Fabula Ultima - The Romance of Ys - Session 8
We wrap-up the second adventure, with the party getting directions toward the treasure they seek and a clue about Rhiannon's missing spouse.1
Episode 2, "The Stone’s Voice Speaks! Seek the Secret Steeding." Session 08
Cast
- Aurelia, she/her, Ex-Inventor Turned Spy - Absent this session
- Hemlocke, any, Loyal Servant Looking for Answers
- Mio, she/her, Headstrong Pugilist with a Heart of Gold
- Rhiannon the Blue, she/her, Widowed Revenant Looking for Answers
- Seren, she/her, Kindhearted Princess on the Run
The Green Man and His Friends
The session starts with a conflict scene, with a strange leaf-man leading a charge of thieving pumpkin spirits against Hemlocke, who quite literally was caught with her pants down after unequipping all of her gear to get past a trap in the adjoining room.1 Hemlocke scrambles to get himself situated, but the leaf man notices and holds his pumpkin friends back long enough to politely allow Hemlocke to put back on his armor. The rest of the group take the time to rush past the giant scissor trap in the adjoining room and jump into the conflict just as it resumes.
As the party fights, threads appear around them, linking them to tapestries all about the room. The tapestries in-turn show alternate versions of the party in the self-same fight against their own Green Man and Pumpkin Jacks. A combination of finding-out their foes are all ice-vulnerable, passing around the sand dollar hairclip Mio wears that turns her damage to ice, and borrowing their alternate selves' ability to cast the Terra spell, the group quickly freeze-out their foes.
Fight over, the Green Man collects the spirits of his pumpkin friends and disappears, leaving the party alone with the tapestries, the door to the sage, and a new shortcut that magically opened, leading directly back to the entrance.
At Long Last! The Party Respecs
The party picks through the room for a moment, discovering valuable crafting materials in the durable rinds of the destroyed Pumpkin Jacks, the Green Man's beret, and a charm hanging on the door leading to the sage.
Threads still connected to them, thruming with the knowledge that the alternate selves depicted in the tapestries around the room want their skills, each member exchanges skills and "respecs." Mio and Hemlocke adjust a few skill levels while Rhiannon and Seren opt for more dramatic changes. Rhiannon swaps out her Spiritist levels for Necromancer levels, playing into her nature as a Revenant. Seren, in-turn, exchanges her levels in Elementalist for levels in Pilot. The runaway princess now has an exosuit frame that she's reflavored as supernatural magics granted as part of the same ceremony that awakened her as Planet Oracle. These allow her to fly, give her some armor, and help offset the cost of casting spells.2
The Sage Advises
Satisfied with their changes, the party advance through the double doors, entering a sunny glade. The roots of the trees poke through the soil above, confirming they remain underground, but in all other ways the room is a pleasant grove. In the center are piled large rocks, which in-turn are blocked by a massive boulder, too heavy to move. An empty bottle of wine sits outside of the boulder and an old man is heard singing from within the pile.
Seren approaches and politely introduces herself, which the drunken old man pitifully declares he knew already. Hemlocke pulls another bottle of wine from their bag and puts it on the ground in-front of the boulder. Without the rock moving, the bottle disappears and the man gives them thanks. Plied with alcohol, he promises to give them two answers - the one that brought the party here as well as one more. He has Seren pull-out her map, where its revealed he magically marked the location of a fairy kingdom that houses the item they look for. He instructs them to look for two large trees that form the shape of an arch, and that will lead inside.
Hemlock briefly considers asking about the state and location of her liege, Queen Titania, but instead prods Rhiannon to ask after Rhodri, her spouse. She does and the sage responds drunkenly, telling the revenant her spouse's soul is trapped in a lobster cage held by a fey beachcomber. Uncertain what to do with this, but at least wiser than before, Seren offers the unseen old man thanks and promises to return later to provide company.
The Fool In The Hill
The party leave, employing the new shortcut to return to the entrance. As they do, they hear yet more singing, this time coming down the east hall connected to the entrance. A short, fey man dressed in a red-and-white jester or clown's outfit approaches, juggling a half-empty bottle of fairy wine with a spindle and a pair of scissors. Hemlocke groans as the fool sees them - it is Puck, jester to Queen Morgan Le Fey of the Unseelie Court, and a man Hemlocke owes a favor to. Puck stops his juggling and happily introduces himself to Hemlocke and the party, only to realize Hemlocke is traveling with mortals. Delighted to see mortals, he takes the chance to play his role and begins to speak in rhymes.
Seren and Mio are delighted by the short fool, with Seren even offering rhymes to the struggling, out-of-practice Puck. Hemlocke, however, will have none of this. After a short chat where Puck takes the opportunity to remind Hemlocke that they owe him a favor, Puck departs and Hemlocke fights off a migraine.
Hillside Rest
The party are greeted with night skies as they leave the hill. They head back-up it to the tree, where they spot the Green Man planting the spirits of his Pumpkin Jack friends. Mio takes the chance to talk with the plant-man and gets permission for Hemlocke to take some ingredients from his garden. Rhiannon sets-up a tent and Hemlocke prepares a campfire and the party rests.
As they do, Puck returns and shares the half-empty bottle of wine. Making Hemlocke nervous, he offers help and provides them instructions on how to enter the fairy kingdom they search for and suggesting they bring a gift for its resident. Mio and Seren proceed to get drunk from the remaining wine while Puck serenades them with song and rhyme. Mio drunkenly complements Seren for how clever and driven she is, and Seren returns the admiration in-kind. The night comes to an end with Hemlocke calling Seren "Your majesty" and everyone but Mio seeing Puck's face light-up in delight at this.
Matty Sails To New Seas
We wind-down the session with a check-in on Matty and another round of her mini-game. The party take the opportunity to trade the sailor equipment they no longer need, using Honey Locust and their linked books to make the exchange, and in-return secure a guaranteed prize from whatever treasure Matty finds.
The erstwhile dishwasher sets sail and encounters an island whose sole resident is painting a picture of the sea and sky. As she does, the colors change to match those she paints. She offers Matty a chance, but the young woman makes a mess of it.
Disoriented but undeterred, she sails on and finds a straight leading to a new sea. But blocking her path, moving perfectly in-sync to do so is her ownself! A mirror Matty approaches! Debating between finding a way to slip past her or negotiating with the duplicate, she opts for the later. A successful check later, the two secure passage by each other and actual Matty leaves behind the Silver Lens Shoals, entering the Gusty Gull Waves!
Matty offers a haul of three items at the end - two new, and one a previously passed on Baptismal Pearl.
The party pass on the Pearl again, but get the Armor as reward for their investment. Taken by the Sidhe Shanties, the group trade more equipment and pool their zenit to buy it. Combined with Rhiannon's Elemental Weapon spell or Aurelia's Tinkerer Infusions, they can do air damage to set-up someone wearing Mio's Sand Dollar Hiarclip to capitalize on with ice damage.
Next Time On!
The session concludes, and so does the adventure. This means it's time for the next adventure's teaser!
Next time on “The Romance of Ys!”
Seren's former handmaiden Vesper stands in a forest, next to an immense coffin wrapped in chains. She converses with a young woman who is the spitting image for Seren, if Seren’s hair was silver and she wore an elaborate yellow-and-white dress. The young woman excitedly exclaims “Ceridwen’s alive?!”
The scene cuts and we see a cartoonish, ice-covered boar charging the party, who stand in a mix of purple-and-black-colored bear-traps. In the background a lizardwoman aims a bow at the group.
There is another cut and a large, magnificent horse strides onto screen, standing in an idyllic fairy field. It rears up before turning imposingly toward the camera as the title appears on screen: “Hunters X Horses: Showdown at the Stallion’s Roost”
The party leave the session having earned 7 XP and reaching level 10!
Referee Thoughts
The game continues to go well. I still can't figure out the pace of the game, but I didn't mind as much this time. I expected the group to get through the hill quicker, giving me time to start the new adventurer, but that just didn't happen.
The group reaching level 10 is both exciting and a bit demoralizing. They are now one-ninth of the way to the level cap, and we aren't anywhere close to finishing act one of five in my loose campaign outline. At the same time, my meager treasure budget nearly doubled, climbing from 1,000 zenit and a cap of 500 zenit per item to a 1,800 zenit and a cap of 1,000 zenit per item. That last part is welcome not only because now I can award interesting armor pieces, but because I also can afford to seed vehicle modules into the treasure found - relevant for both Seren and for Thistle, Hemlocke's companion.
The fight with the Green Man and Pumpkin Jacks went well. Despite the Green Man being a minor villain, I expected it to be an easy fight. And it was, both because the players were clever and figured out how to do high amounts of ice damage and because I expected making the Green Man a soldier class foe wouldn't make him much of a threat. His central gimmick as a support character got deployed, though - he made the Pumpkin Jacks double-in-size, gaining more hit points and doing more damage - and he used a spell, allowing Mio to learn her first Chimerist spell. So I am not complaining.
Mushroom Toss MP: 20. Targets: One creature. Duration: Instantaneous. You create a toxic mushroom and hurl it at your foe. The target suffers [HR + 15] poison damage and suffers weak.
The other gimmick for the fight was allowing player characters to spend Fabula Points to use spells, skills, and attacks they normally wouldn't have access to. As seen in the image above, a character could spend 1 FP and an action to either perform a strong melee attack, perform a multi-target heal, cast a multi-target earth damage spell, or steal an item from a foe. Having a creative way to spend FP encouraged players who had been hoarding points to do something with them. I was also excited to see them puzzle out a way to combine the options with the gear they collected to make short work of the Green Man and Pumpkin Jacks. The only thing I wish had happened was for one of them to try to use Soul Steal to take an item from the Green Man.
Of the respecs, I think Seren's is the most interesting, but expect Rhiannon's will subtly be the most powerful over time. Seren's player has wanted flight for a while, and after a lot of going back-and-forth on how to accomplish that - taking Arcanist and having an arcana grant flight, picking Magical Girl and taking a flight power from it, picking up a Mutant therioform - we settled on Pilot. It lets her use flight continuously where the other options ended with each scene, and reskinning it to be a powered-up magic form exited her.
Rhiannon's player picking Necromancer is less dramatic, but she puts more thought into her build than anyone else at the table. The class has some strong spellcasting buffs as well as ways to increase survivability. About the only choice I scratch my head at is she picked the skill that let's you talk with undead. It's a useful skill, thematically appropriate to the character, and fits the campaign well. But by her own word and in actual practice, Rhiannon's player does not come to tabletop games for the role playing. I hope she doesn't regret taking a skill that by its nature will make her the center of scenes involving undead.
The most surprising thing about the conversation with the sage was that nobody asked his name. It isn't too hard to figure out that the old wizard trapped under a rock and/or hill is Merlin, but I don't know how read-up on Authuriana my players are. I'm curious if learning that he is Merlin - a character they learned last session helped condemn a lot of babies to death - will change their opinion of him.
I expected the free-question to be tricky for me. If it isn't abundantly clear at this point, I am a high prep gamemaster, something that puts me at odds with letting players ask any question at all. I gave a vague, rambling answer pulling on ideas I in-turn took from an Irish folkstory from the 1800s involving a fairy who trapped the souls of drowned sailors in lobster cages. I still don't have a great idea of what to do with this, though. Rhiannon's player discussed having it tie-into Matty's Immram mini-game, so I'll look at that in the future.
Puck worked as well as I hoped. While I failed to cleanly rhyme, everyone had a lot of fun with the vocal quirk and it was a delight when Seren joined in as well. His appearance acted as a way to affirm that the Unseelie Court are a faction in the game with their own agendas that they actively pursue as well as build off of a request from Hemlocke's player to have the seneschal owe favors for their pre-game efforts to find sanctuary for the survivors of the raid on the Seelie Court.
I say Puck worked as well as I hoped, but that's a lie. His apperance went over so well that when the party rested for the night Mio's player spent a Fabula Point to bring him back. I took the opportunity to provide more guidance on how to reach their next objective as well as cause Hemlocke consternation. I am not sure what I will do with him knowing Seren is nobility, but it is a fun hook to follow later.
Matty's Immram remains a nice mini-game. Amusingly, only three sessions into playing it she's already advanced to the next zone. This was always a possibility - there is is a 6.25% chance of it happening on any given roll at the level Matty's at - and it just means she is in the next zone for longer, but it was a surprise. I'm going to use it as a chance to rethink how I prepare a new minigame zone, especially with regards to what treasure can be found.
Finally, the "Next Time On" blurbs remain a fun challenge. I typically don't have a detailed outline written for the next arc when I write the blurbs, so have to walk a line between writing something detailed enough as not to be boring but vague enough that I can wiggle around it if I make mistakes. And I do - I teased a scene with Vesper and with Seren's sibling this time, describing them as standing in a forest. Meanwhile, I already have a 1,470 word (!) cutscene written for next session that instead places them next to a ruined tower in a grassy space. If the "Next Time Ons" are meant to evoke old cartoons, I figure such mistakes are just editing errors or the result of miscommunication between the team making the blurb and the team working on the next episode.3
That's not true. It actually started with me apologizing for not providing them with an additional piece historical information last session. Namely that Seren recognized Brigantia, the sovereignty goddess of Albion, and the spirit her parents attempted to summon in the ceremony that unintentionally unlocked her planet oracle powers.↩
Seren's player described her powered-up "vehicle" form as looking like Lune from the video game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.↩
There was a moment when the party talked with Merlin where I briefly considered having him break the fourth-wall and refer to him saying a line from the previous Next Time On. A small part of me regrets not doing that.↩