deadSun -MAXIMAL- 08 Desert Crawl

 LOOT

- A whole lot of nothin'!

DEVELOPMENTS

- Mab's treasure map lead to a strange crystal ruin sunken into the sands, its door sealed by some manner of sorcery.

- All traffic is halted east from Fort Auroch due to a mysterious murder by one traveling performer Yako the Blue, who is imprisoned in the Fort's dungeon.

We had a lowkey game of exploration and debating the best ways to murder three more people to sate the sword god's bloodlust.

We opened with the unveiling of Kestrel's surprising paint job - one half of the hoverbike was refashioned in a creepy neogothic Philippe Druillet ceramic face motif, and the other was painted like the Hatsune Miku motorcycle. Kestrel was impressed. Machine Kid gave him his card in case people asked about who did the work, trying to get his name out there as a designer.

The Village of Hog's keeper Jospel asked them to meet him in his gardens; the Company agreed. Jospel politely outlined his argument after offering the Company to partake of his motor oil - the biker gang was likely to retaliate due to the recent massacre, and they would be looking for the Company, so acting as the village's protector, Jospel needed the Company to make themselves scarce as quickly as possible. The Company found his logic sound and agreed to get out of town ASAP, which frankly surprised and relieved Jospel. 

They travelled the wastes on their new hoverbikes, riding east. They stashed their iron mule Mischief at the mysterious merchant's hut by Rat Creek. His necrotortoise packmule was conspicuously absent from the stables, but Pete's cyborg steed was still there. The company then set out enjoying the perks of covering ground at twice the rate.

They followed the treasure map given to them by Adipose Mab and arrived at a strange crystal ruin sunk into the central scarlet desert sealed by a blacker-than-black metal double-door. Some graffiti indicated Halaena Graf's gang had passed through recently; a broken hammer and chisel at the foot of the door and a hobo sign on the wall indicated that the door was likely sealed by some form of sorcery. Kestrel knocked on the door to no response. They gave the grounds a once-over, then decided to carry on in search of more people to murder.

More Gus L goodness

Riding southwest, they passed by a crumbled blue statue of an ancient monarch and spent the next evening camped atop a rocky mesa. During her midnight watch, Hipsap spotted a group of seven weary and well-laden tomb robbers with their two mules heading east on the road below them, but in a sudden fit of conscience, the Company decided not to get involved.

The next day they passed through towering red canyons painted with enormous ancient cave-paintings depicting strange lanky figures, then arrived at Fort Auroch. They found a large group of merchants camped around its gate, who gave them shifty looks and conversed in hushed tones as they passed. The Fort's portcullis was barred and the guards demanded they turn back, but they bribed their way in with some of the vintage pin-up magazines Hipsap had looted from the bikers previously. The bribed guard welcomed them to Fort Auroch and gave them the low-down: folks were testy for two reasons. The first: no passage was granted into the Crimson Canyons beyond Fort Auroch's eastern gate due to a wild rampaging angel on the loose. The second: a traveling performer from one of the stopped caravans, Yako the Blue, was being held in the Fort's dungeon after murdering a guard in cold blood.

Thus concluded the session. Seven days remain to sate the Sword God's curse.

deadSun -MAXIMAL- 07 Hoverbandit Rumble

LOOT

- 30gp from the Machine Kid for stripped bike parts

    > Kestrel spent their share on a "surprising paint job" for their bike from the Machine Kid Binocco

- 1 Stack of Vintage Pin-up Magazines (worth 800cp)

- 1 lead-lined pouch of chipped Occulith, toxic crystal gemstones (worth 1,000cp)

- 3 Metal Cylinders, depressible button on top, Blue Clock symbol painted on it (1/4 slot)

- 1 Metal Cylinder, same button, Green Hazard symbol (1/4 slot)

- 1 flask half-full of backwashed rotgut (1/4 slot)

- 1 sticky note, "REMEMBER TO PICK UP SLOP FOR THE HOG-GATORS!"

DEVELOPMENTS

- Six out of Nine people have been slain to sate the Sword-God's bloodlust, after which it claims it will release Breezy Pete

4th of Lastmonth, Year 1V39

Gaming

 We opened with players locked in a stalemate with the hoverbiker outlaw gang. The gang demanded the return of the stolen hoverbike and funeral expenses paid for their comrade, whom the Company had slain previously. 

Under the guise of accepting the deal, Kestrel hid their rat companion under the hoverbike's hood and passed the bike over to the Ooze Mutant, the outlaw gang's spokesmutant. The rat leapt out and dealt the Ooze Mutant a fatal surprising blow, and the battle was on.

Seizing initiative, Gemini attacked one of the gun-toting bandits with a throw of Breezy Pete's Emerald Spear, slaying them instantly. The slain outlaw's partner immediately failed his morale roll, turned tail and fled. Hipsap took a lucky reaction as one of the gunners on the opposite hill whiffed his shot terribly, and she made short work of them with her moldy maleficence. 

The bug bandit's lieutenant - a hulking 8' tall insectoid mutant - leapt from his bike with inhuman speed and flexed his massive mutoid biceps, blasting the sleeves off of his black leather jacket and revealing a glowing tattoo of a rose. He engaged Kestrel and Gemini in a long bloody melee. Kestrel created an opening by blinding the mutant bugman with sand from the ground, and Gemini scored a powerful hit with their lucerne, but the bugman kept on coming, its carapace hissing and roiling as neon green ooze dripped from its wounds.

The bugman fended off the mighty blows and a second pair of insectoid arms burst from his body, which seized Gemini and dealt a powerful blow. Gemini was nearly rendered Deader than Dead, but judicious use of the Grit feat reduced the wound to a destroyed arm. Gemini still was knocked unconscious and would die quickly if not treated.

Seizing the Door Sword from Gemini's person, Hipsap shouted the name of her destination - the village of Hog - and drove it into the bugman. Light began to pour out of his body, and still he did not back down, but Kestrel score a killing blow with a point-blank flintlock pistol headshot. The bugman melted into a pool of neon green goop, and beneath his molten flesh appeared a rusted cellar door.

Hoisting the door open and hurling the lethally wounded Gemini through it, the party found themselves crashing into a scrap heap inside the Machine Kid's garage back in the village. He was busy gaming on his vintage setup and was annoyed at the interruption, but quickly helped Gemini into a MutaTube and stabilized them before they died.

The party returned to loot the battlefield and found many things, including a sticky note that read, REMEMBER TO PICK UP SLOP FOR THE HOG-GATORS! 

The party kept three of the hoverbikes for themselves and cut a deal with the Machine Kid, who paid them 3,000cp for the rest to strip for parts. They chatted for a while and Machine Kid pointed out they would need to repaint them quickly if they didn't want to be taken for brigands around the village, and offered to repaint them for 1,000cp each, using something he called "the Algorithm." Kestrel took him up on the offer and asked for "something surprising"; Machine Kid pocketed the money and told them to return tomorrow morning to pick it up.

Hipsap instead slunk around and found some indigo dye steeping in the Village Sanctum's gardens, which she stole, intending to repaint her bike herself. (The results of her efforts remain to be seen.)

The party then holed up and licked their wounds for the remaining 4 Watches of the day, ending the session.

Thus ended the 5th of Lastmonth - there are 7 Days Remaining to sate the Sword God's curse.

Primer, Tips & Tricks for deadSun -MAXIMAL-

What follows is a quick primer on OLD SKOOL GAMING and some ERRANT-SPECIFIC MECHANICS. It's the hint book in the back of the floppy disk box. They're primarily adapted from Arnold K's goblin punch blog and Patrick Wetmore's primer at the beginning of Anomalous Subsurface Environment with some Errant-specific things thrown in.

EXPLORATION

- Errant is a game of exploration. You gain XP for cash that you waste partying. Treasure is the primary source of cash and XP in old-school gaming.

- Treasure is found in dungeons. The best treasure is hidden and will require you to hunt for it. Ask questions. Open drawers. Look under mattresses. Make offerings on mysterious altars. Pry open the synthoid machine-husk and gut its valuable components.

- Dungeons are filled with traps, hazards, and obstacles. These serve to prompt creative problem solving. You aren't limited to what's on your character sheet - you can attempt anything remotely possible within the fictional space.

- Performing some actions may require succeeding on an attribute check. You pass these by rolling a d20 over a target number and equal to or below a relevant attribute score (think blackjack). Failing these can bring harm to your character.

- If there is no risk, there is no roll. Jumping across a chasm might require a physique check, but using a ladder succeeds automatically.

- There are a wide variety of tools available to aid exploration. 10' poles let you prod something potentially dangerous from a distance. Mirrors help you peek around corners. Spikes can hold a door open or closed.

- Light is your most valuable tool of all. It's a measure of how long you can spend in the dungeon. Stumbling around in the dark is a death sentence.

- Supply is used to restore your light sources, rations, and other equipment with a depletion value, like potions or ammunition. More supply = more exploration time.

- Old-school gaming is interested in the friction that comes from tracking encumbrance. You can carry a number of item slots equal to 10 or your PHYSIQUE score, whichever is higher (my house rule). If you're carrying more than that, you'll be at higher risk of encounters in the dungeon -- it's hard to move quietly when you're weighed down with all that gear. You'll have to make decisions about what to carry and what to leave behind.

- Retainers are a valuable resource. You can hire a porter to haul heavy treasures and carry the torches. Henchmen will explore and fight alongside you in dungeons in exchange for a share of the treasure. Mercenaries will accompany you on travels through the wilderness. Teamsters will handle your pack animals.

- Death is part of the game. Don't take it to heart. Roll up a new character, loot your old corpse, and get revenge. 

COMBAT

- Combat is often quick and deadly. You can better your odds with a good plan or a crafty gambit. Use stealth, treachery, henchmen, and your environment to your advantage. A good maneuver will enhance your damage, allowing you to roll larger dice.

- Combat can often be avoided entirely. Remember: you earn XP for treasure you bring home, not critters you slay. Errant has a robust system for running negotiations. Find out what people want and give it to them, or convince them to see it your way. This can work with monsters, too. 

- If the chips are down, you can always run for your life.

- Armor is like a get-out-of-jail-free card. Armor gives you blocks that you can spend to reroll incoming damage on a smaller sized die. If you reduce your opponent's die size all the way down to 1, you get to make a reaction in combat for free. 

- Armor is also heavy and can take up multiple inventory slots. You can hire a porter to lug around all of your extra equipment. 

- You can restore your spent blocks in the dungeon by using an armor repair kit.

- Resting for a night in a safe location lets you restore a roll of your damage die in HP. Occults restore their spells, too.

DOWNTIME

- Downtime Turns last a month in-game. In addition to healing up, shopping, socializing, and wasting your gold for XP, you can work towards your goals. These are like project clocks in Blades in the Dark. If you've done the legwork you can start a cult or a side gig, learn blood magic, look for a witch to cleanse you of your hexes, craft or tinker with your gear, build a road, do alchemy, etc. There's a big list of subsystems in the book and the base structure is pretty accommodating to most goals.

AND LASTLY

- If something doesn't make sense or seems unfair, let me know! I am super jazzed about dipping into the traditions of Old Skool Gaming but I really am still learning the ropes.

deadSun -MAXIMAL- 06 Village of Hog, Return of the Hoverbrigands

Kenshi

Loot

One goat (haunted?)

Dramatis Personae

- Gemini
- Kestrel
- Hipsap
- Scramps, Village of Hog vagrant swineherd
- Binocco, Village of Hog machine kid
- Jospel, Village of Hog machine-centaur shovel sanctum keeper/gardener
- Ooze Mutant, the Hover Brigand

Worldbuilding

- High Noon lasts for four hours in the land of deadSun -MAXIMAL-.

Recap

5th of Lastmonth, Year 1V39

    We picked back up with the Company making their way through the yellow deserts toward the Village of Hog. Along the way they encountered a duo of gas-mask wearing goatherds who greeted the party kindly. The party immediately began debating amongst themselves if they should kill them to uphold their pact with the sword god, but instead decided to return the greeting. The goatherds welcomed them to the lands surrounding the Village of Hog and gave them directions, then made an offer to sell them a goat. The second goatherd was walking at a distance apart from the rest of the flock with the goat for sale on a leash. 

    Using the Door Sword, Gemini contacted the Sword God and attempted to see if the goats counted as valid murder targets for fulfilling their pact. They did not. Curiously, though, the goat that was for sale made the Sword God pause in consideration - "perhaps counts for half," he said. They also noticed the goat gnashing at its leash angrily and drooling profusely. For 5 copper pieces they bought the goat and left the goatherds on their way. 

    Hipsap Sanvalli attempted to record the interdimensional thoughts of the goat using her Communicate Dimensions spell and play them back. She heard a bizarre ranting and raving, like one side of an argument, considering sorcerers, molecules, the nature of the universe, and the consumption of sorcerous brains. 

The party continued onward and arrived in town at High Noon.

Village of Hog (Vaults of Vaarn, Eigin Oasis)

    The Village of Hog turned out to be a few scattered adobe buildings around a central oasis. Upon arriving they were quickly accosted by a down-on-his-luck swineherd, who excitedly asked if the Company were "the regulators they had been waiting for". The party agreed and the swineherd introduced himself as Scramps and began raving of the "undead scourge rising from the northern canyons" and the "consternation loose among the freeholders of our fair village", promising them more information if they bought him a drink.

    The party agreed and he lead them to a tavern staffed by a solemn fungus-ridden man in a wide-brimmed hat. Kestrel convinced Scramps that the water from their canteen was a fine artisanal Northern spirit and poured him a glass. Scramps made a show of artfully sampling the fine spirit and then told them what he knew. He claimed that the town was facing a dual onslaught of crystal-ridden Empyrean zombies from the northern canyons and hoverbike-riding brigands from the south, who each passed through occasionally, stealing hogs and slaughtering townsfolk. The zombies carried gold, he said, and the brigands rode gaudily-colored hoverbikes.

    The Company deliberated about whether zombie would count towards fulfilling the pact, and Scramps said he could take them to one if they bought him another drink. Hipsap bought him a real one this time and one for herself, and the fungus-ridden bartender poured her two flutes of neon turquoise syrupy wine. Scramps led them across the village towards a building whose yard was littered with mechanical debris and scrap metal. Knocking on the door, it was opened by a pissed-off nine-year-old, who Scramps addressed as Binocco. 

    Binocco waved them in through a room absolutely packed with heaps of wires and terminals and heavy machinery, Serial Experiments Lain style. In a large glass tube at the end of the room was a trapped Empyrean zombie. The players pointed their sword at it, and the Sword God confirmed that killing undead creatures would not count toward fulfilling the pact.

    Scramps took his leave to return to the bar. The party chatted with Binocco a while and Hipsap and him bonded over both being afflicted with blood curses. Binocco said he was born cursed to age backwards and he was performing research about how to reverse his reverse aging, hence the zombie and all the computers. He had about nine years left until he disappeared, he reckoned, and invited the party to join him in his research in the future, as he could put a group of people who can handle themselves with a blithe disregard for their own lives to good use researching the Ancient Machines Of The Past. By cross-referencing the seven Spy Kids ass holo-projector watches on his wrist he could confirm that the brigands rolled through town about once a week, but Jospel the lawkeeper might have more information at the town sanctum.

    The party took their leave and went to speak with Jospel, a massive wiry machine-centaur being, who they found weeding a beautiful lush garden. They offered Kestrel some motor oil, which they politely partook of. Jospel asked the Company what sort of travelers they were, and the party muttered about being recruiters... retainers... renouncers... regulators? Taking them for bounty-killers, Jospel handed them a poster detailing a bounty on the leader of the brigands, a huge bug man named Papa Mandible, and said they believed their hideout was somewhere in the southern hills, not far from the main road. The party asked what was in the sanctum, and Jospel told them it was kept empty except in the event of emergencies, such as undead or brigand attacks. 

The Village of Hog, adventurer's perspective

The Plan

    Many methods of mass-slaughtering the townsfolk were debated throughout the session. Eventually they settled on the bandits as their quarry. They left Mischief behind at the village corral and set off with their new goat, Kestrel's skull rat companion, and the hoverbike they had looted from the brigands last session. Checking the glovebox, Hipsap found a crude map that pointed to a place in the southern hills near a bend in Rat Creek. Kestrel made a wager that they would be able to send a precise distress signal using the hoverbike's onboard radio/GPS systems that would make the bandits send nine of their weakest men in staggered waves of three to their current location, calling it a milk run.

    The wager failed.

    The players quickly found themselves surrounded by a group of the brigands. "Did you really think I would be that stupid?", said the Ooze Mutant they had let go last session, "I saw you all run off with that bike." A half-dozen mutant heads poked their heads over the nearby hillsides with their rifles trained on the Company. The Ooze Mutant outlined his terms. 1) The Company would return the stolen hoverbike immediately, as the Better Ought Nots would not tolerate dilution of their brand. 2) The Company would hand over 2,000cp as funeral expenses for Craig, the man they killed in the woods during their last encounter with the bandits.

    Weighing their options, Kestrel hid their rat companion under the hood of the hoverbike before passing it over to the Ooze Mutant, and the session concluded. Tune in next week for more!

deadSun -MAXIMAL- 05 9 Days Remaining

 4th of Lastmonth, 1V39

Returning Characters:

- Gemini, a mutant sphinx-cat Violent errant

Art by Ramón Perales Cano 
from Temple of 1000 Swords

- Kestrel, a robot Deviant

- Hipsap Sanvalli, former ratcatcher human occultist

New NPCs:

- Breezy Pete, enthralled to serve the Sword God of the Cave

- Sword God of the Cave

Rulings

- A Deviant's successful wager can render an attack sufficiently 'magical' as to harm a mundane weapon-immune creature.

Loot

- Priestly Headpiece (treasure, 1/2 slot, worth 400cp)

- The Door Sword (1 slot) - has a doorknob on the pommel. Kill someone with it and then speak aloud where you wish to go; the body will split open like a door, revealing a bloody staircase to your destination. Only works once.

The party as a whole received the following curse:

"KILL NINE PEOPLE IN NINE DAYS WITH SWORDS, OR DIE"

Recap

We picked up with the Company in the depths of the mysterious sword-strewn cavern locked in battle with an undead wight. Battle commenced and the Company remained unable to damage the creature with mundane weaponry. Kestrel failed a wager and induced a berserker state in the wight, its eyes glowing like scorching coals as it leapt about the cavern with mutant speed. Gemini attempted a minor magical feat to root the wight in place with Tomb Crystal, which failed dramatically, exposing all members of the company to Tomb Crystal dust. Hipsap damaged the creature with a blast of moldy maleficence but in the process exhausted her last prepared sorcery. Gemini then sprinted off into deeper into the caves, taking the party's only flickering torch with them. Kestrel sprinted off in the opposite direction into complete darkness and leveled their flintlock pistol at the wight. They wagered that they knew the secret technique of landing complex trick shots against distant weapon-immune undead in total darkness and that it was a common pass-time in the caves where they grew up. They succeeded and the resulting sneak attack was greatly enhanced, slaying the wight handily.

The party regrouped and encountered a weeping ghost that made all of their swords heavy as lead, which quickly disappeared. Passing through a northern door they bumped into a disheveled man who was busily gathering armloads of materials and muttering 'more swords' repeatedly, who they quickly identified from his stylish clothing and once-coifed hair as the man they had been searching for, Breezy Pete. Pete at first gave the party no mind but he seemed drawn to Hipsap's mutant rat corpse sword and slowly trudged after them, following it.

Once the party had returned with Pete to the central cathedral-like vestibule, the massive statue at its northern end roared to molten life. "WHO DARES KIDNAP MY WARD?" it asked. The party engaged in a series of negotiations and huddles. They learned that the being in the statue was keeping Pete under some sort of eternal-sword-making enchantment to fulfill a blood debt, as he had killed the being's champion; if they party sought to recover Pete they would have to clear his blood debt. They eventually agreed. The statue handed Gemini The Door Sword and the ruby in its forehead filled the chamber with an eerie light. "KILL NINE PEOPLE IN NINE DAYS WITH SWORDS," it bellowed, "OR DIE." Once the covenant is filled, the being claimed, Pete would be released from his enchantment and the Company would be free to return and collect him.

The Company resolved to leave Pete behind in the safety of the cave while they struck out on their murderquest, spending 2 Watches traveling through the Yellow Hills to the east with their sights on the Village of Hog, marking off supplies as they went. The sun fell and they made camp in a peaceful hidden glade, the night's watch passing uneventfully. Next session will open with them breaking their camp for the morning and beginning the SECOND DAY of the curse.

The Company's current whereabouts and surroundings.

deadSun -MAXIMAL- 04 Breezy Mystery Session 2

Current Owlbear dashboard... praise the hexes.

NOTE FOR REFEREE - Remember to ask the players about the mule!

Loot

Hipsap got the following:

- A glass jar of Bear Jelly (1/4 slot). Smells terrible. Wards off smaller predators, but may attract big ones.

- A grimoire: ancient scroll, yellowed and flaking. To learn this sorcery, you must know what it is you must never know.

- A hand-written business card with an address of whoever the hut merchant's patron is. It reads: 

        ZYANTIC UNDERPRINXES

        FREE LEAGUE OF FLESHSCULPTORS' GUILDHOUSE

        STREET OF TORMENTED FLESH

        SILVER CITADEL

Gemini got:

- A runed emerald spear (2 slots, heavy weapon). It deals magical damage. It has one True Strike, which you can spend to deal maximum damage across all of your damage dice. True Strikes refresh when you take a DOWNTIME turn.

You also recovered one hoverbike (big post with vehicle stats incoming) and 3 copper pieces from the bandits.

Session Report

4th of Lastmonth, Year 1V39

    We picked back up with the Company emerging to the surface after their foray into the mysterious sword-choked temple. They promptly acquainted themselves with the shiny new hex map. In order to smooth the transition between travel rules as well as account for information the referee forgot to include last session, a formal retcon was issued. The party noticed that the trail of Breezy Pete they had been following (identifiable because his horse's shoes were initialed with BP, and his powerful cyborg stallion had punched the mark into the sodden earth with great force) actually forked off to the southeast seemingly before it entered the cave. The party spent the first Watch of the day following it into the sedge.

    

    While traveling the party was ambushed by three bandits riding atop two screeching hoverbikes that peeled out from behind the treeline, beelining for their iron mule Mischief. The Company seized initiative and felled a nearby tree and tangle of branches, forming an obstacle in their path. The two brigands riding double were caught in the brush and pulled off of their bike, which went speeding away out from underneath them and skidded out on a nearby pond. The last brigand deftly wove around it and struck Mischief with his chrome lance, attempting to trip the top-heavy beast, but his efforts were unsuccessful. Gemini responded by smashing the front of the bandit's bike in with a mighty blow that severed the bike in twain and sent the pilot careening forward in a tangle of wreckage. He did not survive.

    The two remaining brigands surrendered in a panic having lost their bikes and their buddy Craig. One brigand was a human tomb-robber cowboy type, but the other was a mutant with three eyes and orange ooze-like skin. They exchanged confused words with the party and dropped the name of their gang, the Better Ought Nots, before running off. The party let them go and looted the one intact hoverbike, which had three copper pieces in a saddlebag. The party observed they were not very successful brigands.

    Combat completed the party returned to their journey and arrived at a strange hut in the wilderness with smoke coming from its chimney and a stable built into the side. The party checked the stable and saw a sleeping giant tortoise with a skull for a head and a top-of-the-line cyborg stallion, clearly a new model, in hibernation mode, but decided not to tamper with it due to fear of setting off an alarm.

    The party speculated that the man they were searching for, Breezey Pete, was himself hiding out in this hut, and spent a good while debating possible manners of entrance. So long that the inhabitant within the building heard their voices and a wheezy voice from within loudly asked if it was already time to 'collect the quota'. 

    The party said they were not here to collect the quota, and the inhabitant opened the door, revealing a small heavily robed gnarled masked figure. He excitedly asked if players were here to sample his wares. They said they were. He welcomed them into his squalid dwelling and showed off a sundry of oddities, asking for 'points of physique/skill/mind/presence' in exchange for them. The party refused most of them, even a fetching telescopic eye tendril which would bring them closer to the grace of a slug if they implanted it in their heads, but the occult Hipsap purchased a tin of 'bear jelly', said to 'ward off small predators', and a tattered scroll (a grimoire) in exchange for a point of physique and mind respectively. The payment was processed by laying a hand in the merchant's cold clammy one for a moment. The Occult inquired after 'the quota,' saying it sounded stressful to manage, but the merchant assured her that it paid dividends in the centuries it had lengthened his own life. She asked if these people had a card, and he scrawled down the following address on a scrap of paper: 

        ZYANTIC UNDERPRINXES

        FREE LEAGUE OF FLESHSCULPTORS' GUILDHOUSE

        STREET OF TORMENTED FLESH

        SILVER CITADEL

    Business concluded the undead merchant was happy to answer the party's questions about their quarry and welcomed them to share in his gruel. 

    He told them that Breezy Pete was the last visitor he had had, stopping by about a month ago, and he asked him to look after his horse for him, promising to be back the next morning. 'Don't scuff the paint' were the last things he said to the merchant before riding off. The Occult observed that Pete is cool. The merchant also mentioned it was only after Pete disappeared that the swords started appearing at Rat Creek. The party rifled through the saddlebags of Pete's cyborg horse and found his journal. They discovered he was a terse bullet journaler who had written 'that waiter at the Hostel is cute'. Most of the pages were about bounties he hunted and the cool drugs that him and his boys spent the reward money on, but they took a dark turn towards the end, reiterating that 'That Prophet' had done him nothing but wrong and he planned to settle the score no matter the cost.

    The party departed from the merchant's hut and went back to the cave, passing by the same group of duck-mutants screaming while doing swordfighting exercises in the cathedral-like central room. The ducks asked the party if they had slain the queen of the fish yet; the party assured them they were in the midst of fulfilling their duty and had only departed to take strategic exercises to further enhance their killing abilities. The ducks were approving and returned to their exercises.

    Gemini struck up a torch and led the party through a dark tunnel to the west, passing by a grimy-looking door. Arriving at fortified saloon-style door they found that it was barred but the gaps around it allowed Gemini to easily slip her polearm through it and unhook the side that was barred - whoever had barred it didn't seem to think too hard about it. Inside they found a dozen more duck men who were entrenched behind a barricade of mud and rusted clumps of swords - the duck-men rolled a 2 on their reaction and were extremely rude to the party. The party claimed to be the 'warriors against the fish queen' or something similar and they backed off of immediate violence but still treated them in a despicable manner. The Occult surreptitiously asked them about 'the Glaive of the Prophet', to which the duckman captain replied by tossing a sword from his pile at her, which she failed a SKILL save to grab and was hit by for 4 damage. Another question was asked after the prophet and one of the duckmen pointed to the northern passageway and said, 'you mean that dead guy over there?'. The players quickly took their leave and continued deeper into the tunnel to investigate.

    At the end of the hallway the players arrived at a small crossroads chamber where a priestly corpse laid face-down in a pool of its own blood, pierced through by a massive spear. The players investigated the corpse to find its priestly hat had fallen off and its scalp was gray and hair white and stringy. The Violent removed the spear from the corpse, after which the Prophet Wight rose to life and attacked them. 

    In the first round of combat the players attempted to attack the undead creature with their mundane weapons but found that they did no harm to it. The wight attacked the Violent with a ghostly touch that drained 2 of their physique score. The Occult then did something that surprised me. We had recently finished hashing out the mechanics of one of her spells, Absorb Mind, that allowed her to eat the flesh of something to absorb its memories - I had mostly thought of this as something that would occur outside of combat, but she said she wanted to just take a bite out of the wight right then and there. I ruled it would get a free attack on her if she did so, which she consented to, draining her of 3 points of physique. Then she ate of its flesh and rifled through its memories, able to ask it two questions.

    The first: what was the relationship between the duck people, the fish people, and the Prophet? 

    With judicious use of the module's nifty timeline the referee was able to answer that the two mutant groups had been established within the temple before the Prophet even arrived, but the Prophet was not really concerned with their feud - it was clear that the Prophet was content simply knowing that the two were locked in a Forever War, as his belief system found the constant conflict something good and proper and natural to be happening in this location. 

    Next she asked where they could find Pete. The Prophet's mind was hazier on this manner, only able to recall fragments - the first where the Prophet nobly cut down every last one of Pete's men, and the second a brief glimpse of his face after he stabbed the Prophet through the back in this very room. However, in his dying moments, he saw Pete being drawn deeper into the temple by a mysterious force. Curiously, Hipsap also noticed that the temple in this image did not appear piled high with rusted swords as it was presently.

At that the first initiative turn was concluded, and the session was ended, the party still locked in battle with the prophet wight.

The party's exploration thus far.

deadSun -MAXIMAL- 03 Mysteries, Mules, & Mutants

1st of Lastmonth, Year 1V39 {One-Vee Thirty-Nine} 

Temple of 1000 Swords

    We picked back up with the Company firmly resolved to get out of town. They settled on pursuing the Rumor they had heard last downtime turn about the lost bounty-killer, Breezy Pete. They began their investigation by seeking out the hostel waiter Crucius, the last to have seen the man. They caught his eye during the brunch rush and he was soon able to meet them by the dumpsters on his smoke break to chat.

    Crucius was a spacy dirtbag chef type (literally just the guy from The Bear) decked out in dusty space goth regalia. It turned out Crucius and a few other staff at the Hostel had actually thrown together a small reward for anyone who was able to bring back their boy Breezy Pete, totaling to 5,000cp.

    The Company learned that Pete ran a small bounty-killing outfit and was a friendly regular at the Hostel known for his flashy personal style. Crucius served him the last morning he was seen at Scarlet Town - about a month ago - and could tell something was up for a few reasons:

1. Breezy Pete was riding out alone, with no sign of his crew.
2. He looked like shit, unshaven and wearing dirty clothes.
3. When asked about his quarry, Pete said he wasn't hunting a bounty at all, but riding up Rat Creek on personal business, 'to settle the score with that old dread prophet.'
4. He had a strange emerald spear strapped to his back instead of his usual gunslinging gear.

    The party resolved to follow his trail. 

    

    Before departing they did some more shopping. Hipsap bought Gemini a new polearm to replace the one stolen from them, and the party resolved to procure a mule and some supplies for traveling in the wilderness. They stopped by a stable-garage and were wowed by an iron mule that was on display: a boxy, plodding, four-legged automaton said to possess some degree of sentience, capable of carrying a solid load but clumsy and nauseating to ride. They took it at its asking price and the referee indulged in rolling on the d100 Mules table. As the stablehand gave Gemini the keys, he told them the iron mule was named Mischief, and that she was actually quite an accomplished swimmer so long as you plugged up her ears proper. The party also purchased a canoe should it become necessary to traverse Rat Creek, then departed east with the morning sun overhead, following the hoofprints of their quarry.

[ REFEREE'S NOTE - At this point I was attempting to use some kludgy UVG-derived days-based pointcrawling system for overland travel that involved me handwaving just about everything in the interest of preserving a feeling of grandiosity. After this session I realized that wasn't going to cut the mustard for the type of game I wanted deadSun -MAXIMAL- to be, at least in this corner of the world. 

    I had given the players a map of the region including a few major points of interest and someone mentioned 'hey, if we go to Rat Creek, we'll be halfway to the village of Hog!' I realized that there was no way I could accommodate traveling between multiple points of interests with the way I was doing things and something had to change.

    I resolved to chalk up and key a hex map, which I did in the two weeks between this session and the next. I was also excited to use Errant's Travel Turn procedures since they interlock with everything else in a satisfying way. I am just gonna let Ultraviolet Grasslands be its own thing in the setting, Violet City is out there in the world and if they wanna go beyond there we can shift gears and run the caravan pointcrawl game.]

3rd of Lastmonth, Year 4V39

    The party arrived at the terminus of Rat Creek after three days of traveling across dry, parched, red cactus land. Rat Creek feeds into a small swampy pool called, you guessed it, Rat Pond. Mutant rats large and small dabbled in the murk and muck. The Company observed that the bounty-killer's tracks continued along the creek upstream. Hipsap used her Communicate Dimensions spell to glimpse a ghostly echo of the past, in which she saw a silhouetted man riding a mighty cyborg stallion like the devil, stopping to camp only when his steed passed out beneath him. Kestrel saw a glint of metal in the water, and drew closer, discovering that much of the creekbed was composed of rusted clumps of dozens and dozens of swords, seemingly carried downstream by the current. 

    The party grew interested in Rat Pond's ecology and resolved to discover the source of the swarming vermin. Kestrel's Survival proficiency lent a hand in identifying that they all seemed to be swarming around a central location in the deep, but the pond's scummy waters were too clouded to make it out clearly. A rope was tied to Hipsap who dove to the bottom. In the darkness her hand found the hilt of a blade. Hoisting it up to the surface it was revealed to be another scummy longsword, but the blade of this one was composed of the fused corpses of dozens of mutant rats. Hipsap delighted in uncovering an object that clearly held latent sorcery within, a grimoire. 'To learn this sorcery,' the blade told her psychically, 'you must carry a grain of sand on the tip of your finger for a week entire.' She stuck some sand under her fingernails and called it a day. The Company continued following the tracks North, riding a while before stopping to make camp.

    That night Gemini took watch while the others slept and heard a strange rattling noise from a nearby copse of willows. They investigated and found a phalanx of skeletal warriors, seemingly on alert. They awoke the rest of the party who made short work of the skeletons with polearm and maleficence, then returned to sleep.

4th of Lastmonth, Year 1V39

    The next morning they set out further upstream and found a cliff with a trickling waterfall - the Source of Rat Creek. Here the shores were piled high with discarded swords, and the party spied a cave-like entrance behind the waterfall from which the swords seemed to be spilling. They entered the cave and struck a torch, treading carefully to avoid falling onto a discarded blade. From deeper within they heard the echoes of pumped-up screaming, like people working out really hard. Continuing deeper they found themselves in a high-ceilinged, cathedral-like room, where four squat duck-like mutants swung swords through the air, screaming. At the far end of the chamber a gigantic statue stood with offerings laid at its feet. Tunnels continued to the east and west.

    The Company was quickly accosted by the duck mutants. One turned to address them and they saw that it had blood caked around its bill and teeth filed to a point. The ducks asked if the party were 'reinforcements in their war against the fish men.' The Company responded affirmatively. The spokesmutant gave them each a potion of water-breathing and directed them to the flooded tunnels to the west. The Company agreed to 'bring them the head of the queen' and continued west.

    

    Next they found an underwater grotto-like chamber filled with kelp and oysters. After some time observing it they saw a giant octopus with a sword strapped to its back tending to the underwater garden that flitted out of a hidden tunnel in the grotto's depths. Sign language communication was established with the octopus. What's Going On? they asked. I Don't Know, it replied. I Just Work Here. Boss Lady Is Down There. They thanked the octopus and went to meet the Boss Lady.

    The Boss Lady was a strange mermaid woman with a coral throne on an island amid a black cove in the chamber beyond. She jumped at the opportunity to host company, seemingly bored; her merfolk color guard prepared kelp tea. The Company asked her if she had seen any sign of Breezy Pete; she said she had, but that such information was valuable, and her people were at war and in great need. If the Company was willing to 'crush the egg of the vile duck men' she would be willing to part with such valuable information.

    As the session started to wind down the party grew bewildered at the state of the conflict within the caves and had no confidence in the queen honoring her end of the bargain. They politely excused themselves and departed from the cave, hoping to gain some more information about their quarry next time.

    

deadSun -MAXIMAL- 02 Scarlet Downtime

   

Gus L., Tomb Robbers

    We left off with our intrepid adventurers concluding their delve into Murkvey's Rock. The Scholar Adipose Mab gave the party a 4,000cp bonus due to their successful efforts in scouting the tomb as well as two leads to further sites of adventure. The first was a treasure map leading to a nearby tomb that was said to be sealed by arcane forces. The second was a contract to continue working with her by surveying some sort of shipwrecked vessel that had crashed along the coast of the Ursine Dunes to the south. 

 SCARLET TOWN

    They took their leave to consider their options and spent the next month holed up in Scarlet Town's Syndicator's Hostel, licking their wounds and pawning off the tomb loot they had slipped out beneath Mab's nose. They gained a small fortune in occulith, chipped gold, and pilfered jewelry. 

    The Downtime Turn's Event die called for a Trend - a rival company emerged in the region. A few days later a trio of seasoned adventurers rolled into town that the party recognized from Mab's Mule Train. The crew was helmed by none other than Halaena Graf, a dashing high-born duelist from the Core Imperium who had forsaken her noble station and struck out for the Crystal Frontier to follow in her grandpappy's footsteps and live a life of murder and plunder. She was accompanied by insectoid desperado Slinger Irr and her undead henchman, Seer Ghristoph. 

Yoshitaka Amano

    Worse yet, Halaena's crew seemed to have ingratiated themselves with Mab. Halaena herself bore an immaculate rapier woven of crystal and silver that she claimed to have pulled from the Rock, an artifact the party must have overlooked in their delve. She exchanged haughty words with the party, who returned them with equal venom, though they ultimately decided to spend the night drinking together, to which the slobbering Ghristoph replied by eagerly fetching tankards of ale.

    As the night wore on, the Company heard a Rumor - it was said that the esteemed bounty-killer Breezy Pete, a long-time fixture of Scarlet Town, had gone missing, and he was last seen 'riding up Rat Creek with the fires of vengeance blazing in his eyes'. The Hostel waiter Crucius was said to be the last to have seen him.

DOWNTIME ACTIONS

    From here the Company was free to do as they pleased. Window shopping occurred. Kestrel bought a pistol and an alchemist's kit. Eventually it became clear that the Company's coin was burning a hole in their pocket and they resolved to waste it as quickly as possible. (This is how you gain XP in Errant).

    The Company had amassed a solid amount of liquid wealth from their tomb loot and the referee in her infinite generosity allowed the players to engage in multiple rounds of Conspicuous Consumption without further advancing the calendar if they so desired. This may have been a mistake. 

   

    Hipsap emerged from the month unscathed and clocked in at a cool Renown 2 after spending the month engaged in frippery and/or obscurantism. 

    Kestrel and Gemini, instead, went gambling at the first seedy tent bar they could find. Kestrel's luck went bad and they amassed a small debt at the table, after which they called it a night, making it through with only a hangover. Gemini kept going. Gemini amassed nearly 4,000cp in debt and ended the night face-down in the gutter, beaten and robbed by the tent bar's owners and operators. "Remember the name," said the shadowy tough as he planted his boot on Gemini's back. "Remember The Innocents." They awoke with half of their health and all of their possessions missing except for a signed notice of money owed.

    Due to their raucous troublemaking both Gemini and Kestrel advanced from Renown 1 to Renown 3 in one session. All were pleased at the developments. The Company resolved to mull over their next course of action in the intervening weeks, concluding the month of Newfirst and the first arc of the campaign.

deadSun -MAXIMAL- 01 Murkvey's Rock Recap

    We started our campaign around the end of August using Gus L's excellent Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier, meeting our three adventurers along with Adipose Mab's mule train. They are:

- Gemini (they/he), a Violent errant of Arcane ancestry, a mutant sphinx-cat-person and wielder of polearms

- Kestrel (they), a Deviant errant of Adaptable ancestry, a sentient robotic sphere with the Survival and Sleight of Hand proficiencies

- Hipsap Sanvalli (she/her), an Occult errant of Tough ancestry, a human and former rat-catcher, now a seeker of tomes

Much transpired in the four or five sessions they spent beneath Murkvey's Rock. Surprisingly, none were killed. The party completed the scouting for Mab as per the terms of their deal and then departed for nearby Scarlet Town due to the copious wounds that rendered most of them hobbling. A stream of consciousness, roughly sequential summary of events that may reverberate into the future follows.

- Hipsap was cursed by strange shadows moving beneath the surface of a crystal to feel a supernatural compulsion toward truth and duty. Thus far she hasn't seen what happens if she defies it.

- Gemini took one level of crystal poisoning.

- Kestrel had both of their legs broken, over and over, by different things, multiple times.

- The party learned of strange mechanisms installed in the walls and floors of an opulent throne room. In another vision they saw a Mad King incinerate a disloyal courtier by pressing a button on said throne.

- The party met and handily slew a powerful gosbear, then skinned it and turned its pelt over to Adipose Mab as treasure, concealing a few smaller grave goods on their persons as she searched their bags. She was none the wiser.

- The party parlayed with a mass grave of crystal-studded zombies. Hipsap was able to convince them that the party was not a threat by use of a sorcery that makes her sickly and generates amity, Bless Body.

- The party also met the heavily crystal-poisoned gem robber Murkvey. A successful wager from Kestrel established that Kestrel and Murkvey are old bosom buds and the party was greeted warmly by him and his men. Murkvey asked Kestrel if they too sought 'The Orb.' Kestrel confirmed they did. Murkvey was pleased and claimed to have seen 'The Orb' in countless dreams and visions among the crystals, at one point calling it 'The Orb of the King'. He asked Kestrel to retrieve it for him, who happily obliged. [The party departed from Murkvey's Rock without delivering it or so much as bidding farewell to their dear bosom bud; it remains to be seen if this will catch up with them.]

- The party did battle with a strange mineral ghost, a Hunting Echo.

- The party cracked the tomb's arcane Puzzle Door and managed to retrieve a massive opulent crown from a dark room filled with trick mirrors.

- The party passed through a room of 6' tall strange thrumming prisms with shadows writhing inside. Hipsap managed to delicately chisel one off of the ground and carry it with a complex rope apparatus back toward the surface, and turned it over to Mab as treasure.

- The party saw a gigantic armor-clad guardian wielding a massive executioner's sword on patrol, and promptly decided to leave the dungeon. 

And lastly:

- The party wrestled with the decision of how to retrieve the massive opulent crown - valued at 44,000cp - without turning it over to Mab. It was far too large to hide on their persons and they were too wounded to try anything too risky. They resolved to bury it among the rubble and crystal growths in the Gilded Crossroads (area 3) and to return for it at a later date.

Next time: quick downtime recap, setting the stage for the current adventure, and then we will be caught up to the present!

gaming lore

     As of this week my group is five or six sessions into our ongoing campaign of Errant by Ava Islam. I've been wading deep into the blogosphere and have been inspired (mostly by Nick LS Whelan over at paperspencils.com and his notes for his On a Red World Alone campaigns) to maintain a log of session reports to help guide my prep and serve as a resource going forward (and so the archivists have something to adapt once we become the next lodoss war of course). I'll summarize the campaign thus far in a broader sweep and then move into nitty-grittier session-by-session as we get caught up. But first.... who am I?

    MY GAMING LORE

    I didn't really get into roleplaying games until mid-2020 when I was working as the sole employee for a small sheep farm on the border of rural Connecticut. I did manual labor alone for 8 or 9 hours a day and I'm gay and prone to hyperfixation so I naturally ended up getting pretty into hit podcast Friends at the Table, which I had probably heard about on twitter or something. COUNTER/Weight still holds a special place in my heart and the theme music is inseparable from the sense memories of sorting wool for me, the scent of the lanolin. This whole roleplaying game thing seemed cool. It was an extension of the weird fantasy worldbuilding daydreams I would lapse into sometimes, but those would always take the form of massive drafts of complex Dwarf Fortress mods that I would never finish or release. Roleplaying games were cool because you didn't have to code or draw anything, you could just speak something into existence and it would be real at your table, people would respond to it and you developed this shared experience of it immediately. That's still part of the draw for me.

    Some time during that period a friend of a friend hosted an online Troika one-shot over Zoom and I played in it. The style of Troika was really captivating and we played a weird romp with talking cubes and coyote dudes. I didn't really get it but I was stoked on it. So stoked I offered to run a game for the same group the next week. I had no idea what I was doing and worse... it was over Zoom. Things went as you'd expect. 

    Some time after that I started lurking on a bunch of discords and played and ran in a couple of one-shots here and there. Eventually I responded to a posting looking for a group to 'just play some old-fashioned Dungeon World'. They were willing to work with me being a new DM... and they were nice, and funny! Our group of six or seven whittled down to a solid four over the next few months as life happened, but by then I had a tight-knit core group going, and we are all happily gaming together to this day... it's a miracle. 

   After our romp through Dungeon World we ended up playing a year-and-a-half-long Beam Saber campaign. That campaign was a joy - we built the setting from the ground up together starting with street magic, my players really gave it their all establishing our planet-spanning equatorial megacity and took big swings against powerful factions, cool robots were described, some of them were powered by ghosts, tragic gay love blossomed among the stars, and we gave it a tender send-off with Everest Pipkin's stunning World Ending Game. 

THE ONGOING CAMPAIGN

     At this point I had become really enthralled by the idea of  this 'O S R' thing that I kept running into  online. It seemed like a ton of people were always posting cool stuff they made for their games and how they were trying to make their games better, and the idea of running material published by other people was appealing as my life circumstances changed a lot in the intervening years. I also had this science-fantasy mutant western vibe kicking around in the back of my head - something dusty and crusty and personal, less heroic, more sludgy, quotidian. 

My imagination was packed to the brim with all of this weird stuff I was reading - the Classic Dungeon Crawl, sandbox hexcrawling, the Ultraviolet Grasslands and Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun - and I was to eager build something weird that had more personal sword-and-sorcery style stakes and could slot in published modules easily. I tried hacking together a few insane science fantasy heartbreakers before realizing I was putting the cart before the horse and settled on Errant, which has been serving us well as an introduction to classic-style play from our more story-gaming/PBtA background. It's lightweight enough that play hums along pleasantly but comprehensive enough that most of the questions we have are already answered in it somewhere, and my players seem to be enjoying it.

I'm calling the ongoing campaign deadSun -MAXIMAL-. deadSun -MAXIMAL- is Vampire Hunter D, Jack Vance's O.G. Dying Earth short stories, Gus L's Crystal Frontier and Gene Wolfe's space catholicism in a neon-radiated landscape of angels and mutants and cowboys and demons, it's Trigun and Roadside Picnic, etc.  It's gothic science fantasy western post-apocalyptica. We kicked it off with Gus L.'s Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier to set the vibes. The world is filled out with a host of OSR modules along with stuff I've written myself. The vision board can say the rest.

Next time - session write ups!