Cap & Co., part 3
slimy stone soup
“Well, crap,” said Cap. “Bridge is washed out.”
“It was barely a bridge,” said Colmund. “More of a ferry with support beams driven into the bed of the river. You can see on the other bank where they cut all the trees to make them.”
It was true. On this south side of the river the trees reached out over the water and crowded almost to the edge of the road as well. They’d been warned about the cockatrice back in Newmarket. They had not seen any stone statues of victims from the road, but supposedly there were some back there, warnings from the monsters to stay away from their nesting areas.
Or maybe food storage? Colmund said they could break off pieces and turn them back into meat before swallowing them.
Of course, Colmund also said that kidney stones came from a cockatrice flying over you while you slept.
Chaos Factor 5; it goes up when the characters are not in control (which they were not last time)
Wilderness Travel 90’ (Cap’s short legs) → 6 hexes x 1.5 (because of the road) = 9 hexes
They’re at the edge of the New Forest so wandering monsters on 1 or 2 on a d6 → 1 Yes
Is Gold River crossing a bridge or a ford? < 40 miles so Unlikely. 36 No (ford), but barely, so there was a bridge but it has washed out in the recent rain.
Since I had already added a couple of entries to the Characters list (like the Threads list but specific to NPCs), I asked a clarifying question about the wandering monster check before consulting the OSE tables.
Is Wandering Monster the same bandits, diminished by their fight with the gnolls? Likely. 76 No
Is it the cockatrice they saw from a distance before? Unlikely. Exceptional No
So time to hit the OSE’s Wilderness Encounter: Forest tables → 5 goblins, 2 riding dire wolves
Are they Imperial goblins, citizens like Cap? 50/50. 85 No
Are they from the Lone Pine tribe (mentioned in the AV book)? Likely 63 Yes
Cap’s OSE Reaction Roll 7 → Neutral
Do they have
a boat?any way across? Likely. 95 Exceptional No, so they are trapped down here below the riverAre they hiding / wounded? Likely. 26 Yes
Do they need food? OSE Foraging roll 1/6 → No
Do they want wine? Likely. 25 Yes
Share a camp? Likely 51 Yes
There is a surprisingly large literature on wineskins, based on a single metaphor from the gospel of Mark. Supposedly they fermented the wine inside the bag? Cheaper than glass bottles, I guess.
It was not good wine. Cap was mostly using it to sterilize their water when they didn’t want to take time to build a fire and boil it. And the skin bag still had the hair on, inside the bag, which kept coming loose. He had to spit after almost every swig.
It didn’t seem to bother the wild goblins, any more than coming across Cap taking a piss in the woods, away from the eye of that creepy wizard Klimt. They thought his clothes were funny. They thought the smell of his urine was funny. They sniffed it just like their two wolves did. Then they all emptied their bladders in a little scent-marking party, including the girl who was leading them. This was the kind of thing that people simply did not do back in Narsileon.
Cap immediately invited them to supper.
Who are our 5 goblins?
I rolled 5 gnomes (since in Rick’s OSRIC game, goblins are basically reskinned gnomes)
G1, rolled female, Chief’s daughter, on a dire wolf (19hp)
Strength 9, Dexterity 10, Constitution 10, Intelligence 9, Wisdom 11, Charisma 13 8 hit points
G2 male, on a dire wolf (19hp) S12 D10 C14 I9 W10 Ch10, 4+1=5hp
G3 male S9 D12 C10 I12 W10 Ch9, 4hp
G4 male S11 D11 C16 I10 W10 Ch8, 6hp
G5 male S11 D9 C15 I11 W12 Ch10, 5hp
I could have delved into individual personalities using Mythic’s NPC tables, but I was expecting this to be a one-time encounter, so I didn’t bother.
“So you actually hunt those things?” Cap asked, incredulous. Humans were terrified of the cockatrice’s power to turn flesh to stone.
“They sleep at night,” said the goblin girl, slicing open one of the birdlike monsters with a stone blade that was ridiculously sharp. She had laughed when Cap cut himself trying to use it, before taking it from him and doing it herself. “Day men are stupid.”
Cap did not argue, though he didn’t quite see it that way. Day men closed their towns at night because they were afraid of the dark. Imperial goblins, living among them, often took night work as guards. Their ability to see in low light was valued.
Cap stewed the meat with some okra he had picked up back in Newmarket. Humans waffled on the slimy vegetable, but he knew the goblins would love it, and he was right. He even gave them some seeds he’d been saving to feed to his birds.
They also loved the onions, and the garlic, and the wine / vinegar.
Delicious in Dungeon uses the phrase “tall men” to describe humans, but to me that’s not our most distinguishing feature. To me it’s our relative weakness, compared to other apes (an idea also emphasized in the anime) and the growing consensus1 that we evolved as persistence hunters, specialized to sweat copiously and exhaust our prey by overheating it under the African sun. Long legs also helped with that, obviously, but according to the linked article the decisive advantage was mental, the ability to track animals that we could neither see nor smell by their footprints and other signs. If a prey animal couldn’t hide long enough to recover, it would eventually just fall over.
Next Day
Maybe they loved it a little too much. The wild ones all woke with horrible headaches the next day, which they blamed on the sun, though it was still cloudy and Laudanum, who also suffered in bright light, seemed fine.
Or possibly they just didn’t want to help with building the raft. That took all morning, even with Colmund’s shortcut of using lots of smaller branches in multiple woven layers rather than chopping down the trees to get larger logs. The result was less stable but a lot lighter to carry up the other side.
Cap, Laudanum, the two wolves, and their goblin masters were already safe on the north bank, and Colmund was halfway back with the last three goblins when suddenly the raft was surrounded by dozens of bobbing heads, calling to the rafters to come join them for a swim. Colmund smacked the water with his pole, trying to scare them away, but the goblins all stiffened and tumbled into the water.
“They’re charmed, aren’t they?” Cap asked Laudanum. She was more or less immune to that kind of magic, but she could tell when it was being used.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’re far enough away.” She clearly had no intention of going in after them. The Nixies might not be able to charm her, but they could sure as hell drown her.
“Dammit, why is nothing ever easy?” Cap unslung his crossbow and fired a bolt on a high arc, so that the whistle attached had plenty of time to scream its warning on its way down into the water. He held up the crossbow where the Nixies could see it. They immediately ducked under and disappeared.
The three goblins were still paddling around out there, crying for their new mistresses to come back. The wolves were already in the water, swimming out to haul them to the bank.
“It won’t matter,” said Laudanum. “That spell lasts a year and a day. Even if we tie ‘em up now, they’ll just come back the first chance they get.”
Cap ignored her. “See if you can find that arrow!” he yelled at Colmund, poling his way across by himself now. “Those things are expensive!”
Cosmos wants to build a raft, with help
no Wandering Monsters during the night (4 on a d6)
but next day 2 Yes → 8 Swimmer → 11 Nixie (x 30?!?)
They aim for goblins because they know Elves are resistant to Charm
Cap is 1/6 → 4, 5, 6 → all fail their saves vs Spell
Will Klimt help the goblins? Very Unlikely 78 No
Can they hold the goblin males back? 5 > 3, + 2 wolves, so Likely. Exceptional Yes
Do the wolves capture / kill a Nixie? 50/50 No
Do the PCs get across? Very Likely. 74 close thing but Yes
Do they push through to Beretun before dark? 50/50. 41 Yes
Do the goblins come with them? Very Unlikely. 67 No
Splitting the Party
They did tie up the three charmed ones, and fed them every last clove of Cap’s garlic, raw. Their leader, whose name translated to something like Turpentine, loved this plan, and promised to roll them in even stinkier stuff — waterproof, if possible — before turning them loose. “Maybe even some poison ivy!” she laughed, a wicked gleam in her eye as she imagined the Nixies’ reaction.
“Pretty little thing,” Cap said as they ran off with the charmed ones strapped to the wolves’ back. “Mean as a striped spider, though.”
Colmund was unwrapping some sort of candy that he called a gummy. “You know, if you drug spiders, they spin crazy webs. There’s a tribe up north who examine those webs to predict the weather.”
At least one of those statements is actually true.2
Do the wild goblins make it home? Likely. 91 No
Do the 3 charmed ones get away? 44 Yes < Chaos Factor 5 so Random Event
This was my first time using Mythic’s Meaning Tables, where you roll percentile dice (d100, or 2d10 with one color being the ones place and the other being the tens place) for context. Meanings are rolled in pairs, which increases the complexity from 100 possible outcomes to 100 x 100 = 10,000 possible combinations.
78 Repulse + 55 Inform (doubles on a non-Fate roll do not trigger the Random Event rule)
Night 2, in Beretun
According to the AV book, Beretun is a farming village, population 650. From the name (with a ‘u’ instead of an ‘o’) it sounded Thorcin, but I checked to be sure.
Mostly Archontean? Unlikely. No, so Thorcin
Can Cosmos find them lodging? Likely. 79 No
OSE rolls: no luck with Foraging (1 on a d6) 4 No
no Wandering Monsters (1 on a d10) 0 No
weather (still using the Scarlet Heroes table, which only has wet and dry seasons) → pouring concealing rain
Can they at least bed down in the stables? 22 Exceptional Yes, under Chaos Factor 6 (which I raised again, for not exceptionally good reasons) → NPC Action → check Meaning Tables
08 Benefits + 37 Group
Cosmos OSE Reaction Roll (2d6) 4, Cap 5, Laudanum 11 so she charms the young stableboy into bringing them food, blankets, and information
Rolled on OSE Treasure Tables and got Cursed Scroll
Would Klimt recognize a cursed scroll? Likely. 17 Yes
Would s/he say anything about it? 50/50. 75 No
Cursed scroll summons 4 giant Driver Ants (surprised)
Thac0 16 (so way better than PCs uniform 19), mandibles do 2d6 damage (twice as much as Cosmos’s spear, and 3x as much as Laudanum’s staff)
Armor Class 3 (also way better than theirs)
18 hit points each (more than the party members put together!)
Does stableboy flee? Almost Certain. 45 Yes
Klimt casts Charm Monster, 1 saves
miss miss fumble → Laudanum falls down
initiative us 2, them 5
miss miss fumble → Cosmos jams his spear into a post and it sticks
last ant misses Cap
Cap misses, Laudanum casts Darkness, which blinds the ant
Klimt Charms Monster again, 7 misses the saving throw
So that was potentially disastrous. One of those things could have killed the entire party in 3 rounds, the way they were rolling.
But now they have 4 completely uninjured six-foot-long pack animals that can move faster than horses, which will treat them like friends for at least a month. Not entirely sure what friendship means to an ant . . .
Benefits Group, indeed.
Though clearly there are people who disagree.
https://undark.org/2019/10/03/persistent-myth-persistence-hunting/
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/webs-spun-by-lsd-tripping-spiders/
“The drug was mixed in a sugar solution which was then injected into a small fly. A tuning fork was used and the vibrations set up in the signal thread were the clue to the bait. Apparently the mixture was delicious because there was no problem about getting him [the spider] to take the bait,” read the Gravure Magazine article.