Smoke Kisses Sky - Session 4: Brewing Tensions and Journal Entries

At the end of the last session, the Father killed the Son in a duel to the death. Since then a couple days have passed as Matilda recovers, and the Mother has been giving the Father a cold shoulder. Which is impressive becouse she already has a very frigid disposition on a good day. Matilda overhears how the Mother speaks to the Glazier for advice on if she should prioritize her duties as a warrior or as a mother. The bandits at the Lily of the Water have silently started to form into two groups, around 10 of them are on the Mother's side while double that amount are with the Father. It's no surprise that she has less support, becouse the Father has always been the better chef of the two.

Meanwhile the collection of hunters that helped with taking down the Beast are starting to part ways. Rosemary is going to go upriver and over the mountains to the Great Wood where Moss is strongest. The poor unlucky woman does not want to be struck by lightning, so seeks the powers of Moss, becouse Glazier tells her that lightning is in the domain of Crystal. Bellum plans to get a safe distance away from Yelenin before the fighting starts while still operating in the Jabberwacky's marshes, since he's a local lad. Dame the Vivisector is going north to the Fallen City to slay dragons.

Matilda has the oppertunity to recruit one of them for a more permanant basis, and chooses the level headed and uncursed Bellum. He is willing to stick around despite the risk if Matilda has a good plan for ensuring that he's on the winning team, and Matilda comes up with the scheme of using her advanced knowledge of stew making to win over the bandits. The poacher is initially unsure but agrees to back her play. Matilda aligns herself with the Mother's camp through the comradery of the bandits she faught the Beast with, whose loyalty to the Son transformed to make the Father thier enemy. If the Father is taken out, Matilda has a chance to become the gang's new chef but she's going to have to deal with the Beast's slayer Scarlet and the Son's Wife, who are both skilled in the culinary arts. For Matilda to have a chance at the spot, she's going to need to collect reagants, that likely means hunting some dangerous magical beasts.

While politics are happening the background, she also decides to investigate the Sphinx of Black Quarts with a professional. The Glazier is able to find time in his busy schedule to venture to the previously explored cabin with the protection of the Apprentice and Matilda with her two companions. When they arrive, the craftsman-priest pays introduces himself politely to the unintrested oracle and looks at the statue. He translates the inscription to say “Swear on me, be judged and accept what you deserve” and explains that there is likely to be a specific phrase that is involved. By process of elimnation the answer must be in the cabin's final unexplored room, Distal's nest. However before getting to that, the old skeleton man admonishes Matilda and crew for not buring the bodies of Claricia and Inezch and directs them to correct thier error. During this process it's discovered that Inezch has wizard teeth, which are useful alchemical ingrediants that go unplundered, due to everyone's watchful gaze. Then the Glazier and Apprentice headed back to the villiage, becouse they have shit to do.

Meanwhile the party had to think about how to get inside Distal's nest without bothering the light senstive monster. The one time the oracle is known to leave that place is during the full moon, and after consulting the calander, it fortunately turned out that this very night it was the full moon. So the party just rested in the upstairs cabin until nightfall. During which time Matilda read Claricia's journal, learning more about how she died to her own poison, that her blood was cursed, how she tamed both Distal and Miette and her worries for both of them and her husband Inezch. 

Then when the full moon came, and the oracle wandered into the marsh, singing unharmoniously, the party snuck into his private chambers. The room consisted of chair, a couple chests, hanging paper stars and words written and carved on every surface. The phrase "Sphinx of Black Quartz Judge My Vow" was identified from common repetion, and the chests were opened with Inezch's key, where a crossbow for vampire hunting, silver bolts and several books were found. The books and bolts were looted and the party slept up in the cabin. That night Matilda saw a sphinx prowl into her dreams and give her a judging look that makes the Glazier's dissaproving tone look like approval.

In the morning she read Inezch's journal. In which she learned that Inezch became a divination wizard from vows to the Sphinx, that Distal stopped looking like him after Claricia tamed the oracle, and that Inezch was extermely paranoid about Claricia's safety. The session closes on Matilda pondering the mysteries presented before her and her next move.

Ease Of Running

This session was much easier to run then the last one, and I came away from it feeling way better. I think it's becouse there was a lot less uncertainty on if I was using the procedures correctly. The half consisted of me presenting information, and getting Alice to make choices and elaborating of what that entails. The second half was mostly exposition, with a focus toward answering the mystery of how to utilize the Sphinx of Black Quartz. 

Lunar Coincidence

I did not intend for Alice to arrive at the cabin at precisely on the day of the full moon. I quickly calculated how many days had passed in the campaign and it turned out to be two weeks. Which in the simplified calander I chose for this campaign, that meant that day had to either be the full moon or the new moon and I decided the former based on Feral Elf lore.

Kitsuragi Effect

A term I'm coining now. The Kitsuragi Effect is that when you give a PC a reasonable friend they are a lot less likely to do wierd shit due to the social pressure. Claricia's heart and Inezch's teeth have gone undefiled becouse I mentioned that npcs might judge Matilda for doing so. I don't know if this is a good or bad thing.

Smoke Kisses Sky Session 3- First Thunder Clap

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.