Outside obligations have caused us to take a couple of weeks off of our usual game, which means a couple of one-shots for the remaining players! Here’s the first one, as we run through the module Haskenport Manor. While the characters are not our usual, the campaign setting is the same, including the pantheon lifted from Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastard series.
The Heroes of Ellas—gnome druid Rabbit, human monk Mir, dwarf sorceress Dagnar, and Cosme, the mysterious priest of Aza Guilla—got word of an opportunity to make a bit of easy money—clear a manor house of some hobgoblin squatters and earn 100gp each! The town of Haskenport on the northern shore of the Sea of Fermia offered free room and board in addition to the monetary reward, and the siren song of free access to the town's famous mushrooms was as much incentive as Keeper Cosme needed. They convinced the rest of the team to take the deal, and together they boarded a ship that would take them around the southern coast, past the Whispering Mire and upriver to the inland sea.
With Rabbit leading the charge and doing most of the talking (and Mir ensuring that they didn't drift into too-trusting territory), they met with local officials. The mayor and the town's high priestess of Perelandro assured them that this roving band of hobgoblins, while unusual, shouldn't be much of a problem for a group of experienced mercenaries. The Heroes also met with the local druid, and his enthusiastic sea-cave-exploring companion, and were once again reassured that the seven hobgoblins should be an easy enough group to rout. So bolstered, the group cautiously made their way to the manor house and the promise of easy money.
Having been willed to the church of Perelandro, who lacked the money to maintain its upkeep, the house had lain forsaken for the past ten years, abandoned to the ravages of the sea winds. The garden overgrown, the wooden doors swollen until they no longer fit in their casings, one front window broken in—the building was an ominous sight to behold, though the beauty it once held was still evident beneath the disrepair.
There was no sound of creatures within. Moving carefully, they shoved the swollen door open and made their way inside.
An empty dining room and a simple chapel dedicated to Perelandro flanked the foyer, all of the rooms scattered with dust and leaves blown inside over the years. Straight ahead lay a sitting room, and evidence of habitation in the form of some sort of meat still roasting fragrantly over a fire built up in the hearth. As they moved into this room, a voice called out and, from their left, a tall human woman stepped through from another room. Dressed in fur-lined leathers and brandishing an enormous greatsword, she demanded that the heroes state their business there.
After some moments of tension, the woman introduced herself as Genna, a traveler from the north and once a member of a small clan that had been traveling south only to be slaughtered by bandits as they made camp one night. She alone had escaped, she told them, and finding this abandoned house had thought to find some brief sanctuary here. The hobgoblins who had been squatting inside had fallen to her sword, and she had thrown the bodies over the balcony behind the house. Sensing their suspicion, she offered to show them the evidence; Keeper Cosme, ever concerned with the fate of the fallen be they stranger, friend, or foe, followed her out to take a look. Mir, as wary as ever, went with them as well, as did Rabbit and her faithful dog-friend Eedee.
Their caution proved prescient, as with Cosme leaning over the railing to look at the bodies below, Mir saw Genna reaching out towards her and instinctively moved to stop whatever she was doing. Unable to grab her wrist as she intended, Mir nevertheless drew Genna's attention to herself instead—as Genna swiped out with a hand suddenly larger, fingertips growing into deadly sharp claws, Mir found herself snatched up in a powerful hold and unable to break free. Prize now in hand, Genna dropped the illusion that had shrouded her until now and her true form was revealed: an ancient-looking woman towering nearly ten feet tall, with pale blue skin and lank, stringy black hair. The creature let out a cry that only Dagnar, still inside, understood.
“Wait, what about ogres??”
A pitched battle began on the balcony. Unable to free herself from the creature's hold, Mir suffered claws continually raking across her body while Cosme battered the creature with a flaming mace. Dagnar stepped outside with the others and, entirely forgetting that she had a crossbow strapped to her back, unleashed an arcane bolt of lightning as Rabbit drew the natural powers she served into her diminutive form and swelled into a fierce and angry bear. The ogres, emerging from the kitchen, took up posts at both balcony doors, one targeting Mir and the other Rabbit, though their strikes went thankfully wide. With the creature holding Mir aloft blocking access to both the other doorway and to the monk herself for healing, Cosme lost patience and, with an incantation in an unfamiliar and terrifying language, their body burst into flame before they threw their arms around the larger creature and let the fire burn away the last of its ability to stand against them.
The ogres were easily dispatched after that, and the bloodied Mir healed through the judicious application of a magic potion and Cosme's frustrated channeling of their own divine magic. No sooner had the heroes regrouped, however, than a loud thud sounded from somewhere below, and they knew that their task was not yet complete.
Investigation of the kitchen revealed a stone stairway leading down, and Mir took the lead followed by Rabbit—now back in her gnomish form—and Eedee. Below, a metal door stood open at the end of a dark hallway, and a crumpled body lay on the floor near the bottom of the stairs.
As Rabbit rushed to check for signs of life, Mir crept towards the door and found that it led to small sea cave open to the morning air, with a rickety wooden dock ringing the lower level of the house. Around the corner lay the bodies of the slain hobgoblins, clawed and nearly rent in pieces, though the mark on the armor that they wore was still visible on some: a round yellow circle, like a rising sun, overlaid with a stark red handprint.
Inside, Rabbit investigated the body of what seemed to be a human girl, still alive but unconscious and fading fast. She managed to stabilize her through her skills in basic first aid, and the group continued to search the area they found several more bodies in what looked to have once been a small hidden room near the stairs. All four possessed the same golden brown skin and dark matted hair as the girl outside, and all were clothed in the same threadbare rags and barefoot as she was, and all were growing cold to the touch. One, lying half in and half out of the open doorway, looked as though he had been struck down while trying to escape.
Summoned by the alarm of their companions, Cosme descended the stairs to heal the fallen girl. Before they could move either her or the bodies of her fallen companions, she woke—disoriented at first, then alarmed at the unfamiliar faces, all other concerns were pushed aside when her franticly searching eyes fell upon the body in the doorway. With a heartrending wail, she crawled as quickly as she could manage to pull the body into her lap, imploring him in a language that none of them understood between her sobs.
When the Heroes had all gathered in the basement, they realized that none of them understood either of the languages the girl tried to speak, and that she could manage only a handful of words in Common. Thus, they turned to one of the bits of treasure pulled from the blue-skinned creature above—an amulet fashioned like a pair of hands clasped at the wrist, the holy symbol of Azri, The Lady of the Clasped Hands, goddess of pacts and contracts. By donning this amulet, Rabbit was able to understand the girl's words as she begged them to help, swearing that she would go back with them without struggle if they would only wake her brother again.
The girl, they managed to discover, was Phenisa, a selkie taken by slavers along with her twin brother Cybarus and several others. Their pelts had been stolen and hidden away, and they'd been loaded onto a ship as cargo to be sold. Two of their fellow captives had jumped overboard in human form and, she believed, drowned in the unforgiving sea. Others had found their pelts and managed to escape, but the slavers had somehow managed to track them no matter how far they got, she believes by somehow using blood that had been collected from them all when they were brought aboard. One of the other captives—selkie or not, she could not say—had told them of rumors of a magic item in this house, supposedly able to shield one from detection by any magical means. With no more than that to go on, the group had escaped together when the ship passed near the river delta, swimming upstream and traveling partway through the Whispering Mire until they reached Haskenport and the house with the coral trim.
They had made their way into the basement, she told them, found the secret room and the box within. However, upon opening it, a burst of magic had brought one of the driftwood statues of Perelandro to a semblance of life, and it had begun swinging wildly at anything and everything in reach as it stormed its way blindly down the hall and out the open door. Exhausted, weak, and malnourished, they had been no match for it, and all of them had fallen.
Though they could bring none of the fallen back themselves, Cosme did manage the magic required to keep Cybarus's body in stasis for a time. With Dagnal's help, they guided Phenisa and carried the bodies upstairs while Rabbit and Mir investigated the hidden room. Calling Dagnal back down, they had her attempt to dispel any magic that might be on the chest, ready to beat a swift retreat if their efforts awoke the other driftwood statue left in one of the adjacent alcoves. With the chest temporarily untrapped, they emptied all its contents into Mir's bag.
Unfortunately, the chest was still standing open when its magic reasserted itself, and just as they had feared, the statue did indeed begin to move.
Deeper into the room than the others, Rabbit took the brunt of the construct's swings, nearly falling before Mir could distract it with her own attacks against it. Taking refuge once more in her bear form, Rabbit escaped, followed soon after by Mir and Dagnal, who shut the door behind them as they all fled up the stairs. Though the sounds of the construct battering against the door continued for several breathless moments, soon enough the basement once again grew still and quiet, and the entire group hurried outside with the bodies they carried.
In the garden, they looked through what they had pulled from the chest below. Along with a great deal of coin, a beautiful ruby, and several magic items, in a red leather bag they found the prize that the selkies had lost so much to seek: a pair of manacles, the chain between them long-since broken, with the power to shield their wearer from any sort of magical location or detection. Unfortunately, there was one large problem still standing in their way: though they had been promised the rights to any treasure pulled from the bodies of the monsters that they found, they had given their word not to plunder anything belonging to the house itself. And while Rabbit and Dagnal had no qualms about ignoring that promise for the sake of a greater good, Mir and Cosme were rather less sanguine about the idea.
Eventually, they hit upon the means of solving their dilemma: the mayor had told them, when they inquired about the job, that the church of Perelandro had been hoping to sell the house for quite some time and was actively looking for interested buyers. With the aid of Azri's holy symbol and Dagnal's force of personality, they managed to convince her to take a down payment of the money they had between them—some twelve thousand gold or so—so that they could purchase the house themselves. With its contents thus legally theirs, they could dispose of them as they wished.
One of the manacles went to Phenisa and, after the money from the chest was donated for the cost of his resurrection, Cybarus took the other. The bodies of their friends were kept in stasis through Cosme's continual attentions, and laid in temporary repose in the chapel they converted to the worship of Aza Guilla.
Together, they began to restore the house to order. The garden bloomed into vibrant life under Rabbit's care; Mir set to work improving the seaward side of the house with a sturdy new deck and additions to allow her to keep her training up; and Dagnal charmed a handful of town members into helping them clear out the worst of the mildewed interior.
Even as they labored, however, they did not forget that their other work had only just begun. Phenisa and Cybarus found some comfort in aiding with the exploration of the area's sea caves, but still they were restless and ill at ease this far from the open ocean waters, and the bodies in the chapel stood as a silent reminder that justice must still be served.
In scrying upon the stolen pelts, Rabbit saw the ship that carried them, sailing across the water towards The Ghost Cliffs of Ephane. They would find the ship, the group decided, however long it took. They would free the other captives, whether they had been sold away or not, and punish those who had made the mistake of bringing the wrath of The Heroes of Ellas down upon them.
However long it took, whatever the price, retribution was coming.
The L5R stories I write really have very little in the way of smut. Some chronic long-term pining, yes. Slowly awakening sexuality, yes. Explicit sex scenes, no. Kagami can't even think the word "sex" yet without combusting in embarrassment. She self-censors her own thoughts about it.
Nami, her yojimbo and the other POV character, is a far more sexual being and enjoys the odd, no-strings-attached roll in the hay. But it doesn't really fit with the other 500K words I have written in the world, so it is very much tangentially mentioned. Not even fade-to-black, just a single line that, if you know, you know means "yeah, she went and fucked him long and hard and had a great time."
So I am amused at the paragraph I just wrote as they suddenly needed to leave town after Nami almost-agreeing to meet up with her most frequent friend-with-benefits.
"She had found him without any particular difficulty just as he was leaving the training grounds. The other Kakita had expressed his disappointment at her sudden departure, then he had led her to a private alcove where he had very efficiently expressed his pleasure at her coming to find him in person to let him know. Afterwards, she had made her way down to the docks, slightly disheveled but well-satisfied with the world."
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
I'm starting the process of putting the write up of our Avatar: Legends RPG up on AO3. It's being run by my friend who played Jiromasu in the L5R campaign we just finished.
The game follows a small group of young benders in the struggling city of Bodishai just before the rise of Kyoshi. We did lose a couple folks after game three and picked up another one, so a couple of the characters in the very first few sessions disappear, but that's 3 episodes out of... uh... we're on 23 now?
Dramatis Personae:
Zao Dan Zu: The youngest daughter of one of the Three Families who ostensibly run Bodishai. Last remnants of the Shangs, they still hold position within the city. Zao Dan is far younger than her siblings, daughter of her father's second wife, and is the focus of a prophecy of renewal for the secret Order of the Hidden Dragon.
Po Sungfei: Born among the Air Nomads and left there by his mother, he struggled for a long time to try and master Air-Bending to no avail. It wasn't until a powerful Earth-Bender visited them that it was discovered that his bending came from his earth-bending father's side, not his mother. A gifted bender who has the ability to mimic the ability of other benders through earth-bending, Po found himself in Bodishai just in time to be swept up in the events of Bonfire Night.
Chun Do: A water-bending monk from the mountains well away from Bodishai, Chun Do is one of the sole survivors of a virulent plague that devastated his monastery and the community that surrounded it. His mostly-aimless path since then has brought him to Bodishai where his desire to help and save others has tied him in with this band of young benders.
Mihn: A young street-rat who was adopted by an artificer named Dr. Wasi. She is mourning his loss while trying to keep herself alive on Bodishai's unforgiving streets. When her friends start disappearing, she goes looking for others to help her in her search.
So, I finally finished editing and uploading the fourth installment of the Honour and Obligation series, which consists of three write-ups from our Legends of the 5 Rings game and then a fourth work which is an original story of mine in the setting, following the characters from the game.
If you’re interested in reading, it is almost 420′000 words worth of story. Heh.
Honour and Obligation: 107K
The Gathering Storm: 98K
Alliance: 143K
Blood and Nightmares: 71K
No smut, I’m afraid, though there is some very subtle background pining. Kagami took a few actions early on in the story that led to an NPC falling hopelessly in love with her. A fact he concealed very successfully from her.
I had a great time playing with my character, Kagami, in this world and she came a long way in her character development.
The setting isn’t quite classic L5R, as my husband - who was our DM - tweaked a few things, but it should be very recognizable to those who like the setting.
So... the first volume of my L5R write-up is up on AO3, complete. Second volume has been written as well, but honestly, I have no idea if folks would actually want to read more, as it was written as a game write-up, so I have no idea how much sense it makes to folks who weren’t actually there, so... yeah. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll post more.
Chris: “I like how in the last game, I destroyed a car with a sword and flew across the forest in a wingsuit. And now, in this game, I am struggling to do paperwork.”
(Full episode writeup here)
Due to player absences, Philimore is sick and Al is babysitting him while the rest of the party is planning a roadtrip to Jersey to look for werewolves, without our werewolf expert or our medic. It is agreed that this sounds like a terrible idea. Werewolf Quest 2014: postponed.
We go watch cartoons at Jay’s house instead, because Aqua Teen Hunger Force is exactly the pop-culture education that Micah needs. (Also Adventure Time, which is more fucked up than Kit remembers it being.)
And then we go out to an Irish pub for New Year’s Eve because in-game time has reached the turning of the year and we are not quite enough of sad lifeless losers to sit at home in our own apartments on New Year’s Eve. There’s lots of loud celtic-punk music, and Jay is apparently singing “booze, booze, booze booze” at some point? Good job, Jay.
A couple of hours in a couple of other changelings come in: a “sorta shiny” Buffy the Vampire Slayer lookalike in a ‘40’s style evening gown and a “super-cockney” huge bright orange warthog-looking guy who orders a large pitcher of very poor quality beer and then is upset about it. Jay proceeds to order him a decent beer, because no one should attempt to drink a bucket of PBR.
The lady’s sitting alone and looking very bored, so Jay proceeds to go chat her up and buy her a drink, too. Then Sean buys a round of Irish car bombs for the group, leading us to get sidetracked discussing: a) are those actually bombs, b) what is in them, and c) does anyone know what the heck we need to roll against to do shots. Despite the fact that some of us have kind of lackluster stamina scores, we all manage not to pass out. Go team!
The lady, on the other hand, can’t handle her liquor, and while she’s reeling from trying to match the ogres drink for drink she snaps at Jay for calling her Buffy, since apparently her name is Damiana. It’s agreed that she should get something other than alcohol in her, so we follow up the drinks with corned beef sandwiches “because we’re in a fucking Irish pub.”
Kit starts to think the lady looks familiar, like it might have seen a less supernaturally gorgeous version of her at some point? A little digging in its phone brings up the research from when the party was looking into the chicken nun case, and she seems to be the changeling counterpart of the elderly nun we were pretty sure was a fetch.
Meanwhile, Damiana is getting annoyed with her companion fussing over her, and tells him to buzz off - apparently his name’s Bert. Which leads Jay to start doing an Ernie impression. Which leads to Jay almost getting punched. Once that gets defused, we start talking a little about pop culture and getting caught up after being in Arcadia, and the two of them have apparently been back for about ten years at this point. And she’d like to invite us along for something “fun.”
"Oh! We’re going to rob a-" "No!" "That sounds even better than what I was thinking! Where should we rob?" "I am not down for a new year’s eve heist!" "Tomorrow, then? A new year’s day heist?" "Can we retreat back to your original suggestion?"
She asks if we know about the Mantle of Terrible Beauty. (Micah asks if she’s wearing it and earns a high five from Jay.) She says not yet, and then does something where she… looks terrifyingly beautiful. Traumatizing everyone except Jay, Bert, and the bartender, because the rest of us are kind of wusses apparently.
We still don’t want to try to pull off a heist with her, though. Jay apparently has a rule about robbing banks with people who spent the evening before getting so drunk they can’t stand.
Then it’s Micah’s turn to get flirted with and he has no idea what to do with himself. Sean is a bit more collected when she turns her attention on him, and Kit stammers a bit and takes refuge in its phone. Jay continues befriending Bert, who is so glad he didn’t punch him, especially when Jay quietly offers to split the bill.
(Hydok, Micah’s player, has asked in the skype text chat:
hydok: does she want to go find hookers
hydok: is that her plan
hydok: she’s trying to find hookers and drugs
…which gets the attention of Nai, Al’s player, who couldn’t make it to the game this week but is keeping an eye on skype.
nai: … What the hell am I missing over there
bramble: us not being down for a new year’s eve heist
hydok: we are so down for a new years day heist though
bramble: no we’re not
hydok: we so are
hydok: with the scary pretty lady
bii: micah is because he thinks the lady proposing it is hot
daniel: We’re sort of down for a new years day heist.
Yep.)
ANYWAY then Bert starts asking about the local court situation, to which Micah drunkenly exclaims that we’ve only been out three months and they should USE THE GOOGLE. Kit pats him on the hand - approvingly? in an attempt to mollify him? we just don’t know - and rest of us try to fill them in a little. At this point, Micah is extremely taken with Damiana and trusts her implicitly, and Jay and Sean are not keeping their guard up as well as they probably should; Kit doesn’t trust her at all.
She starts asking after the rest of our friends, and Micah volunteers that one of our friends is really old and also sick. And ugly. Really ugly. She asks if he has any other friends, and he says no - apparently he’s forgotten that Al exists. After Micah volunteers that he’s “a butler, but ON VACATION” she spends a while guessing everyone else’s professions.
The new year’s countdown hits, various unlikely pairs kiss (Micah grabs Jay, Damiana kisses Sean, Bert declines to kiss the bartender), and Kit realizes belatedly that it is in fact in NYC and could probably have gone to Times Square this year like it always wanted to as a kid and ushers in the new year by facepalming.
The next day Micah is massively hung over and everyone misses/ignores Damiana’s text asking if they want to help her rob a bank. Which apparently she pulls off without our help, because Sean hears about it at work. We’re not sure whether we missed out or dodged a bullet, honestly.
I ran my first game of The Strange last night. After backing the Kickstarter campaign, then waiting and waiting and waiting for the release, I was eager to finally try it out. The reaction from the players was enthusiastic, and I'm looking forward to whatever strange recursions we manage to take the story during future sessions.
I've run games of Numenera before, so we were all familiar with the Cypher System. There were only two players and I decided to start with the characters being naive to the deeper realities of the game. Aware of their powers from being quickened, but not necessarily the ability to translate to other recursions. I let them flip through the Player's Guide to get a sense of the game, then launched into a roleplay heavy prologue before even making characters.
The prologue introduced the primary NPC contact, who explained some of the basic features of the Strange and the formation of Ardeyn. A demonstration of a phase shifting cypher was enough to dispel any doubts in their minds. The characters were given initial cyphers, and the background information for the provided starting adventure, The Curious Case of Tom Mallard. At this point, we finally pulled out character sheets and made characters: a mad scientist (a clever paradox who conducts weird science) and a former mercenary (a fast vector who is licensed to carry).
(I wouldn't recommend this prologue structure for everyone... but with my group of experienced roleplayers, already familiar with the Cypher System rules, it really worked to hook them into the story before writing anything down.)
The players made short work of the security system and searched the apartment top to bottom, enjoying the feel of a modern day dungeon crawl. We translated into Ardeyn and started exploring the ruins beneath Shalmarn, but didn't quite finish the adventure before calling the game for the night. (Another friend just got off work and showed up late, so we switched to a board game...) Judging from the reactions, my friends were excited about the possibilities of the game and just as eager to explore strange recursions.
To share those stories and brainstorm ideas for future games, I am starting this blog.
