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[Jubal]

A Storm over Gemiscare

This was now a couple of weeks ago, but I felt I should write something up on my first game running Savage Worlds anyway. It was definitely a learning experience, but one in which I think everyone had fun

I'd cobbled together a mostly relatively newbie gaming group - one experienced RPG player, three inexperienced ones, none of us had used SW before. It worked pretty well regardless, which I think is testament to a pretty strong core ruleset (and a decent amount of preparation on my part, I'd run several combats for myself so I knew the ropes well enough to run it moderately smoothly). Also, I had a really good balance of players, which helped, definite credit to them too.

We didn't really use any of the "alternative combat maneuvers" other than the basic attack - nobody had any spells except the priest having healing and light which didn't get used, and nobody had taunt. I think that was OK, especially as it was a learning game for all of us, but it's probably the next bit of the rules that would need to be introduced to make combat more fun. I also need to get better with on-the-fly adjustments to things - in a longer campaign, it's much more OK to have encounters the players have to run from, but if it's the final battle in a one-shot game it can really mess you up. I think I managed the NPCs fairly well, though that's going to take practice.

Anyhow, a full writeup of what happened is spoilered below if you want to read it...



Spoilered since I'm actually going to write this adventure up as a PDF at some point, but here's the notes/story on what actually happened:

Spoiler

The basic plot was set on one of the Oak Islands, the large archipelago that stretches over the gap between the ocean and the Starlit Sea, the latter being the obvious Mediterranean analogue in the setting. It was a small island called Gemia (გემი = ship), and its major town, Gemiscare (გემი + ქარი, wind, so the town's name is literally "ships of the wind"). There was one other settlement on the island, a goblin village in the interior: the Gemiscarenes mostly occupied the southern part of the island and ate olives and made wine and had siestas and all that sort of stuff.

On this island, four travellers found themselves thrown together by some chance - the goblin hero Nepomuk the Great, played by Marius (for whom "Don't you know who I am!?" became a catchphrase rapidly), a rugged, one-eyed human priestess called Tara, played by Nishtha, a dwarf traveller/ranger called Elena played by Clara, and a scholar called Benedict who specialised in Geography and History, played by Jorge.

The players started in the town, and of course since I hadn't put them in a tavern they went to look for one immediately. They were a little, I think, disappointed to find that this setting didn't have "taverns" in the standard sense, and what Gemiscare had was various people who sold wine out of their front windows mostly. They nonetheless overheard some rumours about the war (which they didn't follow up) and a shipwreck recently (which sounded far more exciting so they did follow it up). They met Henio, proprietor of The Bullhorns, the largest such establishment, a pillar of the community who unexpectedly turned out to have named his moustache Heniette, who directed them to go and find the town's leaders.

They got to the hilltop manor of the town's richest man and town council leader, Serragane, to find that the door was locked and the guard asleep. A debate ensued on whether to try and attack the guard, steal the keys, go back into town and buy rope to scale the building, break in, etc. Eventually they proceeded to select the obvious and sensible option which was to wake the guard up, at which point he just let them in because that was literally his job. They met Serragane, a calculating wine merchant, Nevro the shipwright, and the rather dim Tabaloro, the guard captain who represented the interests of the Doge of Caprane, who ultimately Gemiscare owed its nominal allegiance to. Having got the location of the ship, the players headed for it.

On their way, they encountered a farmhouse whose owner gave them very vague answers and claimed to know nothing about shipwrecks. The reason he was claiming this was primarily that he had, in his basement, ten men who had just scuttled their own ship, killed two comrades to make it look like an accident, and were plotting with an ambitious general from Genasta to wipe Gemiscare off the map with a magically induced tidal wave. The players were unaware of this and indeed remained unaware for the entire game, as even when they won I'm pretty sure they didn't know why they'd won to begin with - imputing the basic motive into the plot was probably my biggest failing, though there was enough mystery to solve to keep them going in place of that.

Nonetheless, they went on and found the ship. This involved some climbing rolls which they repeatedly failed at, even when giving each other boosts, a problem I wasn't really sure how to solve - I should probably just have made them take longer but not have to roll. On the wrecked ship, they found two greymarnes. Greymarnes, also known as grymarants, are possibly one of my favourite monster creations I've done - basically a smallish gryphon of a similar bulk to a human or a pig, but also with a fish-eating type beak and the exact life attitude of a really, really big and unpleasant seagull. Gryphons are majestic creatures that will hunt mighty bison and elk. Greymarnes (grey being an etymological corruption, as it's from gryphus marinus, the same as corvus marinus forms the root for cormorant) are just absolute assholes that will steal your lunch and there's nothing you can do about it. In this case, they were eating the corpses of the two unfortunate aforementioned sailors. It was a pretty grim scene. The players were fairly unbothered about disturbing the animals and just wanted to get below decks, though the scholar did throw up briefly. The greymarnes weren't moving though so the party moved in, killed one and chased off the other. It was a good first combat though I could have added a third easily enough.

Below decks there was pretty much nothing there, except what could only be described as a large, relatively unadorned, stone bathtub. This then essentially formed the key mystery for the rest of the story - who on earth carries a big stone bathtub on a ship with them? Early theories included "maybe it contained holy water" which was a pretty smart guess - in fact, it had been the long term secure prison/transport container for a water elemental, who had now been transferred to a more temporary box until she could be "set up" and bound into destroying Gemiscare with a tidal wave. One of the players was a goblin, and noted the lack of goblin smell despite the looted vessel. With little to show for the expedition, they returned and briefed the town council, whose intial theory was "it was probably goblins", and who didn't have any information on stone bathtubs in ships. After a debate over whether to split the party and leave two members to find things out in Gemiscare, they eventually decided to all head for the goblin village.

Evading wolves on the way (it was early night when they made the few hours' journey), they managed to negotiate their way past the suspicious guards and were greeted by the village alchemist who gave them somewhere to sleep and told them that she couldn't think of anything that you should transport in a stone bathtub. When they awoke they talked to the chieftain, who told them that some goblins had, just the previous night, spotted a boat heading from a point on the mainland to a smaller island that faced the bay of Gemiscare. The players managed to negotiate to get a goblin raft, and headed downriver to the goblin docks to get it. Once there, they managed to inadvertently start a new trend of constructing bathing rafts, as the goblins had no idea why you'd have a bath on a ship but thought it sounded awesome. Moreover, their very persuasive priest obtained not only the raft but an offer of ten goblins to go with them - which they declined, on the grounds that they didn't want to share the loot. They did let the goblins carry the raft for them though, and set off to a good point from which to launch.

On the way, they decided to go through a swamp and were attacked by carnivorous plants which rather unpleasantly release gases that send creatures into a stupor and then pour digestive poisons on them when they stumble close enough. The players managed to resist the gases but had to drag some goblins back, including one who got moderately injured. The leader of the goblin party volunteered to come along with them one last time and they finally accepted, so one dwarf, two humans, and two goblins finally set out on the raft. It began, gently, to rain.

The crossing was not fun. The raft broke two thirds of the way into the crossing, and some boating and swimming rolls were needed to counteract it. It was in fact the goblin, amusingly and prophetically named tsqlis ("Of water") who made the necessary boating roll to finally get them to shore. Two players were fatigued as a result - and they saw the boats on the beach, and the cave up ahead...

I will admit that at this point I tweaked some NPC stats on the fly. My plan had involved the players having ten goblins and not being fatigued, so I'd grossly overestimate the number of enemies needed, and I couldn't adjust that on the fly since I'd already been clear on e.g. how many men would have been needed to pilot the ship in the first place. As such, the final guards had slightly lower defence stats in practice than I had on my sheet. I think this was the right call - the end battle ended up protracted even so, largely because the players' damage output was awful.

The NPCs saw the players before the reverse, and threw a round of spears - to no effect, but it was a good set piece opening to the battle. The players actually insisted on making several shouted persuasion checks as they struggled uphill under the barrage of missiles, which I think was perhaps my fault since the plot had not made clear enough that these were The Bad Guys. As even their best attempt resulted in a "**** off" response from one of the NPC sailors, they were forced to get in and fight at close quarters. It was a fairly long battle, as I've said, and the scholar (who had the worst CC damage output you can really get in Savage Worlds, trying to hold a spearman off with his dagger) found it tricky, though "you're really scratching his shield up properly, that paintwork has definitely had it" became a bit of a running joke that lightened the general mood. The goblin and the priest were the most effective fighters by and large: the dwarf was hampered by going into close combat and might have done better at range.

The goblin hero was the first one to finally make it into the cave and realise that oh my goodness there's a giant water elemental so that's what the bathtub was for etc. The goblin, being a smart goblin, went straight for the wizard who was binding the elemental (there was a general counter of how many successful spellcasts the wizard needed to make the tidal wave, and we'd got to 4/6 by this point so it was getting pretty serious). Outside the cave, tragedy struck as Tsqlis was run through with a spear, instantly past any healing rolls. Tara finally dealt with both of her enemies and then went to help the others out, bringing that combat to a close.

The wizard was fairly durable, albeit vulnerable because he kept concentrating on the main spell rather than trying to help. A full on storm was brewing outside, and the wizard realised that being on the verge of victory, he couldn't stop now The bound water elemental acted as his guard instead, slapping Nepomuk into the walls several times and blocking the other players from reaching the wizard, but eventually the goblin hero managed to kill the wizard! The elemental lasted another round then snapped free of its bindings and splashed down, oozing freely into the soil of the island once more.

In the epilogue, the players took the boats back to the mainland across now-clear waters, delivering the body of Tsqlis to the goblins, who were (as creatures with such short lifespans tend to be) pretty stoical about the outcome. Whilst they couldn't prove the water elemental aspect of their tale to the town council, their having foiled a band of Genastan mercenaries, plus the revenues from selling spare equipment, would tide them over for a while. A good deed well done, all round!