Fabula Ultima - The Romance of Ys - Session 9

11 Nov, 2025

The third adventure kicks-off with the party exploring a discovery site and sitting through multiple cutscenes.

Episode 3, "Hunters X Horses: Showdown at the Stallion's Roost." Session 09

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, Widowed Revenant Looking for Answers
• Seren, she/her, Kindhearted Princess on the Run

Gatecrashers

The session opens with a cut-away to a group of harried dwarves performing a ritual in the forest. Just before several undead warriors catch up to them, the dwarves create a breach leading into a fairy kingdom and dash through. The undead evaluate the site and identify that it must lead to a secret fey realm and leave to inform their leader, an unnamed baroness.

Boarling Grove

Needing supplies and wanting to get a gift, the party set out from the sage's hill back to Caer Ys instead of traveling directly to the kingdom the sage pointed them toward. The travel roll comes-up lucky and they discover a site on the way to Caer Ys!¹ Picking their way through the wilderness they enter a grove with signs that once, long-ago, a building stood there. Deciding they have the time to spare, they opt to investigate.

Inside they find a group of midnight-black boarlings, which they identify as oddly-colored Cross, Bolting Boarlings and Hamhawk Boarlings. Mio opens a conversation with the disgruntled beasts, but gives them a healthy helping of trail rations to let the party by. The group take a moment to study the boarlings, watching them chew through the offering of food, but eventually make their way past them to a forest pool with pitch-black water. Almost everyone can tell its magical, and with a little study suss out that its magic activates at night. With it being close to sundown, Aurelia dips the tip of her finger in. When she pulls it back, it is permanently stained midnight black, like the boarlings.

Imagine these, but as black as the night sky.

After a fumbled check, Mio warns the group that the boarlings have both finished eating the food she gave and have decided that if the party has some food, they must have more. The group brace as the boarlings charge and swoop in for a fight! The party make short work of the five animals, though, with Aurelia killing two, Mio breaking the tusk off a third to scare it away, and the rest of the party knocking-out the last two. Not wanting to let the two dead boarlings go to waste, Hemlocke collects their meat to cook with and the party set-up camp for the evening.

A Late Night Meeting

From there we cut to another cutscene, where a horse-drawn coach with driven by a headless man pulls-up alongside a broken tower in the wilderness, where Seren's former handmaiden Vesper is waiting. As the headless man removes a truly massive coffin from the top of the carriage, a young woman who is almost the spitting image of Seren, but with shorter, silver hair, steps out. This doppleganger politely thanks the headless driver, wincing at the sound of her voice, before clasping her hands and dismissing him while winds whip around her. The winds settle, the carriage and its driver vanish, and the young woman greets Vesper in a different voice, one identical to Seren's.

Vesper properly greets the woman as Princess Astri, then the two have a conversation, catching each other up one what's happened with them in the week since they last talked. Vesper complains about her job trying to convince the aging lesser Cymry King, King Niyonin, to hold a joust and is happy that Sir Roric, her partner on her mission, has agreed to move to plan B. Astri asks about it, and Vesper becomes excited and animated, declaring that there is a body in the giant coffin and exclaiming she will perform black magic with it. She teases Astri whether the nervous woman wants to know more, but when the Princess collects her nerves, changes the subject instead, revealing she talked with Seren a few days ago.

Astri demands Vesper perform the magic mirror ritual she used to talk with Seren, and Vesper happily obliges. They arrange the mirror on the coffin, and Astri calls out to it, notably introducing herself as Nichol.

Twin Talk

Unfortunately for Astri, everybody except Seren is awake when the call goes through. Aurelia quickly disguises herself while the group rouse Seren, who quickly tries to wake-up and make herself halfway presentable before taking the call from who she thought is her twin brother, Nichol. She instead is surprised to see her face on the other side of the mirror!

She recovers, and the twins awkwardly update each other. After Seren fled Nova Sinfonia, her parents recalled her twin brother, Nichol, from the frontline of the war with Eire. They ordered Nichol to impersonate Seren, declaring her to be necessary to some task and to the shock of Seren. They also performed a magic ritual on Nichol, implanting two gems in her back and trapping two powerful spirits inside - one that lets her summon the headless carriage, which can travel swiftly across the land, and another that lets her change her voice. Nichol is uncertain with what their parents' plans are with this disguise... but also seems happy to be impersonating a woman.

The conversation winds on, with Vesper, Mio, Rhiannon, and Hemlocke chiming in and Aurelia pointedly staying quiet and away from the mirror's field of view. Astri and Vesper don't get many details from Seren, but Astri does update her on what she's gleaned of Nova Sinfonia's plans:

• Nova Sinfonia's war with Cymru remains paused, with their parents reluctant to order troops to resume it while the Phantom Redoubt conjured with the fall of King Arthur still keeps Sinfonia's shackled spirits from entering.
• The crystals the party encountered around Caer Ys are part of a plot led by a Cymry knight, Sir Roric, on behalf of Nova Sinfonia. Vesper quashes explanation of the details, instead saying Seren and the party should visit her at King Niyonin's castle if they want to find-out what's happening.
• Their mother, Empress Berenice, is preparing to visit Lecanda, the home of Aurelia, shortly on a diplomatic mission. Astri suspects there is more to it, though.
• Their father, Emperor Xerno, is heading north to Alba to negotiate with leaders from the northern Lod empire about trade and supplies; to check-in on his witch hunters and their search for both the Unseelie Court and a way into it; then will head to the battlefront with Eire.

Astri asks after Maine, the Eire prince who helped Seren flee, and her sister admits she lost contact with him. Seren asks after Findabair, the Eire princess who she tried to bring with her in her flight, and learns she was whisked away to some secret site Astri cannot find. The two parties end their call, with Astri and Seren turning to an uncertain Vesper and requesting she keep the two siblings in-touch.

After the mirror is put away, Seren turns to the party in a bit of a daze and declares "My brother is my sister now."

With that declaration, we wrap the session up with another round of the Matty's Immram minigame. Matty managed to visit all the sites rolled for this trip without being booted back to Caer Ys early, but none of the treasures interested the cash-strapped party.

Referee Thoughts

This was an odd session for a number of reasons. We started much earlier than usual and two of the players had to call-in over hotel wi-fi that had a several second delay. The party found another discovery while traveling, and I had to quickly pull-out a micro-dungeon I wrote a couple years ago. And we had a truly long cutscene followed-by a long-requested conversation between Seren and her twin. Other than the wi-fi delay, it turned-out fine. But it definitely felt messier than usual.

Starting with the travel roll, the discovery gave Mio's player a chance to use the armor she got from Matty last session, and they group were able to pick between two different discoveries to investigate. They chose to explore what I described as a mysterious black pool over the other option, which was described as a young woman singing to herself while bathing in a different pool. I think the group wanted more concrete information, but were happy that the item they bought last session immediately paid-off.

The site was a micro-dungeon I drafted for use with an old campaign. The original plan called for a fight with a giant, black-furred boar. I did not have stats for that in Fabula, so fell-back on using a travel encounter with five boarlings that I did have banked. It went well, even if I had to elide some stuff in the dungeon's layout that didn't make sense in our setting. I'm going to block-out more time to prepare more encounters like this in-case the group continues to get lucky on their travel rolls.

The pool itself dyes anything black, but only under a new moon. Fortunately, it was the night of a new moon! I had already planned the scene with Vesper and Astri to happen on or just after a new moon after seeing that on the calendar I keep for the game. I had hoped the players would do more with it, but were content to dye the red toadstool beret they got from the Green Man an even black.

The boar fight was a cakewalk, which was more-or-less its intent. I designed it to be a moderately difficult encounter for a party of level five characters, and the party is now level 10. That pushed the conflict into easy territory. It still took a lot of time to run (more thoughts on that in a bit), but I think it helped drive-home that the party is getting stronger. That feeling might change as they head north into more dangerous parts of Cymru, though.

I like that Mio chased off one of the cross, bolting boarlings. I need to have it come back and follow her around, impressed with her strength.

I am relieved that the cutscene with Vesper and Astri went well. The presence of Astri's been known for a while and was part of the pitch when Seren's player took my plans for a runaway princess NPC and turned them into her own character. My initial idea was to put Astri into a kind of Twelfth Night scenario and to make her gender-fluid. But Seren's player and Mio's players, two trans women, saw a lot of their own gender situation in the brief outline for Astri and requested we make her trans as well. So while I know they'd step-in if I got anything "wrong," there was still a lot of pressure in making sure Astri's first appearance met their expectations.

The subsequent conversation was fun, but kind of a mess. This I chalk-up to the hotel wi-fi more than anything. I was glad that I could use it to backdoor in a clearer picture of what's happening in the world while the party is off looking for a magic item. Fingers-crossed, this both creates a sense that the clock is ticking and encourages them to literally pick their battles.

I also concluded the session feeling Fabula Ultima is not designed to handle five player characters. Particularly with the trip to the sage and with the easy-but-still-time-consuming boarling fight, I think some common situations just can't be handled well with a group this large.

First up, if I ask the party to individually make checks, usually related to seeing if they know something about a place, item, or critter, they are going to inevitably succeed and get all the information. There are five dice rolls being made and particularly with knowledge checks, three of the characters roll d10 on Insight. The party have successfully gotten a 16+ on every history-related check I've called for and something like one-third of all study actions performed to identify an foe.

This isn't a new problem - you see it in D&D, Pathfinder, Shadowrun, and pretty much any game that encourages having everyone roll a separate check - but it feels exacerbated here given the way Fabula rolls for checks. I could swap to calling for group checks, but that just creates another problem as five people on a voice call have to negotiate who is the leader and roll their individual support checks. It's a slow process in a game that already feels like it is moving slow for us.

That sluggishness extends into combats. Fabula's balanced around the idea of fielding foes who have a number of actions within a range of +/-1 of the party. So if you have three PCs, you want your encounters to involve foes who collectively can take two to four actions. With five PCs in the party, that means I should field encounters with four to six foe actions in them. That means that each conflict round there are anywhere from nine to eleven actions happening, half of which are PC actions. And PC actions, like group checks, get negotiated as folks strategize on turn-order and what actions to take. All this has led to us pretty consistently taking one or two hours to resolve conflicts. Chatting with folks in Table Shapers, it sounds like this is abnormally slow.

Five player characters also means I have to be ready to advance five separate player character plots and a main plot at the drop of the hat. While Seren's player is great at telling me what direction she wants to take the story in, the others are largely content to let me take the lead. Which leaves me trying to give screen-time to six different plots. This admittedly isn't how the game's expected to be played, but that doesn't change the fact that this is how it is being played.

Other issues also become exacerbated. I have to seed the maximum amount of loot each session, which means finding or developing more-and-more items to keep that treasure interesting. More players means more chances a player has decision paralysis - very easy to have in a game with a lot of complex character options, particularly in combat. More players also means you need to spend more Fabula Points to get an extra XP each session. Which in-turn means it becomes real easy to single out the players who are hoarding their points instead of spending them.

I don't think any of this is unique to Fabula Ultima. I've experienced this in basically every "trad" RPG I've ever played. But I also don't have the tools to address them and don't think Fabula as a ruleset will provide me with them. Just going off of the examples in the rulebook as well as the rewards table capping-out at four player characters, it really feels like the system was designed around playing with a group of three player characters and one game master.

To circle back to the skill checks issue, it also highlights that I don't like how study works as an action. Focusing specifically on studying to learn an NPC's statblock, on a 16+ you get basically everything there is to know about that character. Each time it's happened - and it's happened to about one-third of the foes encountered - it's removed all mystery from the conflict. The players gain perfect knowledge and no-longer need to speculate that the oily-furred boarlings might be flammable - they just know they are vulnerable to fire damage. I find a lot of fun in teasing out that kind of information in the games that Fabula pulls on for inspiration, so its disappointing that it is so easy to side-step that process.

Again, some of that is exacerbated by party size. I have five player characters, three of whom have a d10 in Insight. Meanwhile, I presume an average party probably has three people, only one of whom might have a d10 in Insight. That's going to swing how often my players can get all the information. But just the reward itself removes the mystery, the exploration, inherent in a conflict.

I don't know what to do with this, either. I could change how much or what kinds of information you receive, but there are whole class skills designed around getting this information. And it clearly delights my players - I had one tell me she sees collecting all this information like updating a Pokedex.

I'll wrap this up by touching on prep for the session. Almost all of it was spent creating treasure and sites for the Matty's Immram mini-game. Turns-out when you allow for progression to happen early, even if the odds are against that progression happening early, it can lead to having to do a lot more writing sooner than expected. I think Matty moving onto the next zone as soon as possible has more than doubled the number of sites I have to write for it. This is fine - each site isn't that difficult to design - but it has been time consuming. Lesson learned!

#fabula ultima #rpg #the romance of ys #ttrpg