Posted on

Chasing The Sunset & Secret Base

Chasing the Sunset is a West Marches-style exploration game using Fellowship 2nd Edition‘s Horizon rules.

The party: Lucia the Brave the Heir, Dryden of Conwall the Collector

Lucia and Gleador have sent an angry mob home with no injuries, but a longer-term danger still remains: werewolves. People were attacked by at least one werewolf, and may turn into werewolves themselves. They consider the injured farmers they met earlier. Surely Kenney will turn, maybe the others too.

They return to town, where they are not particularly welcome, and return to Olivia’s healing house.  They are met by Miles, a young man who is Olivia’s apprentice. Olivia is not here. She runs supplies to the scientists on the mountain to the north every two weeks. They ask what he knows about werewolves. Miles says that werewolves are only legends, although he did hear that some fierce, furry creature attacked the Fairmeadow Fair a few weeks ago. Lucia says she’s heard of the Black Beast. They go in and talk to Kenney, inquiring after his wounds. He’s healing very well, but still needs to stay in the healing house for a few more days.  He doesn’t know what attacked him. He can’t remember anything from that night. They float the possibility of a werewolf attack. Kenney says thsoe are just stories. Dryden points at his wounds and asks “What does your chest say about stories?” They point out that the attacks happened on the night of the full moon, which reminds Kenney that last night, he was looking at the moon through the window and noticed a bright star that was not there previous nights. Molly pips up from the next bed. She noticed it too.

The party suggests that Kenney travel with them for the next month. That’s a sudden change for a farmer like Kenney. He barely knows them. Dryden says that they are very capable, and could protect him from mobs out for revenge (like, maybe, his home town?) and maybe find a way to heal him. They’ll let him think it over and check back once they return from visiting the mountain that Olivia has gone to.

So Lucia & Dryden leave the village and head north. The ground rises of plain suitable for fruit trees to hills, and mountains beyond. There’s a path to keep the party heading the right way, and soon they can see one particular mountain with buildings and paths on it.  Far beyond, towering, sharp, snow-covered peaks are visible in the distance. Lucia & Dryden walk up the path and encounter a gatehouse.  Addison, a woman wearing a thick apron and big gloves, asks their business, and they say they know Olivia & have come from the village. That’s good enough for Addison, so she leads them up the mountain to where Olivia is staying.  The paths cut into the mountain are all covered, and the buildings that dot the slopes have huge umbrellas over their roofs. The gatehouse is on the southern slope and the main building is on the northern slope, so the path winds all the way around the mountain. The stairs cut into the rock turn into a bridge as the path crosses a huge slit cut east-to-west all the way through the mountain. the slit isn’t vertical, but tilts to the south. It’s aligned with the ecliptic plane, the apparent path of the sun and moon through the sky. In the center of the slit is a huge tube, thousands of feet long connected to tracks on the inner surface of the slit that let it rotate. Further up the path, around the north side, they approach the headquarters of the facility, which looks like a James Bond villain’s hideout, jutting out from the rock at an aggressive angle, all big windows and simple lines.

Addison introduced Lucia & Dryden to Olivia and Dr. MacLeod, the owner and head scientist of the facility. The party explains how they suspect a werewolf attack. Dr. MacLeod immediately believes them. She hates werewolves and is actually working on a plan to destroy them! This entire facility is dedicated to destroying werewolves, who only emerged after the Moon suddenly appeared 102 years ago. Dryden and Lucia aren’t old enough to remember a time before the moon. Dr. MecLeod explains how the appearance of the Moon and the werewolves was such a terrible thing, and how she’s been working for so long to construct this facility, and it’s finally ready! Tonight, the fruit of her labor will be revealed! Dryden asks how long she’s been working on building this enormous facility.  She says 60 years, which is weird because she looks like a 50-year-old who puts a lot of work into her appearance, e.g. Nicole Kidman or Charlize Theron. Dryden wants to know exactly how she’s going to save the world from werewolves, but Dr. MecLeod is determined to wait for the demonstration tonight. Why tell you when you can see for yourself? The party agrees to wait. Dryden pretends to take a nap on one of the designer couches in the huge lounge, but he secretly lays a trap in case things to badly.

Immediately after the sun sets, Dr. MacLeod gathers her guests and most of the workers to the observation dome at the mountain’s peak. Everyone faces the moon and waits. There’s a flash on the surface of the moon and after a few minute, a few tiny twinkling lights surround the moon.  Dr. MacLeod is distraught! The propulsion worked. The trajectory was perfect. The warhead was insufficient! The party realizes that Dr. MacLeod’s life work is to destroy the moon!  Dr. MacLeod is pacing the room, thinking out loud. The warhead she built herself wasn’t even close to big enough. She needs a Source Of Power to be able to attack the moon. Alas, the library would probably be able to tell her where to find one, but that stupid warlord ruined everything, and the library is inaccessible. Dryden is sympathetic and asks technical questions about how the anti-Moon cannon works. Dr. MacLeod can prepare the compressed-light propellant for another shot before the next full moon, but without a Source of Power for the warhead, it’s useless.  Dryden asks how she affords all this. She says “Old Money”Dryden indicates that the party could go find and secure a Source of Power for the next test.

The party is given a room for the night, since it’s already dark and too late to return to the village. As soon as they settle in, Dryden turns to Lucia and says, “She’s crazy! We have to stop her!” Lucia suggests finding a cure for werewolves at that library that she mentioned.  Dryden says he’s already hidden some traps, and they may have to destroy this place when they return.

The next day, they set out for the location of the library, as described by Dr. MacLeod: inside on of the twin volcanoes to the west.  Their route takes them past Lady Evelynn’s estate. Lady Evelynn is pretty scary, but Lucia is a Queen now, so Lady Evelynn will have to show her respect.  They knock at the gate and a bored, sullen young woman with little horns on her forehead answers. Lucia shows her symbol of royalty and demands hospitality.  The young woman walks unhurried to the main house, then a butler comes back much faster. This is Jayce, a tall, neat human that the party met last time they visited. He welcomes them warmly and brings them inside to meet Lady Evelynn. Lady Evelynn was amused last time, but she’s polite this time, mostly. She says that Lucia is now traveling in better company.  Dryden agrees, and says that he has heard she has a collection of treasures. As a fellow collector of fine artifacts, he’d like to see her collection. Maybe they could even trade.  Lady Evelynn assures him that her collection is better than le Grind’s, and takes Dryden into a show room. Her collection is cruel, just like her. Lots of items that are hard, sharp, or specifically weapons. Dryden doesn’t see anything he wants,but he wnats to present Lady Evelynn with a gift: the Ever-Burning Brand. It’s a branch that is always on fire, clasped in a protective stone gauntlet.  Lady Evelynn leans into admireit, and the brand casts a big shadow of her on the wall and ceiling. Her shadow moves independently as if to get a better look. Lady Evelynn accepts the gift and places it in her showroom. (It’s actually an explosive trap. Dryden doesn’t trust anyone!)  Lady Evelynn tells Jayce not to put these guests downstairs with the other guests. Use the nice rooms upstairs.

The next morning, the party says farewell and sets off toward the east.  When they stop for a break, a pesky marmot gets into their bags looking for food and generally making a mess.  Lucia kills it and cooks it.  They continue and approach two volcanoes. One has smoke rising from the top and the other does not.  Dryden jokes that Helen and Shasta could explore these volcanoes easily.  He set off for the smoking volcano first.

Posted on

Chasing The Sunset & Fire Pits

Chasing the Sunset is a West Marches-style exploration game using Fellowship 2nd Edition‘s Horizon rules.

The party: Lucia the Brave the Heir, Dryden of Conwall the Collector

Lucia’s friends from her homeland have linked up with her and htey are ready to adventure in these new lands, but where will they go?  Dryden asks Lucia to choose their direction. He’s more formal than Gleador. The vibe is going to be different.  They survey their surrounding.  Upriver, the town of Sugar’s Crossing, which Lucia and Gleador have already explored and disrupted. Downriver, the swamp of the witch Samantha, and beyond that, the port that Dryden just came from.  To the east, Fairmeadow, and other towns that Lucia has already explored.  To the west, orchards, and a plume of white vapor.

They head for the white clouds, walking through neat rows of small fruit trees.  The find the source of the white smoke: a steep sudden valley. A hole in the ground, full of geothermal activity.  Pools of water, bubbling and colored by strange minerals.  Boiling fumaroles, delicate travertine. Down near ht bottom of the pit are two humanoids, lounging in the pools and having a great time.  One of the figures, a man named Shasta, sees the crew looking down and invites them to join him.  He assures them that the hot springs are very refreshing.  Great heat is wafting out of the pit, but Dryden decides to go down and meet Shasta.  He climbs down the steep slope, but slips, and ends up next to Shasta’s pool covered in mud.  Shasta laughs and splashes some scalding hot water at him to clean him off.  Dryden tries to block the water with his cloak, but still gets burned.  Helen, the other red-skinned person in the hot spring, admonishes Shasta.  She doesn’t want to scare Dryden off, like the last fellow.  She’s got the cheery over-familiarity of a Southern diner waitress, and points out the features of the natural spa.  Wash in this pool, rinse under that waterfall. This pool is good for soaking. Wash your hair there. The minerals will make your hair soft and luscious like ours.  (They do have very nice hair.)  Stay out of that pool. it’s actually acid!  All of these features are near boiling. Long exposure would be lethal to a human, but Shasta and Helen seem to enjoy it very much.

Dryden asks if he can collect some of the water from various pools, and his hosts allow it.  He retrieves a long metal flask from his cloak, halfway between a canteen and a test tube, and holding it with metal chopsticks, he carefully fills it with water from the soaking pool. He collects water from the hair washing pool in a second flask, and reaches for the acid with a third. The acid pulls back away from the flask and and rises in a mound on the far side of the pool!  This is no unliving pool of acid but a Rain, like Melvin, relaxing in the heat.  Non-porous containers like metal flasks are the only way to capture a Rain, and the Rain don’t like being captured!  Dryden has never met Rain before and wants to know all about them. the Acid Rain is willing to chat, if Dryden will provide snacks.  Dryden has many snacks! He offers a branch of a tree from the island of Moldova. The acidic soil is drawn into the roots of the tree and a unique mushroom grows on those roots. The mushroom is an acquired taste for most people, but the Acid Rain loves it and tells Dryden a bit out The Rain. They arrived on a comet from another world. They are shapeless, able to slip through the smallest cracks. They are ruled by The Rain King.

It’s really hot down here. Even though Dryden avoids the scalding water, the air temperature is high enough to be unhealthy. He needs to leave.  When he was a child, he played alone a lot, so it was hard to play catch. He tied a string to his ball and practiced throwing the ball across the yard and pulling it back with the string.  This skill transfers over to his rope arrow, which he fires to the rim of the pit and starts to climb.  Again, the steep, muddy slopes betray him. he loses his grip on the rope, tumbles down, and ends up balancing on a small, wet rock in the middle of a bubbling pool of boiling water! Shasta looks up and says, “Good choice! That one is particularly refreshing!”  Lucia grabs the rope arrow, tosses the end down to Dryden, and pulls him out of the pit.

Lucia and Dryden look for a more survivable settlement. They are in orchards, so there must be one nearby.  After following rows of trees to a path to a barn to a road, they do find a town.  The humans in the town seem on edge.  When they enter, the townsfolk ask if they’ve been attacked.  Two nights ago, on night of the full moon, three people were wounded, and one person was killed!

GM Note: I paused at this point and said, “Oh right. People die in this game.” In all of Fairmeadow Fair, the closest the party got to killing was turning off robots and dispelling ghosts. Chasing The Sunset is more violent and dangerous.

The townspeople suspect the burning deceivers in the horrible Fire Pit out there in the orchards. They’re always trying to lure people in to their death! Devon, the designated cautionary tale, is brought forward, and he pulls up his pant legs, again, to show the burn scars he got when he trusted the “burning deceivers” and went into the Fire Pit.  Dryden and Lucia want to see the victims to figure out what happened.  The local healer is named Liv. She has the three wounded victims resting in beds. The dead body is behind a divider in another area of the healing house.  The three victims give their testimony.

  • Tanner has bandages on his feet and legs. The foot of his bed is next to the window, and something reached through and tried to drag him out. The assailant failed, but Kenney’s legs were cut up.
  • Molly’s left arm is bandaged and in a sling.  She was out late on her farm, when a strange furry figure came out of the trees and grabbed her arm. She pulled free and ran, but her arm was injured.
  • Kenney doesn’t have a shirt on, instead his chest is wrapped in bandages.  He doesn’t remember the attack at all. He went to sleep early, before the sky got dark, and woke up outside bleeding. He figures it must have been the Burning Deceivers, because who else would threaten this small town?

Lucia and Dryden notice that all the wounds are lacerations, not burns. The evidence doesn’t point towards Shasta and Helen, who don’t seem like the types to sneak and attack anyways. Lucia wants to ask Liv a question, but she’s not around. Lucia peeks behind the divider and sees that the dead body is also missing.  Suspicious, but before she can investigate further, there’s a commotion outside.

Angered by the attacks, and encouraged by the arrival of powerful-looking travelers who are concerned for their plight, the people of the village have formed and angry mob, with pitchforks, torches, and everything!  They won’t tolerate the presence of the Burning Deceivers anymore! They are going to defeat them! Somehow! No one has a plan for fighting them at close range without being horribly burned.  There’s a particularly charismatic villager who even convinces Dryden that fighting right now is the best thing to do, so he and the mob set off. Lucia is faster on her mighty steed than the mob on foot, so she picks up Dryden and rides ahead to to Fire Pit. Out of earshot of that very convincing villager, Dryden realizes that fighting would be foolish.  he considers putting a trap in the mob’s path to stop them, but doesn’t want to injure them.

Shasta hails them from down in the pit.  They explain that an angry mob is on the way, and it will turn out badly for everyone, but mostly the villagers.  The villagers blame Shasta and Helen for attacking people on the night of the full moon.  Lucia and Dryden explain the attacks. Of course Shasta and Helen didn’t do that. They stay here in the lovely sauna. But two nights ago? They did see a weird hairy guy up at the rim? They hailed him, but he didn’t come down.

GM note: I said “full moon” “hairy person” and “slashing wounds” enough for the players to say, “Oh, it’s a werewolf!” at this point.

Lucia asks if Helen & Shasta can retreat elsewhere to avoid the mob.  The Fire Pits opened up recently, when geothermal energy broke through from some underground system, and Helen & Shasta also came from underground. There is a path back under the earth, but they aren’t willing to abandon their lovely spa.

The mob arrives. Dryden tries to redirect their anger with a passionate speech about the danger of werewolves, but this turns the mob against itself! Villagers realize that any of their neighbors could be the deadly beast. Tensions are high, and weapons are at hand!  Lucia can’t get their attention. She asks Dryden if he has anything that explodes. He has lots of things that explode!  He selects fireworks that explode with a loud bang, and shatter into mosaics of nature scenes, trees and hills and the like.  Those are things farmers like, right?  The villagers stop and look towards Lucia, who commands them to stop. They are insulted that this outsider thinks she can order them around.  Dryden and Lucia won’t be welcome in the town after this, but they do seem less violent.  Shasta climbs up to the surface and tells the people to get lost. He’s trying to have a nice time and all the noise is really harshing his vibe.  Lucia recommends discussing the werewolf problem back in the safety oft he village. The villagers still think the Burning Deceivers are a problem, so they want Lucia to beat up Shasta first. “Beat him up?” says Dryden mischieveously. He brings out his flying stone and offers it to Shasta. “To activate this, you tap out a beat on the stone, then you’re rise into the air, so I’ll beat you up!”

GM note: That’s such a horrible pun is just has to work!  Roll for it.

Shasta taps on the flying stone, which activates and sends him up and out of sight through the vapor that constantly rises from the pit.  Shasta lands safely o nthe other side, pleased by the adventure. The villagers see Dryden fling a Burning Deceiver right out of the scene and are very impressed!  they head back towards the village, and a terrible brawl has been averted.

Posted on

Chasing The Sunset & Fairmeadow Fair

Chasing the Sunset is a West Marches-style exploration game using Fellowship 2nd Edition‘s Horizon rules.

Fairmeadow Fair is a campaign using Dungeon World rules.

GM note: I started runing Chasing the Sunset after Fairmeadow Fair had been going for a year. Fairmeadow Fair was using mostly Dungeon World rules, but I threw out encumbrance, Fronts, variable damage, and 3-18 stats with modifiers. So was I really playing Dungeon World? Since Fellowship did more things that I liked, and Chasing The Sunset could handle multiple parties in the same fictional world, I asked my players to join Chasing The Sunset’s shared world. They agreed, and this is the transitional session.

Behind the screen (I don’t play with a screen. It’s a metaphor.), I attached the map of Fairmeadow and its surroundings to the continent on which Chasing The Sunset takes place.  Lucia the Paladin was easy to convert to Lucia the Heir, but Gleador the Druid has no counterpart in Fellowship’s rules, so Gleador’s player created a new character, Dryden the Collector. In this session, that player played two characters from two different rulesets at the same time in the same fictional space!

People from Lucia’s far-off homeland have important news, and are searching for her in the other continent that she’s traveling in.  Mara is Lucia’s servant, and Will is her bodyguard.  With only vague information of her whereabouts, they have taken many wrong turns, and gone up several rivers, with and without paddles.  Her childhood friend Dryden is with them, although he wasn’t invited.  They finally find the river that leads to Sugar’s crossing.  Mara and Will have proper papers and easily clear the bureaucracy in the port city, but Dryden isn’t really supposed to be there.  He creates a distraction by firing a special bean into the river near the ship he wants to board.  The bean rapidly grows, emerging from the water, separating into two branches, and forming a bridge from one side of the river ot the other.  Everyone is amazed, and Dryden can easily slip on board and duck into Mara & Wills’ cabin.  They are a bit annoyed by his shenanigans, but they are also grinning.

Later, Gleador and Lucia are rowing south on the river as the boat containing their friends passes.  They spot each other and yell and wave.  Lucia and Gleador turn their boat and attempt to catch up to the larger vessel by rowing hard, but they are too slow.  Gleador transforms into a water horse with a dolphin tail and a frog’s grabby tongue. With Lucia on his back, he easily catches up to the boat.  Mara shouts that she brings news from home.  Gleador attempts to stop the boat by shoving it sideways into the shore. Once the boat is stopped, they can all speak calmly, right?  The boat’s pilot is very upset by this attempt to wreck his boat, and the crew rushes out with poles and the like to get Gleador away.  Lucia tells Will and Mara to jump overboard! Gloeador won’t be able to carry all three of them.  Mara jumps to land on Gleador’s back. Will is about to jump in the river and swim for it, when Dryden emerges!  He pulls out a smooth, flat, round stone, about the size of his hand, and starts spinning it.  It magically generates force that lifts him into the air. He spins it faster, overcharging it so it lifts Will also, and he flies the two of them to shore! Lucia uses her special bloodline power to make the boat crew forget the past few minutes, and everyone meets up on shore.

GM note: Is this “make people forget the last few minutes” power going to become a problem?  Time will tell!

Mara delivers important news from home. “Your mother, the Queen, has died of natural causes.  You are the heir.” She hands over a symbol of royalty: a leaf brooch.  Lucia pins it to an inner layer of clothing, so it’s not always visible, but it’s easy to flash when appropriate.  Mara continues. Lucia’s younger brother is ruling in her absence. The royal family knows that Lucia doesn’t want to rule, and that she’s out here questing to remind people that the old kingdom hasn’t vanished.  They support Lucia’s life choices. Now that she’s queen, she must be attended properly, so Will & Mara, people that Lucia knew back when she lived in the palace, will travel with her.  Mara’s about Lucia’s age, so they grew up together. Will is older and was more of an uncle figure. He’s got grey hair and doesn’t talk much. He’s a bodyguard, and taught Lucia some fighting skills when she was young.  The Queen’s death is sad, but not unexpected. She was old.  Lucia had made her peace with her mother’s death already. She knew when she left that she would not see her mother again.

Dryden was not sent as part of Lucia’s entourage, but here he is! he explains that he had to tag along and help Will and Mara.  He always has a sense of where Lucia is. You see, long ago, he was using Lucia’s bathroom to mix some potions so that he could track foxes, and Lucia spilled the concoction on herself. Lucia remembers, and points out that it never would have happened if Dryden hadn’t destroyed his own washroom with a previous experiment.

Gleador speaks up. “Alas, this news is grievous!”  He showed Lucia a secret Druid ritual (and was exiled for it) in order to secure peace between the Druids and her kingdom.  He promised the Queen that he would follow Lucia until she herself became queen, and now that vow is fulfilled. She has other companions, and he can go to regain his standing with the Druids in the Sapphire Islands to the south.  Gleador thanks Lucia for her faithful companionship, and fondly remembers their many close calls. “Journey well. We will cross paths again.”  With that, he transforms into a Phoenix and flies away! A single feather falls as he leaves, and Lucia picks it up as a keepsake.