He a slime person who can’t be hurt by normal weapons, and in fact keeps several normal weapons inside his gooey, malleable form to produce and weild when the need arises. The Rain (singular and plural) arrived on this world as fragments of an ice comet. Rain tends to live with other Rain and not in the cosmopolitian, multi-species cities that are common across the world. They all answer to the Ice King, and Melvin is exploring new lands partially because of some unpleasantness back at the royal court. Rumor has it that the Rainwant to create a great Ice City.
Lumen the Lantern
She appears to be a female humanoid accompanied by a small floating light, but really she’s an extradimensional traveller, and the light is closer to the “real” her than the humanoid form it projects. Maintaining the humanoid form is tiring, but makes interacting with others in this world much easier. There are not many Lanterns in this world. She’s exploring to right wrongs, enforce justice, and protect the innocent, and she’s focused all her skill into making her Little Light as versatile and dangerous as possible. Woe to the wicked! Rumor has it that Lanterns can possess other creatures, kind of like they ‘possess’ their humanoid projections.
Grokch the Goblin Tinker
He’s a little Goblin in a big suit of power armor, equipped with a blaster gun and giant drill. Goblins are somewhat shy and stay in their technologically advanced underground cities, never venturing to the surface. Grockch (be sure to to pronounce the guttural ‘ch’ after the hard ‘k’!) was voluntold to explore topside for new materials or power sources to help advance Goblin civilization. In addition to seeking scientific progress, he also wants the chance to show off his cool toys! Rumor has it that Goblins are redirecting underground streams.
Bungo Trotter the Squire
He’s not the champion of humanity. He’s just a guy who’s good at making friends and is a little over his head. He wants to see the sights and maybe discover more about who he is, deep inside. Rumor has it that humans are brainwashing the Goblin scouts that are sent to the surface, so they will go back and infiltrate the Goblin underground cities.
Rumors
There’s a new material that enables a new form of energy
A swamp monster lurks inside a lake
A mystical shrine that lets one recover from grief
Drinking from a certain natural spring brings euphoric feelings
Let’s Begin
Bungo, Grokch, Lumen, and Melvin did not take a ferry like the previous party. They took a charter vessel that was already carrying some cargo to Port Fennrick. It’s a small boat, with barely enough room for the six passengers and crew, plus the carefully wrapped, couch-sized cargo. The boat is pulled by two manatees, commanded by Jensen (a platyperson) and guided through an unconventional route by Sebastina (a mermaid). During the journey, some vast undersea creature passed by. A fast-moving hill of water, pushed up by the unseen monster, overtook the boat and threw it off-course. The manatees broke loose and fled in panic. Sebastina barely held on to the hull, and the boat and its six occupants washed up on an unfamiliar shore.
Our heroes take stock of the situation. No one is injured, and the boat’s hull seems intact, but their propulsion is gone, and they don’t know where they are relative to their destination. Lumen surveys the scene. They are on a sandy beach. The water is shallow, dotted with many islands of strange, unnatural shapes: a hemisphere, a cube twisted at an odd angle, curlicues, and other shapes which wind, water, and time would never create. Inland, there’s dense jungle, and hills rising far beyond. Lumen’s sharp eyes detect giant spiders lurking in the jungle, hunting birds looking for stragglers overhead, and the tops of masts far away to the south. So the main shipping lane is to the south, but how can they get there?
Melvin walks into the sea and shapeshifts into a manatee. He calls out, hoping to find the lost manatees. Instead, he finds strange fishes, as misshapen and twisted as the islands they swim among. They head towards him, and they don’t look friendly! Fortunately for Melvin. he’s hard to see when he’s immersed in water, and normal weapons like fish teeth can’t hurt him anyways. Bungo still throws rocks to distract the fish and pulls Melvin to shore.
Just then, from behind a perfectly cylindrical island, a small racing yacht appears. It’s zooming dangerously close to the island, it’s lone occupant leaning so far off the side that the pontoon on the opposite side is out of the water. It’s do Rolo, the millionaire thrill-seeker! Bungo knows him! Bungo helped de Rolo select the perfect tree to turn into that yacht’s mast. Bungo hails the yacht and de Rolo swiftly heaves to. The castaways explain their predicament, hoping for a ride on the yacht, or for de Rolo to build a mast for their boat so they can finish their journey under wind power. de Rolo is excited by the strange, large creature that got them into this mess. He’s a thrill-seeker, so of course he wants to pursue the creature immediately. Of course he won’t leave them stranded. They can all accompany him on this grand chase, and then he’ll take them to Port Fennrick. The castaways are not interested in heading into danger, especially Captain Jensen, who really wants to deliver her cargo on time. It’s very important. They convince de Rolo to make a mast for them so that he can go chase monsters and they can go to Port Fennrick.
de Rolo is now fixed on his new mission and marches boldly into the jungle to select a proper tree. He doesn’t see that he’s walking right towards a couple of giant spiders! The spiders’ attention is all on de Rolo, so Melvin and Lumen blast one with their respective ranged weapons. The second Spider pounces on top of de Rolo, but Lumen drops that one with a single,well-aimed shot! Our heroes move forward to secure the area, and de Rolo finds a good tree. He and Grokch attempt to fashion a mast from it, but Grokch has only a blaster and a drill, tools better suited to other uses. He destroys the tree.
de Rolo is frustrated and won’t try again. If the party wants to leave, they had better accompnay him on his yacht. They all return to the beach, but the yacht isn’t there! Neither are Jensen or Sebastina. They’ve stolen the yacht and stranded our heroes! Melvin can move through bodies of water at incredible speed, so he catches up with the yacht and pleads for Jensen to return and pick up the others. She reluctantly agrees, and Melvin owes her a favor. When everyone is onboard, their destination is hotly debated. Jensen wants to deliver the package to Port Fennrick immediately, but de Rolo wants to pursue the creature. During the commotion, Lumen sneaks a peek at the mysterious cargo. It’s a large wooden box, maybe 2m x 1m x 1m, wrapped in canvas and secured by rope. Lumen unites a few knots and lifts the lid. Inside, there’s a creature that has been reshaped so much that no original shape is left. Eyes, limbs, teeth at all angles. It lies perfectly still, because on the inside of the lid is a glowing Symbol of Sleep! Lumen manages to cover it with her hand just before it knocks her unconscious. Now she remembers Jensen’s mannerisms and her insistence on delivering the package. She’s smuggling this beast for some unsavory folks, and if it’s not delivered as promised, Jensen is in serious trouble.
Just as Grokch is convincing Jensen to go on de Rolo’s adventure first and deliver the cargo later, Jensen spots Lumen messing with the cargo! Lumen reveals the secret of the cargo. She doesn’t uncover the Symbol of Sleep, of course, but explains the situation. She gives an inspiring speech about slaying this foul creature and fighting the mobsters who put Jensen and everyone else in danger with it. Most are convinced, but Melvin is dedicated to the freedom of all things, and sees the Chaos Beast as a prisoner. Everyone starts arguing as mutant fish start circling the boat, drawn to the Chaos Beast.
Melvin prevails. They will release the Chaos Beast from its enchanted slumber, but they don’t want to deal with an active Chaos Beast on the crowded yacht. Grokch rigs some floats and a time-release spring so they can set the Chaos Beast adrift, and dump it into the water when the yacht is a safe distance away. Unfortunately, the spring goes off immediately, throwing the box high into the air. The lid opens, throwing the Chaos Beast clear, but also flashing the entire crew with the Symbol of Sleep! Jensen, Sebastina, de Rolo, and Bungo all collapse, but Grokch no-scopes the lid right out of the air with his blaster, destroying the symbol.
With all immediate threats dealt with, the racing yacht heads for Port Fennrick.
Last time, our heroes ran into old adversaries and once again ruined their plans. These folks are prepared for everything except our heroes, it seems. Now they’re in jail.
The morning after the excitement at the docks, Friday the 15th, our heroes prepare to travel to the lost city of Saarland. Gleador the Druid shape-shifts into a Hippogriff, and Lucia the Paladin hops on his back. They fly northeast, across the river. They see the estate and mill of Lady Evelynn behind them and the beet fields giving way to forests in front of them. On the horizon, the forests rise into hills.
As they fly over the canopy of the forest, a flock of flying creatures swarm about them. The creatures are energetic and curious, and seem to have adopted our heroes as playmates. The creatures are HummingDragons. They have lizard-like faces, elongated bodies (about 4 feet, including the tails) and wings that flap too fast for the naked eye to follow, like hummingbird wings. Gleador lands to get a better look at these strange creatures. He has to circle a bit to find an opening in the canopy that admits a horse-sized creature. The HummingDragons follow, but land on branches, not the ground. Their claws are made for grasping and can’t open up flat to walk on the ground. Gleador studies them and finds cocoons nearby. The HummingDragons metamorphose. Their larval form is about the size and shape of a baseball, and rolls up and down tree trunks with the help of long, spindly legs. The larval form has a sharp proboscis to pierce tree bark and extract sap for food. Gleador can speak to the HummingDragons because, as an Elf, creatures of the Great Forest are known to him. He asks if there’s anything cool nearby. The HummingDragons all rush off in the same direction. Gleador has to run on the forest floor to follow, because there’s not enough room for his 18-foot wingspan below the canopy. The HummingDragons zoom over a large patch of brambles, heedless of the danger to those who can’t fly. Gleador leaps and clears the brambles, but a low-hanging branch smacks Lucia off of his back. She tries to hold on to the branch, but slips and falls into the bramble patch. The thorns do nothing to her plate armor, but the fall hurts a bit. The HummingDragons continue to rush off, leaving our heroes behind. To delay them Gleador suggests playing hide and seek. A few dart off in different directions, but most aren’t interested and zoom away. Gleador retrieves Lucia and they try to follow the way the HummingDragons went, but they lose the trail.
Fortunately, Lucia’s quest gives her an unfailing sense of direction towards Saarland. Without that, they’d be lost. Gleador rises through the canopy and they fly for the rest of the day without incident. At sundown, they set up camp in the forest. Lucia casts Sanctuary, so she will know if anyone enters the area with hostile intent. Gleador keeps his Hippogriff form and lies still, using his Camouflage skill to look like a big rock.
Sometime in the night, a figure approaches: a Halfling woman wearing a black cloak. She has a big traveler’s pack on her back, and several large empty sacks, secured to the main pack by their drawstrings. She also has an axe across her shoulders. She sneaks up to the campsite, using a large rock (actually Gleador) to keep out of the firelight. Gleador shifts his eyes over to Lucia, who is not reacting like Sanctuary has gone off. This reassures him, so he shifts his eyes back to watch the newcomer. She comes right up to him and peers over him at Lucia. Gleador reveals himself by tapping her on the shoulder with his tail. She squeals and stumbles back. One hand goes to her axe, the other to a large amulet around her neck. Lucia jumps up at the noise and quickly prays to see what her is evil. She detects the Halfling woman as evil, but, since her quest gives her the power to see through all illusions, she also knows that the evil she detects is fake. This woman can someone pretend to be evil. Lucia calms the situation and invites the Halfling to share the fire. The Halfling agrees and swings wide around Gleador to approach the fire. Her name is Rose, and she’s relieved that Lucia is a real person. Halfling food is best fresh. Meat pies and pastries don’t keep on the road. Rose has some carrots and biscuits which she offers to share. Lucia asks what brings her to this desolate place. Rose explains that she harvests rare lumber in the forest. The axe is for chopping wood, and the empty sacks are for carrying wood. Lucia knows this is all lies. Lucia says she’s going to Saarland. Rose tries ineffectively to stifle a reaction. Gleador can’t talk in Hippogriff form, so he tries Mister Ed shenanigans to prompt Lucia to ask questions on his behalf. He fetches a nearby stick and offers it to Rose. She puts it on the ground, neatly chops it with her axe, and puts the pieces in one of her sacks. Ok, so she knows how to use it as a tool and not just a weapon. Lucia continues to press her with questions about her work, and Saarland, and Rose gets really uncomfortable. She jams the last few bites of her supper into her mouth and starts to leave. Thanks, I must be going, see you around, and so on. Lucia cast Hold Person, paralyzing Rose as she tries to flee. Rose agrees to come clean if Lucia will please release her. Lucia agrees. Rose admits that she goes to Saarland to smuggle out whatever artifacts she can find. Le Grind (owner of one of the three mills back in Sugar’s Crossing) pays big money for such artifacts. She warns Lucia not to go to Saarland, because there are ghosts. She disappears into the forest. Lucia wonders how Rose protected herself from ghosts, but it’s too late to ask. The rest of the night is uneventful.
In the morning (Saturday the 16th), Lucia directs Gleador where to fly, and in the afternoon they reach the ruins of Saarland. Saarland’s walls were living trees, 150 feet tall. The ring of closely-packed trees around the hole in the canopy is easy to spot. Gleador circles the ruins to see what’s happening. One side of the city, including the wall, is burned. The other side is overgrown with plants, bushes, young trees. Most buildings are either burned or overgrown. Few are intact. As our heroes watch from above, a few trees move to the burned side of the cities. These living trees are Ents! Three of them surround a small building with a collapsed roof and start to tear it down. Spirits fly out of the building and swirl around the Ents, driving them away. Ents are trying to demolish the ruins to let nature take over, but there are spirits resisting them. Gleador also notices a squat, powerful-looking building whose gate has been smashed in. Soren said that raiders struck important targets while the populace rushed to deal with the fire. This must be one of those important buildings. As Gleador flies near the Ents, they shout, “Begone, grave-robbers!” Gleador lands within shouting distance, but out of reach and turns back into an Elf. Perhaps showing that he is a Druid will convince them of his good intentions. He also whispers to Lucia that they should keep the Saarland coin out of sight. Our heroes call out to the Ents, “We promise we’re not grave-robbers!” “Why did those spirits attack you?” The Ents are not convinced and rip large stones out of the ground and nearby buildings to hurl at our heroes. Lucia dodges, and Gleador turns into an Air Elemental and lets the boulder pass harmlessly through him. They run from the Ents. Knowing no other landmarks, they head for the secure building Gleador spotted from the air. The streets are full of tall grass and bushes from years of growth, but even so, our heroes easily outpace the slow Ents.
A plan view of the Saarland Mint: forge in the center, storerooms on the side, surrounded by a fence.
The building is two storeys tall, mostly stone, and surrounded by a high metal fence. The fence was probably decorated in the past, but now all but the main posts have been stripped by looters. The gates were smashed inwards off their hinges. A sign over the door (carved, not a plaque, so it can’t be removed) indicates that this building was a forge and a storehouse. The front doors are gone, and the sunlight illuminates a small patch of floor inside. There’s a corpse just inside the threshold. Lucia advances to cast Speak with Dead on the corpse. The edges of the shadows around the doorframe stretch and pull towards her, turning into ghastly Spectres, undead spirits who refuse to move on! Gleador unleashes a wide blast of freezing breath, which passes harmlessly through the incorporeal creatures. He shape-shifts into a Fire Elemental to light up the interior. As he bursts into flames, the Spectres shrink back, seeking the shadow. “The Destroyer!” they hiss. The raiders who sacked Saarland and probably killed these Spectres’ mortal bodies used mainly fire. The Spectres remember! Gleador has secured some space, so Lucia can examine the body. It’s fresher than ten years old, so it probably did not fall in the attack on Saarland. Maybe it was a looter and was killed by these Spectres. It carries a number of empty sacks, similar to Rose, and wears a charm around its neck made of leaves and metal. Lucia grabs the charm. This chamber appears to be a foyer. There’s a reception desk in the center, and benches along the sides. Everything that isn’t nailed down is long gone.
Our heroes advance into the main chamber. The center of the room is a huge forge with many openings, surrounded by workbenches. The large chimney goes up to the roof. The second floor is a balcony that overlooks the forge on all sides. There are stair cases at each corner, and smaller doors to side chambers on each side. Most things that could be carried off or pried out have been ,but there are a few dead bodies and some scorch marks scattered around the floor. Gleador advances to secure space, pushing Spectres back into the darkness in the corners of the room. Lucia casts Speak With Dead on an old-looking corpse. She gets three questions. When she asks, the responses come not from the skeletal face of the corpse, but from above. A Spectre peers over the edge of the balcony and speaks for his dead body.
How did you die? Defending the forge for invaders
Why did they invade? To steal our treasures
Why are you still a Spectre? Devotion to my craft exceeds devotion to any god
Gleador and Lucia walk the perimeter of the room. As they approach a staircase, a metal canister, maybe a gallon or two, drops from the top of the stairs. Gleador flies straight up to avoid it and is suddenly face to face with a Spectre with several more canisters nearby. The canister hits Lucia on the head. Her helmet absorbs the impact, but the canister bursts. She’s covered in soft expanding foam. Definitely not a horrible glue trap like in the Dwarven science building. It doesn’t burn, melt, or freeze her. It has a vaguely chemical smell, but there no immediate harmful effects. Gleador roars with flame to drive the Spectre back, and it hurls another canister. Lucia dashes up the stairs to catch it. The canister springs a leak and a stream of foam slashes across Gleador, extinguishes the flames that it touches. Lucia realizes that the Spectres have repurposed flame retardant foam that was used in the forge as a weapon against Gleador. The standoff is re-established. Gleador’s light and heat keeps the Spectres back, so he and Lucia can creep around the balcony and investigate. There’s a lot more stuff up here. It’s much harder for looters to reach. Lucia grabs a fine wooden box containing delicate metalworking tools. Quite valuable for the right smith. In the shadows on the other side of the circular balcony, Spectres manipulate the environment to set traps. At the far side of the balcony, above the foyer where they entered, our heroes notice a wall-mounted cabinet with curved marks on the floor in front of it. Apparently this cabinet swings out from the wall, like a secret door. There’s a big sheet of metal leaning against the cabinet. Our heroes approach, and Gleador reaches glowing arm around the metal sheet to light up the shadow behind. His arm meets the ghostly arm of Spectre, using the shadow as cover to get close enough to strike! The two non-solid arms pass through each other, causing damage to each creature. Gleador blasts a super-heated jet of flame into the metal sheet, heating its center to glowing before bursting through and burning the Spectre behind it. The Spectre howls and flees back into the shadows. With that trap dealt with, Lucia pulls the cabinet out from the wall, triggering a mechanical trap placed by the original owners. Pneumatic pistons fire tiny darts! Lucia uses her shield to smash the mechanism, but a dart finds a gap in her armor and her limbs get heavy. The poisoned darts have paralyzed her! Gleador has a dilemma. As fire, he can’t grab or move Lucia without injuring her, but without fire, the Spectres with overwhelm them. Fortunately, his Chimera ability gives him amazing flexibility. He combines a Salamander for fire breath, and a boyd made of flame, with a monkey tail that is not on fire. He uses the prehensile tail to shove Lucia into the secret compartment and stands guard at the door.
GM note: This is where we had to stop for the evening. Quite a cliff-hanger!
They head to the docks, which are on the west bank of the river, just south of the bridge. Their apartment and the theater is also on the west side of town, so they don’t have to cross the bridge to reach the docks. Most of the boats traffic is barges that drift down the river. They are maneuvered into place by small tugboats. They are really small tugboats because their crews are Halflings. Most people who live in Sugar’s Crossing are Halflings.
The docks and barges at Sugar’s Crossing.
One barge has two Giants that push the barge along with poles, like the gondolas in Venice. The Giants are about 12 feet tall, so these poles are 20-foot tree trunks that are long enough to reach the bottom of the river. The Giants look ready to go to a Goth club. They have baggy cargo pants with straps all over, and mesh shirts made out of rope. The Giants maneuver their barge alongside the dock, and a swarm of Halfling dockhands rush in to begin unloading the barge. The Giants act as cranes. They reach up to the top of the stacked boxes, and Halflings use the straps and ropes on the Giants’ clothes to climb up and grab packages. A bustle of carefully coordinated activity.
There are two other barges at the dock. One is being loaded. There’s a line of cargo and passengers. Some passengers have carts that they will roll on, tie down, then roll off at their destination, like a modern ferry. Gleador and Opal recognize some people waiting to board. There’s Opal, a Dwarf woman who assaulted Lucia on her first night in Fairmeadow! She’s with two other figures, one taller and one shorter than her. They have a cart, drawn by a pony and covered by a tarp. Gleador was tranformed into a panther when he met Opal, so she would not recognize his Elf form, but she does spot Lucia! There’s a bit of crowd between the two groups. Lucia hesitates to see Opal’s reaction. Gleador splits off from Lucia, trying to look like an unrelated person who happened to be walking alongside Lucia for a moment. Opal tries to subtly warn her companions about Lucia. They furtively glance at her and the short one checks the tarp to make sure their cargo is hidden. Lucia moves towards them. Opal hails the nearest guard, pointing at Lucia. Sugar’s Crossing is a major port, so there are guards everywhere to protect commerce. Gleador tries and fails to shapeshift into a Elf that looks just like himself, but with fox ears for better hearing: Gleador, but more anime. The guard is convinced by Opal, motions a second guard over, and confronts Lucia. They say, “What’s your business here on the docks. We hear you’re a troublemaker. If you’re not boarding a ship or picking up cargo, you need to leave.” She says she’s sightseeing, and there’s no rule against that. There’s a tourist area at the end of the dock with rides and souvenirs and such. The guards say that, if she’s a tourist, she should go down there and stay out of this section of the docks. There’s heavy cargo moving in and out all the time. She could get in the way or be hurt. She and the guards start moving towards the tourist area.
Lucia: “I’m just wondering, who said I was a trouble maker? I don’t even know anyone here.”
Guard: “You want us to expose that person to retaliation? We’ve heard this one before. We’re not fools.”
Lucia’s path takes her close to Opal’s cart. Lucia wants to reach out and move the tarp to see what’s underneath, but decides that drawing her sword to do that would be foolish. Setting the cart of fire is also a bad idea. Gleador wanders close as well. At this distance, Lucia & Gleador recognize the short person sitting on the cart as the pickpocket that they caught in the Brace of Pigs bar, way back in Session 2. Gleador yells, “Lucia, look! It’s the thieves from the Fairmeadow Fair! The ones we were deputized to stop!” The guards are very motivated to prevent thievery, so they demand an explanation. “What thieves, where? What’s all this now?” Gleador says that they caught the short one picking pockets, and that Opal attacked them at night.
Gleador: “Lucia, don’t you recognize them?”
Lucia: “I do! I bet they were the ones who said we were troublemakers, because we did make a lot of trouble for them.”
The guards aren’t sure who to trust. One stays with Gleador and Lucia, and the other approaches the Halfling to search him. The Halfling cooperates. His cloak does have lots of little pockets, but they are empty. He says, “I’ve only got the one coin purse.” The guard by our heroes calls out, “Check under the tarp. Maybe that’s where they’re hiding things.” The second guard thinks that’s reasonable.
GM note: I thought that Opal and her gang were stuck, but then I remembered that I had planned for this a few sessions back, but it never came up. Now I get to spring my amazing plan!
Several things happen very quickly. Opal yells, “Plan Z!” and shoves the guard away from the cart. Her Human and Halfling companions draw swords and cut the harness holding the pony to the cart. Gleador jams his shillelagh between the spokes of the cart’s wheel to prevent it from moving. The Human runs towards the edge of the dock. The Halfling takes a potion from his belt and drinks it. Opal tries to shove Gleador away the cart. Lucia intercepts and shoves Opal up against the cart. The sound of Opal’s body impacting the cart and her head being thrown back into the cargo under the tarp indicates that both the cart & the cargo are metallic. Gleador runs after the human. The human leaps into the river. Gleador takes a flying leap after her. As soon as he is concealed under the water, he transforms into a chimera with dolphin tail, alligator body, and dolphin echolocation. The Halfling moves some levers on his seat. The cart jerks forward, but the shillelagh prevents the wheel from turning. He backs up the cart to try to break the shillelagh. Lucia is holding Opal against the back of the cart and binding her, so when the cart suddenly backs up, they are both knocked down. Lucia gets up first and holds Opal at swordpoint.
Under the water, the Human swims under the barge and pulls out a potion to drink it. The potion is in a leather pouch, so even though she’s underwater, she can drink it by squeezing the pouch like a Capri Sun. Gleador lunges to make her drop the potion. He tries to bite her legs, but she’s doing the breaststroke kick, so she pulls her legs away from each other and Gleador’s alligator maw closes right between them. She’s very surprised.
The two Dwarf guards move to separate Lucia and Opal. The Halfling is still trying to break the shillelagh and move the cart. Lucia uses “I am the Law!” to command the guards to go after the Halfling while she secures Opal. The guards don’t like having their authority challenged, so they attack Lucia. Lucia defends, but badly. The guards don’t land any blows, but they maneuver Lucia away from the cart. Opal sees her chance, pulls the shillelagh out of the wheel, and jumps on as the cart speeds away without anything pulling it. It crashes through the line of people waiting to board the barge, heading straight for the edge of the dock.
Underwater directly below the barge, Gleador & the Human are facing off, when the cart hits the water above and behind them. Gleador slams the Human against the underside of the barge, taking a sword blow in return. The air is knocked out of her lungs, bubbling all around them. She gasps in a bunch of water and does not panic or begin to drown. Gleador realizes that she drank a potion of water breathing. The cart sinks to the bottom of the river and starts driving downstream, kicking up a plume of mud behind it.
Lucia is in the middle of a panicked crowd on the dock with two guards trying to subdue her. She berates them for letting the real criminals get away and tries to fight her way to the edge of the dock to see what happened to the cart. When she turns away, one guard hooks her leg and knocks her down. More guards are on their way, but have to push through the crowd of people trying to escape the brawl. People on the barges are yelling about stuff happening in the water.
Underwater, Gleador tries to break the Human’s arm with a tail swipe. He’s hit on the way in, but she drops the sword and goes limp. As she slowly sinks towards the river bed, the cart tries to get under her and catch her.
Lucia’s on the ground with two guards standing over her. They won’t be distracted by the cart. Other people will be dispatched to handle it. They are going to make sure that everyone who has disrupted the docks is captured, and that means her. More guards approach and try to get a sitrep. There are at least four people and a cart in the water. What’s pulling the cart? That horse right there was pulling the cart. That’s a pony, not a horse. Also, how can it be pulling the cart if it’s here and the cart is underwater? The guards standing near Lucia are distracted, giving her an opening. She can bolt into the crowd, but if she pauses to pick up her sword, the guards will have enough time to stop her. Is freedom worth the loss of her sword?
GM note: We spent a long time trying to answer that question. How much does a sword cost? How difficult is it to find a supplier? What are the chances I could circle back and pick the sword up? In the future, I need to keep the game moving.
Lucia disappears into the crowd, leaving her sword behind. She goes to the edge of the dock. She can’t see anything underwater. All the actors are under the barge, and the cart has churned up a lot of mud.
Gleador can see, because he’s under the barge with the incapacitated Human and the Halfling driving the cart to intercept her. Gleador grabs her and drags her away. The Halfling pulls out a handheld harpoon gun and fires at Gleador. Gleador uses the Alligator Death Roll ability to evade the dart. He returns to Elf form and pushes the Human to the surface.
Since sound travels so well underwater, Gleador hears Opal say, “Shelley’s weak! Drive on!” The cart starts moving downriver, abandoning their incapacitated buddy. Gleador pops up and hands Shelley off the the onlookers at the edge of the dock. “Help her! She’s injured!” He dives back underwater to pursue the cart. He uses the plume of mud kicked up by the cart to cover his next transformation.
The dock workers have hooks, poles, and ropes to pull Shelley out of the water. Lucia’s Quest requires Hospitality. She must help anyone in need, and right now, that’s Shelley. Lucia would really like to pursue the cart, but doesn’t want to lose the quest, so she uses Lay on Hands on Shelley. She fails. The crowd around Shelley sees Shelley react in fear as an armor-clad person pushes through the crowd and grabs her broken arm. Shelley screams and passes out. Lucia wonders if she has fulfilled her quest’s requirements. Does she have to succeed in helping those in need, or is trying good enough? The dock workers, shocked by Lucia’s apparently cruelty, push her back to the edge of the dock with their tools and call for the guards. Lucia tries to push through the crowd with her shield, but is knocked into the river. Her plate armor drags her down.
Gleador changes his transformation when he sees Lucia fall into the river. He combines a water dragon (water jet breath weapon) dolphin (echolocation) and flying dragon wings. Gleador swims to Lucia and she grabs on. Gleador swims just under the surface, so Lucia’s head is above the surface. As they zoom downriver after the fleeing cart, they look behind them. A giant from another barge jumps into the river and starts poking around in the muddy water with his barge pole, trying to find anyone else who went overboard.
The cart rushes downriver on the river bed, kicking up a big plume of mud. Gleador is gaining, his long water-dragon body just below the river’s surface. Lucia looks like a poor water-skier being dragged behind a boat. She’s out of the water to her waist, cutting a big wake in the river’s surface. As they approach, Opal fires the harpoon gun. Gleador fires a water jet, which swats the dart away, knocks Opal and the Halfling off the cart, and rips the tarp off the cart. The cart’s mysterious cargo is revealed: a metal statue of a dwarf, just like the one that came to life and ruined the auction back in Session 4! The cart keeps going at full speed, without a pony to pull it or a driver to guide it.
The Halfling swims towards shore, but Opal reloads the harpoon gun and plans to grapple herself back to the runaway cart. Gleador carries Lucia to the shore. She’s ready to bash this Halfling with her shield. Gleador pauses to see if she’s going to be alright. The Halfling gets to shore, and sees a fully-armored Paladin and a water dragon waiting for him. There’s no way he’s winning this. He surrenders. Lucia takes his sword and dagger. She can use the Halfling-sized sword as a dagger. She ties him up.
Gleador pursues the cart. Opal has grappled back to the cart and is firing darts backwards as the cart drives itself. Gleador pulls alongside and blasts a water jet at the top of the cart. The cart flips out from under Opal, who is then yanked after it by her line. The statue is flung clear and lands headfirst in the mud at a weird angle. The cart lands upside-down on top of Opal, wheels still spinning. Gleador shoves the cart onto its side. It starts skidding in a circle as the wheels kick up mud. Opal uses the controls to stop the wheels. Once again, Gleador has appeared as a weird monster, so once again, Opal panics and lashes out with her sword. Gleador tries to wrestle the sword away from her, but gets stabbed for his trouble. She swims for the statue. Gleador wraps his long body around Opal and constricts her until she stops struggling. He carries her to shore, within shouting distance of Opal, who has secured the Halfling.
They are out of sight of Sugar’s Crossing now, but a few Naga troops have been mobilized and are quickly swimming towards them. Four snake-like heads skim above the water’s surface. Lucia calls out, “We caught them! The cart is down there!” Two Naga heads turn towards the shore, and the other two heads disappear under the water. A moment later, the two Naga reappear, confirming that the cart is there, and no one else is underwater.
The Naga demand an explanation. Lucia and Gleador explain that these people are thieves and muggers that they encountered in Fairmeadow. They name-drop Pepe. They also warn the Naga not to touch the statue that’s underwater, since a statue just like it what wrecked the auction at the Fairmeadow Fair. Especially do not touch any switches on the statue. We don’t know what they do. The Naga will check on their story, but it seems legit, so they will take Opal and the Halfling back to town in custody. Gleador and Lucia are allowed to accompany the Naga under their own power.
Three Naga come ashore to slither along with their prisoners. One Naga swims ahead to fetch someone to recover the cart and statue from the riverbed. The Naga say that if they were on duty instead of the Dwarfs when all this happened, no one would have gotten past the docks. They are proud of their amphibious capabilities. It took a while for the Dwarfs at the dock to call for the Naga troops, which is why they had such a big head start. Our heroes explain that the statue is very dangerous and unpredictable and leaving it unattended may be foolish. One of the three Naga says, “I’m not scared of your statue. I’ll stay behind and watch it.” The leader warns him not to touch any switches or controls on either the statue or the cart, even though the self-driving cart might be cool.
The party (Gleador, Lucia, Opal, Halfling, Naga commander, one Naga tail-soldier) returns to the Sugar’s Crossing dock. There are lots of Dwarf guards around, but not the two that gave Lucia trouble. The commander of the Dwarf security force is there, identifiable by his fancy hat. There’s also a fancy magical Halfling named Lightfoot who has been brought in to confirm our heroes’ story. Lightfoot is using an enchanted tea set to communicate with Pepe remotely. It’s Halfling tradition to get together and share stories over tea. Halflings think it’s weird that Humans throw out the tea and look at the junk left in the bottom of the cup. That’s silly. Pour the tea, let it sit, and look into the reflection. If your friend is also making tea at the same time, you see your friend in the reflection. It’s quite a sight seeing this fancy Halfling sitting on the floor whispering into a teacup surrounded by grumpy Dwarfs.
Pepe confirms our heroes’ story except for one thing. Opal doesn’t have a statue like the one that wrecked Fairmeadow. It’s the same statue. It was stolen from Fairmeadow’s town hall a few days ago. The Dwarf commander says that Gleador and Lucia are OK. They were telling the truth. The people they were fighting were dangerous known criminals. Just one thing, though. It was really mean of Lucia to break Shelley’s arm when she was already injured and half-drowned. Excessive force, to be sure. Our heroes weapons are returned. A Giant sets out to retrieve the cart and statue on a raft that looks small only because its pilot is so large. When he reaches the wreck, the Giant jumps in, sinks to the bottom and picks the statue and cart up over his head to put them on the raft. He’s really strong.
Shelley is with a healer. Opal and the Halfling (named Billy) are in custody. The poor pony that was pulling the cart has been taken to a stable.
The Giant (his name is Ommm. Exactly three Ms. Omm is his cousin.) returns with the cart and statue on his raft. The Dwarf-sized statue barely passes Ommm’s knees. It looks very non-threatening. Opal yells, “That’s mine! You have no right. It’s my birthright, my property! It was lost. I was taking it back.”
Gleador: How can you prove it’s yours?
Opal: My family name is stamped under the statue’s left arm.
Lucia’s senses can pierce lies and she does not detect any lies.
Gleador: Describe your sense of property ownership.
It’s got my name on it. We didn’t sell them. It has to be stolen. Them? How many are there? She is not sure. This is the first functional one that she’s found. She has parts of maybe five. They are miners.
How do you control them? “It’s easy,” she says, gesturing towards the statue. Everyone rushes to stop her from touching anything. Set it to collect. It collects metal. Then you set it to return and it returns. But how do you get to the switch to change it to return mode? (The statue tossed our heroes around when they tried to turn the switch) Just wait until the pack is full, and then it will stop. Our heroes are shocked that it’s that easy.
Lucia detects that Opal and Billy are evil. Shelley isn’t here, so her status is unknown.
The Oolites built the statue shortly before the Oolite family lost their fortune. Opal was not around to see what happened, but something went bad around the time the Oolites opened a new mine with the robots. The exact disaster is a family secret that the old generation won’t talk about. Opal isn’t content to accept the loss of the family’s old status. She wants to regain it by using these mining robots, but she doesn’t know where to mine, exactly.
GM notes: Players are willing to spend forever asking all sorts of questions, and why not? Their enemy is captured. I need a way to make them ask the important questions and then move on.
The Dwarf captain tells them to wrap it up, so they can get the docks back to working order. Lucia re-iterates how dangerous the statue is. Ommm is not impressed and figures he could just throw it in the river if it went crazy. Gleador wishes Ommm was around when they fought the statue in Fairmeadow.
Lucia wonders what the pickpocket was for. Opal explains that the opening bid for the statue was 500 gold. Oolites aren’t rich anymore, so they had to steal the money to bid on the statue. How did Shelley get involved? She was a historian that Opal consulted and she was impressed by Opal’s goal to recover her family’s artifacts. She’s a softy. The guards take Opal, Billy, the cart, and the statue to the fort. The commander anticipates arguing with Pepe about which town was more damaged and who gets to try them first. As she’s dragged away, Opal yells, ‘I’m not responsible for what people who don’t know how to operate the statue did! If I had been able to buy it, none of this would have happened! It’s your fault!” Gleador yells after her, “Who owned it before the auction?” The commander says, “Didn’t you check the auction records?” Our heroes remember that it was sold by Hama, an agent who did not reveal who she was selling the statue for.
The crowd breaks up, and our heroes are free to pursue whatever they want. Gleador is hurt, but he can heal overnight. Is the statue involved with the coins? They were trying to figure out the Saarland coin mystery and didn’t make any progress. The coins were found in the statue’s backpack, but our heroes theorize that the coins may have been in another item at auction, not in the statue originally. They decide to track down Hama, and learn that she’s staying with Lady Evelynn. Lady Evelynn is scary, and they don’t want to go back into her lair. They will go to Saarland instead. They will head out in the morning. They visit the tourist part of the dock and spend another night in the apartment building
She just hatched yesterday, from an ancient egg that Buckle found and incubated. She’s has four legs, wings, and is about the size of a Golden Retriever. She likes to strike from above with her sharp talons, but doesn’t always control her great power. Perhaps other eggs or dragons have survived. She’s traveling to find them. She heard that somewhere out there is a city made of gold.
Long ago, dragons ruled the world, but they were brought down by trickery and almost wiped out. They are vengeful, although not many survive to enact vengeance. Rumor has it that they are also very greedy.
Buckle the beast.
He’s a Platyperson who has electrical senses to detect living creatures, venomous spurs, and the ability to breath underwater. Incubating eggs is normal for platypi, but it’s quite unusual for dragons to emerge from those eggs. He’s traveling for a reason that he has not shared with his companions. He heard about a underwater crystalline cathedral.
Platypeople keep to themselves & don’t interact with outsiders much. Their ‘cities’ (small compared to the cities of Elves or Orcs) can be underwater, on land, or both. There’s a great festival called Platypalooza scheduled for the next full moon. Platypeople have a reputation of being ignorant, backwater folk.
Rook the remnant.
They is an incorporeal ghost, unable to touch or be touched by anything. They died near the end of the war against the dragons, but they remains. They remembers. They heard that somewhere out there is a temple with the power to restore the dragons.
Long ago, their people served the dragons, but they were all killed in the same war that killed the dragons. Rumor has it that dragon sympathizers like Rook remain because they were cursed by witches!
Agnes Nutter the harbinger.
She’s a blind prophet, who has sight beyond sight. She riding a flying snake named Snek, who can shrink and coil around her neck like a scarf when flying is not needed. Agnes has a ring that lets her see through Snek’s eyes. She also has a vague sixth sense of things near her, so she won’t run into things, even without Snek’s help. She travels to find a legendary library of powerful magical tomes.
The blind prophets are nomads, and avoid each other, since multiple prophets close together cause magical interference, distorting the prophesies. When prophets dream, they are possessed by some magical force and recite or write prophesies. These prophesies come from several different sources. Rumor has it that the prophets are just high all the time, and their visions are drug-induced hallucinations.
The “new to them” world
This is not like Europe 500 years ago declaring that lands were unknown and uninhabited just because Europeans didn’t know about or didn’t live there. Our characters know that the world is bigger than what they’ve traveled or heard about. They are going past the limits of their experience, not to some undiscovered country. There will be people and nations out there. Our characters’ ignorance of those people does not invalidate them.
Let’s begin
Agnes found a Fairy Ferry that runs across the sea to the land they will explore. This ferry is made of two enormous leaves. One forms the hull and another forms the deck. The stem of the hull curves up, providing an elevated platform like the bridge of a human ship. The ship is driven by two propeller shafts, one on each side of the ship. The propeller blades are shaped like giant maple seeds. The shafts run inside the hull and are connected to basically bicycles. Teams of fairies take shifts pedaling to propel the ship. Fairies are about a foot tall, extremely skinny and delicate humanoids. They fly on transparent insect wings. Their skin can be any pastel shade, and they favor flower names. They are nude, except for accessories, like Captain Periwinkle’s impressive tricorne hat. They have a constant glamour that makes it impossible for one to get a clear view of their bodies. They always seem obscured, un-detailed, PG-rated.
Buckle stands at the prow. He’d rather swim. Boats seem like big-city nonsense to him. Rook lurks at the entrance to the lower deck. They can’t enter without permission. Agnes & Fafnir are below. Fafnir is hungry and licks a bench. Maybe it’s salad. Fairies powering the screws change shifts. A fairy named Crocus notices Fafnir and yells at her, Agnes gets a glimpse of something strange in Crocus’s locker that he’s trying to conceal. Agnes convinces him to give Fafnir candy in exchange for taking a shift on the bicycle. He gets fruit & candy from the locker, revealing an evil charm. A large splinter of wood with a dried tentacle wrapped around it, secured with twine. Agnes takes a piece of fruit & uses it to look through Crocus’s eyes. He’s looking at he evil charm, muttering about “soon, close!”
Agnes goes above to gather the team & tell of the danger. Only now do Fafnir and Agnes notice that poor Rook was left outside in the rain. Rook sinks through the deck to stick their head into Crocus’s locker, but is spotted. Buckle’s electrical sense & Agnes’ ley lines detect something approaching from starboard, connected to the charm. They go to warn the captain. Periwinkle sends Rose, the burly first mate, to check on Crocus, who is running up to the deck to complain about Rook.
Just as Rose & Crocus meet, the Kraken emerges! Tentacles threaten the ship! Rook tries to distract a crushing tentacle. It works! The tentacle attacks them, but passes through them and smashes through the deck of the ship. Another tentacle grabs Rose. Fafnir runs to pin Crocus & hopefully take his charm. She was thinking of just killing him, but restrained herself. Crocus dodges & blasts her with fairy dust, damaging her Sense. Also, the charm is still in Crocus’s locker, not on his person. Since no one helped her, Rose is yanked overboard.
Agnes goes overboard somehow. Snek flies out to look for her. Buckle jumps into the water and asks the Kraken to please let them pass. The Kraken is surprised to hear someone speak to it, so it emerges to look at the situation more closely.
The Kraken’s squishy, bulbous head and giant yellow eye tower over the ship. One tentacle is still wrapped around one of the propellers. Snek picks up Agnes & Rose & carries them back to the ship. Fafnir flies up, drops onto the Kraken’s eye, and tears at it without restraint. Chunks of squid-flesh rain down on Buckle, who dives under the ship to safety. The ship can’t dodge & takes more damage. The Kraken submerges, leaving Fafnir in the water.
Under the boat in relative peace, Buckle notices farms and buildings on the sea floor. He swims down to seek help.
Agnes sends Snek to retrieve Fafnir from the water. Rook pretends to have Crocus’s charm. Crocus approaches, trying to get it back. Rook backs up to the edge of the ship, hoping that Crocus will fall overboard, but Crocus can also fly, so they both float past the edge of the ship.
The binding tentacle that no one dealt with snaps off the starboard propeller shaft.
The Kraken re-emerges on the port side of the boat. Fafnir does the same trick to score another hit, disabling the Kraken’s tentacles. She restrains herself and does not inflict collateral damage. The Kraken submerges & Fafnir is left in the water again.
Buckle swims into a cave in the sea floor from which light is shining. Inside, there’s a mer-person working metal over a volcanic vent. Buckle asks for help, but the smith demands something precious first. Buckle hands over a crocodile tooth, a trophy of a previous hunt. The smith starts planning how to turn it into an impressive necklace, but then remembers the business at hand and swims up to engage with his smithing hammer.
Fafnir swims over to the ferry and tries to climb aboard. Coco, Fafnir’s scheming Kobold minion, has planned for just such an occasion and helps Fafnir aboard.
Under the ferry, the mer-smith charges in, striking mighty blows with his hammer. Buckle is going to use the distraction to strike with his venomous spurs, but the Kraken attacks with its beak. The smith is caught in the terrible jaws and drops his hammer.
Agnes manipulates the ley lines to open a path to a closed space: the inside of Crocus’ locker. She grabs the charm and destroys it with her runeblade. The Kraken convulses as the blow is struck, and sinks limply to the sea floor below.
Buckle takes a trophy from the Kraken as it sinks. The smith claims the carcass as salvage, since it fell on his fields. Even with half its propellers gone, the ferry is able to limp to port under the expert guidance of Captain Periwinkle.
Port Intrepid is built on stilts in a marshy river delta. Folks move around in town either by boat or on boardwalks. A platform overlooking the bustling dock has three important features:
Crew bosses shouting orders to workers below
A clock tower
A big Ogre, who is making a show of being menacing, but seems a bit uncomfortable with the role.
The party heals. Fafnir and Buckle level up. Fafnir teaches Agnes the “Dragoon” move that was so effective against the Kraken. Buckle gains another animal trait and teaches Fafnir how to use electro-sense.
Thus ends the first session of Chasing the Sunset. Next time, a different group of characters will have different adventures.
Here’s a cheap easy way to make tokens to represent characters in tabletop games using basic office supplies.
Materials:
a multipack of those winged paper clips. I spent a few bucks on a jar of them in 1- and 2-inch sizes and a variety of colors.
Index cards. I prefer index cards over paper for stiffness. Blank is better than lined, but I have a solution for unwanted lines.
Scissors to cut the index cards to size
Drawing implements. Pen, pencil, colored markers. Whatever level of art you’re on is fine.
To avoid lines on our tokens and to make them stiffer, we’ll fold the index card over. Each index card will fit 1 large token, 8 small ones, or, as illustrated above, 1 large and 4 small. Cut on the red lines and fold on green lines.
Now you have some folded pieces of paper that will fit into your winged clips. If you have multi-colored clips, you can use clips to sort tokens into teams.
The slips of paper fit into the clips as seen on the left. We still need turn those paper slips into tokens. Before writing or drawing on them, consider fitting them into the clips and marking how much of the paper the clip will cover, as seen on the right. You’ll be sad if 30% of your beautiful character drawing is eaten by the clip.
Depending on your artistic abilities and how much time you want to spend on each token, you can draw a picture of a character, or write her name, title, class. Whatever will help you quickly identify the token when it’s on the map.
Slide the completed drawing into the clip, then remove the “wings” by squeezing the two wires towards each other until you can unhook one side from the central piece. Now you have a token that will stand up by itself.
Here are a few tokens on a map. If counting squares is important, the small tokens fit in a 1-inch square and the large ones take up 2 squares.
Don’t lose the “wings” that you remove from the clips, or if a slip of paper is pulled out of its clip you’ll have no way to get it back in. You could use the wings to protect the paper for storage, as shown above.
This weekend, I will photograph the Fremont Solstice Parade and the Solstice Cyclists from the 12th year in a row. These two related but separate events are glorious local tradition of joy, creativity, and public nudity. In years past, I’d upload all my Solstice photos to a public gallery. Other users could comment on the photos and add them to collections. Wow, did I see a lot of disgusting, disrespectful comments and photo collections! Alas, creeps & voyeurs use this glorious event, which should be about freedom & joy & self-expression, to make the nude cyclists uncomfortable.
Privacy for nudists
Thus my quest to make my photos invisible to the general public, but easily accessible to people I photograph in passing. One year, I put all my photos on my own website and only posted the link on the private e-mail list for the Solstice Cyclists. Someone on that list made a publicly-accessible page of links that included my private link. Apparently I can’t share things in confidence, even on that private e-mail list. Another year I put all my photos on my own website, but this time the only place the address appeared was on contact cards that I gave out at the event. My website’s logs indicated a lot of traffic to certain images, so someone probably shared links to them. I could guarantee that no one could publicize someone else’s photo by delivering all photos via e-mail, but many Solstice Cyclists prefer to remain anonymous and don’t want to give out their e-mail addresses to photographers they’ve just met.
So how can I deliver photos only to the people in the photos without getting contact information from those people? My solution this year is to pass out unique contact cards to each person I photograph. Each card will have a different URL printed on it. When I hand out a card, I’ll take a picture of the card and its recipient. When I process photos later, this will tell me which photos to upload to which URL. The URLs are generated from a large list of English words, so they will be easy to remember and type. The word list is large enough that it won’t be easy to guess someone else’s word from looking at your own. The words aren’t all colors, or names of birds, or adjectives. If people lose their cards, they won’t be able to find their photos, but previous solutions had the same problem. Nude people rarely have pockets, but people in previous years have stuffed cards into socks, bags, helmets,etc. If they have phones, but no pockets, they can photograph the card & keep a virtual copy.
Generating the cards
I obtained a list of 1000 words from a site for crossword puzzle enthusiasts. I read through the list and removed any words with possible negative connotations, like “bizarre”, “murderer”, “chunk”, and so on. That left me with about 730 words.
In a word processor, I made a mockup of the contact card, using the longest possible word in the URL to make sure it would fit on one line. Once I had one card, I copied-and-pasted dozens of times to make sure it would fill up one page and wrap to the text properly. I had to adjust spacing and font size a few times, but I ended up with a card that would print 16 to a page.
I wrote a python script that would pick a word from the word list, insert it into the text of the card, and write that to a file. One loop for 10 pages and another loop for 16 cards per page, and I had a text file with 160 unique URLs. I copy-and-paste that into the word processor with my carefully tuned formatting, and everything lines up. It’s so nice to see rows and rows of identical text, except it’s not quite identical. Every card has a slightly different URL. Print and cut and I’m ready for the parade!
In Mouse Guard, players portray gallant mice who keep the territories safe for all the normal mice who live in protected settlements. The wilderness is a dangerous place, especially for small creatures at the bottom of the food chain. From the fortress-city of Lockhaven, Matriach Gwendolyn sends patrols to keep roads clear, deliver mail, respond to crises, and assist mice in trouble.
Today, she has a mission for Kenzie and Saxon: find a missing grain peddler who usually runs a route from Barkstone to Rootwallow. Gwendolyn tells Kenzie privately that the grain peddler is suspected to be a spy. Kenzie must find this grain peddler, and find evidence of his treachery.
Since Barkstone and Rootwallow are far apart, the patrol checks the intermediary towns to see where on his route the mouse went missing. Apparently this Otis made a delivery in Elmoss but is overdue at Copperwood. Saxon & Kenzie search the route between those two cities, and detect movement in tall grass a ways off the usual path. They approach and find a light grey mouse wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat and pulling a handcart loaded with bags of grain. Saxon recognizes this as the potential spy, and since he always draws his sword at the first sign of trouble, he points his sword at the traveling merchant!
Otis, like most mice, does not relish conflict. His Will is no match for Saxon’s display of Fighting skill, so he drops his cart and flees into the brush. Saxon pursues, and Kenzie sees a great chance to search the cart without interference. Her search does not reveal anything, and is quickly interrupted! Otis blunders right into a grass snake. Now both Otis and Saxon run back towards the cart, but Otis is too slow and the constrictor snatches him up. Kenzie hurries to the source of the commotion, and the guard mice engage the fierce predator!
Snake’s goal: drive them away.
Patrol’s goal: rescue Otis
The snake has wrapped around Otis, but is still striking at the guard mice with tail and teeth. It out-maneuvers Saxon and just nicks Kenzie as she tries to flank it. Saxon scores a glancing blow, then they circle each other. The snake tries to surprise Kenzie with a bite, but Saxon smacks it hard when it takes its attention off him. They trade a few more blows and the snake looks about to give up. Saxon and the snake go straight for each other! The snake strikes a mighty blow! Saxon won’t be able to continue after this. His sword falters, but he gathers his strength and pulls Otis from the snake’s coils.
Holding Otis was taking much of the snake’s attention. Now freed, it is even more formidable, so the guard mice flee, dragging Otis behind them. They regroup at the cart, and the snake does not pursue them. Alas, Otis is dead. They put him on his cart on top of his grain, and make a sad funeral procession back to Elmoss.
The sorry sight causes quite a commotion as they enter the city gates. Elmoss’ bureaucracy requires endless forms and records, so the guard mice are able to find Otis’ next of kin: a sister named Ursula who lives in Barkstone. The bookkeeper takes the opportunity to look at the logs for Otis’ last few trips. The price per ounce is always within reasonable limits, but amount of this shipment right here is too heavy to fit on Otis’ little cart. How odd.
Saxon removes his cloak and goes undercover as a laborer, loading cargo for the day and hopefully getting more gossip about Otis. The cargo loaders don’t lolligag. Chatting is for the tavern after the shift is over. Saxon works the whole shift and is quite thirsty when the whistle finally blows. At the tavern, a worker complains that Otis was in a hurry to leave ahead of schedule. The amount of time Otis was budgeting for the trip between Elmoss and Copperwood was excessive.
So the potential spy is dead. There are some irregularities about his route and payment cargo, but no contraband was found in his cart. The patrol is weary and puzzled. They have some clues to pursue, but first, they need some rest.
Mouse Guard is a role-playing game based on the comics of the same name, about brave mice who patrol the territories and keep settlements safe from everything that threatens good, honest mice (which is basically everything: weather, terrain weasels, predators, even other mice).
The characters:
Saxon: A veteran of the Winter War with the weasels. He’s always ready to fight!
Kenzie: The patrol leader. A generalist who is good at talking to people.
Kenzie and Saxon are summoned by Gwendolyn, matriarch of the Mouse Guard. A grain peddler who travelers between Barkstone and Rootwallow has gone missing. Make sure he’s OK. Gwendolyn pulls Kenzie aside for special instructions. The grain peddler is suspected of spying on Lockhaven for parties unknown. Kenzie must find out if he is really a spy.
Kenzie immediately shares this secret instruction with Saxon as they set out on their mission. Rootwallow and Barkstone are far apart, and the patrol doesn’t want to narrow their search area, so they go to the towns along the route and ask around, trying to find the leg of the route that the grain peddler didn’t complete. He made a delivery in Elmoss, but not in Copperwood, so he must be lost between those towns. The patrol searches the path and finds the grain peddler far off the normal path. His name is Otis, and he pulls a handcart with a few bags of grain. Kenzie interrogates him, and he confesses. He started taking jobs he found on a notice board in Barkstone to supplement his meager income from grain peddling. He just had to deliver some stuff. He didn’t much care what it was. None of it seemed illegal or dangerous, although the pay was high, so maybe he should have suspected. He had gone off the trail to see a signal that would tell him which drop point to use. The package he was carrying is a detailed map of Lockhaven, certainly useful to enemies who wish to infiltrate the fortress-city of the Mouse Guard.
The patrol takes the Otis back to Lockhaven and show their evidence to Gwendolyn. Kenzie thinks Otis is a sucker caught up in things he doesn’t understand, not a threat to the guard. She wants to deliver a false map and see who picks it up. Gwendolyn agrees, but Otis will remain in custody until the mission is complete so he does not warn his employers. Saxon enlists the help of his friend Samuel the Printer to make a new, inaccurate map of Lockhaven and with this bait the patrol sets out for Copperwood. They remove their guard cloaks before entering the city so they can move unnoticed. Mice are good at hiding naturally, so that helps. Kenzie takes up a look-out post overlooking the drop point, and Saxon deposits the fake map under the loose flagstone, as Otis instructed. Saxon moves on while Kenzie waits to see who picks up the map. Two burly mice arrive somewhat later, look around, then lift the flagstone and take the map. Kenzie sneaks after them, and they deposit money where Otis said he expected his payment. Then they go into a shop called “Merida’s Remedies”
Meanwhile, Saxon has gone to a gym to work out and try to find rumors. He bench presses apple slices and takes a bite after each rep.
Kenzie enters Merida’s Remedies, a shop built into the front of a two-storey house. Merida is there, a polite old lady. Her shop has various oils and tinctures that heal, improve, or just smell nice. While scoping the place out and getting a feel for Merida, Kenzie orders some Essence of Dandelion, famous for settling upset stomachs. Merida needs help with something or other and calls her son out from the back room. It’s one of the mice who picked up the fake map!
Kenzie regroups with Saxon to consider their next move. Those two mice: Sean and Ewan, are definitely involved in the plot against Lockhaven. Kenzie doesn’t want to burst into Merida’s house because she thinks the old lady might not know of her sons’ trechery, and she doesn’t want an innocent, vulnerable mouse present if a fight breaks out. They decide to sleep on it.
The next morning, the guard-mice return to Merida’s Remedies, but the shop is closed. A regular customer is standing around, confused because Merida is usually so consistent. The guard-mice look around and find Ewan and Sean pulling a cart out the front gate of Copperwood. Merida is sitting on top of the cart. They see the guard-mice coming and bolt! The heavy cart slows them down and the guard-mice catch them not far from the city limits. They fight! Ewan, Sean, and Merida want to escape, and the guard-mice want to capture the conspirators. The guard-mice overpower the conspirators, but Merida is able to force a compromise. She’s the ringleader and will surrender in exchange for mercy for her sons. The guard-mice let Ewan go, but Sean and Merida are prisoners. Merida explains that the income from her shop is dwindling, and she worried about having enough to live on when she was too old to brew the remedies. She was sure that Lockhaven kept high-quality supplies for the guard, and that if she could make one big score, she’d be set.
Kenzie’s player says: “So this is all because mouse society doesn’t have good social security?” In mouse-kind’s defense, they have medieval technology and are constantly beset by giant monsters. There’s no chance of a post-scarcity society. Kenzie & Saxon consider what to do. Since Merida’s crimes are against Lockhaven, not Copperwood, they can’t turn her over to Copperwood’s authorities. So they take her to Lockhaven, which is part one of her plan. The guard-mice present their findings to Gwendolyn and recommend a sentence: since Merida is a skilled scientist and chemist, and not a violent traitor, she could pay her debt to the Mouse Guard by passing on her skills to guards in training. This would give her access to Lockhaven’s supplies, which is part two of her plan. This would also give her an income & pension, which is part three of her plan. Gwendolyn marvels at how they have given Merida everything she wants, but also put the Guard in a better position than if this plot had never happened.
Last time, our heroes teleported into the mansion of a spooky noblewoman on the outskirts of Sugar’s Crossing. They avoided her ire (possibly re-directing it to the mayor of Templeton) and entered the city of Sugar’s Crossing.
Sugar’s Crossing is so named because it straddles a major river, and the beets from the surrounding fields are refined in the three great mills on that river. The owner of the mills are always vying for power in the city. Lady Evelynn owns one mill. The others are owned by the Miller and le Grind familes. The bridge over the river is fortified against attack, and the fort for the garrison is right next to it. Instead of a city hall, there’s a forum: an open area where people give speeches and hold debates to influence policy. The storyteller’s theater is on the west edge of town, near the main road.
A map of the city of Sugar’s Crossing showing the river flowing south the the center, three mills, docks, and other landmarks.
The theater has two big plays each day that are free to the public. These are basic, staple stories of the history of Sugar’s Crossing. There are rotating exhibitions that one can pay to see. One can also hire experts to expound on any subject one is interested in. Lucia attends the morning’s free show. It covers the founding of Sugar’s Crossing, and the rivalry of the two old mills that face each other across the river: Miller & le Grind. A pair of star-crossed lovers are torn apart by the family strife, and must meet in secret under the bridge. They decide to abandon their family and flee the strife. Each builds a canoe. They meet in the middle of the river and lash their boats together to form a catamaran, which is more stable than their separate boats. They set off down the river, never to return. The play ends when an actor dressed as Lady Evelynn bursts in, throwing the stage into chaos.
While Lucia is watching this history lesson, Gleador looks for someone to gossip with. He finds a chatty, clever halfling named Pan who runs a food stall. Pan sells ground & spiced meats & starches wrapped in leaves, kinda like Indian samosas. Gleador asks for the latest gossip. There’s always competition and backstabbing between the mills as they vie to control town policy. The harvest party barge came through a few days ago. You just missed it. It sets off from upriver when harvest begins and slowly winds down the river, stopping in each town for a celebration and to buy & sell crops. Gleador asks if Pan heard about all the trouble at the Fairmeadow Fair, especially the living statue that disrupted the auction. The food stall has a split counter: one at halfling-height, the other at human height. Pan climbs up to the human counter to lean in conspiratorially and whisper in Gleador’s ear. Pan says the auction is sometimes used to launder contraband. It’s a bit of an open secret. No contraband was noticed this time.
Gleador and Lucia meet up after their morning expeditions and go back to the theater to hire a specialist. They ask for an expert on the story of Saarland. They are in luck! One of the storytellers who lives at the theater is a refugee from Saarland. They go into a back room and meet Soren, an Elf woman. Gleador coughs significantly at Lucia, trying to send a message. Lucia understands and prays to know what here is evil. Soren is not evil, but she does ask what the performative coughing was about. Gleador explains that they had to be sure she wasn’t evil. Soren isn’t sure how coughing helps them determine that. Gleador says that evil people get mad, not inquisitive like Soren.
They start explaining why they are interested in Saarland. When they mention a robot smashing up the auction in Fairmeadow, Soren has to stop them. She’s unfamiliar with the word “robot.” They explain that the living statue was holding coins like this, and they produce the coin from Saarland. Soren is emotional. Here is a relic of her lost home. She wants the coin. As a survivor of Saarland, she has a claim to it. Our heroes resist, since they promised to give it back to Pepe. Soren says she won’t tell them the story of Saarland unless they give her the coin. Gleador tries to convince her that by telling them about Saarland, she’d make them bearers of the lost city’s culture, inspiring them to get justice! Soren isn’t quite convinced. She wants more assurance. She notices that Lucia is a Paladin, and asks her to swear a quest. Lucia swears to find who stole the coins.
Soren tells the story of Saarland. It was an Elven city in the woods to the north. It was surrounded by a living wall of close-set conifers and brambles 150 feet high. One night, the wall on one side of the city suddenly caught fire. The residents organized to fight the fire, but were ambushed by masked invaders. At the same time, on the other side of town, looters appeared and struck the bank, storehouses, and even took valuable tools from artisans’ workshops. The sudden, coordinated attack threw the city into chaos. The fire spread across the entire wall. Some raiders were killed once the residents re-organized to the new threat, but their bodies burst into flame. There were no prisoners to question, and not much evidence to look through. It took three days to contain the fires, and two more days to account for the missing, injured, and slain. Soren only slept once in that time. The attacks were so precise, people were sure the raiders had inside help. But who? Some people were missing, but did they flee for their lives during the attack, or leave with the raiders? The unrecognizable corpses of fallen raiders might be Elves from the city, or humans, Orcs, plenty of possibilities. Some said that the raiders fire-based attacks proved they were demons. The looting convinced others that these were bandits, although the force was larger and better organized than usual bandits. Still others feared this was the vanguard of an invasion. The community was shattered, and the survivors fled and scattered. Soren has never returned. The roads that led to Saarland have not been maintained, so after 10 years the forest has surely overgrown them. Soren suggests that the sentries that patrol the outskirts of Sugar’s Crossing could find the old paths. Gleador & Lucia thank Soren for all the information and promise to solve the mystery.
The evening show is about to start, and Lucia wants resolution for that cliff-hanger from the last show. This show, about Lady Evelynn’s arrival 20 years ago, is a glitzy musical, as opposed to the more dramatic, serious play from this morning. Lady Evelynn’s outfit is covered in rhinestones. There’s a back-projection system to represent her giant shadow. The three mill owners circle each other, first one direction, than another. Lady Evelynn’s arrival does not inspire le Grind & Miller to team up against her. The two-way duel is now a three-way rivalry.
After that show, Gleador and Lucia seek lodging. In Halfling towns like Sugar’s crossing, family home, apartment complex, and hotel all blend into each other. Homes are large to accommodate extended families. Some homes have rooms set aside for guests, and some homes charge for those rooms. Gleador and Lucia find some extra-large rooms that fit them. Gleador has a debility from a previous adventure, so they decide to stay another day to let him rest. With Lucia’s help, he recovers on the morning of the third day in Sugar’s Crossing. When she’s not healing Gleador, Lucia attends the special exhibitions at the theater. She learns a lot of things that may be helpful in future adventures.
GM note: I made a custom move for listening to stories. Lucia got Hold that she can spend to boost the result of a Spout Lore roll in the future. Spend the Hold and tell us what play or recitation told you this information.
GM note:I was sure they’d at least go look at the river and spot some old foes hiring a boat, but they never left the theater. I could have forced them into seeing what I wanted them to see by putting the theater on the opposite shore, but I didn’t think of it.
GM note: Well, now they are chasing down a legend. This is far from where I thought the secret coins quest was going to go. Lucia swore a quest, so it’s definitely taking priority over learning about the Oolite robot, and after they went through such trouble to get information about the robot!
Here’s a hack you can add to almost any Table-top Role-Playing Game to make it more like a PG-13 movie.
At the beginning of each session, place two tokens in the middle of the table where all players can reach them. One token is labelled “F” and the other is labelled “B”
F token: Take this token when your character says the F-word. If the token has already been taken, your character cannot perform this action..
B token: Take this token to briefly expose your character’s breasts or bottom. If the token has already been taken, your character cannot perform this action
Describe combat briefly, bloodlessly, and mostly painlessly.
