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Chasing The Sunset & depression

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

Party: Fafnir the Dragon, Stella the Halfling, Agnes the Harbinger, Buckle the Platyperson, and Rook the Remnant.

Fafnir spent the night sleeping under a porch after chasing a lanky black cat. The next morning, she happens upon the rest of the party as they are walking through the streets.  “Good to see you, Dad,” she says to Buckle.  She doesn’t know anything about the trouble last night, and just wants breakfast.  The black cat is walking along with them and Agnes has a vision that this cat will save the world. A magenta Pomeranian appears and chases the black cat.  As the party chases the two animals, a mobster named Billy appears to grab the Pomeranian.  That’s not OK! These are our pets now! Agnes tries to wrest the dog away from Billy and he tosses her aside.  Fafnir flies past at high speed and grabs the dog, but Billy punches her as she passes.  Billy sees that it’s five against one and flees.  Rook floats silently after him, hoping that he’ll go somewhere dark. If he does, Rook will make sure he never emerges.  Since it’s morning, even the narrow alleys aren’t dark. Billy returns to the aquarium and goes inside. It’s dark in there, but Rook can’t enter without an invitation, so they returns to the rest of the party.

The magenta Pomeranian that the mobster was after is named Wallace.  Agnes wants to know who owns this brightly colored pooch, so she holds its collar aloft.  She sees through the eyes of the owner, swimming over kelp fields towards and underwater city, holding a large bag.

GM note: We had a lengthy discussion about the definition of ownership. Is Wallace a possession of its owner? What happens if Agnes holds a mobster aloft? Do pets own their toys and collars? We decided that living creatures are not possessions, but objects given to pets belong to their owners.

Agnes holds Wallace up to Buckle, who can speak to any beast and asks questions through her interpreter.  Wallace lives in a house with other animals. He can’t read and is colorblind, so he can’t give an address or describe the place satisfactorily. Agnes asks if she is his favorite, and Wallace heartily agrees, licking her hands for emphasis.  Agnes tries to overcome her grim demeanor and smile, but it’s hard. Wallace does remember the way home, so he leads the group there: an aquarium

Agnes uses sight beyond sight to look through the wall of the building and sees two figures: a human and a Platyperson. The team prepares to breach the building. Fafnir and Stella are on the roof, reaching it through flight and wall-crawling spider mount, respectively.  Agnes, Buckle, and Wallace the magenta Pomeranian form up at the back door.  Stella’s companions, Gus and Rose, cover the front door. Rook is ready to float to whichever area needs help.

Paulie, the Platyperson, bursts out of the back door.  Fafnir leaps from the roof, grabs Paulie’s head on the way down, and smashes it into the boardwalk with all her weight behind it. Paulie’s still conscious. She gathers herself and lifts her head despite Fafnir’s efforts to keep her down. Paulie draws a nasty weapon, the limb bone of some large creature, with one end snapped off into splinters. She flails about, endangering everyone nearby. Rook approaches and uses his hypnotic voice to calm her so Buckle and Fafnir can get clear. Stella puts a pit trap in the boardwalk between Paulie and her friends.

Billy, the human mobster that fought the crew earlier today, makes a break for the front door. Gus and Rose try to hold him back. Gus is a cook, and forcibly Cinnamon Challenges Billy. While Billy is busy sputtering and coughing, Stella runs over to talk him down. Billy went after Wallace so aggressively because his whole life had been disrupted when the mob was betrayed by one of their own, their leader exiled, and their prized animals scattered. Billy was trying to reclaim the animals (like Wallace) to reclaim a semblance of the order his life used to have. Stella is sympathetic, but says that holding onto the past doesn’t work, and that Billy needs to act on what’s happening now, not what he wishes was still happening. Billy is really encouraged by these wise words.

Paulie is still mad and goes after Buckle, but falls into the pit trap, which drops her into the river. This just lets her escape, since Platypeople are excellent swimmers. Buckle dives in to pursue her, and has a heart to heart talk with her.  She and Billy were trying to hold on to the mobster way of life after their headquarters was smashed up and their people scattered. Paulie (mechanically a “Beast Loner”) realizes that she doesn’t need to cling to this structure that doesn’t even exist anymore. She’s capable on her own. She swims off to make her own way in the world.

Things seem handled here in Port Fennrick, so the crew decides to head up the Mighty River. As they walk upriver, they meet a boat coming down river. It was attacked and is on river. Buckle uses Tail Slap to splash water over the burning boat and put it out.  They ask how the boat caught fire, and the captain says that it certainly wasn’t a fire-breathing lizard. Those have been extinct for a hundred years!  Fafnir fumes, literally.  Agnes tells her to behave, or she’ll withhold Fafnir’s snacks. Fafnir’s Kobold companion Coco will feed Fafnir, so Agnes’ threat is blunted.

Further upriver, Stella’s riding spider (named Silk) bolts off the path after a bird. It’s the chrome songbird that Ori and Melvin released a while back. The chrome bird, (a Crow-m, perhaps?) sings a piercing note that resonates at the frequency of reality itself, and manifests a coiled spring underneath Silk, sending Silk flying into the air. Silk and Stella decide not to mess with this bird and return to the path. Rook is happy, because Songbirds were considered extinct. Nice to know a few are still around.

Further upriver, mysterious music floats through the air. “Do you hear that?” Agnes retorts, “I’m blind, not deaf!”  Fafnir flies ahead to investigate and finds Slick (ex-pirate) playing a harmonica next to a campfire, with a traveller’s bindle nearby.  This is what people do when they are sad and they have nowhere to go, right?  Fafnir likes his music and asks to hear more. Slick is pleased and plays very fast.  Fafnir is impressed. People would like to hear this music. You could be in show business.  Slick is encouraged to hear this. He’s got a goal to aim for now.  He thanks Fafnir and runs towards Port Fennrick at incredible speed to start a new life as an entertainer!

Further upriver, Agnes notices something sparkling on the riverbed. Fafnir hates water and won’t investigate. Agnes sends Wallace, but Wallace is unable to dislodge it from the riverbed. Agnes cuddles him and tells him he’s a good boy and tried his best.  Agnes sends Snek down to investigate and discovers that it’s a hatch, mostly buried under mud. Snek has no hands and can’t open it.  Agnes tells Buckle to go open it, but he puts his foot down and demands that he use his proper name. In the last day she’s called him “Beagle”, “Bickley”, and “Buckley”. His name is Buckle!  With that settled, Buckle swims down to grab the valve. With remote assistance from Agnes, he pulls the valve open, revealing a tunnel beneath the river! Rook floats down into it and finds a hidden tunnel network. There’s a station nearby with a stairway concealed by a false rock. Fafnir pushes the rock aside from the top, and the crew heads down into the mysterious depths.

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Chasing The Sunset & mobsters

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

The party: Buckle the Platyperson, Agnes Nutter the Harbinger, Stella the Halfling, Rook the Remnant.

Looking west at Port Fennrick on the delta of the Mighty River.

Buckle, Agnes, and Rook have just limped into Port Fennrick on a damaged fairy-ferry that was attacked by a Kraken.  Fafnir the Dragon was also onboard, but is nowhere to be found now.

GM Note: Fafnir’s player wasn’t here for this session. One of the concepts for West Marches is being able to mix and match characters into different groups, so I didn’t want to make a big deal of a character’s absence, but that’s what the players wanted to role-play, so we did it.

Rook is especially worried by Fafnir’s absence, since they was dedicated to caring for dragons in their former life.  Agnes magically senses that Fafnir is fine, and says not to worry.  Rook isn’t happy about this and drags their feet as they floats down the road after her. The party doesn’t know what’s going on in town and looks around for excitement. There’s a commotion at the back of town, where the Mighty River enters. They get closer and see a Giant yelling about pirates upriver.  As people listen to the Giant’s story, a damaged longboat arrives with its own story about a battle with pirates.  People waiting at the checkpoint to go upriver start complaining to the inspectors.  “You say these inspections and regulations are for our safety, but you can’t keep us safe from these pirates! Why are you even here? Get out of our way!” The party decides not to get involved.

It’s evening, so they go to a tavern for food and a room for the night.  Stella, the newest player character, has some space at her table in an otherwise crowded tavern and invites the party over.  Rook sort of floating through a chair, but can’t really sit in it.  Introductions all around. Stella is a halfling. She’s traveling with two friends and a giant riding spider which is out back in the stables.  At another table, Sebastina (navigator of an ill-fated charter boat) tells of her brush with the Kraken.  She never saw the beast, but our party knows exactly what she’s talking about, because they fought and killed it. Buckle interrupts to tell his story, but he’s not good at public speaking, and the crowd shouts him down.  He buys a round of milk, which also does not endear him to the hard-drinking crowd.  He does get a big reaction when he says he was traveling with a dragon, since dragons have been extinct for about 100 years.  The rest of the party decides that Buckle shouldn’t talk anymore and drags him away.  They pile into Stella’s crowded room upstairs for the night.

In the middle of the night, two figures slide open the window and creep into the room where everyone is sleeping. Rook isn’t sleeping, because Rook doesn’t sleep. They screams, waking everyone up.  Stella is near the window and grabs one of the figures clambering through. She pulls him into the room, but he rolls with the movement and throws her to the ground.  Agnes shoves the second figure out of the window. He stumbles off the roof of the porch and falls to the street below.  The one still in the room grabs Stella, but Buckle makes him drop her with a tail-swipe.  The invader turns his attention to Buckle and jams a canvas sack over his head.  The invader is human-sized, and Platypeople are only four feet tall, so the invader has a big weight advantage. As he struggles to fit Buckle completely in the bag, Rook floats through the window after the second figure. Rook is alone in the dark with an enemy, and, using their terrifying ghostly powers, silently rips the life out the would-be kidnapper. Back in the room, the kidnapper has Buckle in the bag and tries to toss the bag out the open window. Agnes steps in a blasts the kidnapper’s leg, wrenching it into a very unnatural position. Snek (Agnes’ pet flying snake) enlarges and coils around the disabled kidnapper, flicking its tongue in his ear.  The kidnapper is unmasked and must explain himself.  Outside, Rook casts Speak With Dead on the other kidnapper ot gather mostly the same information.

the kidnappers were sent to grab Buckle and bring him to the boss, because Buckle knew about a dragon, a rare and valuable prize. The boss is Louie, and he runs the underworld here in Fennrick. Anything that’s not above-board belongs to Louie. The live kidnapper that’s being constricted by Snek is Johnny. The other one that fell out fo the window is Jimmy. Agnes takes Johnny’s ring that marks him as a member of Louie’s gang.  She says that if Johnny crosses them again, she’ll find him, and she won’t be so kind.  She heals his leg. The ruined flesh grows back brand new, pale as a Seattlite, soft as a baby, and hairless.  Snek releases him and they send him out the window. Rook returns at the same time and passes through Johnny, an unpleasant cold sensation.  Johnny finds Jimmy’s dead body, and, keeping to secret gang traditions, disposes of the body. Only Johnny and Rook know that Rook killed Jimmy. No one else saw anything.  Stella’s friends keep watch for the rest of the night, but there are no further disturbances.

In the morning, Stella shares her Halfling food with her new friends. Buckle wants fresh game, so he swims under the city to catch some fish. Port Fennrick is built on a river delta, so most buildings are built on stilts over water.  As he pursues fish, he realizes he is being pursued by a Mermaid with a trident and net. A mermaid mermydon. A mermaidon! he outswims the Mermaid and reaches land, where the mermaid can’t follow. He rejoins the party without fish.  Agnes holds Johnny’s ring aloft to see through is eyes. He’s on a road, holding a bag. He looks over his shoulder, and Port Fennrick is receding in the distance. Johnny skipped town.  Agnes wants a possession from every party member so she can see through their eyes. Buckle doesn’t have many possessions. He won’t give up his hat, and doens’t like the idea of cutting off a lock of fur. He offers a treasure that he took from the Kraken, but Agnes just whips out her runeblade and takes a tuft of fur. Stella refuses to give her a possession.  (These new friends of hers are a lot!)  They linger and ponder their next step until the innkeeper knocks on the door. The inn is busy and need to either pay for another night or make way, because other people want the room.  They leave, and decide to track down the mob boss that keeps sending goon after them.