Tales of Escia

TALES OF ESCIA: Running an OSE Hexcrawl 02

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.

For the play report of the previous session, click here.

Session 02 - Of talking Spiders and merry Outlaws

TL’DR: The party unexpectedly found a group of soldiers in need of help. Their quest to find an antidote for a poisoned soldier led them to negotiating with a pair of giant black widows and learning more about the goings-on in the region, as well as spending the night in an old thieves guild hideout.

Road Investigation

As was planned in the last session, we began with our party travelling from Margrave Keep to hex 0801.

Hexes on this map are scaled for 24 square miles, so it takes approximately a day to travel from one to the next, unless the journey is impeded by difficult terrain. With hex 0801 being adjacent to Margrave Keep and travelling along the road they came through from Saltmarsh, the party arrived at their destination late in the afternoon.
My dice indicated no random encounter for the day, so they found the location where the webbed merchant cart was discovered without any hold-ups. Being a relatively busy road, any possible tracks since the cart was moved back to Margrave Keep were already mixed with newer ones.
Looking around, Melora and Myr’tacae discovered two things: a female voice screaming in pain, coming from the top of a hill to the west; and an off-road trail, leading to a deeper section of the area to the east.
With the additional task of looking for the halfling merchants’ missing wife, they decided to head up the hill first.

Landmark Discovery

On top of the hill, the party discovered a ruined tower and a group of five people inside. They were clad in armour and wearing colors they hadn’t seen before at Magrave Keep: a black tower on red ground.
One of them - a human woman - was lying on the ground next to one of three statues, resembling the demigods Aphrodite, Demeter and Hephaistos, and the source of the screams. The four others - three male humans and one male halfling - were standing over her, obviously distressed.
The halfling noticed Merlora and Myr’tacae first and gave his captain a good nudge to the kneecap. My reaction roll told me they’d be wary of the party, but their desperation for their comrade in distress quickly led to them talking about what had happened: Last night while camping, their party was ambushed by giant spiders, with one member ending up wounded and poisoned and another being carried off into the darkness. When asked why they didn’t bring the poisoned soldier to Margrave Keep for healing, the captain responded that doing so would most certainly lead to the lot of them ending up on the gallows, since they aren’t welcome there.

To the Nest!

Alton Crang the halfling had an idea how to cure the poisoning, but his captain wouldn’t let him try it, because it involved tracking the spiders and extract their venom from their body to cook up an antidote. When Melora and Myr’tacae agreed to help, the captain gave in and allowed Alton and the two other soldiers to go with them. When talking about how to extract the poison, Alton suggested Melora and Myr could try to talk to the spiders, rather than killing them off.
On their way from the tower, Alton shared that he knew where the spider nest was located, because him and his group regularly travel these hills. It didn’t take long for them to arrive at a grove of web-covered dead trees, hidden in a valley.
Standing before the massive Nest, Melora and Myr debated on how to best approach the spiders, with Alton stressing that he made a joke, since everyone knows that animals aren’t supposed to be talking.
Heading deeper inside, the group found remains of spider eggs and two humanoid sized cocoons. Just as Myr’tacae was approaching the cocoons, two giant black widow spiders descended from the webs and barred her way, demanding to know what they were doing here.
Surprised by the fact that these spiders indeed were talking to them, Melora took the lead and explained the situation. My reaction roll again told me the spiders would be wary but willing to negotiate, so they told Melora that they were only attacking the soldiers because they needed something to eat and that the poisoning of one of them was only in self defense. Melora offered some honey in exchange for their venom, which the spiders accepted.
Too baffled by the spiders’ apparent sentience, Alton forsook any plan to attack them, instead asking to take their abducted comrade back with them. The spiders told him that it was already too late for that, but that they were free to take his belongings back with them. Myr took his broken shield as a token of proof and they left the nest in (relative) peace.

Return to the Tower

On their way back, Melora and Myr’tacae asked Alton about the halflings’ group and their conflict with Margrave Keep. He told them that the keep originally was property of the Addercapper family, before Lord Brackenwold gifted it to Commander Margrave a few years back. She arrived at the keep with her soldiers and gave the Addercappers the choice of leaving quietly or be executed for insubordination.
Outnumbered, the current head of the Addercapper family, Katerynne, chose the former option and has been living in the hills with her loyal entourage ever since. They make their living by stealing from the keep and its associates, but Alton stressed they only ever take as much as they need and try to avoid violence whenever possible. The reports of attacks on merchans are, according to him, not about them.

Dinner and Goodbye

Back at the tower, Alton started cooking up an antidote right away, while Melora and Myr talked to his captain again. He introduced himself as Molly Fraggleton and invited them to stay for dinner. They could also keep the broken shield as payment, as it would prove to be a helpful piece of equipment, once repaired.
Melora and Molly talked at length about the beekeeping and honeymaking and how it could provide the Addercappers a way to trade with merchants rather than stealing from them. Molly was intrigued by her expertise and promised to at least propose the idea to Katerynne.
When wondering about the untouched offerings lying before the three demigod statues, Molly told the party that the tower was supposedly used as a hideout by the thieves guild, although he and his group have never actually encountered anyone here.
After dinner, the soldiers headed home to their encampment, providing Melora and Myr’tacae with its location , should they ever want to trade or need their help.

Cellar exploration

After the soldiers left, Myr took a stroll around the tower to look for a good place to spend the night and under some rubble discovered a hidden door leading to a cellar below the tower.
Inside, they found one door that proved too stuck to move, and another leading to a small but hopefully safe enough room to sleep in. During the night they heard the cry of an eagle outside (my rolled omen of an random encounter) and noticed their fire moving in a draft of air. Myr looked for the origin of the draft and found the eastern wall of the room to be an illusion, hiding a passage to another room deeper within. The room, which contained several sleeping rolls and a large chest filled with gold and gems, seemed to have been unsused for quite some time as everythin was covered by a thick layer of dust.
Happy about having found a more comfortable place to sleep and their newfound treasure, Melora and Myr’tacae went to bed.

Closing thoughts

This is where we ended the session, again with 15 minutes left to talk about other things.
We determined the XP gained in the session (1165xp for the gold plus 480xp for exploration per PC) and where they plan to go the next session - further westwards to look for the missing halfling, Pearl.
Overall, the players discovered the landmark (tower ruin) and hidden thing (spider nest) in hex 0801, which just leaves its secret feature to uncover. They also got directions to the secret feature of hex 0902, the Addercapper camp.
Most of the sessions RP vibes were determined by the NPC’s reaction rolls, which I’ve come to embrace for all my recent games, and which proved to generally fall into the partys favor.
I like using the Mausritter reaction table on the left over the actual OSE one on the right, because as you can see, it tends to give even more opportunities to parley with a possible enemy, which serves quite nicely for our type of play.

See you in two weeks. =)