The Valley of Yurd Session 003-004: Firing up the CONFLICT ENGINE

     The session last Wednesday was a casual affair, with 4 players in attendance. We did a little in-town interaction, a bit of dungeoncrawling and then carousing. Boilerplate OSR experience circa 2015. But the web of connections and inter-woven motivations present in the Shucked Oyster could not abide this, and we ended the session with abject anarchy literal minutes away from bursting forth throughout the Aberlin region. This was doubly impactful as we were just days away from Oktoberstein, a Braunstein event scheduled around a Harvest Festival. This post will cover both the Adventuring session from October 2 AND the Braunstein from October 5. 

    We had basically the exact same crew as the previous week with the exception of Taff being missing, and of course last week Alden was decapitated by a Leatherface Berserker Cultist. This week that player was playing the surviving porter Belvedere, who hired his own porter. He took the name Alden for himself and bestowed the title of Belvedere upon the new porter. It is not clear how many times this cycle has occurred, Dread Pirate Roberts style. 

THE SESSION

    The players sniffed around town looking for work, and learned that an anonymous benefactor was offering a reward for anyone who could provide the identity of The Dark Shadow (A Batman-style vigilante that has been causing problems for the local criminal underworld). The players discussed this possibility and came to the conclusion that causing problems for the criminal underworld is actually very cool, and so they elected to "Let him cook" and headed back to the forgotten shrine-dungeon they were exploring the previous week. 

    Pushing deeper into the dungeon, they encountered a room with pews and a grand mural. The mural depicted a scene of a giant purple ape-demon triumphing in combat against a man that bears a SHOCKING resemblance to local eccentric foreign aristocrat Mungo Borlov (Who is certainly NOT a vampire). Perhaps this bald, nocturnal noble has more to him than meets the eye? The likeness deviated slightly, the Borlov in the mural was sillier, and more pathetic looking than the dour man of reality. Clearly this cult does not like him in the slightest!

"It's over Borlov! I have depicted you as a soyjak!"

    They searched a store-room and saw little gleaming eyes peering from a crack in the wall, just big enough for a medium-sized dog to squeeze through. Gard, the fighter with 1 hit-point (Now followed by some new men-at-arms) was not taking any chances (Having only 1 hit-point) and elected to pursue Violence of Action, charging the crack to stab and the eyes with spears. Two of the sets of eyes went dark, and the third fled into the little tunnel. Pulling the corpses out of the crack, the players discovered that Moss Dwarves (an idea I crudely pilfered from Dolmenwood) were not a superstition at all, but in fact very real! Gard vowed to leave a bit of mouldy cheese and sour beer out on his window-sill every night that week, lest he incur their mischievous vengeance! 

    Pressing onwards the players came upon a room with a huge brazier in the center, and obsidian mirrors all over the walls. The door locked itself behind them, and they started poking around. There was a big bucket of dried slugs, and after Jonathan's experience with slug venom the previous week the party deduced that the slugs probably got burned on the brazier to induce hallucinations. Alden 2 said "what the hell" and threw a slug on the coals of the brazier. The smoke filled the room, and the party had a sweat-lodge trip. Everyone had a reasonably stable experience (Like being in a Tool video) but Gard failed his poison save and had a horrible, unspeakable vision which left him rattled for the rest of the session. 

    Poking around further they discovered a hidden door, and based on the dust on the floor this secret room was not known to the cult. Who knows how long this place had been untouched? The walls were a blood-red marble, and in the center of the room a sarcophagus of similar make. Inside, a silver-haired vampire lay, with a beautiful war-horn, shield, and scarlet chainmail. One problem: The chainmail cannot be removed without removing the stake that protrudes from the vampire's chest. The players attempt to remove the stake, take the chainmail, and re-stake him. They then get an idea: A terrible idea. A stupid, terrible, no-good nonsense idea.

    "What if we put one of the slugs in a bowl of oil, and put the bowl in the sarcophagus, and lit the oil just before closing the lid? Then, the slug would burn and the sarcophagus would fill with hallucinatory smoke, as a trap for whoever else might end up poking around here!" 

    They all agreed that this was an excellent idea and had Belvedere 2 retrieve a slug from the Slug-Sack (Having removed all the dried slugs from the bucket and put them into a sack). And the trap was laid. I have written down a chance of success for this scheme, and we'll see if it ever comes up. Probably the first-ever instance of my players trying to set a trap in a dungeon for other, later dungeoncrawlers. Anyhow. 

    Pushing back the way they came through the chapel with the mural, they entered into a well-stocked alchemist's laboratory. Here they fought a giant spider, found a potion, and a door into what would be the last room of the night: Svetlana's Boudoir. 

    Svetlana, one of the women of the Oyster, was maintaining a "home away from home" in the temple of Malchimpus, complete with a decadent poster bed, an armoire of perfumes, and a secondary closet. The players knew it to be hers on account of Cromworth Barleystein, owner of the local tavern, sobbing uncontrollably in her bed. He squealed on everything, how Svetlana and Pleasant Peter (The gravedigger) are in on some horrible cult, how she had lured him down to "Show him the Truth of things", how she manipulated him for his money, etc etc etc. The party led him out and decided to quit while they were ahead, take their treasure and go home. On to the carousing tables!!!

    The carousing results from the previous session had resulted in the Oyster being burned down, and though it was rebuilding, the party elected to carouse at Cromworth's pub instead of the ramshackle construction site that was the Oyster. They were doubly motivated to do this on account of the incredible lifetime discount that Cromworth offered them for "Saving his life". We got a number of great results from this round of partying.

    

    1. Jonathan the Once-Herder broke the strings on Ethel's harp, earning him the title of "Harp-Breaker" (Dream-maker, love-taker)

    2. Francois managed to steal a precious amulet from Garfunkle the Wise (This result was hilarious because Francois' player is also playing Garfunkle at the faction level)

    3. Alden 2 got irritable and drunk, started a barfight that escalated out of control and in the scuffle one of the ladies of the Oyster was killed. Calliope, who had always had her face veiled, lay dead in the street, and it was revealed that she had all this time been a Medusa. More on this as we set the stage for the Braunstein.

GAME-STATE at the START of OKTOBERSTEIN

    The wednesday session ended in-game on friday night, meaning the revelation of Calliope as a monster would hit the town the very day that the Braunstein starts. Mungo Borlov was visibly grief-stricken, it was known in town that he fiercely loved Calliope. Gaston the Righteous, upon learning that Calliope was a monster, acted according to his conditional triggers from the Shucked Oyster module:

    The Oyster may already have burned down, but for the horrible crime of harbouring this wretched being of Chaos, Gaston slew every single woman of the Oyster in a fit of rage and left to brood over this betrayal in the forest, Lancelot-style. Naturally, this prevented him from appearing in the tournament for Oktoberstein, the conceit and excuse for our Braunstein event. So what is going on here?

    We had 5 Patron characters present at this festival, a feast dedicated to Frobar, a local deity of the earth and of farmers. 

    1. King Elgar of Aberlin, a Yurdish king and the host of the festival. He has been concerned mostly of late with establishing a proper road and trade route between his city and the Yurjan city of Galurgan on the north side of the river. Many speculate this move is motivated by the influence of his wife Kenilda, who herself hails from Galurgan and is ill-liked by the people for her foreign origins and customs. 

    2. Prince Edric of Ulport, the only legitimate son of King Elgar who tends to a castle and a few villages in the south end of his father's domain. He is very well-liked, known for his virtue and courage, as well as his great skill as a tactician and warrior. He seemed very concerned with impressing Princess Alma of Getwinn, dedicating much of his efforts in the Tournament to her and generally trying to maintain her attention. 

    2.5 Wuldric the Bastard, one of King Elgar's illegitimate sons, who runs the largest merchant guild in the region. His player was unable to attend, but he did leave me some conditional orders to execute in his absence, and is also very concerned with improving trade relations with the Yurjan kingdoms north of the river. 

    3. King Arn of Getwinn, a Yurdish king whose domain lies southwest of Aberlin. He has come to the festival as an opportunity for diplomatic hob-knobbing, but has many concerns. The trade relations with Galurgan seem lopsided, as the Yurdish southern kingdoms are much more prosperous than the north. Furthermore, in recent memory King Arn fought a defensive war against invading Yurjans, a war which saw Wuldric the Bastard serve as an officer and distinguish himself for his great tactical cunning. As such, King Arn is greatly wary of these northerners and their strange gods. Additionally, there is the matter of his daughter, Princess Alma, who seems to be on the receiving end of attempted courtship by both Prince Edric and...

    4. King Odilon of Certh, a Yurjan king whose city lies west of Galurgan. His attendance at this festival has raised many eyebrows, as his father was responsible for the invasion of Getwinn some years ago. That old king has died, and King Odilon seems to be a more subtle ruler. What he hopes to gain in relation to the southern kingdoms is unknown, but he has made moves towards courtship with Princess Alma, to the great chagrin of Prince Edric.

    5. Garfunkle the Wise, a Yurdish scholar whose tower outside Aberlin stands as a pillar of learning and secrets. He is known to pay great sums to adventurers who bring him artefacts and knowledge of occult or esoteric significance. He admittedly did very little overtly in this Braunstein, but he never wasted a single opportunity to schmooze and grovel and generally play yes-man to King Elgar. 

    The night before the festival began, King Odilon financed a grand party on the shores of the river, with a huge bonfire and endlessly flowing wine and frivolity. During the party, a wealthy merchant was found robbed and murdered, with the calling card of the Dark Shadow left on the corpse. Has the masked vigilante taken up a taste for slaying the rich? Is he giving it to the poor, or is something else going on here? All who were present at the party (Everyone except Garfunkle, who was canonically at Cromworth's tavern having his jewellery stolen by Francois) had to make a roll to determine if they were hungover, and asked on an honour system to factor this handicap in to their turn 1 orders. I don't recall if anyone failed this roll or not, but it was a nice bit of intrigue by King Odilon's player to try and handicap the opposition. 

THE EVENTS OF OKTOBERSTEIN

    This was intended to be an event where we covered about 5 days of "Stuff Happening", with each day turn taking about 1 hour. In the end, we spent the entire day on "Stuff Happening" on the Saturday, but this was fine because it still had the intended outcome: Generate motives for conflict at the Patron-level and kickstart the new campaign's static initial gamestate into motion. 

All this work laying out the fairgrounds to scale, and I didn't even need it

    After a dreary religious ceremony that kicked off the festival, we got right into the tournament. The first day's event was to be jousting. I allowed player characters from the "Adventurer Level" to join provided they were at least level 2 and paid a fee of 20 gold per event. We then broke into the jousting rules. It took us a few tries and restarts, as we first missed the detail of available defensive positions based on target, and then missed the detail that an unhorsing ended to match, regardless of what round you were on. But we eventually got it right and the players took great glee in working out the best "Meta" for the jousting minigame. As soon as one strategy was identified as obviously superior, it would naturally be planned against and a new meta would appear, very satisfying. 

    Prince Edric devoted his rides to Princess Alma and presented her with a enormous flower, to determine her response we consulted the WOMEN TABLE from the Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets. She was aloof, though sympathetic to him. She had a marginally more positive impression of King Odilon of Certh, who pulled her aside to the merchant pavillion when Edric went in for his last ride in the semi-finals. This attempt to draw attention away from the prince ended up being likely in his favour as Prince Edric was summarily humiliated in the semi-finals and defeated. This back-and-forth competition between the two was about to be cut short, however. 

    We had some fun with the NPC knights generated to fill out the tournament. A crowd favourite was Sir Shanahan the Disabled, who was missing his left leg. Whoever was controlling Sir Shanahan was not allowed to choose "Lean Right" as his defensive position, and this little flair made for a less stagnant game whenever he rode. He got pretty far, too, but in the end the winner of the tournament and the recipient of a new noble title, Lord of Castle Gordon, went to Ser Gatson the Swift (Not to be confuseed with Gaston the Righteous, who never showed up). This was a huge scandal, as the king had promised to bestow the land and title to whoever won the tournament, but to give control of the border-checkpoint between Aberlin and Getwinn to a YURJAN? A foreign knight from the heathen north? People had very little time to react to this upset, because at this moment, a rider barreled into the fairgrounds, screaming "BANDITS BANDITS ARE ATTACKING"

    During the tournament, I was periodically pulling King Elgar's player aside to handle some combats off-screen, using the dice-pool mass combat system from Chainmail. You see, his patrols that were keeping an eye on the countryside were being attacked by bandits. Though the patrols of 5 horsemen each were massively outnumbered by 25-50 bandits each, the ratios of Medium Horse to Heavy Footmen meant that the patrols dealt heavy casualties to the bandits, and in one skirmish a horseman escaped, riding to warn the people at the fairgrounds. 

    King Elgar declared a state of emergency, the peasants were ordered to evacuate to the city, escorted by the infantry guards present at the festival. The knights who had been competing in the tournament were conscripted and rode out with Prince Edric to find and dispatch the bandits. Unbeknownst to them, they were headed in the wrong direction. The bulk of the bandit force was not west, where the rider had come from, but east, between the fairgrounds and the city. The evacuating peasants with their guards were ambushed from both sides by bandits emerging from the cornfields to slay and plunder!

    Despite having the tactical advantage in terms of initial positioning, the dice were not on my side and my bandits were slain after killing only 36 of the 900 fleeing peasantry. This battle was the straw that broke the camel's back. Either we are doing something egregiously incorrect, or we just do not like Chainmail mass combat that much. Bill and I are going to dig into this subject with some test battles that are not campaign-pertinent and get to the bottom of Rank-and-Flank medieval combat that works for our table. Following the battle I made some morale checks and it became clear the remaining bandits lurking in the area were NOT interested in tangling with 20 Heavy Cavalrymen. The session was brought to a close and I took "Next week or so" orders orally from each of the faction players. 

    Before everyone left, I revealed a twist from the Shucked Oyster that got the players scratching their heads. Gaston the Righteous slew 20 prostitutes on Saturday, but on Sunday morning 10 of them were back alive, working on rebuilding the Oyster as though nothing had happened. None of the townsfolk remember Gaston killing these women (They remember him killing the ones who did not come back), and overall it's as if nothing had ever happened to them. I explain that the Patron characters are in on this amnesia, they have no memory or awareness of this temporal slip, but the adventurers definitely notice that something strange is going on. The end of the day left us with all sorts of questions as the central conflicts of the campaign begin to take shape:

    

    1. What is the cause of this time-slip, and why has nobody noticed?

    2. What are the objectives of the cult of Malchimpus, and just how many people are involved?

    3. What is the motive for King Elgar to be trying to push forward good relations with the Yurjans? Is it just his wife pulling the strings or is something bigger going on?

    4. Why did the Dark Shadow kill that merchant? Unarmed targets have not been his style until now

    5. Where did those bandits come from? There hasn't been a raid this ambitious in years, and they were well-equipped. 

    6. What exactly does Garfunkle the Wise want? Why is he always hanging around important people? 

    All these questions and MORE will be surely be (Somewhat) answered in sessions to come!