Chapter 6: Blighted Stars

Session 6.1 of my solo Cairn campaign

Setting up the session

Welcome back to my solo Cairn campaign!

Last session, Reed made his last stand against the witches and their thralls. He fought well. He died in the mud. And we carry on. That bitter massacre left only one survivor: the foundling known as Steeleye. Worse still: Steeleye failed his DEX save to escape the massacre with a 20. To start this session, I rolled the theme, weather, and a random event.

• Theme: Eerie & Frost

• Weather: Cold

• Random Event: PC Positive.

This was tricky. Steeleye failed to escape…and had a positive event as a result. Recalling my thoughts on Failing Better, I started the session with a personal challenge for Steeleye.

To learn more, I rolled on my spark table: Bloody & Tree. That could only be the corpse tree from Chapter 1. Reviewing Steeleye's character sheet, I decided his twig trinket was from that same tree and valuable to these witches.

He ran. The underbrush ripped his clothes and lashed his flesh. But he had to keep running. The hooded men howled after him, loosed arrows, and hurled javelins. But nothing could hold him back. Twice he stumbled on the soggy ground and rolled up in a muddy heap. The second fall twisted his ankle; he had to keep running.

If they were lucky, Cliff and Ash were dead. That bastard Marchguard was dead too, and he hoped the witches gave up his guts to whatever god gave them magic.

He’d seen it before. And he wasn’t dying like that.

So he ran. Downhill, to the muddy rill, and up again into a copse of pines. And that’s where the witch waited for him, still and grey as a river stone.

She wore a crown of antlers ornamented with a bone bead veil that hid her eyes. Ink dribbled down her chin, dripping from her filed teeth. She stretched out a gnarled staff capped with three bat skulls.

Game notes

I rolled Razan’s reaction first — wary — and rolled an oracle to tease out more.

Oracle: Does Razan know him? Yes, but…

— Does she know about his curse as a foundling? Yes.

— Will she let him go? Double 1s — a twisted, strange “no”

— Why is she wary of him? Haunted & Flesh.

He marked the corona of hoarfrost on the ground at her feet. They could never hide their magic — she was witching this place in some way.

He knocked an arrow, but he didn’t dare draw on her. Not yet. When the frost was on a witch, they were…unstable. Demons tolled their magic heavily but didn’t much care who paid it.

The witches were only people though. Afraid. Bitter. Just like him.

“Let me go,” he croaked. He could see his breath now. They began to circle one another, and the yellow leaves and brown needles crunched under their feet. “You’re alone here. I could kill you with a shot.”

She kept that mangled staff of hers between them. It seemed to slither and writhe in her hands, pulse even like maggots on meat.

“We remember you, Ralund," she said, polyphonic.

“You know me? How by?” He gripped the bow tighter and ran his fingers along the fletching of the arrow. She knew his name — his real name.

“Your child: Addy. She speaks to us from The Umbral River. She’s afraid for you. Bitter that you let her die.”

He let the arrow fly. It shattered. A bell of arcane frost coruscated around her before fading into the air. The woods grew bitingly cold — so cold Steeleye — Ralund — could taste it. It burrowed into his open cuts as he drew the rusted blade from his hip.

He couldn’t run anymore. He had to kill her or be killed. So everyone finds their end. So it goes in the Wenderweald.

“It needn’t be this way, Ralund.”

“Stop calling me that!”

“You still carry the yew branch, yes? She says you do.”

Steeleye gripped the hempen cord around his neck and the totem wrapped within it like a chrysalis. Addy gave it to him. She promised it would keep him safe. Safe from her when the witching was on her.

It had. It was still. That’s why he was still alive, he realized.

“If I give this to you, you’ll let me go?”

“It’s the only reason you’re not dead yet.”

“And why not just kill me after I hand it over?”

“There’s a blighted star over you, foundling. Your life. Your pain. It’s woven into the wyrd. If I kill you, I’ll inherit that wyrd. And I have much to do before I die.”

That was the same thing Addy said before the Marchguard took her. “A blighted star,” she called it.

He reached for the ball knot at the back of his neck and forced it through the loop holding the necklace around his throat. He hadn’t taken it off since she gave it to him. The cold air bit at his bare skin.

He stared at it for a while. A disgusting, moldy cord of hemp coiled around a bleached twig of yew. A trinket. A memento mori. A bargaining chip.

“The gods have plans for me, that’s it?” he said, nearly laughing at the thought.

“No.” The witch was terse. “Something else has plans for you now and the gods hate you for it.” She hissed that word: hate. A hate she seemed to share.

He wasn’t sure what to make of that. He knew only that this thing Addy gave him kept him alive and it might do it again. He knew if this witch wanted it, she could easily kill him and take it. He was dead already. And the dead don’t get a say in what goes in the hole with them.

He handed the necklace over to her.

Game notes

Oracle: will Razan accept this trade? Yes.

She took it with fingers too long to be human. Then she burst into a cloud of winged termites. They flew up towards the milky sun but shed their wings before they breached the tree canopy. They fell all around him like snow.

The witch was nowhere. She left behind only the insects. They wriggled, mating and dying in the muck.

She was gone. And Ralund ran again.

Game notes

To account for his escape and negotiation with Razan, I added 2 Doom dice to the pool. Then, I advanced another hex east toward Gideon’s Reach. This triggered a Wilderness Event: Encounter.

I rolled on the random encounter using my Wenderweald One-sheet and added a spark table roll to flavor it: Trappers + Bloody & Stag…the todorats again.

The sun was setting. The grey and gloom ate up all the anemic light left. The woods became a cage of twisted and sharp-edged shadows.

He was too old to live out here anymore. He reached for the twig at his throat absently, only half-remembering what he traded it for. Another night in The Wenderweald. The blood in his veins felt heavy like sludge. His legs ached. The empty quiver cut into his shoulders. He was spent.

Why keep fighting this place? Why keep fighting at all?

Hate, he supposed. That was fire enough to stay warm. Not warm enough, though. His breath clouded up. Steam rolled off his body. He shot up and reached for arrows that weren’t there.

He could hear a woman’s voice in the distance. And a child’s.

He stalked ahead as if on a deer’s trail, following the voices into the heavy dark.

There was torchlight ahead. A fur-clad woman held up the burning brand, looking down on a dead stag…not a stag. A todorats. A young boy stood behind her and spotted him as if he had been waiting for him there all night.

Game notes

I rolled to see how she'd react to Ralund, bloody and stinking of witchery. Wary — totally understandable.

The woman wheeled on Ralund, dropping the torch in a flash and drawing up a blade that shimmered in the reflecting fire.

“Stay back!” she commanded.

Ralund came out of the cover slowly, holding up his empty hands.

“I need water,” he bleated. “Please.”

“I said stay back!” She backed away from him, closer to the todorats' corpse. If she had killed it, Ralund thought, then she was tougher than she looked.

Game notes

Oracle: Did she kill the todorats? No, but…

— did the boy? Yes.

Fantastic.

Ralund stepped out of the brush and his legs gave out. He’d run all day and they wouldn’t listen anymore. He was done, and the woman knew it. She brought the tip of her sword to his throat but he couldn’t move anymore. He said the only thing he could think about

“Water. Please.”

“Are you with them?” She gripped the sword with both hands, ready to decapitate him.

“I’m not with anybody.”

The boy knelt over him and looked into his eyes. He touched Ralund's face with hands crusted in frost.

“You were born under a blighted star,” the boy said.

Ralund almost laughed. “I know,” he said. “I’ll trade you: my crossbow for water and food. Please.”

The woman sheathed her sword into a leather scabbard. She helped Ralund to his feet and draped his arm over her back. They walked together, halting and slow as the boy walked ahead with the torch.

Ending the session

For now, it seems Steeleye — Ralund, lives another day.

We’ll see where this strange family is taking him next time.