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

Dramatis Personae

Previously . . .

The group ends up converging on the location of the screams and bellowing. People are running like crazy from the west road. There was a small refugee caravan that had been travelling down it, panicking and yelling as the group converges towards there, there’s a few people that went running with them but they’re more concerned about trying to get the refugees herded to safety. The scene is pretty open, the sounds is what gets them at first, loud, loud noises and screams and weird honking-squealing sounds, similar to very, very loud pigs. As they arrive at the cleaning, they can see several people that were dressed similar to the bandits from behind, and three very large boars that are just a little bit smaller than an elephant. Weird bristly-fur, foaming at the mouth, blood on their muzzles and bodies lying around

Providing for Wolftrap

Trapper
Outside of Wolftrap
Stonesday, Zhven 19th, 2,981 Fourth Reckoning, 10th hour of the Sun
Wolftrap, Western Span

Trapper immediately falls back into stealth as the hogs start moving, one of them attacking a bystander that manages to roll out of the way. Seven readies his shield, waiting until a boar gets close enough to charge. Trapper knocks out one of the bandits with a boffin and fires a prodd pellet at one of the boars trying to hamstring it. Listens attempts to cast an elemental blast at one of the boars that manages to dodge. In return, Listens sprouts an arrow in his left shin and left arm. And then an area of explodey happens right on most of the group as a fireball comes from the bandit in the clearing. Rhum does a sacrificial dodge onto Listens while Seven takes cover behind his shield as the Servant of Bones takes the hit straight on. Rhum, smelling of burned fur, stares towards the bandit that threw the fireball and launches one of his throwing axes at the bandit that causes the hatchet to fly around him and launch back towards Rhum who ends up taking the axe into his right arm, crippling it. The bystanders flee the battlefield away from the direction of the group.

Boar 3 charges towards Seven who charges towards the boar as well, his shield aiming towards the boar’s head, sticking the boar with a bellringer that stuns it before he sticks a spear into the boar’s eye, causing it to squeal and froth blood at the mouth causing Seven to try to put a spear into the other eye but missing. Boar 1 charges towards the Servant of Bones who dodges out of the way. The final boar charges towards Seven who dodges out of the way, and then past the Servant of Bones to collide with Boar 2, knocking both prone. The Servant hops onto the back of Boar 1 and stabs it in the spine, not doing any actual damage to it. Seven stabs once more into Boar 3’s uninjured eye, this time managing to hit it, blinding it completely before grappling the spears to cause maximum swirlage in Boar 1’s brains. Trapper fires off two shots at the standing bandit, failing to knock him out with a boffin bolt but a prodd bullet to the pelvis knocks the bandit to the ground stunning him. Listens, meantime, casts an elemental chill against the boars, draining them of fatigue, knocking out Boar 1 and 2. The Servant of Bones jumps onto Boar 3, jamming it into the boar’s back only for it to break the sword. Rhum rips the axe from his arm as Listens quickly bandages it, restoring use of Rhum’s arm, Rhum, meanwhile, spots two bandits not far off the path and just within range of an axe charge, the bandit taking an axe to the shoulder, killing the bandit. Some arrows come towards Seven and Rhum, both of which block the arrows.

Boar 3 fails to break stun so the Servant grabs Seven’s spears and shove them back into the eyes of the boar, finally killing it. Seven keeps looking around for where he’s being shot from to no avail. Trapper, meantime, sniffs out opponents and knocks out yet another bandit with a boffin to the face. Listens moves into cover while the bandits keep trying to fire at Unit Seven only to miss. Rhum charges the next closest bandit and chops at him, getting through the bandit’s knees, killing him. The bandits break with that last death, but they aren’t fast enough to outrun Trapper’s prodd as he hamstrings them, leaving only two fatalities among the bandits and a few casualties among the rest that’ll live.

Looking around, there’s five dead bystanders on the ground and Rhum is looking rather singed, so Listens casts Succor on Rhum to bring him back up to some kind of health. Listens and Trapper looks at the boars, they’re not tainted or poisonous but they do have some interesting mix of porcupines with pigs. They get the boars butchered before Trapper insists they go downstairs and look at the stuff that they insisted that Trapper organize. They go over the spoils, including the armor that that Trapper looked through, which includes a suit of plate armor that is of appropriate size for Rhum. Offering up the large shield with a rim-blade on the edge, along with some good spears, for Seven. Trapper grabs some of the older currency that’s no longer in circulation.

Trapper also passes on the information from Meiri, Toragana, and Tayang about how they may need to speak with spirits about the problems. He mentions that Tayang suggested going to a spirit oracle and how he was given a wooden cylinder that Listens wants to see which Trapper says he’ll take a look at. Listens also shares where he was, about how he made a potentially unwise deal with a powerful water spirit and how he saw the bandit camp and what he saw there. Trapper notes that it doesn’t seem right, considering the tales the villagers had shared previously, that there’s obviously bandits outside the camp and possibly on the way to Wolftrap for in time for the new moon.

They’re going to have to look at things closer. Rhum, meantime while they’re discussing, heads to the inn again to listen to things. Listens speaks with everyone else, Kohana, Meiri, Tessikai, and a couple other people before using some of the items from Warborn cache to create a sacrifice for spirits. Speaking with those that he can as well as starts setting up for fishing expeditions.

Aftermath

Looking around, there’s five dead bystanders on the ground and Rhum is looking rather singed, so Listens casts Succor on Rhum to bring him back up to some kind of health. Listens and Trapper looks at the boars, they’re not tainted or poisonous but they do have some interesting mix of porcupines with pigs. They get the boars butchered before Trapper insists they go downstairs and look at the stuff that they insisted that Trapper organize. They go over the spoils, including the armor that that Trapper looked through, which includes a suit of plate armor that is of appropriate size for Rhum. Offering up the large shield with a rim-blade on the edge, along with some good spears, for Seven. Trapper grabs some of the older currency that’s no longer in circulation.

Trapper also passes on the information from Meiri, Toragana, and Tayang about how they may need to speak with spirits about the problems. He mentions that Tayang suggested going to a spirit oracle and how he was given a wooden cylinder that Listens wants to see which Trapper says he’ll take a look at. Listens also shares where he was, about how he made a potentially unwise deal with a powerful water spirit and how he saw the bandit camp and what he saw there. Trapper notes that it doesn’t seem right, considering the tales the villagers had shared previously, that there’s obviously bandits outside the camp and possibly on the way to Wolftrap for in time for the new moon.

They’re going to have to look at things closer. Rhum, meantime while they’re discussing, heads to the inn again to listen to things. Listens speaks with everyone else, Kohana, Meiri, Tessikai, and a couple other people before using some of the items from Warborn cache to create a sacrifice for spirits. Speaking with those that he can as well as starts setting up for fishing expeditions.

After Action Report (GM)

This session was pretty much a combat and wrapping up of some loose ends. I wasn’t on my ball as a GM running it, but the players had fun and there were some genuinely memorable moments. And some other stuff that popped up and I had no idea (a Stop Hit) how to do until I remembered it after the game. I also need to seriously adjust how the new rules for Disappear work in my campaign. Ugh. I uhhh, might have broke it a bit. Ah well, success requires experimentation!

World Lore Tidbit (Lifeforged Beings)

One of the conceits of Aersalus is a classic gamism – “A wizard did it!” – but subverted. We’ve all had those moments as players, GMs, worldbuilders (oh, my!) where we liked a thing because it was cool and that was enough. One of the things I wanted to achieve with this setting was the idea that unnatural things might have been naturally made. I know. Weird. But bear with me a bit. The idea of creating life can be good or bad…as can the results. All around the planet of Aersalus are hidden “lifeforges.” A lifeforge is effectively a way to create beings constituted from spiritual essences and precursor agents. In effect, it takes the spirit and turns it material. “From without comes within” – in our world “Energy = Matter.” Lifeforges are incredibly difficult to operate, the precursor agents are to find, and then there is the matter of harnessing spiritual energy… In Aersalus, lifeforges were made by the Firstborn (beings so ancient that no one even knows what they actually looked like) who used them to alter the primordial landscape of their world. After they disappeared they’d be used by many others over time, with each time the knowledge of their working growing less and less. In the current day, lifeforges are things that wars are fought over, kingdoms are razed for, and gods killed over. Users with sufficient ability can use them to create other beings. The more primitive the being made, the easier. Lifeforged beings are usually mules (one-offs incapable of reproducing) because doing that is easier than creating an entire potential race or type of being. Life-forging stable creations is also harder. Unstable lifeforged critters are (again) easier to make. So one-off, primitive, unstable creatures tend to be what the burgeoning dark lords make to serve as their minions. But those who can? Well, that’s where some beings come from. The razortusks from this session are lifeforged beings who were able to breed true and were stable – but rather primitive. Someone probably decided to try to create some sort of deadly war mount or siege beast and whoops, sorry! Now you have giant boars with porcupine quills that fly off of them when they are enraged. Lifeforges themselves are vanishingly rare…but over the eons beings created by them have accumulated, giving rise to some of the weirder and more wonderful life on Aersalus.

Other Notes

Bonus Report from Rory.

Soundtrack

“War Pigs” by Black Sabbath

Aersalus B-Team: Season 1, Session 11 – Assault on the Kennel