Chapter 2: Homecoming
Session 2 of my solo Cairn campaign
Author’s Note:
For this chapter, I included my notes and roll results. They’re separated with dividers and displayed in italics. I also used my own homebrewed story engine: Doom & Dread
A watery dawn spilled over the swamps. The morning was grim, grey, and cold, and Reed felt about the same. He had marched all night, fighting the pain in his belly — fighting the urge to vomit and die on the spot like a poisoned swamp rat. Last night, he lost his senses, his guide — even his helmet. The Captain would have his hide for that. But at least he’d die before serving latrine detail for yet another week.
He was dizzy from the blood loss. Every step was heavier and more lazy than the last. His body felt like separate pieces all jostling in the same direction but at different paces, each with its own dull pain. Every part of him ached. It wasn’t so far though — not much farther now. Soon, he could lie down and sleep in his cot. He could almost smell the dusty straw and rough-spun pillow. He needed to rest soon. He needed to rest now, in fact. Just for a little while. Just a chance to catch…his…breath.
— Reed moved one hex east which triggered a roll of the hazard die: Loss. Bleeding and cold, time felt like the one thing he couldn’t afford to lose right now, so, naturally, that’s what he lost.
A crow squawked, and Reed shot up, panicked. He had fallen asleep against a tree, but for how long? An hour? Two? The gray sky gave no sign. Neither did the crow.
He peeled back the strip of Cobb’s tunic he had belted around his wound. The wool drank up his blood greedily, but it wept again whenever he exhaled, sending wailing pain up his spine. He needed to get back to The Fort. He would die out here, just like One-eyed Gann did last moon and Strongbite Brie, too, when she went looking for that one-eyed idiot.
No one in the Marchguard could tell what killed them rightly. The crows saw to that. They squawked again. Scores of them watched Reed in the branches above. No doubt they had a taste for Marchguard now. Reed would feed the murder well too. But, then, who would dig the latrine this week?
Who would warn them of what else is watching out there?
— Reed’s HP was down to 0/1 and STR down to 6/16. I expended some rations to restore the HP and rested for a spell, adding 1 Doom Die to the pool (1/4) before pressing on to Fort Greymist. This close to The Fort, it didn’t make sense for Reed to fumble around lost looking for his own home, so I opened the next scene about 20 yards outside the gates. To color the scene, I rolled on my Spark Tables (Grotesque/Mist) and Weather: (Storm) — off to a great start…
Fort Greymist was the best-built fort on the frontier. And that meant it was a ramshackle bulk of rotten logs. “The Old Pile,” they called it.
The keep listed noticeably to the south. The palisade wall was banded together with rope and rusted nails salvaged from the last caravan inbound from Gideon’s Reach. They leaned sleepily over a muddy lagoon. Duckboards like flotsam led over the mire to the wooden gate.
— Oracle: Do the guards spot Reed? Answer: (Extreme no).
Reed was home…but no one else seemed to be. He should have been spotted by now. The posted guard should have blown the horn. Come to that, he should have been intercepted by the picket or even a ranger — there weren’t even torches lit.
Rain began to fall. It drummed on his leathers like impatient fingers: ta-ta-ta-tap. If fell harder, then harder still. Reed couldn’t stay here much longer. He had to find a way in and something to treat the gnawing wound in his belly.
Slowly, he picked his way over the duckboards, over the mud and closer to the palisade gate.
Still nothing from inside.
He limped the last few paces until he reached the gate.
Still, nothing.
Reed banged on the gate, desperate for help, and called over the screaming rain.
Nothing.
He peered through the chinks in the boards and could see the muddy bailey beyond.
— Spark Table: What does he see? (Eldritch/Mist).
— +1 Doom Die (2/4)
A pool of silvery mist shrouded the bailey on the other side. It churned like bitter waves, and naked shadows boiled up from the deep smoke like the tendrils of some sea-borne hellion. The fort always wore a beard of swamp smoke – that’s where it got its name — but this was something else, Reed knew. The rain battered the gatehouse above like thousands of pounding fists. It washed the blood from Reed’s leathers and he watched it swirl in the soupy mud collecting around his boots. He had to get inside somehow.
— DEX Save to climb over the gate: 9/11 (Saves)
One-handed, he clambered up the gate, finally abandoning his wound to add another hand to the gut-wrenching effort. He cleared the top and bellied over, down into the bailey proper with a wet thwack. Incandescent pain burned in his guts. His breath fled and he struggled again to hold back tears, vomit, and blasphemous hatred for every god that kept him alive and hurting.
The grey gloom swirled around, impassive. Careless as the gods he damned.
— Oracle: Does the mist affect Reed at all? (No).
The fort was empty. Silent. Still. No torch light. Not a breath of life. It didn’t matter now — Reed could see his wattle and daub barracks through the gloom. Home. Peace. Rest.
— Oracle: Is the barracks locked? No. Is it empty? (Yes).
Reed ambled — dragged, himself to the door and nearly collapsed through it. He rounded on the door and pressed his weight against it to shut out the cold, the howling rain, and everything else in those damned swamps.
— Oracle: Is there first aid in the barracks? (Yes).
The apothecary’s trunk sat against the far wall, tucked behind a roughspun curtain beside a moldy cot. Reed rifled through the drawers and found gauze, silk thread, bone needles, and half-spent ingredients for a poultice. He’d cut enough men and been cut by enough to know how to stitch the pieces back together. He’d also seen the swamp add fever to splinters and fleshrot to shaving nicks. That was more godly work, though. All Reed could do was close the wound and wait and pray.
— Most healing is natural in Cairn, so it’ll take a week, or so, for Reed to recover his full STR. Given that, though, I estimated he could recover 1d2 STR each day and rolled: +2 STR (8/16). The time he took to nurse his wounds, though, was considerable, so I added +2 Doom Dice (4/4) and rolled the pool: (Upheaval). I rolled on the Spark Table to learn the nature of the upheaval: (Enchanted/Loam)
Reed woke delirious and forgetful of where he was for a moment. The rain battered the roof still, but slower now. At some point, the wind snapped the door open and the mist outside pooled around the low cots. He sat up, wincing and blinking the sleep from his eyes.
There was something in the mist. It snaked over the boards leaving a wake in the fog. Reed reached for his sword and stood on his cot as it drew closer.
At the other end of the barracks, more of them were slithering through the open door. They writhed and curled up through the fog, wrapping around the beams and rafters: black, bloated vines. They pulsed like polluted veins and sprouted offshoots that reached like mudworms into the cracks and splits in the wood.
The barracks began to groan under the strain. The roof shuttered and rain trickled through. Mud seeped up from the boards like puke. The swamp was eating the barracks. Reed had to get out before the whole thing came down.
His sword felt useless in his hands, but still, he swung it at…the mist? The vines — the swamp itself. He carved a path to the door as the barracks crumpled all around him. His blade bit into something that hissed and spit. Warmth filled his boots as more black vines knitted over the boards and doorway. He pushed forward, rushing and cutting his way out of the greasy knot.
— Retreat roll: 3/11 (Success)
Reed burst through the growing net of vines just as the roof of the barracks buckled and collapsed. He watched helplessly as the vines crawled over the entire structure. The roof beams snapped like bones in its constricting grip. The windows coughed up dust and splinters as the vines dragged everything down into a pit of bubbling mud. Reed felt his knees go weak too, and he let his sword fall limp into the mud.
The ground beneath him was veined with more slithering vines. They had wormed over the gate and pressed in through the palisades. The Captain’s Keep, though, was high enough from the mist – high enough from the swamp, that it might be the only place left to hide. Reed just needed time. Time to rest. Just for a little while. Just a chance to catch…his…breath.
This is great stuff! Your storytelling really does a great job of leaning into the slow dread of a story. Lots of down beats very few upbeats.
Loving this. Did you come up with the setting and everything yourself?