Chasing the Sunset is a West Marches-style exploration game using Fellowship 2nd Edition‘s Horizon rules.
The fellowship: Boris the Remnant, Ol’ Jardiner the Harbinger, Yonne the Rain.
Last time, the Fellowship reached the Forgotten Lands and convinced the inhabitants that Boris was not trying to kill everyone. This time, they make the perilous journey to the original homeland of the people who now live in the Forgotten Lands.
GM note: We (everyone in this session, plus Markus’ player) decided what the original homeland of the Forgotten Lands was like. They had super-technology and stripped the land of all resources to build flying cities. Nature cursed them for their hubris by sending magical boars, one of which turned out to be Boris. They abandoned most of their super-technology when they fled the curse. This happened 800 years ago. Any new technology they develop aims to be harmonious with nature. When they left, they didn’t move. The Forgotten Lands and the orginal land are somehow in the same place, like a double exposure. The fog surrounding the land is a magical transition that moves ships from one dimension to another. The sea level of the Forgotten Lands is higher than the original. Ships sail up a slope as they pass through the fog. People who know about the original land say “the library is the key” but no one ever tries to go back.
Every major town in the Forgotten Lands has a library because education is important. The head library is in the Royal Education Center of the capital. Dr. Melinora is the head librarian. She’s excited to meet someone who was present at such a historically significant time, but Boris was created to destroy what she works to preserve, so she wishes this great event was safer. Boris, Ol’ Jardiner, and Yonne are in the main library with Queen Lucia & Dr. Melinora. The royal house still uses the old language in royal decrees and logbooks, but most pre-curse documents are difficult to read, even for scholars.
Boris has been trying to notice cultural customs the whole time he’s been in the Forgotten Lands. The Forgotten Lands has a meritocracy that’s actually based on merit. They respect knowledge, experience, and expertise. A known expert can speak directly, while others use more hedging. Of course Queen Lucia can say whatever she wants and people obey, but Dr. Melinora can tell Lucia “Don’t sit there” while in the library because she knows which chairs are historical artifacts. Boris imitates the direct, straightforward speech that he hears from Dr. Melinora and Queen Lucia.
Boris: We need access to the library so we can make a safe and effective journey through to the ruins and test if this taboo can be broken. If so, I would be the one to facilitate that, having been part of the curse myself.
The people of the Forgotten Lands don’t know Boris. He hasn’t proven his expertise, so this plain speaking sounds presumptuous. He’s overstepping.
Dr. Melinora: That is a difficult task for you to attempt so lightly. I don’t think you have the skill or the mettle.
Boris: We just met, so I’m not sure where you get that assumption from, but it is your land, so I have no argument to say you’re incorrect. I merely wish to remedy a problem that has been linked to me. If there’s anything I can do to assist, I would like to. I don’t want to push and make you feel uncomfortable.
Yonne doesn’t like how these people are disrespecting Boris. Ol’ Jardiner smoothes things over by looking a little into the future and watching Dr. Melinora’s face to ensure she reacts positively to each thing he says.
Ol’ Jardiner: Forgive my companion’s forthrightness. He has not proven himself to you, but rest assured he will be under my supervision at all times. I not only saved the Hidden Library (with which you have recently re-established contact) but I recalibrated the Moon and rid the world of the scourge of vampires, so you can trust in my ability to handle powerful magical problems.
If a fog-generating boat uses water with a special magical charge, it can open a portal from the Forgotten Lands to the old country. An artifact in the library, unused for centuries, can instill this magical charge, but only to very pure water, like from the lake in the Unicorns’ lands. Some messages from the message board provide helpful tips.
Averiela: Approach the Unicorns with due reverence
Dryden: If you want a library card, don’t mention my name.
If animals can aid you, call upon my fame.
The Fellowship leaves the Bastion of Memory and travels the road to the port a little ways. They turn off and head for the lake. There’s knee-high bright green grass waving in the breeze and birds singing everywhere. Very tranquil and beautiful.
Ol’ Jardiner: OK, we don’t barge in, we wait until they invite us in.
Boris: Vampire rules.
Ol’ Jardiner: Usually I’d say, “Don’t mention Vampires,” but maybe mentioning that we destroyed them would be helpful.
Yonne: You destroyed them. I watched from the ground.
Soon enough a herd of Unicorns gallop by and a few split off to approach the Fellowship. Buckle imitates an equine bow by putting oneleg out in front of him and bending the other leg. A Unicorn approaches and repeats the gesture. When the Unicorn rises, Ol’ Jardiner rises.
Ol’ Jardiner: Hello, great Unicorn. I am Ol’ Jardiner, a friend of Dryden and Averiela. Your herd is fond of White Sands, her companion. They aren’t with me today, but my companions and I are on an important mission to help the whole Forgotten Lands.
Yonne: Hello. That’s us. The companions.
Ol’ Jardiner: We request to fill this bucket with the pure water of the spring you drink from. I know this is a great request, and I would not ask if it was not important.
The Unicorn nods. Ol’ Jardiner offers the bucket, which the Unicorn takes in its mouth. The Unicorn fills the bucket at the spring and returns it to Ol’ Jardiner. He takes it and does the Unicorn bow again, very carefully to avoid spilling the water. Yonne carefully stays away from the water. She does not want to turn it acidic. The Unicorn escorts them back to the road, and the Fellowship returns to the Bastion of Memory and the main library. Boris turns to the guards escorting them.
Boris: See that? The Unicorns are totally cool with us. Just more evidence that I’m not here to kill you. Tell your friends.
In the library, the Fellowship looks for the device that will magically charge the water. It hasn’t been used in centuries and may have been painted over or otherwise concealed.
- Tell me about the machine parts? How could they hurt or help me?
- The machine parts must be cleaned before use or the magic won’t work.
- There’s a central lobby covered with a glass dome, with circular structures on the floor to match. One of those rings on the floor is a magnetic ring, part of the machine.
- What part of the machine is hidden or out of place?
- Two medallions that look like decorations on opposite sides of the library are parts of the machine. Boris points them out because they are made in pre-curse style. He’s old enough to remember that style.
- What will happen if I use the magical machine?
- The two medallions form a horizontal axis between them, and the magnetic ring projects its energy vertically. The water must be placed at the point where these magical lines of force intersect, which is right above the reference desk.
Yonne melts the paint off the medallions with her acidic touch. Ol’ Jardiner asks Dr. Melinora for permission to disrupt the library temporarily.
Ol’ Jardiner: Boris here recognizes these ancient motifs on these medallions. They’ll form the pole. This ring here is charged metal that forms a counter-pole. At the intersection is where we’ll align the water. You’ll see that’s right where the reference desk is. For the safety of the library patrons and your materials, and for the effectivess of this magical ritual, we need to clear the lobby of patrons and also move this desk. Once we are finished, we can put everything back.
Dr. Melinora: Alright, but you must do this at midnight, after the library is closed.
In the intervening hours, Ol’ Jardiner goes to the market and buys amulets for the Fellowship, so they don’t forget the Forgotten Lands when they leave. Boris stays behind because he doesn’t want to scare the merchants. Ol’ Jardiner buys a gem-encrusted amulet for himself because it’s pretty and he likes nice things. He asks about different materials and picks a metal amulet for Yonne that she can hold without dissolving it. Boris wants something plain or popular, so Ol’ Jardiner buys a cheap amulet made of stamped metal. He takes the chain from Yonne’s amulet (she can hold it inside her body) and links it end-to-end so Boris has a double length of chain to fit around his thick and powerful neck.
At midnight, the Fellowship returns to the library, each wearing an amulet. Dr. Melinora conjures the same soft floating light as Ol’ Jardiner to light the dark library. Ol’ Jardiner doesn’t want any structure to interfere with the magical energy, so he holds the water bucket in place with Wizardry. Dr. Melinora recites an incantation and the ring on the floor starts to glow. The light reflects off the medallions, which are mis-aligned after centuries of neglect. Yonne and Boris each take one medallion and look across the library to see where the reflection from the glowing ring hits the far wall. They adjust each medallion so that the reflected light hits the other medallion. That ensures proper alignment. The spell is extra beautiful in the dark, which makes all the glowing energy more visible. Ol’ Jardiner carefully brings the charged water down and seals the container.
Ol’ Jardiner: Phew! We’re done!
Dr. Melinora: You’re half-done. My desk is still in pieces.
The Fellowship puts everything bad how it was before, except the ring and medallions are now shiny and clean. Moving furniture is tiring, but not a challenge to experienced adventurers.
With a jar of magically-charged water in hand, the Fellowship leaves the central library and returns to the port, where Commander Bartholemew (a middle-aged Halfling man) has orders to assist them with one of the reserve fog-generation boats. The spinning magnetic ring doubles as propulsion and magical fog generator. The boat moves away from the dock on conventional power, then rotates the ring until it’s horizontal directly above the boat. The ring spins up and lifts the boat into the air, revealing (from under the waterline) large fins used to direct the boat through the air. The ring tilts forward to pull the boat forward, and the boat moves off to a safe distance.
The ring is about 20 feet above the deck and spinning rapidly. The Fellowship can’t jump that high and anyone throwing a rope to it would be flung aside. The Fellowship ponders how to safely pass through the ring. They modify a line-thrower, used to bring the boat back to dock. Fog-generating boats usually land a short distance from the dock, launch a line to the dock, and get pulled in. That way they don’t use their dangerous ring engines at the dock. The ship’s engineer weighs the Fellowship and adjusts the pneumatic pressure. They remove the coils of rope and place a hatch over the mouth of the line-thrower for the Fellowship to stand on. When modifications are complete, the commander orders the magically-charged water to be placed in the fog generator. The fog swirling out of the magnetic ring changes color subtlely. The Fellowship stands on the hatch, and the rigger’s mate, first class activates the line-thrower. As the Fellowship flies through the air, Yonne swirls around her solid companions, stabilizing their path like a rifled bullet. All three (and their Slime pets) pass neatly through the ring and disappear into the fog.
GM note: I made a table of locations and encounters the Fellowship could find in the other dimension.
The Fellowship emerges in a flat, desolate land. This area was scraped to the bedrock to extract all its resources. Over hundreds of years, erosion has broken the rock surface into boulders and stones, but not plants or animals have moved in. Except one. Somehow, there’s a Unicorn here. Ol’ Jardiner had a lot of practice interacting with unicorns recently, so he steps forward and bows in the Unicorn style. The Unicorn mirrors the gesture.
Ol’ Jardiner: Hello, friend. What brings you to this desolate place?
This Unicorn can’t speak any humanoid language, so it touches Ol’ Jardiner’s forehead with its horn and sends mental impressions. Confusion. Hunger. Alone. This unicorn wandered into the fog barrier and ended up here. It doesn’t know how to return home, and it can’t find food or water. Ol’ Jardiner says that the Fellowship is looking for a way back to the Forgotten Lands, and the Unicorn is welcome to follow them. Yonne summons rain. Boris and Ol’ Jardiner hold the corners of a cloth to collect the rain for the Unicorn to drink. The Unicorn joins the Fellowship as Yonne’s companion.
There’s nothing to do in this empty place except leave. The Fellowship picks a direction and starts walking.
GM note: We rolled again on the table of locations and encounters. Endless machinery. Rogue AI.
They find the machine that scraped this area clean: a World-Flayer. It’s a hundred feet high and several hundred feet wide. The front is a mass of arms and blades and break up and ingest whatever is in front of it. In the center, sorters, centrifuges, trapdoors and conveyor belts separate and sort useful materials. At the back, various chutes, platforms, and hoppers collect and present the materials for other vehicles to take to the great factories. Those transport vehicles and factories no longer exist. This titanic machine was abandoned in haste and ravaged by the cursed boars. It was too big to completely destroy, but everything on the surface is bent and bitten, and damage reaches in the interior in some places. Boris goes inside to look for some gadget that seems like it could help them return to the Forgotten Lands.
When he finds a likely object and starts disconnecting it, a nearby console lights up. It’s a screen on the wall with a few buttons and a stylus below it. The stylus remains in its storage pocket, even though the cord connecting it to the console is broken. The screen flashes red with the message: “Thieves! Take nothing belonging to the masters!” in the old dialect of the VolWolkenStadt. That’s what the people of the Forgotten Lands called themselves before they were forgotten. The language is 800 years old, and even Forgotten scholars can only read it with study. Boris was here when the language was common, but it’s been so long. He’s barely literate in languages that he encounters often, so he has no idea what the console says. He does think a functioning console could be useful, so he starts to pull it out of the wall. The AI of the World-Flayer sends a power surge through the console, but Boris diffuses the electricity across the dark magic that surrounds him, turning a sharp shock into a lingering buzz. With the machinery in hand, he retraces his steps to the exit. The AI moves what doors and selectors still function to thwart his progress. Eventually it herds him into falling in a deep hole.
Outside, Yonne and Ol’ Jardiner get worried. Boris has been gone for too long. Ol’ Jardiner sends a thought bubble.
Ol’ Jardiner: Boris, are you OK?
Boris explains how the machine came alive against him and describes the hole where he is trapped, but Ol’ Jardiner’s messages are one-way. He has no way to hear Boris’ reply. He can see the direction the thought bubble flies. That’s the way to Boris. Ol’ Jardiner points out the thought bubbles to Yonne, and she flows through gaps and cracks in the ruined machinery until she finds Boris. She also does not understand the VolWolkenStadt AI’s threats and warnings. She finds Boris in a dark storage hopper with chunks of galena ore a few feet deep. There’s a metal lid at the top. Boris’ fire isn’t hot enough to burn through metal walls.
Yonne flows back out to report the situation to Ol’ Jardiner. He has her carefully describe what she sawon the way to find Boris. He draws a schematic of the machine, as described by Yonne, on folded tracing paper and marks a straight line from the exterior of the machine to the storage hopper. He upfolds the tracing paper and lays it against the World-Flayer’s hull. Instead of a schematic, there’s a circle inscribed on the paper. Ol’ Jardiner traces his fingers around the circle, faster and faster, creating a spinning ring of magical energy. He pushes the ring forward and it chews through the World-Flayer, leaving a circular tunnel in its wake. Ol’ Jardiner sends a thought bubble:
Ol’ Jardiner: Boris, stand against the back wall!
Yonne’s descriptions were accurate and the magic stops at the correct distance. It does breach the wall of the storage hopper, allowing Boris to exit, but did not continue through the storage hopper (and Boris!) Boris climbs through the tunnel to rejoin the Fellowship outside.
As far as the Fellowship knows, the old, broken machine is unstable and dangerous. They don’t know the AI exists, or was trying to communicate with them. They keep moving.
END-OF-SESSION MOVE
- Did we thoroughly explore a new location? YES, the Sapphire Islands
- Did anyone find what they were seeking? YES, Gleador’s lesson of the Forest Hounds gave Boris the inspiration to propose the journey to VolWolkenStadt
- Did we learn anything new about the world or its people? YES The “age of fire” the anoxic zone under the Sapphire Islands. The machanics of the fog barrier. The existence and nature of VolWolkenStadt.
Three Boons:
- gear
- gear
- gear
GM note: The players could level up, but they leveled up the previous time we did an end of session move, and didn’t feel their characters had advanced enough since them. It’s nice to make decisions based on character, instead of trying to keep up with a power curve that could kill everyone and end the story.