Chapter 11: Back to the beginning

E1:A2 of my solo Cairn campaign

Opening the session

Welcome to Episode 1, Act 2 of my solo Cairn campaign.

In this series, I’m using 2 new characters who began in Act 1 as NPCs and betrayed my last character.

Sysa, the half-witch and her husband Ramil, the fieldwarden. Thankfully, they’re both way more hardy than poor Ralund was.

Sysa, the half-witch

Ramil, the fieldwarden

In the last act, Sysa and Ramil fled Gideon’s Reach after Sysa learned her sister Razvan is still alive and wandering in the Wenderweald. Ever devoted, Ramil gathered up what they can cart off and followed Sysa into the strange, bewitched woods.

The Warden’s Guide has been released since my last campaign, so I’ll be using that for this new one.

I’m using my same one-sheet to carve deeper into my homebrew setting. That provided my session theme and weather. Then I checked for a random event using my dread dice.

• Theme: “Isolated” & “Secret”

• Weather: “Grey & Grim”

• Random Event: none

Sketch from my notebook

Rank wind flew over the pus-yellow bogs and breathed a foul stink through the bare, gnarled pines. It buffeted the black trees, driving out crows perched in their tangled branches. Old roots groaned in their shallow muddy graves. It was louder than their old sagging cart.

“I swore I’d never come back here,” Ramil said.

He spit over the rail and checked the quiver between his knees again. His kind were not welcome in The Wenderweald, and he knew it. “I swear it’s watching me.”

“It is,” Sysa confirmed curtly. It was watching her too.

She belonged to The Wenderweald. It was in her blood even if she had left it behind. It did not share the witch with outsiders. It would not understand why she left. It would not forgive her for loving Ramil. He was an outsider, and that made her a traitor.

Sketch from my notebook

Rowena cawed atop the cart in a fury of black feathers.

“Traitor! Traitor!”

“Shh!” Sysa hissed.

The raven quieted but so did The Wenderweald. All at once, the barking toads and screeching crows went silent. Eveleen spooked, her long ears darting in every direction.

“Shh.” Ramil cooed.

The swaybacked mule snorted and pawed at the mud. Sysa turned to Ramil and smiled meekly. He smiled back.

“Come on, lady,” he said gently. Sysa flicked the reigns and Eveleen plodded ahead through the misty gloom.

Game notes

To run this campaign, I’m using the forestcrawl rules outlined in The Warden’s Guide.

Forestcrawls are pointcrawls confined to a wooded area. The Warden’s Guide provides tons of complex tables for determining the nature of each waypoint, the paths between them, and even the living character of the woods.

Ordinarily, forestcrawls can be traversed in a single watch. But this is the Wenderweald – it decides how many watches it takes.

I rolled up my first waypoint: a hazard: “stinging nettles” and “chaotic weather.” This hell I dubbed The Nettledells and found 2 paths from it — the merchant road and a fae passage. You can probably sense what’s about to unfold here.

Beginning the forestcrawl

Eveleen dragged the cart upland away from the black still muck to a cresting glen brocaded with sickly green ferns and nettles. Emaciated trees brindled with blighthair and spines brooded over the glen. The wood wheels of their cart snagged the nettles, ripped them up by the roots, and spooled them around the felloe and axle. Before long, the cart was greased in ruddy sap that smelled of licorice.

Eveleen stomped through the nettles and brayed and bit at her legs.

“They’re poisoned,” Sysa said. She reigned up and Eveleen brayed again.

Ramil clambered down from the cart and it rose a foot without his bulk weighing it down. Sysa rolled her leg wraps up tighter and dropped into the nettles herself. The underfoot soil was spongy and loamy — rank with decay and sweet with fresh growth drinking the light rain.

Ramil knelt with a sighing groan to inspect Eveleen's hooves.

“Gah! They’re packed with the stuff. She’s blistered around the fetlock, too, poor thing.”

Rowena took flight from the cart and fluttered up to the tree line. Sysa watched the raven before she realized Ramil was talking to her.

“Love!”

“Hm?”

“The hoof pick?”

“Oh — sorry.”

She rounded the cart and picked her steps to avoid the poisoned leaves. In the back, she found the farrier kit and cheesecloth wraps for Eveleen’s legs. She bundled them up and passed them to Ramil, stealing glances for Rowena somewhere up there above the canopy. The rain was starting to fall harder.

“You alright?” Ramil asked, taking the kit from her. He pulled his hood up and turned back to Eveleen.

Sysa pulled her hood up as well. The wind was whispering to her again, and she’d forgotten its tongue. She wanted it that way.

Rowena dove down, too fast, and perched on her shoulder with a flourish of feathers that spooked Eveleen and Ramil both.

“Damn bird",” he spat. He rubbed Eveleen’s back with his massive hand and she snorted.

Game notes

By now, I had loaded doom dice and had to roll: Hazard. Storms gathered.

To learn more about what lay ahead, I rolled on my spark table: “Psychedelic” & “Lake.” Seems very fae-like.

“The lake! The lake!” Rowena croaked.

“The lake? Why?” Sysa demanded. The raven darted for the cart and bounced on Sysa’s spot.

“What lake?” Ramil asked, puzzled. He cast about the wide glen and beyond. There was no lake he could see.

“Only witches can see it,” Sysa said. She brushed through the nettles carelessly and winced as they bit into her flesh. She pulled herself up into the cart. The rain was screaming down now, in sheets. The nettles danced in the silvery cold wind.

“Ramil — we have to go.”

He looked up from Eveleen’s hindquarters and saw the witching on his wife’s face. Her eyes shone silver and milky, and the scars under her chin cracked and bled fresh as the nettles bloomed all around. The Wenderweald wanted them gone.

Something was coming…

Ramil pulled himself onto the cart and Sysa snapped the reigns before he could find his seat. The cart lurched violently as Eveleen picked up into a trot. They carved a path through the nettles, whipping them up in a slurry. It blistered their skin and the rain shot through them like needles as they careened through the emerald morass.

Rowena took flight alongside the cart and overtook it with a few beats of her wings. She surged ahead, screeching loud enough to wake the dead.

The nettles ahead began to swirl in a tornadic tunnel that rolled over them like a wave. Ramil screwed his eyes tight. Sysa fought back the smile growing on her face.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. Ramil forced one eye open.

A swirling tunnel opened ahead like an invisible mouth eating up the Wenderweald. It ripped at reality itself in a burst of prismatic color and emptied into a lake still as glass and iridescent with an oily sheen.

Sysa reigned up and Eveleen slowed to a halt. Elegant ripples radiated away from her hooves.

Ramil opened both his eyes and took in the lake. It was only ankle deep by his guess but stretched far away in every direction — far off into a wall of grim fog veiling the skeletal, smoking remains of a burned forest.

“What is this place?” he asked, breathless.

Game notes

I didn’t know if Ramil or Sysa had ever been here before, so I asked the Oracle.

Oracle: Has Ramil ever been here before? — No.

— Has Sysa? — Extreme yes.

— What is this cursed land? — Witchbirth

It had been years — a lifetime since she’d been here.

“It’s The Grand Swarm’s Loch,” she whispered.

“That doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“My home,” Sysa breathed. “It was. It’s home to witchfolk who walk between worlds. It’s the way out.”

“There’s no one here.”

“Not anymore,” Sysa confirmed.

Ending the session

It’s getting strange in The Wenderweald already and the deeper I dig into it, the more I learn and discover. I would have never added this hidden pathway within (outside?) the woods — not as it manifested anyway. Much less would have guessed it’s a path between life and death — or empty (whatever that means).

The journey continues for Sysa and Ramil. And as they trek onward, I’ll update my forestcrawl map until all the POIs are detailed.

Stay close, and watch for the Wenderweald watching.