A Noble Profession: An Incunabuli Post-Sesson Report

 We had a good session this week. We spent a long time on the homestead, and so I'm glad to get the chance to exercise my improv skills as the cutters continue their journey north.

As always: a million thanks are to Benton, the author and creator of the Incunabuli setting and playtest. It's quickly becoming one of my favorite systems, and I really enjoy how everything fits together. Which is good. It's good to love the games you play.

 If you're looking for the last report, you'll find it here.

*** 

Cast:

John Dole of Bisque, Firlish Stew Captain. Sturdy, Dependable. Mildly criminal. Big boned.

Dwayne Ottleson of Fir Reach, Firlish Ironmonger. A Man of Industry. Pugilist. Willing to do anything to spite the Other.

Padre  Faustino Calderon Capard del Monte Rubito, Algóran Venturesome Priest. Alcoholic. Smackhead. Flagellant. Ascetic.

The Strange Woman, Revenant Delver. Fresh Eyed. Hopeful. Innocent.

Vinkle, Lothrmensch Moonshiner. Really needs the crew to just sit down for a few weeks so that he can really get his operation going.

***

It's been a long day at the Lamrey Homestead, and the cutters decide to stay the night and hope for good dreams as opposed to making the trek back to Bermish in the dark. The Padre and Ottleson say their prayers as the rest roll their eyes and sleep, with most of the party rolling quite well on their sleep rolls. The Strange Woman, unfortunately, dreams of aelves. Her mind an empty canvas, she saw a pale boy with black eyes standing over her, lifting her mind from her body. She saw her body lying, still and empty on the Lamrey's bed as she rose towards a crack in the ceiling, rising towards strange stars and an enormous moon.

 The crew rose bright and early in the morning and set out for the Lamb & Boar. It was a fine, beautiful, brisk morning, with little to interrupt their journey. The crew arrives at the pub, and, seeing the freshly painted "No Cutters" sign, they debate a little about how on earth they're going to get paid. Lottie, one of the children the crew rescued, suggests that she and Pater can just go in themselves, until the crew reminds her that they need to be paid to save her, and that they would have left the two siblings on the wreck of the farm if they weren't going to be paid. After waiting for the rest of the crew to come to a conclusion, the Strange Woman shrugs and barrels on through.

Inside, the pub is nearly empty. Alfried is out back, cutting wood as Esme cleans earthenware mugs inside. When she sees the cutters, covered in mud and spattered with blood and mandrake juice, she drops the mug she's working on and rushes over to the group.

"Is everyone okay? Did something happen?" Then she sees the children, alone. Ottleson sends the pair outside, to help their uncle Alfried before he explains what happened with the Lamrey homestead and the mandrakes, and how the crew lost Else, how that stranger Jack Lumber of Wood died, and how he lost his hand. Feeling bad, Esme gives the crew an extra pound for the trouble, and wakes their charge, Mister Collier of Sohport to let him know that it's time to check out. John Dole asks if they can't stay another night, and Esme answers that they're fully booked for tonight. 

"It's the... uh... Hoarwood family! Their relations from the city are coming to visit."

Grumbling, the party accepts their hostess' excuses as they break their fasts, bathe and start stocking up for the five day journey to Fenn Blaine.

***

The party leaves Bermish at around Noon, and for the most part, the rest of the day is a quiet one, until the evening, where a heavy, Otherish mist arose yet again and caused them to nearly miss their destination. Backtracking to the village takes the crew another hour, and by the time they are there, the hamlet is dark and quiet. The crew looks for an inn or hostel, and finding none, resolve to camp for the night. Wood is not too hard to come by, but the Strange Woman wanted to try out Jack Lumber's axe, so as the party starts making camp in a nearby copse, the Strange Woman marches out looking for a fine tree to cut. She finds a nice looking aspen, and cuts it down, as John Dole gathers water from a nearby creek. It takes an hour to chop the tree, and an hour to cut the logs into usable pieces of firewood, so it's at least 10 at night before the fire is started and the Stew's going. While John Dole cooks, Vinkle, the Strange Woman and the Dog head out into the countryside to see if they can find anything. 

With a fantastic Herbalism (Scrounge) roll, Vinkle finds a bush of blueberries and picks 7 servings of them to bring back to camp, although, as I'm writing this, I realize that they went out without lights, so that roll probably should have been at -2 or more. Whatever. If there's one thing I've learned from like 13 years in this hobby, it's that you have to be comfortable calling a mulligan if you want to keep the pace of your sessions up. No matter how much it bugs you as you lie in bed trying to sleep, reliving your failures as a GM. Can you tell I'm coping? Anyways...

The stew this evening is made with lard, salt, canned vegetables and a hunk of cheese Mr. Collier tossed into the pot to give it a little more body. The dog looks expectantly as the stew is ladled out, and Otterson scoops out a couple servings of lard to sustain him. The dog is disappointed, but it accepts the meager offering as I get heartburn just thinking about potentially eating only lard for five days straight. 

As the crew sits around the fire eating, Ottleson tells of a particular tradition at his firm, where once the loyalty of a worker is proven (via catastrophe, loss of life and limb, etc.), they are given a new name as a reward for their bravery and service. Ottleson has no supervisor present to grant him this honor, so he takes it himself. Henceforth, he announces, his name will be William, after the founder of his home firm: William and Sons Fine Metallurgy.

Still in the naming mood, Ottleson bequeaths one to the Strange Woman, saying that since she alleges to have risen from the dead, her name should be Yuree, short for "You're Re-animated!" As William bestows the name with pomp and circumstance, he looks over to see that Yuree is already fast asleep, and so he shrugs, figuring that he can always tell her in the morning.

The crew sets watches and I roll for random encounters. It's clear until the last watch at 8 am, a little before Terces. Ottleson is the first of the group to awake. The were lucky: it was a dry night, and despite the lack of sleeping bags and tents, most of the crew slept well. But, someone's missing: Yuree.

Ottleson checks around the copse and, not finding her nearby, tries rousing the rest of the Crew. He checks the nearest outhouse and gets into a shouting match with a surly peasant who informs them that she cut down a tree, and that when she was confronted about it by some of the young laborers on the way to work in the early morning, she didn't even bother denying it, so they dragged her to the landlord, a certain Mr. Palomer to face judgment.

William Ottleson hears this, thinks "hmm that sounds bad," and then remembers that he lost his hand three days ago and asks the man if he knows the Smith, to which the man replies that he is the Smith. Unfortunately, he's not very jazzed that a band of cutters are 1. Camped out right next to his house 2. Vandalizing property in the area 3. Interrupting his morning evacuation. 4. Trying to get him to forge a prosthetic by bribing him with raw flour. It's not until John Dole has finished his business, that he's able to appeal to the man's better side, and get him to agree to throw together a hunk of metal for the low price of £1 • 0 • 5.

After the argument, the pair catch everyone up to speed on what's happened, and they all head out to the Lord's manor to see if they can't bail out their friend.

They reach the manor, and it's in clear disrepair. There are no guards, and as John Dole subtly opens the front door, the crew can hear the lord struggling with Yuree's poorly developed sense of property and context.

(John Malkovich in Burn After Reading (2008) dir. the Coen Brothers)

 "My Family owned this Valley for eight-HUNDRED years BEFORE the revolution. Do you have any idea what one THOUSAND years of tradition looks like? No? Well maybe you should have THOUGHT about whose tree you were cutting... DICKHEAD."        

 - Lord Henry Palomer IV, 31 Sextuary 3.450

John Dole tries to sneak his way up behind the lord, but his timing is just wrong, and the landlord wheels around just in time to see a twenty stone cutter creeping up behind him with a firlish officer's pistol in his hand.

"And just who do you think you are?"

In lieu of responding, the cutter looses. 

The first shot misses, shattering the glass in his hand. Before the aristocrat can react, John Dole is leveling out his leverette. He rolls. 10 + 5. Massive success. Hit location & Damage: 1 on the d20, 7 damage on the d8+1. The landlord barely finishes his sentence before a fléchette flings itself through his brain, shattering a priceless mirror behind him as his body hits the floor. Yuree takes a point of distress, because, well, he was starting to grow on her.

Immediately, like termites, the cutters begin looking for expensive looking rings. The aristo has an embossed flask, a golden pocket watch, a pistolette, a mini bottle of laudanum and a yerba roja cigarillo. Most of the mansion is in complete disrepair: only the arisocrat's smoking room and his study are decorated and, well, mostly intact. Yuree digs through his pile of correspondence looking for a next of kin, finding little other than the trail of a man's spiral. It seems that he was overfond of drugs and gambling, his wife left and took her dowry as she moved back into the family estate, and the late aristo took massive loans to cover the loss. His most recent letters seem to contain phrases like "past due" "history of negligence" and "suffer the consequences," mainly from a clerk signing for 'T&F.' For someone without amnesia, it is quite obvious: Péridot Firm is not the only bank with its eyes on the North.

As Yuree uncovers a conspiracy, the Padre conscripts Vinkle and Ottleson into digging the grave for the poor gentleman in his garden. As he commends the late gentleman's soul to Aveth, the Padre, indulging in laudanum, begins to drift off course, reciting his obituary for Else, forgetting that this service is for someone else, someone he barely knew at all.

The service drones on and inside the manor Yuree grows more and more desperate. So many debts, so many creditors, the paper trail is massive. The guy seems to get more and more letters every day. She needs to cover their tracks. She grabs a can of kerosene and pours it all over his desk, all around the room. She lights a match, taking a deep breath as she tosses it into the study.

The cutters outside notice smoke billowing from the front of the manor as Yuree charges out the back door. "Guys, guys," she explains breathlessly, "We need to go. They're onto us. I covered the trail as best as I could, but we need to go."

Smoke billows up into the early afternoon sky. It is the last day of Sextuary, and the crew has made a massive mistake.  

***

Great session. We got a lot done, far more than we usually do. I need to do some reading on how law enforcement was done in rural Scotland before the next session. (If you have an article or some literature on the subject, please  please send it to me!) I feel that it's not unreasonable that the crew of vagrants passing by the area, who are known to be looking for the landlord, would be fingered for the murder and arson charges. But I suppose it's an open question of exactly who is the authority around here. Ah well, whatever I come up with, I'm excited to see where this goes.