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 met Tazio: a radical who doesn’t accept the way the Empire interacts with the land. Their train derailed and they barely managed to get the passengers to an isolated railway station.
This time, they help the survivors and try to figure out what happened.
Pierre fast-talked the station master into not questioning how the train car arrived without an engine. The station master is Brewster, a human man. He’s large and muscular. His rolled-up sleeves reveal many scars on his hand and arms, probably from working on large, dangerous machines. The six mechanics he leads are similarly big and tough.
- Brewster he/him human station master
- Strong Arm: His blows knock down and momentarily stun his foes.
- Black Thumb: Given time and safety, he can fix or disassemble any mechanical device.
- Group of 6 mechanics
- Ornery: They damage anyone who tries to Keep Them Busy.
- Group: This enemy can act against two people at once. When this enemy is destroyed, this stat is damaged, or this is their only stat left, replace the Group with two normal enemies.
Boris looks at Brewster and hopes he is in a good mood. He’s certainly energetic. He spurs his mechanics into action. They capture the drifting train car with long poles tipped with magnetic balls. They re-direct the train car onto an artificial, powered magnetic line that bring it to the station’s platform.
Boris takes the lead in co-ordinating with the mechanics to take care of the passengers. Yonne is happy to let him lead. She tried taking the lead earlier by taking the form of a Geologist, but that didn’t work. She can’t do it as herself. If she does it as herself, it doesn’t work. She has to do it as somebody else, but she’s not figured out who the right “somebody else” is.
The mechanics help the passengers off the train car. Imperial citizens don’t panic and stampede. They think, “There’s an emergency procedudre, and if we follow the procedure, we’ll be OK!” So they follow directions from people who seem to be in charge.
Boris: I do respect that bit of their culture.
Boris Look Closely 7-9 ask 3 questions, find 1 answer the hard way
- What would the mechanics have us do next?
- The normal adventuring way of inserting themselves into every situation seems like meddling. They want to follow their procedures without disruption.
- What injuries have the passengers suffered?
- Jenner she/her halfling is too upset to wait and follow procedure. She steps out of line waving clearly injured hands. Her fingers are not pointing the right way. She’s a sculptor, and the fear of losing the ability to do her art is at least as bad as the pain of her injury.
- Kassssidy she/her Snakefolk has smoke inhalation. She unhinges her jaw and gapes to point out the problem. She has to concentrate for a bit before she can speak again.
- What should I be wary of when dealing with the Mechanics?
Boris doesn’t know how to help with broken fingers, but the dark magic that clings to his soul is fiery, so perhaps he can do something about Kassssidy’s smoke inhalation. Boris interjects as the Mechanics tell Kassssidy to wait in line.
Boris: Let me take this problem off of your hands. I may have a solution.
The mechanics are happy to let Boris deal with Kassssidy. Boris gauges Kassssidy’s discomfort to adjust the length of his expanation. She’s short of breath and uncomfortable, but not in crisis.
Boris: Suffice it to say, I have a magic about me that is part of my body and soul and I can extinguish fires and (by extension) smoke. I’m thinking that if we bring ourselves in proximity and I do a little bit of digging, I can physically and magically remove the smoke from your lungs and/or body. It may be uncomfortable.
Boris Talk Sense 10+
Kassssidy: You wanna put your hand into my mouth? That’s fine. I’ve eaten bigger things. I’m going to have a hand on your arm, and I’ll tap it if you need to stop.
Boris: Perfect. Tap if I need to stop. Clench if I need to get out immediately.
Kassssidy’s body is over 3 meters long, but snakes don’t stand up straight. She “stands” on a coil of her tail and can easily adjust the height of her head to match Boris. Boris uses one arm to hold her body close to let her get used to the feeling of the dark magic that clings to her soul. He pulls back his other arm to reach for her lungs and she lines up her head and the upper part of her body to match.
Boris Overcome 10+
GM note: Content warning for body horror. The players were OK with it, but maybe you don’t want a detailed description of the inside of a snake.
Boris’ head is boar-shaped inclusing a big snout. That snout has no teeth. in the back of that large mouth is a small mouth. This is the one he uses to talk, and which annihiliates anything that enters it. He looks a little strange when speaking (OK, he always looks strange because he’s a boar monster) because the big, visible mouth doesn’t move.
Boris’ hand has two fingers and a thumb with thick nails. Kassssidy unhinges her jaw to envelope it and rests a hand on his arm. He carefully reaches down her throat until it splits. There are two pipes inside that he can feel with his two fingers. Kassssidy taps his arm and points to her right. Boris gestures with one of his fingers. She nods as much as she can. Boris has selected the bronchial tube and not the esophagus. It’s narrower, so he can only reach one finger inside. Snakes have one main lung and the other is atrophied, so the bronchial tube does split, but the path to atrophied lung is small and easy to miss. Boris can feel the smoke inside the main lung and tries to twist it around the tip of his finger like cotton candy. He pulls his forearm and hand out of Kassssidy’s mouth trailing a cloud of smoke. He moves his arm away from any bystanders and shakes it off. It fades away in the open air. Boris gingerly holds Kassssidy as she takes a moment to re-assemble her face and take a few breaths.
Kassssidy: Wow. Yeah. That really worked.
Boris: I’m so glad that worked.
Kassssidy: You weren’t sure? I guess you only need to do it once. We got away with it.
Most people on the platform had stopped to stare at the procedure. The four children of a halfling man are loudly and impolitely curious.
Halfing child: Daddy, look! That man’s pulling something out of that snake. Was she eating him?
Boris: No, don’t worry. I’m inedible.
Homer: Please forgive the kids’ enthusiasm. My name is Homer. This is Holly, Howard, Howdah, and Hannah. I guess this is a teaching moment about how people are different, and that’s OK. We’re called “halflings”. What are your people called?
Homer’s four kids have a family resemblance. Anyone would know they were related, even without their matching clothes. Yonne takes a shape that’s a combination of all of them. So far she’s taken the exact form of specific people, and that has caused problems. She’s trying something new: Looking like a person, not a specific person. She copies the eyes from one, the nose from another, the mouth from a third. The combination only looks normal because the four children look similar. Homer often counts his kids to make sure all four are there. Now there are five.
PIerre comes around from the other side of the train car. He sends a thought bubble.
Pierre: Yonne!
Pierre marches up to the person that the thought bubble went to.
Pierre: Yonne, good. You’re using that. You did not completely explain how it works to me.
Homer: Oh, is that your son? He looks so much like one of mine.
Pierre’s a halfling and Yonne is disguised as a halfling child. Pierre takes Yonne aside to scold her.
Pierre: You didn’t completely explain all the limitations of this changeling ability. I was being brave. I was impersonating someone else so that they wouldn’t have to get hurt. But it work, because as soon as something hits me, I change back to myself.
Yonne: That’s how that works.
Pierre: That was not clear. I got hit when I didn’t deserve it and I didn’t fool them. This was terrible!
Yonne: Oh, sorry. I didn’t think it was important because I don’t usually use it when I’m fighting. I kinda forgot, sorry.
This is a very frustrating response for Pierre. He’s angry, but has nowhere to put his anger. She didn’t do it on purpose, but she’s not upset about it. He wanted to throw his bad emotions at her, and they slid off. She’s made of water.
Pierre: Fine! Now I know.
Yonne: What were you using it for?
Pierre: We were trying to make a deal with this guy we fought earlier. We made a really good pitch, but he was spiteful. He said, “OK, but the elf hurt me last time. I want to hit the elf.” The elf refused and I took her aside to “convince her.” I came out looking like the elf and just stood there while he punched me across the room! I was a halfling before I hit the ground.
Boris: He punched the elf out of you!
Yonne: I feel like that’s the elf’s fault.
Pierre: I guess it is. If she had gotten punched, then I wouldn’t have been punched. I was excited because I was doing a brave thing. I usually don’t do that, but, I don’t know, people like it when heroes do brave things.
Yonne: That’s super cool. You should tell Boris and also, speaking of Boris, he just took smoke out of a lady’s whole mouth. That snake lady over there, that’s just fine? She was coughing and he went into her body and now she’s fine! You both did brave thigns today.
Boris: Do you have a spell to fix broken fingers? I don’t have good medical knowledge.
Pierre: Careful with the spells. I no longer have a magic-user’s badge. I left the Empire with my other team and they took the badge back, so I should be discreet.
Brewster gets everyone’s attention for an announcement.
Brewster: Folk, I sent for a relief car to get you to your destination. The next stations report that the ley-linei s also down for them. The track is impassable in both directions.
Yonne: That’s weird. How does the track work? I thought it was based on the stones in the ground.
Yonne assumes Pierre knows about anything magical.
Pierre: Yeah, there were magical ley-lines yunder the ground that kept the trains up with magnetic forces. It’s possible for ley-lines to move. That’s how I open sealed locations with my magical seam ripper.
Pierre reaches for his vest, then remembers not to show off magical items. He taps his pocket.
Pierre: It’s not unheard of for the ley-lines to move or become dormant. It’s weird that a bunch of them moved at once. I think if it was common, the Empire would have planned for it.
Boris: Maybe it’s the proximity of the Avatar.
Yonne: Maybe the Avatar is using them on purpose, or the stones–stones don’t think, do they?
GM note: That’s double dramatic irony, because Yonne’s player used to play Vestri the Dwarf, who came from stone, will return to stone, and can talk to stone. Also, the land is trying to become a person, although it’s not good at thinking.
Homer and his kids have an appointment that can’t be delayed. A prestigious music school is holding auditions tomorrow. Homer and the kids are a singing group. Attendance at the school isn’t all that’s on the line. If they are accepted, Homer and his family will gain Imperial citizenship. Right now they are residents, not citizens. The train was going to arrive at midnight, if it wasn’t delayed. Boris wonders if he can sprint while holding all the children and get them there on time. Homer wouldn’t let a stranger run away with his children! Boris doesn’t even bring it up.
GM note: Boris has taken the Witch destiny and really wants to use Conjurer to make some sort of problem-solving creature. It’s hard to find
Boris can’t conjure something that is both strong enough to carry the family and fast enough to get to the city on time. Perhaps if he conjured something strong, it could drag the train car to the next station, carrying passengers without tight deadlines.
Homer: Brewster, how did you get here? You must have gotten here somewhere?
Brewster: We’ve got the camels and a cart, but the cart is for transporting equipment. It wouldn’t be fit for long-distance travel, especially with kids.
Yonne: Hey Jardiner? Pierre? How does a person find ley-lines?
Pierre: Let’s start with the underlying mathematical axioms that lead to the characteristics of ley-lines…
Pierre learned his magic at the academy, in a rigorously intellectual way. Tazio is an Elf, who is innately magical, and has a more intuitive understanding of magic.
Tazio: No, no! You don’t need all these books and equations. Prime angles? That’s garbage.
Yonne is automatically on Tazio’s side because Pierre’s way seems too complicated and confusing.
Tazio: When you stand on top of a hill, the breeze will move your hair. Well, if you had hair. It moves my hair. When you stand in a brook you can feel the water flowing past you. You can feel the speed and the temperature. You have to be very present in your body and in your environment and you’ll notice things you were too busy to notice before. Too busy talking, or thinking, or moving about. These ley-lines are one of the things that you will notice. And the Geologists almost get it right except they are completely wrong.
Yonne: OK, so you can find ley-lines is what I’m hearing? Did they actually leave, or did they move? Could you put the train on them if you pick the train up and put it over there?
Tazio tries to meditate, but Homer is still worried about getting his family to their appointment and he’s making a lot of noise and nervous energy. Tazio leaves the platform and moves into the wilderness. There’s not much around this train station. There’s no town
Pierre: I wonder if she’s using the breathing exercises. Would the breathing exercises help me detect magic?
Yonne: I want to try with you. I hope I can feel magic. Let’s find out.
Pierre and Yonne try his breathing exercises, but that’s not the kind of meditation that Tazio is doing, and they don’t gain the ability to sense magic. Tazio returns.
Tazio: I can’t feel that magnetic pull within a kilometer. What they use to carry the train is very strong. I could sense it a long way off. I actually didn’t hear anything, which is quite unusual.
Boris considers creating a strong creature that could pull the train car (and all the passengers). It’s from a mag-lev train, so it doesn’t have wheels. It can rest on pegs when not on a magnetic rail, like for maintenance. Dragging those across the ground would not work.
Brewster: Fine! I don’t think it’s worth it, but I’ll send for a Rapid Response Team to get you out of here.
There’s a tower above the station with several funnels pointing in different directions. This the Imperial high speed communication network, based on bullets. Brewster writes message, puts it into a special capsule, and fires it towards the next station, where a funnel will capture it.
Yonne: I don’t want to do this, but if I stick to the bottom of the train car, it would be easier to pull.
Pierre: That sounds painful.
Yonne: I don’t really feel pain like other people,
Pierre: Are you sure? Can you ever be sure of another person’s experience? We can describe to each other, but it’s all metaphors. We should figure out how to make the cart go that distance. We should rip the seats out of the car and put them on the cart, so people can travel in comfort and safety.
Brewster: There’s still the matter of my camels going a hundred miles.
Pierre: Mister Brewster, I have a proposal which I think will help us prioritize our highest priority passengers in a way that will not affect operational readiness of this facility—
Brewster: Hold on. I called in a response team. It’ll be fine.
CLANG! A message arrives at the tower. Brewster goes to the tower to read it. He comes back out, holding the slip of paper.
Brewster: “Rapid Response Teams are not travelling.” I’ve seen “Rapid Response Team denied” but this is different. I’m not sure what this means.
Yonne: The ley-lines are down everywhere!
Boris stands by Pierre to add a sense of trustworthiness, since Boris stepped in to help the mechanics earlier. Boris and his friends are helpful and competent people. That’s a good way to strengthen an emotional appeal, but Pierre does not appeal to Brewster’s emotions, so it doesn’t work.
Pierre: We’ll have to make do with what we have here. With our ingenuity and resources, I’m sure we can do it. First, if we take some of the seats from the train and put them on the cart, that will make travel safer and more comfortable. your camels will not haveto go all the way to the city. We just need to take them to the next train station. So we would not be taking you away from your work here for too long.
Pierre Talk Sense (+Sense, explain plan) 10+
Brewster agrees. He explains to the passengers that he will take Homer’s family and Jenner to the next train station. He and the mechanics get to work modifying the cart.
Brewster uses Black Thumb: Given time and safety, he can fix or disassemble any mechanical device.
The Fellowship lets the experts do their thing and looks for other ways to help. Jenner is having a bad time. Her fingers hurt, and she’s stressed her future capabilities. This could end her sculpting career.
GM note: Usually, spending food can heal a stat, but giving Jenner an aubergine to heal her fingers isn’t narratively satisfying. We’ll take a more interesting a complicated approach.
Pierre asks Brewster for a small pan or tray and some cloth and receives them. Pierre puts a cloth down in the tray and has Jenner put her hands on the cloth. Pierre takes his magical elixir, puts some on another cloth, and pours some directly onto her fingers. It’sa magical fluid that anaesthetizes, but also makes things softer. He very carefully brushes it on because her fingers hurt a lot at the beginning. When the elixir has been worked into her fingers, PIerre carefully bends them back into place.
Jenner: Wow, this is actually working. It doesn’t hurt as much as I thought. Oh, this is like sculpting. You’re sculpting my fingers back into position.
Pierre: I can get them aligned, but I’m sure you can do better. You have a few minutes before it solidifies, so you can make the fine adjustments.
Jenner sculpts her hands with her hands until they are just the way she wants them.
Yonne: You are really good at magic and really cool and if anyone disagrees, they can fight me.
Boris: They can look for a complaint form at the back of my throat.
The Fellowship wants to figure out what sort of large-scale disruption is affecting the Empire. But Boris wants to maximize comfort for all the passengers who don’t get to go on the cart. Boris gathers materials and makes a bonfire to provide cozy light and warmth to the stranded passengers, a safe distance from the station itself, of course.
The Wasteland Waypoint exists because, by statute, a train must always be within a certain distance of a station, and this wasteland is big enough to require a waypoint in the middle. It has sleeping bags and some durable good in anticipation of a train’s passengers being forced to spend the night. It’s not set up to take care of people long-term.
Boris looks intently at the Moon to sense some kind of magic. Did the Moon turn off the ley-lines?
Pierre: I was there yesterday. Do you want to hear about it?
Yonne: How come you keep going back to the Moon?
Pierre: We went to the Moon and fixed it so it killed Vampires. I assumed that we were heroes. Then the Moon blew up our ship. Mostly. We got it fixed, but it took a while. We went back to the Moon, like “Why are you being terrible to us?” Some other people had been there–It was a Platyperson who was on fire! Wasn’t the Avatar a Platyperson on fire? It was an inside job!
Boris: So a Platyperson claiming to be the Avatar was working as an agent of the Moon to hurt the Empire?
Pierre: The Kobolds said that this Platyperson said “You can still help the Dragons. A giant spider-thing is trying to kill the last Dragon, and you should turn the Moon into a beam weapon and blast it!” They blasted us because we put legs on our ship.
Boris: Attacking every large spider seems like a bad idea.
Pierre: It’s true. They fired on two other things. We were soured on them. Maybe they are the bad guys. That clerk who was drawing pictures of the Moon. He saw a little dark spot on it. That’s because there’s a monster up there who is smashing things.
Boris gives a thumbs-up.
Pierre: Right! My friends said, “Well they deserve to have their super-weapon disabled. We don’t feel bad for them because they attacked us personally and blasted other things as well.”
Boris: I’m moraly opposed to super-weapons, having been one. More genocides are not good.
Pierre: We tried to talk the monster down and that’s the guy who wanted to hit the Elf.
Yonne: Oh, you get punched by a monster. No wonder you flew across the room.
Pierre: We decided that they deserve each other. We told the Kobolds that if they keep moving the mirrors around, the monster will keep smashing stuff. The monster didn’t want to talk to us, but we called out, ‘Maybe go to the far side of the Moon!” So we’re pretty sure that the Moon will lose the ability to be used as a beam weapon just by being smashed.
Boris: Do you have any evidence of the Avatar being there?
Pierre: Umm. No.
Yonne: When you go through the windows, can you bring someone with you? Maybe bring the Kobolds here. And the second thing is, I don’t know if they’re going to trust the person who represents the ground if the ground stopped being magical.
Boris: I don’t mean to be prejudiced against the Empire people, but they seem pretty adamant about the avatar doing no wrong.
Yonne: It’s the first time the Avatar showed up. The Avatar’s been around for a week.
The passengers hear the Fellowship talking about he Avatar and chime in with rumors they heard and their differing opinions on who the Avatar is and what his presence means, and if the land could have an Avatar at all.
Yonne: The Avatar does miracles? I do miracles too. Watch this!
Yonne takes the form of each passenger in turn.
Tazio: When the Avatar does it, it’s a miracle. When I do it, I go to jail!
Yonne: Watch this also!
Yonne grabs something and dissolves it inside her body.
Yonne: Watch this also!
Yonne gestures to Pierre.
Pierre: What are you talking about? I don’t have any magical abilities.
Boris snuffs out and re-ignites the bonfire several times. This is not a coherent argument to change any minds.
Mechanic: Watch this also! Hey! Quit the weird tricks! If you wanted to perform, you should have gone with Homer and Hannah and the rest of the kids.
The Fellowship moves away from the passengers, who are still debating.
Boris: Tazio, would you be offended if I tried to force my magic into the land?
Tazio: No, I think we’re all connected by magic. When I use my magic and the earth’s magic, that’s synergy. That’s good. I think they, the rest of the Empire, would get upset if you start setting stones on fire of whatever.
Boris: I agree with both of your sentences. Will you hop on my back? We’ll go for a quick sprint in the same direction that the train travelled, so we’ll be over the ley-line.
GM note: If they just went into the wilderness, they would see something interesting, but the train route intentionally keeps that thing out of sight, so they don’t see it.
Tazio agrees and in no time they are half a mile down the “tracks”.
Tazio: Even out here I still don’t feel any magic. It’s like when you call out and it’s so windy you don’t even get an echo back.
Boris hopes to put enough magical energy into the land that Tazio can use her innate magic in synergy with it, like she usuall does. Boris isn’t familiar with Imperial Geology, so he depends on Tazio to explain the situation. The countryside is mostly rolling hills covered with grass. Dirt can only stick to a slope up to a certain angle. A certain hill is steeper, so the layers of stone inside are exposed on one side. This hill was uplifted compared to the rest of the ground. Tazio finds an exposed iron-rich layer that is the same layer that the ley-line ran through in the valley below the hill.
Tazio: This layer of rock is above the ground, and we’re trying to reach a layer below the ground, but it remembers. It wasn’t that long. For a rock.
Tazio shows Boris the specific stratum, then goes down to the valley, where the ley-line was. Boris takes both his hands and thrusts them in and exudes as much magic as his body will allow.
Boris Overcome 10+
Tazio tries a few things, like making a metallic piece of jewelry float.
Tazio: OK, that’s enough!
Boris stops and Tazio re-joins him.
Tazio: It was kind of floating. It got a little warm, I think because you’re fire-based. Usually I send my magic out and the earth returns it amplified. I was born here, but my parents are immigrants. They told me about their forest back home. That was their paradigm. They send out and nature responds. I felt your magical power bouncing back, but it’s not the same as when the ground itself had magic.
Boris: Ah, there’s no ignition happening. There’s no way for me to jumpstart it. Is it possible that I take a piece of this rock onto the train and power it, so the train can go?
Tazio: Lifting the train is done by the ley-lines. Pushing the train forward is done by the locomotive using energy crystals.
They return to the station. Another message arrives at the tower with a clang. A mechanic fetches it.
Mechanic: It’s a red capsule! I’ve never seen one before. It says: State of Emergency. There’s been an attack at the Saline Caverns.
The Fellowship doesn’t know what that is, but Tazio explains. There’s a salt lake on some porous rock and underneath are the Saline Caverns, natural caverns that have been expanded by the Geologists to serve as their headquarters. The Fellowship talks about getting the Trilobite, so they can move around the Empire quickly without depending on Imperial infrastructure. Passengers hear that someone has a vehicle, but Yonne explains that they have to to get it. They can’t call it to come to them.
Boris carries Yonne and sprints overland towards Hullift. Pierre can use Infinite Windows to visit his other team, then return to Yonne & Boris in Hullift.
NO END-OF-SESSION MOVE