If you want to read the last report, you can find it here.
***
The Cast:
John Dole of Bisque, Firlish Stew Captain. A pretty good shot, but recently the chance to hit another target when missing a shot into a group was increased from 1-in-4 to 1-in-2, and, well. The big guy has seen a precipitous rate of increase in friendly fire incidents.
William Ottleson of Fir Reach, Firlish Ironmonger. Don't let his missing hand fool you: this old dog is one of the Coast's premier boxing champions... unofficially, of course. But he's eager to prove that he's better than any possible contender.
Padre Faustino Calderon Capard del Monte Rubito, Algóran Venturesome priest. He's like Doctor House if he was a Spaniard. And not an atheist. Otherwise just like Doctor House.
Youree, Revenant Delver. Doesn't think she can die. Not afraid to get severely injured to prove it.
***
At midnight, just in time for the changing of the guard, the cool white moonlight of summer flicks to the eerie, warm yellow of autumn. Partway through John Dole's watch, around the hour of Vigil, he hears someone, or someones, cracking twigs and quietly cursing as they walk through the woods, just outside the illumination of the campfire. John Dole figures that he should be better safe than sorry, so he pulls out his leverette and orders them to come into the light, slowly.
It's not who he expected. A short, thin man in expensive, if muddy clothing. He smiles, bright good teeth glinting next to dirty palms. He extends a hand forward.
"Apologies, sir, but I'm afraid I'm lost. Owen Adler of Dunerrow, Esquire. Representing T&F--That's Tiber and Fellows-- but I'm afraid that my escorts and I have, well, to be frank, we really are quite lost. And I was hoping you wouldn't begrudge us your fire."
"A Bankman!" John Dole is overjoyed, "We've gotta bankman, as well!" He shakes Mr. Collier awake and introduces him to the new man. Collier is less than thrilled. He pulls Dole aside as Adler calls his men over to the fire.
"Don't you realize who they are?" The little man hisses, with more vile than Dole really thought possible.
"Who? The banker, the other cutters? Ain't we with the same bank?"
"No, you imbecile! They're the competition!"
"So? We's all cutters, ain't we?"
"How kind do you think they're going to be when they find out that you're the one who killed their client?"
John Dole looks over at the campground. He sees four cutters, plus the banker, happily chuckling as they ladle out portions of his stew into their bowls. They toss in apples and pour water from their flasks to keep it going as they chatter. One of them, a mean-looking human wearing a pickelhaube and too many belts mimes out a kill.
Mr. Collier continues, "in this business, it's them or us..."
The two men stare at each other. The other crew of cutters can be heard laughing and cheering as their celebration wakes up Youree.
"I'll give you standing for this. What do you think about Level 2 You know the benefits? Pre-approval for loans up to 5 crowns, priority signup for Ventures, paid transportation to and from-- "
"Done. Lemme get Ottleson."
When the two come back to the clearing, their guests greet them with exultation, and one of the faces belongs to a cutter John Dole knows well. Terrance Romeaux of Bisque is a large man, and if you swapped out Dole's longarms for Romeaux's knives, the two could be twins. The other man tackles John with a hug, nearly lifting him off of his feet.
"Jonny Boy! It's been so long!"
John Dole can't help but return the reaction as Ottleson sneaks out with Collier, negotiating for £100, enough for a new hand, to be paid out once the Peridot Firm branch in Fenn Blaine is established. Next, Ottleson speaks with Youree, warning her that these strangers are not, in fact, friendly humans, a trapero and a mouse, but are plant-people, like mandrakes. Youree doesn't take much convincing before she says she's ready when everyone else is, and the group waits for the other party to fall alseep.
Only one stays awake, the trapero. Ottleson heads over to chat her up, and I forget that reaction is now rolled with a d6, and in my forgetfulness, I roll very high. Despite the fact that he's wearing a ripped (-1) and bloody (-1) military outfit, is covered in mud (-1) and has not shaved or even combed his hair (-1) in several days, William Ottleson cuts a rugged figure, and his suave eyebrow wriggling is enough to convince her that maybe there is something in the North worth savoring. William proposes that they meet out in the woods, and she agrees, temporarily abandoning her post.
William waits for a few minutes before he gives a thumbs-up to Youree to start the slaughter. John Dole is keeping Terrance Romeaux occupied with idle chatter as the two men quietly whisper, catching up with each other.
"You know, before I saw you I was getting ready to throw in the towel," Terrance says, getting serious for a moment, "an' I mean it. Th' las' coupla ventures were roight dastardly. If that's no' bad enough, roight as we're passing through town... Well, I won't bother you." John Dole sees Youree creeping up behind his old friend... "Suffice to say, I feel like my luck turned back right around when we stumbled into your camp. It's like I have hope again for the first time--"
Youree strikes with her woodsman's axe. She misses twice, but before Terrance can react, Ottleson has him in a headlock, muffling the big man's cries for help with his empty sleeve as Youree tosses John Dole a knife.
"Oi'm sorry, Ter'. It's just business." John Dole plunges the knife deep into his childhood friend twice, and Terrance jerks once, before he falls limp, and fights no more.
The crew works through the camp, moving silently, the only trouble coming from the banker, Owen Adler, when Dole fails to get all of his important neck chords in one foul movement. He crawls away, pathetically, and is hacked to death by Youree, who finally manages to hit a moving target with her axe.
The final victim is the ragwoman. She paces around a small clearing, stopping as she sees Ottleson creeping out of the woods. He falls onto one knee and professes his eternal, undying love. If she swears to abandon her crew tonight, to head North alone, he will meet her in Fenn Blaine, where they can form a new life together. She shies away, taken aback by this rather large ask, and unseen, deep in the bush, John Dole takes his shot. One fléchette embeds itself in her hand, the other sinks deep into her throat.
Without the Padre to shame the crew into a proper burial, the group loots the corpses for their provisions and valuables, and stacks them in a row near the edge of camp. Youree volunteers to take first watch, but she falls asleep almost immediately. It is not until Lauds, shortly after dawn, that the group is awoken with a clatter.
***
John Dole awakes, bleary-eyed, in time to see a bear knock over his portable copper stewpot. It sniffs and licks up some of the stew that spills out, before it looks away and paws at one of the piled-high corpses. While it's distracted, Dole takes the opportunity to seize his livelihood and the crew escapes into the trees.
The crew, newly dressed in the ill-gotten duds of their victims, walks for a few hours through the woods, only realizing that they are lost once they come across an antique stone bridge, built over a small, gurgling creek. Some fishing lines are tangled in the boughs above but the line leads under the bridge, taut in the crisp morning air.
Youree tugs at the line, and feeling something on the other end, pulls hard. Out of the water, the enormous, bloated grue hooked on the other end of the line springs from the water and lunges at the party, and I decide to end the session on a cliffhanger.
***
Session 9 starts with combat, as every player fails their surprise rolls, and the grue tackles Youree to the ground, biting her and spilling disgusting disease-water all over. John Dole falls back, missing his first shot, but Ottleson pulls out his pistolette and nails the grue between the eyes.
The crew kicks the rotting skeleton back into the water and decides to follow the crik. Ottleson figures that since there's one massive lake to the North, following the creek should leave them straight to it. This proves to be slightly more difficult in practice, as the forest quickly becomes wetlands, with the creek becoming harder and harder to follow.
The crew takes a short break for brunch on a small mound. The stew has begun to morph into a sweet porridge, as John Dole adds flour, creek water, sugar, molasses and butter into the pot. It is tasty enough, if a bit rich and cloying, and it hits the spot. There are a series of hills to to the south/southwest, and it looks like the creek continues to the north-northeast. The crew breaks camp and continues following the creek.
They're able to follow the creek for another hour before it ends in a large pond, one that looks pretty much the same as countless others they've passed as they've wandered through this wetland. Ottleson says that they should keep heading North, and no one else as a better idea so they keep going. Another hour sees the crew trudging through mud and dirty water, stumbling through another pond, where John Dole spots a half-dozen bloated grues underneath. He shouts a warning and runs out of range, preparing for the grues to emerge.
About this time, the Padre snaps to attention, his player having been absent for the past session-and-a-half, but returning just in time for this bout of Peril. The grues move first, falling over themselves as they scuttle towards the party, bee-lining towards Youree, the only party member with a Subtlety of 0. The Padre, as aware and agile as ever, charges towards them, praising Aveth and cursing these fiends and swinging his Hastella back and forth. Last week, he mounted it to a haft made for a pike, and he makes good use of his additional range, slaying a grue that threatens Ottleson.
The frontliners are doing well, thanks to the armor looted from the other cutters, but Youree still takes a couple wounds from the swarming mass of fungal death that surrounds her. Hoping to take advantage of careful positioning, John Dole flanks the grues and looses several fléchettes, most miss, however, and there is a brief incident of friendly fire as the Padre takes a dart to the face, marring his rosy and youthful visage forever with a nasty cheek wound. No hard feelings, the Padre uses one of his faith points to resist the wound, and it certainly doesn't interfere with his combat effectiveness.
By the next round, the crew has dispatched every monster, and Youree is glad to be given attention to her wounds, though, the padre notices something on her upper arm. Already there are small, grey lesions forming around her bicep: Blight.
In its early stages, Blight is not much to be afraid of, provided one has the means and the grit to endure a painful debriding process with a well supplied surgeon. But right now, the crew is lost in an expansive wetlands, and there's no telling how quickly the infection will develop or spread. Faustino breaks the news as softly as he can, and Youree takes it quite well, though she turns down the invitation to pray.
"Listen, Padre. I've seen the other side, and there's nothing. There's no Lord, and there's no Paradise. So stop trying to pass me a pamphlet. I'm not interested."
Faustino bites his tongue as he fiddles with a mini bottle of laudanum. Sometimes, a voice inside him tells him the same thing. He bites down a little harder. He'll take it tonight, after he prays. That's only a few more hours away.
***
The crew has been traveling for almost the entire day, they were already drowsy from the midnight intrusions, and on top of that they've been walking for 6 hours. Looking ahead, however, they can see a structure on the horizon, and so they push on. It's a stone structure with a conical roof, built on top of a small artificial hill, providing shelter from the horrors of the water and the weather alike.
Looking inside, there is some ash and charcoal, the remnants of old fires, and scattered detritus that suggests that this is a common shelter for the denizens of the wetlands, and so the crew agrees to camp here for the night. John Dole lights a fire and cooks up more porridge and the crew sets watches, leveling up, before Ottleson's player asks me a question:
"Hey, what about that dog we have... what did we call it again?"
I think that a better Bookkeeper would have the dog run off after the crew forgot to set aside portions to feed it for a few days, but I am a soft-hearted Bookkeeper, and besides, they did already name it.
Missile Launcher trots up to the crew, proud as can be. He is covered in mud and drops most of a fish at Mister Collier's feet. The bankman shudders, muttering "horrid creature" under his breath as the rest of the crew praises their mascot for bringing home the bacon. John Dole makes a show of putting the fish in the pot, telling the half-feral wolfdog that he's a good boy, right before Missile Launcher shakes himself off, covering the recently dry cutters in a fresh layer of wet dog smell.
The crew's progress as they explore the forest. Each hex is ~5 km in diameter.
***
Pretty good couple of sessions this time. The crew's making pretty rapid progress, but I'm a little worried that they're feeling so much of a crunch on supplies that they'll bounce before they find the dungeons hidden in it. I guess that's sort of my own fault for giving them a time crunch to start out with. The trouble with planning ahead like that is that you can find yourself stepping on your own toes a bit.
No real problems with that, though. Everyone's having fun, myself included, and the more they adventure before they get to Fenn Blaine, the more danger I can put them in when they start looking for legal Ventures in the area.
Next post should be in about a week, depending on how much we get done next session, until then: tootle-loo!
Missile Launcher is my fav
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