Tales of Escia
TALES OF ESCIA: Running an OSE Hexcrawl 08
Player Characters
Melora Kriss - Human Druid
Myr’tacae Malenia - Elf Fighter
The Premise
As explained in my previous article, we’re running a modified version of Old-School Essentials in a minimalist romantic fantasy setting, which will be fleshed out as we play.
We began with our first session of B2 - Keep on the Borderlands and decided on a bi-weekly rhythm every second wednesday evening, playing for 2 hours.
For the play report of the previous session, click here.
Session 08 - Of hostages and demigods
TL’DR: The party bought the hostages’ freedom and were in for a divine surprise on the way back to Margrave Keep.
Negotiations
After a few hours of waiting, the party was picked up by the guard they met the day before and brought to the meeting with the hobgoblin chieftain.
The meeting was held in the common room after dinner, and after the tables were emptied, Melora and Myr’tacae found themselves alone with five hobgoblins: the chieftain and his four wives - one of which was lying head down on the table, snoring rather loudly.
The chieftain himself was rather open-minded about reestablishing positive relations with Margrave Keep, although he insisted ransoming back the hostages.
The wife nearest to him, and next to the sleeping one, was not so agreeable; trying to convince him of their current course. But, being outargumented four-to-one, her defense of concerns and fear mongering quickly crumbled, and she admitted defeat.
When being confronted with her overtly agressiveness, she admitted semi-regular contact to a man dressed in black robes - someone who tried to contact the chieftain, but
was turned down because he found them too suspicious.
The chieftain confirmed the beginning of the discourse in the demihuman camp as corresponding with the time the man in black started visiting the different folks living there, while his wife described him as being overly nice and giving out presents, showing a silver bracelet to the group.
After agreeing about the ransom, Makkad brought the party to the room where the hostages were held, as the chieftain needed to adress another emerging problem: A scout matching the description of the dead hobgoblin in the goblin storage was reported missing and the camps guards suspect the neighboring orcs as the culprits. Makkad and the party exchanged glances, but otherwise kept their silence.
Freeing the hostages
At the prison, they found the halfling merchants wife, Pearl, as well as another halfling introducing himself as Sandy Honeyman, an obnoxiously positive jam vendor, a human called Loren Ipson who speaks only gibberish, as well as three religious breggles who went on to praise St. Marcia for their timely rescue.
The party agreed to escorting the six ex-hostages back to the keep, agreeing to depart as soon as possible.
Makkad gifted them a small chest containing some coins and a small wooden wand for their help, as well as the leftovers of the sleeping herbs, before they left.
Late night festivities
On the way back to Margrave Keep, the dice indicated another random encounter for the night - “a demigod or his avatar”.
After turning in for the night, the travelling group noticed rythmic music and chanting slowly growing louder from all around them and when Myr’tacae went to investigate, she discovered a human-looking man and an entourage of fauns surrounding a campfire in jolly celebration.
When she tried to back away and return to the camp, the fauns noticed her and gaily approached her.
Closing thoughts
Melora and Myr’tacae are on the way to complete their first major quest - Pearl walks free once again!.
The talks with the hobgoblin chieftain were largely in their favor, as the remaining traditionalist wife had little to pressure him with when she found herself cornered by her opposition. Nevertheless, she gave some more insight in what is going on in the recent past events.
Most of the hostage NPCs were taken from Gig Economy, a neat little supplement containing 200 retainers, hirelings and henchmen. I’m having a lot of fun with them, especially Loren Ipson, who just recites the Lorem Ipsum text but otherwise seems to be a decent fellow.
We also had a lot of fun with Melora trying to bond with Sandy Honeyman over her love for apiculture and him dead-pan not being into it, despite his name.
The divine random encounter ended the session on an unexpected note and I’m excited to see how Myr’tacae reacts to the requests
and whims of what is basically a being possessing awesome power, but the temper of a five-year-old.
See you next time. =)
Tales of Escia
TALES OF ESCIA: Running an OSE Hexcrawl 07
Player Characters
Melora Kriss - Human Druid
Myr’tacae Malenia - Elf Fighter
The Premise
As explained in my previous article, we’re running a modified version of Old-School Essentials in a minimalist romantic fantasy setting, which will be fleshed out as we play.
We began with our first session of B2 - Keep on the Borderlands and decided on a bi-weekly rhythm every second wednesday evening, playing for 2 hours.
For the play report of the previous session, click here.
Session 07 - Bee my honey bee
TL’DR: Bee-autiful creatures and dead hobgoblins, oh my! The party gathers narcotic ingredients and discovers a corpse that could spell trouble in the future.
A detour
The party left Margrave Keep on the next morning to head back to the demihuman camp and arrived there without issue. Before heading back to the hobgoblin camp, they remembered their talk with Makkad and decided to head further south first to search for a plant that could be used as a narcotic.
Being a beekeeper/gardener and local from Saltmarsh, we established that Melora would know the local flora and which herbs and plants were used in the making of sleeping potions.
Their search led further south, to the edge of the Maned Serpent Glades.
Bee-autiful creatures
Entering Hex 0702, the dice indicated a random encounter for this day, namely “2d6 Thriae in conference. Critical of visitors.” They are a kind of nymph, with women’s head and torso and lower body and wings of a bee. Local legends say they possess the power of divination.
Skittish and wistful creatures, Thirae can sense the shape of the future and are generally disappointed. - Picture and description from The Monster Overhaul
I rolled up 4 of them on a meadow filled with wildflowers, not far off the main road. Players being players, they couldn’t just ignore them and decided to approach.
The creatures being half woman, half bee and all of us being Final Fantasy XIV players, the games’ current bee-hype certainly influenced the decision.
Swarmaline, queen bee to be
Becoming aware of Melora and Myr, three of the Thriae began circling them cautiously. The fourth and biggest of them introduced herself as Swarmaline, the swarm leader.
Thanks to Meloras beekeeper experience, the conversation quickly shifted from “critical of visitors” to a more mellow mood. Swarmaline knew where the plants they looked could be found, but wary of people taking more than they needed. Melora convinced her that they would only harvest a few and was given directions.
Curious of how much truth the legends hold, Melora asked about the Thriaes’ power of divination and Swarmaline offered to give her a prophecy in exchange for something of worth. Melora offered a bundle of lavender from her starting equipment, which the swarm happily accepted, as it helped in building their new hive.
Swarmalines prophecy was cryptic as could be: A great battle will be fought in the sky.
Return to the Caves of Chaos
Parting ways with the Thriae, the party gathered their herbs and headed back to the demihuman camp and decided to pay a visit to the goblins first. They were greeted by Dandelion, who was a) sad he was left behind and b) in distress, because the storage held an ugly surprise.
The party learned that two days before their arrival, a hobgoblin had sneaked into the storage chamber and was surprised and subsequently killed by one of the guards. The guard in question, Pinecone, seemed very inspired by Dandelions latest exploits and apparently took much pride in his job and his kill.
Since no one came looking for the hobgoblin in the meantime, the party decided it might be better to not further complicate their coming talks with their chieftain with news of his dead clan member. Luckily the storage chamber acts as a natural refrigerator and the goblins were willing to keep their secret a little longer.
Meeting again with Makkad, the party provided her with the herbs and they
went over the plan: Makad would mix the herbs into the food of one of the opposing wives and would then petition the chieftain for a meeting with Melora and Myr. They would go back to the goblins for now and wait there until being called on.
Closing thoughts
After almost two month of not playing because of life stuff, we finally got together again, albeit for a slightly shorter session than usual. This has become somewhat of my comfort campaign. There’s something very freeing about leaving most things up to random tables and dice rolls and the added free time because I don’t have to prepare very much between sessions.
And yet, the dice help tell a story and flesh out the characters as we play, as we’ve just seen here with Melora and the Thriae, deepening the theme of her being very invested in everything apiculture - a trait that started with the beekeper suit in her starting equipment.
I think I said it somewhere before, but I love Skerples’ The Monster Overhaul. Most of the random encounters for this hexcrawl are based on this book, including the 30 baboon harem and now the Thriae and the obscure prophecy. It’s the most
imaginative monster book I’ve read until now. I’m excited to see they’re seemingly working on another thing, a treasure overhaul.
Swarmaline is now part of the Recurring NPCs table, so I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of her.
See you next time. =)
Building the Underworld with His Majesty the Worm
Welcome back! This is the second post in a series of exercises in world- and dungeonbuilding using the procedures described by Josh McCrowell in His Majesty the Worm.
Last time we built the city of Eldheim, the home base of our fictional adventuring guild. Today, we have to go deeper, as we will begin building the Underworld, a megadungeon beneath the city.
What is a megadungeon?
Simply put, a megadungeon is a single location large enough to support a campaign. It doesn’t necessarily have to be, but often is, a dungeon (or rather, several connected smaller dungeons) with its own inhabitants or factions that the player characters will repeatedly visit over the course of the campaign; making friends and enemies in the process while exploring the place.
Recent popular examples in adventure- and elfgame circles are Miranda Elkins’ Nightwick Abbey, Gradient Descent for Mothership, or the ambitious Halls of Arden Vul.
I myself have neither run nor played a megadungeon (yet), but if you want to hear more from people who have, consider giving the podcast Into
the Megadungeon a listen.
So, let’s get started with building our own megadungeon!
How to build a dungeon with tarot cards
As with the city above, the dungeons below are built using tarot cards. Instead of drawing from the minor arcana deck, this time we’re using the juicy major arcana deck.
This procedure covers 5 steps, the first two of which we’ll cover in this article, because that’s what I did by myself before starting to write out the process in blog post form. They cover the broad strokes of setting a theme, and choosing how many areas and levels the underworld contains and what their sub-themes are.
1. Choosing an origin
First, we’ll choose the origins of our underworld. This will be its theme, something we can always come back to for ideas, when we get to more granular details for individual rooms for example. Note that specific sub-areas or sub-dungeons might have their own sub-theme, but having a “grand theme” so to speak, can be used to wrap everything together more coherently.
We can of course choose every theme we might think of, but since we’re following the procedures in the book, I’ll stick to the examples given therein. It provides seven different underworld origins, from “Hell itself” to “a series of stolen cities, each piled on each”, with origin-specific questions that can be used to flesh out that first idea.
Since we’ve established a theme of “fear of magic” when building Eldheim, I found the following origin quite fitting: “Is it a heaven usurped by ancient sorcerers? What repercussions did their intrusion cause for the cycle of death and rebirth?”
In addition to the worldbuilding we did when creating the city of Eldheim, this origin provides us with a series of new facts about our setting and follow-up questions to think about:
There was a group of ancient sorcerers. Are they still alive today? Are they the (sole) cause of Eldheims fear of magic?
They usurped the location from a third party who felt safe here. Who were they and what remnants did they leave behind? Do some of them still live in parts of the underworld?
There is a cycle of death and rebirth. How does it work normally? Are there creatures except from this rule?
The sorcerers’ intrusion changed the cycle of death and rebirth. How does it work different now? Was it a local or a global change? Can it be fixed, and if so, with what consequences?
I can think of a number of possible answers right now, but let’s leave them open for now and see if we can get more context in the course of our procedure. These are questions we can come back to, when thinking about dungeon denizens, traps, or treasure.
2. Generating the underworld layout
On this step, we start drawing cards from the major arcana deck. Josh recommends drawing a minimum of three cards, with five being a good starting point. Each card represents its own sub-dungeon, so we generate a general layout and a cross-section of the underworld this way.
I originally started out with drawing five cards (IV, VI, VIII, XIX, XXI) but ended up drawing three more (VII, XIV, XV) because I couldn’t come up with a satisfying layout and their values were too far apart for reasonable connections.
Start with the lowest value as the main entrance (VI). If card values from I to V are present, they are on the same level as the main entrance and provide secondary entrances. I had none.
Place the card with the highest value somewhere below the first (XXI). This is the deepest level.
Place the other cards somewhere between. Note that there is no system here to how exactly lay out the cards. Go wild.
Based on their number and their position in the layout, we then determine connections between the sub-dungeons and levels: cards physically next to each other are connected, as are cards with a sequential value, and with values evenly divisible by another.
With these, I came up with a layout like this:
Based on the connection rules, we know that:
- IV is connected to VI (physically) and VIII (divisible)
- VI is connected to IV (physically) and VII (sequentially)
- VII is connected to VI (sequentially), VIII (sequentially) and XIV (divisible)
- VIII is connected to IV (divisible) and XIX (physically)
- XIV is connected to VII (divisible) and XV (sequentially)
- XV is connected to XIV (sequentially) and XIX (physically)
- XIX is connected to VIII (physically), XV (physically) and XXI (physically)
- XXI is connected to XIX (physically)
So, what are these major arcana cards about? As written above, each card represents a single dungeon. Each comes with a short description and an example map. The book also provides us with details for possible sensory sensations, structures, denizens and monsters, and the levels’ unique dungeon lord.
Each of these dungeons is provided with a map by Dyson Logos, whose maps I usually use for my games.
We’ll get to that in detail when we start writing the room keys in Step 3 of the procedure.
Here’s what we’re going to work with:
IV - The Emperor: The Inverted Castle
The main entrance to the Underworld.
Dripping down like a stalactite, the Inverted Castle hangs in the middle of a great cavern.
Nice. A giant cavern beneath the city and in it an upside-down castle? I love it. It reminds me of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, where you finish exploring the castle only to discover there is an upside-down mirror image of it opening up for you. Our group also played the Trophy Gold incursion The Rime Palace in our Eberron game last year, and we had much fun. I love that kind of location.
Let’s see what details it provides us with:
It’s described as a tomb for the Worms’ draconic children, with Escher-esque hallways.
This sounds like we could have some fun with non-euclidean geometry, with rooms bigger or smaller than they seem and a generally difficult to map place. Maybe some rooms are even moving?
Example inhabitants are Imps, Orcs, Sphinxes, Scorpion Men and Mummified Dragons. Maybe the ancient sorcerers were actually some kind of dragons?
Every dungeon comes with a designated “Dungeon Lord”, a special kind of creature that could be used as its own faction, boss monster, NPC or what have you. This dungeon’s lord is “The Beastmaster”, which could be a yet-living dragon sorcerer itself, or indicate that the dragons were in fact not the ancient sorcerers, but their minions instead.
VI - The Lovers: The Pits
A dungeon level connecting the Inverted Castle to deeper parts of the dungeon.
If you think that the Underworld is merely the home of death, you are mistaken. It is teeming with life.
This one is a fairly expansive labyrinth of tunnels and caves, populated by tons of rats and worse things.
Example inhabitants are Ratmen, Goblins, and Meat Slimes. I like the sound of that.
The Dungeon Lord of this level is the Rat King.
As it is a connecting level, it might make sense to also have a secret exit to the city in here somewhere. Maybe it leads up to the Shrine of Teeth, the defunct healing district.
VII - The Chariot: Belly of the Beast
The second level of the Underworld begins here.
The primordial world serpent Apep long gnawed upon the roots of the Underworld until he choked on the sins of the living and died.
The maybe literal carcass of the world serpent leads even deeper, like a spiral descending into the earth. Our layout conveniently supports this, as the dungeon from card XIV is located directly beneath this one.
Example inhabitants are Melancholic Imps, Skeleton Jellies and “various Stomach Prisoners”.
The Dungeon Lord is the Still-Beating Heart which could be an alias for a rogue alchemist or the literal heart of the world serpent.
VIII - Justice: The Drowned Wedding
Note that my card says Strength, not Justice. Apparently the card value of VIII or XI is switched depending on the tarot deck you’re using. The alternative here would have been XI - Strength: Sepulcher of Titans. Based on the card position and location name, with the river The Grey flowing above, keeping the Drowned Wedding made more sense to me.
Everybody agrees that the wood elf princess Titikamook and the Finfolk King were lovers.
Underground elven ruins, half submerged and now populated by ghosts. This sounds like Dark Souls’ New Londo to me. Maybe this level could provide a secondary entrance, provided one can breathe underwater.
Example inhabitants are Brine Imps (There are a lot if Imps in here, maybe former sorcerer familiars?), Walrus Men, Land Whales, and Banshees.
The Dungeon Lord here is the aforementioned Finfolk King. What happened to his queen? Were either the Finfolk or Woodelves the former inhabitants of the Underworld?
XIV - Temperance: The Menagerie of Singular Creatures
Directly below the Belly of the Beast lies a peculiar set of rooms.
The sphinxes whisper of a time before there were multitudinous species - droves of oxen, murmurations of starlings, schools of fish, prides of lions. Before that, there was only His Majesty the Worm.
A series of chambers, each unique in their appearance and contents. This might be the most difficult dungeon floor to key. Or the most fun.
Example inhabitants are not given. Is this place truly as lifeless as it seems?
The Dungeon Lord here is the Unicorn. Is it an escaped experiment or an actual unicorn, maybe the last of its kind? Or simply an impostor, driven mad by loneliness?
XV - The Devil: The Hellmarkt
Hidden deep within the earth lies a marketplace like no other.
The Hellmarkt sits at a crossroads between the Underworld and the far realms, where spirits dwell.
This one is a giant bazaar, where mortal races stick out like a sore thumb. Sounds like a great place for gathering information, shady contracts and monkey’s paw bargains.
Example inhabitants are Elf Cloneslugs, Angels, Devils and Dream Fairies.
The Dungeon Lord here are the Curators. What are the terms and conditions in this marketplace? Maybe the guild needs to watch out not to find themselves be bargained for as yet another curiosity.
XIX - The Sun: The White Gardens
Connecting the Hellmarkt and the Drowned Wedding lies an vast underground network of caverns filled with bioluminescent fungi and mushrooms.
In the sunless reaches, light has taken on strange forms. Bizarre breeds of mushrooms have learned to shed illuminations as white and cold as the stars.
Reminds me of Hollow Knight’s Fungal Wastes area. With the connection to the Drowned Wedding above, it might be a cool opportunity to add more verticality to the dungeon.
Example inhabitants are Fungoids, Dire Crabs and Spore Zombies.
The Dungeon Lord here is the Fruiting Mother. Maybe every fungus and mushroom here is part of one giant colony. It may very well be the biggest and oldest organism of this world.
XXI - The World: The Undertomb
The last of our dungeon levels, the very deepest point beneath Eldheim.
At the center of the Underworld is the Undertomb. At the center of the Undertomb is the Well of Souls, the font of all life and death.
Yes, I really drew this card. The worm willed it so. Huge caverns. Cyclopean architecture. Eternal Darkness. This might be the place you need to reach to bring your beloved back to life or become a god. But at what price?
Example inhabitants are Ogre Spiders, Lost Adventurers undergoing Apotheosis, Disassembling Angels, and more Dragons.
The Dungeon Lord here is His Majesty - THE WORM.
Closing thoughts
This is the big picture of our Underworld. It might look something like this:
There’s a whole lot of different areas and themes and every level seems unique in its own way, so I’m positive it won’t be boring to explore.
Some cards surprised me - I love the idea of a hidden bazaar for extradimensional creatures or the way the layout reinforces the maps provided in the book - while some might be subject to change, especially the Menagerie of Singular Creatures. It seems somewhat out of place, yet it could be used to reinforce the ancient sorcerers experiments. I’ll need to think about that one for a bit.
Next up is writing the room keys for each level. This is the end of what I prepared beforehand, so it might be a while until the next article in this series is done. But I’m excited enough to at least start the mapping process, maybe I’ll even see it through.
See you next time! =)
Building a City with His Majesty the Worm
Last week, I was in Italy for our planned vacation and, as fate would have it, Josh McCrowell published his years-in-the-making game His Majesty the Worm via the folks from Exalted Funeral, which conveniently arrived at our doorstep on the day of our departure.
His Majesty the What?
“His Majesty the Worm is a new-school game with old-school sensibilities: the classic megadungeon experience given fresh life through a focus on the mundanities and small moments of daily life inside the dungeon.”
I’ll say upfront that I was really excited for this game release, as I’ve been reading Josh’s blog for a long time and his ideas and comments on game design resonate with my own.
I managed to read a good chunk of the 411-page tome between eating pizza and drinking coffee, and got curious to try and build a City and Underworld with the procedures laid out in the book.
Because doing it all by myself is boring, and it is a fun exercise in worldbuilding, I’ve decided to document the process in this post and take you, dear reader, along for the ride!
So buckle up, because all that we need are the book (or pdf), a deck of tarot cards and something to write on:
How to build a city using tarot cards
The city generation procedure has us drawing cards from the minor arcana to determine the core districts and surrounding areas. If the first card is a numbered card, we get the currently ruling power determined by its suit (i.e. The Tyrant Emperor for Pentacles or The Cult of Mythrys for Cups); if we draw a face card instead, it’s going to be a little more specific (we get into that in detail later on because I initially drew a face card).
We start in the middle with the ruling power, work our way outside from there and add three constant institutions (a river, catacombs and a market) at the end, leaving us with a unique city and a layout like this:
Let’s break it down and follow the procedure Josh calls “reverse archaeology”:
1. The Central Power
The first card I drew was the Page of Pentacles. According to the description, this face card represents The Colonies, an ethnic enclave of the City’s minority underfolk (the games term for dwarves, halflings and trolls) population, a place where their folkways are practiced and a diplomatic entity within the City is located.
Now, if this card is drawn while mapping the City, a special procedure tells us to draw again and place that district directly above the Colonies. My second card, thus, was The King of Wands, another face card.
The King of Wands represents The Court of Wands, an institution to control sorcerers and the impact of magic on the citizenry. According to the descrition the court is a city-within-a-city, mainly populated by sorcerers and rarely visited by others.
Both disctricts together leave us with an interesting setup with lots of potential for conflict and drama, with licensed and rogue sorcerers, witch hunts and the pitfalls of magocentric bureaucracy.
I imagine the Court as a kind of Mont-Saint-Michel-esque location: A central hill upon which the old town was build by the underfolk, with a walled-off, spire laden keep at its top. This double-district also presents us with a form of city government, a House of Lords and Commons like situation, consisting of both sorcerers and magic-critical folk.
2. The Core Districts
Next up, we draw four cards and lay them around the central card. I got the following:
North: 2 of Pentacles, representing the Orphanarium, a district populated by gangs of unsupervised children.
South: Ace of Pentacles, representing the Licehouse, the poorest district of the City.
East: Queen of Pentacles, representing the Street of Beggars, another district full of lepers, orphans and beggars.
West: 7 of Wands, representing the Sidereal House, a tower on a high hill, home to astronomers and philosophers.
Oof, this city is awful. Apparently, a lot of poor people live around the central district, while the people with money are moving literally above them. Sounds like our central hill is located next to an even bigger hill, with the natural moat being a literal gutter.
3. The Sprawl
To further map out the City, I drew another eight cards and spread them around the core districts:
North-East: 9 of Swords, representing the Grey Docks, a nest of pirates and scoundrels and the only entrance to the nearby river, The Grey.
East-East: 6 of Swords, representing the Bridge of Mourning, a giant bridge over The Grey, crowded with buildings like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence and one of the main city exits. Maybe it’s even trying to close itself off, like the Kowloon Walled City.
South-East: 10 of Cups, representing the Alchemists Hall, a district full of laboratories ruled by the Order of Alchemists.
South-South: 2 of Swords, representing the Temple of Strength, a gymnasium for sports and games (I imagine it like the Colosseum in Rome).
South-West: 7 of Swords, representing the Shrine of Teeth, a defunct district of healing houses.
West-West: Page of Swords, representing the Court Martial, where trials by combat are fought out.
North-West: 6 of
Cups, representing the Madrasa of Maiden Wisdom, the local public institution of learning, offering free education.
North-North: King of Cups, representing the Court of the Grail, a temple district and seat of the Cult of Mythrys, the local religion.
This third drawing further solidifies the idea of a hill-by-the-hill topography and gives us new information about the different power players in the City.
It also adds a new and interesting question: If there’s an institution offering free education to anyone regardless of standing, why are there so many poor people seemingly left to their fate? With the Court of the Grail nearby, maybe they flock to the church for a number of reasons. Maybe they’re all of a single kith and being suppressed, like the Dalish elves from Dragon Age? This could very well develop to be a key point of a campaign.
4. Constants
Last, we place the three constant locations:
The Grey: Considering we already have the Grey Docks and the Bridge of Mourning in the northeast and east, this makes placing the river easy.
The Ossuary: The ancient catacomb beneath the City, leading down into the Underworld. I think it makes sense if we place this location beneath the Shrine of Teeth.
The Omphalic Market: The City’s center of commerce. Considering the nature of the other locations, we place it between the Temple of Strength and the Alchemist hall.
Thus, we have the following city layout:
One hill for education, law and learning;
Another hill for commerce and healthcare;
A third hill representing a governmental island;
And the gutter surrounding it, bordering The Grey.
Factions
Let’s take a look at the different groups of interest we’ve established by drawing our districts.
The Court of Wands, the governing body of the City, consisting of sorcerers and underfolk alike. Paranoid of magical mishaps, they rule from their ivory tower.
The Queen of Beggars, the democratically elected representative of the City’s smallfolk.
The Bridgertons, a small group trying to establish the Bridge of Mourning as an independent entity within the City, by force if necessary.
The Order of Alchemists, trying to consolidate their hold over mercantile power.
The Cult of Mythrys, the local church; benevolent and selfless, but pursuing their own interests.
The Astronomers of Sidereal House have foreseen the stirring of the Worm, but nobody listens to them.
The Madrasa of Maiden Wisdom provides free education to all. But have they ulterior motives?
Some of these are as likely to cooperate with others, as they are to compete with another. Sounds like we inadvertently build ourselves a powder keg with lots of potential contracts for an interested (or desperate?) guild.
What’s in a name?
Every good City needs a name, and this one is no different. I’ll jump slightly ahead at this point: When following the procedure to build the megadungeon beneath the City, we choose the origin of the Underworld and with it, a theme that we can go back to when fleshing out its contents.
With our central power, The Court of Wands, we established a general theme of “fear of magic” for this City. I picked one of the suggested origins in the book that speaks of “a heaven usurped by ancient sorcerers”, further cementing the theme, even into the depths of the earth below.
Thus, the City shall be called Eldheim, seat of conquered Sorcerer-Gods.
Next, we build the Underworld!
Tales of Escia
TALES OF ESCIA: Running an OSE Hexcrawl 06
Player Characters
Melora Kriss - Human Druid
Myr’tacae Malenia - Elf Fighter
The Premise
As explained in my previous article, we’re running a modified version of Old-School Essentials in a minimalist romantic fantasy setting, which will be fleshed out as we play.
We began with our first session of B2 - Keep on the Borderlands and decided on a bi-weekly rhythm every second wednesday evening, playing for 2 hours.
For the play report of the previous session, click here.
Session 06 - Unintended Consequences
TL’DR: This session had the party return to the keep to negotiate a ransom and get their well-earned level up. They also unintentionally made matters worse for the local group of merry outlaws.
Hobgoblin relations
Picking up the game where we last left our party, they were approached by a female hobgoblin, urging them to come talk out of sight if their caves’ entry. After introducing herself as Makkad, it turned out she is one of the hobgoblin chieftains four wives and is hoping they could help her solve the current problems of the clan, as they are currently in a stalemate.
Their leadership has been problematic since the chieftain took his newest wife, because he is just a figurehead and now there are two wives who are pushing for pacifist and mercantile relations with Margrave Keep and two who are pushing for a return of the clan’s old ways of pillaging and raiding. The clan had been living a comfortable life in the encampment, but now it is starting to break up into the two camps, straining their internal relations. To top everything up, the agressive faction is now holding six hostages, which they plan to ransom back to the Keep for 100gp per hostage. According to Makkads description,
one of the hostages is the missing halfling merchant’s wife.
A small party was sent to Margrave Keep to negotiate the ransom, but they haven’t returned yet. Makkad hopes the party could convince the chieftain to abstain from the return to the old ways, but doing so would most certainly require them to prevent at least one of the aggressive wives from attending the meeting, so the vote for the future course could more easily be swayed to her favor.
Makkad had to return to the hobgoblin camp at this point, and the party decided to return to Margrave Keep for the time being, hoping to get their hands on some narcotics and possibly the money required to buy the hostages’ freedom.
Back to the Keep
The return trip to Margrave Keep was uneventful, and the party arrived after two days to the still ongoing celebrations of Duke Albann’s firstborn son. New to the Keeps’ scenery were a couple of covered horsewagons which were clearly not mercantile carts.
The party proceeded to meet the halfling merchant Cori, providing him with a much-expected update on his wives’ whereabouts. He asked them to accompany him to the Guild House, where he procured the gold for her ransom and entrusted it to Melora and Myr’tacae.
Before seeking out Commander Margrave, Myr’tacae went to the blacksmith and invited Gobbli to accompany them, as she had requested.
Hostage negotiations
Inside the keep, they only found the elven advisor Woken-Too-Early, who proceeded to fetch the absent commander. In the meantime, Melora entertained Myr’tacae and Gobbli with bee facts, describing how they used “hot bee balls” to defend themselves. Gobbli seemed disturbingly interested if this could also be used against humanoid creatures, claiming she had a list of people she’d try it on.
Once Commander Margrave arrived, she bid the party accompany her to her office to talk. Melora explained the recent happenings, including the claims of the hobgoblins that the peaceful relations haven’t been ended by the demihumans, but by the keeps’ personnel, first.
Considering the conflicting point of views of the conflicts’ origin, Margrave agreed that there’s a possibility of everything being a grave misunderstanding, but as of now she is inclined to believe her guards’ reports, unless other incriminating evidence was provided.
Myr’tacae added that a third party could also be
involved, showing her new shield with the exiled House Addercapper’s coat of arms on it, intended as an example for her claim, but not accusing them. Commander Margrave didn’t take it as only an example though, instead showing open hostility for the exiles and ordering Woken-Too-Early to increase patrols and round up the outlaws, as she feared she had been too indifferent about their continuing presence in the area.
The party and Gobbli were dismissed at this point, and they took some time talking about their next moves. Gobbli voiced her disappointment in the escalating development, she only wished to see the Commander lose their cool instead. She left Melora and Myr’tacae, claiming to make some calls to prevent bad things from happening. The party decided to head to the chapel to petition for money for the rest of the ransom, after Cori hinted at the local priest possibly being willing to help people out, earlier.
Scrounging up more money
At the chapel, they met father Arfred, an overly friendly man of the cloth and local human priest, as well as one of his acolytes, the breggle Amshred Barbicant, both clad in silver-white robes, the traditional garments of the church of St. Marcia.
Hearing of the hostages’ plight, father Arfred agreed to pay at least some of the ransom money, assuring them that the church always helps their sheep in need. Regrettably, he could only offer 300gp at the time, leaving the party with 200gp left to procure otherwise or pay themselves, if they so choose.
Afterwards, the party headed to the inn to spend the night, which is where we ended our session.
Closing thoughts
This session was mostly in-character roleplay, with the PCs reporting on information they gathered in the last few sessions. Up until now, the players encountered several conflicting viewpoints of the ongoing conflict, realizing there is a lot of misunderstanding between the different factions, but likely no simple solution.
The conversation with Commander Margrave surprised me the most, as Myr’tacae unintentionally added more fuel to the fire: The soldiers at the keep now have a new goal “Round up the Outlaws”, and I changed some random encounter table entries for the area, to reflect the Knights of the Blue Shield now actively looking for them. The outlaws now also have a new goal “Evade the Knights”, and I’m looking forward to which faction wins this one and how it plays out in the end.
Unexpected, but fun. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, after all. >:)
The new horsewagons in the keep are refugees from the village of Orlane to the south, adding a
possible hook for future adventures. In hindsight, I regret forgetting to have them show up inside the keep looking for Commander Margrave or even in the chapel, pleading for help with the priest. I’m going to add that for a future session.
See you next time. =)
Tales of Escia
TALES OF ESCIA: Running an OSE Hexcrawl 05
Player Characters
Melora Kriss - Human Druid
Myr’tacae Malenia - Elf Fighter
The Premise
As explained in my previous article, we’re running a modified version of Old-School Essentials in a minimalist romantic fantasy setting, which will be fleshed out as we play.
We began with our first session of B2 - Keep on the Borderlands and decided on a bi-weekly rhythm every second wednesday evening, playing for 2 hours.
For the play report of the previous session, click here.
Session 05 - Goblin BBBQ (the extra B is for BYOBB)
TL’DR: Beagle-Kobolds! A Cooking Mini game! Goblins and Kobolds bonding over food! This session had it all.
BBQ preparation
We decided to turn back time a little and start the session a short while after the battle in the goblin caves, instead of the next morning, to play out the baboon BBQ.
As the food still took a good while to prepare, the party decided to pay the kobold caves on the opposite side of the ravine a visit, to possibly get more information about the goings-on at the demihuman encampment and the whereabouts of the halfling merchant’s wife.
Kobold Birthday Party
Dandelion led them to the entry of the kobold caves, where they found some small wooden signs with “Kep owt” and the like written on them, but no guards to greet them.
Heading deeper into the dark and narrow cave, which barely allowed the human-sized PCs to walk upright, they soon heard celebratory noises from deeper within. They followed the sounds to the camps’ common room, where the light of their torch revealed a gathering of 17 dog-like humanoids sitting around a table, with an eighteenth sitting on a chair placed on top of it.
Although nearly blinded by the torchlight, my reaction roll was in favor of the party, so I had the head-kobold, a beagle-like fellow with silver fur approach them. The celebratory mood clearly being an advantage for the party, he asked them if they came to also celebrate Snoots (the kobold on the chair) birthday. Smitten by their doglike appearance, Myr’tacae and Melora played along and joined the celebrating kobolds, which were just about to
start howling a birthday song for Snoot, who was shifting in her chair - visibly uncomfortable, as one does in such situations - waiting for her ordeal to be over.
Melora and Myr’tacae awkwardly joined in the “song”, both characters’ successful Charisma checks preventing them from making fools of themselves. Afterwards, they talked at length with Ukba, the silver furred kobold about what happened at the goblin den and proposed the kobolds could join in the feast, building a bond between the two as-of-yet indifferent to each other clans. Ukba meanwhile complained about the kobolds’ relationship with the orcs living right above them, their newfound agression towards each other and smaller races being the reason for the kobolds’ seclusion in their cave. He could confirm the sighting of the hooded man, adding that he never saw him arrive or leave and another kobold chimed in to report his sighting of white clothes, possibly a robe, and a symbol resembling a sun, star or moon underneath
the wide black coat.
All the while, Myr’tacae was distracted by the kobolds’ cuteness and proceeded in petting a few of them, and Melora could hardly hide her excitement as well. Snoot asked Ukba to join the goblins feast as a birthday present, a wish he couldn’t decline. After filling a big sack with ingredients from their own storage, Snoot, Ukba and nine other kobolds joined the party in returning to the goblins cave.
A Bonding Moment
Once they arrived back at the goblin camp, the goblins and kobold quickly bonded over their mutual interest in food and the goblin king Redwing, ever the opportunist, quickly seized the moment to officially invite the kobolds to join the feast to celebrate the victory over the baboons and their newfound common ground.
While preparing the food, Melora and Myr’tacae joined the cooking crew to help and make sure they definitely got something edible on their plates. This prompted a quick cooking mini-game inspired by Prismatic Wastelands recent blog post.
The player characters succeeded in cooking something surprisingly tasty, using mostly ingredients from their own rations and the kobolds supply, and as little baboon meat as possible.
The celebrations went on for a long time this evening and Melory and Myr’tacae, along with most of the kobolds, fell asleep among their newfound goblin
friends.
Scouting the Hill
Come morning, the party decided to get a better picture of the lay of the land. Moving around the ravine and its surrouding hill, they made note of the different cave entrances, before heading to the main entrance to the hobgoblin lair to continue their investigation for Pearl’s whereabouts.
Their scouting efforts seemingly didn’t go unnoticed, because they found a female hobgoblin waiting for them at the entrance. Inticing them to follow her, she went on to a spot hidden from the entrance’s view, waiting for the party to follow.
Closing thoughts
After last sessions’ chaos, this one was more on the calm side. The kobold birthday party was a welcome surprise and helped to bring them and the goblin clan closer together. The players have now unlocked both of their races as available choices for future character creation.
Escian kobolds are the dog-variant, while escian orcs are the pig-variant, because I like their appearance in Dungeon Meshi, and it reminded me of my childhood, especially Zelda’s Moblins in the animated series and older games. Plus, I am a dog owner, and it’s fun to have the kobolds behave just as silly as my beloved Leia. :D
Behold, my own personal Kobold.
While planning the campaign, I knew I wanted the players to have the possibility to cook with different ingredients. As written in my post about alternate starting equipment, I am using Skerples Monster Menu-All for descriptions and food effects.
I originally planned to use the Dungeon Gourmand supplement by occultesque.com mentioned by Skerples, but the site has since been taken offline and after reading Prismatic Wastelands aforementioned blog post, I found the Yahtzee mini-game more fun to use. I did change it to all kind of ingredients using the same d6 size though, so the players have a higher propability to actually trigger the positive effects. I like the idea of a growing dice pool by using more ingredients to increase the chances of, or even enabling beneficial dice combinations
in the first place. The players liked it too, so I’m sure it won’t be the last time I used it.
See you next time. =)