Chasing the Sunset is a West Marches-style exploration game using Fellowship 2nd Edition‘s Horizon rules.
The fellowship: Dryden of Conwall the Collector/Hunter, Averiela the Elf/Elven Elite, Markus the Squire, Pierre Jardiner the Harbinger
Last time, the Fellowship was attacked by a beam weapon from space! The Luna Punumbra was almost destroyed, but the Empire re-built it. The Empire was embarrassed that a foreign dignitary was attacked in their territory. This time, the Fellowship searches for why the Moon attacked them.
The Empire recommended that Markus return home to the Forgotten Lands, because he might be at war with whoever attacked the Luna Penumbra. The Fellowship leaves the Empire the same way it entered: by the observation platform on the frontier air net. The Empire sent Cirrus along, probably to spy on the Fellowship and probably because CIrrus failed to prevent the attack on Markus. Barry greets the Luna Penumbra at the platform.
Barry: The state of emergency has been lifted because an avatar of the land has appeared. He assures us that the threat from the Moon is past.
Dryden: Tell me more!
Dryden Speak Softly 7-9 ask 3 questions, 1 unhelpful answer
- Dryden: What can you tell me about the Avatar?
- Barry: The Avatar appeared in Hullift. We have a saying, a friendly farewell, “May the ground rise to meet your feet.” It literally did, as soon as he stepped off the dock. Amazing! The Geologists were summoned, and many people gathered around him. He said the threat from the Moon had passed. That’s what I’ve heard. I’ve been stationed here.
- Markus: Thank you for your service at your post.
- Dryden: Was that expected or an unlooked-for event?
- Barry: We didn’t know it was possible.
- Markus: Nice to have your heart set at ease and no longer be afraid.
- Barry: Kind of, but then I look over to the north-east, where the Fairy Forest used to be.
From this height, the Fellowship can see a large circular lake where the Fairy Forest should be. The trees around the edges are burned. The lake isn’t full. The land slopes down from the burned trees to the water.
Dryden: Did you see this event happen?
Barry: Yes, it was a blinding beam of light from the sky.
Averiela: Unicorns lived there!
Barry: It was the night after the state of emergency was removed.
Markus: The Avatar came and then the Fairy Forest was destroyed? There was a beam of light that destroyed the Fairy Forest? Was it like the beam that destroyed our ship?
Barry: I don’t know. I didn’t see that.
Dryden: Quite a week!
GM note: That was definitely more than 3 questions
In the past few days, Barry has untangled a few fleeing Fairies from the aerial net and sent them through the immigration paperwork. They all got refugee status automatically.
The Luna Penumbra leave the Empire and the Fellowship plans its next move.
Dryden: It seems like there’s someone still on the Moon.
Pierre: It seems like cursing Junior did not stop them from using the beam weapon. If the beam weapon is new, it might not be written in the manual.
Markus: Can we see onto the Moon in any way?
Averiela Elfsight: When you Look Closely, you may study any location you can see, no matter how distant, as if you were standing right there.
Averiela Look Closely 6- Ask one question, find out the hard way.
- What is going on here? What do my senses tell me?
- Averiela concentrates on the Moon and sees that it is made of hexagonal mirrors. In the middle of the Moon’s disk is the Command Center, which Averiela has visited. Glimmering lights catch her eyes towards the edge of the disk. There’s a dark spot on the Moon. It’s a bunch of broken mirrors. The Kobolds move around the Moon by cable car. Averiela sees a cable car leave a tower on the edge of the dark spot. Other Kobolds flee the tower onto the surface. A skeleton, three times the height of the Kobolds, with two glowing red eyes, smashes the tower until it falls. The cables snap and ping. The fleeing cable cars falls. The tower falls over and sends mirrors spinning from the impact. Those spinning mirrors catch and reflect sunlight, sending a beam of light right into Averiela’s eyes!
Averiela damages Sense
Even people with normal vision can see little beams of light flick across the sky.
Averiela: We should send someone to help the Fairy Forest. We could put down Knows-Too-Much and White Sands to see what’s going on. I can always talk to them.
Pierre: Vampire Fairies live there. I don’t want to help Vampires.
Averiela is concerned about the Unicorns that lived there. She has a better picture of life in the Fairy Forest than Pierre, who only remembers the things trying to kill him. Will (the captain) orders the ship to set down on its four remaining legs at the edge of the Fairy Forest. Knows-Too-Much and White Sands disembark.
Dryden and Markus realize that the monster on the Moon is the same monster they accidentally released from a block of obsidian below New Clay City.
Markus: It’s unkillable. We have to contain it, like a Genie. Could we trap him inside the mirrors on the Moon? Pierre?
Pierre: Hmm, unkillable monster. I was going to say we should send him somewhere remote where he can’t hurt anyone, but I thought the Moon was such a place. We can’t open Infinite Windows into deep space, because we don’t have any objects from there.
Pierre looks north and sees the Rain Comet, which brought Rain to this planet long ago.
Pierre: The comet has been here for a while. Is it now from here? If not, would Infinite Windows open to the planet it broke off from?
Markus: There’s probably Rain still on that home planet. We don’t want to send this skeleton to destroy it.
Dryden: We could put him on that island with the pirate curse.
Pierre: Maybe he likes being around other skeletons. No, we broke the curse and laid them to rest.
Dryden: I have chips of precious metals and and gems from the original block he was contained in. Could we rebuild it?
Averiela: If he was trapped in a box, we could trap him again. I need time to gather all my materials and craft it.
Averiela Hand of Silver You are capable of crafting glorious magical items. It will be expensive and require exotic materials, but it can be done, at great personal cost.
Pierre takes Infinite Windows and the chips of minerals from Dryden and performs a ritual to open Infinite WIndows safely.
Pierre spends one use of magical rituals
Pierre opens a person-sized to the first cavern layer under New Clay City. The floor of the cavern is covered with yellow fungus. It’s nutritious enough to feed farm animals, and that’s exactly what’s happening. The fort has expanded and the obsidian block has been cleared away. This area is now a farm with pigs, reindeer, and peafowl. The portal surprises a farmer, who tries to lead his animals away from it. The peafowl don’t pay much attention with him.
Pierre Speak Softly 6- ask 3 questions, 1 false answer, 1 unhelpful answer
- Tell me about the obsidian.
- Workers cleared and reinforced this area before the farmers came in. It would have been taken to the stockpiles. Obsidian used to be a prestigeous material, but the market collapsed. There’s so much available in the ruins of Sunpeak.
- What should I be wary of when dealing with Hans?
- Hans is a legendary fighter. He only farms when he’s not on duty.
- What is the fortress doing? What will it do next?
- We’ve secured an area of the first cavern layer and expanded our farms. Now we’re digging out big apartment blocks because we can support a higher population with all the extra food.
Markus: So what’s the newest, valuable, strong, obsidian-like building material? We might be interested in buying some.
Hans: You’d have to go to new Clay City proper. I’m not a miner and I don’t sell things.
Dryden looks for a fallen peacock feather, but settles for a chunk of yellow floor fungus.
Pierre: This is more complicated than I thought it would be.
Dryden: I have eggshells from Phoenix hatchlings. We could shrink him and put him in an egg.
Pierre: Ancient, magical, and tough? We have Underfoot’s shell.
Markus: We should go back to the ship. Thank you, Hans. Lovely to meet you. Good luck with your expansion plans.
Averiela: Can we barter for a Peacock?
Markus: What would we do with a Peacock?
Averiela: I miss Knows-Too-Much and White Sands.
Hans will trade a Peacock for a Precious item. Despite all their power, the Fellowship isn’t rich. Dryden has many trinkets and items to look through. Markus does have a cut amythest.
Markus: I don’t know that I want to use it on a Peacock. I feel there might be something more valuable.
Hans respects Markus’s haggling, but insists on the virtues of his Peafowl. They are beautiful, have long feathers, and Peahens lay extra-big eggs. Markus is not convinced. The Fellowship returns to the Luna Penumbra to find another magical, precious, tough material.
Markus: The library in the mountain. The cover that sealed off the library. Could we get a peice of that? That is rare. It is magical. We have a Dwarven Hammer that can hammer through it. We can open Infinite Windows there because I’m very confident we have something from there.
Pierre: We have library cards, don’t we?
Dryden: I don’t.
Pierre: I only have one ritual left to open Inifinite Windows safely. I want to save that for the Moon. We should fly there in our flying ship.
The Fellowship begins a long journey to the Hidden Library. The first location they fly over is Rowdy’s Ramparts. That’s where the Luna Penumbra’s reactor was booby-trapped. Averiela goes down to collect some seeds. Two children out gathering berries see Averiela and flee.
Berry-pickers; A ghost!
Averiela sings to the forest to strengthen it, and asks the Old Willow tree for some seeds. The Old Willow is not angry anymore. It does not have to fight Baron’ Von Till’s evil influence anymore.
Rowdy doesn’t send forces out against the Luna Penumbra. His power is in the castle, so he closes the gates and hopes the Luna Penumbra flies within range of his ballistas. The Fellowship is happy to stay away from the castle and flies away without incident.
Next they fly over the Anti-Moon Weapon, which has been destroyed and re-built multiple times. There’s activity around it.
Averiela: Do we have to go to the Moon? Could we just blow it up? The skeleton will float in space.
Ohm has already done more damage to the Moon than the Anti-Moon weapon ever did. It’s also been intentionally wrecked several times by people who thought such a weapon should not exist.
Markus has the ship land nearby and calls out.
Markus: Hey! Who’s in charge here? What’s happening?
A man nearby looks up from his clipboard.
Man: I can’t tell you. That’s top-secret!
Markus asks more questions to keep him from going inside the nearest building.
Markus Keep Them Busy 10+
Markus keeps asking questions and he keeps refusing to answer. In his mind, he’s winning each exchange. Pierre climbs down to the surface and walks into the building.
Pierre Friendly Face So long as you show a friendly face, anyone not already actively hostile towards you will treat you as a friend, until proven otherwise.
Pierre Look Closely 7-9 ask 3 questions, find out 1 the hard way
- Tell me about the people. What are they doing? What will they do next?
- Many of these people are Snakefolk from Vieport. They aren’t trying to repair this gun. They want to build another one.
- Is something hidden or out of place?
- The leader of this reasearch team is Agate, the Spider. He’s easy to miss because he’s climbing up high in the machinery, not walking on the floor.
- What will happen if I try to get their notes.
- Pierre writes some gibberish in a notebook asks the nearest Snakefolk to compare measurements.
Cecil, the Snakefolk engineer, puts his notebook down next to Pierre’s so they can compare. He quickly realizes that Pierre’s notes are meaningless. Pierre has been found out!
Pierre uses Doodle’s Illusion
Pierre’s notebook is actually Doodle folded up. It suddenly unfolds like a jack in the box! Pierre runs for it
Pierre Get Away 10+ avoid harm, bring Doodle along
Pierre: They want to build another one of these in Vieport! We should go!
Pierre boards the Luna Penumbra and it lifts off. The Fellowship decides not to kill a bunch of researchers or camp at the Anit-Moon Weapon to repel intruders, so they make a note that they’ll have to deal with Vieport at some point and fly east.
Next, they pass over Lady Evelynn’s estate. The river that flows around Lady Evelynn’s estate and into Sugar’s Crossing used to be fed by a river flowing from the Drowned Forest and a river flowing from the Fairy Forest. A river still flows from Rowdy’s Ramparts, but all the water in the Fairy Forest flows into the crater. The water level in the river is low, affecting the mills. Lady Evelynn doesn’t have time to deal with a ship flying overhead.
The Luna Penumbra arrives at the Hidden Library. Dryden examines the ceramic shell that covers the Hidden Library. The hole that Dryden broke years ago has been expanded into a neat entrance. Spiral staircases lead from the volcano’s rim to the bottom of the caldera. One can hardly tell there was a war there. Averiela accompanies Dryden into the Hidden Library. She wants to do some research, and Dryden doesn’t have a library card.
Ghost LIbrarian: I remember you. I’m very grateful for your defense of the library. What brings you back here?
Dryden: We have a new problem that could damage significant portions of our world. There is an extremely large immortal skeleton loose on the Moon that is causing beams of light to randomly catastrophically impact parts of the world. We are hoping, my fellow adventurers and I, to use this ancient magical broken door to seal the skeleton inside it on the Moon. With your permission.
Dryden Talk Sense (+Sense, explain plan) 10+
Ghost Librarian: Well, we don’t need this impenetrable shell anymore. The people who tried to assault the library are dead. We’re not worried about invasion anymore. If you can get pieces of the shell out, you can use them for whatever.
Averiela Speak Softly 6- ask 3 questions, 1 false answer, 1 unhelpful answer
- Tell me about the immortal skeleton.
- I’m pretty sure this is fiction, but there’s a children’s book with a story about a kid who didn’t want to eat his food. He scraped all the bones off into the fire so he could show his parents a clean plate. All the bones came to life and jumped out and got him! Always finish your plate, kids.
- Tell me about the obsidian that contained him for so long.
- Obsidian is formed when lava cools very quickly. If you break it apart and work it, it’s just normal rock. To maintain its magical properties, you have to form it into shape while it’s lava, then cool it.
- Tell me about ancient containing devices.
- Hmm. We have puzzle boxes, prisons, barriers… There are stories of magicians who used themselves as bait to lure monsters into traps. They had some secret method of exit to get out, leaving only the monster inside the exit. here’s a design with two chambers. You lock yourself in one, and someone else gets in the other chambers, and you switch the chambers so they are in the locked one.
Outside, Dryden prepares to break off a section of the ceramic shell. He first cracked the shell years ago by dropping a Dwarven hammer from a great height. That’s imprecise and dangerous. Averiela needs a particular size and shape. She helps Dryden select a section of shell to separate. Dryden taps and listens to find the weakest point, then carefully positions the Dwarven Hammer directly above it. Doodle grabs that shell with the Luna’ Penumbra’s harpoon, so it won’t fall into the library when it separates. Dryden drops the hammer.
Dryden Overcome (+hope, Averiela’s assistance) 10+
It works! now Averiela has materials to create her magical traps.
NO END-OF-SESSION MOVE