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, Lucia the Brave the Heir/Halfling Sheriff, Edna Crusher-Harcourt the Ogre/Knight
Last time, the Fellowship entered the second of three doors and solved another magical puzzle. Only one door remains, and the second puzzle gave them a key.
The third door is a big metal door with intricate engravings of flowers and other decorations. Dryden asks Edna if she recognizes the plants from her research in the library. Edna wasn’t paying attention to the books. She just wanted to cause a diversion. Some of the engravings on the door are Elvish letters.
Edna: Too bad Averiela isn’t here to read this for us.
GM note: Averiela’s player invented and ran this whole magical adventure.
The door has no knob or handle, but it does have a keyhole. Lucia takes out the key she received from Friar Frederick and puts it in the keyhole. It fits. She turns the key and a deep, booming dhord rings out. Edna pushes the huge door open. Through the door, only mysterious mist is visible. The Fellowship boldly walks in. The door swings shut behind them.
Edna Overcome 10+
Edna turns and gets her mighty hands on the edge of the door. The door keeps trying to close, so she jams it open with her walking stick.
The Fellowship walks forward and leaves teh mist. They see a bright, desloate space. Everything is lit by yellowish light. An Elf woman stands at a table with many vials on it. Lucia greets her politely.
Elf: So you have come. Are you ready for the final test? Turn back if not.
Edna: You tried to make sure we couldn’t turn back!
Elf: The choice is yours.
The Fellowship agrees to take the test. The Elf gives each of them three vials. One green, one black, and one purple. She drinks a green vial and vanishes. Edna and Lucia examine the vials.
Edna Look Closely (+hope, Lucia’s aid) 7-9 ask 3 question, 1 answer the hard way
- What is hidden or out of place?
- Everything and nothing. Magic is all around.
- Tell me about the Elf.
- She is ageless and beautiful. She wears a white dress and has longwhite-blond hair. Her bearing indicates royalty, but she is also a guide.
- Edna: Guides don’t disappear and leave their charges behind
- Tell me about the black vial? How could it hurt or help me?
- Edna tastes a drop of the black vial and vanishes
Edna appears in thick, choking smoke! She can barely see. The ground underfoot is dry and barren.
Edna Overcome 7-9 pay a price
Edna damages Grace
Edna stumbles around until she finds a depression in the ground. Smoke rises, so she can lie down in the depression and breathe normally.
Back by the table of vials, Dryden and Lucia drink green vials, like the Elf did. Suddenly they are in a lush forest. They hear birds singing and children playing. It’s a happy place.
Elf: You’re missing one. She must have drunk the wrong vial. Walk with me, children.
They walk down a path of mossy gress. Every so often they cross a line of small stones on the ground. These stones extend on either side of the path to form concentric circles around their destination, an Elven village in the forest. They see an Elven armorer trading with Halfings, and a Dwarven wagon arriving on another road. The town square is a little marketplace.
The Elf hands Lucia a small compass made of gold. It glows with a green light and hums when pointed in a certain direction.
Elf: This will lead you to the treasure. Learn from the past to preapre for the future. Learn from the future to prepare for the past. Starting now you may take a total of six sips from any combination of vials. The vials won’t run out until you’ve taken 6 sips. You must find the treasure and save one sip for the purple vial. Drink the purple vial when you are done.
The Elf opens her black vial.
Elf: Are you ready? This will be hard. This is what was. We go to what will be.
Lucia, Dryden, the Elf, and all the companions all drink from their black vials. They appear in a smoky place, where it’s hard to see or breathe. The Elf repeats her instructions. Follow the compass. Six sips total (only five now) Sip the purple vial when you are done. She drinks her purple vial and disappears.
Ol’ Jardiner sees Edna’s huge footprints and follows them. Lucia tries not to choke on the smoky air.
Lucia Overcome 7-9 temporary solution
Lucia sticks her face in a hole to avoid the smoke, but she can’t explore like this. Dryden tries to get Edna’s attention.
Dryden: Help, I’m a little one! Protect me!
Ol’ Jardiner spends Overwhelming Power
Ol’ Jardiner balls his hands into fist by his chest, then stretches them out to either side, creating a sphere of clean air centered on himself. The Fellowship crowds into the sphere and follows Ol’ Jardiner to Edna. The ground they walk on is blackened. Everything is burned to a crisp.
Edna: I knew that Elf was no good. She tricked you into this place too!
Dryden: The other place is great!
The others explain the rules to Edna.
Lucia: We have 5 sips. You have 6.
Edna: But I already took a sip of the black vial. Do we start with 6 sips or 7?
Dryden reaches behind his cloak, but finds nothing.
Dryden: This is pre-lab.
GM note: Dryden doesn’t carry all his gadgets on his back. His cloak is a portal that connects to the lab in his home where all his gadgets are stored. When he reachesbehind his back, his hand appears in his lab and grabs the gadget he wants.
Edna: So this is the past?
Lucia: The Elf lady, queen actually, implied that this is the past, but not as past as the green place.
Edna: Is this the timeline where we didn’t stop the Doomsday Engine?
The Fellowship walks inside Ol’ Jardiner’s protective bubble of air. After more than a mile, they suddenly reach the edge of a cliff!
Lucia Get Away 10+ avoid harm, bring Dryden along
Dryden starts to slip off the edge, but Lucia grabs him and pulls him back. Usually Dryden could use his Flying Device to explore. Edna could jump down a pit safely and could carry the Fellowship in her apron, but she can only jump to places she can see, and the smoke conceals the bottom of the cliff.
Dryden Queen of the Wild: You can Command Lore about local beast
Dryden tries to sense local wildlife, but there are none nearby. They probably died in the fire that destroyed everything else. Dryden drops a rock over the edge. After a long pause, He hears it hit something. Dryden tosses a rock gently over the edge. After a similarly long pause, he hears it hit something. Dryden throws a rocks off the edge as hard as he can. It takes about the same time as the others to hit something. Lucia rolls a rock off the edge, and does not hear it tumbling down a slope, so there’s a sheer drop. The Fellowship decides to switch times. Everyone drinks from the green vial.
Edna appears in the forest, away from the others. She follows the sounds towards the village. The others appear right where they left. So each person’s location in each time is preserved. One can’t move to a location, drink a vial, and appear in that location in the other time. Dryden wonders if he jumped off the cliff, then switched times right before he ht the ground, would his momentum be preserved? Maybe he could cancel fall damage with careful timing. Too bad the smoke prevents him from seeing the ground below. Maybe he could drop rocks first and listen for them to hit . . . that’s far too dangerous. Dryden greets a Halfling that he met the first time he was here.
Dryden: Henry! Hypothetically, if you were in a smoke-filled land at the edge of a cliff, but you needed to keep going, what would you do?
Henry: That sounds awful. You are an odd bunch. Good bye.
Lucia checks the magic compass. It points weakly north.
Dryden: We should get ropes or masks.
Lucia displays her Symbol of Royalty to Henry.
Lucia Symbol of Royalty: grant an audience with whoever you show it to
Henry: Your Majesty! Are you here to visit the queen? I’ll take you to the palace.
Lucia: We’ve arrived in an unusual way. What is the name of this village and the queen.
Henry: This realm is Elysium. We’re at the blacksmith’s outpost, far from the mother tree. Here he uses his magic fire to craft beautiful items.
Edna: Do they make unique crafts here?
Henry: Armor, weapons, clothes.
Edna talks to the blacksmith, and Elf named Dalish.
Edna: I want a spear. Elf-sized. I don’t need to use it. I just want a finely-crafted item to admire.
Dalish: I have a code. I never make offensive weapons.
Edna: I respect that. How about a helmet?
Dalish: I could craft a large one…
Edna tries to impress Dalish with her physical toughness. She files her nails with a carpenter’s rasp and sparks fly from her mostly-metal fingernails.
Edna: It’s not for me.
Dalish shows her four helmets. The first has a feather crest and is decorated with carvings. The second is minimal: a band across the forehead and the chin. The third helmet is a simple design that comes down to the shoulders, but is molded from a single piece of metal. The fourth helmet covers the whole face with only a small eye slit, and hinges in the middle to fit a head inside.
Edna: I’ll take the one with the feather. What do the carvings represent?
Dalish: I added my favorite birds, which represent nobility and strength, and flowers for beauty.
Edna signals and Viktor retrieves her jewelry box from her backpack. Edna’s both the VIP and the beast of burden. She looks through her valuables for something to trade. She has plenty of coin, but she’s worried that she shouldn’t show coins from unknown countries and future dates. Can she cause a paradox? She selects some gems, which Dalish accepts.
Dalish Spare Weapons: A blacksmith will trade Precious things for weapons
Edna spends 1 Precious item
Edna: Thank you. This will provide joy and beauty for a long time.
Dalish: You get a free polish every 100 years.
Edna grimaces because Dalish probably won’t survive to keep that promise. Henry leads the Fellowship towards the palace. They walks north about 1.5 miles over bouncy soft grass. Wlaking barefoot here would be safe and feel great. They reach a sheer drop-off. They overlook a valley about a mile wide, with another tall cliff on the north side. A river runs east to west in the center of the river. A supernaturally huge tree grows in the center of the valley, taller than the cliffs surrounding it. It’s branches spread out to touch both sides of the valley.
Henry: This is the Mother Tree. Are you ready to enter?
Edna: Is it complicated?
It’s not. Certain branches that reach the cliff are used as paths, and the Fellowship follows Henry along one of these branches towards the trunk of the enormous tree. All around the tree bustles with activity. Elves moving back and forth, carrying loads, greeting each other. It’s a whole city.
Henry: There’s a long way and a quick way to the bottom. The quick way might not work with your heftier companions. The long way is to walk down thes spiral staircases carved into the trunk.
Edna: What’s the quick way?
Henry: Swinging on these vines. They’re usually used by Elves and Halflings, not someone of your, um,, dimensions.
Edna pats him on the head.
Edna: No need for verbal gymnastics. I’m sixteen feet tall and weigh eight tons naked, nine or ten with all my gear.
The Fellowship takes the stairs down to the valley floor and emerge from the tree on the south side of the river. Henry leads them west, and the river widens into a lake.
Henry: See that on the northwest shore? See the docks? The entrance is just past that.
Edna: Ooo, docks. I’ll be careful.
Edna Free Ride: You can carry the entire Fellowship
Edna puts on her apron and gathers the Fellowship into its pockets.
Edna: I’m about to jump across the lake. I have a pocket for you.
Henry: Oh, we’ll be there in time for supper.
Edna: You’re taking this surprisingly well.
She puts him in a pocket and jumps past the docks, aiming for a clear space beyond.
Edna Mighty Leap: Jump to anywhere you can see
They land without destroying anything important. Henry leads them to a giant door set in the north wall. People walk through it like it isn’t there. Is it real or an illusion?
Henry: Are you ready? All together now.
Edna: Is this more complicated than the branch?
Henry: The door needs to hear your. TALEEL!
Henry walks through the solid door and the Fellowship hustles through behind him. They find themselves in a tunnel carved out of the stone, walking on a white path.
Henry: Keep up. It’s almost time for dinner!
Henry leads them down the tunnel, which emerges into a large carven. The far end of the cavern is a shining white palace. In front of the palace are fountains and gardens. The path becomes a tile road lined with statues.
Henry: I almost walked past you, Your Majesty!
There’s a younger version of the Elf Queen that started the Fellowship on this quest.
Edna: Did you get her name? I kinda left early.
Elf Queen: Ah, visitors. Please, stay for dinner. Children, class dismissed.
A group of young Elves sitting before the Elf Queen get up, bow, and leave. Lucia bows and greets the Elf Queen.
Lucia: We are glad to be welcomed to such a beautiful place. We look forward to learning more about Elysium.
Elf Queen: You’ve come a long way. Longer and sooner than I expected.
Edna: Do you have any more of these vials? I don’t want to run out.
Edna shows the Elf Queen the green, black, and purple vials that the other Elf Queen gave her. This Elf Queen looks shocked, then sad.
Elf Queen: Oh! You have come. The time is nigh. Look around, see what you need.
Dryden and Lucia take her advice.
Dryden Look Closely (+hope, Lucia’s assistance) 10+ ask 3 questions
- What is hidden or out of place?
- The Elf Queen opens a secret door by pressing a certain flower petal in a wall carving.
- What is the Elf Queen doing? What will she do next?
- The Elf Queen exits quickly to her royal quarters. She gathers supplies and asks around to hear how the Fellowship got here.
- What do my senses tell me?
- People are going about their daily lives. They are an affluent, happy, unstressed people. Some sing as they walk.
Edna wants to buy some textiles, but this is a palace, not a marketplace. Sometimes those are co-located, but not here. She stops an official-looking Elf to ask how to get to the marketplace. Sylar, the bookish, uniformed Elf she stops, is wearing the uniform of a professor, not a cop or a guide.
Sylar: What do you mean? This isn’t the marketplace. It’s the palace. Are you deaf?
Edna gives Lucia and exasperated look and lets Slyar continue on his way. The Elf Queen returns.
Elf Queen: I feared this day would come. Do you know what happened?
Dryden: All is fire and ash. Naught remains. We’re seeking a puzzle to solve the mystery. Without the tree, how can we get down into the valley?
The Elf Queen starts crying.
Elf Queen: The Mother Tree is gone? It’s worse than I thought. Without the branches, you’ll need rope. The future ahead was opaque. I could not see.
Edna: We couldn’t see either.
Elf Queen: I’ll get rope from our emergency supplies.
Dryden: How can we deal with the smoke?
Elf Queen: Blacksmiths have special equipment for working around fire.
Dryden: We could use lanterns too. I usually have a wealth of supplies, but they are inaccessible.
Elf Queen: I hope I don’t see you again. Fare thee well.
Edna Free Ride: You can carry the entire Fellowship
Edna Mighty Leap: Jump to anywhere you can see
Edna leaps up to the south cliff and the Fellowship returns to Dalish the Blacksmith.
Lucia: The Queen herself suggested you could help up. You labor in heat and smoke without harm. We must travel to a burned land and want to be able to breathe.
Dalish: Smoke and fire? Sounds awful.
Lucia: It is desolate, but we seek answers there that may help.
Dalish: We have old respirators. You can have them. Maybe not for Madame…
Edna: Edna Crusher-Harcourt, Dragon-Bane
Dalish: What?!
Edna: Edna Crusher-Harcourt, Dragon-Bane
Dalish: I don’t think I can do business with you.
Dryden: You trade with dragons?
Dalish: We live with dragons! Every evening the dragon-riders fly around Mother Tree. It’s a glorious sight! Where are you headed? Do you need lights?
Dryden: We go to a place where light has been abolished, to restore it.
Dalish: I’ll give you a fair price for the lights, but nothing for Edna. We welcome dragons here.
Lucia opens a case of jewelry for Dalish to choose from. Gems surrounded by gold wire twisted into shapes of a rose, a butterfly, a seashell, a flower. Dalish selects the butterfly.
Lucia spends 1 Precious item for lanterns
Dryden: They like dragons here. We are way, way back!
Edna wants to eat, but she gave all her food away. Lucia shares her food.
Edna Fill Your Belly: spend 1 Food to heal
Ol’ Jardiner Fill Your Belly: spend 1 Food to heal
Fill Your Belly: when friends share a meal, heal 1 extra stat (Ol’ Jardiner)
Lucia hands out lanterns and respirators.
Edna: I could bury something here, then dig it up in the future. No, I can just bring it with me when we go to the future.
Everyone drinks from their black vials, and they appear at the edge of the smoky cliff. Ol’ Jardiner concentrates on creating a sphere of clean air for Edna, who was denied a respirator.
Ol’ Jardiner spends Overwhelming Power
The Fellowship turns left and walks west along the edge of the cliff for a while. They look for the branches that connect to Mother Tree, but see nothing. Lucia checks her magical compass. It point north and down. They turn around and walk east for twice as long, passing their starting point and exploring beyond. There’s more ash in this direction, but no branches. Perhaps the entire tree was burned. Plan B is the rope that Elf Queen provided.
Enda Overcome (+hope, everyone’s assistance) 10+
Everyone climbs slowly down into the dark valley, and reach the bottom without mishap. The valley is intensely hot. The river is boiling!
Edna: This is the only way water could get worse!
GM note: Edna can’t swim because her metal bones make her sink.
Lucia’s magical compass points west, so the Fellowship follows its direction. They reach the shore of the lake, which is bubbling and hot just like the river they were following. There’s burnt wood along the shore and smoke impedes visibility. The compass seems to be pointing towards that door that Henry used to lead them to the palace in the past. That door would be on the far side of the boiling lake. Going to the past and crossing the safe version of the lake won’t work, because they’d return to the future right where they left. They must get across the lake in this time.
Edna: Dryden, can you fly over there and open a Window for us?
Lucia: You should take Ol; Jardiner to give your a boost.
Edna: I need him to let me breathe!
Dryden Flying Device Overcharge: fly for the rest of the scene
Dryden stays a good distance above the boiling water as he flies across the lake. He can’t see through the smoke, so he drops pebbles for sounding. When the rock thud instead of splash, he knows he’s can land on dry ground. Dryden gets Infinite WIndows out of its pack and activates it with his half of Edna’s magical friendship bracelet.
Dryden Open A Window 10+ stable, correct place
A window in space opens next to Edna on the far shore, and the whole Fellowship steps through. Lucia brings a rock from the far shore, in case they need another window to get back. Lucia’s compass guides them to the big steel door, which is intact, unlike everything else in this time.
Lucia: Taleel
The magic word makes the door intangible. The Fellowship goes into the whtie tunnel and sees that it’s blocked by a big white boulder, fit snugly into the tunnel leaving no gaps. Edna could definitely lift that boulder, but there’s nowhere to put it. There’s a narrow cylindrical hole in the boulder, probably a magical keyhole for an oddly-shaped key. The Fellowship recognizes the inverse shape of a unicorn’s horn.
Ol’ Jardiner damages No Sense Of Right And Wrong
Ol’ Jardiner: I picked this up on my travels. Maybe it helps.
Ol’ Jardiner has a Unicorn Horn.Where did he get that? Best not to ask. There are no good answers. He places it in the boulder’s keyhole. Every unicorn horn is unique, and this is not the right horn to open the boulder! The boulder starts moving down the tunnel, threatening to crush the Fellowship between itself and the steel door!
Edna Overcome: 10+
Edna throws her shoulder into the boulder and stops its progress. She strains, but she can hold it. The Fellowship quickly brainstorms, but doesn’t know what to do. They retreat out of the tunnel and Edna lets the boulder slide forward. Before leaving, the Fellowship notices three Elvish words written on the inside of the doorframe.
Edna: Sure would be nice if we had someone who spoke Elvish and had a Unicorn!
Again, the Fellowship must figure out how to proceed.
Lucia: Could Infinite Windows let us travel through time as well as space?
Lucia Look Closely 10+
-
- Lucia sounds out the Elvish words.
- Taleel
- Hamouth
- Sunisaloth
- Lucia sounds out the Elvish words.
Lucia says each word to the door.
“Taleel” opens the door to the white boulder. Her compass points right at it and glows brightly.
“Hamouth” opens the door to a square tunnel with a grey tile path. The Fellowship enters and explores. There’s refuse scattered around, indicating a hasty shelter. The tunnel opens up into a chamber with stone outlines where small buildings once stood. This might have been a marketplace. At the back of the chamber is a graveyard that looks as improvised as the shelter.
“Sunisaloth” opens the door to a round tunnel with a dirt path. The Fellowship walks down the path, which ends at a beautiful mural.
Dryden Look Closely (+hope, Lucia’s aid) 10+ ask 3 questions
- How could the mural hurt or help me?
- The mural provides the key
- What do my senses tell me?
- The mural shows a golden forest and Mother Tree. At the bottom of the image is a dragon egg. The mural continues. The branches turn to leaves, then to thorns. An Elf in white riding a white dragon fights a red boy on a red dragon. An Elf woman walks into darkness. The red boy is now a red man. The Elf woman bleeds from a chest wound and is tended by a unicorn. The names of slain unicorns are written nearby. The white Elf woman flies away on her white dragon. The red man on the red dragon, with other dragon-riders behind him burn the land. Mother Tree burns.
- Edna: Averiela told me this story. That’s the guy!
- What is hidden or out of place?
- The unicorn horn in the mural is a real unicorn horn.
Edna pulls the unicorn horn out of the mural, and it about to replace it with Ol’ Jardiner’s horn. but stops. Putting the wrong unicorn horn where it’s not supposed to go has bad consequences. The Fellowship leaves the tunnel.
Lucia: Taleel
The steel door reveals the white boulder. Edna places the unicorn horn from the mural in the keyhole and the white boulder slides back, allowing access to the tunnel. The Fellowship walks inside and finds the palace entrance, like they saw in the past, but abandoned and decayed. Lucia’s compass points to a particular fountain, and there’s a book at the bottom.
Dryden: I don’t need a library card for this book!
Dryden reaches for the book, but his hand goes through it. Lucia looks up to see if the book is a reflection on the water’s surface, but there’s no book on the roof of the chamber. She reaches in and is able to retrieve the book. It’s ornately decorated with a smooth metal cover and metallic foil on the edges of the pages. Despite being under water, the book is dry. It’s locked, but Lucia tries the shimmering silver key from Friar Frederick and it fits!
Edna: If this is a chronicle, we can take it back, and they can take out that red kid before he gets strong!
Lucia opens and reads the book. It’s instructions on how to raise dragons. A note reads “We erred. It was not meant to be.”
Lucia: We weren’t sent to prevent this. We should learn from the past as we hatch this new dragon.
Dryden: The hopes of the writers was not to save the past but to help the future.
Edna: We could save a lot of lives!
Dryden: The water is still boiling. This calamity was recent. For all we know, the past only has a week before the Dragons burn it all.
The Fellowship returns to the marketplace/shelter to try to guess how long it was used, and how long ago. Maybe a year? They exit the tunnel and Edna looks around for a landmark that survived the calamity. She finds a good-sized rock.
Edna: After I leave, dig here.
Edna drinks from her purple vial. She appears at the table with the Elf Queen, where this whole adventure began.
Elf Queen: Back so soon? Did you give up?
Edna: Look, uhh, do you want us to save your people?
Elf Queen: Those decisions were in place a long time ago. I wish they could be saved, but they cannot.
Edna: I’m sorry to hear that. Can we go to where Mother Tree used to be?
Elf Queen: The way is far, but we can try.
After a 20 minute walk, not hard at all, they reach a deep valley. Mother Tree is gone. Even the river and lake are gone. The Valley is covered with sand.
Edna Mighty Leap: jump to anywhere you can see
Edna leaps to the valley floor and looks for that certain rock she told the others about. She drinks from the green vial. Nothing happens. After drinking the purple vial, she’s out of the game and can’t travel to the past.
Back in the smoky, burned time, the Fellowship digs where Edna indicated and finds nothing. They wait a while, but Edna does not return.
Lucia: The young queen said she didn’t want to see us again.
The Fellowship all drink from their purple vials. They appear at the table, but the Elf Queen is not there. Lucia leads the Fellowship in the direction of the cliff and meets Edna and the Elf Queen traveling the other way.
Elf Queen: You have the book. Use it wisely. Share only with those you trust. Remember to drink the tea when reading it. Handle with care or beware the consequences. The most important page is the last. Don’t read it before the others.
The Elf Queen leaves, and the Fellowship returns to the door that Edna blocked open with her walking stick. It opens with a happy chime and the Fellowship returns to the secret chamber below the library.
Pixies: You did it! You want an easy way out?
Dryden: Yes!
A Pixie flies into one of the lanterns and lights it with pixie dust. The light from the enhanced lantern reveals a door in the wall that leads to the forest behind the Bastion of Memory.
Pixie: We made it especially big for you!
Edna: It’s nice to be appreciated.
The Fellowship emerges into the “real world”, in ‘the present”, whatever that means.
NO END OF SESSION MOVE