Chasing the Sunset is a West Marches-style exploration game using Fellowship 2nd Edition‘s Horizon rules.
The party: Buckle the Beast/Heart of Earth, Stella the Halfling/Hunter, Professor Gummidge the Lantern/Mad Scientist
Last time, the Fellowship tricked an immortal monster into powering the Miranda, retrofitted to a trans-dimensional lunar lander. They stole the Moon’s power source as they left.
The Moon’s power source is the Elder Star: a miniature star, a powerful ever-burning flame. It can be used to power any technology, but it can also be detonated with devastating effect. When the detonation is triggered, everyone within a mile of the star has 30 minutes to get away from it before it annihilates everything. Anyone and anything within the blast is simply gone forever, never to be seen again, and anyone witnessing the blast is blinded for several minutes.
The trip to the Moon and back has permanently altered the Miranda and the river where it launched. The outrigger came off enroute. Gallybagger is now permanently attached to the Miranda as a figurehead. The Miranda’s hull has a silvery metallic gleam: residue from Gallybagger’s legs stretching out to form a shining interplanetary bridge. The Dwarven Tunneler (usually stored on a net between the outrigger and the hull) landed near the Miranda. Half the water in the river flows up into the sky and evaporates, following the route that the Miranda took to the Moon.
Stella wants to be somewhere with werewolves to see what happens during the full moon. Buckle feels bad for taking the Moon’s power supply and leaving the Kobolds stranded, so he wants to repair the teleporter terminal that he destroyed years ago. Gummidge is delighted. This is the most exciting and cool thing that has happened to him in a long time. WIthout Gallybagger, he floats around as a shimmering ball of light. He looks similar to the Little Lights that follow Buckle.
Stella wants to talk to him, but walks up to the wrong light first. Gummidge is over the side of the Miranda looking at the changes to the hull. He hears Stella talking to him and shouts back, without moving to face her.
Stella: What have you done to my ship?
Gummidge: Improved it! You made modifications before. You weren’t attached to its original form. The hull is mostly metal, but all the surface detail from the original wood are still visible.
Gummidge floats along the hull, twirling and pulsing his light to make it reflect on the hull. He pauses when he reaches Gallybagger.
Gummidge: It was for a good cause. I don’t think I regret it, but I do–I’m going to miss Gallybagger. Hmm, this isn’t the place to find components for the next one.
Stella: Wait, you built it?
Gummidge: Up until now it was my greatest creation, but it has been replaced by our trans-dimensional bridge. I couldn’t have done it without you. And Ohm.
Stella: I hope he’s doing OK.
Gummidge: I’m sure it’s a grand new adventure with many things to learn.
Stella: He doesn’t like new things.
Gummidge doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he doesn’t.
Buckle is in the cabin with Baffle, who is not pleased. Her mission is preventing dangerous and powerful technology from being misused. Buckle wants to use the Elder Star to help Platyfolk. He checks the Magi-fiche reader that he took from the library for information about the Eldar Star.
- Tell me about the makers of the Elder Star. What are they doing? What will they do next?
- The Dragons didn’t make it. They’d love to claim it, because it embodies fire and power, the greatest Draconic virtues. This was left by cosmic Visitors from somewhere very far away. They left it behind because they didn’t think it was important. Descriptions in the reports are confusing and contradictory. People in different positions looking at the same Visitor saw different things. Gummidge cross-references the Magi-fiche with his celestial knowedge. This star changed color. There was a supernova over there. A new nebula formed there. It seems these visitors are moving along a path and changing things on the way.
- Is something hidden or out of place?
- The Elder Star is a glowing sphere with a ring floating around it as a handle. Grabbing the sphere by each pole and twisting will unlock the hemispheres from each other and allow them to be pulled apart, revealing a tiny red jewel hovering in the center. Crushing that jewel makes the Elder Star overload, and in 30 minutes it will annihiliate everything within one mile. Stella’s glad the process is too complicated to trigger accidentally.
- What will happen if the Elder Star is used to power multiple things?
- Buckle wants to power the hamster wheel and use it as a gyroscope. Baffle brought a piece of forbidden technology for emergencies. It’s an automatic astrolabe that determines the user’s position on the planet. It doesn’t use satellite like. It detects pulsars and quasars even during the day. It can point the way to a chosen waypoint, but it needs external power to do that. Buckle wants to test the limits of the Elder Star and use it to power both at once. He hooks it up to the hamster wheel and it spins so fast he has to reduce the power. He connects it to the astrolabe but the Elder Star can only send power in one direction at once. The hamster wheel slams to a stop. The gears are covered in a layer of frost. The Elder Star pulled all the energy, even heat, out of the Hamster Wheel. The astrolabe starts sliding across the table towards the waypoint.
Buckle asks Gummidge how they can reach the teleporter terminal, which is in a cave in the Fairy Forest. The Miranda can’t sail there. Perhaps they can use the Dwarven Tunneler. Gummidge doesn’t want to deal with the angry old tree at the border of the Simple Savannah, Drowned Forest, and Fairy Forest. They could go north, all the way around the Rain Comet Crater. But they have a Dwarven Tunneler! They can tunnel under the angry tree and come up directly in the cave, avoiding all the Fairies. The Dwarven Tunneler only seats two Dwarf-sized people. Everyone else will have to walk down the tunnel that it digs.
Stella is still basking in the serendipity that Ohm is happy to stay on the Moon. She didn’t expect to fulfill its deepest desires. She’s also not sure that the Vampires should all die. They have been terrible to her and others, but wiping out a whole race is a big deal. Curing lycanthropy is one thing. Those people continue being people and don’t change into werewolves anymore. Getting rid of vampires means creatures dying. She’s very happy for the good things that happened and unsettled by the things that didn’t go to plan. She’s living in a silent space, feeling a lot of feelings, but having no one to express them to.
Buckle: Stella, we think the best way to get to the teleporter is to tunnel there. What do you think?
Stella: I don’t know that the Tunneler will make it that far. How will we make sure we get there?
Buckle: It doesn’t seem much further than the distance from Port Fennrick to the Hidden Library.
Hamfast and Rose stay with the ship, as do the birds, Ugg, Jammy the Jellyfish, and the mountain lions. Stella drives the Tunneler. Baffle acts as navigator with the automatic astrolabe. As the Fellowship organizes itself, Gummidge realizes that this is where he must say farewell. He floats over to the Tunneler.
Gummidge: Uh, assorted creatures, it was wonderful working with you. I think we really made a contribution to science and the progress of all creatures. This was very important to me. Thank you, but I must go.
Buckle: You don’t want to visit the teleporter?
Gummidge: That goes to the Moon, right? I’ve already been there. I really want to build another suit.
Buckle: Where will we find you?
Gummidge: Thaumatown’s Robotics Facility.
Stella: Good to get to say goodbye to you this time!
Gummidge: Oh, yes! Goodby, Stella.
Gummidge bobs and flashes, then floats away.
Baffle interprets the astrolabe and tells Stella where to aim the Tunneler. They plan to tunnel deep enough to go under Old WIllow’s roots. As they approach the co-ordinates indicated by the astrolabe, Stella notices the soil getting looser and wetter. She estimates how far she needs to go around to avoid the roots, but doesn’t realize that willow roots frow very fast and spread three times as far as the branches above. Old Willow is a huge tree on the surface, and the Tunneler is already inside its root network. Roots emerge from the all sides of the tunnel to grab the Tunneler and everyone walking behind it!
- Old Willow: An ancient tree with a twisted heart. It strikes out at those who enter its territory without permission.
- Get Off My Lawn: The old willow’s attacks are Giant, Melee, and send anyone hit by them flying out of its territory. The old wood’s territory is anywhere its branches can reach.
- Dark Heart of the Woods: The old willow is in such a state due to something wrong with the forest it calls home. If the source of its dark rage is found and dealt with, the old wood becomes calm and no longer a threat. While this source exists, however, the old wood will revive in a new tree whenever it is killed, cut down, or stripped of branches.
Buckle: I bet trees are afraid of fire.
Buckle runs from root to root, setting them on fire. The roots retreat.
Buckle: You have to go deeper!
Buckle chars the ceiling of the tunnel to delay the roots from pursuing them. Stella takes teh tunneler deeper. The roots withdraw, then burst forth from two different directions, making a pincer attack on Buckle. Buckle ducks, grabs them, and ties them in a knot. He scampers down the tunnel after the Tunneler. Stella goes even deeper than Old Willow’s roots and the Fellowship escapes.
Guided by the automatic astrolabe, the Fellowship emerges inside the cave where the teleporter used to be. The scorched ruins are still there.
The teleporter terminal was a red pyramid with spaces for four huge batteries. Doors led inside to a pyramid-shaped space that swapped with the space in another terminal. The interior of the cave is scorched from when Buckle destroyed the terminal, but later, every atom in the cave was teleported one foot in a random direction, turning the smooth rock surface into dangerous, jagged spikes.
Buckle consults with Baffle about fixing the teleporter. Baffle has manuals from the Moon explaining the construction and operation of the teleporter. She notices an important component that is not among the debris. The boundary of the space that swaps between terminals is a pyramidal cage of fine wire mesh. It’s all one piece and too large to fit through the doors of the pyramid. That piece is gone. Where could it be?
- What do my senses tell me?
- Dense vegetation from the groud to the high canopy. There are sounds of animals all over, but also giggling, probably of trickster fairies. The cave is under a certain tree in a bit of a clearing, and that’s the only landmark. it’s very easy to get lost in the jungle. Buckle hopes to meet another dinosaur like Kitty, but none are evident.
- Is something hidden or out of place?
- Broken-down Dwarven vehicles. A Tunneler with a ruined drill. A cart with a broken axle. The wrecks are in a line from south-east to north-west
- What will happen if I go looking for the teleporter cage?
- You will get lost and be attacked by fairies. The fairies aren’t physically impressive, but they are tricky. They will lead you into traps or set beasts upon you.
Buckle reports his findings to the Fellowship inside the cave. Baffle wonders if they could use a ball of string to mark their route and avoid getting lost. Stella thinks that’s safer than using breadcrumbs. Buckle thinks the fairies would mess with the string. He could remove his fireproof suit and burn an unmistakable trail through the jungle. Stella goes to look at the broken Dwarven vehicles, but as she walks out of the save, a Boa Constrictor drops on her!
- Boa Constrictor: The largest of the snakes, it relies on pure strength to kill its prey rather than toxins or trickery..
- Constrict: When the boa would deal damage to someone it hasn’t wrapped up, it constricts them. Constricted foes cannot move, they cannot free themselves, and they will slowly die from the boa’s Stranglehold.
- Stranglehold: Anyone grabbed by a boa takes damage each time the boa gains the spotlight.
Buckle: Hey, neighbor, do you mind letting go of my friend?
Boa: You guys are OK. I won’t eat you. The fairies told me to hunt here, so I’ll get in trouble if I don’t constrict something.
Stella: Let me tell you, you are in luck! My good friend Gus has something for you.
Gus pulls out an entire bone-in ham!
Gus: You can squeeze it if it makes you feel better.
Boa: It does.
Buckle tries to chat with the Boa, but it is completely focused on eating. It’ll be a week before it wants to talk to anyone.
Stella examines the Dwarven vehicles. They have been here for years and plants are growing over them. They were here the last time Stella and Buckle were in the Fairy Forest. They just didn’t happen upon them. Stella looks for parts she can salvage to enhance her Dwarven Tunneler.
- Is something hidden or out of place?
- Looking down the line of vehicles, all the trees in the line are small. They are younger than the trees around them. The young trees continue in either direction.
- What do my senses tell me?
- The tunnelers were part of a large convoy that smashed through these trees years ago, and the convoy continued on, leaving damaged vehicles behind. The Fellowship can follow that path of disturbed trees.
- What will happen if we try to move one of these vehicles?
- Stella opens the hatch of the wrecked Tunneler and it crumbles in her hand. A swarm of metal-eating termites emerge!
- Metal-Eating Termite Swarm: A swarm of creepy crawlies who get everywhere you don’t want them to be.
- Consume: The bug swarm is hungry, but people are hard to eat. When they swarm over someone, if they have any metal equipment, the swarm will eat that first, before dealing damage to them.
- Fragile Swarm: The bug swarm can’t be hurt by standard weapons – you need Area, Burning, Giant, or Dangerous attacks to damage them. They can crawl over any surface or enemy they like. Anyone with a bug swarm on them is in Despair. When the Bug Swarm becomes damaged, it is destroyed.
Stella activates her wireport and appears in the branches of a nearby tree. The metal-eating termites briefly form an outline of Stella before falling to the ground. Stella finds herself right next to a fairy! She wonders if he is a Vampire, but his mouth is so tiny, fangs would be hard to see. Buckle tries to flee, but the termites swarm over him. He has no metal equipment, so they bite him.
- Sprite, he/him fairy: an orange-skinned, thin, elongated humanoid the size and shape of a Barbie doll, held aloft by buzzing insect wings. He is nude and glamours himself to PG-rated indistinctness, also like a Barbie doll.
- Arboreal: Fairies fly through the foilage with supernatural agility. Anyone trying to catch or harm a fairy in the trees is in Despair.
- Trickster: When you take aggressive action against a Fairy, you automatically fail as if you got a 6-, then damage this stat.
Sprite blows fairy dust at Stella. She smashes her last cattail and blows the fluff back at Sprite. there’s gunk everywhere and Stella ends up inhaling both fairy dust and cattail fluff. The fairy dust puts her to sleep, but she chokes on the cattail fluff and wakes up. Sprite retreats. He wasn’t ready to attack yet.
Back on the ground, Buckle quickly removes his fireproof suit. His fiery body incinerates the swarm and lights up the surrounding jungle. Thefire is reflected in the eyes of hidden creatures all around them.
Buckle: That was exciting. We should finish up and get out of here.
Stella looks inside the wrecked Tunneler. There’s no room-sized pyramid inside, but this model has removable doors that can be used as shields. Stella takes the doors to use on her Tunneler. Then she wall-walks up to the canopy to see where the trail of the Dwarven caravan leads.
The trail of trees goes north, and Stella sees evidence of settlements on hills far to the north. Between the jungle and the hills is the City Junkyard: a tangle of buildings of all different styles jumbled and collapsed on top of each other. She also sees Sprite gathering other fairies.
The Fellowship drives the tunneler along the trail left by the Dwarven convoy, crashing through the young trees with the drill. They are ambushed by Elven Archers! That’s the assistance Sprite was able to find.
- Group of Elven Archers: Experts with the bow. They say elven archers never miss.
- Perfect Shot: Damage this stat to shoot something out of their hands.
- An Even More Perfect Shot: Damage this stat to make something ridiculous happen.
- Group: This enemy can act against two people at once. When this enemy is destroyed, this stat is damaged, or this is their only stat left, replace the Group with two normal enemies.
Six arrows from different directions all hit the seam between the Dwarven Tunneler’s drill and compartment, jamming the drill.
Archers: We remember you as enemies of the Vampires and the forest! We will destroy you!
The Elves are rocked by a powerful explosion! Several are killed or flee, but two remain. One archer shoots the Medallion of Cleft Sky off Buckle’s neck and the other shoots Silk (Stella’s riding spider) Stella exits the Tunneler and uses her Jumping Spider ability, jumping close and far and in all directions.
Elven Archer: I can read your patterns from my hundreds of years of archery practice!
Buckle watches the other Elven Archer carefully, and right as the Archer is about to fire, Buckle uses WIzardly to un-nock the arrow. The Archer is shocked! He hasn’t misfired in decades! He retreats and supports the other Archer, who has figured out Stella’s pattern. Stella knows something is up when the Archers change stance. She jumps onto Silk and they charge the Archers! She’s still not trying to kill them, just terrify them. It works and one flees. Buckle taunts the remaining Archer.
Buckle: The Vampires are all doomed anyways? Come the full moon, you’re all going to be dead!
It works too well. The Archer shoots Buckle, hitting his bill. The Acher sees that he’s lost all his back-up, so he leaps backwards off the tree and shoots multiple arrows that hit small branches and make them swing down and block him from view. The Fellowship don’t pursue. Stella retrieves the medallion and puts it on Silk.
Stella: Buckle, do you think the pyramid is with the Dwarves?
Buckle: It seems like something they would take. Let’s go find out.
Before they move on, they Fellowship needs to get the Tunneler’s drill working again. They use sheet metal from the original doors to pry the arrows loose, so the shields that Stella just added to the Tunneler must stay as permanent doors. The Fairy Forest holds no meaningful danger for them, so they reach the edge of the City Junkyard without further incident.
Chunks of different types of buildings are piled together, including mer-Folk buildings grown from coral, half-rotten wooden buildings that slint, Human stone-work, Dwarven stone-work, any kind of building imaginable. Everything is in danger of collapsing, especially if a Dwarven Tunneler drills through them. This is the last obstacle between them and that settlement on the hills.
Stella: Buckle, I think we need to leave the Tunneler here.
Buckle: Let me scout ahead and find a way through.
Buckle seeks a vantage point to plot a path through the City Junkyard that is stable enough for the Dwarven Tunneler.
- What will happen if I direct the Dwarven Tunneler along this path?
- Buckle guides the Dwarven Tunneler onto a cobblestone street, but it was just a layer of cobblestone over another building. The Tunneler falls through the street into a grain silo buried on its side. Rotten hay goes everywhere.
Stella exits the Tunneler and walks up the walls of the silo towards the surface, but the wall collapses under her weight. She’s pinned beneath debris. Buckle scampers down from his vantage point and pulls Stella out of the cobblestones and rotten hay.
The silo is 20 feet across, and the hay surface is about 12 feet below the hole leading to the surface. Buckles walks towards the top end of the silo. When he leaves the circle of light from the hole to the surface, he sees the darkness around him moving!
- Nightmaw: A shadowbeast that hungers like no other.
- Shadows: The Nightmaw can only move through shadows, along the surface. It cannot form in total darkness, and it cannot touch anything off the
ground or in the light. It can only be harmed by fire and direct sunlight. - Hunger: Whenever Nightmaw deals damage, it gains Armor (1 Use). It can hold a maximum of 2 Armor at a time.
- Shadows: The Nightmaw can only move through shadows, along the surface. It cannot form in total darkness, and it cannot touch anything off the
Buckle can easily drive off or destroy these creatures with his fiery body, but that would also ignite the wooden silo and hay. He retreats to the circle of sunlight.
GM note: Since Buckle can become immune to a location stat (like Unstable?) can he drive the Tunneler over fragile structures without collapsing them? Does the Tunneler become lighter with him at the controls?
Buckle knows the solid path he picked out is nearby, so he aims the Tunneler at it and drills through the silo’s walls. He comes out on the path, follows it for a while, and comes to a dead end! From his vantage point, he didn’t see this building because a taller building hid it. It’s a fortified tower on its side, with thick stone walls and arrow slits.
Stella wants to just drill through it, but doesn’t want to cause another collapse.
Buckle: Hold my suit.
Without his fire-proof suit, Buckle scouts the fortified tower. Every room he enters is brightly lit and Shadowmaws must flee. Stella sees lights moving through the arrow slits. When the tower was upright it had wooden floors connected by ladders and hatches. These are now walls with doors. The bottom of the tower is missing. That side is just opened. The top of the tower is covered with sloped stone to deflect missiles dropped by flying creatures. The Tunneler could easily enter the tower from the bottom and drill through the wooden floors, but getting out the top would be hard.
The strange lights draw the attention of two Dwarves, covered with Bronze armor, who come down from the hills. Buckle doesn’t notice because he’s inside the tower.
Stella: Hi, we are on our way up to your town. As you can see, we have a tunneler and it looks like you might have familiarity with it. We were hoping you could help us fix it.
The Sentries bring Miners, who safely tunnel through the tower walls, and they all escort the Fellowship and their Tunneler into New Clay Fortress. A metal drawbridge controls access to a tunnel that leads into the hills. Around a corner there’s a Trade Depot, with a long table on each side for the city and visiting caravans to display goods. After going around another corner and down some stairs, the Fellowship comes out into the city proper. Stella must meet with the manager to get a repair job scheduled for her Tunneler.
- Ast he/him manager
The Fellowship enters an office where Ast sits at a desk with stacks of clipboards. Dwarves bring work orders in to be signed, then take the signed work orders out to various workshops.
Ast: I’m busy. What’s this? Always another job.
Stella: We’re here to get our Tunneler fixed. Repaired?
Ast: You’re not on any of the work teams assigned tunnelers.
Ast looks closer.
Ast: You don’t even live here!
Stella: We brought our own Tunneler because we saw other one down the hill and thought maybe you can help.
Ast: Well, it would have to be behind other high-priority jobs. You’d have to stay for a while
Stella: Staying in town for a little bit is OK?
She’s half seeking permission from Ast and half checking in with Buckle.
Stella: That’s fine, we have others that we need to talk to. Do you happen to know who knows the most about polygon-shaped metal?
Ast: If it’s shaped metal we have metal smiths, metal crafters, blacksmiths, armorsmiths, weaponsmiths…
Stella: A cage in the shape of a pyramid that’s already been created?
Ast: Cages. You should talk to the captain of the guard. He’s in charge of traps. Used to be Sarvesh, but she moved back.
The Fellowship goes to see the new Captain of the Guard. She’s one of the few Dwarves who has iron armor. Most soldiers have bronze equipment.
- Dorin she/her Dwarf Captain of the Guard
- What can she tell us about a pyramid-shaped cage that may have shown up in the last two months?
- Dorin: I know exactly what you’re talking about. another group of adventurers came through here. They stumbled into one of our cage traps, but there were two cages. One of our standard cages, and a pyramidal cage made of relatively fine metal. We didn’t know what to do with it, so we put it in a cage stockpile and it’s probably still there. It doesn’t fit our traps. We don’t know what to do with it.
- Stella: we would love to take that off your hands!
- What should I be wary of when dealing with them?
- While talking about the other adventurers, Dorin lets slip that they participated in a sortie into the caves that went so badly the Dwarves walled up the entrance. The Dwarves will leave you to die if it will save their city or people.
- What do you want and how can we help you get it?
- Dorin: Reclaiming the old city has made logistics confusing. They are trying to re-establish the Dwarven Waterways, but there’s a problem. Some Goblins are blocking one of the old tunnels and not letting their work crews repair it. Maybe you can solve that problem.
Stella: What’s it worth to you?
The broker handles deals and money, so Dorin takes them to Ziklag.
- Ziklag he/him Dwarf broker
Stella: This will open up communication between the old city and new city. Since we are going to use our taletns and materials to make it happened, it only seems fair that while it is repaired it is enhanced in terms of weaponry and armor.
Ziklag: You shouldn’t even have the Tunneler! It’s clearly Dwarven property.
Stella: How dare you say that this is not my birthright? I’m half-Dwarven! Some parts of this Tunneler have been passed down in my family for decades! Years! Generations!
Ziklag: Sorry, I didn’t realize.
The Fellowship gets to keep the Tunneler, and they can take the pyramidal cage because it’s useless to the soldiers. While they were underground, the full moon rose over the surface. The Fellowship doesn’t see what the adjusted moonlight does.
NEW CLAY FORTRESS MESSAGE BOARD
- Stella: They will try to take your gear if they feel it shouldn’t be yours. How rude!
- Buckle: We’re taking the cage back to rebuild the teleporter and rescue the Kobolds trapped on the Moon. Somebody stole their power source!
END-OF-SESSION MOVE
- Did we thoroughly explore a new location?
- YES, the Moon
- Did anyone find what they were seeking?
- YES, Buckle took another Source of Power
- Did we learn something new about the world or its people?
- YES, the Kobolds on the Moon. The Vampire/Dragon war.
Three boons
- gear
- gear
- heal