The Doug Alone

A man wanders through a liminal space with dice and dominos.

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 15 - Entering the Everburning Forest

By

On 2024-10-20

In Actual Play, ShadowDark, Solo Campaigns, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

The Everburning Forest

In his youth, Jonias Grunkheart was fascinated by a strange stretch of land two days travel from the Grunkheart Manse. In old tongue, it was the Tarulukki Ran: the Valley of Sulfurous Smoke. In the distant past, before the Barthic Empire had largely pushed aside all Ancient Technology and buried it out of fear of a Third Cataclysm, the Ran had been the site of contact. This fact Jonias found in scrolls written in Pre-Barthic tongue that his family treasured above everything else.

Something, a creature of long eyes and many teeth, had arrived there. Seeking tarulang: now known as sulfur. The Ancients and the Outsider built an engine to pull great rivers of molten earth up to the surface and harvested from the destruction. The scrolls do not make it clear whether or not the outsider got what it needed. The next story takes place hundreds of years later. A young techno-priestess named Elizin Urnlight, attempted to save the everburning valley by settling the eruptions and by creating an entire ecosystem of flora and fauna that could survive the sulfurous atmosphere. The roots of the unburning trees helped to heal the stones and eventually the lava ceased to flow so freely. 

Thus the place of fiery death became Tarulukki Ran, a place where the air was harsh to breath and the heat was unbearable to many, but a place where life could grow. 

As Jonias grew older and had begun gathering the great families into the new city of Grunce, forming the Pentarchy to fight back, he knew their final stand would be brief without a weapon against the Bleak. The rumors had been ignored for too long and the amount of soil left free from the spreading darkness decreased by the day. 

He went into the now nearly forgotten Ran and built up a network to tap into Elizin's network of lines and conduits of power, barely understanding the science he used but desperate to harness it to his own ends. At the spot where the machine had once been planted to cleave the earth into fire, Jonias built a workshop. He believed there was a source of primal Light, there, a energy left over from the Outsider, which could be harnessed and elevated and magnified. The same light that Elizin Urnlight had used. 

There he met an outcast Efreeti named Uuld Alloces and made a pact with the creature of fire. He would leave the valley to Uuld with the old technology still potent enough to keep the Bleak out. 

After a tense decade where the Pentarch was under siege not only by the growing number of refugees and the Bleak-filled monstrosities beginning to increase in frequency, but by other great houses from now destroyed cities who demanded their own right to rule. At a time in which the five core families were on the cusp of losing Grunce, Jonias managed his last great miracle. Five fuel stones carved from the rocks of the Everburning Forest to channel a form of Elizin Urnlight's forgotten technology into a singular source: the Lighthouse. 

Where the Light shines over the city that was once the Grunkheart Manse, the Bleak cannot encroach. 

While two days ride away, the Ran still sits in acrid yellow smoke and things entangled in that ancient magic seek a way to leave. The very mystical technology that gave hopes to the last bastion of a crumbling empire weakened the original version of the techno-priestess's great salvation. Different things crawl there, now, things that might grow in power if the Bleak can find a way in...
The Everburning Forest is a place of feral magic where a great working has destabilized natural order and given forth to great energies. In the core, a hole to another place has allowed strange creatures to come forth.  At that place, a group of people long twisted and broken by exposure to the nearly toxic air and high heat have dedicated themselves to the worship of Them. Placating Them so They will be content with a small grove. [Worlds Without Number (WWN): Ruins Tag --> Feral Magic + Wilderness Tag --> Devil's Grove]. 

The Tower

At the top of the valley there stands a tower once used by Jonias Grunkheart to store supplies while he struggled through the rough air and heat. 30' by 60' at the base and rising four stories in the sulfurous, it was much more a wayfinder than a defense of any strength. In the three hundred years since, the top two floors have been eaten away and collapsed into the path. 

At its base, two paths stretch. One east along the side of the valley and one south down into the depths. The east-most path quickly splits with a north trail going to one of the crags and peaks surrounding the valley while the trail continuing east goes to mines used by Jonias once to harness the mystically-infused stone used to carve the fuel stones. 

The tower is currently home to a group of nine gnolls who have been gathering old equipment and junk from the tower. 

Gnoll

AC 12 (leather), HP 10, ATK 1
spear (close/near) +1 (1d6), MV near, S
+1, D +1, C +1, I -1, W +0, Ch -1, AL
C, LV 2 

Rage. 1/day, immune to morale
checks, +1d4 damage (3 rounds).

The gnolls know the way through the path to the south but do not go far into the valley to avoid conflict with the Salamanders and the other things which live in the valley. 

The most recent find by the gnolls is a strange statue of a viperian orphid that has been buried under rubble. It is made out of the same stuff as the fuelstones and represents an early draft worked out by Jonias: a symbol of House Mistamere before the design was perfected and the four statues of the non-Grunkheart houses were replaced by replicas of Pentarch leaders (the fifth, the Cyclops, is carved like a large version of Jonias with a single eye looking up into the base of the Lighthouse, the only non-human variation). 

The tower has otherwise long been ransacked by the gnoll tribe and mostly filled with their own refuse and junk. However, in the second floor is a locked door (DC18 DEX to open) which has been closed off by collapsed rubble (DC15 STR to move one of the pieces of 1d6 rubble). Inside, most of the books and notes used by Jonias have been long destroyed by the climate but one magical book, a Tome of Dead Words remains. 

Tome of Dead Words

Contains each of the following scrolls: create undead, magic circle, protection from evil, and speak with the dead. Can also cast Turn Undead but on fumble draws undead to attack the holder. 

[ShadowSpark (ShS) Treasure 8 and Dungeon Encounter Card 41. Increased number of gnolls to better fit party size and altered the powers of the Tome slightly to make using it more a threat]. 

[Doug's Note: In the interim since episode 14, the quartet have gained and had made dragonsilk cloaks, boots, and gloves. These will get advantage on saves versus fire and will (in notebooking terms) make it where "incidental" checks versus heat are not required. I was not going to make those, anyhow, so there you go.]
"Krs'kal'k SHEBAK!" shouts the voice from the tower and the four adventurers come to a stop. 

"You would think we could sneak into a lake of fire without so much hassle," quips the shortest of the four, the Halfling Inar Gale. Invoker of Gede. Jokester. And a person who decided around six months ago that the adventurer life might not be for him. 

"It is the little things, Inar, we should cherish them. By the way, do you recognize the language?" The person asking the question is Rance Uffolt, the Seer. Human and walking encyclopedia for the group. Also the person who's apocalyptic dreams lead the group to a city called Grunce and got them involved with protecting the last major stronghold of civilization in the Bleak.

"No, you?"

"Yes. Bugger. Goblin. Guess I'm doing the talking, then. Umm, Binoshi chok? Akka NObak?" After a minute, screams and angry shouts can be heard inside as rocks and rubble are flung, ineffectively, at the adventurers. [1]

"And what did you say, Uffolt?" asks Grusk Obe, half-orc Barbarian. Many assume he is the group leader, including him. He at least makes it his business to be the group's big brother.

"They asked us to leave and to go away. I said that we were not worried about them and would pass by the tower. Roughly speaking."

"Roughly," says Spotted Tom, the fourth and final member. A goblin Outlaw. One half of the Inar + Tom comedy duo. Also the moral compass of the group. 

"I kept my sentences short just in case but it was something like 'We stay, Nevermind Tower' which really is ripe for misinterpretation now that I say it out loud."

Tom looks at the others and says, "We can ignore them mostly. If they had bows and arrows I am pretty sure they would have already shot us."

"I don't like having enemies at my back, Tom." Grusk is friendly enough but there's a reason he carries an axe called Bloodlust. 

The group talks a minute and with the exception of Tom decides that having folks potentially stalking them or gathering reinforcements or somehow blocking off an exit would be a bad idea, so now they make plans for attack. [2]

"Uffolt, watch our heads, shoot anyone who tries to brain us with your magical sparkles," says Grusk before slamming bodily (and painfully) into the rubble to knock through the door. Inar and Tom help. Only a minor dent is made. Inside, they can hear the creatures' voices tracking downstairs. "So much for a quick entry," says Tom. [3]

It takes a surprisingly long time for the group to bust their way inside with Grusk finally punching through (and pushing back two gnolls were keeping the door shut). He lands inside as Tom and Inar pull and push bits out of the way to get a more even shot. [4]

Grusk erases one of the gnolls behind the door from existence with a single chop while one of the others gets a glancing stab against Grusk's side. Inar rushes in to help while Tom and Rance prepare for long distance fire the next turn. [5]

Grusk returns the favor by removing his stabber's head from its shoulders and pressing deeper into the fray. Inar and Tom miss their shots while Rance's magic missile catches a third. The enraged gnolls have come to some consensus to focus on the halfling and one of them manages to stab Inar deeply in the guts. [6]

A very angry Grusk fails to connect as Tom's arrows and Inar's swings go a bit wild. Two more stabs catch Inar who collapses. Grusk barely notices that he, too, has been hit. An acid arrow flies out and strikes the already injure gnoll. [7]

Grusk drops his shield and shoulders aside all but one spear thrust and he brings his now double-handed axe deep into the chest of the gnoll who struck down Inar. Tom whispers the activation word to his bow, Lucifer's Breath, and the arrow flying out catches fire as it strikes another gnoll. Rance keeps the acid arrow burning inside his victim as he follows up with a magic missile and another gnoll falls. With four gnolls down and another one injured, the five remaining Enrage and press forth with the attack. [8]

Grusks whittles the remaining down to four with another heavy blow while Tom puts another arrow into his target and drops that count to three. Rance dives in to start tending to Inar as the bleeding Halfling is at the edge of death. The gnolls are being pushed back by Grusk and are unable to get him with their spears. [9]

One of the remaining three gnolls gets a hefty stab into Grusk's chest while both the half-orc and goblin fail to keep up their tally. Rance stops the bleeding and starts pulling Inar back through the door to safety. [10]

Grusk's delaying tactics have cost him dearly as the half-orc hits the ground himself. Rance shoots off another acid arrow which is especially potent as it slams into the chest of the one the remaining gnolls. Tom tracks the same target and lets' loose another flaming arrow. With only two left alive, the remaining two gnolls push past the Seer and Outlaw and start fleeing into the forest. [11]

Rance runs in and rips off Grusk's platemail and staunches the blood flow. 

Tom enters pulling Inar back inside and begins rapidly building the ersatz door he helped tear down just a few minutes ago [12] . Rance is covered in the blood of his friends and surrounded by dead bodies. The Seer had just managed to keep his friends alive. 

The goblin sniffs, upset but as always hiding his anger behind a joke, "I told you attacking was a bad idea." 

== MECHANIC NOTES ==

  1. Unless I am missing it, Gnolls don't have a language specified. I rolled a 15 on an INT check for Rance (+3 for 18) so I figured it's a language he does know. Goblin being one of them. Unfortunately, with Rance's -2 and a reaction roll of 4... this means the Gnolls are going to be extremely hostile. 
  2. Vote Dice. Gave everyone but Grusk a d6. Grusk got a d8. Rolls 4+ were for attack. 3 to 4 with Tom being the only vote no. SoloDark, Is the door still intact (disadvantage)? No. How intact is the not-intact door? 1d6 --> 5. So the gnolls have piled bits of the long corroded door and rubble up in a way to make a door. STR15 with 4 total success to get through it. Otherwise DEX15 to get up to the second floor windows in anything like a successful fashion with gnolls jabbing spears. 6 of the gnolls (just rolled a d8) are on the second floor, leaving only 3 at the bottom. However, this will change depending on sneaky the characters are.
  3. Only one success on the first round of rolls. SoloDark, "Do the gnolls start running downstairs?" 18. So yes. In 2 turns all 9 will be on the bottom floor.
  4. Took 4 turns which gave the gnolls plenty of time to prepare. Grusk ended on a nat 20, so he is a bit more in control. The others will have issues joining in on this turn of the battle. 
  5. Grusk gets a crit. With Bloodlust, that's a minimum of more HP than a Gnoll has. All the gnolls missed but one who got 2 points of damage. 
  6. Another crit by Grusk. A crit by Rance. Misses for both Inar and Tom. All gnolls chose Inar as a target and one of them got a critical (!) hit for 14 points of damage. Inar is very hurt. 
  7. Inar takes another critical hit (only 2 doing 2 damage this time) but then a regular hit that drops him to 0. Only Rance's Acid Arrow hits and it only does 1hp damage (leaving that gnoll with 4). 
  8. Grusk will be AC16 but do more damage. Tom has 5 rounds with his bonus. Inar has 3 rounds to stabilize (failed the first time). 
  9. Spent all the Karma trying to Inar stabilized. He has one more turn to live. 
  10. This is the last round of the gnoll's enrage. They do make their morale check, though, and will keep pushing the fight the next round. Rance makes the stabilize roll (finally). Tom and Grusk miss but one gnoll gets the hit with the +4 damage. Grusk is ALSO hurting. 
  11. Grusk is downed and only has one round to go. Rance is going to have to get to him. Luckily Rance's own critical hit gives him a slightly better chance to stabilize the orc. 
  12. Got a WIS 16 so tearing it down will require a STR 16, etc. 

== DOUG'S NOTES ==

Considering the last fight (versus the technically more dangerous cyclops) went really well it seems the tides needed to change. Two downed heroes kept alive at the very last second in both cases. Since the group will need to regroup and next time will pick up with a few checks for random encounters (which will be bad) while the other work on protecting their friends. This is the closest this campaign has gotten to new characters. 
Current plan is to have the The Bleak & The Pearl posts go into a weekly cycle. Sunday's at 5pm, my time zone. 

== CREDITS ==

This campaign is played primarily using Shadowdark and SoloDark, both by Arcane Library and Kelsey Dionne (et al).

Additional sources include a variety of things for tables, especially Knave 2nd Edition and Maze Rats (both by Ben Milton), Random Realities by Cezar Capacle, Universal NPC Emulator by Zach Best, and various pieces from Worlds without Number and Scarlet Heroes (both by Kevin Crawford).

The illustrations are created by me using GIMP and Hex Kit (featuring the Lil Hex Pack and Strange BW Hex Pack). The sources of the images I edit to make the "two color" splashes range from personal photographs to Pixabay Stock Art to a few old pieces generated by ChatGPT/Dall-E (though I am planning to generate no new AI content for this blog due to a lot of reasons).

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Intermission 4: Leveling up to Level 4 (and the Hunt for Magical Weaponry)

By

On 2024-09-19

In Campaign Design, ShadowDark, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

Note: This whole post will be out-of-character and just in "Doug Notes" mode.

Leveling Up to Level 4

The four adventurers hit level four with the most recent outing so we will work on that, first. 

  • Grusk gets +6HP (bringing his total to 21). His Weapon Mastery will also hit 1+2 (1+1/2levels rounded down). This brings his total bonus to hit to +4 for all weapons (STR+ & Talent) and +7 for axes. He also gets +3 damage when using axes. My boy! His title rank remains Barbarian
  • Inar gets +3HP (18 total). He gets an additional 2nd level Priest spell. While Smite is tempting, I'm going for Cleansing weapon (+1d4 extra damage, +1d6 vs Undead) since he tends to be the kind to cast spells on others for effect. His title remains Invoker.
  • Tom gets +4HP (15 total). He gets an additional dice to his backstab (+3D in total, though that is +3d4 for his attacks). His title remains Outlaw. 
  • Rance gets +3HP (12 total). He gets an additional send level Wizard spell. I'm going for Misty Step since scooting back out of battle will likely be beneficial to him. His title remains Seer. 
All four need 40xp to hit level 5. 

Acquiring Magic Items

In the pre-written adventures, low level magic items are not super rare. I have been using random tables for around 2/3s of the campaign and have really not generated a usable magic item since the Wand of Webs. This leads us to a place where there is a single magic item (the axe, Bloodlust), a Priest who can temporarily magically enchant weapons based on a DC11/DC12 check, and a Wizard who can cast spells. The team is high enough rank now that plenty of creatures require some degree of magical damage to actually take damage. By level 4, if I was GMing for a group, everyone would likely have 1 magical item or more at this stage. I have also been very, very stingy on GP. This is putting the group behind a bit on material possessions. 
To rectify this, I will not add any Gold/etc to their total but I will roll for 2 magic weapons (one for Inar, one for Tom, page 292 of the book) and then generate 2 additional magical items. 
  • Inar gets a +1 Mace that is studded with gemstones (ruby). It gives advantage to initiative checks but grows stupidly heavy in water and causes the wielder to make swimming checks vs DC18. It will be called The Crimson Star. 
  • Tom gets a +1 Short Bow. Arrows shot from it trail sparkles. The arrows can pierce through any material and once per day the bow will shoot flaming arrows (+1d4) for 5 rounds. This will, of course, interfere with any sneak attacks. The Lucifer's Breath.
  • A Potion of Mind Reading (all creatures within near for 1 hour).
  • A statuette of a phoenix (with actual phoenix feathers) that makes the wielder immune to cold damage. 
That should be a good balance check. Tom's is a bit OP BUT it also makes him a clearer target since his arrows will sparkle as he shoots them, etc. I am not sure if cold damage will be even in this campaign but there you go. 

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 14 - The Sad Encroachment of the Cyclops Grobnir Fronk

By

On 2024-09-19

In Actual Play, ShadowDark, Solo Campaigns, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

The lifecycle of your average cyclops is barely studied by civilized folks because your average cyclops is prone to tossing large rocks (see also: large sheep, small boats, horses) at any one who gets close enough to ask where do cyclops babies come from. The answer is essentially the obvious one. Despite being very solitary, despite being very territorial, cyclopes are born the same way as you and I. Just more aggressively. There are certain species of large cat that roam the Pearl that have a similar mating cycle. A temporary truce, of sorts, is established to allow for procedures.



Unlike big cats, the typical cyclops mating ritual involves a gift of a few sheep, a few barely missed boulder throws, and a loud argument about who should approach first. At some point, the offspring are deemed old enough to be interfering with the mother's territory and more large boulders and shouting tends to commence. However, sibling groups can occasionally tolerate each other a shade better and so the distance between them can be reckoned in miles rather than counties. 

Grobnir was the oldest Fronk of his generation and in the early years of Encroachment he got along fair enough with his three brothers in a valley large enough that they never, technically, needed to see one another. At least until Almot Fronk, the youngest, lost a sheep and crossed over Grobnir's territory for a few hours. The resulting argument among all the sibling caused Grobnir to become so enraged he left the region and kept walking the Southern Plains until he found a great wide grassy area he could call his own. Attempts at cultivating the region by the Barthic Empire had failed, there was no important trade routes to be had, here, and a few fishing villages miles and miles to the East were no problem in that there was no game to lure hunters to attempt Grobnir's ire. 

As the Encroachment and the horrors broke the back of his people, Grobnir flourished by simply fading into the ecosystem. His sheep were nearly wild. His habits were largely ascetic. He was happy to spend days just lounging in the grass and occasionally wondering where everyone else had gone. Over time, the grass changed. Slowly enough he barely noticed. Over time, the sheep that fed from the grass changed. He noticed this, noticed that his sheep's wool was now more like brambles and vines than fur. But so it goes. 

And he, who fed from the sheep, also changed. This he definitely noticed, though the Grobnir Fronk who lives now in a large stretch of the Southern Plains is not exactly the same as the one who came from the west all those years ago. He is already twice as old as the age most cyclopes live. His strangely smooth skin has a deep red color. His head is now hairless. And, perhaps most damning for any cyclops in history, the ultimate insult for his entire kind: 

Grobnir Fronk has a second eye. 

The second is small, human-sized and slightly below and to the right (his right) of his true eye. Unlike his normal eye, this second one does not sleep. It watches. It plans. Grobnir will wake up from an exhausted rest and find he has been gathering stones into strange shapes. Planting odd seeds. Cutting bulbs from his sheep. Why is he doing these things? He never knows. He senses his second eye knows, but he does not talk to the second eye. 

He is afraid what it might answer back.

"So, what you are saying..."

"Yes."

"Is that you want us to take out a cyclops."

"Yes."

"That has killed a couple of your...um...tribe." 

"Our clutch, yes."

"So you can eat some sheep?"

"Right!"

"And then you will help us find where a group of people were killed by another group of people...nearby."

"Not that nearby. But, yes."

With that, the gargoyles start giggling slightly and acting excitedly. Rance and Tom have been trying to talk to them after initial negotiations with Rance and Grusk ended with one of the gargoyles, one that looks a bit like sulphur and seems to be called "Sully", coughed and shot out a magic missile that struck Grusk in the arm. 

Inar's one attempt at communication ended when he asked the clutch of gargoyles why they were out in a massive flat space space as opposed to somewhere where there were buildings and ledges to which they could cling. He was told by the gargoyle that seems to be in charge, one seemingly made out of meteoric iron and called "Hansam," that such questions were racist and besides they were perched, on a hill, pointing to the slight rise in the ground where everyone currently was. After this, Inar has gone back to his bunk and keeps staring at his teeth in a mirror. The poor halfling has become convinced that his teeth are changing shape. Maybe they are.

"Alright," says Rance before turning to Tom. The goblin merely shrugs. Turning to the half-orc still nursing his slightly wounded arm while staring at Sully. "Alright?"

"Yeah," says Grusk starting to pull his armor on. "Alright. Let's go kill a one-eye."

Hansam does not comment on this. The clutch is over there excitedly discussing their favorite recipes for mutton. 

Grobnir Fronk, the Cyclops

Grobnir's second eye means he can never be surprised. He is a very strange, very old cyclops. His eating of Encroached animals has sped up his own Encroachment, changing his body to a more jelly like appearance. This had led to an overall decrease in stats though an increase in intelligence.

AC 11 (leather), HP 35, ATK 2 great club +5 (2d6) or 1 rock (far) +4 (1d10), MV double near, S +4,D -1, C +0, I +3, W +3, Ch -3, AL C, LV 7

Second Sight: Cannot be surprised. Hydrophobia: Grobnir's strange gelatinous body breaks down when exposed to water. It will swell up and eventually rupture. 

Grobnir's Sheep

Strange creatures like large sheep whose wool is more vine like that wool like. Attempting to hit the sheep can result in weapons and limbs getting tangled into the "wool". Flesh and wool are almost like brittle plant matter and so can catch fire. 

AC 12 (from tangled vine-like wool), HP 12, ATK 1 bite +0 (1d4) or 1 ram +3 (1d8), MV near, S +3, D +0, C +3, I -2,W +1, Ch -3, AL N, LV 2

Tangled Wool: Any melee attack against them has a 1:6 chance of getting caught up in the strange vine-like wool. Sensitive to Fire: Fire does double damage to the creatures that are about half-plant. 

The boulder falls down in the early morning light, scattering the four adventurers and their horses as they pull back. Rance and Tom from the saddle while Grusk and Inar manage to stay on. [1]

"Ok, that one would have hurt. Wait...is he asleep?" Rance asks as they see Grobnir propped up on a pile of stones. His right hand is moving around to grab another stone from the pile. Little do they know the strange Bleak eye is piloting the body right now. It will take the very elderly cyclops some time to wake up. [2]

Grusk roars and rides hard to face the cyclops head on. Tom drops behind the boulder (not big enough to hide a human but enough to hide a goblin). Inar rides forward behind Grusk while Rance works on reining in horse. Another boulder comes crashing down near Grusk and his horse while Tom gets an arrow off (that goes wide). Rance's horse runs off in the confusion. Inar casts Holy Weapon on his Mace.[3]

Another boulder tossed, this one for the goblin. While Tom has good cover the rock smashes into the one he is behind and shards of stones bite into the goblin. Tom manages to get his shot off all the same and sees it sink into the strange red flesh. The war horses near the gap and both Grusk and Inar land blows. The axe, Bloodlust, bites deep in the right arm while Inar brings his magically enhanced mace down against the knee. Grobnir wakes up dazed and confused and something starts to happen. A chunk of his head begins trying to tear away. [4]

The cyclops comes up swinging both arms as a sizeable thing pulls out of its head. One arm slams Grusk hard in the chest plate, crunching ribs but the half-orc stays on. The other fist flies over the halfing's head as the nimble priest leaps from the pony to hide in the blue grass. Grusk returns the hit after very nearly slipping but buries Bloodlust deep in the chest of the cyclops as Rance holds the magical arrow steady. The old cyclops collapses as the strange creature wallows on the ground. Grusk pulls Bloodlust out and chops into it before dumping oil on it and setting it aflame. [5]

Taking a few deep breaths, everyone is looking around and checking out their friends. 

"What in the Bleak was that about?" Grusk asks, staring down at Other Grobnir. Looking at the strange corpse of a creature so utterly changed, Grusk begins gathering up stones and piling on top. The others join in, and by the time the sun is fully up, Grobnir has been laid to rest. 

An examination of the area around him finds plenty of junk stored over his many years including obvious loot taken from others that were attacked by the odd, sad creature. [6]


A few days later...

Imari Denish stares at Rance and Cal from across the small den in the back of his shop, a more cozy place than the first time. Cups of tea are being held by the trio. "Well, has the deed been done?"

Rance answers, "Yes. Well, we turned over what we found at the site. It was mostly picked clean but a lucky find of a sword of Marr's distinct red steel along with a bit of a map in crude hand showing someone had mapped out the route. We gave it over to Neuman assistant and Neuman himself came out to verify some details. We did not mention you, only that we had heard 'rumors.'" 

"I do not hear shouts or riots in the street." 

"I cannot answer that. Maybe they are saving that for a more opportune time. Or maybe the Free Merchants are too afraid of House Marr to fight. Or maybe..."

"Or maybe," Cal finishes the thought for Rance, "They are going to treat the death of a trade route as another commodity. No rebellion in exchange for juicy pickings of official Marr business." 

"Maybe," says the old elf before gesturing to the old human behind him to hand over two reams of dragonsilk. "A deal is a deal even if there is less blood in the street than I would have hoped."

"You believe, us, then?" asks Rance

"Of course! I had Stanford here," gesturing to the old servant, "lace all three of our drinks with a Potion of Absolute Honesty."

"Wait, did you?" 

"I drank the tea, too," cackles the old elf, his gray eyes dark and deep and all the rumors of him being once one of the best assassins in the Barthic Empire seem reasonable. "I must be telling the truth."
With the completion of this and getting the dragonsilk, that will be another 3XP and it will take our four adventurers to 4th level. We will work out those details in a brief intermission before going on the Everburning Forest.

MECHANICAL NOTES

  1. Reaction roll was a 5, so pretty hostile. Grobnir missed with a 2 but still did DEX rolls to see who stays mounted. 
  2. Checking to see what Grobnir might want now that he has transitions quite a bit into "something else," got Acquire Crime + Capture Help. The "Other Grobnir" is trying to find some sort of different host. "Can the Other Grobnir take over another sentient body?" 13 ==> Yes, but... it is most compatible with other cyclopes so it is looking for a host to travel to where it can spread. Sort of a strange cordyceps type infection. "Is Grobnir resisting?" 3 ==> No, but... he is too fragile and old to resist but has long lost the ability. 
  3. The party will need a turn on horseback to close the distance. The Other Grobnir gets another boulder off with hits a 13+4 = 17 but we'll subtract 2 because Grusk is in motion. So it still misses. Rance gets a 2 on getting his horse. Tom shoots for the cyclops and misses.
  4. Grobnir wins initiative. The boulder hits for 15+4. Even with cover, it's a hit. it does 4 points of damage. Even with the moving penalty, Grusk gets his hit (15+7-2 vs 11). It sinks in for 8 points of damage. Inar doesn't hit initially so spends a luck token to get a high enough roll. It hits for 6. Rance shoots off an acid arrow and gets a nat 20 (giving back the luck token and doubling the damage). As long as this is sustained, it is for 2d6. The first round it does 6 points of damage. Tom manages to hit this time for 3. All told that is 23 points of damage versus Grobnir's 35. The "Other Grobnir" will attempt to "escape" next time since it failed its morale check. Will Grobnir try to help the Other Grobnir? Yes, but... he won't understand so instead will try shielding it with his body. 
  5. Grobnir wins init again and gets two swings. The first connects with Grusk for 6 points of damage. Grusk makes his save to stay on his horse. Inar is going to use his "go invisible" halfling ability to avoid being seen by the creature. Grusk misses his first roll but spends a luck token to succeed. With Rance keeping up the focus, this does enough damage to kill Grobnir. "Does Other Grobnir survive for long outside of a host?" 9 ==> No, but... it will try immediately to find another. Grusk uses his Grit: DEX to stay far enough back to pour out the oil (gets an 18 on the roll). 
  6. They find a gold censer shaped like an angel [70gp], a potion of polymorph [200gp], and a potion of healing [150gp]. This grants them 3xp each. 
  7. Using Random Realities to generate the sort of clues found: 5, 4 ==> went with sword icon + 1, 1 ==> After a moment, I think the one that looks kind of like a quill makes most sense.

DOUG'S NOTES

The adventure was on the cusp of turning into a fetch quest so I cut it a bit "early." Early in the sense that originally it was going to have them get to the site of the massacre, possibly fight some undead related to the site, and have their adventure there. Instead, we met some goofy gargoyles and a sad old cyclops. When I first started and had either a planned gargoyle fight or more traditional cyclops fight, the general scope was a bit more OSR-ish. I am not exactly an OSR guy though so as I started weaving bits of the more jelly-like grass and the way it changes people, I just let the prep-is-play aspect take over. 
Grobnir's design (a jelly-ish red cyclops that is slightly old and bloated looking) is a nod to a monster you fight in Saga Emerald Beyond that is slightly based on the old "slime"/Sensei character model from the Gameboy era of the series. Picture this but taller and redder... (image credit: Romancing Saga Re;Universe, it's the S-style of Sensei). 

That's not exactly what I was going for but I figured its best to establish why The Bleak is such a bad thing. It is shifting reality. Once we get to the Deeps, it will be even more so. The party is basically cursing themselves by carrying out their quest but by helping Grunce they are buying other people a chance to live more freely again. 

Anyhow, once I got to the fight with a cyclops and had the weird backstory for a couple of sessions about the strange changes, the kind of key/central quest took a backseat to just doing some world building. After Grobnir's death, I could have worked out another session's worth of adventure but I figured let's skip ahead. This was meant to be a quick "get something so you don't burn to death" before we get to the start of a meta/arc shift once they learn more about what actually is happening with The Light. 
Next time we will level up the characters to 4, have them take on the Everburning Forest (or at least start to...) and then after that we will be getting the truth of the Monolith, finishing the fuelstones, and juggling the whole thing with the growing civil war in the last great bastion of society. Where it is unlikely that even House Grunkheart is completely innocent (though Cal is 100% a good guy...the rest of his family, maybe not so much). 
Note: The "Eye" at the top of this (though modified in my "SoloDark" style) is from Insspirito on Pixabay. There's a lot of good vector style art there. 

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 13 - The Boot & Wares, The Southern Plains, and the Ring of Gargoyles

By

On 2024-09-11

In Actual Play, ShadowDark, Solo Campaigns, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

"The Bleak" (in this case, using the term to mean the remains of the Barthic Empire that have been attacked and absorbed by "The Bleak," folks in Grunce use the word to mean roughly eighteen different things at the same time) is the large scale corpse of a once thriving empire built upon the back of an even more Ancient empire whose technology once dominated the world even beyond the late . Though the spread of The Bleak took decades, that was relatively abrupt for an empire stretching back two millennia. Even a hundred years into Bleak's spread, several of the great Houses and Cities attempted to hold fast, gathering up their people and their treasure into a open air grave. 

Now those many, many last stands are abandoned or their new residents no longer remember what it was like to be human. Strange misshapen things wandering through halls full of gold and silk crying out in a voice of a language that no sane throat could make. 

For those brave enough to travel far past the light of Grunce or the relatively protected towns near the Gray Channel, there are riches to be had. 

If you survive.

And if you can find a buyer.   

This is where the expedition shops come into play: selling many vital goods to adventurers while also acting as a primary buyer for unearthed relics and treasures (both tending to be tangled up into the same contract). 


The "shallow" edges of The Bleak are largely plucked clean. One must dive deep to get true treasures. Spending weeks or months past the new boundary of civilization, though, comes at a price. Even for those who do not fear Encroachment upon their own skin must know that each and every crossbow bolt will fly true. Adventurers become fiercely loyal to their home shop: trusting their very lives to the wares inside. Likewise, shops become loyal to their customers. Without the relics, the shops could not afford to stay open. 


The Boot & Wares is one of the oldest of the shops. In the early days of Grunce, when it was essentially a home for the families that worked under the auspices of House Grunkheart, it was an eel pie restaurant that doubled as a cheap inn. After the Five Families came together and made Grunce into the Last Great City on the edge of The Bleak, The Boot & Wares went through several iterations. Selling food. Selling passage. Selling off goods for people fleeing. 

One hundred years ago, Imari Denish won The Boot & Wares in a card game. At the time, it was used to mostly shuffle debt around for families that had long tried to flee Barthus but had become stuck and left behind with years of collateral stockpiled into a madcap pawn shop. Denish, who was old by elf standards, saw the potential for a new type of business and gave many of the families tied to generational debt a choice: go back into The Bleak and bring stuff out. Each relic bought back a piece of the family legacy. 

Most did not survive. Some did. Denish sold off relics and the remnants of now gone families and brought in enough money to start shipping equipment and goods from the Free Merchants and the Pearl craftsfolk. 


Other businesses grew up using the same model. Some did it better. Most did it worse. Denish is not always an easy elf to work with, but he has his charms. A cottage industry he created - feeding off those desperate or foolhardy enough to brave diving into The Bleak - has somewhat left him behind and if you asked him he would tell you that he is fine with it. In reality, the old elf has a few tricks left up his sleeve. 

There are rumors that Imari Denish, hundreds of years ago, was a professional killer for several generations of some of the most powerful Barthic families, that he held out for decades in The Bleak until his old masters were too thin and too poor to retain him. If the Encroachment ever struck him, he has hid it well. 
 
Boot & Wares is an old shop. The shop owner, one Imari Denish, an elf old by elf standards, has only owned it for a bit [Shop name and own generated using tables from ShadowDark (ShD)]. Denish, an established but childish proprietor, won it in a game of cards around a decade back. His only goal is to find pleasure in his remaining years, Rumor has it he was an assassin some years back and fled some job deep in The Bleak [details generated, in part, by Universal NPC Emulator (UNE)].

The B&W has an item that can be valuable for long term survival in The Everburning Forest: dragonsilk. Clothing made from it can protect the wear from heat and smoke (in game terms, all saves and attempts to avoid damage from those sources will be done at advantage, on a fumble the silk will rip. Roll 1d6, if you roll under the number of rips, the silk is too compromised to continue working). [SoloDark (SoD): "Is there something in Grunce the 4 heroes can use to stave off heat damage?" at disadvantage and got 13 + 14 so "Yes, but..." there is some catch to obtaining it and it won't work forever] 

["Is Denish willing to sell the dragonsilk to new customers?" SoD 3 "No, but..." "What does he want to part with it?" SoD 97 Destroy 30 Lead + 48 Evolve 81 Path] He won't want to sell it, but he will trade it for a task. One involving taking down someone who is leading and whose downfall will open up paths to return The Boot & Ware back to better business. 

"I want you to break the balls of old Talbot Galfreet!" The old elf, white haired and wrinkled, cackled out this ludicrous phrase like a small, petulant child. 

It was Cal Grunkheart's aunt Moreena, current Lady of Grunkheart, who put them on the search to find The Boot & Wares, a large crumbling barn of a building that is either fairly empty or pretty full depending on how you looked at it. Fairly empty for a warehouse meant to be stocking delvers into The Bleak with all the best gear and equipment. Pretty full for a place in Grunce's slums that looks like it should have fallen over several years ago. 

As they asked around to find out where The Boot & Wares or its proprietor, Imari Denish, might be located, the people who answered did so from somewhere between awe and irritation. Some refused to talk about it. Most just broadly gestured to someplace roughly "over there." 

It was late at night before Rance found someone willing to answer. A bartender in the middle of the slums who seemed to be on good terms with Denish and the elf's customers. "Oh, you want 'Old Denish, well...that way, go down...past Kardent's old Keep...up the graveyard lane past the church..." and then proceeded to list another dozen streets and half dozen landmarks. "Can't miss it!" 

To Rance's credit, he did not. He came to a building around a third the size of a city block that looked like it had been set on fire once or twice with a large red door that was probably painted around the time that Rance was born and he and Cal knocked. Despite the time of night, a surly old man, human old, brought them and soon enough they met Denish himself. 

To call him "Old Denish" is to put a lot of weight on the word "Old". Most travelers who meet an "old elf" might be shocked to see a centuries old person who still had smooth skin and bright hair. Denish would have been old when the Barthic Empire fell. Now he was the kind of old that you could use to frighten youth. 

Here was a man who had been alive before the entire Grunkheart family took its name from the small fishing village of Grunce's Hearth and might, maybe, be alive after the last Grunkheart passes from the earth (especially in light of neither Cal nor Gryff having any children, yet). Except "Old Denish" still acts a bit like an excitable child. 

"Excuse me, what?" asks Cal, after a few good moments of confused silence. 

Even a relative newcomer like Rance knows of Galfreet: the walking smile who owns The Tinman's Whistle. The biggest expedition shop in Grunce and one of the few that looks like a proper, respectable place to shop (others consider it poor taste to look so friendly).

This all started as Rance asked a simple question, "What can we do to survive the potential dangers of the Everburning Forest?" and the answer, in the books, was largely, "Do not go." A couple of the books did give some possible solutions, and of the relatively few answers the one that seemed to be most possibly helpful was dragonsilk (neither silk nor made from dragons, being made from the crushed larva of fire beetles and treated in a many step process). The second question, "Where do we get dragonsilk," was both simpler and harder. It is not that it is rare, per se, it is simply rarely in demand. When you have thousands of square miles of landscape ripe for the plucking, there is little cause to go to portions of the landscape that happen to be on fire. 

One of the Keepers, though, had a cousin whose uncle owed some debts and so forth and so on and the gist being that Imari Denish had taken three large reams of dragonsilk as payment a couple of years back. 

Once Cal asked about the dragonsilk, Denish had cackled for a few seconds before saying the above ludicrous phrase, but the story he told them was not ludicrous at all. 

"Galfreet is in the pocket of House Marr, and they have been very naughty children." It turns out that Marr's never-ending fight against the Free Merchants has turned violent only its unsure if the Free Merchants even realize they are in the early days of a war. The Merchants tend to run the expedition shops. Marr wants to cement that trade so has been making sure a few bad transactions have slipped through, a few unlucky accidents. Nothing too egregious. 

Until Frond Neuman's Sand Divers left Grunce a couple of weeks ago, going to Mist Lake in the center of Sofron Desert. They never made it. Sometimes trade expeditions do not, though the border towns rely heavily on them for supplies. It is dangerous to go into The Bleak. That is why the pay is so good. 

Only, Denish has heard that Neuman was waylaid by a gang of thugs employed by Marr through the management of Galfreet. The very shop that had supplied the mission and so knew exactly what path they would take was able to lay a trap and then steal back most of the valuable supplies from the corpses. Besides, Mist Lake has been hoarding relics and refusing to make any sort of deal with Talbot Galfreet. If he can cut off supplies to them, it gives him another revenue stream. 

"Marr plans to take this town. Not as the elected leader of the Great Houses but as his own personal playing field. And he plans to crush the Free Merchants and claim sovereign power over expeditions. He has decided that killing his own subjects is an ok path to his rise. If we can get proof that Talbot is helping, then we can turn the tide before sets his sights on my place," gesturing around to the various odds and ends and rubble in the building. "Do me that favor, and the dragonsilk is yours and I'll toss in a discount on your other goods." [1]

"Do you want us to bring back the proof here so you can use it for blackmail?" Cal asks. 

"No, share it with everyone. Better there are riots in the street as people know the truth rather than this city let the enemy in to feed off its corpse for any longer." [2]


The caravan was lost around at around 4 hexes travel away from Grunce (1 day for adventurers moving lightly, at least twice that long for those actually on the caravan). [Note, this was determined by rolling 8 dice and then keeping only those 3+]. 

It tracked west across the South Barthic plains to the River Orneth and then headed south. The first section is "plains" and then the remaining three are "river" [using ShadowDark hex mapping rules]. The road will run along the river with the plains out to either side. In the distance, the Caux Mountains will be visible.  There are no places of interest on this route. A few old bridges from when roads were more plentiful and a few fording spots. Everything else is just ruins of homesteads long gone. 

If you dug deep enough into the tall grass, you would find broken plows and bricks. Two generations before Jonias Grunkheart and his father built up the family name, the Grunkhearts were prone to less savory money making schemes. Elias, the third Lord Grunkheart, Jonias's Great-Uncle, brought in a lot of people to the South Plains in a scheme to strand them and force them into a form on indentured servitude by having them farm land not suited for any profitable agriculture. The farms would fail and Elias would then enlist the destitute farmhands into service to carry out military campaigns or other thuggish activities. It was his nephew, Basil, that actually turned the Grunkhearts around after a brief familial war. Basil and his son, Jonias, reworked the farmland into grazing pasture and moved many farmers into fishing and boating as a prime livelihood [(SoloDark) 90 Mislead 57 Failure + 67 Secure 09 Trial]. 

The grass here has altered here in the many years of Encroachment. The color is tinges towards deep azure. The blue grass is smooth and if pressed hard reshapes slightly at the touch, like one is touching some sort of hardened gel or quicksilver. Heavy, it barely moves in the wind that flows over the space. Instead, the air moving through the oddly smooth grass makes strange dissonant tones that might sound like a sigh or a gentle humming. During particularly strong breezes, it takes on the sound of a choir warming up. During storms, it can sound like a shriek before the grass deforms and has to be rebuilt. Slowly springing back into its semi-liquid shape. [(Knave) Place Traits 88 (Texture --> 66 Quicksilver) + Color 11 Azure + Place Traits 11 Singing]

The morning is largely uneventful. A few small animals and occasional traveler spotted. Just the long miles of road and river and strange singing blue grass [Doug's Note: I blame the oracles for this, pun not intended but now canon]. After a restful lunch, the team will spot a herd of 10 wild horses. At least, what was once horses. The Encroachment has altered the structures of the beasts. They are of a similar substance as the strange hard liquid grass. Their outer skin a more translucent shade - blues and purples and reds - with inner bones and organs slightly visible underneath. Their manes flex and flow even when there is no wind. In the grass, they can stand still and so thoroughly match the colors of the sky and land around them as to be practically invisible. Up close, they can attack with their hooves or by shooting off ooze-spines from their mane. 

Southern Plains Horses 

(built using Horses + ShadowDark's creature generator). 

AC13. HP13. Attack 1 ooze (+3 1d8) or 1 hooves (+3 1d6). MV Double Near. S+3 D+1 C+2 I-3 W+1 R-2 AL N LV 3

Unfortunately, the horse-like things are extremely hostile to others [rolled double 1s on reaction roll and "What are they doing" was a "nesting" so this is a group with young, half of their number are young]. Though on the other side of the river, they will notice the PCs and some will start crossing the river [rolled a 17 vs DC15 DEX check] and be across in two rounds]. There are 2 males who will carry out the attack while the mothers stay back.

The four travelers have been riding for hours and are feeling sore for their effort, being not used to any sort of horse-bound activity. They grew up poor and got really used to long hikes but time is enough of the essence here that they need to move a bit quicker than they could on foot. 

They are also feeling the strain of being out in the Bleak after having more first hand experience of its impact, its...Encroachment. Inar was the first to note the strange texture of the grass, and still has not really come to grips with the fact that if they were to spend enough time out in the Bleak, the same shift might happen to him. 

"Cal says this is the Shallows, Gale, the Encroachment here is very small," says Grusk. The half-orc has shown no outward sign of being disturbed by the fact that chances are, on some minute level, the Bleak has already changed some slight portion of himself. Cal Grunkheart assured them it was very unlikely they would ever have any effects from it. The Bleak is extremely "shallow" here and some folks spend most of their times past the walls with little to no impact. "As long," Cal said, "as they don't have kids. Then it gets...odd." 

"It does not have to be very big. I am not very big." 

"Well, Inar, you could use a makeover." Like Inar, Tom is on a smaller pony while Grusk and Rance are riding on horses. These are Bleak-stock. They are chosen for good breeding and trainability and raised, like a lot of the agricultural stock which keeps Grunce running, on farm islands out in the Channel. Fixed so they can not get pregnant and then brought to The Bleak where they spend the rest of their days. Good Bleak-stock is hard to find and the quality of these is pretty exceptional. Some large favors were called and losing these horses would likely earn them the ire of some relatively rich people.

The four of them had been following a map given to them by Denish. How he got it, they do not know. It shows the route from this past delivery to Mist Lake. There are no real roads between the various Bordertowns. Caravans take a variety of routes and switch them up regularly in order to avoid any sort of bandits, rivals, or strange cults. Navigators get paid big to map out safe routes. Only, if the navigators are in on the swindle, as happened here, they can lead the group right into a trap. 

Denish said that some of the goods that should have been on the caravan re-entered the Grunce blackmarket only a few days after the caravan left, suggesting that it was only a day or two out at the most. Why attack so close to Grunce? Because if you go a few more miles you have to traverse a fairly Deep section of The Bleak and it does not take a lot of superstition for house retainers to worry about that fact. 

Some caravaners get paid good money to trek through the Deep: giving up having children. Giving up their own humanity if they do it for long enough. A couple of small shanty towns near Grunce take care of the old-timers who have been hit too hard by Encroachment. 

They ride in silence for several more miles until they final come across a break in the monotony. A herd of horses. Or at least, things in the rough shape of horses on the other side of the river. The skin on these creatures ripples and flows in strange ways, showing bones and organs in odd swirling glances. The color is a deeper shade of the grass overall, though some lean a bit more red or a bit more green. 

"I guess you are what you eat," quips Tom as Inar gasps and breathes heavily in the rear, sounding like he might be fighting the urge to vomit. 

"Let's not eat those, then," answers Rance. Grusks laughs. Inar breaks down into a coughing fit and looks like is about to fall from his pony's saddle.

Unfortunately, two of the larger horse-things start rearing and loudly snorting. "Ah, I think they don't like our horses," Rance notes. Sure enough, the aggressors start plowing into the water and quickly crossing. 

"Grusk, we cannot kill them. They might be the only members of their species," says Tom despite notching his arrows. 

"Then let us put some space between us. Uffolt, can you buy us time?" 

Rance pulls out his Wand of Webs and casts it on the shore right as the two horse-things walk out. The spell gathers around them in white, glowing strands before hardening into a gray materials. The creatures buck hard against this but are trapped, for now. The group is able to make an escape. [3]

A ring of stones the characters stop at to rest for the night turns out to be 8 gargoyles. The gargoyles are currently sleeping but will be aware of the adventurers whom they will consider interesting curiosities.  Rather than attack, they will keep something of a guard on the party and eventually will fully wake up and try chatting. They are bored and mostly wanting company. [(SoD) Do they get any regular visitors? 2 No] [(SoD) What do they want? 52 Awaken 65 Control + 56 Break 85 Truth... they want to rule this chunk of The Bleak but they need the real leader to be destroyed.] [(SoD) Is there a more powerful creature that the gargoyles fear? 18 Yes.] [(SoD) Will the gargoyles be able to help the adventurers find the destroyed caravan site? 16 Yes]. 


The creature the gargoyles fear is an ancient cyclops. What does the cyclops want? We will find that in play... 

[Are the gargoyles impacted by the Bleak? 10 --> Twist! 56 Break 37 Wisdom + 83 Ascend 52 Sorcery. They are goofy, silly acting gargoyles are who prone to casting random spells on accident.] 

[Doug's Note: This is the adventure that never ends...it goes on and on my friends...]

Note: Gargoyle stats are on page 216. Their WIS is adjusted to -2 but their Charisma to +2.

Unsurprisingly, it is Tom who first notices that the strange stones around them are moving. Seeing the rocks unfold into wings he decides to skip any attempt at stealth or decorum and screams, "GARGOYLES!" Sure enough, the eight stones the party had camped out in are all moving into large, 7' living statues. 


Grusk is up in a flash and Bloodlust is brought forward. Inar is slower to waken but is somewhere between grabbing his war hammer and hiding deeper into his sleeping bag. Rance wakes up and casts light on the dying campfire, fully illuminating the scene in harsh colors. [4]

The armor is in a pile nearby. The group got too used to the silence. Once they found the bridge over Orneth that would allow them to keep following the caravan they had decided to try and get a full rest so they could push it the next day to hopefully find the attack site and then get back to Grunce in quick time. It is a mistake they are not likely to make, again. Only Tom has kept his leathers on. A goblin does not relax easily. 

"I knew we should have just kept riding," Inar says. Tom notes the halfling is trying, and failing, to quietly put his armor on to the side. 

"The first one who comes closer, I break into tiny pebbles," Grusk, even unarmored is slowly spinning in place trying to keep an eye on as many of the gargoyles as possible. 

"Now. Now," says one of the largest of the creatures. "No need for all that. We were keeping an eye on you while you were eating and everything!" 

"Excuse me?" says Rance, looking to his friends. 

The smallest of the gargoyles, still larger than Grusk, breaks into a large, toothy smile and says in a quiet, almost squeaky voice, "You guys got any more wine. Pffrak never shares any wine."

MECHANICAL NOTES

  1. Using adventure tags from Scarlet Heroes (ScH), got an urban adventure tag of "Stolen Authority" and a Wilderness Adventure Tag of "Massacre Site". Combining elements of those two we have a story of the Free Merchants being targeted by an increasingly power hungry Marr and there being a place in the wilderness with a mass grave. The Free Merchants do not yet know that Marr is doing this and if they did, it would spell a lot of trouble. 
  2. (SoD) Does Denish want to expose Marr/Galfreet openly? 16 --> Yes.
  3. Casting roll is a 13+4 = 17. The two horse things rolled a 14 and a 10. They are trapped. One will bring free in 3 rounds and the other in the 4th. Rolling a DC9 to check for horse riding (these have been established as good quality horses used to the Bleak) all make their roll. These horse things might still be on the way back but for now they managed to get away without bloodshed. 
  4. 16 + 4 = 20. So a solid cast and fairly bright.

DOUG's NOTES

After the super busy couple of weeks, I had prepped about 2/3s of this post (though the original version was a lot more abrupt) and then proceeded to get super-ill for most of the next week. It worked out ok because as I went through cold meds and fevers and all that I had some time to mentally parse some of the world and give it some thought. Essentially, the "this game is be my dungeon crawl story and eschew story" is well and dead and instead it's going to be a LOT more story and goofy NPCs and such (as well as some dungeon crawls, point crawls, and all the classics). 
On one hand, this gives me the freedom to just go all out and make the story very Doug where there will be essentially no "just baddies" and the world will be weird and have a lot of RP opportunities and weird fiction influences. On the other, it has one strangely unintended impact: I have to decide what to do with my entire Blood Hands storyline now. Though the Dark and the Bleak were kind of the same story, there was the difference that BH was all about the social interactions while B+P was all about the dungeon delving and such. By folding both elements into this one there is little reason to keep up the original version of The Bloody Hands. I have an idea on that but I am essentially going to take the best parts of both of those and pull them into this story and probably make that story much more as written on the tin: not a corrupting force but a war between the outside and inside. Drop some of the drug angles and focus more on fighting the monsters trying to invade the veil. We'll see. 
For this campaign, expect the elements of "world lore" + "gm mode" + "player mode" to continue, though. 

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Intermission 3: The Effects of the Bleak and The Pearl

By

On 2024-09-02

In Campaign Design, ShadowDark, Solo Campaigns, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

On Being and Becoming and the Fall of the Ancients

In the language of the ancients the names of the twin islands were Artuunila and Siluutila: the place of being (siluut) and the place of becoming (artuun). There were not mere philosophical notions, but a way to describe the great immanent energy in these lands. Artuun warped and changed those exposed to it. Siluut reinforced the nature of things but in doing so made things outsized. Artuun turned a mountain into a magical plateau of strange fay magic. Siluut turned a mountain into a huge monolith beyond comprehension. 

Both took time. The creatures and plants on Artuunila shifted and merged in strange ways. The creatures and plants on Siluutila grew large and strong and severe. Neither was a place for civilization, both would inherently destroy any attempt to tame the land. Until the Ancients did just that by discovering uuxa: a form of energy generated by the tension where the two forced clashed. 

Uuxa is the same energy that Jonias Grunkheart later dubbed The Light. It feeds off the Being and the Becoming and repels them both, simultaneously giving the resource to fight back but also to make a safe place where the great teeth of the land can not grind those within it. Jonias suspected that the two energies were outsized here because of the Ancients who might have actually increased their output to create more uuxa, but the result was the opposite. Both energies decreased until they were barely noticeable: taking centuries to recreate the impact that a few years might have. 

The twin lands became just two large landmasses with somewhat unique ecosystems. The great engines of the Ancients ceased to function. 

And so the Ancients entered into millennia of decay, until the Barthic Empire rose to the west, led by the mage tyrants tapping into latent amounts of artuun as a mystical force further decreasing it. 

To the east was Silt, a semantic degradation of Siluutila. Remnants of siluut meant magic struggled to take hold so the Barthic mages avoided it. Left it a wild and unexplored land. 

On the Bleak and the Impact Upon Those Within

It is unknown exactly how the primal energy known as artuun became corrupted into The Bleak but the effects are known in more recent history. There is no immediate indication of your exposure to its foul energies. Buildings might decay faster. Certain fast growing life forms like molds will spread and grow new and strange spores. New growth on plants will be more gnarled, more diseased. Stranger. Darker. 

New generations of life are where it is always most obvious. Offspring of two healthy parents might show some strange mutation. Deer with spider legs. Two headed serpents. Birds with odd number of wings. For the people of the Barthic Empire, rumors of strange "witchery" in the provinces gave way to panic when it was their own children. A generation later, the children of people impacted by The Bleak were even more twisted. If it was every child, every generation, the society would have collapsed before it could attempt its great failed migration. 

The effects were tenuous at first. Even as they became stronger they were never automatic. A small village might find all of its newborn children born more mushroom than goblin but then the dwarf clan a few miles away would merely see a slight shift in hair color. This was the great cruelty. Because of this, people turned on each other. Those who suffered The Encroachment were blamed: a sign of the gods' disfavor, a sign of some great sin. 

As wars and fleeing marches of refugees wiped out the Barthic Empire, researchers like Jonias Grunkheart realized it was already too late. The slow increase of The Encroachment meant that everyone sailing across The Gray Channel was already infected to some degree. Still, he and others fought valiantly to buy people time, to stop the flow of the strange destroying energy before it could cross. 

People spending days and weeks in The Bleak may show very few symptoms. A general sense of unease. A tendency to nausea. Of not feeling well. After a few months, shifts might be minimal. Fingers slightly different in length. Joints that bend at slightly new angles. 

Years in, and people will almost definitely show some changes. Different for everyone. Lifespans will decrease, even for those who manage to avoid the new dangers and monsters. New sicknesses and curses will be found. 

And then, for others, the Encroachment will never begin. Others can spend decades in The Bleak and never show any changes at all. 

Those that have children may see the true cost of their adventuring days because while not every child is born Bleaktouched, enough are for every person driven to expedition to understand the true cost of exploring the twice great land. 

On Borders and Shores

Another element unknown about The Bleak is why there are pockets where it does not reach. Jonias believed it was like an ocean that flowed to the rhythm of a tide we could not see. Islands rose out of this ocean and there some semblance of normalcy could remain. Other places he classified as Shallows and Deeps. In the Shallows, effects would be relatively minor. Entire generations could live somewhat peacefully if they were lucky. In the Deep, people will find it nearly impossible to survive even a single generation without risking great harm and change. 

As an old man, Jonias began to suspect that the material used to make the fuelstones were possibly the cause of these small regions of normalcy. He had believed them to be unique to the Everburning Forest, but grew to believe they were the leftover generators of the Ancients. People naturally gravitating to the places The Ancients had harnessed uuxa. Unfortunately, Jonias died before carrying out an expedition to study these energies. And the infighting in Grunce meant that the Keepers had to switch fulltime to keeping the Lighthouse functioning until Jonias's dream of retaking Barthus had morphed, like everything in The Bleak morphs. No longer was it a conquest, it was merely a last stand. 

Others call these pocket zones of safety "The Borders" and several towns and villages and forts have grown up in them. Expeditions to raid the corpse of The Barthic Empire use them as layovers. An entire economy based on people willing to brave the miles and miles in between. Sometimes only to find that some border fort or border town had fallen in the weeks since it was last visited. Another victim in the centuries of Encroachment. 

DOUG'S NOTES

The general crunch of the new academic year is not precisely over but I am getting some time to actually sit down and play things and think about playing things again so wanted to try and work out some ideas and concepts. The intention was to jump straight into the short hex crawl related to the Everburning Forest but while prepping that I decided I wanted to go back and actually answer some questions. This is one of two campaigns I am running about some non-specific dark energy force that does...something. Figured it was best to work some mechanics about what that something might mean. 
Reading through Made in Abyss and thinking about the Southern Reach trilogy got me into the mindset of the broad "Stalker" genre greatly influenced by Roadside Picnic. The fictional trope of there being some place where reality and normalcy breaks down and people risk going into that place for knowledge and for fortune. 
The idea of a great civilization that was built on the back of an even greater civilization means it is logical that many, many treasures are buried out in a realm infested by an unknown source. But...did I want "The Bleak" to be something more allegorical - a general decline in civilization (the rough explanation at the start of the campaign) - or something more tangible - an energy that actually does something? I have been leaning towards it as an active force more and more so I decided to dive into the latter. The Bleak is an energy that corrupts. Everything. However, at its core it is a natural, primal force of change. One that is merely accelerated. And itself corrupted. I might not ever get around to getting more specific than that. I do not really need to be. 
When it started, this campaign treated "The Bleak" as basically a land where old magics had shifted reality and burned out the old cities but there was really no reason not to immediately retake it. In this new "twist," no one can stay out in The Bleak for too long. 
Eventually we may get around to how The Pearl is a sister force to this, but there is no rush. It is the sword and sorcery counterpart to the grimdark fantasy of The Bleak. That is enough, for now. The "Being" and "Becoming" energy trope, by the way, is a nod to my very first RPG product from some years ago: Ghostlight. In the never completed "second edition," the notions of being and becoming were going to be more definite forces with the general world built out the energy at the center of the two. 
The plan from this point on with the campaign is to lean into worldbuilding and plot development from here on out. While the campaign essentially started as a way to just dungeon dive without any real explanation, I think we are past that. 
Probably was from the get go. 
I'm also going to try a new style of art for this campaign using high contrast two-color art to highlight the "twin" nature of things but also to tap into the sort of dark art of the source material. 

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Intermission 2: Creating the Everburning Forest

By

On 2024-08-18

In Design Philosophy, ShadowDark, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

The adventurers have a map to lead them through the Everburning Forest. Let's break this down and start figuring out what this means. 

First, some lore. The Everburning Forest is going to be a valley with a lot of geothermal activity, lava pools, and the burning smell of sulfur. At some time in the past, the pre-Barthic Ancients developed flora which could resist the constant burning heat and low oxygen and which to this day thrives in a place where even the Bleak has trouble penetrating. 350 years ago, a young Jonias Grunkheart found this forest/valley through local legends and went in with a team to build a workshop to study the Ancient technology and to find out how to channel it. Such technology was used by him to create the burning light of the Lighthouse. 
Now, let's populate it. 
Flipping through Bestial Ecosystem Created by Monster Inhabitation (Courtney C. Campbell and others), I wanted to pick a couple of "faction" types that made sense in an ever burning forest. Efreeti made sense to me but I was thinking maybe just a single entity who has been cast out from the City of Brass and found some solace in the valley (and possibly, long ago, worked with Jonias). Another one was lizard folk but I was immediately put in mind of Romancing Saga 2's Salamanders and so we'll use them instead. Besides this we can use fire elementals and fire beetles. The salamander tribe is not necessarily going to be an enemy (at least not until I absolute fail reaction rolls again). I'll save the question about the efreeti being a boon or bane if the adventurers encounter it. 
With those ideas in mind, let's make up a basic map using some ideas talked about at the end of my contemplating hex-crawls post. Rolling 10d6 "green", 1d6 "red" (to represent the workshop), and discarding all green 1s I come up with the points of interest and get a rough number of paths. I then roll another set of 5d6 "on top of it" to represent difficulty of terrain. 1-3 is varying degrees of easily passable. 4-6 gets increasingly hard to traverse. Then for each path, I roll another d6 with 1-3 being "in good condition, lower is better" and 4+ being a path that will require some trouble. Putting that all together, I get...

I pick the blue star to be my starting point. There are two dead ends off of it that are passable. There's another path the south that is harder to traverse with very rough terrain to get through. The air is harsher and the lava pools are wider while the path breaks down. Then, there is a clear and obvious chunk that takes a couple of hours (the left over bits of some road that has not yet been reclaimed) but it passes by a significant element. We'll make that the salamanders who hunt the road. After another point in the road, another long stretch through less passable terrain happens. However, the workshop's path is collapsed (workshop was a 6 so no paths to it). At this point, the characters will have to go off road and deal with the issues. 
In the distance, in the deepest and roughest portions of the Everburning Forest, is the makeshift manse of the efreeti. Now I'm going to roll on the Overland Hex Maps table to learn roughly what everything else might be though I will not dig too deeply into elements. I get the "4" and the rightmost "3" are holy shrines. Stopping spots on the way for researchers to reset and to perhaps even worship the Ancients. the "middle 3" and the "topmost 2" are "natural landmarks". We'll have one be a crag and another being one of the largest trees. We'll make that the one-time home of a Sulfur Dryad but we'll see what's up when it is found. The other "2" is a cave complex which could be interesting. 
Putting this all into Hex Kit (using Thomas Novosel's Strange Tile BW hex pack) and then taking some liberties with exact layout, we get... 

The intended path will then be to start at a ruined tower (which was the 5/crossroads). Head south to the crumbled roll until you get the first shrine. Head deeper into the relatively clear forest past the salamanders you come to the First Burn tree and then find another shrine. Here, you have to leave the path and head through the rough terrain until you find workshop. Go to far, and you end up in the territory of the efreeti. 
What exactly the shrines are and the cave complex and such...we'll figure it out. 
Step one is to start at the beginning: gathering up fire protection something and then figuring out the tower as a start and going deeper and deeper. 
Other details will be developed as I go. For those that want to see this with a hex overlay, with each hex this time being about 1.5 miles or so...it looks like this... 

Behind the Scenes: Contemplating Hexcrawls and Pointcrawls for My Solo Games

By

On 2024-08-18

In Solo Musings

Roleplaying games are a fascinating artifact that I hope survives for a long time. There are a lot of things that you can say about RPGs but I think the two I want to focus on right now are a pair of contradictory statements:

  • Roleplaying games cut through the near infinite amount of abstraction presented by "real world" considerations by providing a framework that simulates a particular subset (usually combat and a few other adventurer subsystems). 
  • Roleplaying games are an abstraction of "real world" considerations and not necessarily meant to represent any sort of 1-for-1 aspects and instead provide an escapist avenue beyond specificity. 
In other words, an RPG often takes an in-Universe reality and dissolves it to fluff text and a few abstract dice rolls and stats and then feeds this back into the in-Universe reality with the broad idea that anything outside this abstraction is in itself an abstraction. 
I am personally writing this like a college essay, by the way, because I am not sure if there is a better way to explain it. Maybe we can go with this. This IS not a cat:
That is a set of just a few quick shapes thrown together in Google Draw in under five minutes that represents the kind of "landmarks" we might associate with a cat  face: ears, whiskers, nose, mouth. It will not win any awards but at its core I think if I made that into an icon people might go "oh, that's a cat icon". It boils down the immense number of elements that go into an actual cat face (thousands of strands of fur, vast differences in eye color, whisker length, variations in bone and flesh structure, and so forth) into an abstraction that is in no way a cat face but which, in RPG terms, could be seen a rough "these elements" approach to describe a cat face in the way that STR, DEX, CON and so forth is a ludicrous way to describe a person but it also makes perfect sense in the context of RPGs. 

This kind of thought is what I have been giving over to how I might want to run hexcrawls. There are a lot of different flavors of abstraction but roughly speaking you see something like to represent, say, a mountain range ending at a forest with an old ruin on one side and then a small hamlet on the other side. 

It makes sense and in-Universe it can represent several sessions of fun. By several conventions, those hexes represent 5-mile or 6-mile constructions and each has one or so distinguishing features. There are arguments why this "6 mile" hex makes sense and in gameplay it is a good way to guarantee a certain story/plot-density. You can travel 2-3 hexes per day and so you get a few chunks of story per in-game day but you also get to travel some 100+ mile range to help things feel nice and epic. 
The problem is, that's as nonsense as my cat face above. Give or take a few half miles, this is roughly a six mile real world hex of Monte Sano State Park nearish my house in Huntsville, AL as snipped (kind of hastily, from Google Maps. 

In that 6 miles there is an entire state park. There are dozens of roads. Hundreds to thousands of houses. The park has dozens and dozens of miles of trails. There are shops and churches and schools. While this is, of course, a bit of a silly comparison because this is modern density it still shows that if you were take a dozen different parties and send them through that hex you have no reasonable reason to believe that any of them would ever crisscross. You can have entire towns and civilizations, there. Multiple dungeons could survive in that ecosystem. BUT, in that old school hex crawl, that would represent a single hex with a little mountain on it. And there are hex systems that consider 10- or 12-mile hexes to be the default. 
Without triple checking math, the area inside such a hexagon should be roughly 30 square miles. For another modern comparison, that is more landmass than Manhattan. Or, to stick to something a bit more Outdoors Survival, you could roughly consider Yellowstone National Park to be something like 10 to 12ish hexes by 9 to 10ish hexes. While I don't disagree that someone could hike across the park in 3 or 4 days (good weather permitting) it still fails to capture the true size of such a place. The sheer amount of things even a relatively wild place might contain. 
On the other hand, if you are mostly driving a story forward by key points then does it really matter that you are boiling it down roughly to six "hexagonal" directions around 6-mile segments and focusing only on one landmark per hex? Going back to the bullet list above, you basically get this compression
  • A reasonable amount of distance to travel VS
  • A reasonable amount of story to tell. 
Most other considerations about hex size are non-sense in the way that a dungeon as presented by a classic RPG scenario is beautiful nonsense. There are a surprising lack of real world examples of 20'x30' trapped rooms with 20-floors down to make way for a lich. We can gleefully understand the hex-crawl as simply a way of saying "This is the size of the page I want to use to write my story." 
What I am trying to work out is something that might emulate elements of a hex-crawl but also give the sort of flavor that a dungeon might when generated for solo play. As in, you have a certain density of movement but rather than it suddenly decompressing from 10' squares to 6 mile hexes it instead treats it roughly the same way as you might by gathering up certain "rooms" of varying sizes and shapes and they are connected by corridors and there are traps and hazards and occupants. 
Something like how Advanced Fighting Fantasy (and many others) use with a dice drop method... (taken from page 135 of AFF 2nd Edition):

The idea would be the start there with a twist of rolling more dice and removing 1s (1 = a null space where no paths or nor significant objects exist). 
  • 2 = dead end
  • 3 = a point along a path 
  • 4 = a fork where a path diverges/converges
  • 5 = a crossroads of 3-4 paths
  • 6 = an area off any path but which itself has significance. 
I could shape that in a particular way by arranging things or the space to match my goal. A sheet of paper with an area drawn on it. Et cetera. 
Then, for each path I roll a second d6 to determine path difficulty with something like 1-3 = no difficulty while 4-5 is some and 6 is notable. 
Combine this with other methods to map out terrain shifts and significant points in more of a traditional hex map style system and end up with 2-3 "maps" that can be overlaid to create a story rich area that is variable as needed (long distances the relative scale shifts) and has the idea of being zoomed in and out (any given point can be looked at closer or the whole generated map can be part of a large map). 

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 12 - The Grunkheart Golem

By

On 2024-08-13

In Actual Play, ShadowDark, Solo Campaigns, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

 

Doors to either side are locked and require DC18 DEX to open.

This is a 40' by 30' research library with a 20' by 10' alcove along the south wall storing many important texts about the running of the Monolith and about experiments towards fighting the Bleak. [SoloDark (SoD): 99 Rest 16 Information + 73 Assist 41 Danger]. The books are still in generally good condition, partially because of defense system installed which was also once an assistant used in running the complex.

In the center of the room is a strange stone automaton (the Grunkheart Golem, aka "The Librarian") connected to the floor with four rotating wheels that spin upon a central axis. The top wheel has four mouths and four ears and four eyes and can answer questions as well as communicate. The eyes reflect the mode/mood: red = attack, blue = processing, green = librarian, black = off. They are currently in red mode. The Librarian is waiting for a passcode to back into its processing and helpful state.

The second wheel down has 3 long and articulated arms capable of reaching 15' out from the center. They are equidistant around the wheel and each arm can strike for 1d10+2 damage. They hands attached (with seven digits) are capable of retrieving books from the shelves as well (but not the more restricted alcove). 

The third wheel has four orbs which extend out on thin arms if needed. Red casts Hold Person. Blue casts Telekinesis. Green casts Protection from Energy. Orange casts Wall of Force. 

The fourth wheel, closest to the ground, has enough space that it can rise up and slam down. The bookshelves are designed to absorb this impact. 


The Grunkheart Golem (The Librarian)


AC 18, HP 40, ATK 3 slam +8 (1d10+2) and 1 slow, MV none, S +6, D +0, C +6, I +3, W +0, Ch -2, AL L, LV 8 Golem. Immune to damage from fire, cold, electricity, or non-magical sources. The bottom wheel's "pound" causes all targets in near to require DC15 CON or speed halved 1d4 rds. For the four orbs, spells are at +2 to cast.

Three questions about the current state of The Librarian (SoD Oracle):

  • Is it still fully functional as its original function? 17 ==> Yes, but... requires repair.
  • Does the House Grunkheart still have the password required? 4 ==> No. This requires a trip to somewhere else.
  • Will it be mindlessly aggressive? 5 ==> No, but... it will defend the library.

The strangest door off the main Artery, as Rance calls it, was once brightly colored and still retains some elements of its glory after all these years of water and weathering. It is better sealed than the others, giving no indication of cracks or taint, still resisting mold and decay. The front has a series of interlocking wheels that make up some sort of opening mechanism the adventurers have not seen before. Despite time spent listening, no one has heard any sound from inside. 

On the door, in very faint letters, are markings in a complicated language that neither Rance nor Tom recognize. Terk mentions that some of the oldest books in the library in the Lighthouse use this text and Cal has been trying to decipher it. Progress is being made but more about the language is lost than found. Tom's theory is that was a secret code for the five families to communicate about the construction of this place. [1]

Now that the other avenues are starting to get explored, Grunce wants to knows what is behind the door and tasks Tom with getting opening while everyone re-kits after backing away from the large crocodile's lair. 

It eventually takes Tom, Rance, Nelf, and Terk some time to figure it out before the proper arrangement of wheels is made and the door releases with a deep hiss as the space beyond depressurizes. The siblings pull back and stare at the adventurers. 

"You're up, bigun!" Tom calls to Grunce who stands, takes a breath, grips his axe, and pushes the door open. The room beyond is a library. An extensive one. Rance almost forgets himself and goes to walk in but Grunce pushes him back. "Watch it, Uffolt, this place is full of surprises." 

One such surprise is in the middle of the room. A...structure. Like some primitive totem full of strange angles and shapes. Four wheels of differing sizes have been stacked on top of each other. The bottom one thick and heavy. The top one smaller and covered in strange carvings that look like a parody of the human face. Another one near the bottom with four orbs and a fourth, above this, wider than the others by a notch, with long...appendages. 

As the door is pushed open and Grusk is standing there holding the others back, the thing begins to "wake up" as some of the shapes in the primitive face start to glow red. The long appendages stretch out just a bit and start to resemble complex arms like those of some strange giant bug trying to imitate a human. The wheel with the four orbs starts to spend faster and faster while the heavier wheel on the bottom lifts up. 

In on time at all the thing seems to be fully "on" and one of the shapes in the face-parody starts barking in an unknown language: "ERIYL TOROL....ERIYL TOROL!" [2]

Grusk, entering the room, shouts back: "Yes, yes, Eriyl Toural." Then stops as the "four orbs" disk stops and points the red orb at him...which flares and then turns off... before spinning back around to the Blue orb and Grusk flies back past the door and slams into the others. The half-orc manages to twist with the movement and prevent anyone from suffering more than embarrassment. [3]

The door slams back shut and moments later, when reopened, Grusk finds himself running into an invisible wall. Despite the "barrier", the calls of "ERIYL TOROL!" are followed by "FARON IX!"

"Well, this is a funny thing," says Inar. 

***


Rance and Tom sit around with Cal Grunkheart around the oversized stone table on the second floor of the Lighthouse. Outside, the sounds of Grunce night can be heard in the distance. Yet another festival being thrown by Mayor Marr to distract the people from the encroaching darkness threatening to devour the town. The drunk calls and loud shouts as the city folk let their worries free. 

Gryffin Grunkheart and Father Marnit enter the room. The young guard officer tosses an old scroll on the table in the direction of Cal. 

"Here, cous, this is what mother gave me." 

Gryff, a junior member of the officers of the Grunce guard, is Cal's cousin and middle son of the Lady Moreena Grunkheart, current matriarch of the House. Once the party had returned to the Lighthouse and told Cal about the strange door and the even stranger contraption inside, Call summoned Gryffin to talk Lady Grunkheart to find out if the current House library has any note about the commands or passwords to control the machine. 

The library in the Monolith potentially will answer all the questions the Keepers have about saving the light. [4]

Unfortunately, Lady Grunkheart was unable to find anything conclusive about how to get past "The Librarian," so the team has to take a different approach. Hence the scroll that Gryffin tossed to Cal. It is a map. A few miles northwest of Grunce is the Everburning Forest, a place of thick trees and constant smoke from fissures deep beneath the ground. Somewhere in there, and the map shows roughly wear, was Jonias Grunkheart's old workshop where he studied and puzzled at pre-Barthic technology that later formed the basis of the Lighthouse and the Monolith. [5]

Cal looks over it and then hands it to Rance. Rance and Tom look over it and then call in the other two who had been playing cards in the next room with several Keepers. 

"Pack your bags, boys, we're going on a walkabout." 

MECHANICAL NOTES

  1. Is the language an actual secret code? 9 ==> No, but... it is an old Barthic language that was largely lost by the time of the construction. Not secret, per se, but something from the past. Jonias was tapping into some old technology/lore when he built this place. 
  2. Just rolled 4 times on Random Realities to generate some syllables. Probably won't try and make any functional degree of Grunkheart's language.
  3. The Librarian failed it's Hold Person spell but managed to get the Telekinesis off. Grusk made his DEX save to prevent from damaging himself and the others. The Librarian gets the Wall of Force spell to seal off the room. 
  4. I'll save any rolls related to that fact once they figure out how to get past the Librarian or ending up fighting and destroying it though the thing hits like an absolute truck.
  5. Is the map easy to read? 9 ==> No, but... it shows enough details to get them roughly to the spot once they actually explore. 

DOUG'S NOTES

Tried my best to create (in GIMP) a rough sketch of The Grunkheart Golem. I think it works ok. I want to start working in more and more of my own illustrations to this even though I absolutely suck at it. 
Once I got a "boss monster" in a room right off the main "artery" I had a slight problem about what kind of "boss" would be around 30' away from action that has already taken place and not yet involved. I decided it would either be a cool, higher powered undead, or some thing more "magi-tech". I basically flipped a coin and then got to work making a weird golem that turned increasingly weird. I went from wanting it to be a "fight" to something that could be worked deeper into the lore. I spent half the time of this session doing a very prep-is-play format. 
From here we will try out the first hexcrawl of the series which is kind of exciting for me. It will be a bit more of a "point crawl" than hex crawl but I have ideas. 
The name "Everburning Forest" was because I just used a quick "generate a site name" and it was "Immortal Fire" or some such and I wanted to "bleak" it up. There's been a building towards the classic trope of age-of-technology becomes age-of-magic and I am down for it.
With something like an hour of writing and designing some the backstory, the actual play here is at a minimum but so it goes. The GM-Doug + Player-Doug aspect offers opportunities like that.

CREDITS AND RESOURCES

This game is played using Shadowdark and SoloDark, both by Arcane Library and Kelsey Dionne (et al). The map in this delve is "The Halls of Amon-Gorloth II" by Dyson Logos with added annotations and colors by me. 
The page of the Voynich Manuscript (an inspiration for the strange pre-Barthic language that will be featured in this next bit) was taken from the Encyclopedia Britannica and has the caption: "Botanical or pharmaceutical illustration, Voynich manuscript (page 99 verso), 16th century; in the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University." 
Other resources used in this campaign are
  • Knave 2nd Edition by Ben Milton
  • Random Realities by Cezar Capacle
  • The Monster Overhaul by Skerples
  • Bestial Ecosystem Created by Monster Inhabitation by Courtney C. Campbell and others.
  • The Book of Random Tables: Dungeons, The Great Book of Random Tables, and The Great Book of Random Tables: Quests by Matt & Erin Davids. 
  • The Solo Adventurer's Toolkit One & Two by Paul Bimler
  • GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing by Raging Swan Press.
The illustrations for this delve are a mix of elements from the game/map as credited above, Pixabay stock art (often used more for effect than precision), elements made by me, modifications of maps using Gimp, and various pieces generated using ChatGPT4o [or some combination of multiple of these things]. 

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 11 - On Waterfalls in the Dark, Painting the Past, and When Fighting Is Best Saved for Another Day

By

On 2024-08-12

In Actual Play, ShadowDark, Solo Campaigns, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

Room would be 30' by 20' except for the sharp angle cutting through the eastern wall. Said angle has a secret door. [ShadowDark (ShD), Room Contents = 2, Empty]. The room was once [SoloDark (SoD): Secure Dream || Acquire Secret] a measurement system for the whole Monolith. Vials and dials are upon shelves and alcoves, pipes and other conduits are built into the wall. None of the equipment functions any more [SoD: Does equipment have any spark? Disadvantage: 2, No]. 

Roughly 80' corridor. [ShD, Room Contents = 1, Empty]. There are two alcoves showing very old and decayed artwork. Just visible with some effort [SoD, Are any details still presently visible? 19, Yes, but...] (on the left) is a shows a bright scene of dragon flies flying in the foreground while in the background a wave of darkness destroys the land [Random Realities (RR): 5,1 --> image element of dragon fly + wave]. The second (on the right) shows a obelisk with a light floating over it while all around darkness presses in [RR, 4,5 --> obelisk + lightbulb]. These are the paintings of Jonias Grunkheart showing off his early understanding of the Bleak pressing in on Grunce and the whole of the Empire. 


Rance Uffolt looks around the room in clear excitement. "Ah, this is very useful. This looks like one of the rooms that was originally used to...INAR, no!" The latter shout to try and discourage the halfling shaman from pulling a pipe out of the wall. Inar Gale looks back a bit sheepishly and then pat the sensitive equipment a couple of times to show no harm done (and to hide the fact that he had pulled it slightly out of alignment).


The room the group find themselves in was once either some sort of control room or a measuring station. Mildew stained glass runs in tubes along the walls (and some are smashed upon the floor) while dials filled full of mud just barely show an arcane system of measurements. Bottles and metallic scoops and other cylinders that seems to have been used to store something lies in disarray on the floor and across the metal, rusted tables. Basins long rusted into gaping holes are connected to some of the complex clusters of the tubes and vials. 

Considering its proximity to the entrance, this room could have been either to measure the salt water flow that makes up the "blood" of this construction or instead be something that actually handled some of the energy flow into the Lighthouse, above. 

Unfortunately time (and sea water damage) have not been kind to the room. It has held up more than some of the others they have explored but only just. Rance and the Keepers will likely be able to make use of it but it will take weeks, if not months, to fully appreciate what this room did and how they can use it. Something to bring up to Cal (this being Cal Grunkheart, Jonias's descendent and the reason they are here: to save the ancient Lighthouse that has long protected this region and stopped the Bleak from spreading across the Gray Channel). 

"Check this out," says Spotted Tom as he explores a patch of wall over to one side, one now covered in roots and black mold. A few pieces of old piping are still attached to it but none of the more solid pieces. As he pushes against it, the whole bit of wall slides out. [1]

Rance comes over to explore the opening and figures that maybe some of the tubing could be run out from here into the chamber outside (where the salt water flowed) to better collection some samples. He makes note of this and recommends they spike this door open to help this room air out. He'll get Nelf and her brother to take a look (Nelf and Terk Haskins are two of the more senior Keepers handling the exploration of the Monolith). [2]

Grusk Obe, the half-orc warrior, beckons to the far door. He has been spending the last few minutes slamming his shoulder into it to try and get it open but has had no luck. "Tom, see if you can open this." With a little bit of fiddling, Tom figures out the locking system and gets it open and the adventurers go deeper into the complex. [3]

Past the room, they find themselves in a corridor with steps going up. Along the righthand wall they see a couple of alcoves and in them are large oil paintings that have just barely survived the decades of decay. 

The first seems to be an idyllic scene. A sunlit day. Only in the background a town (possibly Grunce itself) is being washed away by a dark tidal wave. 

"I can't make out the other one," Grusk says before Tom steps up and replies, "It is the Lighthouse, I think. At least an artistic rendition of it. A shining light in the dark that is consuming the rest." [4]

"These are either by Jonias himself or he had them commissioned. Like a reminder of what this Monolith was built for...why they were fighting," says Rance, walking back and forth and staring at both. 

"That or what they lost," says Inar, an uncharacteristically downbeat proclamation from the usually mirthful halfling.

A 50' by 70' room with open archways on either side. The room's original purpose was for [SoD ==> 78 Sacrifice 62 Pain +  14 Assemble 35 Asset] training purposes. Soldier's would gather here to train and stay in physical shape. In the chance the town had evacuated into the complex, this is where they would have maintained some physical discipline. Now the training dummies are rotted and sagging and the gear is largely decayed. 

The sound of water can be heard trickling to the south. 

The room inhabited by a Giant Spinder (ShD, Room Content --> 5, Solo Monster. Spinder was rolled on the random creation table and given two mutations). The creature looks like a cross between a large spider and a porcupine. It can shoot spines from its back up to distance near. Each spine is poisonous but due the projectile state the DC to resist poison is CON 9. On a natural roll of 1-3 on a d20, the spinder has its last ready spine though it can still attempt close range attack. They hunt their pray by hiding along ceilings and getting a sneak attack. 

(Note: the Spinder is currently sleeping [ShD Random Encounters: 12 --> Sleeping].)

Giant Spinder 

AC15, HP25, ATK 2 Spines (ranged, near, on nat 3:20, it is out) +7 (1d6 + poison), MV near (climb), S +4, D +1, C +2, I-2, W +1, Ch -2, AL N, LV 7.  

Poison. DC 9 CON or paralyzed 1d2 hours.
Sensitive to Sound. The spinders many spines act to pick up sounds and can aim at targets not facing it (making it dangerous even to approach from behind) but this also means that loud sounds can confuse or disrupt the creature. It needs to make a D12 WIS check to avoid. 

Tom sees the dead body of a gar folk warrior on the floor. Desiccated with several large spines sticking out of its back. The goblin raises a fist in the air and signals the others to hold. Looking inside, he can sense something is wrong but not make out exactly what. [5]


The group backs up down the hall a good space away, slightly past the oil painting of the obelisk. In an absolute whisper, now, they talk about Tom's fear. "Something killed that gar and since it looks like said something ate his insides I don't look forward to joining them." 

Grusk grumbles, as usual: "It's easy, we send Gale in at a run and whatever chases him I will chase in return." 

Inar takes the jest in relatively good humor but says maybe they should go back the other way for now. The halfling ends up outvoted. In quick succession, Rance wraps himself in Mage Armor and Inar gets a Holy Weapon spell cast on his and Grusk's weapons. The halfling's voice might be shaky but he stays resolute in his faith. [6]

Rance hands his glowing staff to Tom who goes ahead and wedges against a wooden figure once roughly human torso shaped so the room is lit. Tom looks around the rest of the room. More of these torsos - training dummies going all the way back to this Monolith's heyday are rotted and decayed past use. Punching them now would have your hand sink inside and you'd end up with a splinter or worse. 

A few archer targets and other training gear are on the walls and floor. This area was above the main waterline so the decay (and smell) isn't as bad here. 

Tom sneaks across the room with the the plate-mailed half-orc holding back. He senses that something before he can see it but is unable to get fully back in time as a spine shoots from the back corner and stabs him in the shoulder. [7]

Seeing this Grusk runs in (along with Inar) and they square off against a large spider...thing...coming out to face them. The size of a pair of horses lashed together, its back is a series of large and dripping spines. "Do you know this one, Uffolt?" Grusk asks. 

"No!" Shouts Rance while already casting the first of soon to be many magic missiles. [8]

The creature shoots out two more spines with one glancing off of Inar's armor but the other catching Grusk in the arm. It does not slow the half-orc down as he runs across the room and chops at one of hte large front legs. Inar uses the half-orc partially for cover and dives past him to bring his mace down on another leg. Loud cracks can be heard. A magical arrow flies out of Rance's hands and strikes the creature for even more damage even though Tom's aim is thrown off by the spine in his shoulder. [9]

The creature starts climbing up the wall and is able to get out of range of the adventuring party. [10]

From this position it continues to shoot its strange poisonous spines. Another strikes an enraged Grusk while the other hits Rance closer to the doorway. Grusk looks around to find something to throw and decides to throw the most obvious answer: his axe. It flies up and strikes the ceiling but does not make contact. Inar takes this time to hunker down behind one of the training dummies while Tom lets loose more arrows: still missing. "Acid Arrow!" Shouts the wizard as a green, acidic bolt shoots forth and strikes the spider. Which causes it to screech and become even more aggressive. [11]

Grusk runs and grabs up his axe and throws it again, this time missing so hard the axe - Bloodlust - embeds into the ceiling. Inar has completely gotten under cover and so Tom and Rance try and make up the difference. Tom manages to get an arrow into the spider beast and returns the earlier favor. Rance sweats as he wills the acid bolt to burn through and soon enough, it does. The creature, dying, falls from the ceiling and collapses into a twisted shape. [12]

"How the hell do I get my axe back?" 

***

While Grusk is ranting about his axe being stuck in the ceiling Tom makes a discovery in the corner near where the spider thing was resting. A collapsed marble pedestal had a large amber "egg" with a wyvern hatchling inside. Made to look the size of a wyvern egg (and roughly 50lb) this decoration is a rare survivor of the various wealths and treasures that likely once adorned this place. Tom places it in the bag of holding and then tries to help Grusk out by looping some rope around the axe. While he is able to hit the axe with the tossed rope, the blade is wedged too deep and keeps slipping out of the loop. [13]

Grusk agrees to head back to the base camp and see if Terk still has scaffolding and can help. [14]

This platform juts out a just a few feet over a underground river. Down in the water below, a number of crocodiles can be seen sleeping blindly in the dark [Room content itself = empty, but this explains where some of the crocs are coming from]. Claw marks show where occasionally one of them makes the climb but they are slow to try most days. It is nearly 30' down to the water. In the distance, another platform is visible but in the dim light it is hard to make out clearly. 

In the past this room [SoD Prompt ==> 47 Lose 12 Time + 70 Win 94 Luck] was a place to relax and enjoy the flowing water below. People would toss small trinkets and coins in, many of which have been washed away. Some remain, though. If anyone braves the crocodiles, they will find still in the gravel 25 gold pieces, 40 silver pieces, and a polished pearl worth 40gp. 

Crocodile stats are on page 203 of ShadowDark. 

[Does the river flow into the channel? [or, if "no" from the channel] ==> 10, twist. RR 3,6 Ambient Noise + 6,6 ==> reverberation of sound... so no, it flows from here into some large cavernous space, possibly notes for another day.] 


This 55' corridor ends with a door back into the main flow chamber, sloping down a few degrees at a time. This corridor is cracked and sunken and silt and mud still retains a few inches of water around halfway and a few feet of water at the far end (water that will flow out once the door is opened). The smell is poignant because an absolutely massive crocodile considers this to be home and has grown increasingly agitated as the water has drained. In another week, this behemoth will move back to the river (above). 

In the mud near the croc has bones of many victims and some washed up debris. A copper flask with an owl is covered in patina but represents an old Grunce emblem and is worth 30gp. There is 20% chance for an additional treasure on the 0-3LVL chart. 

Big Croc

AC 16, HP 30, ATK 2 bite +4 (1d8),
MV near (swim), S +5, D -1, C +2, I -2, W +1, Ch -2, AL N, LV 6. 

Entering into the hallway, the four note the sound of loud water to their right and carefully walk over to investigate it. Here, the sound is much louder than before with the air feeling humid, but in a much less stagnant way. Down below, at some distance, the light of Rance's staff shows the eyes of several crocodiles lounging against the bank. 

"A...waterfall?" Rance asks, no one in particular. 

"So you are telling me there's a waterfall the goes deep...under...a large body of water?" Inar asks, as confused as everyone else. The two continue to stare into the darkness, noting another platform across the way. Considering the dangers of being lost into the darkness below and swept into some madman's dream of a functional water system if you do not get eaten by a dozen angry crocodiles, they silently and mutually decide to not worry too much about getting across for now. 

"The crocodiles climb up here," Tom says noting where parts of the platform have broken off and form a steep but relatively gentle slope (only 50 or so degrees instead of the normal 80-90). 

"Then let's not tarry before you three end up lecturing me about the morality of eating croc eggs, again," says Grusk, already heading south. 

***

"This way," says Rance, looking at the rough map and the updated notes he has been taken," should head back towards the central artery." 

A gentle slope down in this place means that like the staircase from the previous day, mud and muck and debris have had time to build and the smell of the stagnant and fungal water is pretty strong. There is something...else. 

Grusk tells the others to stay behind him. He has had this smell in his nose before. "Croc," he says. Moving forward he prods the water in front of him with his axe. Then raises his fist in the air to stop the others. 

"There." Where he points is the largest crocodile they have seen. 

"It's not far from the others, maybe we can...I don't know...bonk it on the nose and then lead it back." Tom makes a smacking sound on his own nose by way of demonstration.

"Bonk...the giant crocodile?" Asks Inar. 

The four begin having a debate while the crocodile stares on, suspiciously. Mouth open as a threat, but also not approaching the four strange things.  [15]

After a few minutes the party makes plans to leave some food at the end of the tunnel, double back and leave some more food near the edge, and then maybe check on the croc in a few days once they have cleared other parts of the complex out. [16]


MECHANICAL NOTES

  1. Tom got an 18 on spotting the door. 
  2. This room will be +5 to the check of getting the sea water flow working more properly. 
  3. Have been rolling 1:6 to see if the doors are locked. That one was. Grusk whiffed a few times to get it unstuck using STR but Tom got through with a pick locks. 
  4. Kind of minor but I did DC15 checks for the characters to see if they could make out the paintings. Grusk + Inar only passed the first painting. Tom only passed the second painting. Rance passed both.
  5. Goblins cannot be surprised. However, I rolled an INT check by the spinder and got 19-2 = 17 and neither of Tom's "Spot Hidden" rolls hit 17. So...the spinder has hidden itself well. Still, he can sense something. 
  6. Took a couple of rolls on the Vote Dice but eventually all BUT Inar decided to push forward. Inar rolled a 16 and 19 for the spell checks so he is well good. By the way, a "hearing check" on the spinder came back with a 7 total so the spinder is not hearing them and is well asleep. 
  7. Even giving the sleeping spinder disadvantage versus waking up at Tom's sneaking, the spinder rolled a 19 and a 20. Then, again, at disadvantage to shoot the war goblin, two high enough rolls landed. Tom takes 4 points of damage but makes the save to resist the weaker poison. 
  8. Rance studies the creatures of the Bleak a lot and so gets DC[N] rolls based on how common. In this case it would be DC18 and he did not make it. 
  9. Spinder wins imitative. Missed Inar but got a hit on Grusk. Only did 1hp of damage and Grusk saved the poison. Grusk and Inar both hit doing a total of 15 points of damage and taking the spinder down to below half health in a single burst. 
  10. I did a weighted d3. 1:6 = 10', 2-5:6 = 20', 6:6 = 30'. Got a 3 so 20'.
  11. Spinder wins initiative and makes its morale check. Goes up high and keeps picking away. Keeps getting hits but rolling crap for damage. Tom and Rance the ranged attackers but Tom misses. "Can Grusk use anything on the floor as a weapon?" No. Throws axe. Treat it as a dex based roll AND at disadvantage. It misses. Inar cannot do much but hide and wait to cast some healing magic. 
  12. Heroes won the init roll. Grusk made another throw but this time got a Nat 1 so it's funny to imagine a magically sharp axe being able to chop through stone. Inar got a 18 on his hide roll so I think he'd be good if the fight went on. Tom finally landed a shot and that left the spider with 1hp overall which Rance won by spending a luck point to maintain the acid arrow. 
  13. Got the wyvern egg out of the 7-9 treasure table. At first thought it was too big for the bag and then realized that it should be roughly a 1 slot item, just a chunky one. Tom made the roll to toss the rope but I asked the oracle "Can they get the axe back without help?" and got a no. 
  14. Can they get Terk's scaffolding into position? Yes. In fact, Nat 20 so very yes. It's quite portable and might be used in other places. This was taking some time so I skipped head about an hour and rolled 3 wandering monster checks. All were "no." Rance re-ups his light spell. 
  15. Reaction Roll = 7, Suspicious. The team generally has tended to lean towards trying to minimize chaos when the creature isn't outright attacking them so I figured I'd play it down to a reaction roll. 
  16. Made a somewhat collective INT roll and in the way I've been doing used the highest (i.e. Rance's) to see if they could hit DC12. No. Even spent a precious Luck token. So, they don't really have a plan. However, an oracle test of "Will the crocodile leave the tunnel and go back to the others?" ended up with a 20. So, very much so yes. And, in general, that giant croc will actually be somewhat "neutral" to the party. Basically as silly as it sounds I'll give the crocs +2 reaction rolls to them. The dumb dumbs earned it.

DOUG'S NOTES

Fun fact, I have 100% been calling Rance Uffolt "Uffort" in the last couple of sessions. Ah, well. I'll fix that in post sometime. 
Real life got a bit in the way of me making this any longer but it's a decent spot to end it for today.
I realized some of my frustrations I talked about in the past session were due to an interesting aspect of this campaign. For most of my campaigns and one-shots, the scenery is simply an extension of the characters. A temple or a school yard or a old factory are set pieces for a campaign mostly about what the characters do and in principle the flavor might shift if the characters were in a different place but I can add in just enough flavor to make it interesting for myself and maybe others. 
While I love world building, during actual play I tend to like to world build in the context of characters. 
With this campaign, the place the adventure takes place in is another character especially in the context of this complex/Monolith. Some rooms are empty. Some are full of stuff. Some had an important role in the old days. Some have an important role now. The method of making up the rooms as the characters are in the room while also properly building up a narrative  and just dealing with a sense that the dungeon is too full of things in order to have something to write and do kept itching at me. My usual approach of "just focus on the characters, everything else is background" ended up with me having the weird stuff like the gar folk encounter get kind of out of hand. 
Thus, I have decided this campaign will try a dual approach. I'll take a moment to build up a few rooms and be in full GM mode working out oracles and tables to make interesting encounters and background information for 1-3 areas and then I will swap into player mode to lead the characters through it and do it in such a way that GM-Doug and Player-Doug are not necessarily seeing eye-to-eye even if they both want to tell an interesting story. 
The GM-mode flavors the Player-mode for sure but it gives me time to work out the mechanics and the ideas and the history without having to essentially do both. The dungeon gets to be a fully fledged character which has improved my mood greatly. It takes more time but it enables me to make a better world and that better world enables me to tell a better tale. 
I like it because in potential I could build a dungeon in this method, strip out the stuff I did as the characters, and still have something like an adventure: albeit one built by oracles and madness. 
As it should be. 

CREDITS AND RESOURCES

This game is played using Shadowdark and SoloDark, both by Arcane Library and Kelsey Dionne (et al). The map in this delve is "The Halls of Amon-Gorloth II" by Dyson Logos with added annotations and colors by me.

Other resources used in this campaign are
Knave 2nd Edition by Ben Milton
Random Realities by Cezar Capacle
The Monster Overhaul by Skerples
Bestial Ecosystem Created by Monster Inhabitation by Courtney C. Campbell and others.
The Book of Random Tables: Dungeons, The Great Book of Random Tables, and The Great Book of Random Tables: Quests by Matt & Erin Davids.
The Solo Adventurer's Toolkit One & Two by Paul Bimler
GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing by Raging Swan Press.
The illustrations for this delve are a mix of elements from the game/map as credited above, Pixabay stock art (often used more for effect than precision), elements made by me, modifications of maps using Gimp, and various pieces generated using ChatGPT4o [or some combination of multiple of these things].

The Doug Alone Check In: August 2024

By

On 2024-08-05

In Solo Musings

I'm the kind of person that usually (at least in my solo play sessions) likes to fling things out there and try to figure out what it means on the way down  and this blog is sort of like an extension of that. It started as a place to post my "The Bloody Hands" Tricube Tales solo game while behind the scenes I was mostly focused on a couple of other campaigns, and then at least one of those campaigns, the SoloDark "The Bleak + The Pearl" has been added. It gave me the freedom of space to try out things (which lead to the completely new approach of gameplay that the Gareth Hendrix storyline let me try).
Still, each time I post I wonder not only "how can I change up how I'm playing" but "how can I change up how I'm writing about what I am playing". 

On How the Changing Style of Writing Is Impacting My Own Playing

I think is pretty obvious how the blog's initial designation as a place where I wrote, for lack of a better word, pretty broad recaps about my sessions changed a good bit as I've tried to write out my sessions as more of an actual story and keep things a bit more interesting for whatever random folks stop by (and also for myself). This has ups and downs. The up is that I am more proud of my stories. It forces me to dive into the characters, to add in details, to think even when I might be just wanting a quick reason to roll 3d6. The down is that it takes longer to write and much longer to read. This has slightly changed how I play. 
Around 4-6 hours of playing through "The Lost Citadel" became two blog posts: one + two. By comparison, the time since then has involved a lot more writing over actual rolling. So a post about a single group of encounters roughly as complex as the fight with the beastmen in The Lost Citadel becomes the backbone of two different blog posts: a different one + a different two. 
There will likely be 10+ more sessions to deal with the rest of just that dungeon (assuming I do not go off on a massive tangent, again). While that has given me a lot more space to work out characters like Grusk and Tom (Tom's morality is a major part of the process, now) I know it makes the process more complex. Not just for me, but also for anyone else. 4-6 hours worth of play into two sessions will likely be 20+ hours of play and writing across a dozen plus posts. 
The blog's primary focus is my own play for my own use and to expand my thought processes and ideas. I find that it helps me to be a solo player to have to stop and think about how other people might read and experience it. Explaining it to an audience, even a primarily imaginary one, helps me to better explain it to myself. BUT... I still want it to be entertaining and not just a slog of a creative writing experiment for others to wade through, though.
I will try and work on balancing both. In that above linked "a different two" (dealing with the conclusion of the fight with the gar folk in my SoloDark campaign) I compressed down about 15 minutes of behind the scene play into just a few lines. I'm not saying that's the solution but it's a solution for sure. 
I did think about trying to play out a session in my short hand form with quicker beats and resolutions but I found that does not quite work because it makes the longer write up more artificial. I would spend a lot of time (and I appreciate the irony of what I am about to say) making up things. What I mean, though, is that if I play out a fight and then explore a few rooms and then come back after and try to fictionalize it I have to build in more than "they opened the door" and that means I need details and concepts and emotions and motivations and if those things were not there to begin with then it's an artificial skin on a skeleton. 

My Favorite Thing from the Past Month

My favorite thing from the past month has been the finale where Gareth Hendrix ends up being less about a battle and more about fighting the good fight. Not only did he focus less on any particular conflict but he inverted the primary expectation of the whole mini-campaign. Well, I did. But I did it because it felt right for the character.

My Least Favorite Thing from the Past Month

I have already linked this twice already but my least favorite thing is the way I allowed myself to stall out when dealing with the conflict with the gar folk in "The Bleak + The Pearl". It actually took me several days and sort of derailed what was meant to be a few days off work to focus on some fun solo play projects because my brain kept trying to make it more complex and more moral-driven. That is not a bad thing in itself but these are fictional story points in a fiction that I am writing. I should have just set a limit for myself. Just summed it up a couple of rolls. A single complex question roll could possibly solved the whole thing. I'm sure it will end up being a much better campaign because of taking time to work with it but it sucks that it took so much energy out of my enjoyment.

Something I Would Like to Do in the Next Month

I think my biggest wishlist is for a game that brings in a bit more complexity with dice rolling and more excuses to use more tables and charts and tools but also decentralizes combat as the only good conflict. I have some ideas.
I also sort of want to play with Mythic, more, since the main campaigns have kind of not needed that level of tool and I miss having more complex threads and relationships. 
Finally, it is time to get my Advanced Fighting Fantasy back on and as we approach the one year anniversary of that I am ready to dive back into that world.

Page 8 of 10

Previous

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén