Hexplore24 — Day 18
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WEATHER: 5 — SNOW STORM
OBSIDIAN FOLDS
HEX K09
Wind is picking up, and before anyone pokes their heads out from the tents they know: another snow storm.
The bare trees in the nearby mystery orchard blow and twist in the wind, silhouettes vanishing from view in the thick snow fall.
DAWN HAZARD die: deplete 3
Malla, with a resigned frustration, tells them to remain in tents as much as possible. She works with the handlers to help the 3 remaining mules avoid the worst of the weather.
MORNING HAZARD — 5 — signs
Malla takes Satis and Aima out to gather more wood to keep the fire going — though they return with only six hours of wood, exhausted.
“We saw them again,” Blain and Belus report, squinting against the wind.
“Who? The watchers?” Satis asks.
“Yes,” Blain replies, pointing across the river. Belus adds, “I saw them there last night. Then in a break we saw them again. What do they want with us?”
Malla, stoking the fire, shakes her head, “I have no clue. Why be out in this weather? It’s all so strange...”
AFTERNOON HAZARD: 2 — Rest, +1 NEG Hazard die next watch1
They spend the afternoon again looking for wood in shifts, then warming up by the fire. All are exhausted from the effort, but they do gather enough wood to last the night.
DUSK WATCH HAZARD: 4, local effect. 9, Mythic Random Event.
Roll a 20 — new NPC. Huh. I guess I’ll go with it.
FC: from Beacon? 2 — NO. DESCRIPTION: Strangely Faded.
I’ll roll on Dawnwood Encounter TABLES:
ADVENTURING PARTY. 6 of them. LvL 2.
USING OSE Advanced Tables. Assassin, Paladin, Magic User, Barbarian, Gnome, Illusionist
FC Need Help? Extreme yes
Why? Mythic Action table: “Deny Outside”, “Divide Weather”, Description table: “Intensely Empty” “threateningly Dry”
Sounds like they ran out of supplies and got stuck in this storm...
As the group is preparing for dinner, the fire now full and warm, Belus and Aima both stand, suddenly hands to weapons, as six figures appear on the edge of the camp.
“Who goes there?” Aima asks, as she moves to block Blain.
Mahbe2 the magic user
Character Conversation: “Truce Refuse” “Frantic Careful”3
“Please!” a man says, his voice hoarse, “We are victims of the storm, lost and hungry. Had we not found your fire we would have frozen this night!”4
“What are you doing so far from Beacon without food?” Aima asks suspiciously.
“Beacon?” The man says, confused, “We come from Praam.”
Conversation Element Meaning: “LIE ANGRY”5
“Is our need not evident? Please, invite us to sit by your fire!” His voice has a tired edge to it.
Conversation Element Meaning: “News Mature”
“My apologies” says the man, warming his hands, his face red and chapped from the cold, like his companions. “I did not mean to raise my voice, I was just afraid, we are, as you can see, in bad shape.”
“Why?” Satis asks, “You are traveling so light?”
Convo “official calm”
Plot Twist “Mental Pursue”
Reaction: 10 — Friendly6
“We lost most of our supplies when we were chased, we ran for our lives only to end up in this storm,” the man explains, coughing.
“I’m Malla, you can warm up, and we have some fresh meat I can share.”
“Thank you, I’m Mabhe”, then gestures to the rest of his party, all trying to warm up numb fingers and noses, “We all owe you.”
“What was chasing you?” Aima asks.
Mythic creature description: “Horned Wings”
“King Fishers,” Mabhe says.7
“The birds?” Satis asks.
“Birds? No,” Mabhe gestures a large size “The flying horned reptiles?”
“That’s new,” Malla says as she starts cooking the remaining mule meat.
As curious as the Beaconites are, and as warm as the fire is, the conversation is soon silenced by hungry eating.8 Malla moves around who is in what tents so the strangers can sleep in two of them.
Belus, curious, leads a hymn he’s sure came from the old lands, but the strangers appear to have not heard it. Soon, all are cold and tired enough to retire for bed.
Night watch hazard 2, so [-] next check.9
Belus and Satis sleep well despite an extra animal handler sleeping in their small tent.
Malla squeezes in with Aima and Blain. She sleeps fine, but Blain is restless, blaming it on Malla’s snoring.
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A hazard die roll of 2 means you either have everyone rest and next hazard roll you add in a 2nd die and take the lower of the two results, or you let the PCs not rest, and take exhaustion.↩
I’ve been naming characters using a table of names in Whitehack. But I’m deciding to use Mythic’s name elements meaning table for the names of people and places from the New-Old Lands, to give them a different feel.↩
Typically I use a 2d6 reaction roll to guide my conversations with NPCs, however because these characters are so new to me I felt I needed more information than just a negative/neutral/positive prompt. So I’m using the Character Conversation element meaning table from Mythic in this conversation.↩
Note that there are 6 new NPCs here, but to keep things manageable and simple, I’m only having one of them speak. If the NPCs stick around longer than just this scene I’ll work out who the others are and eventually introduce them. But right now I want to focus on keeping the story moving forward, and abstracting 6 characters down to 1 is very helpful.↩
I like using tables like Mythic’s character conversation table when I’m still learning about a character’s situation. However, it is important to not take the prompts too literally. Here I decide that the man’s temper flairs (Angry), but I don’t commit to him necessarily telling a lie, more of him trying to hide his anger. The scene already has enough going on in it I don’t feel it needs me to create a whole new layer of deception just because of this one prompt.↩
Here I realize the conversation table is unlikely to give me a good prompt for why they lost their luggage. Several Mythic tables could work, but I chose the plot twists table as it tends to consistently give eventful prompts. Because I’m not sure if the NPCs will take this line of questioning as friendly or rude I also do a 2d6 reaction roll, which returns friendly.↩
The Mythic prompt of “Horned Wings” made me think of a predator like the Kingfisher bird, and that’s a cool name, so I decided to keep it and apply it to this new fantasy monster these NPCs were dealing with.↩
These NPCs are exciting from a lore and story point of view — they potentially have answers to a lot of the questions we’ve been asking about the New-Old lands. However, I didn’t feel this was the right time to get into a huge expository info-dump, including doing all the work to generate that info. So, taking into account the context of them being close to death, exhausted, and huddled around a fire in a blizzard, I wrap the scene up. We can learn more about them at a later time.↩
A roll of 2 on the Event/hazard die means PCs either rest and take an additional negative event die next time, or they become exhausted. Seeing as my PCs are all asleep, I have them rest and take the extra die. The mechanics of the extra negative event die is the same as advantage/disadvantage, and I am using the shorthand used in the game Mothership of “[-]” to denote disadvantage. You’ll see me use this more often in my notes.↩