperate ways for training and such.
Other classes and heritage options will open up through interactions with the setting. I’m picturing a tepid trinity of arcane saints as the main religion – the Saint of Wizards, the Sorcerer Saint and the Patron of Warlocks. Magic drugs for kicks and performance enhancement. Lots of scrolls hither and yon. Lots of magical treasure for the taking.
Going to write up tables for coming up with quick jobs (looking at you, Blades in the Dark and Swyvers) and encounters/treasure, looking at you, Dolmenwood. Jot down a few outside-the-city hexes and populate ’em. Daydream a bit about the political pressures in the city (oh shit, maybe a Hex Flower for that!). Write up some factions and see how things shake out.
Welcome to Ioun City.
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As heard on the Daydreaming about Dragons podcast, the Inspiration Goat helps me process media and take parts that are useful for the gaming table.
This isn’t about the hottest new thing or the crowdfunding with the biggest payday; it is just a few geeky things that are inspiring me.
It might be weekly; it might be monthly. It all depends on how fast the inspiration goat chews on media and who can know the chewing speed of my favorite very-real goat?
I’ve been poking around the Rijks museum’s online resources and found this pic. Link and info below. Love the info that the artist and the militia got into a tussle of some kind and another artist had to finish it up.
A commission for a civic guard portrait was rarely granted to a painter from outside the city. Quite exceptionally, Frans Hals – from Haarlem – was asked to paint this group portrait. However, he soon found himself at odds with the guardsmen, and the Amsterdam painter Pieter Codde had to step in to finish the seven figures on the right. Known for his small-scale, very smoothly and finely executed works, Codde nevertheless imitated Hals’s loose style as best he could.
While Daggerheart has the community thinking about fantasy RPG that can take on the Killer D’s, have you seen what Richard Whitters, former WotC Art Studio Lead, is brewing?
tl;dr: Tamrin’s Outlaw Friends arrived at the Jaunty Horn and got into a tussle with a trio of shape-shifting fairies who had been in the form of a Breggle Longhorn Knight and a pair of Thieves.
On the first night of spring the Jaunty Horn, a well known road-side inn on the Ditchway, was full of human and Breggle shepherds ready to run their herds to market. There was a Longhorn Breggle Knight whose heraldry showed that he was sworn to Lord Malbleat with a pair of thugs but they were keeping their heads down (more about them later). After Princess Donut led the Thirteen Thieves they were travelling with in some spirited dancing as they sang before the drinking began in earnest, the party set up shop near a fire-pit near the stables rather than crash in the inn’s common room.
I described the trio of Lichhounds, naming them after dogs in Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu and other stories – Wicked, Worse and Worst-Of-All because we’re animal-lovers and the dogs and their names seemed like an important detail. The inn was too busy for the inn-keeper to have time to welcome them or make much of an impression other than that she was built like a linebacker.
Did I forget about the NPC Princess Donut had recruited last game? Yes, I did but with a quick reminder from Aaron, Madam Pusskin, the King’s Own Claw, was back. I even rolled her class randomly to find out that she was a fighter.
Dream of Remembrance sang a beautiful song in High Elfish about the stars in the sky being out of sorts since the Cold Prince’s exile and Spiro (who everyone calls Inspirator) bleated out some Breggle poetry before they arranged watch shfits for the night. Something about talking about watch shifts makes me feel like a junior high kid all over again – in a good way.
I rolled a random encounter in the night, a few bramblings on patrol that gave Princess Donut a glowing green eye looking over until Worst-Of-All ran up and one of the inn-keeper’s kids yelled something in Drunish. The sleepy-eyed kid explained they were just on patrol and probably wouldn’t be a problem as the humanoid-shaped thorn-bushes headed back into the forest.
Moraine woke up the Thirteen Thieves and spoke openly about ambushing the group moving Tamrin. A half-awake shepherd overheard this and went to wake up the Breggle Knight and snitched.
Now I’ll explain what the table would soon figure out – the Breggle Knight and thugs were NOT a Breggle Knight and thugs. They were a trio of fairy shape-shifters that I pre-game rolled as the previous night’s random encounter. So, when the shepherd grabbed the not-a-knight and said that if he didn’t come out and do something he was going to alert Lord Malbleat that his knight had no honor, the shapeshifter came out to see if this could be ended quietly and without a ruckus.
It would not be ended quietly. Spiro brought the ruckus.
Before the fairy shape-shifter in the shape of a knight could do anything, Spiro, the Breggle Thief, goat-charged him and back-stabbed him, doing more than 2/3’s of the monster’s total hit points in damage. What had looked like the Breggle Knight began bleeding in a strange blue color and screeching in a manner that no Breggle would screech. The group finished off the creature, nicknamed, The Goopy, and they heard a further ruckus in the inn’s common room. Moraine went to deal with that and Princess checked out the knight’s stuff (chainmail, longsword and shield, Scroll of Protection Against Wyrm Breath, Arcane Scroll (Ventriloquism & Ioun Shard) and 1 mysterious potion and a ton of jewlery treasure that I forget to tell them about).
The shape-shifters had gotten into a tussle with the 13 Thieves, who weren’t going to let the pair go out and back up their knight friend and then DEFINITELY weren’t going to let them walk when it was clear they were travelling with a shapeshifter. Moraine walked in to the fairies taking a bad beating. One Charisma check and he successfully called a pause. The fairies talked to him in High Elfish and a few things became clear:
These were NOT nice creatures, but former assassins for the Hag Thorn-Rosie who had a job go poorly and overly violent; they ran rather than face the consequences. Despite their attempts to appeal to Moraine’s Cold Prince patriotism the elf gave the Thirteen Thieves the go-ahead to finish the job. Spiro was upset that he had killed the wrong person. Killing a longhorn knight is fine but some fairy…Spiro wasn’t sure that was the right thing at all. And Moraine was clearly sad and conflicted As they left, Moraine assured Spiro that no one in this world, nor fairy would miss these three.
Ebbi took a penny from the shape-shifter’s treasure (for some reason one of them was carrying around 10,000 copper pieces?!?) as a Hunter’s memento.
There are little moments that I really feel like I am not capturing. Yes, this is a goat-person, an elf, a cat-person and a moss-person in a darky fairy tale world. But the humanity that everyone brings to these strange characters is really cool. Ebbi’s reluctance to engage with large groups of people they don’t trust. Spiro’s reaction to violence that wasn’t against who he thought it was. Moraine’s sadness and turning the thieves’s knives against a creature of fairy, even if those fae are killers without pity. Even Princess Donut’s cat-like aloofness is balanced by a deep caring. I like these characters.
I rolled a trio of shape-stealers (DMB, 75) and decided that they had ambushed a group of adventurers. So, I rolled up the adventurers using the tables for doing so (DMB, 108-109) and got a Breggle Knight, a Breggle Thief, a Human Thief, a Human Enchanter and a Woodgrue Enchanter. I decided that they knight and thieves were easier to pose as.
I liked having a night-time encounter that was just a creepy thing sticking its head out of the woods and then going back in. Factions are on the move out there. Things are bubbling under the surface.
Next week we’ll start with some Woodgrue musicians, rocking out, oblivious to the world around them, and then into (through?) Lankshorn.
Check out the following amazing quote about RPG settings from said blog post:
“What’s a Tomb Astronomer?” “Who is the Warlock King?” “Are Empyreans Elves?” “Who are these Carceral Templars”? “Are there humanoids in this setting” “Why doesn’t Scarlet Town have Clerics who can cure disease?”
I don’t know. I don’t actually care all that much even. I know an answer to these questions, but I don’t want to say it’s “THE” answer. Instead I think fantasy needs blank space. I write and present things without answers, though again I may have thought up an answer … it doesn’t need to be shared. Exhaustively documenting setting information for a reader or my own players is a waste of time unless it’s something that will matter to the grubby lives of desperate tomb robbers.
“If there’s one truth in this life, it’s that you simply can’t win. The most you can achieve is to make a nuisance of yourself, for a very short time.”
16 Ways to Defend a Walled City by KJ Parker
First we figured out how much time had passed since we began. Thankfully, Teo kept good notes but it took a while and it was all book-keeping that we should’ve been doing since the start. The Legion, it turns out, is making good time.
I needed a pattern interrupt and Fort Calisco gave it me. In order to move forward they had to go on a mission to distract the army and get the rest of the Legion in a side entrace to the fort.
Land-mines, Hounds (fast zombies that run on all fours), a deadly enemy sniper somewhere out there, trying to get a shot
It was a grind. I made the clock larger than usual and the successes were few and far between. Lots of resistance rolls. In the last minutes of play, Split fell to stress turning to trauma. Split, the legendary sniper who the rookies look to with fear and awe, fell.
We’ll start right there in 2 weeks, deciding whether to try to finish the mission with an out of commission mission-leader or to go back to the Legion and accept the loss, try to regroup and try again with a fresh battallion.
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“People don’t change to suit their god; they change their god to suit them.”
Toll the Hounds by Steven Erikson
I had some trouble getting a grip on this mission. I descibed a few things as they entered this holy valley, trying to show ghoulish crows hunting deer with explosives and cruelty but it didn’t hang together. Then I asked each player to share a time when their character thought they were going to die and the game settled down and something started to happen. The characters connected. I need to find out who these characters are sooner in the session.
In the end they got the crypt antlers and Silver Flowing Glade led the Crows away with a critical hit on a scouting roll. They’ve got Resistance rolls and giving aid and group actions. We need to connect to the characters and to each other earlier in the session. Changing characters every session kind of demands it.
They could’ve succeeded and lost two rookies or failed and lose only one. They chose the failure. Drew mentioned that this didn’t make sense and I agree but said, “Safe to assume that this kind of thing is a design decision because war shouldn’t make sense.” We’ll go over the emotional fallout of a death and the first failed mission of the march with some Between Mission scenes next week as they arrive at Fort Calico. I’ll roll up missions this weekend.
Rookie Idlin Skeider died on the failed mission.
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You do not settle your debts with the gods. You settle them thanks to them.
Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson
We did bookkeeping, looked over the missions and got our sense of context and place back after a long time off. I always prided myself on getting lots done in a given night but tonight was not that. That is fine; after months away from the game, we needed to catch up and get our feet back under us.
First up – a Back at Camp scene. It said, A young soldier is detonating munitions, egged on by others, but Drew suggseted that the Horned One was detonating the munitions and it led to an odd and tense scene in which the Quartermaster, a former academic everyone refers to as, The Professor, confronted the Horned One and accused Her of not contributing.
She responded by deposting the bits and pieces of undead she has killed, keeping the Cinder King’s undead touch from entering camp, all piled up in the shape of antlers. By the time we were done, it was time for us to take our first hour break. We started to get set up for the missions and ran out of time, with 2 hours being a hard stop.
So, next week:
Primary mission:
Secondary mission:
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Githyanki Diaspora 
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