Fabula Ultima - The Romance of Ys - Session 19
The party continue to prepare for their upcoming mission, creating a clever disguise for Seren, and get a lead on a lead about the missing Rhodri's whereabouts.
Episode 4, "Foul Garden: Trouble in the Onion Castle!" Session 19
Cast
- Aurelia, she/her, Ex-Inventor Turned Spy
- Hemlocke, any, Loyal Servant Looking for Answers
- Mio, she/her, Headstrong Pugilist with a Heart of Gold
- Rhiannon the Blue, she/her, Academic Ghost Bride Looking for Answers
- Seren, she/her, Kindhearted Princess on the Run
Disguises
Morning rises as we begin the new session where we left off - figuring out false identities for the party for their upcoming mission to spy on King Niyonin and finding a disguise for Seren. After a brief digression to check-in on Matty's Immram and discovering a pile of zenit set aside in the packages sent from the palace to complete their disguises, the party settle on identities and return to pitching ideas for how to disguise Seren of the glowing eyes and blue hair, who King Niyonin likely has met at some royal visit or event in the past. They get excited by the idea of developing an elaborate monstrous prosthetic head for Seren to wear, then enchanting that with an illusion that makes her appear human, and using that as a two-layered disguise, where if the illusion is pierced they can play it off as Seren being deeply shamed of her horse-like monster head. After talking through the pros and cons, and counting the funds they have on hand, they settle on a different approach and head to visit Gwent Glasscock, skilled barber.
Facilitated by Gwent's magical cosmetics and skills, the group create Clamouflage, an enchanted cosmetic kit housed in a large clam shell. In the hands of a skilled stylist who has a detailed image or model to work from, it can be used to transform the subject into a picture perfect copy of the target of the disguise. So powerful is the enchantment that the disguised subject feels real, sounds effortlessly like the object of the disguise, and even replicates small mannerisms of the object. The only thing it seems to stop short of is providing a copy of the object's wardrobe.
Item complete, Rhiannon retrieves a picture of herself from when she was still alive from an uncle of Rhodri's she is friendly with, and Gwent uses that to transform Seren into a picture perfect copy of a young Rhiannon. Initially disoriented by the changes in height, voice, and accent, and perturbed by reflexively mimicking Rhiannon's stride, Seren follows Hemlocke back to Greenhome to rehem her costume again.
An Awkward Fitting
While the others are visiting Gwent, Mio makes a trip of her own to the tailor shop owned by Nikodem Tadych. Unable to separate her fears and frustrations with the Lod empire from those of the Lod-born Nikodem, spends an awkward hour being measured and fitted so that the tailor can integrate Mio's heavy armor into her noblewoman's disguise. At end, both are frazzled and the tailor promises to have it ready the next day.
Goblin Market Game
In the afternoon Aurelia gathers Rhiannon and heads-off to visit her contact in the Goblin Market. The disguised Seren tags along and the trio make their way to the office of one Tuck, pronouns fae/faer, a dog-snouted goblin information broker. As the sign on faer door declares, fae "knows things."
The cordial Tuck welcomes the trio in, but before fae accepts the job raises the matter of an unpaid bill. Darius, the dwarf agent Aurelia met in Rhiannon's Steading, previously took advantage of faer services but never paid. Tuck shows Aurelia the bill, but also makes an offer - faer a bit of a gamer, and if Aurelia can beat fae in a game, then fae will clear Darius' debt. Aurelia agrees and Tuck pulls out a game board and children's book to play a game of commedia dell'giocare. Tuck places the book down and a cartoon-like beast appears on faer end of the board. Fae then explains the trio should find a book of their own to place down, which will summon a character from it to do battle with faer beast.
Seren rifles through the stack of rare novels she took from Manhunter Ilona and produces "Mistbeard and the Great Kraken Encounter." As she discusses choices with Rhiannon, Seren let's slip that she is a princess, which canny Tuck files away to sell or leverage later. The risk of this knowledge being sold is lessened by the princess being in disguise and catching herself when asked for a name and providing the alias of "Najma" instead.
Armed with a romance novel, Aurelia places it down and the titular great kraken - and its very friendly eyes - appears on the board. Aurelia and Tuck proceed to direct their two creatures to battle, though it ends-up one-sided as the Kraken's lightning attacks make short work of Questy, the childish beast from Tuck's offering. True to faer word, Tuck promises to look into leads on where Rhodri is and have them ready in a few days of "overland" time.
Nightmare Check-In
As night sets-in, Mio, Seren, and Rhiannon head to The Leaky Johnson while Hemlocke stays behind to hem and alter outfits and Aurelia heads to bed. The dwarf agent's sleep is far from restful, as she navigates room-after-room of a nightmarish space filled with all those she's left for dead or killed. As she scrambles about, she stumbles through a door and into the dream-office of her handler, Caius. With no ceremony, Caius asks for Aurelia to report on her recent activities, and obliges, relaying her adventures in Rhiannon's Steading and her new mission from Sir Cai.
Caius is as perplexed as Cai as to why King Niyonin has called for a joust in Queen Gwenhwyfar's name and requests Aurelia to report on her findings. Before dismissing the agent, Caius assures her that he will look into reports of the goddess Rhiannon and informs her that new equipment is available for requisition at Gay Abandonment. He then settles down as Aurelia returns to her nightmare.
An Unexpected Date
Mio, Seren, and Rhiannon arrive at The Leaky Johnson at peak hours, and elbow their way through rowdy sailors to a empty table and wait things out till closing time. After the last straggler's been shown the door, they retreat to the kitchen to chat with Joan, Matty, and Joan's son while the three clean-up for the night. Mio and Rhiannon quickly pick-up on Matty being smitten with "Najma," while Seren fails to recognize the change. Matty offers to walk the three home, and as the group head out, Mio hangs back for a moment to tell Joan who Najma is. The bar owner is amused by it all, hands Mio a loaf of bread and tells her to be careful after giving her a pat on the cheek and a firm hug.
As the four women head to Greenhome, Matty asks after Seren, and the princess reveals her disguise to the flustered dishwasher. Matty recovers as best she can and asks if Seren has the time to teach her another spell. She agrees to meet her at the beach they trained at last time, and Matty makes an excuse to dash back to the bar before meeting up.
When Matty arrives at the beach, she's done her level best to freshen-up. Finally starting to clue-in that Matty might be attracted to her, Seren initially pegs it as attraction to Najma. But even the oblivious princess picks-up on things as she teaches the flustered Matty how to cast the lux spell. By the end-of it all, the two spend a quiet time watching the waves, holding hands, and leaning on each other.
Referee Thoughts
Another session where it feels like we spun our wheels, despite a lot happening. I don't think I will ever figure out how to pace Fabula for the group, and just have to accept that. That said, we had a fun time playing!
I was delighted when the party decided they wanted to go all-out designing a magic item to disguise Seren with. Being clear-up front what the risks were if the recognizable Seren was discovered and that I view it as fair game to use opportunities to reveal this information to the residents of Castle Niyonin really motivated them to find as an airtight solution as possible. Once we settled on the mechanics of Clamouflage, they they agreed to sell-off valuable gear to maximize the item's effect.
I handwaived some of the project rules when designing it. As written, it would have taken the group roughly five in-game days to make the item. Normally, this might make for an interesting choice - do you delay your mission to strengthen yourselves - but Aurelia making a deal to find information about Rhiannon in 30 days time has put everyone on the clock. I want them to feel that time pressure eventually, but having them spend a week creating Clamouflage would have discouraged them from pursuing Projects, a thing I want them to do. In the end, I offered that Gwent, a magical barber, could help create it in less than a day. If they ever want to create a second Clamouflage, though, I will revert to the normal build time for Projects.
Clamouflage itself is pretty powerful, but I think the two limits - needing to have a good picture of the object of the disguise to work off of and needing to be skilled at applying make-up and styling hair to use it effectively - are sufficient to keep it from being abused and even open up some interesting problems in the future. Hemlocke's player opted to spend a Fabula Point to declare the seneschal learned how to be a stylist from their sisters, which is also a delight - I now can drop her family into the story to create problems for the party.
The scene with Tuck went well. Aurelia's player gave me enough notice that she wanted to use her Agitator quirk to create an NPC that I was able to prepare an unnamed character and a challenge for the group to overcome to get their help. Commedia dell'giocare is essentially just Pokemon with books, and is implemented as two low-level NPCs battling each other. The level is important, since it allows me to build out characters quickly. I had three options prepped for the party to use based on the books they have in their inventory, but they opted to create one and I was able to take a level 10 hydrozoan from the Core Rulebook, toss it into Fultimator, and reduce it to level 5 in about 10 or 15 minutes. The closest I've come to reaching the "Pause the game and make something" ideal described in the Rulebook. No clue if the party will want to play it more - they found it fun but didn't get excited about it in the moment - but if they do then it is pretty easy to build out.
Matty having a thing for Seren surprised Seren's player. She decided to reciprocate ("Seren has two hands") and seemed to enjoy the idea of Seren and Matty dating. I look forward to doing more with this, as well as make things messy whenever Gyneth re-enters the game.
This might be it for Ys for a bit. I let the group know I have about half-a-session of runway left before I need to sit down and finish my prep for Castle Niyonin. I'm hoping that we can return to CERoW while I do that, but we'll see how it goes.