Tales of Escia

TALES OF ESCIA: Running an OSE Hexcrawl 01

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 yesterday and decided on a bi-weekly rhythm every second wednesday evening, playing for 2 hours.

Session 01 - The Beginning

TL’DR: The player characters arrived at Margrave Keep after receiving a call for help in the town of Saltmarsh: they are to investigate a series of attacks on merchants and abductions of the keeps populace. The group got their bearings and met most major NPCS at the keep, before settling down for the night in the sleeping room of the Stinking Ogre tavern. This was a 100% RP session.

Arrival at Margrave Keep

The session began with the PCs arriving at Margrave Keep, passengers on a merchant cart, after hearing of a call for help in the coastal town of Saltmarsh, located about 5 days of travel to the west: The keeps Commander seeks a neutral party to investigate a series of recent attacks on merchants and travelers, as well as disappearances of people in the vicinity of Margrave Keep.

Still flying the banner of Brackenwold, Margrave Keep is located at the northwestern border of the earldom of Albann. Six months prior, the former ruler of the peninsula, Lord Brackenwold, had to give up this part of his land to Count Albann, by decree of the twin emperors of Courland. As part of the division, the hills around Margrave Keep were defined as the new border and for the time being, the keep remains staffed with its former inhabitants.

At the gate, the party was met by Brackenwold soldiers of the Knights of the Golden Promise - remains of Lord Brackenwolds army, consisting mostly of breggles (goatfolk) from the Dolmenwood region far to the east - and granted access to the keep.

The Stinking Ogre

They started to get their bearing around the keep by visiting the local tavern, the Stinking Ogre, meeting the dwarven barkeep Dombo Barkhop, as well as grimalkin noble Madame Pusskin - first claw and ambassador of King Pusskin of Dolmenwood - while talking about their reasons for arriving at the keep.
Mme. Pusskin stated her task of retrieving a lost sword, stolen from another grimalkin noble in the area not long ago. Unfortunately for her, she was the only person around when the task was issued and forbidden to return to court until the sword was found, and had no one to delegate to - until now. She offered 100gp to the party, should they come across the sword in the course of their investigation and return it to her.
Dombo mainly talked about the issues around the keep, as well as warning of the dangers in the surrounding area. As the barkeep, he was the main source of local rumors. He also showed interest in Melora adding honey to her ale and offered to name the drink after her, should it prove popular with his customers.

Audience with the Commander

Afterwards, the group decided to visit the keep fortress and met Commander Malgrave - an ageing, too-old-for-this-shit breggle - and her advisor Woken-Too-Soon - a dolmenwoodian elf - and talked long about investigating the attacks and missing people. Commander Margrave explained why she needs a neutral party: the locals are starting to blame a group of demihumans that are known to have a settlement somewhere in the area and, until recently, regularly came to the keep to trade. She doesn’t have the manpower to start a large-scale search and wants to prevent unnecessary bloodshed.
They advised the group to talk to the locals for more details of the attacks and disappearances and also bid them to keep an eye out for the keeps mage, who went missing a week or so ago.

Talking with the locals

Next, the group went to the merchants quarter of the keep, where they found the local trader Fennig Cornicus - a breggle - arguing with the merchant they arrived with. Fennig had little additional information about the missing people and wares, except that a few days ago, a patrol discovered an abandoned cart southwest of the keep with its cargo untouched, covered in webs.

They then went to the local provisioner, Cori Brandywood - a halfling - and learned that his wife Pearl is one of the people reported missing. Three weeks ago, she went looking for herbs southwest of the keep and never came back. His own search unsuccessful, the guards and soldiers couldn’t be bothered looking for her and Cori strongly voiced his opinion and disappointment of them and was glad that finally somebody showed interest in investigating the issue.
They also talked about the culinary preferences of goblins, since reports involving them reported only stolen foodstuffs, but little else. Cori suggested they buy a pack of rations from him, for themselves or as a bargaining chip.

Having rolled up a whopping 12+2gp after choosing their background and starting equipment, Melora and Myr started discussing the price of 5gp for the rations. Cori, glad that someone was finally willing to look for his wife, took pity on them and offered a payment in increments: 50% now and 50% when they return his wife. The rations still ate up a good part of the groups funds.

Return to the Stinking Ogre

With the day nearing its end, Melora and Myr returned to the Stinking Ogre, and there overheard another group of adventurers discussing a bounty issued by the local guild house: hunt a certain basilisk and earn 250gp.
To save some money, the party decided to sleep in the taverns hammock room, the cheapest option availabe.

Closing thoughts

This is where we ended the session, with 15 minutes left to talk about other things. I briefly explained the downtime rules (we’ll be using Ben Laurences Downtime in Zyan as a base) and we decided on giving the PCs the opportunity to spend a week or more on downtime activities whenever we end a session in a safe haven.
Overall, I think we got a lot done in the relatively short time of play, even if it was a pure roleplaying session. I basically got to dish out every hook and rumor I had prepared for this session, with all of them coming up organically during roleplay - no rolls needed.
It certainly helps that we’re an established play group, every one of us having played with (and GM’d for) the others before. Aside from re-establishing some starting facts, everything went smoothly fast and the PCs already show a lot of character after one session.
The players already decided to go look for Pearl and the location where the webbed merchant cart was found next, starting their exploration of the surrounding lands.

See you in two weeks. =)