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
Last time, the Head Geologist tried to destroy the personification of the land. She and the Rapid Response Team she called in were destroyed, mostly by accident.
This time, the Fellowship goes to a nearby farm to demonstrate that the land can work together with people to do great things. (That is not what happens.)
[insert map of farm]
The Fellowship, the rock creature, and the Geologists that follow them make camp after the excitement with the Rapid Response Team. They walk up-river to Lake Samak in the morning.
Lake Samak, Imperial fish farm
- Stat: Scattered. Important landmarks are far apart.
- Response moves
- Famine: When you Fill Your Belly, someone must Pay A Price
- Stalker: one of the locals will follow the Fellowship and report their activity to the boss
The fish farm is a lake fed by two rivers. One tumbles down the steep slope from the second level of the Empire. There’s a small headquarters building on stilts in the middle of the lake, surrounded by wooden platforms. The communication tower rises above that building.
Buckle sees a lake to swim in and takes back his fireproof suit from Stella. With his fiery body contained, he’s able to swim in the lake. He goes to the waterfall to see if anything is hidden behind it. There’s not a sheer drop from the plateau above. The water flows along the steep slope, so there’s nothing behind the waterfall but solid rock. Buckle climbs a short distance up the rocks and slides down into the lake.
A bell rings at headquarters, and the farm workers gather. Some ride small boats from shore. Some were already working in the headquarters building. Buckle stealthily swims over to see what’s happening.
Buckle Aquatic: When you Get Away or Look Closely through water, you may choose one additional option or ask one additional question from the list, even on a 6-.
Buckle Get Away 6- avoid notice
The humanoid workers on the surface don’t notice Buckle, but the fish do, especially his fireproof suit made of moss. Imperial salmon, distinguished by the brassy shine of their scales, are mostly carnivorous but opportunistic. They’ll take moss if they can get it. The salmon start nibbling on the fireproof suit. A breach will definitely cause a disturbance. Still, he’s close enough to overhear the conversation overhead.
Wilma she/her human shift leader
Trill she/her human boat pilot
Wilma: A message just came through. The state of emergency is back on. They say there was an attack at the Saline Caverns. That’s not too far off. Everyone be careful.
Trill: What are we going to do that the Geologists couldn’t do?
Lee: Did those people come from the direction of the Saline Sea?
Lee points to the Fellowship on the edge of the lake. Buckle leaps out of the water and belly slides on the platform. He gets up and wanders over to the assembled farm workers, his webbed feet slapping as he goes.
Trill: Is that one of the things we should be careful of?
Wilma: This is a food-producing site. You can’t just wander around here!
Buckle: Hello! I was wondering if you needed help with anything. How’s everything going on your farm?
Buckle Talk Sense (+Wisdom, appeal to desires) 6-
Wilma: No! We had to train and be certiified to work here. You’re trespassing. Get out of here immediately!
Trill: Is he allowed to swim out? Do I have to take him out?
Wilma: OK. Trill will take you to shore and you can be on your way.
Stella and the others see Buckle board Trill’s boat and head to meet them at the dock. Since Wilma doesn’t like Buckle, Trill decides to like him, just to be contrary.
Trill: How did you get here? Exactly what kind of help would you give us?
Buckle: We’re kinda new here, but we’ve made some things happen.
Buckle gestures to the rock creature. Trill has no frame of reference to understand its significance.
Trill: These are Geologists! Did you come from the Saline Sea? Do you know what happened there?
Buckle: I don’t know what happened if I’m being completely honest. Our friend was sitting and then these really aggressive people–one was on a rhino. They held us prisoner and they messed with our friend, then all of them ran away.
Trill: This changes things!
Trill turns the boat around and goes back to the dock. Wilma is displeased that she brought Buckle back.
Trill: Those people over there are Geologists. That’s a disaster area, right? So they’re refugees.
Of course there’s a distaster response plan. The Empire is organized and efficient. Wilma gathers all the workers not on time-sensistive tasks and leads several boats to shore. Everyone meets at the docks. Wilma starts calling out instructions. The Geologists form a queue to check in, leaving the Fellowship and the rock creature in a disorganized group. Buckle and Stella share a look. They’re not sure what to do. Buckle takes off his fireproof suit and hands it back to Stella.
Stella: Right now?
A quick-thinking farm worker throws a bucket of lake water on Buckle. It sizzles away harmlessly.
Stella: He’s normally like this. He’s fine.
GM note: i said that Stella could satisfy the farm workers by showing Buckle’s elemental badge, but when they entered the Empire, Buckle wore the fireproof suit and concealed his fiery body, so he doesn’t have one.
The rock creature doesn’t react to the farm workers. It walks towards the lake.
Buckle: Normally, it likes hugs, but it seems interested in the water today.
Wilma: Stop! We can’t let random people into the water.
Buckle: It’s not really random. It’s everyone’s best friend. You all seem really connected to it. Even I’m connected to it.
The Geologists don’t speak in riddles. They excitedly tell the farm workers that the rock creature is the embodiment of the land, and now they can talk to it like a person. This is a weird and upsetting concept for the farm workers. Wilma challenges the rock creature.
Wilma: So you’re the land, huh? Where does this river start?
The rock creature grabs Wilma and uses fast-travel to take her to the headwaters. Rapid Response Teams are so rapid because they go into the land and emerge elsewhere. The existence of this fast-travel is a state secret, and its exact operation is a mystery even to people who use it.
GM note: I almost didn’t make a reaction roll, which would have changed the course of Imperial history.
Rock creature reaction: Area tag
Everyone sees the rock creature, Wilma, Trill, Buckle, Stella, Gus (Stella’s cook), and Stanlee (a Spider cadet) sink into the ground, barely leaving a mark! Those traveling get an impression of pressure and vast shapes rushing past. They appear in a strange space somewhere inside the magic inside the land. People don’t actually travel quickly through the Empire. The land creates copies. The originals stay in the Belly Of The Empire
- Belly Of The Empire
- Legendary: No one believes this exists
- Reponse moves
- Bustling. Dispair to Get Away. Hard to have a conversation without being overheard.
- Dark. There’s no light underground.
The space is filled with thick brown goopy magic, but the Fellowship can see and move around. This space may not literally exist. They may be in some kind of magical pocket dimension. Buckle’s fiery body illuminates the area, revealing thousands of people. Basically all the important people in the Empire are down here, while copies with their memories take their place on the surface. People crowd around the new arrivals, asking about what’s happening on the surface. The Fellowship doesn’t recognize any of them immediately. A man covered in tiny tattoos pushes his way to the front.
History man: New people! New people! What’s the date? Where did you come from? What do you know about fast travel?
Wilma: We don’t know. That’s for important people.
Wilma does know the date.
Trill: We weren’t even trying to fast travel, this guy–Hey! Buckle, you said that guy was–
Buckle: The Land.
Trill: The Land. We’re in the land. It ate us!
History man and others nod. This is a realization they’ve all gone through.
History Man: We’ve been trying to get a message out to stop using the fast travel. It’s a trick.
Buckle: What have you done in the past when The Land turned into a person and walked around?
Buckle Keep Them Busy 6-
Nobody knows what that means. They think he’s talking nonsense and don’t want to listen to him. But he’s luminous. They’ve been in the dark and want to take his light so that everyone can see.
Buckle: You want torches? I’ve got torches.
Buckle Firestarter: You always have materials and fuels for creating a fire
Buckle starts handing out torches. The mob didn’t expect it to be so easy. People pass the torches and Buckle sees them going further and further away. This is a big space with a lot of people inside!
Meanwhile, Stella is growing to the size of good chair and shrinking to the size of an apple repeatedly. She wants to get The Land’s attention. When she shrinks, the goop that fills the space slowly oozes into the space she left. She’s hoping to get The Land’s attention, since she’s surrounded by The Land’s magic.
Stella Talk Sense (+Wisdom, appeal to emotion) 7-9
GM note: the move says, “You owe them a favor” but it’s easier to introduce a complication.
The magic goop starts closes in around Stella as she shrinks and keeps closing in, getting more and more dense.
Stella: Is this a hug?
Buckle: Oh, Stella, it likes you!
A Stella-shaped mass of magic goo solidifies around her. The Land has taken form again.
Stella Overcome 10+
The pressure hasn’t hurt Stella yet, but it’s a dangerous situation. Buckle hears Stella making noise inside and runs over. He shakes the goo creature.
Buckle: Let her go!
Buckle Talk Sense (+Wisdom, appeal to emotion) 6-
The goo creature pulls Buckle into its body. Stella grows to full-size, and the goo creature, weakened by Buckle’s flames, pops!
Buckle takes damage
Stella takes damage
History Man: They were able to make the fluid respond!
Two fancy-looking people push themselves to the front, because they want to be involved in whatever’s happening. Both are emperor. Priscilla was the first emperor. Claudius is emperor now, sort of. The Empire is actually ruled by a copy of him.
Priscilla: How did you make the fluid react? Speak up and serve your emperor by getting us out of here.
Claudius: Don’t listen to her. She’s been dead for years.
Buckle ignores them and tries to connect with The Land. Stella examines the other originals trapped here. They don’t age or need to sleep or eat. Their clothing isn’t preserved like their bodies, but it doesn’t rot. It just gets less real and less distinct over the years. Priscilla is wearing some kind of robe, but it’s impossible to tell the original cut or color. Claudius’ imperial clothes are sharper, more colorful. Living creatures are able to enforce a division between themselves and outside, but unliving objects can’t and the magic slowly absorbs it. The people trapped here are the kinds of people who use fast-travel. They are used to going places and fixing things. They can’t do either here. There’s always someone arguing about the nature of the space. Is it a physical location somewhere underground, or a shared dream?
Buckle and Stella wonder how to proceed. The goal of most people is to leave, and conventional ways of leaving must not work.
Stella: I’m tempted to propose some kind of human pyramid to see if there’s a ceiling we can poke through.
Buckle: There’s ground. There’s a ceiling. There must be walls. You can walk up those.
History Man: Captain Clark set out and never came back. Some of us think the space is infinite. Others think he was eaten. Others think he got out and we should remember the exact direction he went.
Stella: has anyone tried digging down? We’re standing on something.
Buckle tries to swim down. The magical goop that fills the space is already hard to move through. Either people don’t need to breathe here or the goop provides oxygen. Buckle swims and claws his way down.
Buckle Overcome 10+
Buckle digs down below what everyone thought was solid. It’s just thicker goop. People watch the glow of his fiery body get smaller and dimmer as he digs down until he hits rock. Real rock. He can’t dig through that. Buckle swims back to the surface.
Buckle: Alright, everybody, clear out. Move back! Move back!
The crowd listens because Buckle just did something they thought was impossible. Buckle descends again. There’s a distant thump and the “floor” of the space bubbles.
Buckle Anarchy Reigns: Buckle spends 1 Explosive Device
Buckle’s explosion punches a hole into normal space, and the magic goo flows out. Buckle is sucked out into normal space. Inside the Belly Of The Land, everyone can feel the goop around them flowing down and towards the hole that Buckle just made. More adventurous ones (like Stella) dive in, eager to escape. Others flee, fearing they will be crushed.
The Land notices. It’s been hurt in a way that it hasn’t been hurt before. It works to close the hole that Buckle created.
Stella Get Away 7-9 avoid harm
- fortune roll: 4 other people escape
- Stanlee
- Gus
- Priscilla
- Belloc (and rhino)
Belloc attacked Buckle a few nights ago, but that was a copy. This Belloc doesn’t recognize the Fellowship. These few people find themselves in some kind of underground cavern.
Belloc: With me Emperor! I’ll get you out of here!
Belloc picks the largest tunnel (so his rhino can fit) and sets off.
Buckle touches the goop that flowed out with him. It’s separated from the land, kind of like like rock creature was the will of the land separated from the land. It’s useful for earth-related magic. Buckle pours out some superheated water from the hot springs to capture the goop in a vial.
1x vial of magic goop: drink it to take damage and use Wizardry with great effect on rock or dirt. Not metal.
Stella notices that Trill and Wilma are not with them. She looks around to see where they can go from here.
Stella Look Closely 7-9 ask 3 questions, 1 answer the hard way
- What’s going on? What do my senses tell me?
- The cavern she is in is all natural, but some of the tunnels connecting to it have been squared-off and improved, so civilization must be near.
- A large uphill tunnel, improved by civilized folks, where Belloc and Priscilla went.
- A smaller improved downhill tunnel.
- A natural downhill tunnel with a trickle of water flowing on the floor.
- The cavern she is in is all natural, but some of the tunnels connecting to it have been squared-off and improved, so civilization must be near.
- What is hidden or out of place?
- An odd smell. A toxic gas has built up in this space over the years. It must not be flammable, since Buckle’s fiery body didn’t ignite it.
- Tell me about the water. How could it hurt or help me?
- If water is flowing, there’s somewhere for it to go. That could be a way out. Water flows downhill and most civilization is up on the surface. The toxic gas, so following the water moves away from the gas.
Buckle: Maybe we should follow the important people.
Stella: But they’re going uphill.
Stella Overcome 6-
Stella takes damage
Buckle Overcome 10+
The gas is getting to Stella, but Buckle doesn’t notice anything. Stella leads her friends down a small flight of rough stairs into the smaller improved tunnel. They don’t smell the gas anymore. The people who improved this tunnel probably made the stairs, smelled the gas in the chamber above, and decided not to continue using this tunnel. As the Fellowship continues following the tunnel, the improvements get more refined and elaborate. Finally the tunnel is blocked by some shoddy brickwork.
Buckle Overcome (+hope, Stella’s assistance) 10+
Buckle tail slams the wall and the mortar is even weaker than he expects, so he falls through with all the bricks into a wine cellar. Gus (Stella’s cook) is impressed. This is high-quality stuff.
Gus: Can your size-changing thing shrink one of these casks? It would be so great!
Stella’s gear grows and shrink with her, but she can’t hold or carry a cask that’s eight feet across. There are bottles as well as casks, and everyone takes one. As Buckle reads the label, the wine starst boiling, so he quickly hands the bottle to Stanlee.
They exit the wine cellar into the kitchen of a high-class restaurant. Gus excitedly examines all the food. The kitchen staff is doing a headcount because there was an earthquake. They have more people than they started with.
Cook: Hey, who are you?
Gus is wearing dusty traveling clothes and does not look like a waiter or cook.
Gus: They didn’t tell you? I’m your newest employee!
Gus Talk Nonsense 7-9 owe a favor
They believe him. Surely he’s dusty because he was in the cellar when the earthquake hit. They clean him up quickly.
Head waiter: You need to go out and reassure the guests.
Gus goes out and talks to the rich guests and gives them “berry jammers”: cookies with fruit jam in the center.
Gus: We hope you’re OK. We want you to feel comfortable in this place. Please accept a complimentary dessert. A Halfling delicacy.
Gus spends Special Ingredients
Stella looks around to find out where they have emerged. This is the Imperial capital, on the third level! There’s a commotion outside. Belloc stands on top of his rhino, waving an Imperial banner on the tip of his lance.
Belloc: Make way for your Emperor!
People gather and stare. The woman following Belloc does look like Priscilla, but she’s been dead for hundreds of years. Also, the Emperor is Claudius, and he’s in the palace.
Guard: Hey, you don’t have a parade permit.
Priscilla: By Imperial decree, get out of my way!
Guard: You don’t look like the Emperor. Do you have the Imperial Seal?
Priscilla’s clothes are indistinct and brown. She’s wearing some sort of ring. She does resemble the statues of Priscilla that stand at various points in the city.
Priscilla: That’s ridiculous! I’m me!
Belloc slaps the guard.
Belloc: I challenge you for the lady’s honor!
This is becoming an incident. Buckle ignores it and looks for a place to commune with the land. The Empire loves the land, so the capital is built around untouched mountain slopes and spires. Buckle goes and touches the untouched land. The Land is freaking out. The pain that Buckle caused is different from a river cutting through it, or other natural process.
Buckle: Come up to the top of the mountain so we can put to rest all the stuff that’s been going on.
Buckle Talk Sense (+Wisdom, emotion) 10+
The Land reaction roll: Burn hazard
Lava bursts from the decorative rock that Buckle is lying on. This time the land takes the shape of Priscilla. Most of the lava creature’s skin cools to black, with orange glowing through the joints where it moves and reveals the lava within. There’s a glowing hole through it, dripping lava. That represents the wound that Buckle caused it.
Buckle: Ummm, this isn’t what I had in mind.
The lava creature feels betrayed. It’s mad at Buckle and tries to stab it with lava spikes.
Buckle Heart of Earth: You are immune to heat, fire, and explosions
Buckle lets it pound on him for a bit, then hugs it and tries to apologize.
Buckle: Sometimes we hurt the people we love.
The people of the capital don’t know what’s happening. They just see fiery creatures appearing after an earthquake. The fire department arrives and sprays the creatures with hoses, creating a huge cloud of steam. Even the high pressure of a fire hose can’t blast away lava, which is dense as stone. It does cool the outer layer, so Buckle and the lava creature are encased in a lava egg.
Buckle: I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.
The Land can relate to not knowing. So Buckle is like it. It reframes Buckle as a force of nature. It’s not made at the tide for crashing against it, or the wind for blowing bits away. Forces of nature just are what they are. There’s no reason to be angry. The Land calms down. If Buckle is nature, then it doesn’t need to take this special effort and be a person to deal with Buckle. But Buckle wants it to connect with people. Its people!
Buckle: People are a force of nature too. You connect with them, but they’re separate. You interact with them, but there are boundaries. Love your people, but don’t smother them.
Buckle Talk Sense (+Wisdom, emotion) 10+
Lava creature reaction roll: 8-segment clock before reaction
Nothing seems to happen. Buckle is inside a lava egg with an inert statue. He heats up the walls to weaken them.
Buckle Overcome 10+
Buckle hatches from the lava egg.
Buckle: Now I know how Fafnir felt.
The firefighters turn the hose on him, but one notices that Buckle isn’t in distress, so they turn off the hose.
Firefighter: You’ve destroyed this ancient rock. That’s a crime, you know!
Buckle: The land doesn’t commit crimes. Get the Geologists to come tell you what happened.
The Geologists (who are having a very bad couple of days) are summoned. They determine that the lava flowed from below the rock, so Buckle, standing on top of the rock, couldn’t have caused it. Buckle is fire, and fire isn’t lave.
Buckle: Don’t you know anything about the place you live? It’s been trying to connect with you and you won’t hug it and won’t hold its hand!
Finally, the land reacts. Buckle said there were boundaries between the land and the people, and it was violating that boundary with fast travel. Horrifyingly, most public figures and pillars of the community melt into thick brown magical goop. So many more people rise out of the group at all the fast travel sites across the Empire.
Buckle: Well, Stella, our work here is done. Shall we go to the restaurant?
NO END-OF-SESSION MOVE