Aersalus B-Team: Season 1, Session 7 – Secrets, Snakes, and Stashes

Dramatis Personae

Previously . . .

Trapper has spent most of his downtime opening the treasure chests and cataloguing what they got since Listens seems to think that he’s able to do that. Rhum has been to the inn. Listens prays and meditates. Seven is going through an existential crisis in slow motion.

A Stable Constabulary

Listens-to-Ocean, Rhum, Trapper, and Unit 7
Constabulary
Stonesday, Zhven 19th, 2,981 Fourth Reckoning, 3rd hour of the Sun
Wolftrap, Western Span

Rhum finds Listens, hopefully after Listens finishes his morning prayers. A good portion of the bandits seem to have recovered from their catatonic state. They can’t keep Severi in the basement with everything they brought back from the cache so Trapper just says to shove him back in some of the cells. Listens tells Seven to get the physical measurements of the bandits so he goes off to get proper tools for it. He then asks Trapper if he’s found the bandit’s base yet, to which Trapper says no since he didn’t have any time to do so. They’ve been quite busy with other things going on. He heads back up into the main level of the constabulary and starts researching spells.

We Need Food…Now

Listens-to-Ocean
The Duke’s Party Encampment
Stonesday, Zhven 19th, 2,981 Fourth Reckoning, 4th hour of the Sun
Wolftrap, Western Span

Seven goes to the quartermaster to get some measuring equipment, the quartermaster telling him to come back later as he’s busy with things. The quartermaster tells Seven that he’s been trying to arrange supplies for people and there’s more people coming in from outside the town with tales of being attacked. The group needs another 300-400lbs of food or meat and that it seems like the entire Barrens area is in town, as he shows Seven a map of the area. Either way, they need food. Seven volunteers Trapper to potentially go lead a hunting party for food and the quartermaster finally gives Seven some measuring tools. Seven, stopping by the constabulary, informs Listens that the quartermaster said they were lacking several hundred pounds of food, which Listens says he’ll take care of. He also mentions that there’s an area that’s seen an unusual amount of evacuees.

Listens speaks with the Quartermaster to ascertain the situation, namely that they’ll run out of food within a week. They’re getting 20-50 people per day and for some reason they’re feeding everyone that shows up. Listen ascertains how good the fishing may be, which isn’t bad but they’re still going to have to go out to sea and risk monster attacks. Talking to Kohana, Listens learns that his quartermaster bought out their entire stock of food and the nearest place they can send word to is about ten days away, one way. Listens tries to revitalize the fishing industry while listening to the fact that everyone that can go hunting isn’t due to the bandits and the weird spirit in the forest.

A Spirit Named Snaffles

Listens-to-Ocean
The Edge of Wolftrap
Stonesday, Zhven 19th, 2,981 Fourth Reckoning, 5th hour of the Sun
Wolftrap, Western Span

Listens leaves Kohana and starts casting some spells to call a spirit to locate a person, namely Dogskull. Listens gets an odd occurrence, he now knows the general direction that Dogskull is in, but not the exact one. He also senses a spirit that forms in front of him, taking a minute or two to form into a kind of possum about the size of a large dog running straight towards Listens. It’s twitching and scratching at itself nervously with fleas and ticks, demanding what Listens wants. The possum wants to know what’s it in for him to know where Dogskull is. It laughs at Listens’s attempt to convince it to help him, asking for water, shoes, various other things. Listens, instead, casts a spell to rid the possum of vermin without asking anything. He manages to drive away the fleas and ticks, some of which are actually spirits as well. Listens says he’s trying to stop the bandits because they’re feeding the bad spirit in the area not to be named, Mama Blood, since it feeds off death. The possum waddles off into the forest where its feet become paws again. The possum tells Listens to follow him, not with his feet but with his soul.

It tells Listens to go into the meditation zone and the possum gets quite close before it puts its hand on Listens’ shoulders and pulls the halfling’s spirit from its body like pulling apart Velcro, separating the two, leaving the body where it’s sat meditating, vulnerable to outside elements and spirits. He tries calling on Myrk, who pops out of the ground nearby. Listens tries to offer Myrk some beer and fish, Myrk is curious what the possum is doing there and tells Listens that he can’t trust the possum. They start fighting between each other that each other cannot be trusted and the possum is revealed to be named Snaffle. They argue about whose Shenin Listens is. Myrk smugly tells Snaffle that he’s going to sit there and guard Listens’ body, the important job. Listens holds onto Snaffles tail and they start moving quite fast, extremely fast.

A Tree Grows In Wolftrap

Rhum
The Duke’s Party Encampment/Town Square
Stonesday, Zhven 19th, 2,981 Fourth Reckoning, 4th hour of the Sun
Wolftrap, Western Span

Rhum, meantime, heads for Raito who is in the process of speaking to about 10-20 townspeople, asking them questions as he’s got a small desk set up. There appears to be two songshapers of lesser talent, one for fire and one for stone, trying to assess the skills of the others. He’s also set some of his people to head for the refugee area to take a headcount of who is there and what abilities they have. Rhum can practically smell the fear that’s coming off of some of the people, and it’s not just from the sight of Rhum. He shows the branch the spirit gave him to Raito, speaking about it who says that it’s definitely spirit related but he isn’t used to working with that sort of object. Rhum brings him to the inn for a meal and a break, and Meiri is somewhat not unpleased to see them.

Raito says that it’s definitely some spirit working, as he stares at the stick, that it’s still alive. He offers to shape it for Rhum, but Rhum instead speaks of a great tree in the center of the town, one that has been burned and dead. He suggests they dig up the stump and pull it out and plant a new one. Raito would be happy to help Rhum in that endeavor after the meal. Rhum, drawing a sketch of the snake creature talks about the troubles thereby. Raito mentions that they’re down all their healers except Tessikai. They pay for their meal and head for the tree in the center of town, looking at it that’s it dead. . . and cursed. Someone didn’t want it to grow back. Though the curse doesn’t stop them from planting a new one. Rhum speaks to the branch, to Grandmother Frond, saying the town needs a spirit to watch over it as he tries to plant the stick into the stump, with Raito working hard to create a crevice into the trunk.

Rhum offers his aid to open a hole for the branch to be placed, Raito shoves his hand into the trunk and it starts to climb up his arm like a fluid, Raito rips chunks of the tree out and throws it to the side and Rhum can feel faint and sickly and coughing up blood until there’s a. . . pop. A sound like a balloon fluttering and emptying and then whatever is in the wood stops fighting like it’s slinking away in bits and pieces like a snake slithering away, Raito tells him to plant the branch into the hole and he thrusts the branch into the hole, bleeding over the exertion of shoving the branch into the hole, it feeling like hours before finally there’s an audible hiss and the branch sinks in, all that’s left is the stump and his blood on the soil, and then the ground starts to shake, just slightly, right at the exact center. He sees a green shoot pop up, a tiny green shoot with tiny leaves. Raito stands up and looks down before declaring he needs more beer. Rhum, looking at his hands, says he might need some more as well. They stumble back towards the inn where Meiri calls him everything from a dumb cow to an idiot side of beef. Meiri pours moonshine straight on Rhum’s wounds to disinfect them.

Aftermath

Trapper spends most of his time getting things set up properly from the cache and the vault. There’s quite a bit of valuables from the bandit stash, more than what likely should be. There’s some thought that what might be there may not have just been from just the bandits. The coinage is from the Giant’s Rebellion. The treasure chests are almost nearly round and difficult to open since it was made to be opened by humans. There’s plenty in there that Trapper has absolutely no clue what they are, including resinous like triangular structures that are rather good smelling. There’s also some armor, a lot of spears, and a jewelry.

He smells Tessikai coming down into the basement, asking what he’s doing as he’s organizing the treasure they hauled back. He gives her the leftover feathers from the hawk which she attempts to braid into her hair, not doing too bad a job with her prosthetic. He tells her to keep at it when she notices writing on one of the smaller chests which she calls old. She hobbles over to investigate it while singing, rubbing her hand across part of the chest, and the longer she does it, the more the glyphs glow. They’ve got a solid colour of a deep hue and then shifts to the colours in the order of the ascendance of the notes. Pulling her hand away, it keeps shifting colors even without her presence. Eventually, the pattern repeats. Tessikai starts writing down what she can see and shows Trapper her notebook, saying she’s not sure what it means. Trapper heads out to check the traps that he set several days ago, Tessikai putting on her shoes and walking into the forest with him, hauling the sledge.

Seven has to take a lot of time to get the measurements down since they’re being uncooperative. They just really don’t want to deal with Seven, especially after breaks another man’s finger. Seven still drags each one out of the cell placing them on the scale. They seem to be far more concerned about Dogskull than about Seven, despite Seven snapping bones, which probably tells them most of what they need to know. They do try talking rather quietly in their respective corners, which Altan is rather indignant about as he made his office in one of the three jailcells. He demands a proper counting room as he just realized that he was in a jail cell.

After Action Report (GM)

We didn’t get to play as long as I would have liked as I had a stupid low glucose warning. But we did get to play and do a bit of wrap-up and prelim work on the next big thing: the bandits. There are a few avenues they can go down now and I’m trying VERY hard not to do any GM imposition on the players. I personally believe that games with “soft rails” is good for a open dialogue between the players and the GM. The players do the things they want to do and the GM has some time to prepare for them. This just seems like the best approach (and for me personally, it is).

Listens-to-Ocean got to deal with some more spirits in the area and I fully admit the forest spirit that he ended up calling (Snaffles the Possum spirit) was 100% improvised. He remains amusing and funny even a day later.

Unit 7 got to do some interesting stuff and I really need to spend some time on that character more. It’s on the list for next session.

Rhum. Sigh. Sometimes my brother really surprises the hell out of me. He finished “his” quest last session and received a peice of spirit wood from a nature shen (spirit). I was fairly sure he was going to get someone to turn it into a handle for a weapon or something or make it a tethered object (a kind of supernaturally empowered weapon thanks to the spirit inside of it). He didn’t. No. Not at all. He recalled a detail that I threw out seven sessions ago and decided to act on it. He along with the woodsinger Raito lifted a curse in the town center and planted a new tree in it. That was freaking awesome. It was so good I’m just going to have to give him more character points. What a helluva good detail to look back at from the future and tell as a gamer war story.

Other Notes

Bonus Report from Rory.

Soundtrack

“The Trees” by Rush

Aersalus B-Team: Season 1, Session 9 – The Lady of Silvered Waters