Chasing the Sunset is a West Marches-style exploration game using Fellowship 2nd Edition‘s Horizon rules.
The fellowship: Boris the Remnant, Pierre Jardiner the Harbinger, Yonne the Rain.
Last time, the Fellowship won a research grant to build a weapon to defeat the Moon, which recently attacked someone in Imperial territory.
This time, they
Attempted shenanigans led to the Fellowship fleeing the Avatar’s entourage. They must decide where to do next. Is blowing up the Moon a good idea? It’s artificial. The planet was fine without it for a long time. But it might rain debris down, causing more destruction than its weapon ever did.
Yonne. Let’s go back to Hullift and do some sailing. We still need to figure out this Moon thing, though.
Boris: We were technically hired by the government to do this. It would be really rude of us to get government funding, then bail.
Pierre steps through Infinite Windows with news.
Pierre: The Avatar says the threat from the Moon has passed. Maybe he knows about the monster on the Moon breaking things. You know Mr. Snicket was tracking a dark spot on the Moon? There is a monster (which we have met before) Good news: It’s on the Moon, far away. Smashing mirrors, making it less viable as a weapon. Bad news: it cannot be killed. It is undying.
Yonne: Jardiner–Pierre, could you get us to the Moon?
Pierre: This is weird. I have the magical knowledge to operate Infinite WIndows safely, but I don’t actually carry it. Infinite Windows can’t go through its own window. I couldn’t bring it with me.
Yonne: I was thnking that I know someone who can eat things and they disappear forever. It might not be able to die, but…
Pierre: Another complication on us getting to the Moon. Years ago, we found a teleporter terminal that leads to the Moon, hidden deep in the Fairy Forest. It was scary to get to because most of the fairies were vampires.
Boris: But now–
Pierre: You’d think, but really, the Moon destroyed the Fairy Forest. The terminal is gone.
Boris: Has anyone been traveling back and forth to the Moon?
Pierre: There is another Kobold society. Some of them decided to leave the Moon. They moved to the Table of Famine, basically on the other side of the world. They might have a teleporter.
Boris: Who is in trouble from this beast that is living on the Moon? I’m trying to understand the geopolitics.
Yonne: The Kobolds worked for the Dragons, and they kept doing the thing, but then it turned out the Dragons were dead, so they were like, “I don’t wanna do that anymore!”
Boris: Right, but now the Kobolds on the Moon are beefing with the Empire? Was it the monster that triggered the rays?
Pierre: The reason the Moon’s light was so damaging this time is because mirrors were aimed to focus their light on a single point. Usually the mirrors radiated their light broadly. It’s a technical accomplishment ot aim hundreds or thousands of these mirrors at the same thing.
Boris: It could have been a test that happened to affect the Empire in a negative way.
Pierre: “Happened” to test it exactly on me! And my ship.
Boris: There’s no clear deliniation of who started this conflict and for what.
Pierre: I think I did the Kobolds a very good turn. I allowed them to fulfill their lifetime ambition of using the Moon to destroy the Vampires. I should be their favorite person.
Yonne: You’re my favorite person.
Boris: What?
Yonne: You’re not a person.
Boris: I have come to think of all of us as people.
Yonne: OK, you’re both my favorite people.
Boris: You can’t reel that back.
Yonne: Wait, I have a question. What makes the skeleton on the Moon a monster?
Pierre: He’s scary and impossible to kill and breaking things?
Boris: I’m scary and impossible to kill while NOT breaking things.
Pierre: If I admit that the skeleton might have a good reason for smashing up the mirrors, I might have to admit that the Kobolds had a good reason for shooting the Luna Penumbra. I don’t want to admit that because it was really unpleasant and I’m mad at them. But maybe the monster is a pacifist. He is dismantling a weapon.
Yonne: I want to meet him. Can we meet him?
Pierre takes a mental invenotry of his magical abilities while Yonne and Boris chat.
Yonne: You’re my favorite monster and he’s my favorite person.
Boris: Stop calling me monster.
Yonne: I’m a monster.
Boris: I don’t enjoy being called that!
The Table of Famine is very far away, so instead they head north, to the city where the Avatar was headed. The City of Renewal is a railway hub. Tracks converge from all points of the compass, and several points between. It’s main industry is recycling. Train cars full of garbage are dumped in sorting yards. People sort the items by material, and the sorted piles are taken to different facilities. A small, agile suit of Power Armor leaps from place to place giving orders through signal lights and flags.
- Logistician Prime she/her Goblin over-seer.
- Jury Rig: Prime can build anything she need, given the time and safety to do so.
- Mecha: Prime has a suit of powered armor. When wearing her armor, she is Melee, Dangerous, and can jump to anywhere she can see. The armor has several poles rising from its back that display flags and signals, allowing her to give orders from afar.
Response level 2
1. Famine: When the Fellowship Fills Their Bellies, someone must pay a price.
2. Bustling: You are in Despair to Get Away, and it’s hard to have a conversation without being overheard.
The Fellowship buys food from a stand.
Yonne: We’re here to experience the food of a new culture.
Pierre: Wow, this tastes like the bland stuff we had in Hullift.
Boris: I trust your opinion. I can’t taste a single thing I put in my mouth.
Pierre: You’re not missing anything. I’m having almost the same experience as you.
Boris updates his bond with Pierre: a commen experience with food
The Fellowship continue discussions over lunch. Pierre has been to many fancy formal dinners as a servant. He sets places with several different forks and spoons. Yonne tries to imitate his manners but uses the wrong utensils.
The Avatar comes into town. The Fellowship avoids the crowd. There’s a commotion and an Elf is dragged away from the Avatar, past the Fellowship. Tazio and her captors argue loudly, so the Fellowship learns that she was already working her as punishment for selfish use of the land’s power. Now she’s done it again in front of the Avatar, so her next punishment will be worse: she’s going to lose access to the land.
Pierre: Boris, I think we should not ask too many questions of the people who are dragging people away. but I might tag along and listen.
Boris is stealthy, so he also tails Tazio.
Pierre + Boris Look Closely 10+ ask 3 questions
- Tell me about where Tazio is going? How could it hurt or help me?
- The guards say that Tazio isn’t fit to walk the land, so she’s being sent to a floating prison. It’s held aloft by balloons and tethered to the ground. The tethers are closely guarded, since that’s the easiest way to escape. Prisoners get adequate supplies and can do whatever they like on the floating platform. Being separated from the land is the punishment. Something that doesn’t bother the Fellowship.
- Tell me about her crime?
- She ran up to the Avatar and said “We don’t need an embodiment of the land. We don’t need all this recycling. All we need is right here!” She bashed a rock on the ground and molten zinc poured out of the hole. She really can use the power of the land with her magic.
- What will happen if I show up in the floating prison without being convicted?
- The Empire is very organized. They don’t abandon convicts. They keep careful records of convicts, crimes, sentences, supplies. They would carefully check Pierre, then kick him out because he’s not supposed to be in prison without being convicted.
Boris: We are technically government workers. We could ask–
Pierre: Let’s find a place where we are not overheard.
Yonne + Boris + Pierre Get Away 10+ avoid harm, avoid notice
The sidewalks they are walking on are raised above the ground. Tiles can slide aside revealing a network of pipes. These would be underground in most cities, but the Empire doesn’t put holes in the land. Yonne slips into a pipe, finds a quiet spot, and returns to guide her friends to it.
Pierre: This Tazio is very interesting. She seems to know how to use the magic of the ground. I think we will really endear her to us if we keep her out of prison. I volunteer Yonne because Yonne could impersonate her and slip away later.
Yonne: Oh, that’s smart! Except, how are we going to switch me? You’re really fast. Do you think your’e fast enough that you grab me and run? I turn into her, you grab her and then run?
Boris: I can do that. The problem I foresee is the switch itself. If I move you and her at Mach speed, someone is going to get whiplash.
Pierre: We could make a diversion–
Boris: I eat some stone. We could commute her sentence. My slime pet can corrode metal, which is technically earth. If some metal in view of all, started to corrode, I feel that would draw a lot of attention.
Pierre: There’s all these pipes and machines going everywhere. You wouldn’t have to attack the land directly. You just cause a problem in the operation of this logistics hub. You said something about her sentence?
Boris: Instead of swapping her personage, we get her to do “time served” working for the government without pay under our employ. It’s not costing the government anything.
Pierre: I like that plan because it involves lying to people and I’m good at that.
Yonne: If we got her on the ship, they would really like it. We could travel freely with her.
Boris: And she could teach me Geology!
Pierre: She didn’t seem to be doing the approved method.
Yonne: She’s not a Geologist in terms of the government giving her the title, but she does have the abilities of a Geologist.
Boris: During Pierre’s conversation, Yonne can slide in underneath Tazio. I will prepare myself to speed her out while maintaining spinal alignment.
Yonne: I’m going to be a puddle the whole time and if she disappears suddenly, I’m going to look like her.
Pierre catches up with the police and Tazio.
Pierre Friendly Face: You are small and easily trusted. 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: Hello, I am Pierre Jardiner, Academy graduate. I have been retained by the Imperial government to work on the problem of the Moon. Knowing this convict here–
Pierre is stumbling over his words. He doesn’t want to lose this opportunity, so he uses precognition to run through several possibilities and pick the one that’s most convincing.
Pierre Precognition Right Time: You take action with perfect timing, giving you a 10+ result on your next roll.
Pierre Talk Sense (+Grace, dazzle or trick) 10+
Pierre: There’s a better way for this criminal to pay her debts to the land. Under the superivsion of an imperial weapons program and an Academy graduate (myself) she could be forced to work–without pay, of course–in a defense project to defend the land from the recent attack from the Moon.
Tazio is remanded into the Fellowship’s custody. Pierre was so convincing, they don’t even send a guard along with them.
Pierre: Boris, come take custody of this dangerous criminal! This way, prisoner!
Tazio is an Elf, well over six feet tall. Boris, the tallest member of the Fellowship, is barely five feet tall. He looks like a child holding his mom’s hand.
Tazio: What’s going on? Who are you? I’m not going to assist any Imperial weapons program! You are completely wrong about the land!
Boris Speak Softly 10+ ask 3 questions
- What should I be wary of when dealing with Tazio?
- She knows how to use the magic of the land, which can be scary. It would be easier for her to get away with using the magic on us now that she’s not in a crowd. But she did use her magic in a crowd. She’s dangerous because she’s not pragmatic. She’s willing to take action even the outcome for her will be bad.
- How is her magic different from the approved magic of the Geologists?
Tazio: The Geologists are scared of the land. They’re avoiding it. We’re wasting both of our potentials. The land wanted to be worked with. It wants its magic channeled and harnessed. I’m not selfishly stealing anything. The land responds to me. This is what it wants to do. The Geologists say they sense vibrations to choose which rocks to quarry. They choose the rocks that are dead. The are completely backwards. They are scared of the land! For good reason!
Tazio hikes up a pant leg, revealing a nasty burn.
Tazio: The speed, weight, and temperature of a rock are very different from that of an animal. Mismatches can be deadly. There are plenty of stories of renegade Geologists trying to use the power of the land and being immediately destroyed. Like The Twisted Monolith.
- What would Tazio have us do next?
- Boris explains what they have been hired by the Empire to do. Elves do not revere the Moon. Most Elves are old enough to remember when it appeared.
Tazio: To be honest, I spend most of my time looking down.
Boris: Is the Moon a bastardization, because it’s made of land that wasn’t land?
Yonne: I feel like the Empire’s feelling is that specifically their land is magical and other land isn’t. The Moon is other land, like the main continent is other land.
Tazio: Yes, we are blessed by the superiority of our land. But we’re not fulfilling our potential or the land’s potential.
The Fellowship wonders what Tazio would think of VolWolkenStadt.
Boris: I believe the magic of the land wants to be used, because I was created from the land.
Boris displays the dark shadowy magic that clings to his soul. Tazio believes the Avatar is fake because the land doesn’t need to be personified, but here is someone who is the magic of a place given form. He’s an warning of why the Geologists say Tazio must be stopped. The people of VolWolkenStadt abused the magic for their own selfish gain, and the land destroyed them for it. There’s a kinship that she did not expect. Boris seems extremely foreign.
Boris: Is it possible for her to store some of my magic into a stone, or a vial, for her to study?
The guard gave Pierre paperwork when he gained custody of Tazio. That paperwork says that she’s going to the Imperial Research Station, but the Fellowship was planning to go back to Hullift for their ship.
Boris: I think the best move is to stay within their parameters for now.
The Fellowship takes a Long Journey
The Twisted Monolith is actually between The City Of Renewal and the Imperial Research Station, but the roads and railways intentionally avoid it, keeping hills between them so travellers don’t even see it. Magnetic lines run like rivers through the Empire, and the Empire runs mag-lev trains along these lines. The City Of Renewal is a rail hub, so there’s a train heading the Fellowship’s way.
Roads are made from imported rocks, raised above the surrounding terrain. That way Imperial people don’t trample down the land.
Sometimes, the magnetic leylines shift. which can leave a train stranded. A Rapid Response Team is dispatched (not a combat team) to rescue the stranded train. They lay down a lot of dirt in front of the train, then lay logs across it, and pull the train over the logs with large beasts of burden.
But the magnetic ley-line supporting the Fellowship’s train shifts while they are on it. Tazio and the Fellowship have a car to themselves, because they are transporting a prisoner for an important Imperial project. Pierre has a headache from staying on such a powerful ley-line. Tazio chats with Boris about magic and VolWolken Stadt.
Tazio: Wha? Hold on, everybody!
Boris trusts Yonne’s fluid body to survive a crash, so he looks to Pierre.
Yonne 10+
Boris + Pierre Overcome 10+
The train falls and hits the ground at high speed! Tazio braced, Boris protects Pierre, and Yonne’s liquid, so none of them are hurt. The train car comes ot rest on its side. The following train car is mostly on top of it. The engine disconnected and flew forward. It plows into the ground and explodes! The power crystals shattered on impact.
Yonne: The first thing we need to do is get out of this car. The second thing we need to do is to get the people in the car above us out of that car.
The lower car is on its side, with windows facing the ground, or up at the other car, which is right-side-up and on top.
Boris: If there’s a door from their car that leads from their car to one of our windows, could you act as a safety.
Pierre: If I had known earlier, I might have been able to reconnect the ley-line. But we don’t have an engine anymore. My foresight isn’t that long. I have missed my chance to be helpful in this disaster situation.
Pierre clambers out the back door of the car, doing his breathing exercises. Boris helps Tazio exit.
Pierre Serenity: When you walk calmly without causing or intending harm, wild beasts, dangerous monsters, enemy soldiers, hazardous terrain, treacherous traps, and surly dwarves cannot harm you.
The people in the top car are freaking out. Yonne thinks they will be encouraged by a person in authority, so she makes herself look like Olivine (the Geologist from Hullift). She directs the people in the top car to come out the rear door, which is a bit lower and closer to the ground. Imperial citizens know emergency procedure, so they form a queue and let the most injured people out first.
Boris: There are bits of this culture that I really like! I love a good queue.
Train stewards approach Yonne and treat her like someone in charge who knows Imperial procedures.
Steward 1: Good, a Geologist. The ley-line has moved!
Steward 2: My messenger pistol was crushed. Can you send up a flare?
Yonne: I see you are mistaking me for the Geologist. I am the Geologists’ twin. I just merely happen to look like them and also I thought that my presence would help calm these nice people. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to fix ley-lines. My apologies.
Pierre can alter the ley-lines of magic that hold the world together. This is a very big magnetic ley-line, so he can’t do it by himself. Tazio knows the land and can find the two endpoints of the land. Boris uses his magic to boost the power so Pierre can re-connect the lines and get a car across.
Pierre: Everyone. Thank you for your attention.Very good job evactuating the train. We are in contact with the Empire. They are sending a team to get us to the next station. This is a new procedure. It’s still a bit dangerous. We need to you climb back into this less-damaged car and use panels or hang up your coats, just block all the windows. There may be debris and high winds with this new technology and we don’t want anyone hurt.
Pierre Talk Sense (+Grace, trick) 10+
The Imperial citizens follow Pierre’s instructions. Yonne goes in, still in the shape of “the Geologist’s twin” and leads them in breathing exercises to stay calm and not notice what her teammates are doing outside.
Yonne Keep Them Busy 10+
Boris climbs under the train car and extends his dark shadowy magic to empower Tazio’s magic.
Boris Overcome 10+
Tazio spends Natural Magic: damage this stat to make the land do something.
Tazio shows Pierre where the ley-line has gone, then increases the magnitism in the earth. It reacts with Boris’ magic to lift the train car.
Pierre sends 1 use of ley-lines: gain access to an inaccessible location
Tazio (with the land’s help) pushes the train car along the path that Pierre marks with his magic seam ripper. They travel around different hills than the normal route. They pass within sight of The Wisted Monolith: granite spires and volcanic extrusion hundreds of feet tall with vaguely humanoid forms.
One train car slides into a lonely train station in the middle of the countryside. There’s no engine, and strange-looking people escort it. That’s suspicious.
Pierre: There’s been an accident. There are injured people aboard. You’ve got to help!
Pierre Talk Sense (+Grace, trick) 10+
The railyard workers rush to help and don’t pay attention to how the train car got here.
Tazio forms a bond with the Fellowship: We saved people by using the land’s magic.
NO END-OF-SESSION MOVE