Chapter 4: Journeys

Surviving death || Stitching wounds || Struggling on

The Warden’s Welcome

Game notes

This session continues 3 days after the previous session. Reed has been recovering from his battle with the snally gaster. He introduces himself properly to one of the strangers — Ash, The Greenwise — who helped him survive that battle. Together, they undertake the journey back to Gideon’s Reach. But before that…

As with every session, I begin with a roll to determine if there is a random event. This is similar to the Chaos Factor from Mythic GME, but I built it into my own system: Doom & Dread. When the Dread Die rolls high, it triggers a random event, and that's how this session began: a random, "ambiguous event."

I rolled on my spark table to learn more — "surreal" and "river" — and rolled some random characters from Cairne 2e to help set the scene.

Enter: Razvan and Veles, the half-witches

The Half Witches

Somewhere in the swamps

Razvan could see The Tree, glowing with a dying fire that defied the inky dark water she struggled to swim through. The Tree was the only thing she could truly see down here, down in The Umbral River. It was never an easy journey to make. The Umbral River was the place between worlds, the conduit that carried life downstream to death. And, for a half-witch like her, carried visions upstream as well.

She pulled herself from the bound corpse, still smoking from the lightning. Its details flashed and departed in blooms of ash and smoke. Everything in the swamp was a whispy, screaming shade of half-light and veiled dark. Except for The Tree. She knew where it was. She knew exactly where it was. The living memory of the dead man flooded her mind. She recalled his last moments as if she herself had pinned his hands and feet to the tree with those irons.

The Umbral River began to pull away, draining out to some forbidden sea no living soul can find. The peace of death faded and the pain of drowning filled her lungs.

She woke on the bier, gasping and coughing up swamp water. She was freezing and mist roiled up from her body as the heat of life returned to it.

Veles helped her ground herself - rubbing her back as she retched up the last of the swamp that killed her for the second time that day.

“You’re back,” he said, calmly behind his skull-faced mask. “Your journey is over. Breathe again and know the pain of life that bore you into this world.”

“I saw it,” she said, joyful. Veles smiled beneath his skull mask.

"You know where it is then?”

Razvan nodded and returned the smile.

Veles embraced her and turned to the silent priests in the pavilion. “See to her needs,” he ordered. They helped her from the bier and wrapped her in a bearskin blanket. Razvan watched Veles pass through the flap of the pavilion. The trauma of her own drowning turned her mind to mud, but she could still hear him from beyond the canvas walls

"Children,” he said. “Prepare for our journey."

The roar from the others outside was deafening.

The Corpse Tree

Game notes

At this point, I had no idea what this event meant. I set the scene with some oracles and let the details come naturally.

I figured I’d come back to it when the time was right.

Back at Fort Greymist

Reed woke slowly at first, then in a fit of instinct and grasping hands until he found his sword. He shot up from the moldy pallet, blade darting at every inky shadow until his head cleared. He was in the root cellar below Fort Greymist, abed in a cell.

The miserable chamber stank of mildew and dripped from the clay and roots above. Across the chamber, the wooden bars lay splintered on the boards where the prisoners escaped. The youngest of them — Rat Hair — was there. He sat on a crate below a hooded lantern, mashing a greenish-grey paste in an upturned kettlehelm.

“You’re awake then,” he said, stepping through the broken bars into the cell. Reed let the point of his sword fall when he recognized him. The pain in his guts came flooding back with his senses and memories.

The todorats. The creeping vines. The snally gaster.

Every part of him ached. He looked over his body to see which parts he might be missing. All there, all purple and yellow and chased with angry, stitched-up gashes — but all there.

Gauze wrapped around his bare belly where the todorats had skewered him. It was tender, now, but not nearly as bad as yesterday.

Rat Hair approached with the kettlehelm and bid him sit back on the pallet. “Don’t mess with it,” he warned. Reed sat back without complaint and lifted his arms as Rat Hair unraveled the gauze wrapped around his torso. He poked and prodded and “hmmed” here and there. He peeled away the dry poultice with a flattened spoon and “hmmed” again."

The wound was stitched cleanly. It was a cleaner job than Reed could have done. Cleaner than Reed could have gotten out here, to be sure.

“Who are you?” Reed asked. His voice croaked, dry as paper. Rat hair absently offered him a canteen of rainwater looped to his belt with a leather thong. Reed took it and drank greedily.

“Ash,” he said, tying up his long ratty hair topknot. Ash reached for the lantern and held up to Reed’s exposed wound.

“You stitched me up?” Reed gasped after another belt from the canteen.

“I did. Steeleye wanted to leave you. Cliff and thought you’d be more use to us alive than dead.”

Reed didn’t know what to make of that. Those three could have finished him off. Reed might have done it, if he wore their boots and they wore the Marchguard tabard.

“You’re not leaking anymore,” Ash continued. “And the poultices have drawn out some of the swelling. If you suffer no corruption, I'd say you’ll live, mister…”

Ash trailed off, waiting politely for Reed to finish the last of the canteen and introduce himself.

“Reed,” he coughed. “Late of the Marchguard.”

“I wish I could say I was glad to meet you, Reed of The Marchguard” Ash said, offering his open hand.

Reed laughed haltingly which gripped his stitches like a vice. “Likewise,” he sputtered, clasping hands with Ash. “How long have I been down here?”

“Three days.”

Days? Three days? Reed struggled to make sense of it. The last he remembered the snally gaster was drawing him into that snapping beak.

“What happened” Reed asked.

“Cliff and Steeleye.” Ash daubed the cool paste over Reed’s wound with the flattened spoon. “They quilled the thing until it flew off. Nearly brought the whole tower down with it.”

“It’s still alive?”

“Probably.”

“Still no sign of the garrison?”

Game notes

Oracle: has the garrison returned yet? No.

Ash did not answer. That was his answer.

Up above them, the gnarled roots collected dew. It dropped down on the lantern and hissed. Reed remembered the tree and the vision it offered. He had to get back to Gideon’s Reach to warn everyone. To prepare for whatever this might mean.

Ash finished the last of the poultice and replaced the gauze. Just as he set the spoon down, Reed sat up and reached for his shirt and tabard.

“You’re in no shape to move,” Ash insisted. He wasn’t wrong, Reed knew. That didn’t matter now though. He was the last of Greymist, duty-bound to watch and warn.

“I have to get back to Gideon’s Reach.”

“What about us?” Ash asked.

Game notes

Oracle: Does Reed invite the others to come with him? Yes, but…

I read that to mean there was some reticence for Reed…and some insistance from Ash.

“You saved me, Ash. I release you as repayment.” Reed pulled his tabard over his blood-stained shirt. “Do as you like. Flee. Stay here. Go do whatever it was you did to get locked up here. I’m bound for The Reach — today. Now.”

“And what if you’re killed?”

“Then you’ll really be free of The Marchguard." Reed belted his sword on, wincing.

Ash stabbed a finger in Reed’s belly. Electric pain seared up through his chest. He collapsed back on the cot in a heap. Ash met his gaze and spoke careful, deliberate words.

“Your garrison is dead. You will die too if you go out there alone. And when The Reach finds out my companions and I escaped Greymist with no sign or word from the garrison, how many more Marchguard do you think they’ll send after us?”

Reed tried to speak but nearly vomited instead. That’s why I’m alive, he realized. I’m a witness.

“I didn’t heal you out of kindness” Ash hissed. “We need you alive, Reed of The Marchguard, because you can speak on our behalf to The Lady of The Reach. We’re coming with you.”

Hard to argue with the pain in his guts, Reed thought. He wasn't sure he could leave the cell without help, leave alone the swamps.

Ash left him alone in the dark anyway.

It seems we’re going on a journey together, Ash the Greenwise.

Game notes

At this point, there was no shelter, no back up, and a desperate need to warn everyone about the doom out in the swamps. Besides that, the snally gaster might come back according to the oracle.

It was time for the hex crawl.

Travel is probably my favorite part of RPGs. For this solo-campaign, I made my own hex map and left it mostly blank, so there was mystery and missing bits I could discover.

From there, I counted up the watches according to Cairne 2e and set out for Gideon’s Reach.

This journey was a long one: 6 watches, 3/6 chance of getting lost, and tons of rain (+1 fatigue all around)

More on that next time.

For now, here’s my hexmap and tables:

My hand-drawn hex map

All the tables!