Last time we left Seo-Yun Matilda she was preparing to head off on the hunt, but she was stopped by the Son's Wife, who bought the alchemical supplies she had pilfered from the cabin along with the encoded recipe book. Both her party of five and the Son't party of five ventured in search of the beast. During that day, Matilda and co. encountered fishermen during the day but decided to press further into the night. In the dark they encountered the Son and the two surviving bandits that journeyed out with him, and everyone headed back and to recover at the Lily of the Waters.
On the next attempt the day after that, Matilda decided to join forces with the Son, who got two other bandits to join him. One upside is that from the Son's last encounter they had a solid trail to track the monster by. During the day they did not encounter anyone, but the insects were particularly restless, the reeds stung when you moved throught them, and mud sucked in your feet in worlpools, a sure sign that the waters were conspiring to riot against all. Mechanically this meant that everyone crits against everyone. If they pressed into the night, then they were sure to find the beast and it was sure to be a decisve battle one way or another. And press on they did, the marsh in it's agitation let the Beast right to them, stretched out, skin white like corpse wax, and ever so hateful. It started approaching them calmly and was about to say something, then Matilda shot and missed.
As the Beast screamed and charged at the Gun Shepherd, only the two men present, Bellum and the Son failed thier Morale save, as the Beast ran over and left a horrible gash in Matilda causing her to go unconcious. The Beast then aimed at the Son, but failed and fell into the mud, followed by Dame Vivesector who also missed and fell and started sinking into the marsh under the weight of her armour. The mute Halina, unable to call a retreat went to prevent Vivesector from drowning. Rosemary fired her gun and dropped her gonne. Then one of the bandits, named Gwen blew a massive hole in the monster with a firelance, which was quickly followed up by pikes from two other bandits Laural and Scarlet.
When Matilda regained conciousness, she was at the bandaged at the Lily. The Beast's corspe was burned already, and the Son took credit for the kill, keeping most of the reward within the Family's coffers, however Matilda and co did get paid, and the Son did commend Matilda's bravery in the face of Beast. While recovering, the Gun Shepherd overheard the Son's Wife talking her husband into killing the Father in a duel but decided not to stick her nose in the buisness becouse she wouldn't mind either of them dying. In the resulting duel the Son died. The Beast has died but more trouble is brewing in Yelenin.
Riot Against All
You're immidate question might be what "waters conspire to riot against all" means. It's from the Char3terie zine which I will link to once it's published. It contains a d6 table which describes the 'mood' of the waters, which changes what actions and magics are favored. I put this table into my modified version of the encounter table. This is the one that altered the course of this session.
- 6: Riot Against All. All results count as critical for all actors. All magics are + but incite water's uproar, probabilities inverted.
In retrospect this should have just turned every successful hit into a critical, but in the moment I read that as replacing the d20 with a coin flip. So Matilda and the Beast went down quickly becouse everyone was doing double damage. So far this has been a very 'rocket-taggy' campaign. Not sure if I want to adjust rules for that, my GMing approach or just pretend this has always been a feature not a bug.
Gradual Accumulation of Characterization
The four bandits who joined the Son on the hunt were undefined, aside from how the two were carrying fire lances and two were carrying pikes. Then during the morale roll, of the named characters only the two guys failed their roll so I decided that this must mean the undefined bandits were women. Then when three of them killed the Beast a three crit alpha strike, I rolled up names for them. I think they were probably the Son's cronies, so will side against the Father in the power struggle next session.
Mechanics of the Hunt
It was kinda fortunate that the Riot Against All came up when it did, becouse I think the tracking rolls might have dragged on otherwise. The issue was that there weren't a lot of novel choices between rolls, and the process of tracking the Beast was elided to a degree where it's just rolling until you get it. I think this might be an issue of me not being as good at description as I would like to be. Also a strange inconsistancy is that the nighttime encounter table is written with the assumption that you're setting up a camp, but the inability to rest in the reeds means there isn't an insentive to do so, becouse you might as well press on. I think this could be fixed by a mention that there is a risk of getting lost at night, even if you have a compass or a local to navigate by. Despite these critiques, I do very much like this adventure, it succeeds at the most important thing an adventure has to do, which is inspire a GM to run it.
Simulationist Woes
I didn't want the player to sell off the encrypted recipe book. It has several cool recipes that I wanted the player to have access to play with. I had the Son's Wife try to buy it becouse it made sense for her character to do so, but didn't expect the player to sell it becouse Matilda couldn't read it right away. I think I should have had the Son's Wife try to steal it in the middle of the night instead.
Forgotten Elements
Bentham and Tuesday have been completely forgotten about, but I don't feel too bad about it. Recently I read
Kidnap The Archpriest which includes to focus the adventure around the first couple npcs the players come across, and let the others fade into the background, which I think is a useful mode of play.
I felt I had enough on my plate running the Beast fight that I didn't roll for anyone to get any vices. I think I'll include daemons in encounter tables going forward but I'm not sure how to handle vices going forward.
Spectre of Death
These are the rules for death used, and needless to say Alice chose for Matilda to suffer a Wound. I am currently debating if I want to pick up the action while she's still in recovery and therefor vulnerable or not. I think I had the duel happen somewhere in the middle of the recover week.
What Next
Now I have a bunch of characters for who I need to figure out what thier next actions are going to be. From the adventure I know that the Mother is going to fight the Father, but I need to figure out how the various priests I invented are going to respond and if anything is going to happen with the gnomish cooper friend. I think the Demon Mask is going to carry on the Beast's hatred in it's absence, the problem of the Beast of Yelenin doesn't feel solved. I think it's pretty obvious that it's cursed and horrible revenge killings are going to continue happening around it until nobody is left in the village. I also think I'm going to have the three companions scatter next session, with the option to keep one of them around, so that the one character has more breathing room to exist. The rest will be on the encounter table.
