Present:- Meredith - Alys (1st level thief)
- Simon - Jarl (1st level fighter)
- Pete - Othwic (1st level forester)
- Kevin - Hob (1st level thief)
It was games night this week (
finally) and the Tuesday Knights have broken the ice with their first kills: four of the painted warriors of the dreaded Malte Volk; successfully avoided a large number of giant black scorpions (
Serkets); "borrowed" then lost a horse; found a strange underground room; rendered one of their number temporarily insane; found some treasure (
well, Alys did, the others don't know about it); and are now pretty much lost in the Forest Of Ascetir, deep in "enemy territory".
A
full, in-campaign, write-up can be found over here at the campaign blog but particular highlights for me included the characters' showing their true roguish nature - as befits the swords-and-sorcery genre that the
Crypts & Things rules seeks to emulate. They didn't think twice about "borrowing" Maud's horse (
as Clare was unable to attend due to illness), so that lame Jarl had something to ride on and didn't slow them down, and later on Alys pocketed the strange shiny gold key out of sight of her comrades.
We also had our first run-in with the
Crypts & Things variant take on damage - that, basically, says for player-characters and major villains hit points are just "fatigue" and their Constitution score is the true measure of how physical damage a character can take.
This came into play when a Malte Volk barbarian ambushed Alys and took her below zero hit points with a couple of quick strikes. The remaining damage came off her Constitution and she failed her Saving Throw thus rendering herself unconscious.
However, before the barbarian could do further damage to Meredith's character, Pete's forester stepped in and decapitated the attacker with a very good die roll.
Maud's absence from the group (
it was decided that she had stayed in the tavern because of her major phobia about thunder storms) was felt in two ways: first, as the resident mage, she is the only one with healing magic and secondly she's the only literate member of the party - which was bit of a problem when they found a natty note buried in the remains of a collapsed tower.
Not sure how she's going to take the news that the Malte Volk have stolen her horse, the palomino known as Mythra's Pride, from the people who 'stole' it from her!
While exploring the 'mini-dungeon' beneath the tower I got to use on of my "special effects" records to provide the all-pervading "mysterious hum" - and that piece of atmosphere seemed to go over very well and helped give the impression that there was something "more" to the only remaining rooms of the ancient edifice.
Reckless Hob (Kevin's character) managed to escape possible serious injury when he opened a trap door by jumping on it (
he was quick enough to jump off again), but was later rendered temporarily insane when he climbed onto the exotic leather bed in the main underground chamber and fell into a supernatural sleep.
Hob remained a walking vegetable for the remainder of the session, but I've promised Kevin I'd email him details of Hob's experience - well, what the poor lad can remember of it - and he can then decide what he shares with the rest of the party.
The group is currently camped near the coast and thinking of heading further into Scotia (
the western land of the Malte Volk) in the hope of finding the mountain with a skull on top that was on the note/map that they couldn't read!