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. =)