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 was stranded when the Empire’s mag-lev railroads failed. This time, they run back to Hullift to fetch their ship, the Trilobite.
Boris carries Yonne on his back as he runs at super-speed towards Hullift. They expect Pierre to join them in Hullift when he comes back from his other party. (But he won’t!)
The Twisted Monoliths, nightmarish wasteland. Long ago, a Mage tried to use the magic of the land and it went horribly wrong. The entire area is a wasteland, with strange rock formations that look vaguely humanoid, twisted in agony. It’s a legend and an warning in the Empire to not abuse the land.
Stat: Terrifying – Imperial citizens refuse to come here
Response Level 4
Response moves:
- Famine: When you Fill Your Belly, someone must Pay A Price
- Bad weather: Fog
- Magnetized: there’s magnetized metal everywhere
- Guardian: a powerful threat defends something
The fog forces Boris to slow down. He thinks he sees a person, but it’s a rock. He thinks he sees a stand of trees, but when he gets closer, he sees spires of rock shaped like fingers with too many joints. Boris and Yonne both carry medallions from the Forgotten Lands that let them remember the Forgotten Lands. Magnetic force makes Boris’ medallion tug at his powerful neck, but Yonne’s medallion slides right out of her liquid body. She wants it back! Not because it reminds her of the Forgotten Lands (she forgot about them when she lost the medallion) but because Pierre got it for her. She felt the direction that the medallion was pulled, but can’t see it through the fog and darkness.
Boris Look Closely 7-9 ask 3 questions, 1 answer the hard way
- What is going on here? What do my senses tell me?
- Whatever magical cataclysm formed the Twisted Monoliths magnetized some of the iron ore in the area. The magnetism itself isn’t magical.
- Tell me about the medallion.
- Boris feels his medallion pulling a certain direction. He follows it and sees Yonne’s medallion stuck to a column of rock. It startss to cut into the rock as the whole column slumps down. It’s like the rock is melting, but without the extreme heat needed to melt rocks
- Is there something hidden or out of place?
- The rock gets softer and softer and turns into brown goo: the magical substance of the land.
Boris Overcome 10+
Boris scoops out a chunk of the rock that contains Yonne’s medallion. It feels a bit like the experiment he did last night with Tazio. The rock around the medallion melts into brown magic goo.
Boris: I feel like they won’t like that they did this. Do I have something that can bottle that?
Boris and Yonne aren’t carrying any glass bottles or sealed containers. Yonne could hold the goo in her liquid body, but Imperial citizens would see it inside her and be offended. Since Boris can’t carry it, he eats it! Boris tries to feel the vibes of whatever magical thing is causing the Twisted Monolith to melt into goo.
Boris +Wisdom to sense vibes 7-9
It feels like a hand has come off a throat so it can scream. But it’s not the land that wants to scream. A woman staggers out of the fog.
- Indira she/her Lone Survivor: A cataclysm took their previous life away. Now they must make do with whatever they can find in this new life.
- Old Scars: The past is heavy. When you Speak Softly with the Lone Survivor, they will refuse to answer any of your questions about their past or their calamity. You can erase a bond with the Lone Survivor to get an answer to one question anyway.
- Undying: The survivor is impossible to keep down. At the end of each scene, heal their stats, even if this one is damaged.
- Heavy Heart: The survivor has a purpose – to prevent the calamity that took their home from ever hurting anyone else again. They will drop anything else they are doing to try and stop or destroy this calamity.
- Threat to the World When someone who is not also a Threat to the World takes direct action against something that is, they must Pay a Price to do so.
Indira is exhausted but relieved. She sees Boris (a monstrous humanoid boar) and Yonne (a sentient blob).
Indira: Oh no! Everything was twisted! Everything was ruined!
Yonne: We just got here, hi, Nice to see someone else here. What’s happening with the rocks? They’re melting?
Indira: I don’t want to talk about rocks! Is this the Empire? Are you Imperial?
Boris: No, but you are in the Empire.
Boris is concerned for Indira’s health. Her clothes are tattered an indistinct, all the color of the magic goop, but she’s not malnourished.
Boris: I have this aubergine. Would you like it?
Indira: Yes! Oh, this is great. It’s been a long time.
Boris spends 1 Food
Famine: When you Fill Your Belly, someone must Pay A Price
Yonne recently learned how to alter the concentration of acid in her body. She creates an area of pure pH 7 water and gives it to Indira.
Yonne spends 1 Food
After a meal, Indira feels much better. She’s surrounded by strange monsters, but they are kind.
Indira: I feel like I need to start the conversation over. I’m Indira. What are you names.
Yonne: I am Yonne. Sometimes we have our friend Pierre who’s not here.
Boris: I’m Boris. I don’t think Pierre is relevant. I mean, in this conversation.
Indira: This will sound weird. What year is it?
GM note: The players don’t keep track of fictional time, but the Empire does, and the Fellowship would know it. There’s a date on all the forms they had to fill out to enter the Empire, and on the forms for their research grant.
Indira tries unsuccessfully to stifle her surprise.
Yonne: Sorry, what year did you think it was? Are you a time traveler?
Indira: Never mind how I got here. I need to get back to civilization. I need to report some stuff.
Boris: You’re OK to just leave this space–
Indira: Absolutely. Let’s go. Which direction are you going?
The Fellowship walks south with Indira. Yonne hopes that she will join the crew of the Trilobite.
A while later, they encounter a coach travelling cross-country. It is drawn by four camels and has a large water tank on the roof. It’s moving roughly south, the same direction as the Fellowship.
Indira: Maybe we can hail them. I forgot how difficult walking was.
The driver stops and looks inside the coach. Something has happened. The Fellowship approaches. The driver doesn’t pay attention to them. He opens the door of the coach, looks inside, then slams the door and looks scared and confused.
- Cal he/him human driver
- Yes sir: He has Hope when following orders from a superior.
Yonne: Hello?
Cal: Did you do something to the Colonel? What’s happening here?
He opens the door again and brown magic goo pours out. Indira rushes over to investigate. She orders Cal out of the way like someone who is used to wielding authority. She leans into the coach and chants and makes magic gestures.
Indira: Colonel Rythia, right? Elf, who knows how old? Slim build, about this high?
Indira holds her hand somewhat higher than her head. Brown magic goo drips from her fingers.
Indira: That wasn’t the colonel. It wasn’t real.
Cal: I’ve been serving under her for 16 months now. What do you mean not real?
Yonne: That thing in your truck is the remains of magic, I think. It was a magic clone of her? Maybe the real one’s back at the base.
Indira was nodding along until that last sentence, which convinces her that Yonne doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
Indira: Why were you traveling in the middle of the night?
Cal: The railroads don’t work and she couldn’t use the fast travel. I don’t know–I’m not high enough rank to use that.
Indira thinks. She looks worried. Perhaps this is related to the calamity in her past. She quizzes Cal about the events surrounding Colonel Rythia’s trip. Cal mentions the state of emergency, the trains shutting down, the Geologists’ short-lived excitement.
Indira: Something happened to the land. Something changed it. I think that’s how I got out.
Yonne: Got out of the stone? Are you saying that the place of the stones that looked like people were all people like you?
Indira: That’s in the past. We have to worry about people now! Cal, whatever that Rythia clone wanted at your destination must have been important. I’m coming with you.
Boris feels responsible for loosing Indira on the world. Yonne wants to ride on the coach to get to Hullift faster, and to ask Cal how Indira would know Rythia.
Yonne: We could come with you. It would be faster to get where we’re going. Yes, absolutely. We have higher security clearance than Indira.
Boris: We represent the government on certain science endeavors.
Yonne Talk Sense (+hope, Boris help, +grace, impress & trick) 10+ success
Cal returns to the driver’s seat and helps Yonne and Boris climb onto the roof. Indira opens the door to the cabin and pauses.
Indira: There are still some thing I have to do in here.
Boris: You do not need to explain yourself. You seem very upset about the explanation part. You just say you gotta do it, I trust you.
Yonne: You seem upset to talk about anything.
They ride south for a while. Colonel Rythia was en route to a military base just outside of Hullift. Hills outside of Hullift restrict land movement to just a few routes. The highway that the coach uses is blocked by a traffic jam. Many people are trying to get into Hullift, and some people are trying to get out. Since the trains don’t work, everyone is on the road. Several vehicles have collided with each other. The largest is a double-decker bus that spun sideways and fell over. The fall split open the top deck and spewed luggage and boxes all over the road.
Boris wonders if his pocket-sized slime pal can eat the bus or cut it in half. He’d rather not destroy property. Perhaps the bus can leave under its own power if it was righted. He pushes through the crowd for a better look. Bystanders argue about how to handle the situation. Some say that Imperial protocols will see them through this situation. Others say Imperial ways can no longer be trusted.
Boris Defying Gravity: You have created a magical means to fly for as long and as often as you’d like.
Boris concentrates on a flower pressed between two small panes of glass. Gleador the Druid gave him the flower when he visited the Sapphire Islands. Boris was born from vengeful magic, but when he focuses on peace and serenity, he can focus his magic in a new way and fly. Yonne clings to him and they float over the crowd and land on the bus.
Boris Look Closely 6- ask 1 question, find out the hard way
- Tell me about the bus? How could it hurt or help me?
The bus driver also examines the underside of the bus, now in plain view as the huge vehicle rests on its side.
Bus Driver: The driveshaft isn’t cracked. There’s some water, probably because the tank is sideways. That should be OK for a bit. Hey, mister, I’m going to get inside and turn it on. Tell me if the wheels are spinning. The two axles at the back are the drive wheels. The driveshaft carries the power.
Boris: I got a third of that.
The bus driver is already climbing into the bus. The engine fires up and the back wheels do spin. They catch on the ground and start dragging the back end of the bus across the ground, towards people and stopped vehicles! The jolt knocks the bus driver out of his seat on the high side of the bus. He falls across the bus onto an open window. The window frame dragging across the ground threatens to crush his arm against the ground. Boris finds where the driveshaft connects to the wheels and puts Gore, his pet Slime on it.
Boris: Dissolve please.
Gore Metal Dissolution, slow
Boris Overcome 10+ success
Gore will destroy the transmission, but not immediately. The bus continues to rattle and spin across the ground, crushing the spilled luggage. Someone rushes in to save their precious belongings.
Yonne Changeling You can take on a solid form in the shape of anyone you wish to imitate.
Yonne: No, be super-careful! The bus is super-dangerous right now. Step back!
Yonne Talk Sense (+Grace, trick) 10+
Yonne appears as the bus driver, and the Imperial citizen respects authority and obeys.
Citizen: We gotta trust our traditions!
Boris flies into the bus, grabs the bus driver, and flies out.
Boris: Don’t be afraid, I’m here to help!
A moment after they land, the bus shakes and the driveshaft snaps with a loud crunch. The wheels stop and so does the bus. Boris collects Gore and it flows into his pocket. Boris doesn’t wear much, just beat-up trousers or overalls.
The immediate danger is past, but this wreck indicates a larger problem. Some people are trying to flee Hullift into the Empire. Others are going into Hullift to flee the Empire. Imperial traditions are in doubt. Colonel Rythia is not the only public figure who dissolved into goop tonight.
Yonne: That’s not normal, right? You know who would be really good at this? Pierre. Where is he?
Boris: I feel like Pierre is OK no matter what. He knows what he’s doing.
Yonne: That’s not true! Pierre needs us. He needs people to stand up for him.
Boris: Is that a short joke?
PIerre should be back by now, but Infinite Windows has not opened. Cal drives the Fellowship and Indira to the military base. A crowd of soldiers has assembled near the gate to privide emergency assistance, but at least three people claim to be in command. Colonel Riker, Colonel Taggert, and Colonel Quincy. All their clothes are battered and brown like Indira’s.
Yonne: Hey, everyone! What year is it?
The soldiers sound off in unison, and the colonels look at Yonne suspiciously.
Riker: How do you know about this?
Yonne: What I know is that you were trapped in the goop and you just got out, and goop that was pretending to be you disappeared. This mage knows more than I do. (Indira, what’s your rank?)
Indira: I’m not in the military. Technically, I was ex–OK, so, the corporal here was telling me there’s a problem with the fast travel system.
Taggert: No, don’t use it!
Quincy: It’s a trap!
Indira: OK. Sounds like there was a problem with the fast travel system while it was working.
GM note: The players remembered the Star Trek episode where the transporter made a copy of William Riker. This mess is the result of a teleporter accident.
Yonne: You guys messed with the magic of the ground, apparently! That was a bad idea.
Taggert: I don’t know why anyone uses the fast travel system. It doesn’t work. It’s a trap. We all got stuck down there.
Yonne: Down where?
Taggert: I don’t know. Inside.
Quincy: But I took command when you retired. You’d done several deployments via fast travel and never complained.
Yonne Speak Softly 7-9 ask 3 questions, 1 unhelpful answer
- Tell me about the officers? Did they all melt?
- One colonel commands this base at a time. These three colonels all commanded the base at some point in the past. Of the base’s current personnel, all officers (except one junior officer) and one squad of soldiers melted. Many people came out of the fast travel building, a much greater number than the number of people who melted to goop.
- Yonne: That makes sense. Absolutely everyone who ever fast traveled was in that building. Probably.
- How long has it been since anyone used fast travel?
- In the past week, there have been several calls for Rapid Response Teams, but none of them were able to fast travel. This was about the time that the Avatar of the land showed up, and the Geologists said it was OK to mine everything.
- Yonne: Mining everything: bad. Broke the fast travel.
- Indira: “The Land.” Ugh!
- Taggert: We’re not fans of the land either. It trapped us in some kind of underworld.
- What can you tell me about the underworld?
- The colonels don’t want to talk about it.
Yonne: Well, that was an unhelpful answer. It seems to me that, technically, you’re all in command so you should make a group decision. Or a council.
The military is trained to respect the chain of command, but the chain of command melted. All three colonels did command the base at one time, but none of them know the current situation. Quincy wasn’t stuck for that long and does recognize some of the soldiers.
Yonne: You should decide based on how long you were in service, up until you got stuck.
Quincy: The time that we served the Empire, but there’s also the time we were trapped by the Empire.
Yonne: Only when you were in active service.
The colonels don’t like to hear that their traumatic experience doesn’t count.
Taggert: Why are we listening to a civilian?
Riker: Time served. I still have time. I thought my life was over, but I’m still here. I’ve been given me a second chance!
Yonne: I’ve lost control. I did the best I could under the circumstances, which were very confusing!
Riker is now more eager to take command. The soldiers just learned that they were following orders from goo people impersonating their real commanders. Now the soldiers aren’t asking, “Which colonel is in charge?” They’re asking harder questions, like “Can we trust orders from anyone?” and “Is being a soldier the right thing to do?” The local culture has to adjust to an unprecendented situation and outsiders like the Fellowship can’t sovle that for them. Boris feels an unsettled feeling in his stomach for the first time in ages.
Yonne: I can’t wait to tell Pierre about this. He will think it’s so cool.
Soldier: All our traditions are a lie. I shoudl go into Hullift and catch the next ship out.
Indira: You would abandon your country and your family and your way of life? You coward! You don’t deserve to be in the military. Where did you say the fast travel building was?
There’s enough confusion that the soldiers don’t realize they are revealing a state secret to a civilian by pointing out the building. Indira marches towards it with purpose and the Fellowship follows her.
Boris: We loosed her on the world. We need to see this through.
Indira walks around the building chanting and doing magical gestures. When she completes a lap, a thing bright line appears on the ground, making a circle around the building.
Indira: Outside of this circle is safe.
Boris: And inside isn’t? Are there people inside?
Yonne: Maybe there’s someone who was stuck in there like you for a long time and they just came out and they’re sitting there confused. Maybe the two of us could go in there and check and then you could blow it up.
Indira: Can you tell a real person from a copy?
Boris: Didn’t all the copies melt? Anyone alive in there probably should be alive.
Indira: OK, but be quick about it.
The door bangs open. Boris is already inside. He finds some people who were overwhelmed by the experience and didn’t move. They are waiting for their commanding officer to come get them.
Yonne Changeling You can take on a solid form in the shape of anyone you wish to imitate.
Yonne sees the soldiers, ducks out of sight, and appears as Taggert, the colonel who was in command most recently.
Yonne: Soldiers, we need to roll out! Make sure you’re with your buddy. Let’s go! Return to the base, stat!
The soldiers get up and follow Yonne out past Indira like violent ducklings.
Indira: Oh wow. Good idea. Thank you.
Yonne sends the soldiers to join the rest of the soldiers. Indira walks into the building that she said she was going to blow up. Boris and Yonne run after her. She’s already casting a spell and has to reverse it when she sees them.
Indira: No, outside is where you’ll be safe.
Yonne: We want you to be safe also.
Indira: I’m the fulcrum. It doesn’t affect me. I know what I’m doing.
Boris: As long as you’re safe.
Yonne: OK, fine. Once again, I wish Pierre was here to explain to me what is happening.
They exit the building. Boris runs around the magic circle marking the safe zone, making sure no one enters for any reason. Inside, Indira chants and turns the sphere inside the glowing line inside out. Everything that was near the center is torn apart, and everything on the edges is crushed. The spell fades and the debris collapses, revealing Indira standing on a small circle of intact floor.
Yonne: Wow that was cool. We should introduce her to Pierre.
Boris: I would like to learn how to do that too. Can she show me.
Indira: That is a total spherical inversion. I told you I knew what I was doing.
Yonne: That was really cool. Good job. I have a friend that you should meet.
Indira: I get enough of this from my family. I am perfectly fine being single. Magic is the love of my life.
Boris: Not romantic in any way. You have similar interests.
Yonne: He also really likes magic. He’d be more impressed than us, because we don’t know how hard it is.
Indira: My plan is to find the rest of these facilities and invert them. Which I fear may take a long time. I don’t know how they were fooled into constructing this horrible system.
Yonne: That’s a great question. I think you need to study current maps because you’ve been gone a long time and you know what? We know where the military branches are.
Indira: I was going to run a trace and scry out all the terminals connected to this one. (It would have been easier before I inverted it.) If you have a map, I’d love to see it.
Yonne: I wish I had a map, but apparently these are secret. You know who would be really good at helping you with a trace?
Indira: I clearly don’t know any of your friends.
Yonne: The person I was just talking about! How about, since you’ve been stuck in goop for a long time, and it’s been a long trip, and it’s night, you get some sleep and we’ll deal with this tomorrow? We have a ship that’s docked on the other side of the city. If you want to use our ship to sleep, that’s cool.
Indira: Yeah, I don’t think I slept. That sounds really good.
Indira has been mostly in statis, so she has not had to eat, drink, or sleep for a long time, and all these biological processes are hitting her again. She’s asleep as soon as the Fellowship shows her to a cabin on the Trilobite.
Boris: Stop trying to set her up with Jardiner!
Yonne: No! I want her to be my friend. She’s cool and weird and she has secrets, just like you and me.
Boris: What secrets do you have?
Yonne: I have secrets. You don’t know everything I’ve eaten.
Boris: I can see what you’ve eaten.
Yonne: What about the things I finished digesting before me met?
END-OF-SESSION MOVE
- Did we thoroughly explore a new location?
- NO
- Did anyone find what they were seeking?
- NO.
- Did we discover more about the world and its people?
- YES, there are mud clones!
1 Boon: gear