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yubishines) wrote2015-07-21 05:08 am
yubishines) wrote2015-07-21 05:08 am
sehnsucht: i should go
I'm eventually going to be porting all the tabletop summaries over to Dreamwidth, but one way or another, summaries are going to appear here from now on.
Sehnsucht summary:
Chapter 2: THE AUTUMN OF MY DISCONTENT
Part 3: "I Should Go; or, The Wider World"
- Some time after the trip to the catacombs, a funeral is held for the cattle farmer whose body hasn't been found ever since the rivers flooded. Seems the ceremony had to be delayed to allow all of her old friends to get to the village, because...
- ...turns out that back in the day, old Farmer Waters was Knight-Commander Helena, a decorated soldier who travelled all over the world and led a company of some very strange warriors indeed.
- (for people who know your mass effects, count your references now!)
- The kids turn up for the funeral, mostly because they know Helena was Rana's friend, but mostly they're trying to be polite and stifle their yawns. After the eulogy (delivered by a whip-thin, ill-looking man who sounds like there's something wrong with his lungs), everyone gets up and drifts around in small groups.
- Polly, Nicholas the Baker's son, is also there, partly because he's a kid who tags around after us sometimes, but also because one of the people attending the funeral is an elven church templar; Polly is presumably staring in hero worship through the rest of the scene.
- Jami promptly marches up to three people decked out in barbarian gear and gets all up in their business. The chieftain in red tolerates this for all of a minute before picking him up and bench-pressing him. ("What's your saving throw vs. bicep curls?")
- Things almost get dicey, until Rana blurts out that she's sorry they didn't know Helena and it's her fault she's dead.
- The barbarians exchange glances. The youngest one talks to Rana quietly for a minute, while the chieftain puts Jami down and is willing to entertain his questions, such as about Jami's magical drum, and whether it was his tribe that Jami encountered some time ago (answer: no, it was his shithead brother's) (in no universe does anybody like Wreav at all).
- Some other encounters: Khalil and Caroline talk to Magister Morin, an elderly scholar with a really odd verbal tic, and who knows all about curse-breaking and counter-magic. He helps identify the runestone Caroline received from the fae.
- Also, on learning that Khalil has been teaching himself magic out of mysterious books he found in the river, he offers to tutor him. Khalil is exceedingly conflicted about this, because 1) screw mentors, all they do is reject him and pass him over for other students, but 2) magic though, but 3) screw mentors, but 4) MAGIC THOUGH.
- A legionnaire in full, antiquated-looking armor goes up to the casket and sets a helmet on it, standing in silent vigil. Rana approaches him to ask if he's alright; as the conversation goes on, the magically-inclined kids start to get the creeping feeling that there's nothing actually behind his(their?) helmet. Hmm.
- "Are you a... magic creature?" "OH MY GOD, KHALIL, YOU CAN'T JUST ASK PEOPLE IF THEY'RE MAGIC."
- "Caroline is keeping an eye on Jami to be sure that he doesn't ask how many of us can fit in legionnaire's suit."
- We also speak with a dark elf wreathed in shawls who calls herself Erellyrra; while some of us have never encountered a drow, most of the kids know enough to be intimidated; Jami critically botches a roll or two, and with the scrap of information that dark elves live in tunnels under the mountains, comes to the conclusion that she's a dwarf.
- (Erellyrra disapproves [-5])
- Someone snorts at Caroline: "I'm glad someone here's having fun."
- Finally, we come to the person who Helena left the farm in her will: Knight-Errant Garrett Valkan, who looks like a regular human except that he's apparently been the victim of a fae curse some time ago. Luckily he doesn't seem offended by the kids:
- Anyway, we belatedly introduce ourselves; also, since Garrett and probably Magister Morin are going to be sticking around, it's likely the rest of Helena's old battalion will be coming around every so often.
- Postscript, talking about fairies and curses and whether Garrett called the fae fuckboys or not and how most of the fae are actually musicians, which obviously means that Danny Sexbang is a fae who hangs around some random place in the country who claims this land as Bonertown.
--
Anyway, after the funeral, we did worldbuilding:
Some notes:
- The town Red mentioned has been edited to be Inselsterne -- which is now a Recent Ruin, after a star fell on the town and destroyed it, supposedly as "punishment for defying St. Solaire".
- Slightly closer to town is an oceanside town, where some of Caroline's foster-aunts live.
- Yharnam is still Yharnam because, unlike Hark-Knopmor, there isn't a good anagram for it.
- During the game we discovered that the expansion "Across the Veil" had been released, which includes a lot of undead content (and I really feel like the developers have been reading the Abhorsen rules on departmentv and went YES, GOOD, CANON NOW) -- which led to us creating the Gravestone Gateway, a portal to the underworld. This was a good idea.
- Speaking of good ideas, the Eaten's Grave is exactly what it implies.
- Speaking of echo bazaar, the sunken kingdom is some horrible amalgamation of London and Rapture and Zanarkand.
- NO LIGHT. NO LAW. NO GODS. NO KINGS.
I don't think I'm actually going to go into every location, or at least everything we determined about them, since we're hopefully going to be hitting up most of them -- a neat thing about Beyond the Wall is that you choose whether you visited the place, heard about it from other people, or read about it, and you roll for how accurate your knowledge is, which means you can be wrong.
Next chapter: Moving to Further Afield and a minor timeskip.
Sehnsucht summary:
Chapter 2: THE AUTUMN OF MY DISCONTENT
Part 3: "I Should Go; or, The Wider World"
- Some time after the trip to the catacombs, a funeral is held for the cattle farmer whose body hasn't been found ever since the rivers flooded. Seems the ceremony had to be delayed to allow all of her old friends to get to the village, because...
- ...turns out that back in the day, old Farmer Waters was Knight-Commander Helena, a decorated soldier who travelled all over the world and led a company of some very strange warriors indeed.
- (for people who know your mass effects, count your references now!)
- The kids turn up for the funeral, mostly because they know Helena was Rana's friend, but mostly they're trying to be polite and stifle their yawns. After the eulogy (delivered by a whip-thin, ill-looking man who sounds like there's something wrong with his lungs), everyone gets up and drifts around in small groups.
- Polly, Nicholas the Baker's son, is also there, partly because he's a kid who tags around after us sometimes, but also because one of the people attending the funeral is an elven church templar; Polly is presumably staring in hero worship through the rest of the scene.
- Jami promptly marches up to three people decked out in barbarian gear and gets all up in their business. The chieftain in red tolerates this for all of a minute before picking him up and bench-pressing him. ("What's your saving throw vs. bicep curls?")
- Things almost get dicey, until Rana blurts out that she's sorry they didn't know Helena and it's her fault she's dead.
- The barbarians exchange glances. The youngest one talks to Rana quietly for a minute, while the chieftain puts Jami down and is willing to entertain his questions, such as about Jami's magical drum, and whether it was his tribe that Jami encountered some time ago (answer: no, it was his shithead brother's) (in no universe does anybody like Wreav at all).
- Some other encounters: Khalil and Caroline talk to Magister Morin, an elderly scholar with a really odd verbal tic, and who knows all about curse-breaking and counter-magic. He helps identify the runestone Caroline received from the fae.
- Also, on learning that Khalil has been teaching himself magic out of mysterious books he found in the river, he offers to tutor him. Khalil is exceedingly conflicted about this, because 1) screw mentors, all they do is reject him and pass him over for other students, but 2) magic though, but 3) screw mentors, but 4) MAGIC THOUGH.
- A legionnaire in full, antiquated-looking armor goes up to the casket and sets a helmet on it, standing in silent vigil. Rana approaches him to ask if he's alright; as the conversation goes on, the magically-inclined kids start to get the creeping feeling that there's nothing actually behind his(their?) helmet. Hmm.
- "Are you a... magic creature?" "OH MY GOD, KHALIL, YOU CAN'T JUST ASK PEOPLE IF THEY'RE MAGIC."
- "Caroline is keeping an eye on Jami to be sure that he doesn't ask how many of us can fit in legionnaire's suit."
- We also speak with a dark elf wreathed in shawls who calls herself Erellyrra; while some of us have never encountered a drow, most of the kids know enough to be intimidated; Jami critically botches a roll or two, and with the scrap of information that dark elves live in tunnels under the mountains, comes to the conclusion that she's a dwarf.
- (Erellyrra disapproves [-5])
Jami: So what you're telling me is you come from a land down under.
GM: That didn't happen. You did not quote a Men at Work song in character. I won't allow it.
Jami: You allowed all these other things, but not that?
GM: GM VETO.
Caroline: Oh really, we can't quote songs from 1980s new wave bands?
Rana: DO YOU KNOW WHO'S IN THE FOREST RIGHT NOW?
GM: I NEVER MADE ANY DIRECT REFERENCES, he said, lying.
Caroline: As soon as we left, Da Wei started doing Dance Magic Dance, be real.
[Once the legionnaire is out of earshot:]
Khalil: I read about this! They usually stand guard outside temples and important stuff! But they don't move or talk, they're like, sedentary.
Maria: Helena must've enchanted it.
Caroline: I dunno, some of our friends can move and talk but they aren't exactly intelligent.
Jami: [deadeyed stare]
Caroline: I'll explain to you what a dark elf is when we get back.
- Someone snorts at Caroline: "I'm glad someone here's having fun."
- Finally, we come to the person who Helena left the farm in her will: Knight-Errant Garrett Valkan, who looks like a regular human except that he's apparently been the victim of a fae curse some time ago. Luckily he doesn't seem offended by the kids:
[Reminiscing about the knight-commander:]
Garrett: It was always just a question here, a suggestion there, one badly-timed mouth-off here, and next thing you know you've got half these people pointing guns at you and your friends --
Jami: What's a gun?
GM: I'm getting into character, shut up.
Khalil: So like one time our priest cursed the fae lord and then the horses ended up on the roof and there was a giant evil star in the sky and then we went in and Rana burned an ogre and then we got... and we went and...
Caroline: Speaking of the fae, um. What did you do?
Jami: "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOUR FAAACE?"
Caroline: That is not what she asked!
Garrett: Let's just say I caught the wrong end of... what we'd call a debate over a possession of territory.
Caroline: Did you steal a fae lord's balls?
Garrett:
Garrett: Excuse me?
Khalil: We stole a fae lord's balls.
Caroline: No, we --
Rana: No, it was the other guy who did.
Khalil: We stole them from someone else who had stolen them.
Rana: We were trying to get them back!
Khalil: Counter-stealing!
Caroline: Returning!
Garrett: I'm gonna take a wild guess and say you're the one mostly keeping the others in check.
Rana: [looks at him]
Rana: [thinks about coming up with the plan to infiltrate the catacombs by literally sitting on each other's shoulders and draping themselves in robes]
Rana: [nods and smiles]
- Anyway, we belatedly introduce ourselves; also, since Garrett and probably Magister Morin are going to be sticking around, it's likely the rest of Helena's old battalion will be coming around every so often.
- Postscript, talking about fairies and curses and whether Garrett called the fae fuckboys or not and how most of the fae are actually musicians, which obviously means that Danny Sexbang is a fae who hangs around some random place in the country who claims this land as Bonertown.
--
Anyway, after the funeral, we did worldbuilding:
Some notes:
- The town Red mentioned has been edited to be Inselsterne -- which is now a Recent Ruin, after a star fell on the town and destroyed it, supposedly as "punishment for defying St. Solaire".
- Slightly closer to town is an oceanside town, where some of Caroline's foster-aunts live.
- Yharnam is still Yharnam because, unlike Hark-Knopmor, there isn't a good anagram for it.
- During the game we discovered that the expansion "Across the Veil" had been released, which includes a lot of undead content (and I really feel like the developers have been reading the Abhorsen rules on departmentv and went YES, GOOD, CANON NOW) -- which led to us creating the Gravestone Gateway, a portal to the underworld. This was a good idea.
- Speaking of good ideas, the Eaten's Grave is exactly what it implies.
- Speaking of echo bazaar, the sunken kingdom is some horrible amalgamation of London and Rapture and Zanarkand.
- NO LIGHT. NO LAW. NO GODS. NO KINGS.
I don't think I'm actually going to go into every location, or at least everything we determined about them, since we're hopefully going to be hitting up most of them -- a neat thing about Beyond the Wall is that you choose whether you visited the place, heard about it from other people, or read about it, and you roll for how accurate your knowledge is, which means you can be wrong.
Next chapter: Moving to Further Afield and a minor timeskip.