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yubishines) wrote2015-07-29 12:34 am
yubishines) wrote2015-07-29 12:34 am
sehnsucht: a night at the inn
Chapter 3: REMEMBER THAT TIME WHEN...
Subtitle: "We Survived But We're Dead"
This is regrettably missing a lot of dialogue. We usually record sessions so I can go back and catch stuff, but we didn't this time. But also, things got kind of hectic and I was distracted from scribbling notes.
Jesus christ what even was this.
February, 999: A few years have passed. The children, not so much children now, are about fifteen, a little more knowledgable about the world but we've only ventured out on brief trips here and there. We meet up one winter night at the inn and talk about the places we've visited or learned of in the interim. Catching up and so on.
- ...however, as we grow up and get some distance on our respective childhoods, some (all) of us have been going over certain events in our heads, and now remember some things we'd repressed or just hadn't thought about for years.
- Conversation soon dries up. Khalil is drinking and not talking. Jami is pointedly not touching anything stronger than water. Caroline is drinking heavily.
- (Rana does speak up and say that hey, remember Red, the strange woman we found in the cyrpt? She couldn't put her finger on it at the time, but Rana recognized her and so should Jami -- it was her they saw talking to the miller, when they were spying on him. She goes quiet after that and stares out the window.)
- Not to mention, with the Recent Events, there's more reason not to talk:
-- Maria encounters a travelling fortune teller who imparts a cryptic warning of doom -- but nothing clearer than that.
-- Jami notices that the baker's family is ill at ease. Unfortunately, Jami's idea of asking what's wrong involves putting Polly into a headlock, which goes about as well as expected.*
-- Rana sees a star fall in a nearby field, which makes this the third adventure now that had some star-related omen. She hauls the meteorite home to her blacksmith father to appraise. ("Your dad has entered a strange mood!")
-- Khalil once again has a portentous dream of mysterious royalty, and wakes up knowing their True Name.
-- And a literal band of zombies wander into town; Caroline and some villagers succeed in driving them off, gaining her Captain Glenn's respect.
* "You put Apollo into a headlock. You horrible monster."
"You're the reason he has all those bandages."
"[WOUNDED ANIMAL NOISES]"
"...I haven't played Dual Destines, did I just say something wrong?"
- Still, being haunted by spectres of the past doesn't stop us from... being us:
- Speaking of haunted, there's a chill and a hush in the air. There's shadowy movement from outside the inn. Everyone else, including the bartender, flees the building. Khalil (who has been getting tutoring from Mordin during the timeskip and picking up verbal tics) offers his professional opinion: "Magic coming. Something big. Something dark. Something cold." In response, Jami dumps a jug of water over his head.
- "THANKS, now I'm COLDER." "But are you sober?"
- An apparition enters the inn. It's screaming. And screaming.
- Attempts to get it to leave include yelling back (no effect), punching it (no effect), and smacking it with Gideon's hammer (we'll never know, swing and miss). Caroline, unsteadily: "Look, I've been through too much to deal with two screaming ghost clouds." She throws her dagger. It misses by a mile and hits the dart board in the bullseye.
- Just as the ghost divebombs Caroline, Khalil jumps up on a table, proclaims "I AM THE ETERNAL FLAME, BABY" and barrages the ghost with Burning Hands. Fire (and silver, as it happens) works amazingly on the undead! It also works pretty good on humans who get caught in the crossfire too. Caroline is now singed and missing most of her eyebrows.
- Just as the ghost dissipates, there's a knocking at the door.
- "...Hi, Mr. Herne..."
- Hunter Liam isn't much surprised at the disarray, as it happens; in fact, he's here because he needs assistance with something related to the fae.
- The kids** respond to this with some bafflement and scorn -- seriously, how are we the go-to guys for this kind of thing? Where's Captain Glenn? Or Father Boivin? -- but it tapers off when Liam brings out the person who made the call for help.
** I feel like I need a new moniker for the group that isn't "kids", now that they're in their teens, but 1) "party" doesn't sound right and 2) implying we won't be basically at the same maturity level even at nineteen and endgame.
- It's a fae child with spiky hair (possibly younger than us, though with fairies, who can tell) called Nae-gai, someone Jami and one or two of the others recognize from the court. Nae-gai meekly confesses that he opened the door to an ancient barrow, which almost certainly caused the phantasm at the inn and the zombie incursion.
- He leads us away from town, where we have another nasty surprise: A group of treasure hunters are at the threshold, prepping to enter and loot the place. And Liam seems to recognize their ringleader: a grizzled, scarred mercenary, blind in one eye, who was present for Helena's funeral.
- Liam: "Are you kidding me." "If it isn't the wild hunter of the north! How's it going?" "Kinda weird to see you this far north." "Eh. Had a contract."
- Maria and Jami (mostly Maria) convince Zaeed to piss off, though it's not entirely "intimidated into fleeing" and more like "figuring he's not paid enough to handle a pack of shitkids along with a cursed tomb." He and his buddies leave, unfortunately not telling us who hired them in the first place...
- We all peer into the entranceway (our party includes Liam and Nae-gai, which means more survivability for us but also means each combat gives us a minute breather while the GM has to crunch dice against himself). In lieu of a torch, Khalil summons a little floating mage light. The walls gleam with magical runes and the floor is nothing but pressure plates.
- Luckily, the runes appear to be proximity-based and the plates trigger dart traps that travel at neck-height, skyrim-style; this means we can safely crawl through the entrance hallway (despite a scare when a dart rips through Maria's hat).
- "What does Quoth feel about all this?" "[worried cawing]" "Remember what happened the last time he got taken into a tomb?"
- We reach a foyer where we can stand up again. Caroline attempts to decipher the carvings on the walls; they tell of someone called "Old Owl Eyes." The lord entombed himself here after he mad with paranoia, with a curse on anyone who would break in and try to raise his corpse.
- SUDDEN SPOOPY SKELEGHOUL ATTACK
- The dice are shockingly kind for our combats -- lots of rolls for max damage, some 20s, some lucky dodges and saves. This actually ends up seriously unnerving Liam, after two or three of us get scratched but otherwise unfazed. This isn't normal, because ghouls have Deadly Touch, which paralyzes foes and (with killing blows) causes them to return as ghouls themselves.
- We descend further into the barrow, until we come to another room full of pressure plates and proximity runes.
- Jami excuses himself. He goes back to the combat room, slings one of the ghoul corpses over his shoulder, returns, and hucks it onto the tiles.
- "Saving throws, everyone." "Wait, what?"
- Everyone promptly fails their save, except for one. Rana turns around in time to see everyone, including our NPCs, crumple to the ground, out cold.
- As she's trying to shake them awake, the shadows seem to deepen and a voice comes from nowhere: "Now, I wouldn't really do that if I were you."
- At being asked to identify itself, the voice declines, although "it's so much easier for me to appear when there aren't so many pairs of eyes on me." It seems to show awareness of secrets the children are keeping from each other, and talks for some time about how Owl-Eyes really should have been more careful about "his old friend" and how he knew "just the right way to invite me in" -- probably in reference to the sleep spell.
- "Now, don't worry, child. In fact, I suggest you forget all about this." The voice says nothing more for the rest of the night. Soon after, everyone wakes up to Rana having a minor panic attack.
- Eventually we get moving again.
- ("Boy, someone out there really has it in for old Zaeed, if he was supposed to be doing this." "I'm not worried about Zaeed! I'm worried about us!")
- By and by, we make it to Owl-Eyes's burial chamber. There's a minute where he doesn't notice we're at the entrance. Jami, since he's been trying to make overtures to the fae, enters the room to try out diplomacy.
- Jami promptly triggers a trap that cements his feet to the floor. Owl-Eyes rants at us incoherently, saying he "senses him on us." When asked what he means, Owl-Eyes cries, "Who else! The hell-lord of the dreamscapes!" Then he calls for his skeleton guards, so there goes that plan.
- Once again, the fight goes swimmingly -- Khalil invokes the name he learned in his dream, which of course is Owl-Eyes's True Name*** -- right up to the point that our luck fizzles out and almost everyone gets temporarily paralyzed (or stunned or stuck; can't remember), except for Khalil and Rana. Again.
*** Nocturnus Strix. I'm going to punch our GM. I don't know when I'm going to stop.
- Rana pulls off her arrowhead charm (the same one she used on the ogre in ch1) and attempts to convince Owl-Eyes that as a smith's child, iron protects her, so she can't be in cahoots with whatever he's so afraid of. Owl-Eyes does waver (he can't sense "him" on Rana -- but he does on Khalil), even though he insists iron isn't a deterrent to "him"... but he's ultimately too deranged to be reasoned with.
- Once again, Rana drops the charm around his neck, and Khalil attacks him with a woodcutter's hatchet, driving the arrow into his heart.
- And that is pretty much the end of Owl-Eyes... except that a shimmer or fog appears to leave his body and melt through a door at the back of the tomb... a doorway blocked with stones. We return his corpse to his tomb, much to Nae-gai's relief.
- Miscellaneous finds in the tomb -- silver, a jewelled brooch, some ritual components, a wand, three mysterious potions. Also a large painting on the back wall, of people worshipping some kind of fire. (someone correct me here on details, I genuinely can't remember.)
- Well, the job's done; we let Nae-gai run home to the court to let them know how it turned out, Liam presumably walks us back to the village. Instead of heading home, though, the kids go to their old hideout (not the catacombs, but the treehouse they had as children) to talk.
- ...so in Beyond the Wall, if you're planning on doing a long-term campaign, you can pick your ultimate villain or conflict, a Threat. There are four premade Threats, five with the new undead expansion. At character generation, along with figuring out your backstory and skills and personality, you make a mysterious dice roll that affects some of your stats, but you don't learn what it means until the Night at the Inn.
After the barrows, the kids agree to come clean:
-- Some years ago, a plague swept the village, killing some people. Maria used to be chronically ill as a child, in an unnatural way.
-- Rana herself was recovering from this plague (her mother did not recover); during her convalescence, the woman Red**** paid her a visit, played a game of chess (Rana lost), and left. After the door closed there was the sound of wingbeats.
-- Caroline was stolen away and missing for three days in a "dark place"; she eventually found her way out, or was possibly allowed out. Who knows.
-- Khalil needed some prodding, but breaks down horribly: He was also kidnapped and taken to a strange place, perhaps the same one Caroline was in, but he managed to escape. Mostly. He thinks. He also gives us a name for the kidnapper: The Grey Prince.
-- ...and Jami stays very very quiet during all this.
****Jami: Are you sure it was the same person?
Rana: How many people do we know have red hair--
Jami: [raises hand, opens mouth]
Rana: --and red eyes?
Jami: [shuts mouth, lowers hand]
- (I'm sure it'll come out sooner or later ingame, and we do know this OOC, so it's fine if I say it: Jami remembered a story about his ancestor being a warrior who fought the Vengeful Wyrm, an ancient dragon of legend. The Wyrm remembers its foes. Blood calls to blood. While technically less traumatizing than the other secrets, this is still very unsettling -- especially because one of the other kids is actually obscurely related to Jami, and is also counted as the dragon's foe. Shhhhh. We don't know this yet.)
- At the end of this, they decide to stay in the treehouse overnight, because the wider world suddenly feels like a much, much more precarious place than previously imagined. And nobody ate dinner that night.
- Postscript: It's anyone's guess if we noticed it ICly, but after we left the barrow, a cloud of small shimmering batlike shapes could have been spotted flying southeast. Well, I'm sure there's nothing weird in that corner of the map.
Subtitle: "We Survived But We're Dead"
This is regrettably missing a lot of dialogue. We usually record sessions so I can go back and catch stuff, but we didn't this time. But also, things got kind of hectic and I was distracted from scribbling notes.
Jesus christ what even was this.
February, 999: A few years have passed. The children, not so much children now, are about fifteen, a little more knowledgable about the world but we've only ventured out on brief trips here and there. We meet up one winter night at the inn and talk about the places we've visited or learned of in the interim. Catching up and so on.
- ...however, as we grow up and get some distance on our respective childhoods, some (all) of us have been going over certain events in our heads, and now remember some things we'd repressed or just hadn't thought about for years.
- Conversation soon dries up. Khalil is drinking and not talking. Jami is pointedly not touching anything stronger than water. Caroline is drinking heavily.
- (Rana does speak up and say that hey, remember Red, the strange woman we found in the cyrpt? She couldn't put her finger on it at the time, but Rana recognized her and so should Jami -- it was her they saw talking to the miller, when they were spying on him. She goes quiet after that and stares out the window.)
- Not to mention, with the Recent Events, there's more reason not to talk:
-- Maria encounters a travelling fortune teller who imparts a cryptic warning of doom -- but nothing clearer than that.
-- Jami notices that the baker's family is ill at ease. Unfortunately, Jami's idea of asking what's wrong involves putting Polly into a headlock, which goes about as well as expected.*
-- Rana sees a star fall in a nearby field, which makes this the third adventure now that had some star-related omen. She hauls the meteorite home to her blacksmith father to appraise. ("Your dad has entered a strange mood!")
-- Khalil once again has a portentous dream of mysterious royalty, and wakes up knowing their True Name.
-- And a literal band of zombies wander into town; Caroline and some villagers succeed in driving them off, gaining her Captain Glenn's respect.
* "You put Apollo into a headlock. You horrible monster."
"You're the reason he has all those bandages."
"[WOUNDED ANIMAL NOISES]"
"...I haven't played Dual Destines, did I just say something wrong?"
- Still, being haunted by spectres of the past doesn't stop us from... being us:
Jami: We need a mage.
Khalil: I'm a mage!
Jami: No, you're not. Mages have hats. You don't. Ruling it now.
Khalil: Hey!
Caroline: [silently takes Maria's hat off her head and plonks it on Khalil's]
Khalil: Ha!
- Speaking of haunted, there's a chill and a hush in the air. There's shadowy movement from outside the inn. Everyone else, including the bartender, flees the building. Khalil (who has been getting tutoring from Mordin during the timeskip and picking up verbal tics) offers his professional opinion: "Magic coming. Something big. Something dark. Something cold." In response, Jami dumps a jug of water over his head.
- "THANKS, now I'm COLDER." "But are you sober?"
- An apparition enters the inn. It's screaming. And screaming.
- Attempts to get it to leave include yelling back (no effect), punching it (no effect), and smacking it with Gideon's hammer (we'll never know, swing and miss). Caroline, unsteadily: "Look, I've been through too much to deal with two screaming ghost clouds." She throws her dagger. It misses by a mile and hits the dart board in the bullseye.
- Just as the ghost divebombs Caroline, Khalil jumps up on a table, proclaims "I AM THE ETERNAL FLAME, BABY" and barrages the ghost with Burning Hands. Fire (and silver, as it happens) works amazingly on the undead! It also works pretty good on humans who get caught in the crossfire too. Caroline is now singed and missing most of her eyebrows.
- Just as the ghost dissipates, there's a knocking at the door.
- "...Hi, Mr. Herne..."
- Hunter Liam isn't much surprised at the disarray, as it happens; in fact, he's here because he needs assistance with something related to the fae.
- The kids** respond to this with some bafflement and scorn -- seriously, how are we the go-to guys for this kind of thing? Where's Captain Glenn? Or Father Boivin? -- but it tapers off when Liam brings out the person who made the call for help.
** I feel like I need a new moniker for the group that isn't "kids", now that they're in their teens, but 1) "party" doesn't sound right and 2) implying we won't be basically at the same maturity level even at nineteen and endgame.
- It's a fae child with spiky hair (possibly younger than us, though with fairies, who can tell) called Nae-gai, someone Jami and one or two of the others recognize from the court. Nae-gai meekly confesses that he opened the door to an ancient barrow, which almost certainly caused the phantasm at the inn and the zombie incursion.
- He leads us away from town, where we have another nasty surprise: A group of treasure hunters are at the threshold, prepping to enter and loot the place. And Liam seems to recognize their ringleader: a grizzled, scarred mercenary, blind in one eye, who was present for Helena's funeral.
- Liam: "Are you kidding me." "If it isn't the wild hunter of the north! How's it going?" "Kinda weird to see you this far north." "Eh. Had a contract."
GM: It's... okay, I'm not going to beat around the bush, it's Zaeed.
Jami: Are you just not bothering to hide the references anymore?
Rana: I have a stupid question. Who's buried here?
Zaeed: Who knows?
Nae-gai: I do. It's the old fae lord who ran things. Before Da Wei came into power.
- Maria and Jami (mostly Maria) convince Zaeed to piss off, though it's not entirely "intimidated into fleeing" and more like "figuring he's not paid enough to handle a pack of shitkids along with a cursed tomb." He and his buddies leave, unfortunately not telling us who hired them in the first place...
- We all peer into the entranceway (our party includes Liam and Nae-gai, which means more survivability for us but also means each combat gives us a minute breather while the GM has to crunch dice against himself). In lieu of a torch, Khalil summons a little floating mage light. The walls gleam with magical runes and the floor is nothing but pressure plates.
- Luckily, the runes appear to be proximity-based and the plates trigger dart traps that travel at neck-height, skyrim-style; this means we can safely crawl through the entrance hallway (despite a scare when a dart rips through Maria's hat).
- "What does Quoth feel about all this?" "[worried cawing]" "Remember what happened the last time he got taken into a tomb?"
- We reach a foyer where we can stand up again. Caroline attempts to decipher the carvings on the walls; they tell of someone called "Old Owl Eyes." The lord entombed himself here after he mad with paranoia, with a curse on anyone who would break in and try to raise his corpse.
- SUDDEN SPOOPY SKELEGHOUL ATTACK
- The dice are shockingly kind for our combats -- lots of rolls for max damage, some 20s, some lucky dodges and saves. This actually ends up seriously unnerving Liam, after two or three of us get scratched but otherwise unfazed. This isn't normal, because ghouls have Deadly Touch, which paralyzes foes and (with killing blows) causes them to return as ghouls themselves.
- We descend further into the barrow, until we come to another room full of pressure plates and proximity runes.
- Jami excuses himself. He goes back to the combat room, slings one of the ghoul corpses over his shoulder, returns, and hucks it onto the tiles.
- "Saving throws, everyone." "Wait, what?"
- Everyone promptly fails their save, except for one. Rana turns around in time to see everyone, including our NPCs, crumple to the ground, out cold.
- As she's trying to shake them awake, the shadows seem to deepen and a voice comes from nowhere: "Now, I wouldn't really do that if I were you."
- At being asked to identify itself, the voice declines, although "it's so much easier for me to appear when there aren't so many pairs of eyes on me." It seems to show awareness of secrets the children are keeping from each other, and talks for some time about how Owl-Eyes really should have been more careful about "his old friend" and how he knew "just the right way to invite me in" -- probably in reference to the sleep spell.
- "Now, don't worry, child. In fact, I suggest you forget all about this." The voice says nothing more for the rest of the night. Soon after, everyone wakes up to Rana having a minor panic attack.
- Eventually we get moving again.
- ("Boy, someone out there really has it in for old Zaeed, if he was supposed to be doing this." "I'm not worried about Zaeed! I'm worried about us!")
- By and by, we make it to Owl-Eyes's burial chamber. There's a minute where he doesn't notice we're at the entrance. Jami, since he's been trying to make overtures to the fae, enters the room to try out diplomacy.
- Jami promptly triggers a trap that cements his feet to the floor. Owl-Eyes rants at us incoherently, saying he "senses him on us." When asked what he means, Owl-Eyes cries, "Who else! The hell-lord of the dreamscapes!" Then he calls for his skeleton guards, so there goes that plan.
- Once again, the fight goes swimmingly -- Khalil invokes the name he learned in his dream, which of course is Owl-Eyes's True Name*** -- right up to the point that our luck fizzles out and almost everyone gets temporarily paralyzed (or stunned or stuck; can't remember), except for Khalil and Rana. Again.
*** Nocturnus Strix. I'm going to punch our GM. I don't know when I'm going to stop.
- Rana pulls off her arrowhead charm (the same one she used on the ogre in ch1) and attempts to convince Owl-Eyes that as a smith's child, iron protects her, so she can't be in cahoots with whatever he's so afraid of. Owl-Eyes does waver (he can't sense "him" on Rana -- but he does on Khalil), even though he insists iron isn't a deterrent to "him"... but he's ultimately too deranged to be reasoned with.
- Once again, Rana drops the charm around his neck, and Khalil attacks him with a woodcutter's hatchet, driving the arrow into his heart.
- And that is pretty much the end of Owl-Eyes... except that a shimmer or fog appears to leave his body and melt through a door at the back of the tomb... a doorway blocked with stones. We return his corpse to his tomb, much to Nae-gai's relief.
- Miscellaneous finds in the tomb -- silver, a jewelled brooch, some ritual components, a wand, three mysterious potions. Also a large painting on the back wall, of people worshipping some kind of fire. (someone correct me here on details, I genuinely can't remember.)
- Well, the job's done; we let Nae-gai run home to the court to let them know how it turned out, Liam presumably walks us back to the village. Instead of heading home, though, the kids go to their old hideout (not the catacombs, but the treehouse they had as children) to talk.
- ...so in Beyond the Wall, if you're planning on doing a long-term campaign, you can pick your ultimate villain or conflict, a Threat. There are four premade Threats, five with the new undead expansion. At character generation, along with figuring out your backstory and skills and personality, you make a mysterious dice roll that affects some of your stats, but you don't learn what it means until the Night at the Inn.
After the barrows, the kids agree to come clean:
-- Some years ago, a plague swept the village, killing some people. Maria used to be chronically ill as a child, in an unnatural way.
-- Rana herself was recovering from this plague (her mother did not recover); during her convalescence, the woman Red**** paid her a visit, played a game of chess (Rana lost), and left. After the door closed there was the sound of wingbeats.
-- Caroline was stolen away and missing for three days in a "dark place"; she eventually found her way out, or was possibly allowed out. Who knows.
-- Khalil needed some prodding, but breaks down horribly: He was also kidnapped and taken to a strange place, perhaps the same one Caroline was in, but he managed to escape. Mostly. He thinks. He also gives us a name for the kidnapper: The Grey Prince.
-- ...and Jami stays very very quiet during all this.
****Jami: Are you sure it was the same person?
Rana: How many people do we know have red hair--
Jami: [raises hand, opens mouth]
Rana: --and red eyes?
Jami: [shuts mouth, lowers hand]
- (I'm sure it'll come out sooner or later ingame, and we do know this OOC, so it's fine if I say it: Jami remembered a story about his ancestor being a warrior who fought the Vengeful Wyrm, an ancient dragon of legend. The Wyrm remembers its foes. Blood calls to blood. While technically less traumatizing than the other secrets, this is still very unsettling -- especially because one of the other kids is actually obscurely related to Jami, and is also counted as the dragon's foe. Shhhhh. We don't know this yet.)
- At the end of this, they decide to stay in the treehouse overnight, because the wider world suddenly feels like a much, much more precarious place than previously imagined. And nobody ate dinner that night.
- Postscript: It's anyone's guess if we noticed it ICly, but after we left the barrow, a cloud of small shimmering batlike shapes could have been spotted flying southeast. Well, I'm sure there's nothing weird in that corner of the map.