Speaker 1: Hey, this is Steve Morrison of Arrant Adventures, and I'm
joined by my friend and collaborator John from Tail of
the Manticor, and we are here to bring you a
special combination actual play, narrative drama. John, what the heck
are we doing here?
Speaker 2: Well, this is something we've been talking about for while, Steve,
and I'm a fan of your show, You're a fan
of my show, and we thought what would happen if
we kind of just smash these two shows together and
saw what kind of ridiculous beast came out of it.
And so that, I think is what we're going to
try and do here.
Speaker 1: It is and so we are going to do a
little bit of actual play gaming, and for that we're
going to use the old school essentials, a system that
John is very familiar with and that I have been
looking forward to playing ever since I started listening to
Tail of the Manticor.
Speaker 2: My show is.
Speaker 1: All about the live actual play. I just sit down
and play the game straight and to the microphone and
do a little bit editing on it, whereas John's show
is a little bit more about creating some narrative and
actually spending time editing and writing and doing all those
wonderful production things that make his show sound so good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we are thinking about sort of sea song
between a section of narrative, section of gameplay and just
kind of have the camera zoomed out and then have
the camera zoomed in and just see if it works.
I guess we're going to see if this works and
learn by doing absolutely. Let's talk about the kind of
house rules or lack of house rules that we're going
to use, because we are going to be using old
school essentials. And so the first question is do we
want to use it rules as written or do we
want to use any kind of homebrew hacks. Usually when
I play it, either at a table or on my show,
I use it a couple of hacks, nothing major, just
a couple of things to I guess it's to avoid
really really weak characters, especially from the get go, so
I do things like begin with maximum hit points. Is
that something that we want to do? I think so.
Speaker 1: I like the idea of trying to give our characters
as much of a chance to survive as we can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's plenty deadly even with that. Okay, so we'll
do that, and then we shall we just play it
by year for everything else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I will say, I really like your rule about
rolling for stat increases on level ups.
Speaker 2: It's fun, it's fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I feel like I would be happy to
do that as well, and then we can kind of
take it as it comes as we as we go through.
Speaker 2: Now we're not going to be running this for years,
so level ups, we could say that every episode our
characters go up a level, and even that it's not
going to take us that far right. Does that appeal
to you? It's going to feel accelerated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would certainly give the narrative and the play
a certain momentum, which which might be nice to have.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you what, why don't we do this? We'll
we'll say yes, but if it feels wrong when we
get there, then we'll have that and we'll say one
every two. Yeah. I agree. If we don't do at
least that, then it's essentially there's there's going to be
no level up. Yeah, makes sense to me. Other things
that we should knock out before we really get into it,
lines and veils For me, I guess the places that
I'm not really interested in going would be sort of
explicit sexuality things like torture. I don't mind having some
violence in there, especially as we'll almost inevitably have combat.
Speaker 1: How about you, Yeah, I would say I'm about the same.
Anything explicitly sexual, especially sexual violence. Definitely want to avoid that.
I would say probably violence against children, as you know,
explicit violence against children. The world is a brutal place
and terrible things happen, but you know, if we can
stay away from any sort of explicit descriptions of that.
Speaker 2: How do you feel about profanity, because that's one of
those things that, like, I have no trouble with it,
but I feel like if it's not consistent, it does
something with the immersiveness of a world. It's kind of
you should either be there or not be there. Where
are you on that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I waffle a lot on my show. I don't really
use much profanity, and oftentimes in my fantasy worlds, I
create my own profanities, which can have its own roadblocks
and stumbling blocks as far as drawing you out of
the narrative.
Speaker 2: I think we're on the same page there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, I don't mind it. I play to the
table when it comes to profanity, Like I've sat at
tables where we swear every other word. I've sat at
tables where we go pole sessions without anything, so let's
go with not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just because it's easy. And I think that said,
we probably better underscore that this is made for mature audience.
Speaker 1: Agreed, alrighty cool.
Speaker 2: I think that we are probably ready to wrap up
this little introduction and get to character creation.
Speaker 1: Sounds good to me. Let's actually get into some of
that play that we were talking about. Yeah, the sun
rose over nalakar as Drovar grabbed his pack and bow
and set off down the street toward the gate. As
he approached the arched stone gateway, he saw the remnants
of the shattered pipes. Those damned Hillianites destroyed. Gods be
praised the beasts. Those pipes kept at bay hadn't been
seen in twenty years. As he passed through the gate,
there was more traffic than usual as merchants from Formerist arrived.
The carts were laden with barley and corn, and guards
and Formeristian livery walked beside the rolling caravan. Nalikar soldiers
greeted them and directed them toward the granaries. As citizens
passed by, calling out pleasantries outside the walls Drovar was
joined by Zealedra, who just pulled away from chatting with
a Nalikar sergeant. When she saw him, Zalidra said, wady
ahead out. Drovar nodded, how's odrum. She glanced back at
the sergeant and shrugged.
Speaker 2: The Hillianites have been quiet since making them move, and
the grain delivery is on time, which puts everywhere at ease.
We'll see if the hilly Knites remain quiet.
Speaker 1: Grunting, Drovar adjusted his pack. Commander Ragan assigned us to
patrol the riven Wood. If we hurry, we can be
back mid afternoon. They left Nalakar behind as the sun
traversed the sky, turning the air warm and humid. The
Ribbon Wood, an ancient dense forest, extended from the plains
outside Nalakar and stretched up the mountains separating Nalakar from
Formerist The main road continued along the edge of the forest,
while a single dirt path branched off through the ribbon
Wood and skirted the edge of the mountain, connecting the
two settlements. And it was along this path the two
rangers walked. They started to mallet around when the sun
reached its Zena. Exchanging looks, drove Ar knocked an arrow
while Zeleidra drew her axe. Advancing they followed the curve
of the path around a particularly thick cluster of gnarled trees.
Soledra saw it first, and she swore to all the gods.
Drove Ar squinted at what looked like a caravan, with
carts overturned and bodies everywhere. Flies buzzed and splotches of
red marked the trees. Sledra looked confused, and Drovar couldn't
blame her. Some of the bodies wore the livery of formerists.
If he hadn't seen the caravan arriving at the gate
that morning, he would have believed this was that same caravan.
Was there supposed to be a second delivery, Zilidra asked.
Drovar shook his head. Never has been before, not within
a day of each other. A sound drew their attention,
wheezing groan from one of the over turned carts. Sledra
gripped her ax and hurried to the spot. She stepped
around the edge of the cart and stared down. Her
face went from concern to terror in a heartbeat, and
Drovar watched in horror as something tackled her with a
wailing screech. Sladra barely had time to scream before the hunched,
pallid thing ripped her throat open.
Speaker 2: Drovar drew back.
Speaker 1: His bowstring and loosed an arrow to the thing's back.
Its head snapped around, jagged teeth, dripping Zeladra's blood. The
ranger dropped his bow and ran, but a root he
hadn't noticed before caught his foot, and he sprawled to
the ground. As he tried to scramble to his feet,
a heavy weight landed on his back. Hot breath kissed
the back of his neck. He screamed, what.
Speaker 2: Are you feeling for our attribute roles? Do you want
to go straight three D six down the line or
do you have a preferred method.
Speaker 1: I am happy to play in your playground here. I'm
trying to think if I've ever done three D six
just straight down the line, So I kind of feel
like I want to do that.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's do it. Let's do it and see what
we get. And maybe if you hate what you're looking at, yeah,
they will talk because sometimes you get a real ooh.
Speaker 1: I'm definitely gonna hate what I'm looking at because my
dice rolls are troublesome at best.
Speaker 2: You know, I could be a hot dice roller sometimes. Well,
here's hoping always. Why don't we Do you want to
go sort of bounce back and forth or do you
want to do one character first and then another character.
Speaker 1: Maybe doing the stats back and forth would be fine,
but then doing all the rest of the details on.
Speaker 2: That there are no other details. Welcome to oh school essentials.
That's it, like literally, that's about it. Yeah, not not completely,
not completely. Okay, I'll tell you what. We'll we'll pingpong
it and I'm gonna start go for it. Okay, here
we go. Strength A thirteen. Hello, that's pretty good. It's
really good. I've got a nine, a nine. Intelligence, I've
got a nine, and I've got a fifteen. Hey, it's
gonna be Masers Part two for us. In wisdom, I've
ooh my goodness, I've got a four. Ooh, okay, I'm
gonna I'm gonna leave it as is for now.
Speaker 1: I've got a seven for wisdom.
Speaker 2: Dexterity, I've got a ten.
Speaker 1: And I've got a twelve.
Speaker 2: Okay, Constitution is seven.
Speaker 1: Oh, I've got a ten for constitution.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, I got a five for charisma. Boo,
I don't know about this, and I'm looking at an
eight for charisma. Okay, so not bad. I'm looking at
a character that has got multiple deep penalties. I'm not
sure if this guy is a goer. Yeah, you might
be might need to reroll. I have a rule that
I use on my main show where anything that is
a five or less I reroll just because characters that
are this disadvantaged can really be difficult to play. Should
I just go ahead and use that rule. I'm just
going to go ahead and use that rule.
Speaker 1: Because the alternative is you just reroll all the stats.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we just ping ponged it, which make it
really really difficult, really annoying. All right, here we go.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I got a fourteen, which that where you're rerolling.
Speaker 2: I guess I was rerolling wisdom. And then I've got
a second that's a five or below, and that gives
me a twelve. Okay, this is a This is a
much better array. Where I've got one. I've got two
bonuses and one penalty. Good Okay. In case you're not
familiar for bonuses and penalties, Basically, if it's a thirteen
or above, you do get some kind of bonus. Do
you have any thirteen or aboves? I've got one.
Speaker 1: I've got a fifteen in intelligence.
Speaker 2: For intelligence, you get your native language plus an additional
and you're literate. Yeah. Yeah, it's nice. For strength, my
character has a thirteen. That's a plus one. For wisdom,
that's a plus one, probably unsaving throws. And that's it. Oh,
I had no. I have a negative too. I have
a negative constitution of minus one. All right, my character
is already kind of taking shape as to what they are.
I'm looking at either a cleric character or a fighter character,
but probably a cleric makes sense. Yeah, so I've got
a cleric, and I'm going to say that that constitution
is the result of some kind of past injury. I
don't know what that's going to be, but I'm somehow,
you know, lamed, I probably probably walk with a limp
or something like that. Maybe I'm a bit slower. Good.
Your character is probably a magic user. Probably doesn't have
to be.
Speaker 1: I feel like with that fourteen in intelligence, it makes
sense to go with magic user.
Speaker 2: They could also be like a leader, like an officer, right,
that would make sense too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but with my strength being a nine and dexterity
being a twelve, Like I don't get any bonuses from
any of those.
Speaker 2: Still it's average. I could see an officer who doesn't
do as much frontline type fighting having a lower strength.
I guess the question is what kind of character sounds
like more fun?
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I could also potentially go elf. Yes,
that would be intelligence and strength as prime requisites.
Speaker 2: It's not a terrible idea actually to go with Elf,
because then we're going to get a kind of a
nice breadth of skill sets. Yeah, all right, I'm going
to do that. Then, okay, let go Elf. So your
Elf is going to take six hit points as their
sort of class maximum, and for anybody who's not versed
in the OSSE, they use races class. So Elf is
a class, but it's basically a fighter magic user. Let's see,
my first level cleric does not get any spells. So
that's easy, yep. If you want to choose one, I
can give you the list, or you can roll randomly
and we'll just make sure that you don't get any
of the ones that don't translate into podcaster y Yeah,
because there's a few that just don't I don't know.
Do you want to embrace the chaos or do you
want to choose one?
Speaker 1: Absolutely want to embrace the chaos.
Speaker 2: All right, it's a D twelve then, and if you
get away, Amy, I'll have you roll again.
Speaker 1: All right, here we go rolling for spell A twelve.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's an interesting one, especially for podcastery. Can you
guess it's ventraloquism?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Interesting? Do we want to decide sort of how we
know each other? My feeling is that the thing that
makes sense is a patrol doesn't come back. Yeah, and
we might be the b patrol that's set out to
find out what to them? Would they send two people
or do we want to say that we're two people
leading a small force of red shirts?
Speaker 1: Do we want to do that? Or do we want
to do like a patrol of four and each run
two characters?
Speaker 2: We can do that for sure. Do you want to
go ahead and roll up those other two characters?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 1: I kind of feel like, you know, rolling characters is
so easy and fun. It's it's so fast. Oh yeah,
I almost forgot. I have to name my guy. This
I did in advance.
Speaker 2: I am going to play a male character just because
you don't want to hear me try and do a
female voice the whole time. It's painful. So my guy's
name is Vidar Esta.
Speaker 1: I was not good and did not prepare a head,
so I need some elf name here.
Speaker 2: How do you feel about Kara? That's Elvis for carrot top.
He is a redhead. You know it's good. We've got Vidar,
the cleric, human, Ka the elf, Yes, and ge I
wonder who else is in this scouting party? Are you
ready to go again? Let's find out? Yeah, here we go.
All right, our rules are starting to come together. It's
gonna be anything five or lower. You reroll. I got
a five, jeez, okay, that's better. I got an eleven
for strength. I've got a thirteen nice. Oh oh oh
oh oh, this never happens. I got an eighteen yeah,
and three D six. This may be our man. Oh
my gosh, it's gotta be oh my, I think that's
happened twice. Yeah, in the last three years. That's since
I picked up the hobby again. All right, my intelligence
seven seven, Well, my character promises not to talk down
to your character much. All right, wisdom six. All right,
there's my hubris coming right back. At me.
Speaker 1: I've got a twelve for my wisdom.
Speaker 2: I've got an eleven.
Speaker 1: For all right, I've got a fourteen for dex m hmm.
Speaker 2: Nice. Are we getting all the four Are we getting
the classic characters? Almost right? Yeah, I'm looking at a
ten for con Oh, my goodness, thirteen for con good.
There's a bonus there, boy, those are life saving those
corn bonuses. Charisma, Oh, another high rule sixteen? Nice, get out.
This is a hero, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, these this
character may be the leader. Ten for my charisma. Very good.
It's the middle of the road. We'll take it. Gosh,
I would have been happy with just generally competent. This
leader character that I've got has got a wisdom of six. Wow,
it's a negative one. It's not the end of the world.
Maybe they're just a little bit quick to anger. I'm
gonna just write that down. Quick to anger. Yeah, tell
me about your bonuses.
Speaker 1: So I've got a thirteen strength, so that gives me
a plus one to I think.
Speaker 2: Tech and damage yep, hitting damage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get a minus one in intelligence, which is
you know, that's okay, probably just delliterate. Yeah, yeah, decks
of fourteen. So that also gives me a one and
a con of thirteen, so that also gives me a one.
Speaker 2: Good. So yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like I could go fighter or
archer even yeah, or archer or a thief.
Speaker 2: If you go with a thief character. The real advantage
that a thief has is that they level up quickly,
and that probably won't you won't benefit from that. Give
me what we're doing. So you if you want to
play a thief, like great, do it, but you might
be embracing a weaker character, you know, which is fine.
Speaker 1: It would make sense to send off, you know, a
fighter and cleric and a magic user and an elf
to scout out whatever terrible thing might be in the forest.
Speaker 2: So it does all right, Yeah, I'll go I'll go
fighter with this cool and I had a name here,
but it's just not fancy enough for a magic user.
So I'm going to go and call up the Don
John name generator as well, and I'm going to see
if I can find something that is like extremely fancy.
Speaker 1: Now he may not be an ALF, but would have
an ALF name be indicative of being fancy or one
of the other options. Maybe it could be Dwarvish name
or something you know, something not human Findeleth.
Speaker 2: There, I'm combining two of the ones that I see
here awesome, and I'm going to go with Findealeth.
Speaker 1: I think my fighter's name is going to be you
gall u g A l e u e g a
l you gall the breaker.
Speaker 2: Good good good. Oh. And I get to roll for
a spell. It's like my favorite part, except when you
get a bad one. Okay, there we go, and it's
a five, which is light. Okay, it's not glamorous, but
it makes sense. It can be useful. You sure can.
And let me see. Your fighter has eight hit points
plus constitution, so nine, I believe. And my wizard, who
I never played, like an old wizard, so I think
I'm going to go with a little bit old. He's
got four hit points.
Speaker 1: Do we want to talk about gear and stuff like
that or do you think we should go through the
process of selecting all that gear and everything and then
jump back in.
Speaker 2: I think we should kind of just sort of magic
snap the fingers, and why don't we just say that
our characters have whatever would be reasonable for a scouting
party to have. So the fighters are going to have
chain mail, but not plate mail. They're going to have
a wooden shield, but not an amazing shield, you know,
just your basic you know, whatever kind of standard issue
gear would be available to be scouting party. Things like
do we have torches and ropes and stuff like that?
We could ran minds it at the time, or we
can just make it up. Yeah, we don't have to
get too granular with that stuff. Let's see if you've
got arm like chain mail and shield. I think that's
an AC of fifteen ascending, so yeah, they probably both
have that. Yeah, your carriacters definitely have that, as does
my cleric, and then Findleth is just gonna have AC
of ten. Nothing.
Speaker 1: One other question, which is my decks for you, gole
the breaker, I have a dex bonus of one. Does
that add on to my AC in addition to yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay, cool, so that's AC and to hit for missile, right,
but not for damage? What kind of weapons are we
all carrying? Cleric's going with handy old mace. The Wizard's
got nothing, just a just a walking staff. What kind
of weapons do uh care theear and you gall have?
Speaker 1: That is a great question, I feel like with that
dex bonus Yougle should.
Speaker 2: Definitely have a bow. Definitely, it would probably be a
short bow.
Speaker 1: It depends on how well we think they're kitted out
from Nalocar, because he has the strength to you know,
wield a long bow just from a like narrative standpoint,
like he's a he's a beefy old boy, so he
can probably you know, drop back a long bow. It
would just depend on whether or not we think that
they would have those available in Nalocar or if it
would just be like standard issue would be short bows.
Speaker 2: What do you think this is a city that spends
it's focused on defense. I guess a long bow does
make sense. Okay, so longbow is the elf similarly kitted out?
Is it kind of like a bow and a sword
or are you going to go with something more exotic?
Speaker 1: So I definitely think that you Gall also has like
a mall or something like that, because if I if
I nicknamed him the Breaker, he's got to he's got
to be able to get up close and do some damage.
And then I like the idea of Karathy or having
probably a bow and then maybe a spear, but I
think he.
Speaker 2: Would probably have a short bow. I think character creation's
pretty much zipped up. This is where we start our gameplay.
Here's what I'm feeling. I feel that since we are
the be scouting party, our first job is going to
be to go and find out what happened to the
party that did not return. And I rolled up a
name for our commanding officer, and her name is Commander Reagan.
She says that our job is to go and find
out what happened to the last party. And do we
want to add anything to that or is that it
go find out what happened to them? I think that's enough.
Speaker 1: I feel like it is a pretty straightforward mission.
Speaker 2: Great, so we're for intelligent guys, and we're probably going
to start by retracing their steps or trying to figure
out where they would have been given their patrol route. Yeah. Absolutely,
So let's see, are we going off in the morning
or is it kind of like they didn't come back
at night go out at night? That seems unwise. We're
probably a morning group, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think this is probably the following morning after they
went out scouting, because I think they were supposed to
take a pretty easy route down the road and just
check and make sure there weren't any dangers along the
road towards Formerist and so it shouldn't have taken them
more than a day. And so the fact that they
have not returned by nightfall either you know, they ran
into some trouble or they got lost, which would be
weird for a couple of scouts out there. And so
I think us leaving in the morning makes the most sense.
Speaker 2: Right, And I think given the history of Nelukar, they're
probably not thinking of some terrible beast has torn them
to ribbons. They're probably thinking raiders or highwaymen or just
misadventure of some good Yeah, absolutely, all right, So we're
not going out there expecting to get into some kind
of knockdown fight.
Speaker 1: Now, we are just on the road looking for signs
of our fellows and any sort of trouble that might
be something that they either couldn't handle or you know,
tried to. Maybe they got captured, who knows.
Speaker 2: Now do you imagine that we're going out on horseback
or on foot? I think we're on foot. Okay, so
we're on foot. We're probably traveling fairly late, carrying our
weapons and like minor pack full of equipment, that kind
of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think maybe like a day's worth of rations.
We're expecting to go out, maybe even two days. You know,
it's like, yeah, go out. Maybe we have to look
around a little bit. The expectation is that we're going
to find them probably dead, but we're hoping that that
is not the case, and that we find them living
or at least find some sign of them.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, so we're heading out to the south, we'll say,
and you know, the hours passed, and finally we get
to the point where we believe their patrol would have
come by this area. So we've gotten far enough out
that we believe that we're somewhere along their patrol route.
I think at this point it makes sense for our
characters to look for some evidence of their passing. Yeah,
do we want to say that one of our characters
has some ability to look for tracks that kind of thing.
Should we just make a roll against a table and
see if we can find any evidence of passing?
Speaker 1: I think that makes sense. And we've got a couple
of scouts out here, and we've.
Speaker 2: Got an Elves are good at everything.
Speaker 1: They are the superior class.
Speaker 2: Easy. Now, all right, what do you think it could
be like checking for secret doors, which would mean that
our elf would have a two in six chance. Should
we just make it as simple as that?
Speaker 1: We should definitely make that as simple as that. Do
you have a D six? There's the real question. I
do have a D six, and I am rolling it now.
I want to get a one or two?
Speaker 2: Correct? Yeah, I got it too. Hey, I think we
do find evidence of their passage, then, Okay, how old
is it, do you think? Well, I mean it's got
to be a day.
Speaker 1: It's a day, yeah, a little less than a day.
Are we at the edge of the forest and on
the road, and so we're we're find some maybe some
like signs that they stepped off the road and maybe
took a break and had some food. And so there's
maybe an area of ground that's some like grasses that
have been trampled down a little bit, and some obvious
signs of you know, whatever hard tack bread that scouts carry.
Speaker 2: Right, a trail of bread crumbs down.
Speaker 1: I think, Cara, there is you know, sort of crouching
down looking at it and then sort of holds up
the piece of bread and sort of crumbles it in
his hand and is like they were here, they must
have gone into the forest, So I think we should
probably follow.
Speaker 2: Them, all right, So we're gonna leave our path. We're
gonna leave the sort of relative safety of I guess,
being in sight of home and being on the road,
and being on the probably foothills or hills, going to
get into the woods the road splits off and definitely
findlith has studied their route and knows that they would
have continued on the outside of the tree line. But
if you're right, Gareth, here they've gone into the woods.
Why would they have done that?
Speaker 1: It doesn't quite make sense. But I can see no
other alternative than that they entered into the woods, that
they followed the trails deeper.
Speaker 2: Perhaps your acute sense of hearing might offer a clue.
That's another one in two on a six again for
an elf or a thief. Here we go, I got
a four this time. Just is it silence or is
it bird zone?
Speaker 1: I think that because of what may be in the forest,
that silence makes almost more sense.
Speaker 2: It does, right, Yeah, So even though you don't hear anything,
that means something too.
Speaker 1: I think the thing that Kathare does not hear is
the thing that you know may be what gives us trouble.
The thing that all of us notice is the fact
that it is weirdly quiet HM on the edge of
this forest, a forest that is usually teeming with life,
and there's silence.
Speaker 2: All right, So I guess we make the decision together
to go inside. But this is probably a weapons drawn
kind of situation, right, agreed?
Speaker 1: I think you Gaul draws out his bow and sort
of tests the draw a little bit. Is like, we
go into those woods, but we keep our eyes open.
Speaker 2: There are true dangers in the woods. Keep an arrow notch,
both of you. I like it not something feels a miss.
That's going to be my cleric, Vydar. I think, since
I have a cleric, I'm gonna have to come up
with some kind of deity. I'm going to the dun
John female dwarf names. How do we feel about Ugmar?
Ugmar is good? Do you want divine domain from maze rats? Sure? Judgment?
Ugmar's judgment? Oh that's cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not necessarily a war cleric, but you know, a
cleric of justice, a cleric of he's.
Speaker 2: A bit of an inquisitor or some kind of law
upholder of law kind of guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, which makes sense, right? I mean we're scouts
for the city.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to go inside and we're making our
way through this woods. Does the woods obviously it sounds strange?
Other than that, do you think it looks like a
normal woods or do you think it's got something tainted
to it? Does your gut say anything? Do you want
to roll on this?
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, is this is this our first
oracle question?
Speaker 2: Either now or real soon?
Speaker 1: I feel like there's no better time than now. So
do we think it's impossible unlikely? Fifty to fifty?
Speaker 2: I think it's fifty to fifty, given that what we
already know that there is something bad in here and
that there's no sound in here, I think it's at
least fifty to fifty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's go fifty to fifty, So fifty or less
will be a yes, forty.
Speaker 2: Five Okay, So it's not just that there's something here,
is that the whole place has gone funny? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So are there are there maybe markings in the trees? Yes,
like some sort of substance, like something like ooze, or
like something gooey and like sticky that's like dripping from
the trees.
Speaker 2: Caroth, Look over here, these markings on the trees from
a bear, no bear that I've ever seen, there's certainly
a lot of them. Look, there's more over there and
more over there. Something very powerful must have made these markings.
Speaker 1: And something that wasn't afraid to come close to this road.
Speaker 2: Yeah I said it before. We're like it not keep
your wits about you, Oukmar's law protect us. So I
think we have to keep going if we want to
kind of use old school type rules, that it would
just be as simple as every hour that we move
into this forest, we just roll for a wandering encounter.
Do we want to do that? Or should we say
that since we're essentially going to wander until we reach something,
do we just want to roll to see how many
hours that takes?
Speaker 1: So I think we should roll on the wandering monster first,
because I think there's a possibility that the creature finds
us before we come upon the scene of death. Because
there are I think there are two mysteries, and we
know one of the mysteries, which is that there's the
scouts missing, But there's a second mystery that our characters
maybe don't know, which is there's a dead caravan along
this road and a caravan arrived yesterday as far as
we're aware, But there was only one caravan scheduled from Formerist.
Why would there be one on the road if one arrived?
What's going on there? So I think the wandering monster.
I will answer whether or not the monster finds us
first or we stumble upon this grizzly scene.
Speaker 2: Okay, here's what I propose. Then let's roll our wandering
encounter check three times. If the encounter check comes up
as a hit, then the monster finds us first, and
if not, we find this scene of violence unhindered. Okay,
I gotta roll. For the first hour, I got a
three on a D six no wandering encounter. For the
second hour, I got a six on a D six
no wandering encounter. But things are getting creepy, very creepy.
The woods is all but closed in behind us. And
this is our final role in a D six A two,
meaning that by the skin of our teeth we are
not detected by whatever hellish thing is out there, and
we find something. Now do you know what we find?
Or is this a role on the on action and subject?
Speaker 1: I think we find the massacred caravan, or at least
like the blood and the overturned carts and stuff like that.
I think the question is do we find bodies there
or are there just blood spatters? And we don't have
any actual physical evidence of who is dead here in
this place? Would this creature have dragged away the bodies
for some reason?
Speaker 2: What do you think about using action and subject for this?
Speaker 1: I will never complain about using action and subjects, So
I think it's a great idea.
Speaker 2: Rollsome dice here.
Speaker 1: So we've got thirty nine, which is destroy It's always
a good start, sure, and fourteen destroy duty.
Speaker 2: I think that you and I will have to give
that a little bit of a thought and then see
how that plays out in the narrative. Krathair did not
much care for Vdar. Baidar was a human and a
cleric of Ukumar, and while Kearethir enjoyed the company of humans,
he found all priests tiresome. Bidar was an especially efficient
to kill joy the night comes, frowned the cleric, I
like it not. With the head of his mace, he
gestured further down the forest road, see how dark it
is becoming. In an hour, the sun would set and
the humans in the party would be forced to give
up their search. Oh, the time is nothing to be
afraid of. Come on, Fiendileth pushed ahead, using his staff
as a walking stick. Bidar reluctantly followed. Why. Karethier the
Elf and Yugal the Breaker exchanged brief looks before moving
to the front. It wasn't long before Karethir stopped the
party once again. I'm sure I hear something this time,
said the elf. What do you hear, speak, Elf, hissed Viidar.
Sh let mean this in.
Speaker 1: It's a droning sound, buzzing. Be careful and stay behind us.
Speaker 2: Grunted Yugo, walking ahead of the others. They fell in
behind him. The road was barely wide enough here in
the middle of the riven wood to allow them to
travel to abreast. After a few minutes, they could all
hear the buzzing flies, said Yugo, mostly to himself, a
lot of them. The sound reminded him of his time
as a soldier, bad memories. So it did not surprise
you of all when they came upon a scene that
would not have looked out of place in a butcher's shop.
There were blood splatters everywhere, on the trees, on the
mossy ground, on the splintered wood of the shattered caravan wagons,
and on the ragged pieces of flesh poking out from
beneath it. Flies too, millions of them, writhing in glossy
black patches. Vaidar made a look of disgust, but did
not turn away. Findilith approached the scene, hobbling on a staff,
clearly not bothered by the violence. Most interesting, have a
look at this, He pointed at a partial corpse, some
unfortunate for Moorristian trader, missing ahead, but still identifiable as
such by his clothing. The body appeared to have been
fed on, as fist sized chunks were missing from the
torso and thighs. There's something in the wounds. It appeared
that the wizard was right. A whitish gray substance foamed
around the puckered edges of the bite marks. The flies
wouldn't go near it. Do you see any of our folk?
Zalidra or Rovar, asked by Oar. Carothier shook his head,
muttering the same question the missing Lalacarians had asked.
Speaker 1: Was there supposed to be a second delivery?
Speaker 2: This time the question was met with the silence of
the darkening wood. I shall light the lantern. The clerk
set by way of reply, unslinging his pack and looking
doubtfully into the shadowy legion of trees surrounding him. Soon
it will be dark if there's a rabbit, animal, a wolf,
or a bear. Findleth was bending over the corpse now,
with his nose just inches from one of its wounds.
He was sniffing at it. I doubt we'll find this
cottage was caused by a rabbit. Be quiet, Carithier said, tersely.
Speaker 1: No light just yet, and for the love of the gods,
stay silent.
Speaker 2: Fiendeleth shrugged, straightened, and thumped the corpse or the staff.
A cloud of flies alighted briefly before returning to the
feast on the forest floor. Suddenly, Kaothier snapped his head
to the side. Over there, his bow was at the ready,
as was Hyugol's. The two of them stepped carefully towards
the sound. No one else had.
Speaker 3: Heard karetheir said Yugo, we need the light now. I
can't see more than twenty feet ahead. Have it's your way, then,
said the elf, frowning. Claic Bindar struck a flint a
few times, and presently a yellow globe blooming from his
hooded lantern. Look, said Yugoll softly. He pointed with his
boot because his hands were occupied holding his bow. Now
that there was some light, they could all see it.
Something had been dragged off the road and into the trees.
Here there were crushed plants in the undergrowth, and a
smear of blood marking the way.
Speaker 2: Kaathir was embarrassed. He had not noticed it before. The
others come, then, was all he said. They followed him
off the relative openness of the road and into the
thick darkness of the trees. It was impossible to move quietly,
so after a few steps they didn't even try. Anything
within half a mile would have heard them. Thirty feet
off the road and into the dense wood, they found him.
Drovar was sitting with his back against a tree. His
chest rose and fell quickly but faintly, and this was
the only evidence of life. The man's mouth hung open,
and his eyes also fully open, stared right through the
approaching party of his countrymen. Drovar Wvidar called out, where
here now you are saved? There was no point in whispering. Still,
Vydar flinched at the way his voice cut sharply into
the quiet of the woods. Drovar did not react to
sight or sound. He sat and stared and breathed shallow breaths.
At first, he did not appear injured. Perhaps he was
in shock. Yugal had seen it happen to men before
on the battlefield. Their bodies would be intact while their
minds were broken. But it was Finderleth who noticed at
first look the back of his neck. How interesting. Interesting
was not the word any of them would have chosen.
Drovar did not stir when Vardar came closer with his light.
The warrior continued staring straight ahead. Some kind of growth
seemed to be attached to the back of the man's neck,
a rooty brown thing, a mass of fibrous tendrils embedded
in his flesh. How that can't be a good thing,
suggested Karathier, stepping back and lifting his bow. Fider apprehended
the ELF's intentions and held it be hand. No, Carothier,
do not. We have our orders from Commander Regan, and
our laws are clear. Citizens of Nalkar did not commit
murder outside of self defense. Almost as in response, Drovar stirred,
his mouth opened, and a strange inhuman wheezing sound came out.
His eyes rolled back into his head, and his whole
body began to shudder, as if in the grip of
the seizure. Karatherer loosed his arrow at point blank range.
The shaft slammed into the fallen warrior's chest, easily punching
through his chain mel shirt and burying itself almost to
the fletching in his flesh. The body ceased its jerking
dance and slumped over. Bidar stared at kathe you've deliberately
broken our laws elf. What have you to say for yourself?
Perhaps Kaathie had slipped loosing his arrow because he had
been startled. Perhaps it was a deliberate execution. The truth
would have to wait. Just then, the wheezing sound returned,
but it did not come from the unmoving shape of Drovar.
A figure staggered and lurched through the dim woods, directly
toward them. When it stepped into Vidar's lamplight, they could
see who it was. They could see what it was.
It was a Laitra, her axe held limply in her
right hand. Her eyes were wide open but showed only white.
Her skin was gray, attached to her throat and chest
was a lump of fibrous brown tendrils do