Tag: Fiction

Age of Wonders, Issue 1a: A Simple Job [with game notes]

On By MagicJMSIn Age of Wonders, Fantasy Fiction, Superhero Fiction, Superhero Gaming, Tabletop Roleplaying3 Comments

Welcome to the Age of Wonders, my current solo play and fiction project! To get you oriented, these shaded text boxes are for game notes, which will be absent from the fiction-only posts (for today, that would be here).

I’m playing the Crusaders rpg but, to begin today’s adventure, I rolled on the excellent Random Adventure Seeds in the Mighty Protectors core rulebook. I’m truly letting this homebrewed adventure emerge from the dice and am giving into the randomness. Percentile rolls in parentheses.

Step 1: What’s going on? (74) Invasion/rebellion.

Step 2: What’s the status? (04) Cold case – it happened some time ago.

Step 3: How do the PCs find out about it? (50) Via investigation – either the PCs or a third party.

Step 4: Final details. Perpetrator: (65) Enemy aliens. Victim: (08) Criminals. Location: (46) Prison.

I’ve already decided that Kami, one of our three protagonists, will be hiring Emah and Maly as a way of forming our party of adventurers. So now I just need to combine the above rolls into that story. Here we go…

art by Roland Brown (drawhaus.com)

Maly pushed her way, panting, into the darkened room. The sudden change from sunlight to candlelight momentarily blinded her as she shut the door. Sounds of cart vendors shouting, street musicians, horses clopping, and laughter immediately hushed to dull muffles. The Golden Heron, with colorful tapestries hanging on the wooden walls, had worked hard to keep its business inside hidden from the bustling street outside.

“Emah? You in here?” Maly asked, breathless.

“You’re late,” her friend answered, her deep voice clipped.

“Ah, yes. About that,” Maly held up a finger. “I need to tell you about–”

“You’re late, Maly,” Emah hissed. “Get over here and. Meet. Our. Host.” Each of those last words was delivered through clenched teeth.

“Oh, but… Right. Sorry,” Maly said sheepishly, still panting. She wiped a forearm across her wet brow and stamped her sandaled feet.

“I’m glad to have you both here,” a supple, smooth voice said. Maly blinked spastically, her pale blue eyes adjusting. Cloth hung from every wall, but otherwise the three of them stood alone in a room only sparsely furnished, with pillows placed neatly around its perimeter. A low desk with quill, parchment, and a slender candle atop it sat near a far wall. Another candle flickered merrily on an ironbound chest in a corner. A few garments hung from pegs peeking between tapestries on the wall. She could see now that her friend had her muscled, bare arms crossed and feet planted wide, pointedly turned away from her and towards their host. Emah was kitted for action, wearing her leather cuirass and gloves, her scabbarded sword hanging from her waist. The warrior’s short, kinky hair was pulled back from her forehead by a leather strap.

Maly still couldn’t make out details, but the third woman was slender and dressed in patterned pants and sleeveless top, with a riot of bracelets and necklaces adorning her. Their host’s long, silken black hair fell across one eye and spilled over one shoulder. Something was odd about her face, but Maly couldn’t tell at first what it was. Everything about her graceful bearing and honeyed voice felt to Maly like a caress in the dim light, which made some sense since they were standing in a brothel that she or Emah could never afford. This room wasn’t the Golden Heron’s primary entrance for clientele, though. Maly had, as instructed, circled around to a side door. She presumed this sparse, elegant room was meant for business only.

Maly tried her best to still her breathing, calm her frantic mind, and focus on what their potential employer was saying. She realized that she had missed the last several moments of conversation between the woman and Emah.

“…so you see, it’s a simple job. One afternoon for you and done.”

“You… just want us to walk with you? Are you expecting trouble?” Emah asked suspiciously.

“No particular trouble, no,” the woman said smoothly, shrugging a bare shoulder. “But you must understand, I am not used to visiting imprisoned criminals. I would feel better having an escort and have the coin to spare.”

“Wait, what are we doing? We’re just going to the jail?” Maly blinked, confused.

“Maly…” Emah growled.

“That’s right, Miss Wywich,” the woman nodded. Maly’s eyes had adjusted, and she could see now that the woman was indeed beautiful, but there was something covering the half of her face that her hair concealed. Beneath the curtain of black hair was a mask, delicately carved with an eye hole and curving around her slim nose and full-lipped mouth. “Walk with me to the jail, stay with me there while I conduct some business, and deliver me safely home.”

“Seems like a pretty easy job,” Maly chuckled.

Emah cleared her throat and shot her a withering stare. “It’s the kind of job new members of the Adventurer’s Guild receive, and we’re happy to do it, ma’am,” she growled.

Maly shrugged back apologetically.

“Excellent,” the woman nodded once. “And please: My name is Kami. I’ll provide half the fee now and half when it’s done. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Emah nodded, and took the small pouch of coins. It clinked in her palm, and Emah tucked it away on a belt pouch.

“When are we leaving?” Maly asked.

“Why, now of course,” and the woman glided past them. Kami plucked a wide, circular hat from a peg, and a long slender walking stick leaning next to it. Then she was pushing out into the sunlight.

Outside, all three of them squinted in the bright light, Emah and Maly shielding their eyes with a hand. This part of Oakton, the Rose District, sat at the broad border between the wealthier merchant quarter and the crime-riddled slums. Modest wooden homes and shops lined the dirt road, with horse-drawn carts and people traveling up and down its length. Everywhere individuals and small groups played music, the constant backdrop of Oakton. Closest to them, a man sat cross-legged and pat a wide, flat drum, humming lyrics with a deep voice while across the street a girl of no more than ten sang full-throated while her two friends danced and banged tambourines.

Though it was in the second half of winter—indeed it was the first day of Nigwan, which in Kalee meant “End,” named for the thaw and last days of winter in the nation’s capital—the weather here, far to the west and north, was mild. Most of Oakton’s residents wore light fabrics and sleeveless shirts.

Above the roofline, the towering Great Oak stood, like a protective mother watching over the town, its branches stretching across the cloudy sky. Kami did not hesitate, walking with purpose down the road, towards the immense tree. Emah strode after her with long strides. Maly scampered to keep up.

“Emah!” the young woman gasped. “I need to tell you about–”

“Not now,” Emah growled. Her brown eyes did not meet Maly’s desperate, freckled face, but instead scanned the road for danger with a serious, furrowed expression. “We’re on a job. The first job, I’ll add, in more than a week. It’s actual coin, that will put food in our mouths. So just tell me later and pay attention now.”

Now it was Maly’s turn to harrumph in frustration. “Fine,” she said, pursing her lips, and she glanced behind them, searching the crowd with pale blue eyes as if expecting someone following.

Emah pointedly ignored her and lengthened her strike to reach Kami’s shoulder. “By the way, ma’am?”

The graceful woman kept her pace, seemingly not at all breathless or bothered. She answered mildly. “Yes?”

“Why are you visiting the jail? What’s your business there?” Emah asked. A thin, knobby street vendor stepped in front of Kami, leering at her, and Emah pushed him, stumbling, out of the way. He swore at them as they passed.

“That,” Kami said dismissively. “Is my own concern. One doesn’t usually ask the business of someone from the Rose District, Miss Elmhill.” And with that she adjusted her wide-brimmed hat and continued down the road, weaving amidst the crowd while her two guards kept pace.

The trio quickly approached Southgate, beyond which lay the town’s garrison, government buildings, and wealthiest residents. The gate itself was a gap wide enough for three carts, in a thick stone curtain wall with squat, ugly towers at regular intervals. A bored city watchman nodded at them as they passed, his half-lidded eyes lingering on Kami’s smooth cheek, lithe arms, and breasts pressed against her form-fitting shirt. Even with the carved mask and low-drawn hat the woman drew attention, and the guard’s hungry gaze was only the most obvious example around them. Maly began to understand the brothel-proprietor’s desire for bodyguards into the inner city and back, and wondered how often she was harassed in some way by guardsmen, sailors, or even merchants. The brief image of the leering street vendor also clicked into her mind. Emah gave her most withering gaze to the gate guard, but the man didn’t seem to notice, his eyes fixed on Kami.

Emah glanced back at Maly, still struggling to keep up with them because of constantly looking behind.

“Maly? Is someone following us?” she asked in a low whisper.

“What? Why would you–? No, no. Of course not!” the young woman chuckled guiltily. Her round, pale face had wideset eyes, freckled cheeks, downturned lips, and a button nose, making her look somewhat like a child from the neck up. Her tattooed, muscled arms and the knife at her belt dispelled the illusion, however. Maly brushed the short, sweat-damped blonde hair from her eyes. “Uh, our employer is getting away.”

“Aargh!” Emah huffed, and she hustled to pursue Kami as the woman made a beeline through the passerbys to a round, stone structure set away from the other buildings and far from the looming keep. Here, so close to the towering Great Oak, everything was in dappled shade. Yellow and brown oak leaves twice as large as an open hand lay scattered across the cobblestone, the leaves as constant in Oakton as the street musicians.

The town’s dungeons, which held those either awaiting execution or detained indefinitely, lay beneath the main keep. Where Kami strode, however, was outside one of several jails within the curtain wall, a place to hold those accused of smaller crimes or to pull drunkards off the street. Emah glanced back at her friend as they approached the heavy wooden door of the building, clearing her throat to get her attention. Maly was still looking behind her, scanning for something. She heard Emah and looked up to her friend and then the jail door. She grimaced.

“Is this going to be a problem?” Emah whispered back. For the first time since Maly had arrived late, Emah’s voice held no anger.

“It’s fine,” Maly shrugged, but her lips were a grim line. “I mean, I didn’t stay here that long.”

Kami had stopped, motionless, before the door. As Emah and Maly flanked her, the woman seemed to shake herself out of some sort of reverie, as if she’d been lost in thought.

“We are here,” she said simply.

“Are we… going inside?” Maly asked.

Kami seemed to gather herself and nodded once, sharply. “We are. You may stay outside if you wish.” She reached out and knocked on the door, first lightly, and then more forcefully when no one answered.

Maly arched an eyebrow, impressed at the slim woman’s strength. The heavy door thrummed with her booming knocks.

No one answered.

“That seems odd, doesn’t it?” Maly offered, hesitantly.

The three looked at each other, unsure what to do, then Emah and Maly scanned the surroundings. The jail stood away from any foot traffic, and no one seemed particularly interested in watching them at its entrance. They exchanged confused glances.

Kami pursed her lips and clutched the latch. With a sharp push of her shoulder, the door shuddered and flew open.

Inside was carnage.

Maly knew the layout of this jailhouse intimately. The entry room took up roughly half of the circular level, used for the intake of prisoners. Two city watch members were stationed here at all hours, usually complaining about their boring assignment and playing dice or cards. Behind the desk and chairs stood iron bars and a heavy door, behind which were cubbies with prisoners’ belongings, city watch logs, and a winding staircase down to the lower level. The entire jail was windowless, with torches burning day and night to both light it and make the place smell of oil and smoke.

Today, the heavy door at the back of the room hung open, the table and chairs toppled. Two bodies, a man and woman in the city watch’s yellow and green livery, lay sprawled on the floor, their forms ravaged by what looked like an animal attack, or perhaps several animals. Dark blood spattered the walls and ceiling, and pooled in wide, sticky blobs around the bodies. Small prints like that from a cat or dog tracked through the blood and seemed everywhere across the wooden floor.

One guard’s corpse clutched a long spear, which impaled something brown and furred, also dead and curled around the weapon’s tip. That body drew the eye because it was vaguely humanoid, the size of a child, one four-fingered, clawed hand outstretched as if in a plea for mercy. It wore filthy rags that could barely be called clothing, hanging in tatters from its small form. They couldn’t see the thing’s face from here, but its furred head was topped by small, flared ears.

“By the gods,” Emah breathed. “What happened here? We… we should get the Watch. Maly, go get help.”

“No!” Kami barked, thrusting a hand outward, palm facing them.

“What?” Maly blinked, her breath coming short and shallow. The smell in here wasn’t the typical oil and smoke—it was like iron and sewage, making her eyes water and jaw clench. “We need to tell–”

“No, dammit all! Shut the door and follow me.” Kami dropped her walking staff and threw off her hat, tiptoeing her way through the bodies and blood towards the open door. While the other two women gaped, she stepped across the threshold and peered down the staircase.

Emah was squinting at the furred form at the end of the spear, frowning. Maly stepped close to her, eyes wide.

“I’ve paid you to escort me,” Kami said, her face serious. “Come on.” She descended the stairs.

“What- what do we do, Emah?” Maly whispered urgently.

“I don’t…” Emah shook her head. “Aargh. We follow. Come on. Weapons out.”

Emah Elmhill was not particularly tall, but she had the physique of a well-trained fighter. With a gloved hand she reached to her waist, to a leather scabbard from which decorative tassels hung. The scraping sound of steel across the metal collar filled the room as Emah drew her sword. She held the wide blade out in front of her, other hand clenched in a fist.

“Let’s go,” she huffed, and stepped her way through the massacre at her feet to follow Kami.

Maly fumbled at her belt sheath for her dagger, thin blade as long as her forearm. She stole another glance at the furred creature curled around the spear, unlike anything she had ever seen. When she realized that Emah was already descending the stairs, Maly shook her head and lightly padded forward to catch up.

A second furred body lay halfway down the spiral staircase, this one on its back. Once again it wore tattered, filthy strips of cloth, and one side of its small torso was stained in blood from a wound, most likely a spear thrust from one of the guards. Its head was like that of a large rat, with black beady eyes, long whiskers on a nose hairless at the tip of the snout. Its mouth was gaping wide in death, showing sharp, yellowed teeth at the front of its mouth. One of its four-fingered, clawed hands held a sharpened stick.

“By the light of the sun,” she gasped, her steps faltering.

“No! Blast you, no!” Kami’s voice echoed from below, immediately followed by Emah’s shout.

“Maly! Get down here!”

Wide-eyed, she dashed down the curved staircase.

The bottom floor of the jail was simple in its design. The staircase led to a square area with a guard post at its center. Arrayed around the post were four cramped cells, each with iron bars and containing only a straw pallet, a wooden bucket of water, and a grated hole leading to a common cesspit below. The walls and floor were roughly-cut stone, making the place just cold and damp enough to be constantly uncomfortable. Maly knew this place well from her weeks living here. She hated it and everything it represented.

Today, however, there was no guard posted at the center. No living one, anyway. Another green-and-yellow clad city watch member lay on his back, fat belly torn open and spilling intestines across his legs, his lifeless eyes wide and terrified in the torchlight. Two prisoners also lay dead and ravaged in their cells, bitten and torn by what looked like small claws and teeth. As above, the stench of blood and waste permeated the place.

Kami stood, fists clenched tightly, looking down at one of the corpses in the cells. It was a man, pale-skinned from the Stone Isles, with blonde hair like Maly’s. He was tall, with wiry arms and a long neck, and seemed to be of middling years. His gray clothes had been torn, especially around his chest and shoulders, which were a bloody mess of gore. Kami stared at the man’s face, her unmasked cheek wet with tears.

“Ma’am,” Emah said huskily, holding back vomit. “We have to go. We have to get help. Whatever these things are… we need to tell someone.”

Kami continued to stare at the corpse lying between her and the iron bars. Emah and Maly watched her, willing her to respond.

As a result, none of them saw the furred, rag-robed figures climbing out of the cesspool hole in the floor of an open cell, one by one, their small eyes glowing in the torchlight like rounded flint, until it was too late. Chittering, the rat-figures scampered into the hallway and attacked.

Well dang… no rolling of dice or combat today, but there’s no avoiding it next time. I’m excited to take the Crusaders light and fast combat mechanics for a spin!

Age of Wonders: Issue 1b

Age of Wonders: Maly Wywich

On By MagicJMSIn Age of Wonders, Fantasy Fiction, Superhero Fiction, Superhero Gaming, Tabletop Roleplaying4 Comments

It’s an exciting day! Today we discover the last piece of our starting party’s puzzle. Who will be the third protagonist, member of our erstwhile Crusaders adventurers, joining Emah and Kami? What sort of stories will be possible once the set is complete? Let’s find out… right now!

Background Rolls

As before, I love me some Background Generator tables in ICONS Origins. For any PC in any superhero game that doesn’t have random backgrounds, I can’t imagine starting anywhere but here. Also as before, I’ll include my d6 rolls (sometimes 2d6, sometimes a single d6 or series of d6s) in parentheses. I’ll also include a bit more commentary on each roll than the previous two, since this character completes the picture of the party.

Gender (7): Female! Alright, then… it’s a trio of women as our protagonists.

Ethnicity (6): Stone Isles. That’s a nice balance with Emah and Kami. All the main cultures in Oakton are represented except the Mesca (which will certainly get covered by NPCs).

Age (7,4): 24 years old, the exact same age as Emah and five years younger than Kami. It’s easy to decide, then, that Emah and this character are friends.

Manner (12): Anxious, nervous, or jumpy. Ha! Stark contrast with the other two, and likely makes this character the comedic one of the trio.

Who do you value? (8): Pet. Pet?!

What do you value (6): Friendship. Well, that tracks. She and Emah are definitely besties.

Attitude (5): People need strong leadership and guidance. Truth be told, I originally rolled a 10, which is the same attitude as Emah, and I wanted more diversity. This result is interesting for someone who’s anxious… I’m guessing that she’s a follower more than the leader, but feels leadership is important.

Birthplace (2): Urban. Born and raised in Oakton.

Status (6): Solid and stable, economically speaking.

Tragedy (4): No childhood tragedy.

1st Past Experience (3,6): Windfall. She received some material or financial gains.

2nd Past Experience (6,3): Imprisoned. She was abducted, held hostage, sent to prison, or otherwise held against your will for some reason.

3rd Past Experience (3,3): Opportunity. She found a new opportunity, whether it was a new job, an invention, or a new way of looking at things.

I roll on these tables until either I feel “done” or I get a result that doesn’t fit the story building in my head from the initial rolls. Today, after only three results, she crystalized early and I’m ready to sketch out her backstory. Here it is…

Maly Wywich was an only child to a mother and father who owned a modest business in Oakton. Much to her surprise, when she turned eighteen years old, her last remaining grandparent died of natural causes, leaving Maly a large inheritance. Her parents were offended by the slight but pleased for Maly’s fortune. That is, until news of the inheritance made its way through the town, and an underworld gang intimidated and threatened Maly and her family, forcing her to hand over the deed to her grandfather’s estate and wealth. Infuriated and defiant, Maly tried infiltrating the gang’s headquarters to get back her inheritance but was caught by the town guard and imprisoned for it. The scandal and shock of the events led Maly’s parents to effectively disown her.

Having lost everything and her world shattered, Maly was eventually released from prison without any prospects for the future. She adamantly refused to turn to a life of crime, instead joining the Adventurer’s Guild. There she met Emah, a strong and capable warrior that Maly immediately idolized. The two became fast friends, and Maly sees in Emah someone who may yet help her right the wrongs she’s suffered, restoring her fortune and the relationship with her parents.

I like it! There’s a strong connection between two of our initial party members, and as I mentioned last time, I see Emah and Maly being hired by Kami as the beginning of our adventure.

Origin

Now the all-important (for most superhero games) roll… What sort of character are we talking about here? As a reminder, I’m using the tables from my variant rules post to figure out the rest of Maly’s character sheet.

The Origin is equivalent to class in many d20 games and provides the overall flavor of Maly’s archetype. Here we go… I roll 31 or 13, which is either Wyrding – Arcane or Companion – Animal. Either Maly is, like Kami, directly transformed by the Wyrding, manifesting magical abilities, or else she has an animal companion who was transformed. Well, well, well… remember how Maly values a pet? This is an easy decision, then. Maly will be a non-powered human, as Emah. Unlike our Warrior, however, Maly will have a powerful bond with a powerful animal.

I’ve thought about how to handle a “Companion” character if I rolled one, and my plan is to create TWO character sheets, one for the human and one for the companion. As a result, my three-person party just effectively became four, which is in part why I went for a limited initial number of PCs. If I enjoy this story and want to continue it, I imagine an ensemble cast that at various times bulges and splits off, creating factions that we can follow narratively.

Powers and Attributes

Let’s stick with Maly for now, focusing on her 3 Power rolls and 10 Attribute points. As a nonpowered human, I’ll automatically trade one of those rolls for an additional 4 Attribute points with the Intensive Training option. I’ll also burn a roll for Privileged Background – Maly is independently wealthy, though she won’t have access to that wealth at the beginning of the tale.

That leaves a solitary Power roll, which is: 09 or 90. That gives me Armor, Vigor, Clairvoyance, Telepathy, Energy Blast, Weather Control, Acrobat, or Weapon Master. Even though a lot of those are cool, the only options that make sense, really, are Armor, Acrobat, and Weapon Master. Since Emah is a capable swordswoman, I won’t pick Weapon Master. And given that she’s currently penniless, I have a hard time seeing Maly wearing a sweet suit of platemail armor. That leaves Acrobat, which is a lovely complement. With this power, Maly can vault, somersault, walk tightropes, swing from rooftops, and perform other spectacular feats of agility. She is, in other words, a thief-type of PC. Mechanically, it means she can make acrobatic dodges, adding +5 to her Alertness when defending against melee and missile attacks. She can also break her falls, reducing damage from falls by 20.

For Attributes, Maly will spend her 14 points first and foremost on Alertness, beginning with a 15. She’ll drop a single point onto Physique, four on Prowess, and three on Psyche. She’s vigilant to danger and skilled, with an above-average will. With a 10 Physique, her Vitality is 30, same as Kami.  

Now the juicy part: What kind of animal companion does Maly have? A long time ago, I made an Animal Spirits table for another game, conveniently providing a d100 percentile table upon which to roll in situations like this one.

Some of these obviously won’t work, but let’s allow the dice to tell the story and see what I roll: 68. Panther. Well, that’s just cool as hell. Maly has a friggin’ panther as a companion! I’m guessing that this isn’t an animal that’s ever been seen in or around Oakton, which makes it both a startling companion and something that will immediately cause problems in town. Wonderful stuff.

I’ll also burn a Powers roll for our new panther friend for Intensive Training. Then come the two Power rolls:

Roll 1: 35 or 53, which is Flight, Molecular Morphing, Psychic Blast, Psychic Sense, Energy Manipulation, Force Field, Detective, Marksman.

Roll 2: 90 or 09, which is the same roll as Maly! Once again, that’s Vigor, Armor, Telepathy, Clairvoyance, Weather Control, Energy Blast, Weapon Master, or Acrobatics.

As always, lots of ways to go with those rolls. Unlike Maly, I’m perfectly comfortable going weird here. Off to the Crusaders rulebook I go, reading up on the various powers.

One option is to simply make a Super Panther, taking Detective and Vigor/Acrobatics. I like the addition of an investigative character, but I think we’ve got melee combat handled between Emah and Kami, so I like this option least. I’m also ditching the Molecular Morphing and Vigor combo, which makes a panther that can become stone or wood, which is wandering too close into Kami’s territory.

Another option is to take Energy Manipulation and Energy Blast, making a lightning-cat, or fire-cat, or ice-cat, or whatever. It’s a fun, Pokemon-ish idea and gives the party some range, but I would have liked it more if it had been a regular housecat or less impressive creature than a panther.

A flying panther that Maly could ride? A pega-panther, with Vigor, Acrobatics, or even Weather Control? I love the visual here, but if Maly is going to be our thief analogue, it makes a little less sense for her to be riding a winged panther.

Much to my surprise, then, I find myself drawn to a panther with mental powers. I’ll give the panther Telepathy, which means it can read surface thoughts of other individuals (requiring a Psychic attack if it’s an unwilling target). The panther can also communicate, sending thoughts into the minds of others. This power, then, is how Maly and the panther talk to one another. I’ll also give the panther Psychic Blast, which does indeed provide the party some ranged attack options. Instead of a generic “I assault you with my mind,” I’m going to say that the panther’s stare can cause abject fear in opponents. Maly will provide some comic relief, but the panther will be scary as hell.

I don’t have enough Attribute points to make the panther as bad ass as I picture in my mind, so I’ll have to justify it as a relatively small version who will grow as his and Maly’s Rank grows. For now, I’ll put five points in Psyche and distribute the remaining nine points evenly among the other stats. With a 12 Physique, our animal companion panther will have a Vitality of 26.

Final Touches

Maly’s motivation is front of mind for me. She’s an Avenger, sworn to reclaim her inheritance and, more importantly in her mind, punish the Oakton gang responsible (I’ll have to flesh out that gang at some point). To keep things simple, I’ll say that her panther—whose name I’ve decided is Destiny—chose Maly precisely because of this motivation because he is himself a spirit of vengeance. What Destiny the panther wants to avenge, I have no idea but will figure out over time.

Equipment-wise, Maly will have a dagger and thieves’ tools, and Destiny will of course have claws (which act the same as a dagger).

Here, then, are our two-for-one character sheets:

I’m extremely pleased with what my random rolls have created here. I can picture Maly and her panther Destiny clearly in my mind, and they complement Emah and Kami well both in terms of personality, party composition, and story potential. I can’t wait to get started!

Of course, first I don’t actually have to picture them in my mind, because once again Roland Brown (drawhaus.com) has stepped in with awesome artwork for Maly and Destiny. Here is the initial sketch and final result:

art by Roland Brown (drawhaus.com)
art by Roland Brown (drawhaus.com)

Finally, here’s a little splash of fiction to get a sense of our remaining protagonist(s)…

“‘You’re no fighter,’” Maly said, her tone mocking, her pale, freckled face a mask of abject disgust. She blew out a long, exaggerated breath in frustration, her slim body seeming to deflate against the wooden wall. In a tired voice, she muttered, “I never said I was a fighter. I’m just trying to get my inheritance back!” She yelled those last words, clenching eyes shut and fists tight. With a sob, she sank slowly down to a crouch, her back still against the wall. Somewhere distant, a dog began barking.

Her tirade had disturbed an alley cat, which darted across Maly’s path, escaping the scene. The young woman opened one eye and watched it depart into the shadows, darting around crates as it went. Her other eye, of course, was swollen shut. The unseen dog continued to bark.

“Ow,” she sighed. “Yelling hurts. Everything hurts.”

She lowered her slim hips delicately to the alley floor and stretched out her legs, groaning in pain. Two fingers touched her lip, which felt puffy and split. Maly glanced left and craned her neck right to look down the narrow gap, lit only by streetlamps outside the alleyway. No sign of the cat, or anyone else this late at night.

“Just me and the trash,” she muttered. “And that damned dog.”

For what felt like almost a full bell, Maly sat there, miserable and eyes closed. At some point she placed her forehead against her knees, crying softly.

“Alright,” she sighed, sniffling. “Let’s review. I am penniless, my fortune stolen by one of Oakton’s scariest and biggest gangs. I’ve tried to get it back, and all that’s gotten me is time in a dark stinky jail, my parents disowning me, and now a bunch of scary men and women beating me up. Is that all? That seems like all.” She bonked the back of head a couple of times against the wall behind her.

“Ow,” she said, and stopped.

It must have been well past midnight now, and Maly had never known the town to be so quiet. Even the dog, it seemed, had gone to sleep. Maly sighed, only now fully realizing how much the alleyway reeked of rotting food and urine.

“What am I going to do?” she asked the darkness.

You’re going to fight, a male voice said from somewhere, low and growling. You’re going to tear the East Bay Dragons apart, person by person, brick by brick, until you have your birthright restored.

Maly yelped and scrambled to her feet. “Who’s there?” she gasped. “What?”

You’re going to fight, it repeated, and now Maly felt certain that the man’s voice had no origin. It did not echo in the confined alley, but felt instead whispered, purring, directly into her ear like a lover’s coo.

Something was moving through the shadows towards her. Maly’s breath came fast and shallow.

When she saw the twin yellow eyes, advancing in the darkness, Maly ran.

Age of Wonders: The Adventure Begins!

art by Roland Brown (drawhaus.com)

Age of Wonders: Kami Misaki

On By MagicJMSIn Age of Wonders, Fantasy Fiction, Superhero Fiction, Superhero Gaming, Tabletop Roleplaying5 Comments

Today we’ll build the second of three player-characters for my next solo rpg adventure, which I’m calling Age of Wonders. Check out more about the setting and rules here, the town of Oakton here, and our first PC, Emah Elmhill, last post.

I’ll be using the same process for this character as I used for Emah. Let’s discover who will be inhabiting this world as one of our primary protagonists!

Background Rolls

As before, I love me some Background Generator tables in ICONS Origins. Indeed, it’s fun to think that my earlier exploration of ICONS led me to discover it as a tool, just as playing other TTRPGs have introduced me to all sorts of mini-game systems or other ways to enhance whatever game I’m playing. I have my pair of d6s in my hand. I’ll again log each table and results, with the roll in parentheses.

Gender (6): Female.

Ethnicity* (9): Kaizuka. Interesting! This will be my first exploration of them, since their arrival in Oakton wasn’t really covered in my history. I see them as the hardest-luck people in the town, finding the least desirable work.

*the city of Oakton has four major peoples, which are rough analogues of broad-African (Kalee), Spanish/Mexican hybrid (Mesca), English (Stone Isles), and Japanese (Kaizuka), roughly in that order from most- to least-common.

Age (8,9): 29 years old, five years older than Emah.

Manner (4): Proud, aloof, or arrogant.

Who do you value? (6): Themselves.

What do you value (8): Home or family.

Attitude (6): Neutral towards most people.

Birthplace (3): Outskirts of Oakton.

Status (10): Wealthy. Hm… interesting. That flies in the face of what I said above about the Kaizuka. She may own an elicit business or something.

Tragedy (3,2,2,3): One or more family members were murdered.

1st Past Experience (4,3): Opportunity: She found a new opportunity, whether it was a new job, a new invention, or a new way of looking at things.

2nd Past Experience (4,4): Promotion: She received a promotion or a general stepup in her career or recognition of her abilities.

3rd Past Experience (1,2,1): Gained a friend, who is like a family member to her.

4th Past Experience (5,5): Injured: She suffered an injury, and may even have lasting trouble from it, such as a disability or disfigurement.

Okay, I think I’ve got an idea. Sheesh these characters are not for the faint of heart… Emah’s story blurb, much to my surprise, turned out to be as much a commentary on sexual harassment as anything. And now I’m going to dive into the world of prostitution.

Here’s her brief bio (some of which I revised after rolling on the Crusaders Origins and Powers tables):

Kami Misaki came to Oakton when she was very young, in the cargo hold of a ship fleeing Kaizuka, an island nation across the sea. Like many Kaizukan refugees, her family was given no advantages in the Kalee-occupied town, and found themselves doing whatever work they could find. When Kami was thirteen years old, her father ran afoul of one of the many Oakton gangs, who killed Kami’s parents in retribution. Her older brother joined a rival gang, vowing revenge, and Kami stumbled into the employ of one of the town’s many brothels.

Over the next several years, Kami became one of the town’s most sought-after ladies of the night because of her stunning beauty. It was a soul-crushing life, but the madame of her brothel looked after her and protected her as best she could, becoming a surrogate mother to the lovely-but-hardened young woman.

One night, a particularly brutal client attacked Kami with a knife, wickedly scarring her face. Her value to the brothel plummeted, but the madame decided to keep her in her employ, not as a prostitute but instead to use her mind and keen insights into people for their mutual advantage. Kami became part proprietor, part advisor, and was paid handsomely for her efforts.

Hmmm… now how do I steer her towards the Adventurer’s Guild and in cahoots with Emah Elmhill? A narrative mystery to be solved.

Origin

Thank you, Background Generator! Now I’ll set the d6s aside and grab my pair of d10s for the Crusaders tables, revised for this campaign. We start with Origin, which is akin to Class in other systems.

I roll a 99, which is to Choose my Origin! Neat. Well, since Emah is a non-superpowered (which I always want to write as a slightly-pejorative “normie” because, apparently, I’m a superhero snob) PC, let’s focus on Kami as someone directly affected by the Wyrding. I’ll roll again to see if one of those options presents itself, a reroll if not: I get a 76, which is “Wyrding: Humanoid Animal/Plant.” Excellent stuff, and fits her first name well. Now, will it be animal or plant? Let me roll another d10, odds are animal powers and evens are plant powers: 6. Plant powers… here we come!

Powers and Attributes

For something as specific a concept as “plant person,” I’m going to create a special Powers table, as suggested by the Crusaders Companion supplement. Here it is:

  • 01-10   Adaptation
  • 11        Choose/Invent
  • 11-21   Armor
  • 22        Choose/Invent
  • 23-28   Elasticity
  • 29-32   Growth/Shrink
  • 33        Choose/Invent
  • 34-43   Plant Communication
  • 44        Choose/Invent
  • 45-54   Plant Control
  • 55        Choose/Invent
  • 56-65   Regeneration
  • 66        Choose/Invent
  • 67-76   Special Attack (incl. Toxic Attack)
  • 77        Choose/Invent
  • 78-87   Super Strength
  • 88        Choose/Invent
  • 89-98   Vigor
  • 99-00   Choose/Invent

I’m excited by those options! Kami will get 3 Powers rolls to begin with, and I’ll confine my rolls to only this table (which will limit the concept but ensure I use this handy table I just created). She can trade one or more of these in for various other perks, and I may do so after a couple of Powers. But first, the good stuff…

Roll 1: 28 or 82, which is either Elasticity or Super Strength.

Roll 2: 87 or 78, which is Super Strength, period. So she’s definitely a brick!

Roll 3: 50 or 05, which is Plant Control or Adaptation.

As I frequently find with Crusaders, there are a lot of different ways I could go here. She could take Super Strength twice, making her a mega-tank, but that feels weird without Armor or Vigor to go along with it. She could be able to stretch her arms like a vine, control plants, or simply not have to breathe to go along with her strength. Hm. Let me read up on these powers a bit.

While it feels like a missed opportunity to not take the rare Plant Control, I’ve found a combo from the above list that makes me happy. First, of course, Kami will have Super Strength, making her Strength Level equal to her Physique + 20 for feats of strength like lifting or throwing things, unarmed damage, and resistance to knockback. It does not, however, improve her Vitality or Physique score. In other words, she can (and likely will) be of a willowy build, despite her impressive strength.

Second, she will take Elasticity. I have a fondness of stretchy characters, and mechanically this gives her some ability to take damage, since she a) gets a 25 score instead of Alertness to defend against all forms of melee and missile attacks, and b) subtracts 10 from all bashing or lethal damage, except if blindsided or unconscious.

Finally, it just makes sense to me that she has Adaptation, or the ability to survive and act in any environment (underwater, vacuum of space, or extreme temperatures).

What these choices prevent me from doing, unfortunately, is trading one of those rolls for either Privileged Background (making her independently wealthy) or Connections (which makes sense given her long years in a brothel). As a result, I’ll have to limit how much I rely on either part of her background for her advantage. She’ll have the madame as a contact, but she won’t be able to easily tap into a whole underground network for information or sanctuary. Perhaps the madame only trusts her so far, or perhaps she’s an inherently untrustworthy boss.

With her powers done, I’ll turn to distributing her paltry 10 points to the four core Attributes, which each start at 9. I’ll give 1 each to Physique and Prowess, since she has not trained in Oakton to be a fighter. Instead, I’ll drop 4 points each into Alertness and Psyche; Kami is watchful of the world around her and strong-minded.

With a Physique of 10, it’s easy to calculate her Vitality: 30.

Final Touches

I mentioned last time that I had a narrative system in mind about Motivation that will match the PC’s powers. What I’ve rolled for Kami fits into one of the otherworldly forces I have in mind, sort of a Patron in Dungeon Crawl Classics or a warlock in D&D 5E. As a result, she will be an Architect, someone who is driven to create something of lasting value in the world. That motivation makes some sense for someone who fell into prostitution at an early age, lost their parents, and has lived on the fringes of society who has also come into power.

As I described with Emah, I’m going to handwave most of what fantasy games term equipment. Kami is not wearing anything that would constitute armor, nor does she wield weapons. She’s a social “class,” someone who gets by on charm, wits, and discernment, not fighting. Which is all to say that she does not need anything of note on her character sheet, gear-wise:

Now, the exciting part… let’s see how Roland Brown (you can contact him at drawhaus.com) visualized Kami! As with Emah, I’ll post Roland’s awesome concept sketch as well as the final artwork. You’ll see that I asked him to remove the hat to showcase her mask, though I like the look of the hat overall.

art by Roland Brown (drawhaus.com)
art by Roland Brown (drawhaus.com)

Stepping back, I’m thrilled to have my first two characters be a “scrapper” (i.e. someone who can fight with a sword) and a “brick” (i.e. someone strong and tough), and am even more pleased to have one PC directly affected by the Wyding and another who is more of a companion or witness to these changes. Story possibilities abound, and I’m already thinking that perhaps these two will meet because Kami hires Emah to a job. It will be interesting to see if the final character of the bunch is another non-powered character, making Kami somewhat of a centerpiece, or another person transformed, making Emah the white-knuckled tagalong. Or maybe something else. Will the final character also be a woman, which will make this story have a particular set of themes? We’ll find out next time!

Before we get there, though, let’s peek in at a brief piece of fiction just to get a feel for Kami’s personality and background…

“Sit, my darling,” Elyn said, waving a hand at the pillow across from her own. The room smelled faintly of rose petals and scented candles and was both clean and spare. A high window over Elyn’s shoulder added a slanting sunbeam to the candlelight.

Kami did as instructed, smoothing her silk robe before lowering herself, cross-legged, to the plush seat on the wooden floor. She bowed her head, finding it difficult to meet the woman’s eyes. Without meaning to, her fingers reached up to her left cheek.

Her madame tsked gently. “Leave it. Look at me, Kami.”

She brushed a lock of black hair, combed fine, out of her eyes and looked. Elyn Brehill hailed from the Stone Isles, her skin pale as alabaster stone and lightly freckled, her blonde hair pulled into an elaborate braid which hung over her sheer green robes. She was a truly beautiful woman, and as she’d put on weight in her later years had only become more so. Elyn was round in ways that invited the eye, and the permanent twinkle in her green eyes, the half-grin that was her natural countenance, suggested that she knew you were watching and approved. Even as the proprietor of the Golden Heron and the oldest there by a wide margin, Elyn remained one of the highest-priced and most sought-after prostitutes, and she selected her clients carefully.

“Now that you’ve healed, it’s time to talk, darling,” she said. “You were my best girl, and now, well…” This time her handwave was somehow sad.

“I’m ruined,” Kami said dully. Again, her fingers strayed.

“Leave it,” the woman admonished, her voice harder this time. “As a working girl, I’m afraid those words are true.” She sighed elaborately. “I hope they hang him for what he did to you, but we must face facts. You can’t work now, at least not at the Heron. There’s no market for the disfigured here. I’m sure another house will take you if you want to work.”

Kami’s voice seemed to answer distantly, of its own free will. “I understand. I will be out by nightfall.” She began to rise. “Thank you for…”

“For love of the Great Oak, girl, sit!”

Kami started. She willed the brimming tears to stay unshed as she settled back down, bewildered.

“Come now. Kami Misaki. You’re stronger than this,” she shook her head with disapproval, her bottom lip extending prettily. “When one door closes, another opens. You told me this, when I first took you into my employ, did you not? I understand a time to mourn the loss of your face, I do. But now it’s done. Time to look forward.”

Kami said nothing, her tears forgotten in her confusion. She watched Elyn, trying to read her meaning and body language, but the woman had always been frustratingly immune to her intuition.

Elyn, for her part, seemed to assess the young woman in front of her in equal measure. After several heartbeats, she again sighed dramatically and reached behind her. Her hand returned with a bag of red silk, something heavy causing it to bulge at odd angles and hang from its delicate strings.

“I have a gift. No, don’t open it yet. You can keep it no matter your answer, but I’d first ask you a question.”

Kami took the bag with her slender fingers. Whatever was in it seemed hard and complexly shaped, like a wooden carving of an animal. She said nothing and waited for Elyn to ask her question, though her hands and a slice of her mind puzzled at the bag.

“The question is this: Can you get over your shock and horror at this…” she waved vaguely at Kami’s face. “Setback? I need your confidence and keen eyes, not your tears and shame. There’s less room for those in the Heron than ugliness.”

“I… don’t understand,” she said honestly, fingers turning the bag over. Whatever it was, it was flat but curved.

“You were my best girl, Kami. My most beautiful, true, but more than that. I value your eyes and mind more than your face and body. Well, almost as much.” She chuckled lasciviously.

“I’m sorry. I still don’t understand, ma’am. You want me to… stay?”

Elyn’s eyes twinkled. Her dimples deepened. “Just so. I’d take you as my assistant, someone to keep those sharp eyes on patrons and the other girls, and whose mind I can use to sort through certain business problems.”

“Your assistant,” Kami whispered, her thoughts awhirl. “But, like this?” One hand left whatever was in the silk bag and strayed to her face again. This time the madame did not admonish her.

“Ah, yes. Well. Now you open the bag,” Elyn said with a smile, settling her weight back onto her own plush pillow in anticipation.

Looking down, Kami’s fingers returned to her lap and worked at the cinched top. She pulled the bag open and reached inside.

It was a delicately carved mask, made of a light wood of almost skin tone. In truth, it was more half a mask, meant to cover most of the forehead, one cheek and jawline, with an eye hole and the mask itself curving around the lips. In other words, it was meant to cover exactly the parts of Kami’s face that had been so hideously carved. A simple red ribbon was attached to each of the mask’s top corners.

“Made by Gontro, Oakton’s finest woodsmith. He owed me a favor, of course.”

Kami turned the item in her hands, examining it from every angle.

“He says he’ll adjust the straps and shape of the wood if needed,” Elyn continued. “The idea is that it molds to your face and is comfortable enough that you never need take it off. Oh, do give it a try, will you? Go on.”

This time, Kami let the tears fall freely.

Age of Wonders: Character 3!

art by Roland Brown (drawhaus.com)

Age of Wonders: Emah Elmhill

On By MagicJMSIn Age of Wonders, Fantasy Fiction, Superhero Fiction, Superhero Gaming, Tabletop Roleplaying7 Comments

I’ve picked the system for my next solo game. I’ve outlined the setting and variant rules. I’ve built enough of the starting settlement to have a feel for it and the wider world. Today, it’s time for the first character to throw into that setting, playing that system, as a resident of that settlement.

I haven’t decided how many PCs I’ll make to begin my game. At least two, probably three. As with almost everything in this project, I’ll feel my way there and decide.

Background Rolls

Before I jump into Crusaders, I absolutely love the Background Generator tables in ICONS Origins. Let’s start there, busting out a pair of d6. I’ll log each table and results, with the roll in parentheses.

Gender (6): Female.

Ethnicity* (12,5,7): Mixed heritage: Kalee and the Stone Isles.

*the city of Oakton has four major peoples, which are rough analogues of broad-African (Kalee), Spanish/Mexican hybrid (Mesca), English (Stone Isles), and Japanese (Kaizuka), roughly in that order from most- to least-common.

Age (7, 4): 24 years old.

Manner (11): Detached and logical.

Who do you value? (3): Family member.

What do you value (4): Knowledge.

Attitude (10): No one will ever hurt me again.

Birthplace (6): Rural. Raised in an isolated household away from civilization.

Status (8): Comfortable upbringing, able to afford a few luxuries.

Tragedy (4): No childhood tragedy.

1st Past Experience (1,2,2): Has a friend that is a current or past romantic interest.

2nd Past Experience (5,6): Suffered a personal loss, such as the death of a loved one, a serious financial setback, or personal tragedy.

3rd Past Experience (6,1): Framed or falsely accused of something she didn’t do.

4th Past Experience (4,2): Met someone willing to teach and mentor her.

5th Past Experience (4,1): Made a connection, contact, or earned a favor from someone.

(According to the Background Generator, you roll 2d6 for the total number of past experiences, but I find this volume of results overwhelming. Instead, I’m going to stop when I think that I’ve “found the character,” which is right about now.)

Let’s put all of those rolls together into a brief bio:

Emah Elmhill was the product of an illicit marriage between a scholar from one of Oakton’s several schools and a Kalee warrior from the castellan’s personal guard (who are not allowed to marry or bear children). To raise their daughter without recrimination, they moved north to the foothills of a distant mountain. Emah’s father’s wits and her mother’s sword kept the family safe, despite the ever-present danger of the wilds, and it was an upbringing upon which she still thinks fondly.

She was nineteen years old when her mother died to a beast threatening their home. Though she had trained every day with a blade, Emah and her father could not survive alone, and so moved back to Oakton. Her father reacquainted himself with a university there, and Emah joined him as a scribe. Indeed, she quickly became a favored pupil of the school’s head, much to her father’s pride.

…at least until another scribe, jealous of Emah’s reputation, framed her for stealing a precious and ancient scroll. Though few thought Emah capable of the crime—most especially her father—the evidence was conclusive, and she was expelled.

Desperate and without prospects, Emah joined the Adventurer’s Guild, and…

Well, I suppose we’ll see what happens next. In terms of the Background Generator results, I haven’t yet worked out who her romantic interest is, and I combined both the mentor and a contact who can benefit her later (both are the school’s head). As I said, though, I’ve got a good picture in my mind’s eye of Emah. Thank you, d6s. Now it’s time for your cousins, the d10s, to take a turn.

Origin

Right now, Emah is merely a fantasy character. We’ve established that she can swing a sword, is learned, and has a variety of contacts and rivals in Oakton. But is she a newly bestowed super in this world or something else? I’ll be relying primarily on the tables from my variant rules post to find out!

My first roll is an important one: Emah’s origin (or, if you prefer, what sort of “class” she is in this story). I roll an 89 (Spy/Assassin/Thief/Guide), which can also be a 98 (Warrior). Ooo! So she’s non-powered, but hanging out with folks who are affected by the Wyrding. How interesting!

I’m seeing Emah as a noble soul, which means that Spy, Assassin, and Thief don’t really work. She could be a “Guide,” except that she’s relatively new to Oakton, where our story begins. Instead, I like the idea that she’s a scholarly Warrior, someone there to protect her friends with martial force. Warrior it is.

Powers and Attributes

As a Rank 1 character, Emah received 3 rolls on the Powers table plus 10 Attribute points to spend. Because she’s a Warrior, she can trade one of these rolls for either Armor or Weapon Master, and must trade one for the Intensive Training option (4 extra Attribute points). In other words, she instead has only 2 Powers rolls and 14 Attribute points to spend.

For the first Powers roll, I will absolutely trade it for Weapon Master. I’ve already said that her mother trained her to help defend their homestead in the wilds north of Oakton, and what’s a warrior without weapon badassery? I’ve pictured it as a sword, which is basic but cool. This Super Skill will give her three combat maneuvers when wielding her blade: Superior Strike (+5 to Prowess with her weapon, and can use Prowess instead of Physique to calculate damage), Parry (+5 to Prowess, which she can use instead of Alertness when defending melee attacks), and Disarm (she can try to disarm one-handed weapons instead of deal damage).

That leaves me one Power roll remaining: I roll 49, which can also be a 94, and yields these options: Leaping, Vigor, Psychic Sense, Telepathy, Fire Mastery, Weather Control, Gadgetry/Tech Whiz, or Weapon Master. I’ve crossed out the ones that don’t make sense for a non-powered PC with her background, but there are still four juicy options. In reading through them, Leaping and Vigor are difficult to explain without superpowers, so they’re out, and taking Weapon Master a second time would make her too skilled compared to my vision for her. So that leaves Psychic Sense, which means effectively that she can sense danger and never be surprised. Cool! That’s one of those abilities that is easy to explain in a superhuman way or a “cool action hero” way, and I like thinking of Emah as always vigilant against danger. Heck, I even rolled that her attitude was “No one will ever hurt me again.”

I then turn to Attributes, which in Crusaders are Physique, Prowess, Alertness, and Psyche. Each begins with an average score of 9, and I have 14 points to distribute among them. As a swordswoman, Prowess seems like the key stat, so I’ll spend almost half there to give her a score of 15. I’ll also give her a Physique and Alertness of 13, leaving her Psyche alone. Emah is one of Oakton’s best swordfighters and is both fit and alert. She is, however, unprepared for any sort of mental attacks.

There is one derived stat, Vitality (i.e. hit points), which is 3x Physique. Emah’s Vitality is 39.

Final Touches

In terms of Motivation, I have a sneaky system in mind that’s grounded in what each PC’s powers are and how the forces behind their abilities are prodding them to act. Since Emah isn’t one of those directly transformed by the Wyrding, however, I’m free to figure out a motivation on my own that fits the character. The central question for her is: Why would someone without powers band together with people transformed, especially when it puts her in incredible danger, against otherworldly forces?

I’ll revisit my Background rolls above: Emah values her father, knowledge, and has vowed to never be hurt like she was when expelled from the Oakton school. I take that to mean she’s guarded with others, often seeing them as threats, so Survivor works. Another option is Analyst, as she’s driven to understand why these changes in the world are happening, perhaps even to prove herself to the head of school. Put another way, do I want Emah to be a survivor, pulled along in the eddies of fate, clinging desperately, or do I want her to be the Lois Lane of the story, tagging along despite impossible danger to find The Truth.

I’m leery of damsel-in-distress narratives (note that almost all my DCC characters were women) and Emah is more warrior than scholar, so that makes my decision easier. Emah will be a Survivor, a fighter who refuses to be put down by the forces arrayed against her. Not Lois Lane so much as John McClane, then. That motivation doesn’t explain why she’s with the superpowered PCs, but I’ll rely on bonds or relationships there once I’ve made those characters. In many ways, she’ll be our story’s less comedic Sokka.

One of the things I like about using Crusaders for my system is that it doesn’t get fiddly with equipment. Indeed, the Crusaders Companion lays out how I’ll use it in game, with slight renaming on my part: There are three types of gear: 1) Tools, which are equipment necessary for the use of a Super Skill. Emah’s sword is a Tool, for example, and she receives it for free. 2) Artifacts, which are equipment that simulate superpowers, like a ring of invisibility or a flying carpet. These are going to be exceedingly rare in the world of Age of Wonders, and will be either the result of Powers rolls or will add a Power to a character. Finally, 3) Crafted Items, which are equipment that simulate powers, but do so at about half the value of a power. If Emah goes to an armorer to get kitted out, this will be a Crafted Item (and will likely involve a Luck roll to see if she can obtain it). Crafted Items could go down a long and twisting rabbit hole, but I’m going to handwave most of it. If the PCs need torches, rope, or a backpack, I’m likely just going to let them have it if it makes sense in the story. I won’t be tracking rations, arrows, and the like in this game. I can have fun with resource-management games, but Crusaders is built to be focused on action.

So Emma has a sword, and that’s pretty much it in terms of equipment. In my mind’s eye, she’s wearing what most games would call leather armor, but I’ll say that mechanically it isn’t enough protection to warrant a Crafted Item, and essentially mimics what other adventurers would wear. Her Vitality is an abstract value that, in this case, includes whatever armor she’s wearing. Everything else she’s carrying I can puzzle out as needed once I’m in the game.

The character sheet I’ve created for my game is in Microsoft Excel, because I’m a nerd. Here’s a screenshot to show what I’ll be looking at when playing:

I am a big fan of rendering my main characters so that they spring to life in my mind’s eye during writing. I feel very fortunate to have met Roland Brown to commission some artwork. Find more at his website drawhaus.com. I’ll post the original sketch as well because both are awesome. Thank you, Roland!

art by Roland Brown (drawhaus.com)
art by Roland Brown (drawhaus.com)

Stepping back, I’m psyched that my first PC is someone unchanged by the Wyrding, a witness to the changing world around her. I also like that, no matter what happens, I have a character who can jump into melee and scrap it up. It means almost certainly that I’ll have three starting characters, since I want at least a pair of “supers” at the outset (one of the nice things about solo gaming is that I can expand or reduce the roster without any real consequences). I suppose now there’s a danger that I’ll roll another non-powered character in the next two attempts, but I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it.

For now, let’s do what I started in DCC, write a small warm-up fiction scene to get a feel for her.

“Emah? Emah!”

“I can hear you, Matra,” she grumbled, hunching her shoulders. “I’m just ignoring you.”

Matra tsked rubbing furiously at a wooden bowl with a gray rag. The proprietor of the Dagger and Heart always dressed somewhere between a noblewoman and a prostitute, all fine fabrics, lace, and a tightly cinched corset, showing ample bosom. Today, the bodice was black, highlighted by crimson. Her ebon hair, streaked with gray, was pulled up elaborately, with artful braids, red ribbons, and two delicate curls falling across her rosy cheeks. She was a striking woman, yet those gray streaks, the crow’s feet at her eyes, the waddle of her neck—all spoke of someone who could be Emah’s mother.

“For three days you sit there,” the barkeep scolded, her words thick and clipped with her Mesca accent. “Barely touching my fine ale, shooting anyone a needle eye if they come near. Three days I let you frown at me and darken the mood of my tavern. This is no way to live, Emah. I thought you had found a new trade? Tell to me what is so wrong.”

Emah sighed through her nose. Resting elbows fully on the bar, she straightened her back and fixed Matra with a glare. Leather armor and straps creaked with the movement.

“I…” she cleared her throat. “I don’t like waiting,” Emah grumbled, reluctantly. “It’s been a week since I joined the Adventurer’s Guild, after, well…”

“Yes, yes. No need to speak of that,” Matra said, and made a warding sign with her hand, a quick motion as if picking a leaf from her shoulder, kissing it, touching it to forehead, then throwing it away, all done in a blink.

“Right. Anyway, a full week and no assignments posted for someone new. How am I supposed to eat if I can’t work?”

“The work will come. For now,” Matra shrugged. “Be with friends. Have fun while you are young, no?”

Emah grunted. “I find myself short on friends, right now. But just sitting around is driving me…”

“Well, well, well!” a gravelly voice carried from the front door, across the slanting beams of sunlight and empty tables. “If it isn’t my favorite sight in all of Oakton, Matra Cuencela! An ale for me and the boys, eh?”

Emah’s mouth snapped shut. She returned her face to its unhappy countenance, staring glumly at her full mug. She noticed that Matra’s face flickered with worry and something like disgust, only a fraction of a moment before she smiled widely with her too-red lips and white teeth.

“Welcome, Osen. A little early for you, no? The bard will not be here for several bells.”

“Fah,” the voice behind Emah answered. “Just wetting our lips. We’ll be back later, when… Oh! And what’s this?”

Emah flicked her eyes to the right. A thin Kaizukan man, his face shining with sweat, stood near her shoulder, looking her up and down with a smile of uneven and missing teeth. His black hair was thin and stringy, touching his shoulders. She flicked eyes to the left, where two other men crowded the bar, one from Kaizuka, the other a pale-skinned Stone Islander. All three of the newcomers wore sweat-stained, simple-spun shirts and pants, with long knives on their leather belts. They reeked strongly of fish and alcohol.

“You leave my other customers alone, Osen Haro,” Matra admonished. “I will bring your ales to your table. Go on, now.”

Osen guffawed. “I haven’t done anything wrong. Have I, lass? Just being friendly. Give us your name, sweetness.”

Emah frowned and flicked her eyes to the man.

“Oh, ho! Not so friendly! No need to drink alone, I think. Come join us, eh? We’ll get to know each other.”

“To your table, all of you,” Matra said, a tinge of desperation and forced humor in her voice.

“She doesn’t like ‘em scrawny,” one of the men on the left grunted, the Islander, a thickset brute with a bald head. “Step aside, Osen, and let me get to know her.”

“We all know you’re only big up top!” Osen cackled, and the other Kaizukan man chuckled. “Let her choose after getting to know us, eh? Come, come join us, lass, and tell us of yourself. Especially since no one else is here, ha! Come, come.” Osen waved an arm grandly to the empty tavern, then put a grubby hand on her leather-clad shoulder. Emah shrugged it off, throwing him a glare.

“Stop, Osen,” Matra said sternly, her smile gone. “If you want your ale, you’ll behave.”

“What have I done?” Osen responded, but his leering eyes never left Emah’s face. The alcohol already on his breath almost made her eyes water. “She hasn’t said no. Hasn’t said a damned thing. Come on, then, lass. Too good for an honest fisherman?”

“Go away,” Emah sighed. Her muscles loosened and she found the stillness that always preceded violence. Her mother’s words echoed like reflex in her mind: Fear narrows your vision and makes you stupid. Find your peace. Stay sharp. One hand dropped to her knee nonchalantly, keeping the hilt of her broadsword within easy reach.

“You heard her!” Matra gasped, pleadingly.

“Now listen, bitch,” Osen spat. “I was being nice before.”

“Mikán anitó niwé, má nyásho wékon némát,” Emah said, slowly and clearly, the clicks of her tongue on the ancient words pronounced, as she turned to the man to regard him with half-lidded eyes. She could feel the two others tense, ready to grab her.

“What’s that?” Osen scowled. “What did you say to me?”

“Stop this! Get out!” Matra yelled. “Osen Haro, get out of my bar!”

“It’s Old Kalee,” Emah shrugged. “Very old. From the Age of Immortals. It means ‘Walk your own path; do not chase all trails.’ First attributed to the poet Nijlel, I believe, but there’s some debate.”

“The age of–? What the fuck does–” he sputtered. “Screw this and screw you!” Osen’s hand reached for his knife.

Matra screamed.

Emah’s sword had left its scabbard and cut a red line across the man’s throat before his fingers had even touched the dagger’s hilt, making a wide arc of blood as she leapt from her chair. The warrior spun on the wood-planked floor and set her balance, even as Osen Haro clutched at the fountain of gore at his throat and collapsed.

Age of Wonders: Character 2!

art by Roland Brown (drawhaus.com)

Age of Wonders: Oakton

On By MagicJMSIn Age of Wonders, Fantasy Fiction, Superhero Fiction, Superhero Gaming, Tabletop Roleplaying5 Comments

Earlier this week, I set the stage, outlining the setting of my homebrewed solo campaign, which I’m dubbing Age of Wonders. Today it’s time to dive into the core location for my adventures, the bustling town of Oakton.

For today only, I’m gently placing my Crusaders rulebook to the side in favor of a minigame and tool that I’ve been eager to try. Pendulum is a worldbuilding assistant from one of my all-time favorite creators, Jon from Tale of the Manticore. Jon’s podcast is the reason that I first became interested in solo roleplaying, and he has long been the inspiration for me combining my solo play with fiction writing. It’s a thrill to pick up my favorite of his various Drivethrurpg creations and give it a spin.

Pendulum is a settlement builder, a way of working through the history and society of any settlement in a fantasy region, beginning at its emergence as a hamlet all the way through however large you want to make it, up to a large city. I’ll loosely show you how it works by creating Oakton, the central location in which Age of Wonders will begin. At each stage, I flip a coin to determine whether Law or Chaos rules that stage, with a narrative table in Pendulum guiding me through prompts for what happens. As you’ll see from the output below, it’s a lengthy process (Jon says it takes 6-9 hours to complete each settlement, which sounds right to me), but suuuuuuper satisfying.

Do I need this much detail on Oakton’s history before jumping into an adventure? Absolutely not. But I’m appreciative for the depth this sort of tool invites me to create, and it jumpstarts my brain on several issues in the setting that will make the characters more textured and interesting.

Here we go!

The Beginnings of Oakton

Stage 1: Law. Year 1. Ruler: Pera Luz (age 35). Population 55.

Oakton began as a collection of fishing families who arrived from ships fleeing Mesca, a continent conquered by a dragon (it was, after all, the Age of Wyrms) across the sea. They chose a location set away from the immediate coast, with access to food, water, and timber, on the eastern shore of a large, unoccupied bay, with an inland lake and wetlands stretching to the east and up into forested hills. They were led by Pera Luz, a capable warrior and bull of a woman, leader of the expedition.

The most distinct feature of the landscape was a gargantuan oak tree, inland from the bay and on the lake’s shore, the largest tree that any inhabitant had seen in their lifetime (truly like a tree given a growth potion… over 400’ tall).

Stage 2: Chaos. Year 11. Ruler: Anton Luz (age 26). Population 70.

Ten years after establishing a lakeside home, under the far reach of the mighty oak, Pera died to a wild, monstrous beast while exploring the countryside. Her four sons began infighting over who would take over the hamlet. After a brutal and bloody conflict, the eldest son Anton took the reins, with his youngest brother supporting him, another brother dead, and the last fled east*. It is Anton who dubbed the settlement Oaktown.

*This brother, Sente, miraculously survived the wilds and found sanctuary in a distant township. There he gained some renown as a fighter and became leader of the town’s militia. Any mistrust that easterners have for Oakton likely originated from Sente and his bitterness towards his brothers.

Stage 3: Law. Year 16. Ruler: Anton Luz (age 31). Population 85.

Pera’s death emphasized the danger of the surrounding wildlife, and Anton feared that other sailors may arrive from their homeland to claim their fledgling settlement. Thus the hamlet began construction of stone walls to replace the wooden palisades. By the 16th year, Oaktown had a proper, fortified defense against threats from both the land and sea. Beyond the inner keep walls, a new palisade stretched wide around the farmland and included the massive oak, which the townsfolk had begun to view as divine, a remnant of a time when gods roamed the land in the Time of Immortals.

Stage 4: Chaos. Year 36. Ruler: Anton Luz (age 51). Population 100.

Disparate ships did arrive, small pockets of refugees, but none threatening to conquer the young hamlet. During this time, the settlement faced two setbacks: First, sickness ran rampant through Oaktown, due in large part to dumping sewage into the lake. Many people died, negating any population growth from the incoming refugees and forcing the town to rethink its waste disposal. Second, an attempt to build simple roads east and south through the countryside was met with disaster as monsters feasted on anyone venturing too far beyond the palisades. Reluctantly, Anton called a halt to the roads project, declaring that the hamlet would stay insular. Feeling like a failure, he retreated to the inner keep, increasingly gone from public view. When he died, it took two days for his servants and family to realize it.

Stage 5: Chaos. Year 38. Ruler: Mara Luz (age 36). Population 90.

Anton’s sole remaining heir, his son, fell ill to the same disease that had claimed so many other residents, and died within days of his father. After a period of acute confusion, the town councilmembers decided to elect the wife of Anton’s youngest brother (who had died several years before) to lead them. Mara Luz, a black-skinned woman of the Kalee nation far south of Oaktown, became the subject of mistrust and racism by the families from the original settlers, sparking violence and unease throughout Oaktown.

Mara kept her seat of power because she was (much to her detractors’ dismay) a warrior of an ancient order and skilled with a blade. What no one knew until much later was that she had also been sent by the Kalee queen to bring Oaktown under rule because the queen saw the location as an ideal one where she might establish a trade port. Her marriage to the youngest Luz had been true love, though, and had delayed her sending word back to the queen.

Stage 6: Chaos. Year 43. Ruler: Mara Alaa (age 41). Population 65.

For the next five years, Oaktown was a nest of tension and inner turmoil, with Mara ruling with an iron fist. When an armored militia from the south arrived to formally incorporate the hamlet, many of its residents resisted even as Mara threw open the walled gates. After a brief and bloody conflict and five days of public execution (called The Hanging Days, still commemorated today), the settlement began flying banners for Queen Karpenta of the nation of Kalee. Mara abandoned her married name of Luz, reclaimed her birth name of Alaa, and continued to oversee the town.

It is believed that it was this period of rule where the town’s name began to change, as the Kaleens pronounced “town” as “ton.”

Stage 7: Law. Year 63. Ruler: Mara Alaa (age 61). Population 150.

With the rule of law established, Mara began work on the project her queen had demanded: transforming the bayside shoreline into a trade port. The construction went quickly, but the settlement was not near enough existing trade routes or other population centers to flourish. Still, a steady influx of oversea travelers and visitors from both the south and east grew the once-struggling hamlet into a village of enough residents to expand the palisade wall further. Warrior bands helped farmers and hunters beyond the walls survive against the dangerous wilds.

Stage 8: Chaos. Year 83. Ruler: Mara Alaa (age 81). Population 200.

Beginning to appear on Kaleen maps (as Oakton), the settlement began to be the target of pirates. For nearly fifteen years, Mara oversaw the village’s defense against marauders, all the while sending messages to her queen for aid. Kalee was going through a change in its monarchy with Queen Karpenta’s death, however, and could not be bothered to send ships or soldiers to defend a backwater coastal village. Oakton was left to protect itself, and did so through several bloody conflicts. It is said the heart of Oakton was forged in these years, and why its people are so defiant and fierce. If one positive can be said about this time, it is that the populace set aside their various racial infighting against a common enemy.

Stage 9: Chaos. Year 88. Ruler: Marter Moon (age unknown). Population 160.

In a particularly bloody year, an elderly Mara Alaa and her household guard were killed by invading pirates, and Oakton was claimed by Captain Marter Moon, aka Captain Bloodmoon. Moon was able to keep a grip on the now lawless settlement for five years before he was murdered in his bed by a prostitute. For the better part of a year, Oakton was a ruler-less den of scoundrels and mercenaries, ignored by Kalee’s new queen.

Stage 10: Chaos. Year 89. Ruler: Chanu Karpa (age 23). Population 150.

A sea serpent entered the bay and attacked the port of Oakton, sinking several pirate ships and injecting yet more disarray and chaos into the lives of the settlement’s people. The creature, whom the locals dubbed Berotassa, the Bay’s Fang, would occupy the nearby waters for years and further imperil arriving ships.

Later that year, a band of Kaleen warriors finally arrived to establish rule in the struggling village. The warriors battled and slew many of the worst criminals in town, a time they called the Red Spring. When the dust had settled, a young and proud warrior named Chanu Karpa reclaimed Oakton as under Kalee rule and took its rule in her queen’s name.

Oakton the Trade Port

Stage 11: Law. Year 138. Ruler: Chanu Karpa (age 72). Population 900.

In Chanu Karpa’s second year of rule, a local resident discovered a cache of gold and treasure from the Age of Immortals outside the palisade walls, within the forested hills. This discovery would make the settlement rich and, more profoundly, ignite the imagination of people for hundreds of miles in all directions.

During the next 50 years, Oakton would reestablish its port, repel Berotassa back to the sea, strengthen its walls and defenses, greatly expand its footprint inland, and become a destination township for brave treasure hunters. Proper roads were finally established between Oakton and towns to the east and south. With the influx of people came a merchant class and guild structure, plus multiple fledgling universities. The population exploded with diverse people who lived in relative peace and prosperity under Karpa’s watchful eye. The Kaleen warrior proved to be a fair and clever politician, able to satisfy guild leaders, farmers, sailors, and merchants alike. Oakton, with its ancient tree, shimmering lake, and capable leader became a jewel of the Kalee throne far to the south.  

Stage 12: Law. Year 142. Ruler: none. Population: 950.

Chanu Karpa never had children, so when she died at age 75, Oakton collectively held its breath. Would the township collapse back into years of chaos, torn apart by its diverse factions? Three candidates stepped forward to vie for the role of castellan: a) Munder Bayford, one of the town’s wealthiest merchants who claimed to be from a founding family, b) Seki Keme, a retired Kalee naval officer and one of the heroes of the campaign that expelled Berotassa from the bay, and c) Frada Pagona, the beautiful and charismatic head of the Weavers and Dyers Guild. The three were asked to appear in Kalee’s capital to petition the queen, a perilous journey that would take a full year roundtrip.

This year would be known as The Headless Year, both because of the lack of castellan and the public executions of outlaws during such a sensitive and tense time. It is also the year in which many believe the Blackpaws, Oakton’s powerful thieves guild, was founded (several wealthy families were robbed, likely initiation rites of the guild).

Over a year after their departure, Munder Bayford and Seki Keme returned to Oakton, with the former as new castellan. Frada Pagona perished in the journey, killed by monsters.

Stage 13: Chaos. Year 147. Ruler: Munder Bayford (age 45). Population: 950.

Bayford’s first five years of rule were marred by the most direct attacks from creatures outside the wall in the town’s memory. For reasons unknown, monsters threw themselves at Oakton’s defenses, killing travelers and terrorizing its citizens. Several areas of the palisade wall were destroyed and rebuilt, and one beast even made it to the inner keep walls, destroying much of it. Eventually, the frenzy of the monsters ended, and the creatures moved back into the surrounding forest and hills with no one knowing what had triggered the attacks.

Stage 14: Law. Year 162. Ruler: Munder Bayford (age 60). Population: 1500.

In the next several years, with monsters no longer actively prowling its borders, Oakton’s population bloomed. Meanwhile, across the bay, the town of Saint Oro had been steadily becoming a second (and more prominent) port trading hub, and one of the religious mechas of Kalee. Its founder was a holy man who believed fervently that the gods had not abandoned the world and would return, and when they did, they would purge corrupt settlements like Oakton from existence. Understandably, relations between the two port towns over the decades had been chilly at best.

The wealthy Bayford, however, saw an opportunity to strengthen the area’s economies and military strength by uniting. He initiated lengthy relations with the leaders of Saint Oro and their merchant guilds, establishing a joint navy to patrol the coast and removing the taxed levies each settlement had inflicted upon the other. In recognition of his efforts, the body of water between the two townships was officially dubbed Munder’s Bay, its current name.

Bayford the Builder and Modern Oakton

Stage 15: Law. Year 207. Ruler: Annet Bayford (age 67). Population: 2500.

Two years later, Munder Bayford fell ill and died peacefully, surrounded by loved ones. The rule of Oakton was passed to his son Kaster, a well-respected member of the Apothecaries Guild. Kaster made it his life’s purpose to establish the largest and best medical temple in Kalee and poured the town’s funds and effort into his vision. The Eternal Shade, a towering apothecary and medical academy, became the town’s largest single structure, sitting lakeside under the Great Oak. Kaster died before the building could be completed, but his daughter Annet finished the work when she became castellan. Its completion sparked an architectural renaissance in Oakton, including several of the town’s current landmarks.

Over these decades, the merchant navy repelled two pirate invasions and Oakton’s militia established regular patrols along its outside roads. As a result, the town’s population continued to swell, and its economy prospered.

Stage 16: Law. Year 235. Ruler: Annet Bayford (age 95). Population: 3600.

In the town’s 225th year, Kalee’s Queen Suna visited Oaktown and Saint Oro, the first visit to the region of any of Kalee’s monarchs. The lead-up to the visit and its aftermath marked a six-month celebration unlike any seen in the town’s history, and establishing Queen’s Day as its most joyous holiday. Annet Bayford, a wizened but quick-witted figure, utterly charmed the queen, and gained generous funds used to complete several large construction projects.

“Bayford the Builder” is still considered the single most successful and beloved castellan in Oakton’s history, and a statue of her was erected outside the town hall following her death at age 95. Ever the planner, she passed her seat without incident to her grandson, Gilan Bayford.

Stage 17: Chaos. Year 250. Ruler: Arryn Bayford (age 45). Population 4100.

Dragon! Arriving from the north, the first dragon in Oakton’s history arrived three years after Annet’s death. Temethys, who the locals call the Red Devil, did not linger to wipe out Oakton and Saint Oro, but it did smash most of the merchant navy, burn Oakton’s docks and ships, and set a fire that raged for more than three weeks across the town. Gilan Bayford died in the fires, and his son Arryn became emergency castellan. The great wyrm settled atop a mountain to the east, now known as Devilspire, where it still sleeps today. Devil’s Day is a local holiday in which, in remembrance, residents stay indoors with loved ones, give thanks, and ignite no fires.

Saint Oro largely avoided damage from the dragon’s attack, and its religious orders proclaimed it a sign of the town’s righteous blessing, saying that Oakton was paying for its sins and greed. Saint Oro sent little aid to its sister town across the bay, which enraged Oakton residents. Any attempts to rebuild the merchant navy fell apart, and though the towns did not reinstitute levies against one another, the relationship between the two grew contentious.

Stage 18: Chaos. Year: 295. Ruler: Sendo Avina (age 51). Population: 5000.

After more than one hundred and twenty years with a Bayford as castellan, an envoy from Kalee arrived in the town’s 270th year. It seemed that Queen Mati had offered the distant-but-promising town to the cousin of a favorite noble in court. Young Estet Mukka was just 19 years old when she arrived, surrounded by Kalee warriors, with her royal writ. Understandably, the Bayford family and guild leaders were thrown into disarray.

Estet proved to be a decisive by naïve leader. During her ten years as castellan, she further alienated Oakton from Saint Oro, reestablished many of Kalee’s traditions and holidays (stamping out several local ones), and created jockeying for her favor with guild leaders that would rival any royal court. All the while, she turned a blind eye to the seedier elements of the town, allowing criminal gangs to flourish.

Then, as suddenly as she’d arrived, Estet abruptly returned to Kalee’s capital to be married, leaving the head of the Shipwright’s Guild to lead the town, a boisterous man named of Sendo Avina who Estet favored because of his quick wit and fondness of history (it is widely believed the two were lovers).

Sendo was indeed infatuated with the Age of Immortals, a time when gods roamed the world and magic was everywhere. He saw the possibility of making Oakton the epicenter of museums and artifacts of this ancient age and founded the Adventurers Guild. He promised rich rewards for historical treasures, drawing mercenaries and charlatans from far and wide. As it had 150 years before, treasure hunters abounded in Oakton and scoured its countryside.

These treasure hunters would, of course, unleash The Wyrding, beginning the Age of Wonders.

And there you have it! As you can see, Pendulum just takes you on and on. I didn’t even get to the midpoint of the prompts, and carried all the way to the end would likely see Oakton as a bustling metropolis. I’m happy with where I’ve left Oakton’s size—a medium-sized, established town—and history, though. I already have a far better feel for the place than what I could have come with on my own. Thanks again, Jon!

Next step: Let’s go find out protagonists… We’re close, now.

Age of Wonders: Character #1

Age of Wonders: Setting & Variant Rules

On By MagicJMSIn Age of Wonders, Fantasy Fiction, Superhero Fiction, Superhero Gaming, Tabletop Roleplaying15 Comments

Happy New Year! I love that my first official post on my new project goes live on the first day of 2025.

New project, you say?

Today was supposed to be my umpteenth deep-dive exploration of superhero games, in search of a system that I wanted to run as my next solo game. Then I discovered Crusaders, a book that had been sitting on my shelf unread for months. I’m too distracted by my excitement, so I’ve abandoned my pile of games to be explored. It’s my blog, right? My muse cannot be tamed.

Deep breath. Let’s get started.

My Setting: The Age of Wonders

I’m a big believer that worldbuilding is a trap meant to paralyze GMs from starting homebrewed campaigns. I have a vague sense of what I want to do in this next solo game, based on an idea for a novel I had years ago. But I’m going to discover the world as I play rather than go deep into its history, deities, warring factions, and bestiary.

Here are the elements that are grounding me:

This is a traditional fantasy setting, with faux-medieval technology and cultures loosely inspired by fables and Appendix N-like literature. Taverns and inns have fun names, beware the dark woods, and all that.

At the launch of the game, humans are the only ancestry, living in fortified settlements scattered across the land under a distant monarch’s banner. I don’t yet know who the monarch is or much about the nation, but it’s a relative time of peace.

That said, I envision a town or city where the people are diverse, and many cultures coexist. Too much fantasy, in my opinion, is dominated by the analogue of medieval Anglo-Saxons or Vikings. They’ll likely exist here (because knights and horned helms are cool) alongside African and Latin America-inspired cultures, in a continent that is somewhat a crossroads of the world.

Monsters roam the wilderness, making travel between settlements dangerous and a need for fortified defenses. I need to flesh out what these monsters are, but they’re generally mythical beasts more than nonhuman ancestries. In other words, there aren’t Societies of Scary Things, just hungry predators who want to eat you.

The gods disappeared long ago and took magic with them. Humans are just humans, doing what they can to survive in a harsh world full of creatures mightier than them. Oh sure, people claim that they can cast spells and speak with the divine, because there are all sorts of stories of ages past where these things did exist. But, as far as anyone knows, magic died when the gods abandoned the world long, long ago. As a result, the people in this setting are generally more humanist than religious.

But ho, our heroes are manifesting superpowers! I haven’t decided if the beginning of the story will be the unleashing of wild magic into the world or if we’ll start sometime shortly afterwards. Either way, an event known as The Wyrding will grant some people amazing powers, animate long-forgotten constructs, give some animals sentience, and on and on. The Age of Wonders has begun. Is it random or is there a reason behind the changes? That’s part of the story.

Tone-wise, I’m aiming for something akin to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (phases 1-3, let’s look away from the multiverse stuff) meets traditional fantasy, set in an untraditional cultural setting. This story is meant to be fun, snappy, and action-packed (which is a big part of why I wanted a supers game), character centric, and with emotions that span the spectrum but fall on the more hopeful side of things. In my mind’s eye, it’s a story that starts Grimbright and moves to Noblebright as the characters grow in power. We’re beginning in a decidedly Grimbright story, though… a fantasy town with random people struggling to survive despite the titanic threats surrounding them.

“Moment’s Peace” by Rebecca Guay

That’s it. The details on any of the above and all the texture I’ll discover first by making the starting town, then the main protagonists, then through playing the game. Unlike a novel, I don’t have a story arc in mind, either. I want to find the central antagonists and tensions alongside the characters. It’s an emergent tale, one uniquely possible thanks to TTRPGs and serial fiction.

Recrafting Crusaders Tables and Variant Rules

With these broad brushstrokes in mind, let’s circle back to my game of choice.

As I mentioned last time, I’ll need to do some work on Crusaders to both fit the setting above and combine its core rulebook random tables with the excellent Crusaders Companion. As I suspected, this work was both fun and rewarding, resulting in a set of tables and rules I’m excited to implement.

Origins

Literally the first page of the rules in Crusaders, the first of several random tables, is the Origin of your hero and how you came to be a PC. It is often the most central question to any superhero TTRPG and is the place where I most needed to think through how my setting and Crusaders interact. In some ways, as well, the Origin here substitutes for “character class” in D&D or Pathfinder, helping shape what abilities the character manifests as they grow in power.

Here is where I ended up:

There’s a lot to absorb on a table like this, especially without knowing the game system intimately and with my own homebrew-setting biases littered throughout. One way of understanding this table is that, when making a new character, I have a roughly 50% chance of making someone transformed directly by The Wyrding, 15% chance of someone who’s the companion of a transformed or awakened nonhuman entity, 15% chance of a “fantasy adventurer” who wasn’t transformed but is along for the ride anyway (think Sokka in Avatar: the Last Airbender), 10% chance of someone who is wielding a newly-magical item, and 10% chance to either choose one of these options or create something new/niche. I’ll use this table for both heroes, major NPCs, and important antagonists, since they’re all created using the same process. Speaking of which, expect any PC to also begin with the ICONS Origins Background generator, which I can use mostly unaltered.

Powers

Next up are the retooled Powers tables, which is less about my homebrewed setting and more about a) combining the core rulebook and Companion lists, while also b) curating the lists to the archetypes and powers I most enjoy playing. As you’ll recall from my brief “let’s roll up a PC” foray last post, each percentile roll on a table also gives you the “flip-flop” option (so a 25 is also a 52) across all four tables, giving you a lot of say over what sort of character you’re building. The one place where a fantasy setting crept in is on the Super Skills list, but even here I was surprisingly able to use most skills unaltered.

Here are the lists:

I won’t detail my many, many tweaks from the original lists to these. Suffice it to say, I used the same “what percentage would I want each to occur in the world?” rationale as when making the Origins list. I also added a few items cross-category, so, for example, Acrobat is both a Super Skill but now also a Physical Power, matching things like Super Strength and Vigor. I was tempted to break the Physical Powers list into two lists—either offensive/defensive or separating out travel powers—to make the lists roughly equal in options, but I wasn’t sure such an endeavor gained me anything in character creation. I also didn’t do a deep dive into the flip-flop options, making sure that any number combination on each table provided vibrantly different choices. I’m going to trust that there is both enough variety and randomness in these tables to stimulate my creativity.

Motivations

Motivations are oddly anticlimactic in Crusaders. They get a relatively substantial treatment: a full two-page spread in the character creation section (by comparison, the same length as Origins and twice the length of Character Growth), yet with no real mechanical impact on the game. Motivations are there to flesh out a character and provide roleplaying depth for players, and potential plot hooks for GMs.

I’d like to make Motivations matter more in my game, either by adding Victory Points (the Crusaders equivalent of xp) or Hero Points (the metacurrency that allows PCs to flip-flop die rolls) when characters are acting in direct accordance with their motivation or achieve some story milestone. Possibly both, though I’m leaning towards Hero Points. It’s something I’ll watch once I’m playing and getting a better feel for the system.

In the meantime, long ago I created a handy Motivations list for my various characters, both in TTRPGs and writing fiction. The inspiration for this list originally came from an excellent list in the first edition of the Aberrant rpg, and I slowly added to it over time. My thought is that any character, protagonist or antagonist, can have one of these motivations.

Note that the list is technically a table I can roll on to determine a character’s motivation randomly (good use for those Dungeon Crawl Classics d30s!), though I’m likely going to choose the main PCs’ goals.

Rank and Advancement

As I’ve been saying constantly, I want to create a game with clear jumps in power, taking the PCs from “street level heroes” to godhood. When I made my sample Crusaders character in the last post, I tried using 3 Power rolls instead of 5, and 15 Attribute points instead of 18. I’ve since revised my thinking here, with the following structure for starting values and progression:

Rank in Crusaders is more a symbol of fame and accomplishment than power, so in some ways this is the place where I’m most radically altering the game. Here, Rank 5 is equivalent to what a starting PC in the base Crusaders game would be (5 Powers rolls, 18 Attribute points), which is targeted as a comic book level superhero. To get there, a Rank 1 character is relatively weak, and a Rank 10 character is relatively overpowered. Thankfully, because Crusaders isn’t a game with a defined bestiary and cast of villains, I’m going to be creating all the NPCs and antagonists from scratch anyway, so it’s not like my Rank 1 characters are going to be any more vulnerable if I don’t want them to be.

What are titles, you may be asking? And what does “Godhood” mean? I’m not sure, honestly, except to say that I like the idea of there being a “fame” element to Ranks in addition to power, and I’ve always loved earned titles in fantasy games and literature.

Critical Hits and Critical Failures

Finally, I love that Hero Points in Crusaders are so straightforward and tied to Rank. You get 1 HP per Rank at the start of each Issue, and you can cash one in to flip-flop any d100 roll. Neat. Easy. Cool.

The more I’ve played around with the system, though, the more that double-digits (11, 22, 33, etc.) feel special. The game treats them as special for character creation rolls, in which you’re meant to flip-flop; on the tables above, doubles allow you to choose your own result or invent something new. So, it’s odd to me that the same doesn’t hold true during gameplay.

I’m going to play around with doubles meaning either critical hits (if the roll is under the chance of success for a given roll) or critical failure (if the roll is over). I like this system because it means that if you’re particularly good at something—say, with an 80% chance of success—you get more chances to critically succeed and fewer to critically fail. If you’re facing a particularly tough challenge, the opposite is true. That’s elegant and fits the Crusaders ethos.

The question is: What does a critical success or failure mean when you’ve rolled it? Here I’m going to feel my way and decide depending on the situation. Eventually, I might come up with a more coherent, hard-and-fast rule for how to handle these rolls. For now, I just want them to have juice, either helping or hurting the PCs in some meaningful way.

Let me reiterate that I’m super excited about Crusaders as a game to play. My many tweaks above are a testament to that excitement rather than a criticism. So many of the game books I read had me making puzzled, hesitant notes about rules interactions that I didn’t understand or that felt odd to me. In Crusaders, however, I felt like I immediately “got” the game, and so instead found myself saying, “Aha! That means I could…” All the energy I spent crafting the above tables and rules felt like good energy, generating more enthusiasm for me to jump in and play.

Speaking of which, enough of this table-setting nonsense for one New Year’s Day. Next time we’ll begin diving into the town in which our adventure will begin, and then crafting our player characters. Fun fun! As always, hit me up with any questions or comments below.

Joyfully yours,

-jms

Age of Wonders: Oakton

Reflections: Doom of the Savage Kings

On By MagicJMSIn Dungeon Crawl Classics, Tabletop RoleplayingLeave a comment

Whew! For a fifteen-page adventure, who knew that I would somehow manage to compile over sixty thousand words over seventeen posts? I’m thrilled to have finished my first DCC module, and hoo nelly do I have thoughts to share! Today is the same “look back, look forward” sort of post as after my Portal Under the Stars experience, a chance to towel off from the story, ponder what worked and didn’t, and consider where I go from here. Spoiler alert: new journeys await.

Reflections on Level 1 Play in Dungeon Crawls Classics

Throughout the past couple of months and largely because of the fun I’m having on this project, I’ve become bolder about describing Dungeon Crawl Classics as my current favorite game, surpassing Pathfinder 2nd edition. It has the right balance between crunchy rules and narrative focus for me, and the countless random tables add to the story in delightfully unpredictable ways. It’s the best game that I’ve found that conjures the wonder and excitement of me as a kid while simultaneously incorporating modern game innovations.

You can’t spell “funnel” without “fun,” and I understand why the Level 0 murderfest funnels are so popular. Level 1, however, is when the entire core rulebook and supplements of DCC opened wide. To me, funnels are simply an added step of character creation, and an epic and important one for the game experience Joseph Goodman and the Goodman Games crew envisioned. Without bonkers spell tables, monster crits, Halfling Luck bouncing around the party, the threat of deity disfavor, intelligent magic items, and Mighty Deeds, however, the game hasn’t really started. I can’t emphasize enough how sold I am on Dungeon Crawl Classics gameplay.

Based on every account I’ve read from Judges and players, I also know that I was incredibly lucky through Doom of the Savage Kings. No PC died (though I had multiple close calls). My Cleric Erin was not disfavored by her god Shul. Hilda the Wizard experienced neither corruption nor spell backfires. No PC was put in a position of needing to burn his or her Luck down to single digits to survive. If some, or all, of these mishaps had occurred, would I still be so positive? I think so. Indeed, as I’ve gotten older and played more games, I find myself relishing the failures as much or more than the successes. They’re a chance for character development and story. If it wasn’t obvious while reading the game logs, I was quite disheartened that the Hound of Hirot didn’t put up much of a fight in any of its three battles, because I wanted challenge and peril. Which is all to say that yes, I’m aware that my plucky party experienced unusual success relative to many DCC tales, but I was both prepared for and understood the implications if the dice had rolled a different way. I expect Dungeon Crawl Classics to be a random, swingy game, and that risk is a big part of the fun.

Something else I love about the game is the lack of longform campaign storytelling. Though I’m not a big consumer of Matthew Colville’s videos (and thus don’t know more generally how aligned he and I are on other topics), I love his video on adventure length. To me, the idea of hundreds of possible “next adventures” for a party, based on what’s happened to this point, is exactly how I want to run my games. I’m a big fan of Paizo’s Adventure Paths, and have GMed a group of players through all six books of Age of Ashes over three years. It was a hoot. More and more, though, I find that I’m happy to be a player in an AP, but I don’t think that I want to run one again. I’d like the story arcs to be more emergent, for the epic quest at the end of a campaign to be the result of the dozen decisions the party has made to that point. The fact that so few longform stories exist for DCC is, for me, an exciting feature of its overall approach, and hugely satisfying.

Quick sidenote: Since beginning this project, I’ve run a group of players through a funnel (we played Hole in the Sky, which embraces the weirdness possible in DCC). What I realized from that experience is that the “hey, we’re just going to build the world as we go” can throw players off, especially ones coming from D&D or Pathfinder, where the setting is so deeply detailed. If I Judge a longer campaign (which is, ultimately, my goal), I will start with a Session 0 aimed at fleshing out basic details of the world (I’ve been playing Ironsworn with my friend Rob, and there are great tools there I’d steal for this sort of foundation), and creating our gaggle of peasants. Session 1 and 2 would be the funnel experience and leveling up their surviving PCs, and then we’d start the campaign in earnest with Session 3. Grounding the players from the beginning in a few basics plus giving them time to think a bit about their peasants before the Funnel experience would, I expect, provide a great campaign launchpad. The group I Judged is eager to play a Level 1 adventure, though, so I may have added a few DCC converts to the community.

That said, it’s not a perfect game. I have two primary complaints about Dungeon Crawl Classics now that I’ve played it for dozens and dozens of hours up to Level 2, and these complaints are related. First, I don’t know what the Goodman Games folk had against fantasy religions when designing the game, but Clerics got short shrift in the original core rulebook. Wizards and Warriors are the splashy classes in DCC, and what I hear people promote when convincing others to try out the game. Clerics, for whatever reason, feel like they received a tenth of the attention and writing. Worshipping one deity over another has no mechanical difference for a PC, whereas different Patrons dramatically change gameplay. The different gods and goddesses are described in a single page, with no flavor at all. Moreover, the more I create my own campaign world in DCC, describing the difference between deities and the otherworldly entities who are patrons is nearly impossible. In a nutshell: The entire system underlying Clerics and divine power feels underbaked in the game, and decidedly un-DCC-like.

Thankfully, some of my frustration is addressed in the one (and only, as far as I can tell) DCC Annual. Here, a handful of major deities receive write-ups detailing their background and beliefs. Each has special traits provided to Clerics, an individual Disapproval table, and thoughts about Divine Favors specific to that deity. The Annual introduces the ideal of “Canticles,” spells specific to a particular god. Clerics of the Known Realm is a free (!) supplement that took these features and applied them to the remaining deities listed in the core rulebook, which is awesome. And, as you know from Erin’s level-up post, I also found terrific inspiration from the Knights in the North (also free!). Add these three sources together, and I have the tools I need to make Clerics as satisfying and interesting as Wizards. The requirement to do so, however, leads to my second complaint…

The DCC community is amazing and pretty much everyone agrees it’s one of the best things about playing Dungeon Crawls Classics. Enthusiastic evangelists of the game create adventures, new patrons and deities, spells, magic items, classes, optional rules, settings, and on and on. Zines containing all the above are ubiquitous, as are third-party websites and blogs like Knights in the North. Goodman Games promotes or sells these supplements on their website and promotes them in its weekly newsletter. It’s clear that Joseph Goodman has made a conscious decision to allow a thousand wildflowers to bloom, with no attempt whatsoever to cultivate the DCC garden. You can, as a Judge, find anything you need to enhance your game, answer your questions, or fill in the gaps of your campaign.

So what’s the complaint? Well, after more than a dozen years, there are a lot of wildflowers. As someone new to the game, it’s overwhelming. I dipped my toe into a third-party class for Briene and had to decide for myself between three different Ranger classes. I’ve found several websites listing all the materials available for DCC, but none of them are comprehensive or up to date, so even finding my options takes significant work. I would LOVE for Goodman Games to provide compilations of some of these resources to help me. I would throw money at them for a compiled, edited book of Patrons, or Classes, or Spells. For example, take the material from Angels, Daemons and Beings Between Volumes I & II, add in all Patron write-ups from individual adventures and Gongfarmer’s Almanacs—Provide the most definitive book of Patrons you can provide over the past decade, please! Give me more Tomes that I can flip through to find inspiration rather than dozens of small booklets, some of which overwrite or build on each other in ways that aren’t obvious to me.

Unfortunately, I’m shouting into the void on this one, because I believe the dizzying pile of options is exactly what DCC enthusiasts want, and they celebrate the haphazard, “small press” approach to providing them. I want a map. The fact that this help is never coming is disheartening, and honestly diminishes my enthusiasm to keep delving deeper and deeper into the third-party mountain of options, discovering for myself where the gems are hidden.

In summary: I love Dungeon Crawl Classics. Playing it is incredibly fun. The Cleric class from the core rulebook needs some love to make it as satisfying as other classes, and I find it tedious to discover the many, many supplements to enhance my game. All of that said, I am looking forward to more DCC in my future.

Reflections on the module Doom of the Savage Kings

Doom of the Savage Kings is a beloved module from DCC’s early days, and it deserves adoration. Harley Stroh, one of the game’s more prolific and accomplished creators, clearly decided to transform Beowulf into a sword and sorcery adventure, and perhaps those mythical, narrative roots are part of what make it so satisfying. Gone are some of the bonkers, gonzo features of many DCC adventures that take you into different timelines and alien worlds, battling divine entities with uncontrollable items of power. Instead, Doom is a grounded story about helping a village full of color and depth with its monster problem. It’s great, and an adventure that I would happily run again for a group of players.

As with all DCC adventures, Doom contains several unexplained lore bits that can either be woven with parts of your campaign or lead to future adventures. What happened to Ulfheonar long ago and who were the Savage Kings? What’s with the “wolf versus snake” themes? How did the Hound come to be? What were those skulls on stakes in the Sunken Fens? What’s up with Ymae’s transformation? Etc. etc. Connecting these bits to Portal Under the Stars was fun and surprisingly easy to do. Both Graymoor and Hirot have standing stones and monuments to ancient warlords, so there is some internal consistency to say that these elements are related in the world’s history. I decided that the area surrounding the party was once a place of powerful and warring feudal Savage Kings, each with an animal motif and each playing with powers beyond their understanding in an ever-escalating attempt to defeat their rivals. I haven’t puzzled out how Ymae fits into the narrative, but if the party is ever exposed to Faerie (or Elf Land, or the First World, or whatever), I’m confident that there will be an opportunity to hook into something meaningful. Which is all to say that I’m enjoying the emergent worldbuilding inherent in DCC and appreciate how Doom helped flesh out some of the early seeds from Portal in my mind.

The part of the adventure mechanically that I find myself returning to again and again is the collapsing room hazard within Ulfheonar’s tomb. I haven’t before or since seen a trap work by ticking actions off specific initiative values, pushing players lower in initiative (and thus more dire threats) if they fail rolls. It’s cinematic and tense, with high stakes, and something I will definitely be looking to recreate in future games. In many ways, it’s the first time I’ve seen a hazard capture the “environment as actor” mechanic from Sentinel Comics RPG that I love so much. Bravo, Haley Stroh!

My biggest complaint around the module is how ultimately nonthreatening the Hound of Hirot was for the party. The PCs rolled well in the first encounter and had prepared well for the last encounter, but all three times I never felt the threat of a “final boss.” I like that the Hound’s stats are weaker at the beginning and beefier in its lair for the climactic battle, but either I missed a key part of the creature entry or the swinginess of DCC combat worked in my favor multiple times. Whatever the reason, the Hound felt like a chump. Meanwhile, the random encounter of the swamp jackals almost wiped out my fully rested and capable party. Heck, the tomb ghouls had me more on the edge of my seat than the Hound, and the biggest threat in the module was Iraco and his ambush. I’m beginning to form a theory that, in a game without balanced math and more randomness, a high number of enemies is far deadlier than a single enemy. Whether I’m correct or not, if I run Doom of the Savage Kings again, I will change the Hound’s stats, adding something (damage resistance, a howl that frightens all enemies who fail a save, etc.) that creates a bigger “holy shit we’re in trouble” feeling.

For solo play, the most challenging part of running Doom was the investigative chapter of Hirot. It’s a part of the adventure that I can vividly envision playing with a group, seeing how the players bounce off the various factions and interdependencies. For solo play, however, I experienced a moment of realization that I could write dozens and dozens of pages over multiple chapters without ever rolling a die, and I had trouble puzzling through how an investigation should work when I’m the only one at the table. I muddled through that bit in ways that hopefully worked, but in the future I’ll probably steer away from adventures with too many political, social, or investigative themes (which is a shame, since I love playing and running these sorts of adventures in groups).

Speaking of solo play…

Reflections on Solo-Play/Fiction

Adding my Portal and Doom blog entries together, I’ve written about 85,000 words for this project. A generally accepted minimum length for a novel is 90k words, to put that number in perspective. What’s particularly startling is that I began this project on May 26, 2024, almost exactly five months ago. Assuming I could keep up this pace, that means I’m roughly writing two novels a year worth of content. That’s amazing, and possibly the most prolific I’ve been on any single project (when I wrote my novel Birthright many moons ago, the first draft took me seven months). My undeniable conclusion is that this project has been a writing success.

The combo of solo-play and fiction also works for me. My strong sense is that if I focused on solo play without the blog, it would feel like a lonely and self-indulgent pursuit. It’s a funny distinction, since I only have two people consistently liking these posts (huge, fist-pumping shouts of gratitude for Rocket Cat and Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha (i.e. Kent Wayne)! They’re both awesomesauce, and you should check out their blogs and Kent’s novels). Apparently, though, having even a small audience is enough to help me fight through fatigue or malaise each week. I have never, on any writing project, regretted the hours spent tapping my keyboard, but I have often found excuses to not sit in front of my laptop in the first place. Publishing my solo play as public fiction is a terrific catalyst for continuing to write.

If I have a criticism of my process so far, it’s that, for whatever reason, my characters in this project are flat. I can’t tell why, exactly, but some theories I’ve kicked around are: a) perhaps the “disposable PCs” nature of the funnel and overall deadliness of DCC has kept me from investing too much in each character, b) six PCs is too many to juggle–especially for a system that expects them to stay bunched as a group–and for me the ideal number is probably somewhere in the 3-4 range, c) the emergent worldbuilding is distracting me from focusing on character depth, or d) my characters have always been flat, and I’m just noticing it now. Since I’m finding the gameplay of DCC so rich, the flat characters are particularly perplexing, and it’s something I am committed to addressing in the future. Whatever the case, it’s something I’m grateful to have realized on my own (my wife Sarah is usually my first reader, but given my pace on this blog I’ve been flying solo).  

What’s Next?

After Portal, I focused on two writing streams simultaneously: Continuing the tale of my four surviving PCs and compiling my various blog posts into a coherent piece of fiction without the game-log portions. This time, I’m doing neither.

Whaaa-aa-aat?

While I would love to see what a fiction-only, polished version of Doom of the Savage Kings would be like, it’s simply too many pages and too complex a narrative to edit without major effort. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze for me; a Doom rewrite feels like an energy drain rather than something that brings me energy. Since this blog is a hobby, there’s no reason to spend time on something that feels overwhelming. I want to keep experimenting and building on this new formula without getting too bogged down in polishing. I do think that editing and rewriting is an important and often overlooked part of being a published author, but being a published author isn’t really my aim here. Heh… Those last four sentences basically all said the same thing.

Now that I’m more confident in solo play, there are a ton of other games staring at me from the bookshelf. At the same time, I’ve been interested in poking at my own adventures and setting, circling back to a few ideas that have plagued my thoughts over the past many years instead of relying on published supplements. Combining these two instincts, I’m going to change this solo-play-plus-fiction-blog experiment into a laboratory for other games and other ideas. I still want to continue down my Dungeon Crawls Classics rabbit hole, but with a group of players rather than solo.

There are two possible scenarios in my mind: In one scenario, I have a vibrant, longform campaign of DCC running, either online or in person. Because DCC is relatively easy to prep, I also have the creative energy to continue with my blog, where I’m testing out new games and adventure ideas, enriching both my TTRPG life and honing my writing skills. In this scenario, maybe I even find a new favorite game and start the flywheel all over again, launching another campaign with friends and exploring new games on my own.

In the second scenario, I return to this moment. Maybe I fail to get a group campaign off the ground, or I find that DCC is uniquely suited to my solo play blog, or maybe I just miss this story and these characters. In this scenario, I revive Umur, Erin, Haffoot, Hilda, Joane, and Briene, picking up where I left off and launching them straight into a Level 2 adventure. Heck, I could even see starting over with a new Funnel and a new cast of peasants, focusing my writing on characters who are (hopefully) deep and vibrant.

In either scenario: 1) I’m committed to continuing with Dungeon Crawl Classics, either with a group or back here, and 2) my creative energy is pulling me into different places right now. I’m slightly ambivalent about this choice, because I’ve been having a ton of fun and writing at a feverish pace. There’s a worry that I’ll somehow mess up my mojo, resulting in neither ongoing gaming nor writing.

But even as I type that worry, I smile and shake my head. Nah. I can always come back and would be happy to do so. As I wade into my fifties, it’s becoming easier to make decisions out of a place of joy and contentment than out of fear. Let’s try something new and see what happens!

If you have thoughts on anything I’ve written here, either DCC, this specific story, or where I go next, I’m all ears. For now, get hyped about pivoting into a new direction, starting next week and going until… well, until my fickle muse pulls me down a different path.

Here’s to more playing and writing!

-jms

Doom of the Savage Kings, Chapter 15

On By MagicJMSIn Dungeon Crawl Classics, Tabletop Roleplaying2 Comments

“Well, this is awkward, isn’t it?” Haffoot sighed and scuffed the toe of her boot into the patchy dirt. The sun had climbed above the tree line, within a dome of clear blue sky. It was a glorious late summer day, full of warmth and birdsong, that banished any sense of the coming chill of autumn.

Yet the gates of Hirot remained closed.

“Oy! Nothan!” Joane called up angrily. “What’s the hold up, then? The Hound’s dead and gone for good! Let us in! We’ve been standing here forever with our thumbs up our asses! Hello?”

There was a long, silent pause. A bird called out particularly loudly from nearby, answered by another. Otherwise, everything was quiet and still. Umur swore softly in his native tongue. Briene whispered to Erin, who stood with her arms crossed over her white-mailed chest, frowning. Hilda, as always, leaned on her staff, back from the others, her face shrouded beneath her hood.

Finally, a youthful voice answered from the palisades wall. “Opening the gate now, Joane!”

“That’s not Nothan,” Joane murmured to her companions. “That was Caspar. I don’t know what’s going on.”

“I believe we’re about to find out,” Umur rumbled. A series of thunks and clacks echoed as multiple people unbarred the gates from inside. Slowly, very slowly, the heavy, wooden gates swung open.

The Jarl was there, wearing his wolf pelt. Chainmail glinted from beneath the cloak, and he bore an enormous, bearded axe in his meaty hands. Despite his age, with a bald pate and stringy, gray strands of hair hanging to his shoulders, the Jarl was an enormous man, tall and barrel-chested. His scarred face glowered like a thundercloud as he took in the companions outside the village walls.

He was far from alone. Nothan the Younger, the sharp-faced leader of the Night Watch, stood on one side, nervous and unhappy, his lips pressed together tightly and his eyes roaming anywhere but Joane and her companions. On the Jarl’s other side stooped the robed, oily weasel, Sylle Ru. Unlike Nothan, the thin seer’s eyes glittered with a malicious glee, a gaze that hungrily roamed over the party and lingered on Briene.

Behind the trio of men were all seven of the Jarl’s thegns, brutish women and men, each armored and bearing weapons of various sizes and shapes. Their names were well known to Joane and Briene: Ofenloch, Kreig, Clohn the Bald, Ori One-Eye, Utheryl, Haedrick, and Haelf Halfson. Each was a warrior of renown in Hirot, and the Jarl’s martial might. Only now did it occur to Joane that none had ever been selected for sacrifice to the Hound, nor had any of their wives, husbands, or children. The young woman scowled at the realization that perhaps the lottery had been a sham, or at least influenced in some way to protect the Jarl’s inner circle. Knowing she had almost lost her life at the standing stones made her cheeks burn with rage.

Stretching to either side of the thegns were the few remaining members of the town watch, each dressed in yellow and green livery, and each clutching a spear. Their eyes were wide and terrified, their faces glistening with sweat. Many had been pressed into service when watch members had been sacrificed to the Hound or died trying to fight it. They were too young, too old, or too infirmed for real battle, and yet they stood with the Jarl and his thegns, seemingly ready to charge.

Finally, congregated some distance behind the Jarl’s gang of ruffians, the majority of Hirot’s remaining residents formed a large mob. The several dozen villagers gasped, pointed, and murmured when they saw Joane, Briene, and their companions. Many wept and held young ones close, shielding them from what was to come yet keeping their own eyes fixed on the proceedings.

“I told you to leave,” the Jarl raised his voice for all to hear. “Why have you returned?”

Umur glanced at the others and stepped forward, still outside the open gates. “We’ve come to inform you that the Hound is dead and gone for good. We’ve seen to it.”

A murmur ran throughout the crowd of villagers. Several thegns bent heads together to whisper.

“We ask nothing in return,” the dwarf continued. “We simply wish to resupply and repair our arms and armor before heading on our way.”

The Jarl’s face darkened. “You expect us to believe it’s dead? That you killed it?”

“Blasphemy!” Father Beacom called out from the crowd far behind. “Only Justicia’s judgment will save us!”

Umur shrugged. “Believe what you will, but the Hound will bother you and your people no more.”

The thin, rat-faced seer, Sylle Ru, tugged at the Jarl’s arm. The large man bent and listened, nodding once before straightening.

“And the death of Broegan Cayhurst? What say you there?” the Jarl’s lip curled in a sneer.

“What!?” Joane’s cheeks flushed an even deeper red. “We weren’t even here when my father died, you twit!”

Erin placed a hand on the woman’s arm, holding her from stepping forward. “What are you suggesting, sir?” Her strong voice carried over the distance.

“He dropped dead,” the Jarl made sure the villagers behind could hear. “Witnesses said he fell over mid-sentence, untouched. I’ve got no other explanation but magic, and you have a magic user in your group.”

The crowd of villagers murmured, some agreeing loudly and others scoffing. The Jarl’s face was as flat as stone, but Sylle Ru grinned maliciously and rubbed his hands together.

“You can’t be serious,” Umur groaned.

“Hand over your mage for questioning, and we’ll lock the rest of you away while we handle the Hound ourselves. Your meddling has confused too many people, and too many have died since you’ve arrived. Or do you deny that you took several of our people into the woods nearly a week ago, and none returned?”

“These people bloody saved you all!” Joane cried, and Erin tightened her grip to keep her back. “You probably poisoned my pa just to blame it on us, you monster! It was Iraco that attacked us in the woods, and you know it! Monster and fool!” Tears blurred her eyes and began spilling down her cheeks.

“Watch your tongue, girl,” the Jarl growled, his face darkening. “Or you’ll lose it.”

“Jarl,” Umur stepped forward. Joane turned to sob into Erin’s embrace. “We’ve killed the Hound and done Hirot a service. I see you’re ready for violence, and I assure you people will die if you keep pressin’ your points here. As the lass says, most who’ve died with us were to your huntsmen. Iraco and his men have paid for that, buried near the Snake King’s tomb.” At mention of Ulfheonar, more villagers murmured and cried out, and thegns whispered. A few of them looked at the spear in Joane’s hand thoughtfully.

“Stop the bloodshed, Jarl,” Umur continued. “You know we’ve done nothing wrong. We’ll leave and you can rebuild in peace. We ask for nothing from you. This is madness, man.”

Warrior to warrior, can Umur’s speech avoid violence? Or is the Jarl’s pride too great to accept that these outsiders helped him? Let’s do a Personality roll for Umur. He has a 14 Personality, for a +1 modifier. I’m going to make this a DC 10 for him to at least get the Jarl to pause and consider a non-violent solution. If he hits 15+ something very good will happen. If he gets a 5 or less, something very bad will happen.

Umur rolls a [12+1] 13! The Jarl will pause and consider the implications of a battle here.

His advisor, on the other hand, wants these troublemakers out of the way. Sylle Ru is insecure and motivated by power. He is threatened by the adventurers and will try to encourage violence. I’ll set the DC as Umur’s roll: 13.

I’ll say Sylle has no modifier (he’s smart but slimy), so this is just a straight d20 roll: 3.

Well, this will be fun…

Silence filled the next several heartbeats. Joane pulled away from Erin’s comforting arms with a nod of thanks. Briene reached out to lay a hand on Joane’s shoulder, as the red-haired young woman wiped her nose with the back of her hand while staring at the Jarl with hate-filled eyes. The other companions held their breath, waiting for the Jarl’s response. His thegns shifted their feet, seeming to do the same. Fingers on both sides idly touched weapons. Even the crowd of villagers had quieted, sensing the importance of the moment.

The Jarl exhaled, grimacing. He took one of his giant hands off the wicked axe and rubbed his face. “Gods. There has been enough bloodshed, right enough.”

Sylle Ru tugged frantically at the Jarl’s cloak, whispering and making dramatic hand gestures. The Jarl grunted something and shook his head, brushing the seer’s hand away. The robed man persisted, now urgently and angrily.

The Jarl cut him off. “Silence,” he snapped, then straightened and glowered at the companions at the gate. “Go. Take your people and leave, dwarf.”

“Good enough,” Umur nodded, and turned to the others. “Let’s first check…”

“NO!” a thin, reedy voice cut through the space between the Jarl and the companions. It was Sylle Ru, spittle foaming at his mouth. The robed man took several steps forward. He thrust a thin, knobby finger at Umur. “They are villains! Liars and thieves! Thegns, kill them now!”

Everyone could see the dark red and black energy beginning to swirl around the seer’s outstretched finger as he began chanting in an otherworldly baritone voice.

Sylle Ru, in his fury at being ignored by the Jarl, is going to try and instigate a fight anyway. I’ll roll initiative to see if the seer gets to act before the party. Everyone is ready for violence, so no surprise rounds for either side.

He rolls right in the middle of the companions. It’s Joane who wins by a mile, and she too is wound up and itching for battle. Seeing the seer be aggressive, she will daringly and dramatically try to throw the wolf-spear.

Joane’s Agility gives her +1 on ranged attacks, but the wolf-spear is not meant to be a ranged weapon. As a result, I’ll cancel this bonus. Instead, Joane rolls a 2 on her Deed die, giving her a total of +3 to attack since the spear is already a +1. She rolls a [15+2+1] 18, and hits Sylle’s AC of 10 easily. Her damage is [3+2+1] 6, which is the seer’s hit point total. Sylle Ru dies before casting his spell.

How will the Jarl react to this sudden violence? I’ll roll a morale check, with a higher roll better for the party. Another 15 on the d20. What could have been an all-out, fierce battle ends before it begins. I was ready for this scene to play out in a number of different ways, but whew!

In that moment, with the Jarl, thegns, city watch, villagers, and companions stunned, only Joane moved. She took several loping steps, snarling as she moved. From between the palisades’ open gates she launched Ulfheonar’s wolf-spear through the air, her red-haired braid flailing. The legendary weapon soared through the open space.

Sylle Ru’s eyes widened and the magics crackling at his fingertip sparked and faltered. At the last second, he threw up his hands defensively. The broad head of wolf-spear struck the man’s chest with a meaty thunk! and he fell backwards. Thin hands weakly, spastically grasped for the spear’s hilt, then stilled. Sylle Ru was dead, his eyes open and frozen in fear, his mouth agape.

Joane stood panting, her face bunched in anger. Villagers cried out in horror. The thegns’ wide eyes looked from the Jarl to Joane and back again. At least half of them gripped weapons tightly, while others took a step involuntarily back.

All the while, the Jarl’s expression did not move. His thunderhead frown remained fixed as he strode forward to his seer’s corpse, tucking his great bearded axe into his belt. He looked down, sighed, then pulled the spear free. The Jarl examined the wolf-spear in his enormous hands, his eyes roaming over the ancient script and snaking patterns carved into its shaft.

The companions neither moved nor spoke. Everyone, it seemed waited to see what the leader of Hirot would do next.

His heavy gaze fell on Joane, still panting, cheeks flushed.

“It truly is Ulfheonar’s weapon? You found the Snake King’s crypt?” he said in a low, thoughtful voice only he and she could hear.

Joane swallowed hard, then nodded.

“And the Hound? It’s truly gone, then?” the Jarl raised his voice, and it was clear the Jarl addressed Umur now.

“Aye,” the dwarf said. “It’s all true.”

The man sighed and glanced down again at his seer. His words were heavy and tired. “Alright then. You have until sundown to resupply. Then leave Hirot behind.”

He dropped the wolf-spear in the dirt. Like a lumbering bear, the Jarl turned his back on the companions and faced his thegns. Joane and her companions did not hear what he said in low, commanding tones. The assemblage of warriors glanced back at the group, some with hatred on their face, some with respect, and at least one with a grin, and then, as a group, they strode through the town square, towards the crowd of villagers, the town watch members trailing behind. The mob parted before them, shouting questions, as the Jarl stopped to address his few remaining people. Though he did not realize it, the Jarl took a place next to the strongbox atop a wooden post, where he had stood every three days for weeks on end.

Sylle Ru’s thin, crumpled form lay in the dirt, untouched and untended, like a discarded doll.

Late that afternoon, Umur stood outside of the mad widow Ymae’s hut. His horned helmet was tucked under one arm, battered shield strapped to his back, and longsword at his belt. Yet he’d washed his hair and face, and he wore fresh cotton beneath his black, scaled armor. The dwarf ran his free hand through his beard, scowling furiously as he faced the door.

He grumbled, “Bloody madness. I’m leaving at sundown, never to return. What does an empty marriage do? Nothing is what it does. It’s madness.” Then he cursed in dwarven and turned to leave.

The hut’s door opened.

“Ah, you’re Hilda’s dwarf, then? Well, come here and let’s have a look at you.”

Umur turned.

In the doorway was a young human woman, pleasantly plump. Her blonde hair was tied back in an elaborate braid, wildflowers woven throughout, which hung over one shoulder. Her violet-colored dress was simple, with a belt woven with flowers, and she was barefoot. The woman’s face was cocked to one side, appraising him and grinning with deep dimples.

“I– I’m sorry, ma’am,” Umur stammered. “I was looking for Ymae. Is she home?”

The woman chuckled. “I am she and she is me. Why have you come to my hut wearing the ancient armor of a Savage King’s lieutenant, Master Dwarf?”

“I, uh…” he coughed, flustered. “I was told by Hilda that she made you a promise. For the net.”

“She did indeed. And here you are to fulfill it, eh?” The woman put a fist on one hip, which she thrust out. Umur had never found humans particularly attractive, but even without whiskers this woman was lovely.

He realized that she was waiting for him to answer with an arched eyebrow. He coughed again. “I suppose so. The… the net was most helpful against the Hound.”

“What are you here to do, Master Dwarf?” Ymae leaned forward ever-so-slightly, eagerly, on tiptoes. “Say the words.”

“Well, I… I’d heard that if the Hound was dead that you wanted a… a husband. So I’m here to marry you, I suppose.” He nodded, planting his feet firmly. “As promised.”

Ymae threw back her head and cackled with glee. She spun on the ball of one bare foot as she laughed, her dress swirling. Then the young woman was clapping her hands together, eyes glittering with delight and her white smile bright.

“Oh, well done! Well done!” she cried and leapt at Umur. The dwarf dropped his helmet into the dirt to catch her awkwardly, but Ymae managed to meld into his armored embrace with grace. She kissed him, still smiling, long and hard.

“That’s enough,” a voice hissed from the doorway. Umur blinked, confused, as Ymae pulled herself away from him and turned. He craned his neck to see past her.

Just inside the hut stood a figure of shadow and flame, its form shimmering and dancing like candlelight in a breeze. Umur’s eyes watered to look at it, this thing of darkness that was clearly not of this world.

“He’s done it!” Ymae clapped. “He needed a kiss of thanks, didn’t he? Oh, don’t be jealous, love.” She thrust out her hip again, planting a fist on it.

“What’s this now?” Umur stammered. “I don’ understand.”

Ymae sighed as she stepped back towards the doorway. Flickering hands of black flame reached out to caress her as she drew close.

“Hilda’s oath is fulfilled, Umur Pearlhammer,” the woman said, her voice full of light and joy despite intoning each word like a proclamation. As she spoke, she disappeared into shadow, both moving further into the hut and the strange figure’s embrace. “Go and find your home, though I weep for what you’ll discover. And here is your reward, though your current armor suits you. Perhaps the young Wolf Slayer can use it.”

Umur jumped as the hut door slammed shut. Just outside, folded neatly at the doorstep, was a pile of golden chainmail that glittered and gleamed in the late-afternoon sunlight like fire.

Reflections: Doom of the Savage Kings

Doom of the Savage Kings, Chapter 14

On By MagicJMSIn Dungeon Crawl Classics, Tabletop Roleplaying3 Comments

Something dribbled into Umur’s right eye from the bushy brow above. It could have been sweat, or blood, or even water from an overhanging branch. Whatever it was, he couldn’t spare the effort or time to wipe it away. The dwarf blinked furiously, shaking his head even as he swung his ancestral longsword at the furred body darting past him. He missed, and the creature was gone from sight.

“Blast these beasts!” he bellowed. “To the Nine Hells with you all!”

But behind his fury was a cold dread. There were still too many of the desperate, cunning jackals. His companions limped and bled from numerous bites and tears in their flesh. Still the creatures pressed their tactics, yipping and snarling and darting in whenever one of them turned. Blood thundered in his ears, his breath shallow. They were losing this battle, he realized with grim certainty, and there was no hope of escape.  

All around, numerous rune-marked skulls stared unseeing at them from tall stakes. Their empty sockets appeared and disappeared with the shifting fog. The macabre totems, it seemed, waited in mute witness for them to die.

Round 4 is upon us! I predicted last time that this would be the deciding round in this fight. As a reminder, Briene is still unharmed at 9 hit points. Erin is at 3 of 10 hp. Haffoot 4 of 6 hp. Hilda 7 of 14 hp. Joane 6 of 10 hp. And, clinging to life, Umur is at 1 of 10 hp. Seven of the fifteen original swamp jackals remain, and none of them are currently injured. The jackals just passed a second consecutive morale check, so they are going for the kill, sensing an impending meal.

The first jackal bites Haffoot and rolls a 14 (recall that they have a +2 to hit, but -2 from Hilda’s Invoke Patron spell) versus her AC of 13. Thankfully, the attack only does 1 point of damage, leaving her at 3 hp. The second jackal rolls a 15, surpassing Erin’s AC of 14. That attack also does 1 point of damage, leaving the cleric at 2 hp. YIKES.

Thankfully, the tide turns after that. Joane hits with her wolf-spear, rolling a 17, and does [6+2+1] 9 damage, killing one of the creatures. A jackal misses Haffoot with a 7. Haffoot returns the attack against one of the three (!) jackals near her, missing with her first sword but hitting with the second on a [15+1] 16, dealing a max 6 damage and killing it.

Briene aims her shortbow at one of the remaining jackals harassing Haffoot and rolls a natural 20! The first, I believe, critical hit of this combat for the PCs. She rolls a chest wound (+3d4 damage), and does a whopping 16 total damage. Then Hilda, who had been swinging wildly with her staff against the one jackal attacking her, finally hits with a 16. She halves the jackal’s hit points, dealing 2 damage.

A swamp jackal lunges at Umur. He has a 15 AC, though, so the law of averages suggests they’ll stop hitting him at some point, right? Nope. The jackal rolls a 15, and the damage is irrelevant since Umur had 1 hp. He goes down.

Erin sees her friend fall, and rushes to Lay on Hands. If this fails, there is a serious chance of Umur dying. She rolls a [16+1-1] 16! Because they are the same alignment, this result means that Umur will heal 3d10 damage, and I roll well. Umur is back to full health, though prone and has dropped his longsword.

The last jackal ends our round with a bang, rolling a natural 20 against Hilda. The crit says it breaks a rib, dealing an extra d6 damage. That means Hilda takes [4+4] 8 damage and also goes down.

Umur, last to go in the round, spends his turn regaining his sword and standing.

At the end of the round, it’s time for another morale check. Because only 4 swamp jackals remain, I’m going to give them a -4 to their check. They roll a [15-4] 11 and, miraculously, are still going to fight to the death.

The companions fought furiously and with desperation. Joane impaled a jackal, which unnervingly screamed in a high-pitched wail like a small girl when it died. Haffoot used her thin blade to stab another through the eye. And an arrow loosed by Briene cut through the mists and left a third dead, its body curled at the foot of one of the leaning, skull-topped stakes.

Yet among these wins, too many bites tore through pant legs and found flesh. Umur, blinking furiously, turned almost blindly as one of the swamp jackals launched itself through the air to land on his shoulder. It bit down onto his neck and the dwarf cried out, falling.

“Umur!” Erin called out. Without thinking she ran and knelt by her friend, reaching out with her free hand. Soft, white light spilled from her open palm and over Umur. His eyes fluttered open, even as the jackal that felled him snarled and lunged again with its blood-flecked teeth.

Hilda, away from the others, had been swinging her staff left and right, keeping a persistent jackal at bay. The creatures had shown a malevolent intelligence, however, and the jackal made a calculate charge immediately following one of those swings. Hilda yelped as its leap carried it through her defenses, directly onto the wizard’s chest. It snarled and bit, and Hilda shrieked as she fell.

Round 5. The first of the remaining jackals has a choice between Erin, Joane, and Umur. Since Erin is kneeling and focused on Umur, it attempts to bite her and misses with a 3.

Joane rolls a 3 with her Deed die, and stabs at the one who’d just attacked Erin. She misses with a [6+3+1] 10, but Haffoot lends her a +2 with a point of Luck, making the strike a hit. She kills the jackal and uses her Mighty Deed to force another morale roll from the remaining three jackals. Amazingly, they roll a nat-20. Dang. That was a cool use of a Mighty Deed, I thought.

The lone jackal near Haffoot misses with an 8 and she’s able to return the attack. She hits with the first blade, doing 5 damage and killing it.

It’s Briene’s turn. It doesn’t make sense that she can do medicinal, herbal healing in combat like Erin’s Lay on Hands. So instead of healing Hilda, she will call out to Erin and loose an arrow at Hilda’s opponent. She rolls a [9+1] 10, and Haffoot again supplies a +2 Luck bonus (her Luck is now 8 of 12), which means the attack hits. Six damage is more than enough to kill the jackal.

The last swamp jackal nips at Umur but misses, which allows Erin to scramble to Hilda’s side and try another Lay on Hands. As with Umur, if she fails this check it will mean a “death roll” from our wizard, and perhaps her death. Once again, Shul, God of the Moon, comes in clutch. Erin rolls a 19! Unfortunately for Hilda, because she is Neutral alignment and a wizard, she only gets 2d4 hit points back, and Erin rolls a total of 3. Still, 3 is better than 0. Hilda lives.

Umur is up, armed, and furious. He only rolls a 1 on his Deed die, but hits the last swamp jackal with a [13+1+1] 15, dealing 9 damage.

The combat is over, officially the closest we’ve gotten to multiple character deaths. Exhale.

“Erin! Help Hilda!” Briene cried out, loosing an arrow at close range into the jackal that had leapt atop the robed wizard. “She’s not moving, Erin!”

Joane roared a furious roar and stabbed another creature through the neck as Erin stumbled over to Hilda’s fallen form. Her gray eyes scanned the torn, bloody robes and murmured a prayer. Nothing happened, and she squeezed her eyes shut, praying more fervently. Whether it was Hilda’s dark magics, the new moon that Erin knew was on its way this night, or the cleric’s own fatigue, something stood in the way of Shul’s divine energy towards Hilda, a barrier that had not existed moments before for Umur. After several heartbeats, though, the now-familiar soft glow cascaded over Hilda, less than before but present. The wizard coughed weakly and rolled to her side in the wet grass.

Nearby, Umur had retrieved his longsword and stood. With a bellow he lopped a jackal’s head clean from its emaciated body and turned to face the next oncoming attacker.

Yet the battle was over. As quickly as they’d come, the swamp jackals disappeared. Any remaining members of the pack yipped and chittered away into the mists.

The group panted and wheezed as the sounds of predators faded into the fog. All around them loomed skulls on stakes, bloody furred bodies, dark trees, and swirling fog. Erin, eyes still pressed tight, said an earnest, thankful blessing to her god, tears staining her cheeks.

“We must leave this place,” Umur gasped, stomping over. “Briene, lass, lead us away.”

“The skulls,” Hilda croaked, attempting and failing to stand. “I wish to see the center of the circles. There is–”

Erin’s eyes snapped open. “No. You’ll do no such thing. We leave. Now. Joane, help me with her.”

“I can help to heal…” Briene began, even as Joane stooped to pull Hilda up.

“No, Briene,” Erin snapped, her voice like iron. “You do as Umur said: Lead us out of this Chaos-forsaken place. We must leave the Sunken Fens before we can rest. Our lives are in your hands.”

“Y-yes, ma’am,” the young woman blushed.

Without speaking another word, the group followed Briene through the mists. Erin, Haffoot, and Joane all bled and limped from numerous bites, so it was Umur who half-carried Hilda through the swamps. Fog distorted sounds in the darkened, wet moors. Half a dozen times, the companions stopped, hands straying to weapon hilts as some awful sound found its way to them. Yet each time, no new horror arrived, and they fled. The group moved slowly, stumbling, and pressed on until the mists receded behind them.

Eventually, the Sunken Fens gave way to vibrant, late-summer forest. Sunlight and fallen leaves dappled the ground. The warm red and browns of tree trunks and branches no longer seemed like nightmares waiting to grab them. Birds twittered and chirped above. Insects chittered. Even the smells of the forest had changed, from damp decay to pine and moss.

“I know this place,” Briene smiled brightly. She looked back on the companions, her face a sheen of sweat and delight. “We’re not far from the river, and then Hirot. We’re safe.”

Well goodness, that was scary. Can Briene administer healing to Hilda and the others once they’re away from the dozens of stakes skulls (whose purpose we may never know, or may play a part later… we’ll see!) and the Sunken Fens? Let’s do some checks.

For Hilda, Briene rolls a nat-20 and is able to heal her to full hit points. For Erin, she rolls a [13+1] 14, giving Erin 2d8 (4) much-needed hit points. For Haffoot and Joane, unfortunately, she fails her checks (but doesn’t roll a natural 1, which would poison them).

Which means it’s Erin’s turn. Her first Lay on Hands check for Haffoot fails, increasing her Disapproval chance to 1-2, but her next two checks succeed. She heals Haffoot and Joane to full, and then turns attention to herself. She fails again, increasing her Disapproval chance to 1-3 on a d20. Thankfully, she then rolls a 15, healing herself to full hit points. The party has officially survived the pack of swamp jackals without any lasting damage.

All this healing, however, is going to be time consuming. I’ll say that they spend an entire day in the forests surrounding Hirot, tending to their wounds and recovering. Over this time, Hilda will gain a point back each of Agility (now 10 of 11) and Stamina (now 10 of 18). Haffoot will recover 1 point of Luck (now 9 of 12).

Does anything untoward happen over the course of this day? I’ll roll a d20, and on a 1 or 2 there will be a random encounter. I roll an 18. Nope… it’s a rare day of peace and rest for our adventuring party.

The companions finally collapsed in a wooded glade. Briene immediately dropped her backpack to the leafy ground, rummaging through it for healing supplies. She spent the next several hours tending to first Hilda’s wounds, and then Erin’s. By the time the young woman looked up, blinking, darkness had gathered in the forest and Umur had begun assembling kindling for a campfire.

“We– we aren’t going back to Hirot tonight?” she asked, bone weary.

The dwarf looked at her and chuckled. “Lass, the gates closed at sundown. Besides, the work you were doin’ was too important to interrupt. You’ve become quite handy, navigatin’ us through the woods and healin’ everyone’s hurts.”

“Don’t forget her bow,” Haffoot grinned. She leaned forward to wink at Briene. “One of her shots picked a jackal clean off the ground and sent it flying through the air! I saw it!” The halfling hooted and slapped her knee.

Briene yawned. “Where’s Joane?”

“Gatherin’ firewood and washin’ up in the river,” Umur grunted. “You should wash up, too, before you fall over. Then get some food in ya and sleep. Haffoot here found a rabbit.”

“Come, Briene,” Erin stood with a groan. “We’ll go together. Hilda, hand me your waterskin so we can fill it.”

“Thank you, dear one,” Hilda said sleepily, patting the white, scaled armor upon Erin’s leg. Then the woman pulled her hood close, casting her entire face in shadow, and began lightly snoring.

“She cares for you,” Briene whispered, smiling, as they left the glade.

“Mm,” Erin said thoughtfully. “Something’s changed. She treats me almost like her own child. It’s… odd. And I like the effects of this magic upon her not at all. It’s poisoning her.”

“On that we can agree. But her affection for you is sweet. Perhaps it’s an anchor in the darkness.”

“Perhaps,” Erin sighed. “But I fear that Hilda and I will need to talk sooner than later, before that darkness becomes too great a weight.”

Later, after the six of them had licked their fingers clean of rabbit, a companionable silence fell over the campsite. Briene and Joane leaned against one another, eyes closed in appreciation for the other’s presence. Umur stared into the dwindling flames, poking idly with a stick, his mind clearly elsewhere. Haffoot lay near him, hands folded behind her head, staring up through the canopy at the night sky. Even Hilda had felt strong enough to join them, and sat cross-legged, firelight dancing on her sallow features beneath the hood.

Erin stood, and attention shifted to her. Her armor was battered and in need of repair in several places. She had passed a wet rag over parts, but the black mud of the Hound’s lair and dried blood from their encounters still spattered its surface. The cleric cleared her throat.

“Tonight,” she announced. “Is a new moon. I’ve felt my connection changing these past nights. Shul has closed his eye, resting. In such a time, I thought that I might sing a hymn.” She looked around the group, and almost as an afterthought added. “If that’s acceptable.”

Haffoot rolled up to sit. “Go on, then.”

Erin nodded, clearing her throat again. She began to sing, and once again the group was reminded that, before the portal beneath the Empty Star, Erin Wywood had been Graymoor’s minstrel. Her voice was haunting and beautiful as embers from the fire rose on smoke into the forest night.

“O Shul, Watcher upon high,

Though your eye hides, you’re still nearby.

Dancer of paths where shadows lie,

Guide us safe as stars drift by.

In darkness deep, we know your light,

Guarding souls through endless night.

O Shul, unseen, our path defend,

Until your eye returns again.

Husband of the Three, you weave unseen,

Though all is dark, you keep us keen.

Through whispered stars your darkened eye,

Holds us close as night rolls by.

In darkness deep, we know your light,

Guarding souls through endless night.

O Shul, unseen, our path defend,

Until your eye returns again,

Until your eye returns again,

Until your eye returns again.”

The last notes of Erin’s hymn washed over them, and the group sighed almost as one. Despite the horrors of the previous day and night, their spirits lifted. Joane and Briene hugged each other tightly. Haffoot patted Umur’s thigh companionably, and the dwarf grinned back.

“Beautiful,” Hilda said into the silence that followed.

“It really was,” Joane said. “Thank you.”

Erin nodded and sat back near the dying embers of the campfire. Her own prayer, it seemed, had strengthened her, for she did not grunt or groan in pain when settling down.

“So,” Joane said, disentangling herself from her friend and sitting up straight. “What happens tomorrow, then?”

“Tomorrow,” Umur said. “We return to Hirot so you two can get your affairs in order. We’ll resupply, perhaps repair our armor if there’s a smithy. Then we’ll keep on, towards the Trollteeth.”

“And the mad witch,” Haffoot chided. “Don’t forget her.”

“You leave it now,” the dwarf grumbled. Haffoot giggled.

“She did supply the net,” Hilda said delicately. “And a promise is a…”

“Leave it I said!” Umur bellowed, and the halfling beside him burst into laughter.

“Well, what about the Jarl?” Joane asked. “You said he won’t be giving you all any credit, which I agree with. That bastard will find a way to make everything your fault if he can.”

“Our fault,” Hilda offered. “You’re with us now, and he’ll see it that way too.”

“We’ll just tell the truth,” Briene offered. “He’ll be grateful, won’t he?”

Umur snorted. “We’ll tell our story, aye. What the Jarl does with it, I can’t say. But that’s tomorrow. Tonight we sleep, eh? I’ll take first watch.”

They did. Below a moonless night sky, the companions finally found a long stretch of uninterrupted peace. And though each ran through their own imaginings of the next day’s events, none could have predicted what awaited them in Hirot.

Doom of the Savage Kings, chapter 15

Doom of the Savage Kings, Chapter 13

On By MagicJMSIn Dungeon Crawl Classics, Tabletop Roleplaying4 Comments

Despite purging the Hound and its black seed from the cavernous chamber, no one had a desire to make camp in the muck surrounding the dark pool. The climb out, however, took most of the night.

Briene attended to Erin’s wounds with herbs and a thick paste that smelled strongly of mint. Not only did the medicines help to close the cleric’s many puncture wounds, but they seemed to provide some vigor as well. When Erin revived, she did so with a gasp and wide eyes, already trying to stand and fight. It took three of the companions to hold her down and assure her that the evil of the Hound had been vanquished.

Briene (with her newly acquired Healing Herbs ability) was indeed able to heal Erin, which I did between level-up post and this chapter. She rolled an Intelligence check (+1 modifier) plus her level, rolling a [16+1+1] 18 total. That result heals 2 Hit Dice of damage, which for Erin means 2d8. She rolled 8 healing, bringing Erin up to full health. Go go herbal healing!

With that task done, the party is unharmed from the battle with the Hound, though Hilda and Haffoot still have ability score damage to recover with rest. Hilda regains access to Chill Touch if needed, and Erin’s disapproval chances return to natural-1s only.

Though Briene’s pungent paste could awaken Hilda, the young woman’s herbs could do nothing to heal her. Hilda’s skin was gray and sallow, and she had, thanks to the magic that had summoned their strange, winged stone ally, become thin and seemingly malnourished. The wizard smiled up weakly, past the healer to where Erin stood, with arms crossed.

“It’s as the witch says: Death follows us,” she croaked through dry lips. “But it’s not time to give my hair quite yet, is it?” Then the woman chuckled darkly, her eyes unfocused.

“What does all of that mean?” Haffoot asked, wide-eyed and looking at Erin.

“She’s delirious,” the cleric frowned, even as her companion continued to cough weakly and chuckle. “We must leave this Chaos-infested place and rest.”

With that, Erin stooped and began to haul Hilda up. Briene squealed in concern, and then Umur was there pushing the cleric away.

“There will be time to move her,” the dwarf growled. “But you won’t be doin’ the moving. Let Briene’s remedies work on you before you go bustin’ all of those wounds open again, lass. We do need rest, aye, but you most of all.”

They had thoroughly searched the cavern waiting for the Hound’s arrival, so knew that there were no hidden passages and that their only escape was the gaping maw above. Yet ascending was far more difficult than descending. To leave the lair would mean climbing a rope straight up for twenty paces before the aid of a wall, and then still another forty paces to the sinkhole’s edge. All the while, brackish water would cascade upon them, making it both difficult to see and grip the rope.

I don’t see the need to belabor what is a mundane hazard, but the more I’ve imagined the scene, the more difficult escaping the Hound’s lair seems to me. I’ll do a Strength check for each PC at DC 12. If any of them roll a 1 or 2, I’ll figure out if they fall. Lower rolls mean the task takes a long time. Higher rolls mean less time. I’ll roll in the order in which I see them ascending.

Haffoot goes first and has a -1 penalty because of her leather armor. She rolls a [14-1] 13. She reaches the top and makes it look as difficult as it is.

 Umur will have to remove his armor, but will still take a -1 penalty for the bulk of carrying it. He has to roll three times (rolling a 7 & 6 the first two times), eventually passing with a [17-1] 16. It takes him a long, long time.

Joane’s next in leather armor, and it takes her even longer. After four rolls, she eventually makes it to the top barely, with a [13-1] 12.

Erin, with the help of Briene, also removes her scale male to make the climb, and does it in two tries, crushing the second role with a 19.

Briene is going to tie Hilda’s weak form to the end of the rope and help her to the top, with the others pulling from above. I’ll lower the DC to 10 for her roll, and it takes two attempts to get there, just making it the second one.

Like I said: It takes all night.

Haffoot, light and nimble despite her club foot, made the climb first, at first laughing at how she couldn’t imagine Umur scaling the rope, then grunting with difficulty, and, eventually, falling totally silent with concentration. By the time she made it to the lip of the sinkhole, Umur and Erin were already removing their heavy, scaled mail and murmuring strategies for how best to follow.

The dwarf went next, and the journey seemed to take forever. Haffoot was not strong enough to pull him, and he was too old and depleted from the day to find hidden reserves. Twice Umur stopped, looping the rope around his legs to hold him dangling over the black pool, cursing and panting, until the others were sure he would never move again. Eventually, however, he found his way to the surface, bellowing at Haffoot to stand aside and stop laughing at him.

After that the task went more smoothly. With both Umur and Haffoot pulling from above, Joane Cayhurst, then Erin, made the climb without incident. The cleric’s wounds had begun to seep red through the paste that Briene had applied, but Erin assured them all that she would be fine. She glanced skyward, a frown creasing her face, and idly touched the crescent moon at her neck.

The young healer Briene had insisted on staying with Hilda and vowed that the two of them would make the climb together. She wound the rope around the wizard’s hips and legs, tying competent knots she’d learned from her woodsman father. Then she scaled upwards, staying within arm’s length of Hilda in case she needed aid. It was a remarkable demonstration of care, especially given that both Joane and Briene had openly shown horror at Hilda’s magic. Briene’s noble heart and concern for the infirm, it seemed, overrode her distaste for what she saw as Chaos-touched powers. When they had successfully pulled Hilda’s thin, weak form onto the marshy ground surrounding the sinkhole, Joane gave her close friend a fierce hug while the others watched Briene with thoughtful appraisal.

Indeed, something about the ordeal below had created a confidence and resolve in the young woman that was undeniable. She returned Joane’s hug with a smile, chuckling at their utterly dirty and disheveled appearance. Then she turned to the others and said in a voice gentle but firm, “I know we’re all exhausted and wish to be out of this place, but we need rest. It won’t be a feather bed, Master Dwarf, but let’s see if we might find somewhere within these marshes to regain some of our strength.”

I haven’t made any “survival” skill rolls in the past when the group has camped in the wilderness, but a) the Sunken Fens is a dangerous and foul place, even with the dark seed of Chaos in the sinkhole destroyed, and b) we now have a Ranger in the party. So let’s see how Briene does at finding shelter in a corrupted swamp.

She will get a +1 for her level and a +1 Intelligence bonus to her Wilderness Skills roll. I’ll make the DC 10 which is the “average deed” for an adventurer. If she achieves above a 15, I’ll say the party receives the full benefits of rest. If it’s below a 5, they will not only have penalties for being fatigued but will roll on a random encounter as well.

Heh. Briene rolls a [19+1+1] 21! Hilda will gain 1 Stamina (bringing her to 9 of 19) and Haffoot 1 Luck (10 of 12) thanks to Briene’s survival skills. When I rewrite Doom of the Savage Kings as a single narrative as I did with Portal Under the Stars, it will certainly be Briene leading them to the Hound’s lair, not Umur.

In the darkness of the early morning hours, with fog curling all around them, Briene led the group through the Sunken Fens and away from the sinkhole. The others followed, stumbling and fatigued and more than willing to have the woodsman’s daughter take point in navigating their route back to Hirot.

Eventually, she paused, pursed her lips, and nodded to herself. “This will have to do,” Briene announced, unshouldering her pack. “Let me see to Erin and Hilda, if you two might set up camp there, where those trees are huddled? It’s the best shelter we’ve seen, and the ground is as dry as the Fens provide.”

Haffoot and Umur exchanged a look, both with eyebrows climbing. Umur nodded gruffly while Haffoot stifled a giggle, and the two did as instructed. Joane followed them, providing her height and youthful energy to help make a competent camp. Briene, meanwhile, reapplied her remedies to Erin’s wounds and ensured that Hilda had consumed both water and food. Though the group felt far from safe, they spent the morning in quiet companionship, each finding small pockets of sleep and peace.

By the time they agreed to continue, Umur thought it was probably early afternoon, though it was impossible to tell by constant mists and lack of light within the Sunken Fens. Briene agreed, and thought she could find her way back to Hirot before nightfall and the closing of the palisade gates.

Of course, returning to the village conjured its own uncertainty.

“There’s as likely to be an armed force waiting for us as a parade,” Umur groused. “The Jarl’s pride won’t allow him to accept us as saviors, I think.”

“Perhaps the wedding will distract him!” Haffoot chided, cackling momentarily and then clapping hands over her mouth.

“You be quiet,” the dwarf grunted, elbowing his companion.

“And you two,” Erin interrupted, directing her words at Joane and Briene. As always, the two young women were together, though the healer’s attention was focused on navigating the moors. “What will you do, now that the Hound is gone?”

The group stopped and fell silent at the question. All attention went to the women of Hirot.

Joane glanced at the others and cleared her throat. “Bree and I have been talking. The only life waiting for me in Hirot is the Wolf-Spear. Ah, the inn, not the weapon,” she clarified, seeing the others’ momentary confusion. “But I’ve got no family anymore. Someone else can run it.”

“And I,” Briene sighed. “Am better here, in the forest, than with Father Beacom. The forest needs healing and protection, it’s clear to me now. Staying inside a palisades wall feels wrong now.”

“Which is to say,” Joane stammered, suddenly looking unsure. “We’d join you, if you’d have us.”

“At least until the Trollteeth,” Briene clarified.

“After all the danger you’ve faced with us,” Umur asked. “You’d face more? The wilds here are as likely to kill us as not before we even reach my homeland.”

“We would,” Briene nodded decisively. Even covered in two days of grime and mud, it was difficult not to be struck by her beauty.

“If you’d have us,” Joane added, blowing a stray strand of dirty red hair away from her face.

“Of course,” Erin said seriously. The others nodded in agreement. The two Hirot women blinked, surprised at the lack of deliberation.

Umur chuckled at their response. “Heh. You’ve kept us alive as much or more as we have you,” he grinned, nodding at the paste on Erin’s sides and the spear in Joane’s hands.

“Come on, then!” Haffoot whooped, jumping and throwing her arms wide. “Let’s have a hug!”

There, in the damp, warm mists of the Sunken Fens, the group met in a collective embrace. All except Hilda, who sat back and away upon a rotting, fallen tree to rest. From beneath her hood, the wizard grinned at the scene.

I’m going to use the mechanic of getting to the Hound’s lair on the way out of the Sunken Fens. Briene will make another Wilderness skill check, +1 for her Intelligence and +1 for her level. On a result of 15+, they’ll take the most direct route back to Hirot and travel 2 more hours. 10-15 will mean 3 hours. 5-9 will mean 4 hours. And a lower result will mean 5+1d4 hours and missing the closing of the gate.

Briene rolls a [7+1+1] 9. Not a great result, and will mean four rolls on the random encounter table. Yes, the Hound and its seed of evil or gone, but Briene is correct that the corruption of the forest doesn’t end overnight. There are still dark forces roaming the mists. Once again, I’ll roll a d5, with a 4-5 resulting in an encounter of some kind.

Hour 1: 5.

Hour 2: 5

Hour 3: 5

Hour 4: 2.

Holy crap! Well, let me roll three times on the encounter table and see if I can combine or somehow speed up the narrative so it doesn’t take multiple chapters to reach Hirot. I roll two 6s (which are the same scene and not an encounter per se, so I’ll combine those into one set piece), and a 7 (which is very much an encounter, and makes sense to have in the aforementioned set piece). Very cool, and also means that we’re not quite ready to wrap this adventure yet.

An hour or more later, Briene was not smiling. She stopped and squinted, her eyes scanning the forest around her.

“What is it, Bree?” Joane asked.

“This isn’t the way,” the young woman answered. “And something is stalking us.”

“What!?” Umur growled, reaching for his sword.

“Hold, Master Pearlhammer,” Briene said with a calming wave. “They have been stalking us for some time, always at a distance. I think it’s wolves, wild dogs, or jackals of some kind.”

“Well I like that not at all,” Haffoot said, turning and searching the mists.

“I had hoped that if we kept moving at a good pace they would eventually leave us be, but they’ve been remarkably persistent. In my haste and distraction, though, I took a wrong turn. I– I think this way should get us back to Hirot.”

“Keeping their distance or no, weapons out,” Umur instructed, unsheathing his longsword.

The group stayed close to one another, not speaking, as they followed Briene’s instructions through the tangles of brown briars, withered oaks, and marshy grasses. More than once, someone would swear they’d seen a pair of dark eyes watching through the swirling fog, but as soon as they’d turned, the eyes were gone. Sounds, too, came at them weirdly in the fens, making it impossible to verify if creatures surrounded them or it was simply the groaning, creaking branches combined with bird calls.

“I sense Chaos here,” Erin growled. Something loomed ahead, shrouded, and she stepped forward along the soft ground to meet it.

The mists shifted, revealing a skull pierced upon a tall, sharpened stake. The wood had been driven into the swampy ground, but it still canted somewhat to one side. The skull itself appeared to be human, and strange symbols had been carved into the white bone.

“What in the Nine Hells?” Umur gasped. He had fanned out next to Erin and faced another skull, almost identical to the first, though the symbols etched into it were slightly different.

As they moved cautiously forward, the group entered an entire field of skulls on stakes, watching them with empty eye sockets. The ground was uneven, but the stakes seemed to have been placed in a pattern, all facing outwards in rough, concentric circles, and at the center a larger skull that appeared to be something with horns, perhaps a bull. In all, more than two dozen stakes made the unsettling formation. More than two dozen, which meant a field of death.

“Who were these people?” Joane asked. “And who placed these here?”

“The important question is why,” Hilda rasped from behind, leaning heavily upon her staff. “Those are arcane runes. This is either a warding or a summoning. I would guess–”

Before she could finish her thought, the first creature leapt in a flash of fur and teeth from the mists.

The party is facing a pack of swamp jackals. I rolled 3d7 for how many and unfortunately landed on a whopping 15. Individually, each has only 4 hit points and does only 1d4 damage, but with so many this encounter could become quite deadly.

Even though I’ve distracted the PCs with the unsettling tapestry of skulls, they have been on guard for danger. As a result, there will be no surprise round for the jackals. Instead, it’s just a straight initiative roll, fifteen combatants versus six.

Round 1, and four swamp jackals have won initiative. The first runs through the marsh towards Erin, rolling [19+2] 21 and hitting for 2 damage with its bite. The second does the same at Joane, hitting with a [14+2] 16 and doing a maximum 4 damage. The third attacks Hilda from the rear, rolling [18+2] 20 and also hitting for 4 damage. Finally, the fourth attack Umur and barely misses with a [12+2] 14.

Joane is up next and rolls a measly 1 on her Deed Die. Thankfully she hits with the wolf-spear on a [14+1+1] 16, but does minimum damage at [1+1+1] 3, leaving the jackal that attacked her with 1 hp.

Okay, now I am officially worried.

 A fifth jackal misses Joane with a [2+2] 4. Another misses Umur with a [10+2] 12. A seventh misses Haffoot with a [5+2] 7. Haffoot returns the attack but misses with both blades. I consider burning Luck for the second attack, which is 1 off the jackal’s AC, but I think it’s too early to do so.

An eighth jackal joins the fight against Haffoot and misses by 1. Briene’s turn, and she backs up to fire at one of the jackals surrounding Joane. She hits with a [19+1+1] 21, doing 3 damage. That’s great but leaves yet another jackal at 1 hp and able to attack next turn.

Jackal number nine attacks Umur and hits with a [13+2] 15, doing 2 damage. Next is Hilda’s turn, but let’s pause to describe this first burst of action.

It was as large as a medium-sized dog, with patchy, filthy fur and the features of a fox. It snarled and yipped as it leapt from the mists, jaws snapping at Erin’s armored legs. Before the cleric could react, others had leapt from bushes and from behind trees, all darting in to tear at the companions’ legs. While Erin and the others had paused to examine the strange skulls, it was clear now that these hungry, desperate jackals had maneuvered to surround them. Once the party had paused, the pack made their attack.

The creatures were everywhere, more than a dozen of them and attacking the companions in twos and threes. Umur, Haffoot, Joane, and Erin all cried out from sharp teeth that found flesh between armored plates and leather boots. Then they were gone, back into the swirling fog.

Frantically, the companions lashed out with their weapons. But though they fended off several jackals, the beasts leapt away and danced back, keeping their prey off guard and swinging wildly.

“Form up!” Umur bellowed. “Do not get separated!”

Hilda, grimacing, pulled back her hood. The black rectangle upon her forehead glowed blue in the shrouded swamp. Though she could feel the power pulling yet more of her strength, she embraced it and threw her arms wide, chanting.

Oh Hilda. Time to spellburn yet again. She’s going to fund her Invoke Patron spell check with 2 points of Agility. To do so, she first rolls on her patron’s spellburn table, rolling a 2 on d4. That result says, “A conduit is opened to Ptah-Ungurath, who supplies magical power in exchange for part of the caster’s soul (expressed in ability score loss). There is a 50% chance that Ptah-Ungurath wants more than the caster in willing to give, and takes 2 points for every 1 point of spellburn gained.” Ugh. I roll d100 and thankfully get a 74. Her patron will “only” take the 2 points of Agility (leaving her at 9 of 11).

Her spell check, then is +2 for the spellburn, +1 for her level. She rolls a [10+2+1] 13, which is the lowest possible result above a failure but will still be useful for this combat. The result says, “A strange apprehension of danger sweeps over the area, and every enemy within 100’ of the caster has a -2 penalty to all attack rolls, saves, skills, and ability checks due to a brooding sense of doom. This penalty lasts for 2d6+CL rounds, but even afterwards those affected may experience bouts of melancholy and despair).” I roll [10+1] 11 rounds, which is roughly 2 full minutes and will undoubtedly cover the entire combat.

With the aid of the penalty, the tenth and eleventh jackals miss Erin, and the twelfth misses Umur (I’m going to stop always listing rolls for this combat given the number of actors).

Sensing the party’s predicament, Erin is going to try casting Holy Sanctuary for the first time. As always, she gains a +1 for her level but a -1 for her Personality, which makes it a straight d20 roll. She rolls a 14, thankfully, which states, “Enemies are compelled to focus their attacks against other targets. As long as an attacker can reasonably attack some other target instead of the cleric, it must choose to do so. In order to resist this compulsion and attack the cleric, an enemy must make a Will save vs. spell check DC. If the cleric is the only reasonable target, the creature need not make a save to attack the cleric. This effect lasts for 1 turn. It is immediately dispelled if the cleric attacks or takes aggressive action in any way.” Those Will saves will be at -2 thanks to Hilda.

The thirteenth jackal misses Haffoot (which would have been a hit if not for Hilda’s penalty). Umur finally gets his turn, missing with his longsword with a 1 on his Deed Die and a roll of [8+1+1] 10, but he does manage a slight shield bash, with a [13+1+1] 15 on the d16 and doing 1 point of damage. The penultimate jackal, though, darts forward and rolls a 17 to bite the dwarf for 2 damage. Finally, the fifteenth jackal attacks Hilda, hitting and doing 3 damage.

A quick status check: Briene & Haffoot unharmed (9 & 6 hp, respectively). Erin 8 of 10 hp. Hilda 11 of 14 hp. Joane & Umur both at 6 of 10 hp. All fifteen swamp jackals remain. YIKES!

A pulse of light swept out of the wizard in all directions, leaving her companions untouched but causing the swamp jackals to whimper and roll their eyes in unease. Though they continued to leap and gnash at them all, their conviction waned as an unnatural dread settled over the pack. It was only when one bravely leapt at the magic user and tore at her legs that the jackals seemed to regain some of their savagery.

Erin Wywood, meanwhile, clutched her crescent pendant with one hand and swept her dagger defensively with the other. A glow began emanating from her white, battle-scarred armor, making her appear like a small moon settled into the moor. The jackals danced away from the cleric, focusing their attention on other members of the party and giving her a moment to assess the situation. Everywhere she looked, furred bodies gnashed at legs or leaps away from wild swings of weapons. Erin’s companions were losing this fight, and badly.

It feels useless to describe each individual action in the narrative, so let’s proceed with Round 2. The first jackal fails its Will save badly (natural 2), which I’ll say means it cowers for a turn. The second misses Joane (only because of Hilda’s spell), the third misses Haffoot, and the fourth misses Umur. Whew.

Joane decides to target an uninjured jackal and rolls a massive 3 on her Deed Die. She’s going to try and throw one of the creatures into another as her Mighty Deed. She hits with a [12+1+3], killing the first jackal she stabs. I’ll let her make a second attack at d16, and she hits there too with a [14+1+3] 18! Thanks to the Deed Die damage, it doesn’t matter what I decide for damage dice on that second attack, because it kills the next jackal as well. Great job, Joane!

The fifth jackal again misses Joane only thanks to the -2 from Hilda. The sixth misses Umur badly, but the seventh rolls a 15 and bites Haffoot for 2 damage. The halfling swings both swords, but only hits with one of them, doing 2 damage as well. That same jackal returns the attack but misses.

Briene will shoot at one of the injured jackals harassing Joane and hit with a [19+1+1] 21, skewering and killing it. Another jackal misses Umur, leaving Hilda to swing with her staff at the one that hurt her (no surprise, she misses). The next jackal rolls a natural 20 on its Will save and attacks Erin, but misses.

Speaking of natural 20s, the next jackal scores a critical hit on Umur. Yikes. It rolls a 2 on the monster crit table, which states “Stunning blow! The PC falls to the bottom of the initiative count for the remainder of the battle.” – that stinks for Umur but could have been a lot worse, especially since the swamp jackal only rolls 1 damage.

Recognizing that the jackal in front of her is no longer affected by her spell (which would end this turn anyway), she strikes with her dagger, hitting with a [16+1] 17 and doing [4+1] 5 damage and killing it. The next jackal misses Haffoot.

Another high roll from a jackal facing Umur hits for max damage, dropping him to a single hit point. Meanwhile, the fifteenth swamp jackal bites Hilda for another point of damage. Umur, clearly harried and wounded, rolls a 1 on his Deed die and pitifully low on his two strikes, missing.

Round 2 status check: Briene is still unharmed (9 hp). Erin 8 of 10 hp. Haffoot 4 of 6 hp. Hilda 10 of 14 hp. Joane 6 of 10 hp. Umur 1 of 10 hp. Eleven of fifteen swamp jackals remain, and three of those are injured.

Though they are technically winning the fight, I’m going to do a morale check for the pack of swamp jackals. The way morale checks in DCC work is by rolling a d20 Will save at DC 11. Failure means the creatures attempt to flee. The jackals will be at a -2 save because of Hilda’s spell. Their normal Will save is +1, so it will be a -1 total for the roll. I also won’t roll individually; they attacked as a pack and will flee as a pack.

The morale check roll is a [15-1] 14. They stay and fight, which means that Umur and Haffoot are in danger of dying.

We press on. Round 3!

The first jackal rolls another natural 20 on Erin, doing 3 damage and “Legs knocked out from beneath the character, knocking her prone.” Another jackal takes advantage of her being prone and just hits with the +2 bonus, doing 2 more damage and bringing Erin to 3 hp.

Joane steps in and obliterates one of the wounded jackals, doing 9 damage (it had a single hp left).

Meanwhile, two jackals miss Haffoot and another misses Umur. Haffoot again hits with one of her two swords and kills the jackal she had previously injured. Seeing his plight, Briene fires an arrow at one near Umur and kills a jackal with a max roll of 6 damage. Hilda again misses with her staff. Another jackal misses Umur, and Erin also misses. A jackal misses Haffoot, but another bites Erin, dealing 1 damage and leaving her at 2 hp. We now have three PCs within a single strike of death! To make matters worse, the one latched onto Hilda is starting to do serious damage. She takes 3 more damage.

The round ends with Umur, who rolls a 2 on his Deed die. He rolls a [19+1+2] with his longsword, dealing an absurd [8+2] 10 damage and killing another jackal. His shield bash, however, misses.

Round 3 status check: Briene is still unharmed (9 hp). Erin 3 of 10 hp. Haffoot 4 of 6 hp. Hilda 7 of 14 hp. Joane 6 of 10 hp. Umur 1 of 10 hp. Seven swamp jackals remain.

Time for another morale check now that their number is less than half of what started this assault: The pack rolls a Will save of [16-1] 15. Wow. Apparently they are desperate, hungry, and sensing that a meal is close. I’ll continue to roll at the end of each round in which one of the jackals dies.

Round 4 will be, I think, the deciding one. But since this is already an incredibly long chapter, let’s find out what happens next time! Will it be death for one or more of our PCs, brought down by scavengers even after purging the forest of the Hound of Hirot? Or will the group rally and survive the Sunken Fens? It’s going to be a close call, either way.

The next moments were a frenzy of activity. Jackals darted in to tear and rip at the group of bedraggled adventurers, each of whom swung weapons in a desperate attempt to survive. The animals were desperate and clearly hungry, their ribs straining against patchy fur, yet there was something unnervingly intelligent about their assault as well.

At one point, Joane pierced a creature with the broad head of the wolf-spear and flung the corpse into another, smashing it against the trunk of a tree. Umur heard a sharp yelp behind him and turned, only to see an animal with one of Briene’s arrow shafts protruding from its eye socket. Yet amidst these fleeting, heroic moments, too many teeth found purchase. Soon all the companions bled from wounds on their legs and torsos, their attacks slowing and steps stumbling. Though the adventurers had thinned the pack of scavengers considerably, the jackals still outnumbered them.

Doom of the Savage Kings, Chapter 14