Second Game

[Jubal]

So, my second testing one-shot, entitled "even doves cast a shadow", happened, and I think it worked well enough

As a mystery story I think the plot here worked out quite well and didn't feel like it had too many obvious holes in it - the players expended quite a lot of resources in their efforts, but in a one-shot that's OK and expected. The final battle, a setup where the players had to hold off the called monsters of the main villain, worked pretty neatly as I'd planned it, though very fortunately I decided to give them eight rather than ten turns to hold out - a decision made because we'd have overrun badly on time otherwise, but also helpful because ten turns would've killed them. I generally managed to poke the players in the right direction enough but still have them come up with some of their own solutions which I wasn't expecting (stunning the fungi was smart, creative use of the beast handling skill on the Kalade and of falconry commands in the final battle too). There's definitely a particular thing for one-shots of having to keep the players on more of a track, but they were good about taking that track in the spirit it was intended so credit to them

I still didn't get into doing more detailed combat stuff as I'd hoped after the last game, but the players once again generally avoided fighting. I think the combat was successfully cinematic, though I was finding it a lot to think through in my head. In the final battle I did manage to let Clara/Robin use the "defend" action though I got how it was meant to work wrong (mea culpa), though my on the fly version fortunately worked fine. I definitely forgot to worry about or explain called shots and didn't use the ganging up rules - the latter probably a good thing. Toughness makes a big difference in Savage Worlds, I'm rapidly finding - the difference between a T4 and a T5 enemy is really very significant for a first-level, low strength character fighting with a dagger. This in turn makes decisions on how to equip/stat up enemies pretty important. I suspect this starts to become less of an issue and the fights get quicker and more deadly once you hit 2d6 being a more normal damage level, but I quite liked the desperate, low-power, defensive nature of the final fight in this one, which fitted the atmosphere I'd hoped for.

I think I possibly could've done with lower character complexity - I didn't have the time I wanted to really build up all eight or nine NPCs who turned up. Having to go through the basics of how religion works in this setting was a lot to dump on the players as well, though they handled it admirably. I need better notes on what information to give the PCs in future - I should probably have given them a hint about the knockers somehow, which wouldn't have been hard to do.

And here's the actually fairly long writeup of everything that happened:

Spoiler

I had three players this time - Clara, Jorge, and Marius again - with three new characters. Clara played Robin, a falconer (gender never specified) with a little more than a taste for wine and two birds (a falcon, and a tiny falconet). Jorge played the common sense lacking, kleptomaniac wizard Pedro II, and Marius played Cha Alin, a peaceable Hanau trader.

They arrived at the monastery of the Beloved Lothmund, and Cha Alin started discussions around selling his trading goods, a large sack of silk cloth. The treasurer was delayed meeting them, however, because the monks were busy investigating a recent robbery - which of course they got roped rapidly into solving.

The monastery of the Beloved Lothmund had been founded over a hundred years earlier, after the hermit and monk Lothmund, a devotee of a harvest god called Oreval, had met with the rampaging nomad leader Acherith and persuaded him to turn his horde around and end his conquering rampage. In honour of this, Acherith had handed over a magical ashwood dart that he carried into battle and which was rumoured to have various arcane power, which along with a dwarven Holy Orb (on which more later) was one of the two major relics of the resulting monastery. After Lothmund took the dart, it was claimed that any bearer of the dart would find that all were peaceable toward them To be crowned as the new Senior Monk, a monk of their little order had to be seated on an old stone seat on the other side of the valley that faced the monastery, holding the two relics. The monks typically elected who should be given the right to do this, but ultimately it was the ceremony that mattered.

Fast forward to today, and the dwarf monk Polvan, the monk had become leader-elect, popular among the acolytes for not over-working them. His coronation was set for midsummer's day, just two nights away - but of course, without the dart, it couldn't take place. The heroes asked around the other monks of the monastery - the gaunt and elderly treasurer, Styramund, the effervescent and personable librarian, Desonarius, and the lazy, bemused head beekeeper Dorlad. Desonarius showed them to the scene of the crime, and they discovered that Styramund had come second in Polvan's election - Desonarius had come third, and Dorlad had received just two votes.

After a little searching and consideration of whether to test Styramund's reported dislike of dwarves by selecting random dwarf acolytes to go and talk to him, they caught up with Styramund and Polvan again in the treasury, where the Holy Orb was placed, and was talking - dwarf holy orbs are a rare and precious, but well known, item in this setting, and known for giving garbled advice, rhymes, and other potentially (or not) plot useful things! It was chanting the following phrase (based on a poem I wrote recently, which was in turn based on seeing a rod with a dove ornament in a museum in Aachen, which indeed cast a very large and ominous looking shadow on the case behind it thanks to its lighting).

"Even doves cast a shadow on the world beneath their wing,
At the third, strike the bird, to find that of which I sing."

Desonarius suggested that the heroes take the orb with them, in order to guard it and in case it gave them any useful information on their quest. Polvan was less convinced, but eventually the monks agreed that this would be a reasonable idea.

Finally, the heroes went to interview (and obtain wine from) Dorlad, the beekeeper. He seemed entirely amused at his only getting two votes in the recent election, and happily sold Robin some much needed alcohol.



Having exhausted their obvious leads up at the monastery, they went down to the little town of Matreda in the valley, an iron mining town which was owned by the monastery, with a fairly even mix of dwarves and humans among its population. They went to the local pub, the Chertuine, and met its owner Amaria - chertuines, as they discovered, were great weasel-like beasts that had been a symbol of the aformentioned nomad ruler Acherith, and had also become ingrained in local folklore over the past century. There was even a stone one on the monastery's gatehouse. (Notably, my word "chertuine" is cognate with ქრცვინი/krtsvini, the Georgian word for a polecat). Other than that, everything seemed fairly normal in town, with the dwarves preparing for midsummer celebrations, food and alcohol on offer, and so on. They settled down in the pub, and Pedro narrowly avoided being thrown out after trying to swipe a tip from the bar.

As they listened around the place, there was one point of conversation that seemed to be eclipsing the others - the town's sundial had been vandalised the previous night, the same night that the Ashwood Dart had gone missing. After being shown the object by the town crier Gadall, some inspection revealed that the arm had been taken off, apparently deliberately. It was a book-shaped sundial (inspired by an actual one I'd seen in Genk not long ago). The sundial's pedestal had four images on it - a chertuine, a scene of a mounted warrior and a monk, presumably Acherith and Lothmund, a tree with doves flying out of it, and a beehive.

Could "the third" mean the third hour, and was the orb's mention of shadows connected, the players wondered? Suddenly, there were two crimes to investigate, seemingly linked. A helpful dwarf called Chloderic assisted them in making enquiries; there had indeed been sightings of a hooded figure going into and out of town the previous night, and the figure had (according to a rather unreliable dwarf drunk, at least) left town going upriver and up the valley.

Robin found signs of the tracks from the previous night on the muddy riverside path, and followed them along to where a rickety log fell across the stream to a small goblin encampment. The suspicious little band of five goblins agreed to talk after being offered coins, and then a negotiation ensued, mainly between Cha Alin and the goblins. Robin's job meanwhile was primarily to prevent Pedro from fireblasting the goblins, which he was showing some inclination to do! The goblins were unamused by small offers of coin, and quickly got the sense that what they had, or knew, was important to the players - as the heroes had already discovered that a hooded figure had visited the goblin camp, the real question was whether they could bid high enough to find out what was going on - and indeed how much the goblins really knew. The goblins managed to reveal that they knew the shape of the sundial arm the heroes wanted, and this persuaded Cha Alin to offer his sack of trading silks - aka most of his net worth - with half up front and half for the item itself. The goblins had already been paid, of course, to not give the item to anyone (they didn't know by whom, for he'd been in a hood), but this was plenty enough to outbid their previous offer, and they duly provided the heroes with the missing item, happily taking the valuable hanau silks and cloths and ripping them up to make cloaks and flags and generally being as fancy as goblins can reasonably get. Everyone was happy - except Cha Alin, who had lost his entire cargo of silks (and, though he didn't realise it, several coins which Pedro had stolen from him during the trade).

Returning to town, the townsfolk were rather surprised at the large financial sacrifice the heroes had made for them and pointed out that at no time had they said they'd pay that sort of amount back, though they did have a chat with Amaria and got free board for them for the evening. The remainder Robin's coin of was spent on two bottles of wine, which lasted the rest of the adventure; this made a total of three bottles of wine, since Pedro purloined one as well. Chloderic, and Trothwyn the blacksmith, got to work on repairing the sundial, Robin spent the evening drinking with some dwarves, Pedro attempted and failed to analyse the Orb's pronouncements further, and Cha Alin attempted to negotiate for a trading deal of some kind with a friendly but not entirely helpful local merchant.

The next day was market day, and monks and acolytes mingled with the townsfolk as the players waited for three o'clock on the repaired sundial, hoping that pressing the panel with the doves would lead to something happening. They obtained a hammer from Trothwyn the blacksmith in case striking it harder would be needed, and met Desonarius and Styramund, who were helping organise the monastery's numerous market stalls, giving them a brief update but without letting too much information on. Desonarius expressed sympathy with Cha Alin's losses and promised to advocate for reparations for the trader, hinting that his fellow monks might be less well inclined. Chloderic had a minor dispute with Styramund, whose dislike of dwarves was not well hidden; the players got some food at Pedro's expense (therefore, indirectly, Cha Alin's expense), and waited...

At three, they pressed the dove image, and with a great creaking sound, a trapdoor crashed open on the other side of the sundial. Looking down, it wasn't obvious what was down there - but the heroes realised that their only choice was to head down. Styramund provided them with some rope, and Chloderic with some torches (though Pedro had gotten ahead of that particular game and found some sticks to burn already), and they made their way into the darkness.



They were in a large, empty cavern, with two exits (plus the trapdoor, which they had abseiled down from). One tunnel curved up toward some other part of the town, and another climbed slowly west, towards the opposite side of the valley to the monastery. This was the one they headed along, only to be greeted with strange shadows that seemed to move around out of the corner of their eye, and which were throwing small stones at them. They attempted to rush forwards, but this did little to the bombardment - though, curiously, the stones were so small as to be ineffectual. Eventually, as they headed down the tunnel, they heard a strange droning noise from up ahead. Continuing to head onwards, they came to a cavern full of fungi, which were making a strange singing, droning noise, and they got closer, and closer, and then the two humans keeled over and fell asleep. Cha Alin, the only member of the party still awake and functioning, dragged his companions back and they tied bandages around their ears - ineffectually made, but perhaps, they hoped, enough to give just a little help. Pedro meanwhile had another idea and blasted a stunning spell into the middle of the cave. This worked well, giving the heroes just a moment of time to cross; the bombardment of small rocks curiously having stopped when they entered the fungus room.

A tunnel length further and they found a boulder. This would be nothing especially exceptional underground, excepting that it was moving. It was, in fact, a kalade, a large mountain herbivore often found slowly plodding through cave systems and eating mosses and fungi, though also occasionally found out at night on mountain hillsides too. Robin attempted to calm the notoriously bad-tempered beast, giving it a moment of pause for thought. Its shell, built over the years of its life out of stones, gave it an immense body mass; even without much speed, a kalade's strength and blows could do a lot of damage. The heroes attempted to run around the creature, despite the narrow room - it worked for the athletic Hanau, but the wizard had no such luck. Despite Robin's efforts, the beast trundled forward and slammed into the wizard, knocking him back. The falconer's further efforts to calm it had the opposite effect, and it stomped on the prone magic user - it was a matter of some considerable luck that his entire chest wasn't caved in, but he narrowly managed to escape with mere bruises and a torn robe. Having gotten round the creature, the heroes simply ran for the exit, the enraged beast trundling forwards behind them, snorting aggressively. They headed for some narrow, forking tunnels ahead, hoping that it would be unable to follow them.

The stone-throwing started again - first from the left fork, so they headed right, and then from the right fork, so they headed left. At the third division, they decided to actually go towards the thrown stones - only to find that that runnel was trapped and the Hanau took a scrape from a tripwire trap with fired a bolt into his shoulder. The thrown stones were, after all, only intended to help. The shadows in the dark were the knockers, the mine spirits that protected dwarfs from danger. Unable to talk, perhaps, but worth listening to, if you could work out what they meant.

But now the tunnel maze finally ended, after some hours of twisting, turning passages that had left the kalade far behind them (it is still, dare I say it, roaming the caves above Matreda to this day). Somewhere in the heroes' bags, the orb meanwhile had changed its tune...

"Some want peace and honey wine,
Some want their turn and want their time,
Some want none of other kind,
But some want power and power is blind."

They did not notice this, but had they done so they might have been less surprised at what greeted them ahead.

A steep tunnel clambered to lead out to the open sky, at a somewhat concealed entrance partway up the hillside, which unbeknownst to them was very close to where the throne of Lothmund stood: it was moonlight that now entered the cave, after their long while working their way through the maze of tunnels. Ahead of them was another open cavern, and they stepped inside.

A cheerful voice greeted them.

It was Desonarius, the librarian.



Flanked by a couple of acolytes, he was preparing for his own coronation, for which he lacked only one thing - the orb, which the players had conveniently brought to him. He started, in his own affable way, doing his best to dissemble and persuade the characters to hand over the orb and allow him to be crowned ruler of the monastery, explaining how he'd be a better leader than Polvan, who had clearly failed in his executive duties given the recent thefts, and offering rich rewards to the heroes if they helped him... but the conversation stalled, as Cha Alin refused to believe his promises and kept asking him awkward questions about how this had all come about, not to mention lying that they didn't have the orb (which Desonarius was well aware was in their possession).

Eventually, growing frustrated, the great wizard Pedro II fired off a stunning bolt of magic at him. And promptly missed. Desonarius raised the Ashwood bolt, and five chertuines flapped, crawled and slithered out of the caves around, called to the weapon that their sires' master had once carried to war. Robin released the dwarf homing-bird and it shot off to seek help...

Cha Alin ran forward and attempted to push Desonarius' acolytes aside to reach him, but they fended him off and he had to spend much of his time running around and ducking blows from their staves. The Chertuines went for the other two: Pedro's initial fire blast was easily dodged by the pack of three that rushed at him, and Robin was forced to fend several off with their dagger, sending their two hunting birds to try and distract one whilst fighting the other.

The first Chertuine to fall had its throat torn by Robin's falcon, and Robin managed to dispatch a second with a forceful dagger-blow to the face: Pedro, in retreat, kept narrowly avoiding the snapping jaws of and took a bite to the leg. Fortunately, the falconer's birds distracted two of the three, and the beasts were soon engaged in a snapping, claw-and tooth melee of fast moving bird and lithe predator, the tiny falconet narrowly dancing out of the way here and the noble falcon dashing in with talons flashing there. But two more chertuines crawled out of the shadows. How long could the players hold out?

Pedro finally succeeded in loosing a blast of fire, incinerating the chertuine in front of him, and started hurrying through the room, a second fire blast issuing forth but not quite reaching Desonarius. Cha Alin tried running around, but the acolytes kept in front of him - and Robin closed with another chertuine, again frantically fending it off whilst whilstling instructions to the two birds. The falconer signalled to the tiny falconet to stop distracting a chertuine and fly forward. The magic that Lothmund had given the dart might have prevented sapient beings from attacking him directly, but a bird stealing an item was very much fair game. His finger turned aside at the last minute (without him even noticing), another fireball from Pedro missed Desonarius, the monk being protected by the subtle magic of the dart - though did at least force him to dive to the ground.

Then, disaster struck, as one of the chertuines snatched Robin's falcon out of the air, crushing it in sharp-toothed jaws. Distracted momentarily by the horror of seeing a favourite bird devoured, Robin at last failed to guard against their own opponent, and a chertuine bit down hard, ripping muscle and sending searing pain through the falconer's body. The dagger dropped to the floor. Cha Alin was tiring too, and finally one of the acolytes tripped him with his staff, and the other knocked him hard on the head, sending him into immediate unconsciousness. The pained falconer another chertuine sniff at, and then start biting at, the hanau trader's prone form, as the weakened Pedro looked around him at the surrounding chertuines and the tiny falconet buzzed around the Senior Monk's head. As the light faded from Robin's eyes though, a vague sound echoed in their ears. A tap, tap, tap, ta-ta-ta tap, tap tap, ta-ta-ta, getting louder and louder...

Pedro was the last of the heroes standing when twenty-seven angry, pickaxe wielding dwarves who had been encamped by the nearby mine burst into the chamber, singing the songs of vengeance that the ages had passed down to their people, led down the nearby surface tunnel by the little homing-bird. Already forced to drop down by his fear of Pedro's last fireball, he grasped for the dart but with the tiny falconet still buzzing around him, he failed to grasp it. Engaging the beasts, the dwarves subdued the chertuines, surrounding each of them and then beating them back - the last two, seeing their new master humbled and without the dart to which they truly owed allegiance, slunk off into the depths of the cave system, perhaps forever. Though who can say how long forever is?



Desonarius' acolytes eventually revealed the full details of the plan - of course, Desonarius himself, seeking the power and influence that a Senior Monk could have had committed the robbery, and had used one of a number of century old, secret timed-opening tunnels across the valley to get out of the monastery. Knowing the location of the other such tunnels from maps in the monastic library, he had sabotaged the sundial in order to restrict their use. The Orb, kept in the treasury under Styramund's watchful eye, was more of a problem. Knowing Styramund's age and prejudices he had been considering laying the ground for accusing him of the first theft in order to remove him and conduct the second, but the heroes' arrival had presented him with an alternative opportunity to get the orb out of the now highly alert monastery. When he saw the players on midsummer's eve, one of his acolytes had been trying to hire a thief to steal the orb from the players, but as they'd opened the tunnels, he hurried off, knowing that his best bet would be to catch them at some other point in the tunnels, when they might have already been weakened, and persuade them of his case - or, if necessary, call the beasts that he had realised the dart had power over. And so it had proved, almost.

Pedro, his leg and chest bandaged, represented the three friends at Senior Monk Polvan's coronation the warm sunlight of midsummer morning, where the throne of Lothmund sat amidst a meadow of wildflowers, looking across at the monastery that the dwarf monk would now have charge of for the rest of his born days. Styramund placed the crown on his rival's head, and a crowd of townsfolk and monks alike joined a procession down to Matreda, where the real celebrations began. It was a day later that Robin awoke, scarred but alive - a chirruping falconet and a bottle of wine waiting at the side of a creaking bed in the tavern. Cha Alin was, if just about alive, not quite so lucky. The Hanau's long distance travelling days were entirely over, with the chertuine's mauling leaving him with only one functional lung and a drained, weakened complexion. The hanau eventually settled down to a life - if not a pain-free one - of trade in Matreda, doing deals that exported the town's iron goods to places far away, carried even on hanau catamarans to lands across the seas altogether.

The wizard and the falconer, meanwhile, had other places to go and other adventures to find, leaving the shadows of Acherith's chertuines and of Lothmund the Peacemaker far behind them. Even doves cast a shadow - but it is one that soon passes, like the flight of birds, beneath an everlasting sky.

[Ierne]

I don't have very much to compare this to, given that the only RPG saga I follow is a very dramatic hundred-year epic about exiled Drow destined to save the world.
But I really enjoyed reading the write-ups for both this and the first game the sense of mystery was really well developed in both, and they didn't feel predictable. I was fairly sure one of the monks was going to turn out to be behind the theft, but the plot to get to that point was nicely twisty; and the riddles were fun to have. In the first game, I really did not see the trapped water elemental coming at all.
I would say overall I prefered the second one, just because the various plot episodes seemed to fit together better, and there was a greater sense of atmosphere. And giant death polecats, which were great.
I would very much enjoy reading further installments from this universe

(And this isn't really a proper criticism, seeing as I'm not used to the universe yet, but I did keep forgetting what a Hanau was and getting them mixed up with C.S.Lewis' Hrossa, which are sapient otters XD ).

[Jubal]

The Hanau are named for a people from Easter Island folklore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanau_epe

But yes, it's one of those in-world terms - they're sufficiently not quite elves that I felt I could get away with/should use a different word.

And I'm glad you enjoyed reading them! I'm not sure where I'll be going with this next - I'd like to run a full campaign, but that's dependent on me having time, which is not a strong point for me lately... the various monsters I've designed have gone well and I have a fair bunch of setting notes being collected too, so at some point I'd like to collect a setting primer type thing together. Need more material for that though. Possibly also I need to write up how some things work; I have some quite specific ideas slowly forming on e.g. the difference between clerical and arcane magic in this setting, and the limits on magic, which should maybe be written up.

[Ierne]

The Hanau are a great concept, and I really like settings with non-traditional fantasy races. I'm interested in why you went for a mix of traditional and non-traditional - why Hanau but still Dwarves?  (Very legitimate if the answer is just that you really, really like Dwarves, which  I remember you do )

I'd be really interested in hearing more about the setting at some point, especially the landscape and culture

[Jubal]

So, the idea of this setting is that it's kind of generic in some ways - like, I want it to be close enough to the staples of the genre that I can use them - but also I can't resist putting twists onto things.

I think the reason why the dwarves are still dwarves is less because they lack any twists, more because those twists are created by internal subdivision rather than a whole-species change. The dwarves and humans are the two really widespread and diverse species/peoples in this setting, and both of them have a lot of different cultural etc variations with their own names - I think there's about six cultures I worked out within dwarf society (and a lot of those are fusiony cultures because "dwarf society" in most areas is not a sealed bubble from "human society", the two largely coexist). The Hanau meanwhile are simply fewer in number and more culturally cohesive which means there's sort of more difference because the cultural and species differences all turn up together? (I could have renamed my gnomes for the same reason as they're quite monocultural, but gnomes are sufficiently not-quite-everywhere that I don't think I need to, and I feel like they could actually do with more airing as a serious-ish fantasy species/race.)

Also yes I should get the map sorted!

[Ierne]

I like the idea of Dwarven and human communities coexisting and being mutually influenced, its an interesting change from Dwarves being purely cave dwellers and kinda isolated. Tolkien suggests situations like this in the Hobbit, but the concept doesn't get developed much bc everyone starts fighting

I agree with keeping genre familiarity- I'm writing in a very different universe to doctor who, but I like keeping time travel concepts that fans are used to thinking in, because the show is so iconic.