Emah spun, glaring. She had heard rats chittering and something padding through the shadows.
“Maly,” she growled. “They’re here.”
The warrior tested the grip on her sword, once her mother’s. It was a weapon without flourish, with an iron crossbar, the blade long and wide. Its leather-wrapped handle fit her palm like a natural extension of her body. She swung it out in front of her, air whistling, as she took in their assailants.
The flickering torchlight showed many sets of round, beady eyes, and small furred bodies wrapped in rags. Emah counted half a dozen in all. Each creature was the same size—that of a human child—as the corpses she’d seen upstairs, and each possessed the head of a large, brown rat, with furred arms and standing upright on legs. Their four-fingered hands and feet were tipped by black claws, and some held crudely sharpened sticks. Nothing like these rat-people existed in any tale or story she’d ever read or heard, and she was in her heart a scholar. Yet here they were… inside the inner keep walls of Oakton!
“No,” her friend Maly whispered, almost inaudibly. “No, no, no, no.”
Our first Crusaders combat! Woo!
First things first, these little rat guys are considered (and yes, this is a technical game term) a “bunch of thugs.” There are two groups of three ratfolk, and each has a single stat, called Fight, that they’ll use for everything combat-related. Each ratfolk mob has a Fight score of 10.
Combat scenes in Crusaders are handled in rounds, and characters act in descending order of Alertness (or Fight, in the case of thugs). To keep things simple for this first combat as I’m learning the system, I’m going to say there is no surprise round for the rats… they’ve snuck up on the PCs but alerted them with their chittering immediately prior to any action. Besides, Emah has Psychic Sense, which prevents her from being surprised, and she has time to warn her companions.
Maly’s Alertness is 15, followed by Emah and Kami, each with 13. The ratfolk mobs will each then act with a Fight score of 10. Where is Destiny the panther? Not part of the story yet!
There are no tactical battle maps in Crusaders, and space and movement are both abstracted. Again, to keep things simple, for the purposes of this scene, everyone is considered in melee at the Center of the action (there are two other distances in the game, but we won’t worry about those right now).
All rolls are a) player-facing, meaning that the PCs roll to both attack and defend, and b) percentile, based on the formula [(Active – Opposing) x 5% + 50%] – which sounds confusing but is easy once you get the hang of it, and there’s also a handy table in the rulebook. For Maly, her Prowess score is 13 against the rats’ Fight score of 10, which means she has a 65% chance of hitting with her dagger.
Maly rolls a 63… hit! She does her Physique (10) in damage, plus 5 for the dagger, for a total of 15 lethal damage. With a Fight score of 10, one rat dies, and in mobs the excess damage carries over to the next rat, bringing it to half health (5).
So we have one mob at full strength, and another with 2 ratfolk at 10 & 5 vitality. You can see where the combat here is fast and light… Maly only gets one action, but it’s easy to describe it as multiple maneuvers.
Emah saw shock and disbelief flicker across her friend’s pale face and quickly settle on determination.
Maly dodged to her right, dipping low, as the first rat-thing rushed by her. She extended her dagger as it passed, cutting it from armpit to belly in a shower of dark blood. The thing screamed as it fell, rolling past. A second creature stabbed out with a stick and Maly kicked it in the face. Two things Emah knew of Maly from the training yard… she was quick and she fought dirty, to win.
With a roar, Emah stepped forward, swinging her broadsword wide and effortlessly. The blade tore through two of the leaping rat-folk, and they squealed briefly before dropping lifeless to the stone floor.
Emah can use her Prowess +5 with her sword and does Prowess +5 damage if she hits. With her score of 20 and the rats’ Fight score of 10, she will automatically hit and deal 20 damage. That kills 2 of the rats exactly.
Mob 1: One rat at 10 health (represented by Fight).
Mob 2: One rat at 10, one at 5.
Now it’s Kami’s turn. Does she reveal her powers to these relative strangers? She’s furious (for reasons we’ll learn later) so is not thinking straight. She is not, however, a trained fighter. Her Prowess score is only 10, which means she has a 50% chance of hitting. She rolls an 83 and misses. I could use her sole Hero Point this issue (the length of a usual gaming session, which I’m judging to be three of these blog posts) to flip-flop the roll and hit, but I’ll hold off since these thugs don’t seem particularly dangerous.
Both ratfolk mobs, then, have the opportunity to attack. I’ll say that the two rats head for Kami and the single rat will attempt to avenge its brethren against Emah. Once again, all rolls are player-facing, so Kami will roll with a score of 25 thanks to her Elasticity instead of Alertness. She has a 100% of success and dodges easily out of the way.
Emah has an Alertness of 13, but can add +5 because of her Parry ability. She then has a 90% chance of avoiding the attack from the remaining creature. She rolls a 62 and does so.
Kami seemed to shake herself out of her distraction as the combat raged. She turned, face furious, and swung one of her bare fists. Her arm seemed to elongate, extending much further than it should have done. The rat creature in front of her ducked below the clumsy blow, but as her fist struck the iron bars of a cell there was a tremendous CLANG!, leaving the bars bent.
As if Kami’s swing was not remarkable enough, what happened next caused both Emah and Maly to gape. The rat continued its charge, stabbing forward with its sharpened stake. It was a clever strike and should have impaled her between her breasts, but Kami’s body… bent, flowing like a ribbon in a breeze around the stab. The creature squeaked and chittered in surprise.
Maly is going to try and take out the one attacking Kami, and does so by rolling a 37. Her 15 damage is more than enough to kill it, while Emah slashes with her sword and kills the remaining two ratfolk.
And just like that… we’re done! Crusaders combat is as advertised… fast, clean, and easy. Also, even at street level and my neutering of the PC’s stats, these bunch-of-thugs mobs are no match for them. All of which does indeed feel superheroic. Yay! Soon I’ll feel more comfortable going hard on our party, either by upping the Fight scores or adding more baddies, but I’m thankful to have today’s warm-up.
Maly, clearly running on fear and instinct, had followed the rat creature and stabbed it between the shoulder blades from behind. It dropped, her dagger’s blade slick with blood, and she looked Kami in the face. Where Maly was wide-eyed and disbelieving, Kami’s face was etched in danger, eyes narrowed. Emah swung her sword left and right, snick-snack, killing the final two creatures. Their dying squeals drew the other two women’s attention.
“What is going ON!?” Maly shrieked, her voice shrill. “What are these things? What is this!?” she gestured from the bodies to the bent bars of the cell behind her and then to Kami.
“We go,” their employer said decisively, face glowering. When the others didn’t immediately comply, she rounded on Emah. “You said we must leave, yes? Let us leave, then, and quickly. We should not be here when the Watch arrives.”
Emah looked at the bent bars and then to their employer, a scowl as her mind raced. Impossible creatures followed by impossible acts from Kami. For weeks Oakton had been buzzing about seeming fable-tales occurring across the town, and now she would be adding to those accounts. She had so many questions but now was not the time. The job was to bring this woman to the jail and escort her home, that was it. They needed to get out of here, especially if more of those creatures could bubble out of the cesspit at any time.
“We go,” she confirmed with a short nod, and turned towards the staircase.
“Wait!” Maly cried. “We’re just going to leave? What are these things, Emah? What happened just now?” She was arguing to an empty hallway, however. Emah had already ascended out of view, with Kami quickly on her heels.
Emah heard Maly growled in frustration and the clatter of a sharpened stick that she must have kicked in frustration. Then Maly’s blonde head was bobbing up from the darkness in the torchlight, following them.
The three women scaled the spiral stairs, through the guard room and into the entryway. Nothing there had changed; two dead guards and an equally dead rat-thing lay upon the stone floor in pools of dark, sticky blood. Emah’s mind calculated. One of the creatures dead here, one on the stairs. That made eight total. Was that enough to kill three armed guards? It seemed unlikely, especially without more of the rat-things’ deaths. They must have surprised the guards, but the rats seemed to her like poor fighters. They would have to rely on overwhelming numbers.
“Do… do you think we were seen entering?” Maly panted, interrupting Emah’s thoughts. She blinked, frowning. Kami moved past them both towards the exit.
“I don’t believe so,” Emah frowned. “But when we leave, are we going straight to the Watch or disappearing into the crowds?”
The question was directed at their employer. Kami paused, her hand on the door latch. Emah examined the woman’s hand, thinking that moments before that same hand had extended impossibly long and bent iron bars with a single blow. Kami’s skin was as unblemished and perfect as before, the fingers long and graceful.
“We disappear into the crowd,” Kami nodded, and seemed to remember her hat and walking stick. She bent to retrieve them both, securing the hat firmly on her head. “Best to not let them detain us. I do not think the Watch will assume innocence of a madame of the Rose District and two new mercenaries with, ah, questionable reputations.”
Emah’s frown deepened. The woman had clearly done some investigating into who she hired. She liked that not at all, especially for such a simple job.
“Alright,” Emah exhaled, sheathing her sword. “Maly, come here. You have blood on your shoulder and arm.”
For the next moments, they looked each other over and cleaned themselves the best they could manage with water and the yellow cloaks of the Watch. The parts not spattered with gore, that is.
“Where are we going?” Maly asked when they were done, her voice pitched like that of a frightened child.
Kami looked back, her expressionless face made more so by the wooden mask covering half of it. “Back to the Golden Heron. Are we ready?”
Emah met her eyes and nodded.
Kami opened the door.
Now is a good time to use the Mythic GM Emulator for the first time. It’s an amazing tool for solo gaming, though I don’t often use it religiously or strictly exactly as outlined in the book. Indeed, when playing through published adventures in Dungeon Crawl Classics, ripe with random tables, I found that I didn’t need it at all. Here, when the game is homebrewed and the system lighter, I suspect I’ll lean on it more heavily.
The first question I’ll ask is: Do the trio meet any problems outside the jail? If the answer is no, I’ll just cut to the next scene. If yes, we’ll see where that takes us. The last scene sent the story further out of the PC’s control, so I’ll increase the Chaos Factor from 5 (which is the baseline) to 6. I’ll also say that the chance of them encountering trouble is Unlikely – after all, this is a little-visited jail, away from most of the foot traffic within the inner keep. These decisions give me a 50/50 chance of a Yes. Here’s the roll…
44, which would have been a “No” if the Chaos Factor had been 5 but is a “Yes” now. The PCs do indeed encounter trouble, which means now I need to ask what sort of trouble. First, I’ll roll on the Event Focus table: 11, a new NPC. Second, I’ll roll for the Event Meaning, and use the Descriptor tables first: 16 & 39, which is Combatively Glorious. What sort of character or creature would be outside, between the jail and the brothel, that might be described in that way? Let me ponder…
I’ve got it. Let’s keep the action flowing. It’s not something waiting for them outside. Instead, it’s something that followed them out into the light from the jail. There’s about to be another combat with ratfolk, and this one will be in full view of the city.
This is as good a time to introduce the other sort of Minor Foe in Crusaders, the Lieutenant. I’ll say that there was a leader of the ratfolk minions that were down in the cesspit, and when his pack didn’t return it went to investigate. The creature has tracked the PCs to the upper level and attacks just as the door opens.
Lieutenants, unlike thugs and like PCs, have four distinct attributes, with an average of 12 across scores, and can take damage equal to their Physique. Before I fill out the stats, let me roll on a few more Mythic tables: Character Description (99, Wild), Character Personality (01, Active), and Character Motivations (77, Plan). Alright, it’s a hyperactive super-rat who had planned this jail infiltration into the city and is now furious and crazed that its plan went awry. I’ll give it Physique 12 Prowess 12 Alertness 14 Psyche 10. Fun fun!
The Kaizukan woman walked outside, her hat lowered over her face. The clouds had given way to light rain, which had only begun to wet the cobblestone streets around the keep under the reaching branches of the Great Oak. Emah followed close at her heels, hand twitching towards the hilt of her sword. The mahogany skin of her shoulders, arms, and face glistened with sweat in the sudden light.
“Let’s go,” she whispered sharply to Maly.
The young Stone Islander woman swallowed and moved to follow, but something behind her shuffled, causing her to pause. Emah had just enough time to call out a warning as, out of the shadows, a savage, furred thing snarled and tackled Maly.
Back to Initiative we go, but this time the ratfolk lieutenant will indeed have a surprise round against Maly since Emah isn’t the one being attacked. Surprise means that the lieutenant will get to act first in the round, but thankfully, because its Alertness is not greater than Maly’s (12 vs 13), Maly will not be a “passive target” (i.e. ridiculously easy to hit). Still, because she’s surprised, I’ll say that Maly can’t add her bonus to Alertness from Acrobatics, which means that she has only a 55% chance to dodge – I’ve already said that the attack hit, but this will determine whether she rolls with the attack and thus doesn’t take damage.
Maly rolls a 65, failing. She takes the blow hard, and the lieutenant deals its 12 Physique damage to her. Maly’s Vitality started at 30, which is now down to 18. Ouch.
She is next in initiative order, and in her shock (and my effort to test out different combat maneuvers) will try to Grapple the lieutenant, which is an opposed roll of Physique against Physique. Maly’s not the strongest, so she has a 40% chance of succeeding. She rolls a 96 and fails miserably.
Emah will act next and can end this tussle with an expert sword strike. Thanks to her Weapon Master skill, she has a whopping 20 against the ratfolk’s Alertness of 14. That means she has an 80% chance of success and rolls a 40. She does 20 lethal damage to the lieutenant, killing it.
Lieutenants usually act in concert with gangs of thugs, and I knew a single lieutenant would lose quickly against three PCs. But the consequences for this fight were not the threat of death, but instead a) the public nature of the fight, and b) seeing a different, stronger version of the rats. I’m also feeling my way into the Crusaders system. In those regards, mission accomplished!
These ratfolk also spread disease. Let’s roll Maly’s Physique against a “disease potency” (totally making this up) of 12. That’s a 40% chance of success with her, and I roll a 51. Yikes! Here is an excellent use of Maly’s lone Hero Point for the issue, so I’ll flip-flop that roll into a 15, allowing her to stay disease free for now.
Maly and something large and furred rolled in a bundle out of the jail door and onto the street. Emah drew her sword, moving close. Her friend was screaming and beating at the thing vainly with her bare hands, but this rat-creature was larger and stronger than the others they had fought. Indeed, it was the size of Emah, with muscled shoulders and black claws each the length of her last knuckle. It snarled and chittered, tearing and ripping with those claws. Maly cried out in pain.
Emah stepped in, lunging forward with the tip of her sword and through the rat-creature’s neck. This close, it smelled powerfully of animal and sewage. The creature screamed and slumped to the side, and blood splashed across Maly’s neck and face. She scampered to her hands and knees, gaping at the now dead figure she’d escaped. Its tongue lolled from a long snout filled with jagged yellow teeth.
Emah wiped the blade on the creature’s gray rags and pulled at Maly. “Come on! Up, girl, up!”
All around them, people were pointing and exclaiming in shock and horror. Someone in green-and-yellow livery nearer the curtain wall shouted to one of the watchtowers.
Rain was pattering harder now, blurring everything around.
“We can’t run,” Kami said, voice hard and resolute. “They’ve seen us.”
My Hero Brain 
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