On Roodr’s Trail (played 02/04/2024)
System: The
Black Sword Hack
Adventure: The Darkness Over Nijmauwrgen (from The Chaos
Crier issue #0)
Players: Faaya (Capingreen), Kvam (Janitor911)
GM: Me (Feirsteax)
Session length: 2h30m ish
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My attempt at drawing the true resting place of Kahnvisser. A Deep One is crawling up from the ocean cliffs and the rocky crag off the coast can be seen in the distance. |
Report
After the excitement of last week’s dungeon crawling, this session felt relatively relaxed. Despite that, there were quite a few important moments that cropped up this session that may have a significant effect on the fate of the party and the city.
A good old-fashioned level up
The party made their way back to town in the rainy night, after successfully retrieving a strand of Kahnvisser’s beard from the ancient tomb. Thanks to their honesty, the curious ghost that had appeared at the start of the previous session did not bother them, and upon returning to the Babaselem both party members got a level advancement to add to their character sheet.
Levels work a bit differently in Black Sword Hack, as I mentioned in an earlier post. They are conceived of as “stories” that a character accumulates throughout their adventuring life, with each story representing an important narrative of adventurous moment. I thought the successful retrieval of the beard hair was a worthy moment to celebrate and award a level up.
A Deep Old One sighting – Kvam’s promise
On the way back to the boat, the party witnessed a bizarre sight: citizens in strange, fishy garments dancing by firelight at the docks. A huge fishlike head emerged from the bay and gazed across the harbour, before sinking down below again. Faaya and Kvam avoided them and headed back to the boat, terrified at what they saw. Kvam declared that once he got the trident, he would use it to slay the sea monster.
This is just a slightly altered version of something in the random encounter list. The giant fishmonster was in there, but I thought adding a bunch of worshipping dancers would make things weirder.
To break the curse
Back in the boat, they discussed plans with Duke Taineri. Julovern and Igor had acquired enough fuel to power the airship and escape the city. The Taineri family’s old burial sanctuary was a day’s journey away, so they would be flying there in the morning. The party wanted to know if he could lift Alcantor’s curse right away, but unfortunately the duke would need some time to perform the ritual.
Alcantor planned to travel with the duke in the morning to have the ritual performed on him once they arrived at the sanctuary. Once the curse is lifted, he will return to town as soon as possible. Faaya and Kvam plan to stay in Nijmauwrgen and continue to look for Roodr, the legendary trident.
It strikes me how central the characters of Taineri and Julovern have been to this party's version of The Darkness Over Nijmauwrgen, while in the adventure text they are minor side characters with a few sentences of text between them. Once the game is in motion, things develop in ways you can't predict. Julovern's balloon is now a central piece of the party's plan to obtain the Roodr, and Taineri is the key to unlocking Alcantor's memory curse.
Betrayal thwarted on the Babaselem
In the morning, Faaya was awakened by some shuffling noises in the bridge of the boat and went to investigate. It was Julovern planning to rat them out to the Black Sun! Faaya and Kvam subdued him and tried to detain him. Kvam’s background of “Wildling” allowed him to fall asleep anywhere, regardless of location, so he slept on top of Julovern, making sure he wouldn’t be going anywhere.
I had this written down in my calendar as something that could happen if the party weren’t closely monitoring Julovern. Since they were sleeping in the boat with him but didn’t specifically say they would arise early, I allowed them a Wisdom save to see if they could hear any noises that he would be making in the morning. Kvam failed, but Faaya succeeded. If they’d both failed, the adventure could have gone an entirely different route, and I was considering ways of having the Templars show up and arrest them all. Luckily, Faaya foiled Julovern’s plans of sabotage!
A cacophonous escape and picking up loose threads
As the others made their escape in the airship, Sfen and Kvam got out some instruments and started playing loudly to draw attention away from the balloon. It worked and a crowd gathered round them. Eventually, some Templars came over and angrily told them to stop. Music that isn’t explicitly in worship of the Black Sun is forbidden.
This triggered another Anonymity Die roll which resulted in a reduction from Ud8 to Ud6. From now on, the Black Sun would be following them and interrogating anyone they speak to. In addition, the Thieves Guild are now aware of them as well and are willing to collaborate with them to take down the Black Sun.
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A “Deep One” from The Chaos Crier zine issue #0 |
Once the duke and Alcantor had left, the gang started investigating the clues they had to find Roodr. There were a few different spots they went to for this, which I’ll summarise briefly below.
The museum and the statue
At Sfen’s suggestion, they went to the museum to see if they could find any information about Roodr. The old Trident used to be held in the museum, but was taken out a hundred years ago, coinciding with the construction of the famous city statue. Upon investigating the statue, they found that it did hold an old bronze trident, but it looked like a copy. It was cast in a different metal and painted to match the original material. It pointed the party towards someone called Arro.
The players were stumped on where to look, so I had an NPC (Sfen) suggest a likely spot to begin their search.
Bonifacio’s shack and Arro the weaponsmith
Not knowing who this Arro could be, they decided to ask an old friend, Bonifacio. He told them it was the weaponsmith, and the party travelled over to his smithy. Arro was here, not keen on talking at first. After some coin changed hands, though, he told them everything. Someone matching the description of Alcantor had paid Arro handsomely to forge the trident and replace it with the real one on the statue. After that, Alcantor wandered off to speak with the king’s knights.
Arro’s shop doubled up as an opportunity to purchase weapons and armour. Kvam didn’t have enough money, but Faaya did buy some light armour and an Adventuring Pack (as described in the previous adventure report).
The king’s men and Roodr’s true location
After some discussion it was discovered that a representative of the king and a few of his knights were here on a diplomatic mission. They went to visit him and explained everything.
Mazelius, the king’s representative agreed to send a message by crow over to his men who were stationed some two day’s journey outside the city walls, to the west. The trident was being stowed safely over there at the request of Alcantor, who said he would return for it later when he had a good plan to take down Sarakasas. Finally, the party had discovered where the real trident was!
The session finished after their revelatory meeting with the King’s diplomats. Faaya has a plan to tell Alcantor about the trident via a dream message. But first, there’s the matter of “The Cat’s Meow” to investigate…
As I mentioned earlier, the
Anonymity Die is now at Ud6. This means that everyone they met with during this
session will be interrogated by the Black Sun. I’m not how to adjudicate this,
but I’ll probably just roll a d6 and rule that a high result favours the party,
while a low result favours the Black Sun.
Thoughts
The first part of this session was really exciting. Julovern’s plan to rat out the party could have been disastrous for them, but they managed to keep it under control. I want to add more things like this into the game.
Now the Anonymity Die is reduced to d6, the Templars will be following the party and interrogating anyone they speak to. This is both exciting and daunting, as it means I have to turn up the heat on the party in convincing ways. I want them to feel like they’re being hunted and give them some enemies to latch onto.
Dosteyoz seems like a good candidate for this, and I said in the last post that I might have Sfen arrested. Maybe Dosteyoz will learn of their scheduled secret rebellion meeting.
I'm confused by the "don't prep" instruction at the start of the adventure text. It feels like the situation is really complicated now, and I'm doing at least an hour of prep for each session. There is so much going on in this sprawling city with multiple feuding factions. If I didn't prep, I'd forget a lot of them, and I worry that I wouldn't give the players a satisfying feel of agency and consequence in the world.
It would be cool to hear other peoples' perspectives on this. Maybe I'm missing something really obvious. Regardless, the game is still a lot of fun. Every time we play, I'm delighted by something completely unpredictable. It's great, I think I just expected something different (shorter, looser) and that's why I'm feeling confused.
Glory to the Black Sun!
Feirsteax