Cap & Co., part 7

winter sux even here

Late February / Early-to-Mid-March Madness

No, not the sporty kind, the good kind — nerd conventions!

• Ret-Con in Research Triangle Park, Feb 21-23

• Mythic Con West in Asheville Feb 28-March 2

• What the Hell?!? Con at Guilford College, March 14-16

As a small boost to them, I include a link to The Sample, an auto-forwarding service.

SEBIG

I spent Saturday on campus for a local science meeting on biological anthropology, a hybrid field that spends a lot of time looking at bones, whether those are from a crime scene or an archaeological dig. There were also some nonhuman primate people there, studying gibbons in Thailand or giving chimps tablet computers at the NC Zoo. My job was to talk to students interested in non-academic careers over lunch, which justified my hanging around and indulging my Secrets of the Dead fandom.

Polar Vortex

A couple of weeks ago it got down to 12 degrees here, multiple nights in a row. I tried to protect at least the roots of my overgrown fig tree by tossing some extra insulation on top of them in the form of last year’s slowly rotting leaves and the dregs of the wood chips from the pile in our front yard. You can see some old pictures in this post from last summer.

Raspberry Reset

As a kid on a farm, I worked outside in much colder temperatures. My personal record was about -17ºF (-27ºC), not counting the wind chill. Even wrapped up we could only last about half an hour.

The Lost Vikings

Around the same time I watched this episode of Secrets of the Dead, which was about the death of the European settlements in Greenland during the Little Ice Age. They were already living at the very edge of their cultural and technological know-how. Unlike the Icelanders to the east or the Inuit who shared the big island with them, the Greenlanders were not exploiting the bounty of the sea in an effective way. When their Eurasian livestock overgrazed the coasts, the thin soil washed away and the animals starved. Then the people starved.

One could read Jack London’s “Love of Life” as a horror story. There’s nothing even vaguely supernatural about it, and yet that story has haunted me since I read it as a child, probably 45 years ago.¹

I thought I might do something like that with the situation above, and contemplated a pitch to this open call.

Medieval Horror Novel Proposals

I’ve never tried a novel before. I’m not at all sure the idea is worth 50,000 words, even if they liked the slant angle on it.

There was also a novel I enjoyed sometime within the last five years — written by a woman, I believe — where Scandinavians believed in all sorts of supernatural things, but the draugr that had everyone so terrified was probably just a large man with a severe head injury. I can remember neither the title nor the author’s name, and none of the characters’ names, either. Keyword searches on the internet have not helped.

None of that has anything to do with this week’s solo RPG installment, except maybe for the frustration that comes from reality not cooperating with my expectations. Weather, memories, dice.

Players’ map of the Long Stair and the statues of Arden the warrior and Vul the sorcerer. 21 squares = over 1000 feet! By comparison, the heads on Mount Rushmore are each 60 feet tall and Crazy Horse Mountain will be 563 feet tall, if it’s ever finished. Plus at least one of these statues can move! Those magically wacky Archonteans . . . Map by Andreas Claren.

I did much less story translation on this one because I’m now quite busy at work (y’know, my actual job, teaching, which they pay me to do) and because this process, extended over two months from the one week that I played through the solo game sessions during Christmas break, has been more work than I imagined. This does not bode well for me ever writing a novel.

Chaos Factor down to 5 because the Player Characters were in control of that last scene in Urdenna Belst’s house.

It will take d4 → 3 days for the local Druid, half-elf Fael Valdorsdot, to come and witness the betrothal contract. Lorak will not let Cap out of his sight until then.

Will Klimt wait? 50/50. 55 No

Plus Urdenna Belst wants blood, so off they go, wild goblins in tow.

Spoiler alert: Does Klimt know about the giant statue of Arden serving as an elevator? Almost Certain. 07 Exceptional Yes

Wandering Monster check 1 Yes

before or after the elevator? Very Unlikely. 06 Before

• 4 Harpies

• neither side surprised, distance 30 feet (at a kill?)

1. initiative us 4, them 2

   1. we shout and bang shields so we can’t hear their Charm song

   2. Klimt casts Web

We dispatch the harpies and feed them to the ants; nobody else would dare eat such nasty things.

• treasure type C

  • 25% jewelry 95 No

  • 10% magic items 91 No

  • 20% gems Yes 50 gold pieces (Laudanum), 500gp (Lorak’s sub-group), 100gp (Cap), 50gp (Cosmos)

In the Ruined City

This is the southeast corner of the map. There’s a key in the published version. DM’s numbered version of the map by Andreas Claren.

Chaos Factor further reduced to 4

Wandering Monster checks East side, 1 day and 1 night

day → 3 Giant Frogs

1. initiative us 1, them 4

   1. The frogs attempt to flee the larger party → 99 failed Evasion roll → they make it 2 map squares before being caught and shot full of arrows.

They take the legs for themselves and feed the rest to their mounts.

Does Lorak recognize the Treant at location 7? Likely. 26 Yes

Lorak Reaction Roll 6

girl’s Reaction Roll 7 (She’s good with plants)

They set up camp under the Treant and see 3 more frogs but don’t chase them. Mating season?

Next Day

Chaos Factor down to 3.

morning Wandering Monster check No

Does Klimt know where the entrance is? Very Likely. 54 No

How long do they search before finding it? d6 turns → 4, so 40 minutes

Do they notice that the statues arms move? Unlikely. 96 Exceptional No

Screw it! Klimt just casts Knock on the door.

On the Stairs Below the Pyramid of Thoth

There’s a table in the AV book for rolling graffiti messages. The majority of these are opaque clues to other locations and events somewhere in the dungeon. This overall connectedness is something that reviewers and fans generally seem to appreciate.

Lorak 16 → “The chasm goes deeper than we thought.”

Cap “Hugo - I found the Obsidian Gates. Gog helped.”

Laudanum “Set is waiting and watching.”

Cosmos recognizes tags from two other NPC adventuring parties, Dalton’s Darlings and Roger’s Rapiers.

Being an information broker, Klimt will want to return and document all of them.

Encounter at UP-4: a usable treasure map, carried by Laudanum

Does Klimt want to do a frontal assault with Sleep? 50/50. 84 No

Does Klimt know the back way into the Halfling area? Likely. 87 No

Does he want to call Plumthorn up for a parley? 50/50. 61 No

Charm the guards? 50/50. 36 No

ESP? 81 No

Cloudkill (getting desperate here)? 75 No

Has Klimt abandoned them? 50/50. 89 No

Pay the Halflings to go through the portcullis? 76 No

This was the first time I felt well and truly stuck throughout this whole process.

I’m not including even a basic map of Level Three here because, as you’ll see shortly, the party never made it off the stairs.

Do the guards hear them on the stairs? d6 Hear Noise roll → 6 No

Do they go back up to the surface? 50/50. 15 Yes

Afternoon Wandering Monster check → a loud noise

Go over to the Inn of the Broken Head? 50/50. 78 No

Look at the treasure map? 50/50. 67 No

Is Klimt just waiting for nightfall? 50/50. 43 No

This was really frustrating. Out of 12 rolls in a row, 11 of them were No. In situations like this Mythic suggests deliberately inserting an Interrupt scene, so I rolled percentile dice and got 23, NPC Action.

Then I rolled on the AV factions table and got the slaver accomplices back in Newmarket.

Heschius Ban? Likely. 69 No, so must be the Silent Factor (who are bankrolling part of the locally illegal trade in slaves)

They hired someone? Very Likely. 54 Yes

Was it Plumthorn himself? 01 Exceptional Yes

Did we intercept that message somehow? Likely. 46 Yes

Was it a magical transmission? 50/50. 14 Yes

Kill, or capture? 50/50. 71 Capture.

So it seemed like Urdenna Belst wanted some especially torturous payback for the break-in from the last game session.

Does Plumthorn know yet? 50/50. 05 Exceptional Yes

So we need to hole up somewhere defensible? Likely. 37 Yes

Original map by Andreas Claren, clumsily edited in Preview by me.

Where? Roll on the map locations to determine conditions of the various stone watch towers in the southest, eastest sub-corner of the southeast corner.

tower 4 → condition 4 → mostly gone

tower 3 → condition 2 → completely collapsed

the unlabeled one in between → condition 7 → roof gone but lower floors intact

Next time: the Big Battle!

1. Nexus Studios did an animated version of “To Build a Fire.” That studio has done a lot of interesting experiments with animation, including a “digital puppetry” thing where two of the actors from Critical Role did a live Q&A as their characters.

https://nexusstudios.com/work/critical-role/