Listen to the Rain

Dramatis Personae:

• Shining Star, mandragora sorcerer-priestess of Nyahré.
  
• The Green Knight, mandragora briarwitch.
  
• Bonnie, kong Auspicious Orator.
  
• Amos Burnham, a human from Earth.
  
• Elaphe, a chuzan junior member of the Black Rose.

Elaphe went back to sleep and Bonnie was out in the square by the pipe, but Shining Star, the Green Knight, and Amos were in the common room when one of the amanita from the group last night came downstairs, picked up a bowl of mushroom gruel from the bartender, and started to eat it. After a brief debate about how to deal with the other group, Shining Star took the initiative, stood up, and walked over to the amanita and sat at his table.

The amanita was closemouthed, but he was willing to engage Shining Star in conversation. She tried to subtly hint to them that she was in town for the same reason, but the amanita either didn't pick up on it or wasn't interested in revealing their own motivations.

Shining Star: "You come from the Kingdom of Flowers?"
Amanita: "There are many wanderers from the Kingdom on the road in these days."

She was thinking about what to do next when the mandragora companion of the anamita came downstairs and sat next to him. Shining Star tried talking to her using the Royal Speech, the mandragora ability to speak into others' minds, and had much more success.

The mandragora introduced herself as Dim Ember of the House of Hollyhock, Knight-Lieutenant of the Knights of the Rose, a Floral knightly order responsible for dealing with dangerous spirits. She told Shining Star that she had been tracking Kurome for weeks since they had heard rumors in tower town that he was in Greenwall, and introduced her companions--Ringo, a raptok sorcerer; Meohan, a hedge wizard; and Cheerless Sword, her yojimbo, the amanita sitting next to her.

As if summoned, Meohan and Ringo came down the stairs and joined them at the table, and Amos and the Green Knight--who had been engaging in a staring contest with both Cheerless Sword and then Dim Ember--also came and sat down when Shining Star used the Royal Speech to tell them what had transpired. Bonnie, who had been sidling from chair to chair to get a bit closer, sat as well, and even Elaphe woke up and came downstairs, though he affected to be unrelated and sat at the bar instead, keeping an ear out.

Most of the session was taken up with the discussion that ensued as the two groups tried to feel each other out. Now that she knew she was dealing with a fellow exile of the Kingdom of Flowers, Dim Ember was much more forthcoming, and while she didn't explain her past or how she met her companions, she did mention what she knew about Kurome--that he had fled from the wrath of the Dragon Emperor (she uses the term "usurper") to a village in the north of the Kingdom of Flowers, but a group of wandering heroes had defeated his attempt to conquer that and use it as a base to expand his power. He fled through the Forest of Shadows, somehow surviving the journey, and had come to Greenwall, and she meant to kill him.

Bonnie asked if Dim Ember is a sorcerer, and she replied that she is not but that Ringo is, and then Bonnie tried to find out if Dim Ember and her group really is responsible for killing Summer Rain. She rolls and...botches the roll, so instead of asking in a round-about fashion if the Knights of the Rose have a way of dealing with ghosts, Bonnie blurted out something about whether Dim Ember created any ghosts on the way south. That put something of a damper on the conversation, and moreso when Shining Star casts Scent of Corruption and learned that the bartender in the inn they're staying in has the touch of demonic magic on her. The spell wasn't specific enough to tell if the bartender was possessed, cursed, or under a compulsion, and Shining Star weighed the chance of exorcising the taint with the fact that she'd be revealing herself to Kurome if she did. She decided against it, and Dim Ember and her group left to do more scouting of the town.

Shining Star and the party, minus Elaphe, did the same, and they found a half-dozen individuals who were tainted in the same way. No one is sure where Kurome is, but the smell of rot was strongest in the town square and faded as they walked near the outlying houses and fields, so even if Kurome isn't physically present in the town, that was obviously where his influence was the strongest. While wandering around, they were confronted by a group of local mycon and amanita youths who were spoiling for a fight. One of them, who had the smoky haze of demonic influence around him, even went so far as to throw a clod of dirt at Shining Star, but when the Green Knight used hedge magic to disappear and reappear right in front of them, the youths all broke and ran. Back at the inn, the party conferred. Elaphe agreed to continue watching the bartender and the others went to bed.

That night, after the inn was closed and the bartender had gone to sleep, Elaphe slipped out the front and around the back and found a door leading out to an alleyway, so he chanted a quick bit of hedge magic to aid stealth and settled in to wait. After about an hour in the alley, the bartender left through the back door and began to purposefully walk north. Elaphe followed, noticing a few other people walking at night as well, and eventually climbed up to a roof to get a better viewpoint. The people all walked north into the grain fields and disappeared into the tall stalks, though he could see ruffling among the sheaves that told him they were converging on one point. He made his way back to the inn, encountering nothing other than a few drunks, and when he returned he saw steady light coming from the room that Dim Ember and her group were staying in. He decided to wake Shining Star, however, and explained what he saw and then lay down to sleep.

Shining Star knocked on Dim Ember's door and it opened onto a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth as long as her hand. But when Ringo noticed who it was, she stepped aside, revealing Meohan sitting over a bowl of water and moving his hands in languid motions. Shining Star explained to Dim Ember what Elaphe had found, and Meohan changed the focus of his scrying pool. From above, it showed ten people standing in a circle in a small clearing in the fields. The only sound was the wind, but Shining Star could see the glow of their eyes--not the verdant green of the Green Knight's eyes, but the sickly green-yellow of something poisonous. After a few moments, the group dispersed, and Shining Star returned to her room and went to sleep.


Like I mentioned, this session was almost entirely dialogue other than the spying at the end. The whole thing really turned on Bonnie's Charisma + Presence botch--without that, the party might have been able to figure out what really happened with Summer Rain and maybe resolve that. As it is, the shield was left in their room all day, so barring some kind of ghost power, Summer Rain doesn't know what happened. At least, they hope not!

Now the party has tentative allies, but the real question comes in for whether they'll be able to fight Kurome and what happens after they win. Elaphe's player does a lot of asking about the location of things so he can figure blast radii...

Dramatis Personae:

• Shining Star, mandragora sorcerer-priestess of Nyahré.
  
• The Green Knight, mandragora briarwitch.
  
• Bonnie, kong Auspicious Orator.
  
• Amos Burnham, a human from Earth.
  
• Elaphe, a chuzan junior member of the Black Rose.

Woken up early by the river dragon and under a cloudy sky with a steady rain, the group decided to set out early rather than try to get more sleep, so they saddled their mounts, ate a quick breakfast, and set out on the road. They spent hours on the road with sparse mushroom trees on either side, seeing no one, though Amos did see a few camome dancing among the rainclouds. The Green Knight does pause and use his sorcery to contact a tree and ask it if it saw their quarry pass by, and it confirms that it saw them "recently," but is unable to provide further details and the party moved on. It wasn't until almost lunch that they saw two amanita on horses heavily laden with baggage, riding slowly through the rain.

Bonnie hailed them as they drew near and asked them where they were going. With much glancing at each other, the amanita explained that they came from Greenwall, the village in the middle of the mushroom forest that the hollow one's serpent of smoke and fire seems to be directing the party toward, and left because a kappa warlock arrived and corrupted the town council to his will. Shining Star perked up at that and asked if the warlock has any distinguishing marks, and the amanita said that he was missing an eye--as is Kurome, one of the Dragon Emperor's former generals, since disgraced and fled into exile. They added that they hadn't seen him up close, since they had avoided him as much as they could and got out of town as quickly as possible.

This starts a brief argument among the group over way to do. Shining Star has heard of Kurome and pointed out that he's a former general of the Dragon Empire, not some two-bit hedge cultist. Bonnie was a bit star-struck by the knowledge she could gain from a master warlock, but kept it under wraps in the face of Shining Star's vehemence. Shining Star wavered, but Nyahré's dictates to destroy the unholy win out over her caution against facing a warlock, and the group decided to continue on to the village.

The amanita also confirmed that they saw Summer Rain's murderers staying at a tea house near the western gate, but didn't speak to them. With no further information, the party bids the amanita fairwell and Elaphe spurs his claw strider to a trot.

As they rode down the road and the mushroom forest gets less and less sparse, Amos noticed that there were many more forest spirits watching them silently, and when he mentioned this, Bonnie stopped and brewed up a dose of spirit-flower tea for her and Shining Star. Both of them drank the hallucinogenic tea and their vision swirled with colors, but also revealed the shapes of fushigibana perched on the caps of mushroom trees, watching with them brilliant green eyes. The Green Knight consulted the voices of the forest and received a strong sense that the spirits wanted him in Greenwall to confront the warlock.

Just around a bend in the road were several vines hanging from the caps of the mushroom trees that Elaphe managed to see in time and rear his claw strider to avoid. The rest of the group followed his example, and the Green Knight grabbed a stick and threw it at one of the vines, which wrapped around it and whipped up into the forest canopy. When it didn't immediately come back down, the party started throwing more things, including Elaphe hurling his bob-omb, which sadly went wide and exploded harmlessly in the road. Eventually they were able to trigger enough of the stranglevines that they cleared a path for them to take that won't pass too close to any of them, and Elaphe led them through in single file.

Close to dinnertime they found a path leading north off the road that had been deliberately obscured, but merely marked it on their map and continued going. They settled in for the night at a somewhat secluded campsite under a cluster of mushroom trees, the rain having not let up for the entire day, and went to sleep.

That night, Shining Star prayed for guidance, but felt no answer from Nyahré.

Close to morning on Shining Star's watch, she heard the distant crashing sound that every child in Agarica has drilled into them from childhood--a walking tree. She woke the Green Knight and asked his opinion. The Green Knight said that walking trees do not hunt by sight or sound, and as long as they remain in their camp and do not bleed they should be safe, but he opened himself to the voices of the forest to be sure. He received a strong message to stay where they were, and conveyed it to Shining Star before he went back to sleep.

The next morning it was raining even harder than it previous day, something the party hadn't thought possible, but without any option than to go forward they saddled their mounts, ate some cold rations, and set out on the road. They were soaked almost the instant they left the cover of the mushroom trees.

Around mid-morning, Amos's attention was caught by a small pond on the side of the road that sparkled alluringly. Bonnie took a sample of the water and drank it, and it was some of the most refreshing water she had ever tasted. As she drank, she heard the faint sound of musical laughter. A few winged motes of light appeared, dancing over the water, and they whirled round and round until they coalesced into a woman in diaphanous garments with flowing hair and great wings beating in the air behind her. A great faerie!

Shining Star took the lead her as the faerie asked them if they were willing to stay a while and listen. The faerie waved a hand and the rain stopped a few inches above their heads, as a sign of her good will, but Shining Star said that they were on a quest that could not be delayed, but when it was finished they would come back to her. The faerie asked if she promised, and Shining Star did not do so, but she did offer up a ring with the seal of Nyahré as sureity. The faerie took it and spun it around her fingers, and it vanished in a flash of light. And moments later the faerie did as well, falling apart into winged motes and leaving soft laughter ringing in the party's ears.

As they moved back onto the road, the party noticed that the rain was still stopping above their heads, and gratefully they continued eastward.


Somewhat shorter session this time, but we still managed to fit some stuff in! This is all from random tables and provided a bunch of hooks that they'll get to...later. Elaphe's player pointed out that there's a good half-dozen things the party can investigate when they've finished their current goal, though who knows in what condition some of them will be in by the time they get back there.

This is the first session where I really started to keep track of time with the aid of an in-game calendar. I consulted the players about how esoteric they wanted the calendar to be and the answer was "not," so it has the standard seven-day weeks and twelve months. I changed the names with some inspiration from Japanese naming, though, so in-game we ended on Fireday, the ninth day of the Month of Falling Leaves. The 15th and 30th of each month (Silverday and Spiritday) aren't part of a week, but otherwise it's easily trackable. I even populated it with weather and celestial events like moon phases and comets, so I don't have to roll for any of that and can plan for it in-game! It allows some events that I couldn't otherwise track or would have to leave up to randomness, like other groups' plans being based around certain days or certain astronomical events. I did that in my WFRP game where there's a detailed calendar as well, and I like how it worked out.

Dramatis Personae:

• Shining Star, mandragora sorcerer-priestess of Nyahré.
  
• The Green Knight, mandragora briarwitch.
  
• Bonnie, kong Auspicious Orator.
  
• Amos Burnham, a human from Earth.
  
• Elaphe, a chuzan junior member of the Black Rose.

While Onyx the "Void Witch" (as the players called her) bonded Elaphe's claw strider to him, Bonnie haggled over the formulae for two new recipes for the Lesser Path of Alchemy, and the Green Knight communed with the spirits of the forest and learns the remaining first circle spells of the Briarwitches, Amos Burnham wandered the streets of Blueash. The alleyways were packed with refugees, children in tow, chuzan and mycon and amanita all walking around aimlessly or sitting wherever they could find a free space. An occasional patrol of guards with the cow's head of the Kingdom of Fontina on it moved through the crowds.

Amos bumped into someone as walked and apologized in Floral, and when he looked he realized it was a Silent One. The Silent One's body wasstrangely rubbery, and for a moment it felt almost like Amos sunk into it before rebounding back. The Silent One apologized as well, and Amos was drawn into conversation, asking it about the plague of walking dead and how things were in the surrounding villages. The Silent One told him it was down from tower town on business, but that it hadn't realized things were getting this bad, and that it had heard that the king had sent for a group of witchhunters from the Temple of the Holy Flame to deal with the problem. And with all the refugees in the cities and abandoned farms, the crops are rotting in the fields without hands to harvest them and winter will not be kind. Amos listened to all of this and agreed, and then bid farewell to the Silent One and continued on his way. He took the few coins he had on him out of his pocket and gave them to a family of mycon he saw by the side of the road--not much, but enough to pay for a couple days of food--and the mycon profusely thanked him. At least, he assumed that's what they did since Amos doesn't speak Muskalan, but when he walked away, he saw one of the mycon head toward the market and smiled that at least one good deed was done here.

When the rest of the group arrived at the south gate looking for Snow, they found Amos sitting there watching people come in and out of the gate. Elaphe learned that Snow's shift started in an hour (he rolled a 10 on zero dice, bumped up to 1 die with a 10 required. Don't ask a murderhobo assassin to gather information for you...), most of the group waited, Shining Star and Amos discussing moral philosophy, while Bonnie headed back to a plaza they passed with a pipe in the center of it and a scaffolding of stairs leading up to it as well as a sign saying that the pipe has stable transit to B'rabt but there's a toll collected at the other end. Bonnie sees a few people going in and out, and when a chuzan with sandy-brown fur and longer legs than the Muskalan chuzen, she runs over and interrogates her. Through gestures she manages to convince the chuzan, named White Lotus, to tell her about B'rabt in accented Muskalan and talk with her in B'rabti long enough that Bonnie was able to surreptitiously cast the Language-Learning Ritual and imprint the knowledge of B'rabti in her mind. Currently, she has 20 motes of Essence out of 24 committed to maintaining language knowledge. She also revealed her full name when introducing herself--"Bonnibel."

Also, this is the point where we learned that Bonnie's player had written down Muskalan on her sheet as "Ratspeak." Rude.

Speaking to Snow, they learned that the bandits had gone through the south gate, a little over a week ago, and they decided that it wouldn't be prudent to pursue them at night. They rented floor space in the common room of a tea house at grossly inflated prices and settled down for the night, Elaphe considering and then rejecting robbing the other patrons while the Green Knight meditated on the rooftop, and in the morning they set out for Rockfort, the capital of Fontina.

They made good time on the road, passing a lot of refugees and a few farms here and there. At one point they passed a group of amanita merchants bringing bread and food to Rockfort, but decided not to buy anything and kept going. Just after lunchtime, they arrived in Rockfort. True to its name, it's built on a small mesa overlooking a large lake, with dirt ramps leading up to the walls. Unlike Blueash, here the gates were open and the party went in without much incident, though they were unable to ask the guards more than if they're seen the bandits because of the line of refugees waiting. The guards had seen them--they arrived four days ago. But Blueash was only half a day's ride away. What were they doing in that time? Hmm...

Bonnie immediately scoured the streets looking for any sorcerers in residence, and after a relatively short search, she found a familiar shingle that says "Onyx, Disciple of the Abyss." When she looked inside, it was the exact same room, with the exact same tea table in the center, and the exact same curtains on the windows. Bonnie talked with the hollow one for a moment and Onyx seemed surprised until she realized that oh, they came from Rockfort this time. Bonnie asked if the hollow one can track down anyone who is lost, and she replied that she could if she had something more than just "A mandragora, a raptok, and two amanita," so Bonnie went off to find her companions and get the shield that Summer Rain is currently possessing.

Me: "You step across the threshold-"
Elaphe's player: "Deliberate word choice there."

Everyone except Elaphe refused to enter the witch-haunted house, but Bonnie and Elaphe went in with the shield and Bonnie relayed the information from Summer Rain. When it is done, Onyx spins her arms behind her, opening a hole into a void darker than that which lies between the stars. She turns around--Elaphe's player was surprised she turned her back on them--and pulls something out, and a twenty-foot-long serpent of heatless flame and roiling shadows explodes out of the hole in realities and exits through the front door. "Follow it!" Onyx shouts, and Elaphe and Bonnie hasten to do so.

The group all mounts off and gallops through the streets of Rockfort, not encountering much difficulty as the people all scatter out of the way of a party of galloping murderhobos pursuing a flying, sorcerous thing. They ride hard for several hours until Bonnie is nearly falling off her horse and the horses themselves, and Elaphe's claw strider, are panting and obviously exhausted, and then they make camp. As they sleep, the serpent of fire and shadow circles over them in endless loops and spirals, casting the camp into alternate light and dark.

When it's almost morning, on Elaphe's watch, he hears something faint with his keen chuzan hearing and feels the ground rumbling slightly. Something is coming nearer.


Yes, everything in the petty kingdom they're in is named after cheese. One of the players suggested Fontina and I ran with it. This is serious sword and sorcery, but it's also based on Mario, which has places like "Vanilla Dome" and "Donut Plains" and "Beanbean Kingdom." A small kingdom with names like cheese is nothing.

I'm a bit surprised that everyone really wants to track down these murderers, but if that's what they're going to do, then that's what the game is about. Elaphe's player mentioned wanting to go through the pipe to B'rabt and change the whole plot, and I replied that the plot is whatever the characters do, so I'd have to scrap some of my notes and work on desert-based random encounters, but it wouldn't derail anything.

I would drop some rumors about the plague of walking dead happening out east, though. And if they treat that as background danger, that'll still be what happens.

Dramatis Personae:

• Shining Star, mandragora sorcerer-priestess of Nyahré.
  
• The Green Knight, mandragora briarwitch.
  
• Bonnie, kong Auspicious Orator.
  
• Amos Burnham, a human from Earth.
  
• Elaphe, a chuzan junior member of the Black Rose.

I'm combining these two sessions because each of them had a single main event that dominated the session, though it was a different event for each session.

In the tower town around Etemenanki, the group slept at the inn, again spending the money for a private room (something like 20x as expensive as sleeping in the common room, though they don't have to pay per head for a private room) and in the morning they headed out check the markets. This ended up taking most of the session, and ended up with Elaphe selling the automaton to a Silent One and raptok pair of artificia dealers for a staggering sum of money--three ryō, roughly enough money for a peasant to retire on as long as they're willing to live in a hut and eat gruel for the rest of their life--and then turned around and spent a bunch of it. After some initial contemplation, he turned down the serpentine automaton assassin the dealer was offering, but he did buy an enchanted lockpick which reconfigured its shape based on the lock it was used with.

As soon as he had the money in hand, he headed out to a mount dealer and bought a claw strider with saddle and tack. He plans to bond it as a familiar once he finds a hedge wizard to perform the ritual for him.

Shining Star spent some time studying the materials she had managed to salvage when she fled the Kingdom of Flowers and finally mastered the incantations for the Cloak of Night, which is extra worthwhile because Amos has a crystal that lets him see in the dark.

Bonnie spent some time in a private library in tower town. After paying the entrance fee, she found a few books about Etemenanki--with a fortunately lucky roll, because she had no dots in Investigation--and spent much of the afternoon reading about the tower. She learned that, in megadungeon tradition, it offers great risk and great reward, with barely a fraction of it even explored, much less cleared and made safe. She found a reference to the pidgit-folk and looked up another book, Fading Mist's The Peoples of Agarica, which had a very brief section about the pidgit-folk. Mostly, she learned that there was a cleared route in Etemenanki that led to a balcony where the pidgit-folk would occasionally trade with ground-dwellers, that they lived on the Cloud Kingdoms, that they refused to touch the base earth, and that their sorcerers had command of the winds and storms.

That evening, everyone regathered at the Three Fishes inn and discussed their course of action. They decided not to go into Etemenanki, since it's enormous and not going anywhere, and they do have a treasure map. So they slept and at dawn, they headed out of tower town on the south road. The day's travel was uneventful and they made camp in a small copse of trees. The next day they set out, and around midafternoon Amos saw a sad-looking female chuzan standing over a hastily-patted down mound of earth off the side of the road. No one else saw her.

Unfortunately, Amos doesn't speak Musakalan, and the ghost didn't speak anything else. The group managed to arrange an a system of yes or no questions, where Bonnie would ask the questions in Muskalan and the ghost would nod or shake her head, which Amos would relay. After a while, they learned that in life, the ghost was the daughter of a merchant who had her marriage arranged, but she ran away to become an adventurer. She was on her way to tower town when she was killed by bandits, who included two amanita, a mandragora, and a raptok. She didn't know their names. She did confirm that her two guards also died but had not become wraiths, and the group debated what to do. Swayed by Shining Star, they offered up one of their number for possession, in the passenger rather than overshadow sense, and the ghost instead possessed one of the trow-crafted shields they had taken from the city. Bonnie idly wondered what would satisfy the ghost, and right next to her ear, she heard a hollow voice vehemently whisper, Their blood.

The next day, the group continued south on the road, meeting a few travelers here and there but mostly just making time. They made camp off the road behind a hill, picking Concealment and Sustenance on their Survival roll. During the third watch, near dawn, Amos smelled something rotten on the south wind. The moon was out and the sky was clear, and he could see a group of people moving ("Would you say they are...shambling?" was asked of me) vaguely toward their campsite, though he couldn't tell if the shapes were moving with purpose in their direction. He woke the Green Knight, and the two of them quickly woke the others.

The party debated whether to attack preemptively or not, and finally decided to do so when the Green Knight could handle the vile presence of the walking dead no longer, leaped on his horse, and spurred it toward them, though he did come around in an arc so that the others could approach from another angle. Elaphe grabbed his bob-omb and charged in, following by Shining Star, while Amos picked up his bow and started firing flaming arrows into the group of walking dead. The Green Knight crashed through the horde, somehow missing all of them with his lance and also picking up a passenger as one of the undead grabbed his leg, so he spent several actions trying to get it off. When he rode out of range, Elaphe threw his bob-omb, which did serious damage to many of the walking dead but didn't destroy any of them.

Amos continued to fire as the leading walking corpse got close, then it suddenly lunged for Shining Star, grabbing her arms and making her choke and gasp with the stench (-1 to non-reflexive actions due to nausea from a failed Stamina + Resistance roll). Bonnie sent her iron jaws familiar to save Shining Star while Elaphe got out his knife and the Green Knight finally dislodged his unwelcome passenger and wheeled his horse around, charging back toward the group. As the zombie snapped at Shining Star and she barely got her face out of range, he rode in, leaped off his horse, and tore it to shreds with his wooden claws, knocking Shining Star to the ground and covering her with gore, but leading her uninjured.

Elaphe disemboweled a zombie and another one lunged at Bonnie, grabbing her. Amos picked up his musket and fired it, snapping one of the walking dead nearly in half as Shining Star rose to her feet. The animated corpse holding Bonnie bit her, crunching through the flesh of her shoulder as Bonnie let out a scream. Her iron jaws familiar immediately flew to her defense, though not to much avail.

Shining Star chanted the words to the Chains of Searing Light and bound the zombie attacking Bonnie in solid starlight and flame, rolling four 10s, completely immobilizing it, and dropped it to the ground. Bonnie scuttled away from the battle as Elaphe cut the spinal cord of another of the walking dead and Amos shot one in the head, dropping it to the ground on fire. One of them grabbed the Green Knight, but he tore it apart with his claws before it could bite him, and the group made short work of the remaining walking dead, switching to bow fire to take out the last few who had followed the Green Knight away during his initial charge and only now were staggering back to the battle.

After the battle, Shining Star looked at Bonnie's wounds and was surprised to see that they didn't seem as bad as she thought, though they were bleeding heavily (she lost an additional Health Level from blood loss but managed to score 4 successes on three dice and thus passed the Difficulty 4 Stamina + Resistance roll to avoid wound infection). Her hedge magic wasn't effective, but she used bandages and bound Bonnie's wounds, but not before applying the Malfean Balm (here not powered by demonic energy) into the wound, which made it look a lot better, though turning her fur around it to a shining bronze color.

The group found a new campsite closer to the lake, and this time picked Comfort and Concealment. Elaphe took his claw strider hunting, and they rested for two days while Bonnie's wounds healed.


The combat between a dozen animated corpses, five PCs and one iron jaws took just over an hour, or two run-throughs of this compilation of all versions of Castlevania's "Bloody Tears". That's not bad at all for Exalted combat! Though it did drag a bit at times, but I'm not sure that's even possible to avoid in turn-based combat. At least tick-based timing makes it more unpredictable.

The battle could have gone a lot worse than it did. Bonnie has a Lethal soak of zero, but the zombie did two damage on nine dice. Another zombie missed Shining Star even with her lower Dodge DV and being clinched. No one ever hit Elaphe. Both zombies that grabbed the Green Knight failed to do anything. The Green Knight's horse passed its Valor roll when the walking dead seized it. Bonnie passed her roll to avoid infected wounds in an incredibly statistically-unlikely way (it's usually Difficulty 3, raised for 4 for animated corpses through their Plaguebearer power). Not something the party can always rely on, but I think it helped drive home that combat can be very dangerous. Especially when I mentioned that it would take Bonnie over two weeks to heal before they used the Malfean Balm to turn some of her Lethal damage to Bashing.

I need to add a way for the walking dead to do reflexively Coordinated Attacks if they surround a target. Right now, they're great at clinching but bad at biting (Clinch Accuracy 8, Bite Accuracy 4), so they rely on grabbing people and then biting them, which is thematic. But a group of them isn't dangerous enough, since they would have to take three actions--Coordinate Attack, Clinch, then Bite--to hurt someone. Letting them do it reflexively if there are more of them surrounding a character than that character's Dexterity helps drive home how dangerous it is to get surrounded.

I originally rolled up bandits, but it was 1 point off of the walking dead and I have some plans for things happening in the area the PCs are traveling in. One of the most important parts of a sandbox is that other groups also have plans that they carry on with that the PCs can interact with, or not, so it's not just a game of MOVE TO HEX -> SEARCH -> TREASURE Y/N. The Fairhaven election was one of those--and the election is over now, and one of the candidates won, but the PCs haven't asked in anywhere about it and didn't even check the rumor mill in tower town--and the random animated corpses are another. I've got a couple more schemes up my sleeve, too.

Around this time last year (thank you On This Day), I had the idea to take the Final Fantasy summons and recast them as a fantasy setting pantheon, the way that GURPS Fantasy II has the cast of Winnie the Pooh reinterpreted as capricious deities. I ran through a few and let the idea sit, and honestly I forgot about it. Then when it popped up again in my memories, I thought, "You know...I've detailed the gods of the Kingdom of Flowers and B'rabt in Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom, but nowhere else. Maybe I should use these?"

So here are the gods of Chai:

• Bahamut: King of the gods, god of the sky, rulership, and government.
  
• Leviathan: Queen of the gods, goddess of the sea, knowledge, and secrets.
  
• Ramuh: God of storms, rain, and magic.
  
• Alexander: Deity of the sun and of justice.
  
• Phoenix: Goddess of healing, inspiration, birth, and renewal.
  
• Shiva: Goddess of winter and of commerce.
  
• Ifrit: God of destruction, ruin, and failure.
  
• Siren: Goddess of beauty, love, jealousy, and song.
  
• Maduin: God of boundaries, time, and transitions.
  
• Carbuncle: Goddess of the home, construction, and defensive warfare.
  
• Fenrir: Deity of the moon, transformation, and the spirit world.
  
• Phantom: Goddess of death, dreams, and the afterlife.
  
• Diabolos: God of night, murder, and offensive warfare.
  
• Titan: God of earth, the fields, and the harvest.

I'm sure there are some aspects of the world that I'm forgetting here, but I'm hitting the limit of my ability to turn entities summoned in battle that have one power and maybe a few spells into deities. "God of the Sky" could plausible belong to Bahamut, Valefor, Quetzalli, Garuda, and one or two others I'm missing.

I'm a little tempted to cut one of them to make a numerically significant 13, but I'm not sure who I would cut without losing something worthwhile--maybe Maduin, though I want to keep him. I also just realized it's perfectly balanced--six gods, six goddesses, and two without gender. I didn't set out intending to do that, but I like the symmetry.

I realized that the an important part of sword and sorcery is the rise and fall of civilizations, and while the Predecessor ruins all around the landscape do provide an evidence of society's fragility, and also means there's a hole in history between the time of the Predecessors and the time the game takes place. Exalted taught us the problem with having the ancient past, modern times, and basically nothing in between, so I want to fill that in a bit with some other groups. Here are three:

Arremer

The Kurokyura have not always been the rulers of Makai. Long ago, the people of Makai suffered from the tyranny of the arremer, who ruled the lands near the Cloudtop Mountains from their aeries. All rebellions against them failed because their strongholds were nearly inaccessible. Only a trained group of assassins could get in, and the peasants of Makai did not have that training.

Until the Kurokyura came. A group of vampires saw their opportunity and offered their assistance to the disparate rebel groups and martial monastic orders that had been attempting to resist the arremer's rule, and they were accepted. Their powers allowed them to scale the mountains, to penetrate the fortresses in the form of mist or rat or by bewitching the guards, and to kill the arremer rulers in their beds. The arremer were never numerous, and as the rebellion killed more and more of the overlords and the peasants openly rose up, most of them fled across the Cloudtop Mountains to the unknown western lands. The Kurokyura then settled into the abandoned aeries, rebuilding them to suit their image and creating modern Makai.

What became of the arremer beyond the mountains is unknown, but small communities of arremer sometimes live on the Cloud Kingdoms in western Agarica, surviving by raiding isolated villages or war with the pidget-folk. Their ability to breathe fire and wings make them superbly suited to this sort of raiding, and many people in the west look at any larger Cloud Kingdoms nervously and breathe a sigh of relief when they pass without incident.

Kani

In the south of the Kingdom of Flowers and west along the shores of the Narrow Sea toward the Great Bridge are occasional ruins, battered by wind and wave. The ruins look almost like they were grown out of the ground, with fantastic curves and whorls dominating their lines and opalescent colors shining through the grime of ages from the strangely-unbroken masonwork.

These were the cities of the kani, who lived in Agarica before there was a Kingdom of Flowers. They were amphibious, and their cities were always built partially on land and partially underwater to serve their dual natures. They kept mostly to themselves, having little contact with any of the surface peoples, thought there are stories that they maintained embassies with some of the civilizations of the ocean depths, like the half-mythical zora. They would sometimes raid nearby communities for food, though alternating it with trading fish from the sea and the works of their mysterious sorcerers, without any rhyme or reason.

The legends of the Kingdom tell that when the House of Wisteria first raised its banner and declared itself the royal house of the Kingdom of Flowers, their armies marched south to the sea and engaged the kani. The war was short but brutal, and though the Kingdom's legends speak only of the kani's atrocities, the scars left in the ruins and the trinkets made of kani-shell kept by some local communities tell all of the stories that the Kingdom's official history does not. The kani were not all killed, but their cities were destroyed and they were driven into the sea. The Kingdom suffered from kani raids for decades after the initial war, but the retaliation gradually petered out and now few shore-bound communities keep more than a token defense force.

Trow

In central Agarica, there are many round hills with entrances leading into underground structures, often ringed with partial pillars that stand unsupported and open to the sky. Beneath the earth, these hills expand into larger underground dwellings, carved out of living stone and supported with more pillars. These are the abandoned domains of the trow.

The trow flourished in their underground cities, farming on the surface and trading metalwork and precious gems for the crafts they could not make themselves. Their fame in blacksmithing was reknowned throughout Agarica, and many adventurers on their way to Etemenanki bought trow-forged weapons before heading into the tower, hoping to better their odds against the dangers they could find there. The trow carved fabulous murals on the entrances of their cities and the pillars that ringed them to demonstrate their wealth.

Then, one day, they vanished. Caravans found the doors of their cities closed and no trow answered their call. When explorers penetrated their cities, they found empty caverns, half-forged blades, tables set as though for a meal, and no sign of bodies or of battle. Questioning the spirits of the underground revealed little--the spirits were strangely reluctant to talk about it, with the most memorable statement spoken by an ancient and powerful meguroko: "They poisoned the soul of iron."

The ancient powers that keep Predecessor ruins mostly intact are absent among the trow ruins, and many of their caverns have collapsed on themselves. But occasionally an explorer will find an enchanted weapon or artificia among them, when they haven't become the home of dangerous creatures.

Yesterday was the first real session of the new Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom game I'm running. We've technically met twice before this, but they were mostly character creation sessions. The pitch for this game is a hexcrawl in the old tradition wandering murderhobos investigating locations, discovering perils, and then killing and stealing everything that's not nailed down or setting everything on fire.

This time, there are five characters:

• Shining Star, mandragora sorcerer-priestess of Nyahré, currently hiding her identity due to the bounty the Dragon Empire puts on most Floral nobility.
  
• The Green Knight, a mandragora briarwitch, one of the spirit-driven fanatics who serve the Forest of Shadows. He's traveling with Shining Star because he believes the forest spirits have told him they seek an alliance with Nyarhé in order to fight the Dragon Empire.
  
• Bonnie, a kong Auspicious Orator, the combination scribes, emissaries, and propagandists from Chai. Bonnie's family is quite rich, but all her money, and her government salary, are inaccessible at the moment. She's traveling with the group to study...
  
• Amos Burnham, a human from Earth. After the Battle of 1812, he grew sick of civilization and went west, spending years by himself and occasionally trading with nearby tribes. Eventually, he fell into a sinkhole that led to a pipe and found himself in Agarica. Shining Star found him, taught him to speak Floral, and showed him a bit of magic, and they've traveled together since then.
  
• Elaphe, a chuzan junior member of the Black Rose, the Muskalan Guild of Assassins. He went to Fairhaven when he heard Prince Greyfur was dead and an election was to be held, but after weeks with not a single contract being sent his way, he attached himself to a group that seemed likely to have trouble follow them. A group of murderhobos, for example.

Since this is a hexcrawl, I have a map (I'll put it in another post when I clean it up a bit) that in-game is a treasure map that Bonnie found in the diary of a famous adventurer from a century ago. That's the setup, and the players have the freedom to go about it however they wanted.

And how they wanted was mostly to dodge all the hooks I set up for them! Elaphe did take a moment to pickpocket his way through the crowd when they stopped in a small village where public executions were being held, letting me use the WFRP random treasure tables again to determine what he found, though with some modification--I figured that the bag of excrement was pretty unlikely--but they rode on by the ruins in the distance, let the other party of adventurers pass by without much incident other than questioning them about the source of their treasure, and left the town of Tannin and its election-related violence behind as soon as they could, other than Shining Star seeing if her healing skills were needed at the town's barber and being rebuffed and Elaphe riffling through the pockets of a mugging victim in an alleyway and then cutting their throat.

I used this set of random encounter tables to determine most of what happened, since they were the least low-level-D&D-centric ones I could find. I really need to make up some custom tables with categories like "fungal forest" or "Predecessor ruins" and more malicious spirits, thunder lizard migrations, and carnivorous plants, in addition to the standard bandits, travelers, and so on. It'll let me add more color events too, like the executions.

The party went out of Tannin's west game at the end of game, down the less-traveled road to Etemenanki, which the party is currently heading toward. There's a thriving town around there whose economy is based on adventurers going into the megadungeon and hauling loot out of it. We'll see what happens there!

Last night was the final session of the short Warlords of the Mushroom King game I ran, and almost the entire session was a battle with the Super Mario Galaxy 2 Bowser Music playing in the background. That sounds like a nightmare, but we run relatively short sessions and got a bit of a later start, to a combat with nine major characters--the protagonists and the Blossom Guard that Miyamoto had sent for against the warlock Kurome; his lieutenants, a kappa Brother of the Hammer and a mycon Cultist of the Broodmother; Kurome's summoned demons, and the surviving bandits.

The protagonists opened up the battle by sending Chi's familiar, a self-reassembling bob-omb, walking up to the group and exploding. It rolled 8 successes on seven dice, none of the bandits saw it, and so the protagonists had a huge advantage as they attacked from stealth while the bandits were in disarray. Daiju charged straight at the Brother of the Hammer while Kabocha and Miyamoto attacked the Cultist and Kaeru started carving his way through the bandits. No one got near Kurome, especially not after the demon materialized to guard him.

The Cultist went down quickly, but the Brother of the Hammer took a bit more time due to his thick armor and his Charm-enhanced toughness, but once he started hurting a bit, Miyamoto managed to wrestle his hammer away from him and hurl it into the forest. Deprived of his martial prowess--hard to be a Brother of the Hammer with no hammer--he died quickly after that. Kurome and his demon vanished before the protagonists could turn their attention to them (I'm sure they won't show up again next game!) and the remaining bandits, confronted with the death or disappearance of their leaders and the fact that a single warrior had killed a quarter of them, threw down their weapons and ran. The protagonists let them, figuring the flora would take care of them. They then returned to a heroes' welcome in the village and walked off into the sunset.

I realized there was a third demon that Kurome had under his control--a decanthrope, if you're curious--that I should have had launch itself from bandit to bandit the way it's described in that entry. I genuinely forgot about it, though.

Kurome didn't do much in the battle. He conjured an aura of fear around himself, called on the demon to defend him, and then stepped through the shadows to get away as soon as the battle turned against him. That's a bit by design, though. One of my goals was the sorcery is more broadly applicable than martial arts, but in direct combat, sorcerers have very limited options because spellcasting takes time and blasting spells are highly limited. That's why Kurome had demons to defend him, and why he left early. Maybe he could have turned the tide if he had gone on full offense and sent the demon to attack the protagonists...but that would have been a risk, and he didn't become a powerful warlock by taking risks.

Also the game was almost over, so that did influence my decision making. But only a bit. I didn't conceive of Kurome as the adventurous type.

I learned from this game that Exalted is a great gritty system where Charms and Exalted ruin everything! It worked really well, especially when I introduced the glass beads for players tracking their timing. I called out tick, everyone tosses one into the center, anyone with no beads gets to take an action. It worked really well, and the limited selection of powers meant that combat never really got bogged down. No dice pools with 30+. I think the highest number anyone rolled was 14, and that was Miyamoto disarming people. No one got hurt, so I still didn't get to test my new Medicine mechanics. But next game!

I've mentioned I always learn something from the games I finish. Here, I think I can sum what I learned down to two bullet points: 1) The Seven Samurai is a great plot and I can see why it's been ripped off so many times and 2) Exalted, at its core, is not as terrible as the internet makes it out to be, but it's a bad system for actual Exalted. At the mortal level, with dice pools from 4-12 or so, it works great.

Next Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom game starts next week!

A while ago, when I was converting WotMK over to Exalted's system, I decided to use Terrestrial Circle Sorcery for the various groups of creepy sorcerers because that way I didn't have to write a ton of spells. However, I gave every group of sorcerers ten spells, I've written up fifteen groups so far, I didn't want any overlap between the groups, and there's only so many Terrestrial Circle spells that people have written, even with weeks of scouring the internet for them a while back. When I was writing up the latest sorcerous order, I could only find five spells that fit the concept and weren't already taken by other groups. When I found myself writing up several new spells, I realized that I had hit the limits of the parameters I'd set for myself, and if I wanted to be able to write more sorcerous groups--and I do, since there are several countries in the gazetteers that don't have any at all--I needed a full custom spell list for each group.

So I'm going back to my previous approach. You can see an earlier version of that here, from when I was still using Novus, and a modern version below the cut:
( The Pyromancers of the Kappa Wastes )

So far, I've done that to thirteen of the fifteen original sorcerous orders I had--sixteen now, counting the one that triggered this whole thing in the first place--and it hasn't been nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. I did all that in about three weeks, and it leaves plenty of space for expanding into places that the list of Terrestrial Circle spells I have doesn't go.

For example, originally the Servants of Yarikh from B'rabt were just a place for all the Biblically-themed spells in Exalted to go, like Plague of Bronze Snakes, River of Blood, Water from Stone, Food from the Aerial Table, and so on to go, drawing on B'rabt's combo Egypt/Israel thematics (it's based on Birabuto, but I wanted something different than WotMK!Egypt), but now that I'm writing my own spells I can go back to the association of Yarikh as a moon god and write moon-themed spells for them. And keep the serpent imagery as well, because what is sword and sorcery if you don't have sinister priests with serpent-topped staves walking around?

Last night was another session of the Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom short-run game I'm doing. There was another session in between this one and the first one I wrote about, but I didn't have anything insightful to say about it and I'm not going to do a blow-by-blow recounting of this game, so I skipped it.

I'm writing here because this was the first session where we had actual combat. Part of the reason I wanted to use the Exalted system, even with all the ill-will it has on the internet, is that I'm convinced the base of the system is an interesting, crunchy timing-based (as opposed to round-based) engine and all the problems come when dozens of Charms have to interact with it. Also flurries. And the combat we had would seem to support that conclusion. It had seven participants, ran about half an hour--almost no one had played in an Exalted 2e combat before, so a lot of that time was explaining things--and went pretty smoothly.

Rather than use a battle wheel to keep track of timing, I used some glass counters I bought specifically for the purpose a while ago. Every time anyone took an action, they took counters equal to its Speed, and then I'd say "tick" and everyone would throw a counter in the pile. It made it obvious when people got to go again and kept things moving pretty well. I just wish that Daiju had gotten to participate, but he failed a Temperance roll, went off to investigate some pretty lights, and got beguiled by a faerie.

I did love my players' expressions when I said, "Faerie blood heals wounds. Just sayin'."

Since each player only had five or six Charms to pick from, all of which were from a single martial art and so focused on a particular combat style, there wasn't a lot of dithering and pouring over long lists. Chi used sorcery to link the group closer together so they could make group Stealth rolls, and then opened the battle against two kappa and two mycon bandits with Binding Filament Strands to take a prisoner. After that, he mostly just hid. Miyamoto leapt into the middle of the remaining three and laid about him with fists and feet, knocking one of the mycon out and getting a few hits on the kappa, though most failed to do much damage against its thick shell. Kabocha used her sticky tongue to snag the other mycon and chewed on it, eventually biting it in half. The final kappa ran after the other three bandits were incapacitated and Miyamoto and Kabocha chased it down, tackled it, and killed it.

Things I realized I forgot to do

• DV Tracking: Uh. Oops. I forgot to penalize people's defenses for the actions they took. It was mostly just attacking without anything complicated, but DV is an important part of the rules and if I really want to see how well the combat system works we need to track it.
  
• Combat Tactics: This is mostly because our printer is broken and I couldn't print out the reference sheet for actions, but I really should have had the sheet in front of everyone with the actions and DV costs on it. It would have helped people decide what to do.
  
• Knockdown: I forgot that checking for knockdown is based on the raw damage of the attack, not the post-armor and -soak damage. There were at least two attacks Miyamoto made that were reduced to a one or two damage dice that should still have checked for knockdown (kappa have 8L/8B armor just from their shells).

I did remember to track most everything else, including movement. I found a blank sheet of paper was fine for tracking all the of the enemies they were fighting. No extras, either--everyone had full stats. And I didn't have worry about bleeding, chance of infection, or disease, because none of the PCs even got hurt. The only one who got attacked was Miyamoto, and he handily dodged every attack directed at him.

The PCs also followed a trail the bandits hadn't done enough to disguise and found out their their camp is apparently within the boundaries of the Forest of Shadows. How are they surviving in there without drawing the wrath of the forest spirits or the carnivorous flora? Mysterious!

Things I need to do for next time--get that combat actions sheet printed out, stat up walking trees and forest spirits, and come up with a set of rules for Shaping combat (Chi is planning to use dream sorcery to interrogate/brainwash their captive) that aren't 1) overcomplicated and 2) terrible.

First real work I've done on Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom in a while! Now that the Dragon-Blooded Charm document is mostly done, it's time to turn my attention back to this. Part megafauna, part bits stolen from non-Mario sources.

Burrow Lok

Burrow loks are predators that look similar to giant guinea pigs, though far more vicious. They are horse-sized mammals, with squat snouts, sharp teeth, thick necks, stout bodies, and short muscular limbs ending in dangerous claws. They are covered in dark brown fur, males displaying lighter stripes above and below the eyes. Burrow loks have poor eyesight, but excellent senses of smell and hearing. They dig extensive tunnel networks below ground, which include living chambers, latrines, and chambers near the surface that function as traps. When a large-enough creature steps over the trap chamber, the roof collapses, dumping them into the trap chamber and the fangs of the waiting burrow lok. After their prey is disposed of and any trinkets they find to line their nests are taken away, the burrow lok will shovel earth into the collapsed chamber and build a new one elsewhere. They sometimes move into partially-collapsed buildings or damaged Predecessor ruins if there's a way to move enough dirt in that they can make their characteristic tunnels.

Fire Spirit

Fire spirits have a mixed reputation in Agarica. On the one hand, they are the spirits of brushfires and burned flesh, but on the other hand, they are the spirits of cooking fires and the hearth, and they receive praise and propitiation in nearly equal proportion. They are most common in the Kappa Wastes, but are also found in great numbers in the Berha Desert. Saying they are found in any one place is somewhat misleading, however, as fire spirits are fond of basking in the sunlight and can be found abroad at any time during the day. Their mindset is somewhat simplistic, and it is generally easy to tell where one stands with a fire spirit--if they are angry, they simply try to burn the target of their anger to death, and otherwise they generally ignore mortals. Some of them are much wiser than the average, however, and the knowledge to gain from them can be considerable, as the Pyromancers or the Paragons of Incandescence can attest to.

Lynel

The liontaurs of the savannah, the lynels mostly live in small groups scattered across Agarica's mountains, though some of them have crossed the Great Bridge seeking new territory or food in Pithek. These groups are rarely more than a dozen individuals, but lynels are so individually powerful they can fight off thunder lizards, dossun families, or kappa warbands. It is fortunate for the nations of Agarica that the lynels do not seek conquest, as every one of them is naturally attuned to the Essence of the world. Even lynel children can call fire, and adults can hurl lightning or flames on their enemies or set their own bodies alight without harming themselves.

There are two main varieties of lynel, the blue and the red, who live in the Cloudtop and the Turtleback mountains respectively. The only difference discernable to outsiders other than the color is that the blue lynel manipulate air Essence and the red lynel manipulate fire Essence. Red lynels occasionally descend from the mountains into the lowlands of the Kingdom of Flowers seeking food during harsh winters, but the Barrier mostly kept them away. Now that it has been destroyed and the Dragon Emperor rules, the farms near the mountains mostly lie fallow and the lynels may have to travel further afield to find the same plunder they are used to.

Souldrinker Spider

These creatures are related to souldrinkers in some way, as they are always found in the same ruins together but the source of the relationship is unclear. While souldrinker spiders cannot drain life or fly as souldrinkers do, they are just as aggressive and dangerous due to their ability to control lightning. Their horns constantly spark in battle, and they can use the lightning to stun their enemies before devouring them. The creature is even capable of deflecting arrows or thrown weapons with its lightning bolts. Their legs are unsuitable in battle and too weak to grapple anything larger than a mycon child, but they are strong enough to hold on to walls and ceilings and allow the souldrinker spider to make prodigious leaps. This is their favorite method of attacking prey, and the last thing many explorers of Precursor ruins have felt is the searing crackle of a souldrinker spider's lightning.

Souldrinker Titan

Like the souldrinker spider, the souldrinker titan is only ever found in ruins containing souldrinkers, but it seems even further removed from them. Nearly six yards tall and twenty from their lamprey-like mouth to the tip of their tail, the souldrinker titan is a monstrosity that seems almost out of place in the smaller tunnels of the Predecessor ruins where it makes its home. They are sometimes called the "dragons of the deep" for two reasons. The first is that, like dragons, they collect treasure, though it is unclear if it's simply due to the objects' appearance or due to some other properties. The second is that their breath is deadly. While they do not breathe fire as dragons do, they can spit streams of acid powerful enough to score stone or melt through kappa shells in seconds. Much else beyond that is unknown, and it's unclear how they find enough food to support their enormous bulk or if they ever need to eat.

I had a few thoughts I didn't mention in yesterday's post where I ran through Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom combat, so I figured I'd write about them here.

• It Really Is That Lethal - My Exalted 1e game never really had much problem with lethality, but stacked persistants in 1e meant that the complaint was more often about combat dragging on and on with no resolution, whereas 2e it was whiff whiff SPLAT. The lack of Charms here prevented combat from degenerating into Perfect spam, but it was still obvious that combat was "realistic" in the sense that wearing heavier armor is a really good strategy. The bandits were relying on their tough skin (3L/3B soak), and that meant that when they did get hit it was really painful--all of them died in only one or two hits from Goji, who had 12L base damage. Amiyumi, with 7L base damage, got a couple good hits in, but also a couple that plinked off their soak.
  
  On the other hand, most attacks that did hit, hit with very small margins--usually only 1 or two successes. That also implies that making a dodgy ninja would be possible, since no character here was optimized for avoidance. They'd be a glass cannon and quite possibly get taken out in a single hit, but hits would be rare.
  
  My characterization of "Runequest with dice pools" seems pretty accurate. Wear armor, don't just wade into battle, use positioning and strategy, and don't get hurt if you can because healing takes forever. There's a section on running RQ6 combat when healing times are so long, and I should probably read that. Thaumaturgy can help with that in Exalted, but it's still no Cure Light Wounds.


• Raptok Are Murder Machines - Some of that is because schoolpsychnerd knew this was going to be a combat test, so she optimised Goji for fighting. It also meant that a lot of the disadvantages of raptok, like lacking dextrous hands or being unable to speak most languages, didn't come into play. Their bite does +7L, which is much as a post-Scroll of Errata two-handed great axe, and they've got that ranged clinch.
  
  Also, I just realized that Goji had orichalcum hearthstone bracers. We remembered the +3 to Dodge pool, but forgot the +2 to raw damage. That would have made her even more killy.


• Knockdown and Stunning Aren't Super Dangerous - I can see why a lot of people ignore these rules, especially playing the Exalted. There was some chance here that the bandits would have suffered from the effects, since they had 3 dice to resist Stunning and 6 dice to resist Knockback, but they made all their rolls. Goji and Amiyumi never took more than one Health Level of damage at a time, so they were never subject to these effects.


• Coordinating Attacks Would Have Helped - Coordinating attacks requires a Charisma + War roll and then reduces the target's DV by the number of successes on that roll. If I had remembered about that rule, that might have been a lifesaver for the bandits, who mostly fought as an individual disorganized mob and paid the price for it. They don't have the War skill (as befits a disorganized mob), but since most attacks hit or missed by one or two successes, even reducing the DV by one would have helped the bandits land more hits. As it was, Goji had all her -0 Health Levels full by the end, so a few more hits would have started wound penalties.


• I Need Morale Rules - I didn't appreciate how great OSR D&D games' morale rules were for a long time, but nowadays I think they do a lot to make combat less grinding. And especially in a system where getting injured, with the attendant bleeding, long healing times, and wound infection, is so terrible, beating the enemy without having to fight them would be great. I just used Valor rolls, but I should have some system for when the Valor rolls are required and how they get more difficult. For example, the very first attack made in the battle was Goji grappling a bandit with her tongue and then biting them in half. That should have required morale rolls for the other bandits. AD&D 2e calls for rolls in situations like "when surprised," "25% of their group has fallen, "ally slain by magic," "50% of the group fallen," "offered surrender or a bribe," and so on. Those seem like good guidelines. There's a chart on page 156 of Exalted, but it's pretty vague--what does "Enemy of slightly superior combat strength" mean, exactly?
  
  And as in D&D, morale helps provide a niche for the walking dead, who automatically succeed at all Valor rolls and thus will never run away barring some kind of magic. Though in Exalted, zombies have a much higher chance of wound infection, so there's two reasons not to fight them.


• My -0 Health Level Rule is Great - I gave everyone, including all the NPCs and monsters, -0 Health Levels equal to their Stamina. That helps make Stamina more valuable--though even without it, avoiding wound infections, knockdown, and so on makes Stamina better than with a game with Exalts--and reduces healing times, since healing is based on the category of Health Level: -0s take one day, but -1s take one week. Quite the jump. Again, magic exists to make that faster, but it's still no Cure Light Wounds.


• Temporary Resources Are Very Influential - Since the margin of success was usually pretty small, spending a point of Willpower for an automatic success or channeling a Virtue for extra dice made the difference between success and failure several times. Amiyumi turned a near-miss into a hit at least twice, and Goji used all her Valor channels on attacks, I think. In a long-term game, they'd be more careful with them, but on the other hand they were outnumbered three to one here.
  
  While I used full Health Levels and 10s count double with the bandits, I didn't have them spend any Willpower. That's probably the way I'd do Extras for a grittier feel--they can't channel Virtues or spend Willpower. Lieutenants and up can.

It felt pretty sword and sorcery, which was exactly my goal. All in all, I'm pleased with how it worked out!

Edit: I just realized that the bandits were all armed with spears, so they could have used Thrust to make their attacks Piercing and get through some of that soak. Oops.

Also occasionally called hearthstones or magicite, Crystals are natural distillations of elemental Essence into a solid form. They appear in lonely places where Essence flows strongest and the spirits are most active--in the depths of the woods, on the tops of mountains, on the bottoms of lakes, and so on. The Kappa Waste and the Shifting Sands in Pithek are known for their Fire Crystals, the leaves of the Forest of Shadows provide shade to glittering Wood Crystals, and divers descend the Lake of Dreams searching for the Water Crystals that form closer to shore.

Crystals require certain geomantic characteristics to form at all, and these characteristics are rarely, if ever, found close to civilization, despite the best efforts of practitioners of the Art of Geomancy to manipulate the Essence of more accessible locations. As such, Crystals require travel to remote locations and are very expensive because of the hazard, expense, and dependence on conditions of the local dragon lines.

There are three main uses that Crystals are put to in Agarica. The first is that each Crystal's particular Essence is slightly different, and someone who holds the Crystal in hand and crushes it can draw on that Essence for a particular effect. Such effects are incredibly varied and nearly anything is possible, from an Air Crystal that allows the bearer to hold their breath for hours to an Earth Crystal that makes all blows bounce from the bearer's skin, from a Fire Crystal that can turn an enemy's blood to living flame to a Water Crystal that allows the bearer to slip easily into a dreamless sleep or a Wood Crystal that can change the bearer's coloration to match the surrounding terrain. The Essence is temporary, however, and always fades. Some effects last for a week, some for a month, some only for a moment, but none are permanent.

The second is that a sorcerer can draw on the Essence to replenish their reserves directly after evoking a spell. To do so, they must forgo any other beneficial effects the Crystal would normally have, but as sorcery is so energy-intensive, the results are often worth it and rare is the sorcerer of any power who does not have a few Crystals with them for emergencies.

The third is as a power source for artificia. The artifex of the Scarlet City are a nearly-inexhaustible market for fresh Crystals for their experiments, and even the simple bob-ombs used by Muskalan grenadiers function far more efficiently if powered by a Fire Crystal rather than a crude fuse. The Essence within doesn't last forever, though, and the weaker Crystals are used up almost immediately. Artifex across Agarica have searched for a means to extend Crystals' usefulness for lifetimes, but so far with no results for their efforts.

While most Crystals are influenced by the elements, not all of them are. There are some Crystals that form in unhallowed places with unsavory powers, from speaking with corpses to imbuing weapons with the icy touch of the grave, and some Crystals that draw on aspects of the sun, moon, or Star Road. While it is possible to deliberate manipulate the geomancy of an area to create the former--and some of the Circle of Xhamekh have started creating such areas within the Dragon Empire--the latter are far more random, making them much more valuable.

System
For the first and second uses, it works as stated. Crushing the Crystal is a diceless Miscellaneous Action with Speed 2 if it's already in hand and Speed 5 if it has to be dug out of a pouch, and provides either the stated effect or five times its rating in motes. For the third use, a Crystal powers an artifact for one hour (•), one day (••), one week (•••), one month (••••), or six months (•••••).


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There. That works out as a homage to Final Fantasy I, a way to make some of the more problematic hearthstones like the Gem of Adamant Skin usable without breaking the game in half, and a reason for adventurers to head out into wild places far from civilization in search of loot to sell other than endless dungeon-delving. It also means I can get a lot more use out of the published hearthstones, since there are dozens and dozens of them, but in canon Exalted the average character is unlikely to have more than one or two, and be tied to their manses to defend them.

I'm pretty proud how much of Exalted I've been able to pull in and reuse for WotMK. It's saved me an enormous amount of prep time, even with how much work I've put into this.