Prisoner Liberation

The Burning Ethrea campaign has finally begun. On a sultry summer evening, Princess Kyrilla sneaked into the city of Nimrod aided by a mysterious wanderer who introduced himself as Horatio. Hidden on the loading space of an oxen cart provided to Horatio by the princess’s rebel warriors, the two managed to bypass the sentries of Nimrod and reached the workshop of Baldur the locksmith who was a known sympathizer who had offered his home as a safehouse to rebels on earlier occasions.

Kyrilla explained to Baldur that she needed his help in rescuing the rebel warriors that had been imprisoned by her father, chieftain Marduk, and were now confined in a large bamboo cage on the rostra on Nimrod’s marketplace. Kyrilla had deserted her home town some months ago when her bellicose father forged an alliance with the Angelic evangelists that had arrived in the city and tried to convert the citizens to worship and obedience. Kyrilla, who had always been mistreated by Marduk, took this as the final reason to rebel against her father and found the movement that had become known as the Woodland Rebellion. Not only was Marduk a cruel and selfish leader, the Angelic influene was a bad thing in Kyrilla’s opinion for it had been the Angels who had brought devastation to the lands and death to millions of people, just about 50 years ago in the time that is referred to as the Grand Judgement.

Baldur, on the other hand, who was more of a tinkerer than a real locksmith, wasn’t happy about the evangelist’s influence either as he was obsessed with knowledge and technology and most of the achievements of mankind had been lost in the Grand Judgement. He had dedicated his passion to the retrieval of as much ancient technology as he could and he wanted to start by finding the so-called Mystificator, a device of unknown powers that was said to be in the ruins of Cantopia, a deserted settlement in the Storm Pillar mountains near Nimrod. Unfortunately that area was infested with vicious spider-like monstrosities so Baldur would need able swords for that endeavour. So his reasoning was that helping the princess might put him into position to ask for her help in exploring the ruins of Cantopia.

For Horatio – or Hygelak as his real name was – his motivations were not that clear to his new allies. He had been captured by the rebels on his way to Nimrod and as the princess questioned the strange wanderer with the detached demeanour, both realized that the other was driven by some sort of quest. Horatio didn’t really disclose what he was after, yet he mentioned that he was willing to help Kyrilla’s just cause in exchange for her friendship and support in his mysterious mission.

So the three of them deliberated on how they could rescue the rebels from the cage without revealing Baldur’s involvement (as didn’t want to lose his workshop and stuff in Nimrod). They finally came up with a rather… complicated plan: Baldur would try to forge an absolutely crappy lock that looked like the finest lock ever but would break under a determined hit with the pommel of a sword. Then, Horatio would request an audience with chieftain Marduk in which he would continue to impersonate the merchant and would try to convince the chieftain that the lock on the bamboo cage was an ancient piece of crap (and ancient it was, yet not crappy).

Having the locks exchanged would make it easier for the princess to break open the cage and free her fellow rebels which should finally happen during a feigned rebel attack on the southern barricade. In the chaos caused by that attack, Kyrilla would try to take out the two cage guardians, break the mockup-lock and flee from Nimrod with the prisoners.

So that was the plan. While Baldur and Horatio worked together to forge the lock (which took them about two days). Kyrilla made good use of the deep shadows during sunset and blended into the crowd on the market place with a successful beginner’s luck test for Inconspicuous (I offered a Stealthy test to her which would mean that she would be sneaking around in the small alleys around the marketplace, yet Steffie went for Inconspicuous as she considered it offered better chances). Se also managed to get an image on where the next guards were standing, the frequency of patrols and the overall situation on the marketplace. She also attempted a beginner’s luck test for Warrior-wise to recognize one of the cage guards as an old drunkard from her father’s myrmidons. That test she failed, so I decided the chieftain Marduk had picked only his most valiant underlings to guard the cage on the marketplace.

In the meantime, Baldur and Horatio managed to create a really great mockup-lock. It was a beginner’s luck locksmithing test with a base obstacle of 2 (doubled to 4) and a 2 points disadvantage as Baldur only had mending tools (so I decided that he didn’t have “no tools at all” but simply “not exactly the right tools). Horatio helped by bringing in his blacksmithing abilities and I also allowed Baldur to fork in his Ancient-technology-wise. Baldur also burned a persona point and finally came up with 9 successes on 6 dice against a final obstacle of 6. Yep, that’s a lot. Baldur allocated the extra successes to working quickly, so the lock was finished within one and half day – which was a good thing because Baldur had failed a beginner’s luck Street-wise test just before by which he had tried to establish the fact that he had heard rumors that the rebels would not be deported to another destination within the next week or so. Finishing the lock more quickly gave them just the amount of time they required to free the rebels before they would be brought to the stone quarries on the outskirts where they would have been forced to labour.

The next step was gaining an audience with chieftain Marduk – which wasn’t as easy a task as one might think. Horatio tried to talk his way into the chieftain’s palace but failed his Oratory test (6 dice vs. Ob 3). The guards refused to let him in, unless Horatio agreed to arrange a night of relaxation in Loretta’s brothel for them – which was a difficult task for one who had a B0 resources. Horatio thought about visiting his rich uncle who also lived in Nimrod, yet he decided against it as he didn’t want to call on the uncle’s favour for things like that.

So Horatio waited until the guards at the front door where displaced by two comrades and tried again. Again, he failed his Oratory test  – what a bad day. I decided that the guards had already informed about the annoying dirtbag of a crazy merchant who had been trying to gain an audience. When the new guards found out that said merchant was really, really annoying, they agreed to take him to the chieftain, although I decided that Horatio/Hygelak would gain a 1D hostile reputation with the warriors of chieftain Marduk.

Inside the chieftain’s rooms, Horatio was more successful: He convinced the chieftain that maybe the lock on the cage was a Diabolic artefact and that he had to remove it if he didn’t want to risk the evangelist’s wrath. He offered the mock-up lock to the chieftain and also mentioned grand chieftain Dagan from the other side of Lake Tangir who already had such a great modern lock. Dagan was Marduks biggest rival and – being more powerful than Marduk – the chieftain of the Nimrodin was infuriated by any message of him being overtrumped by his abhorred enemy (whom he had to pay a regular tribute; princess Kyrilla had told Horatio about her father’s rivalry with Dagan).

Eventually, Marduk agreed that he would take a look at the merchant’s offer – which meant that he would send for the only locksmith of Nimrod which fortunately happened to be Horatio’s friend Baldur. So in the end it was a collusive agreement in which Marduk he finally agreed, not knowing that he was just helping his rebellious daughter with the liberation of her friends.

After the price for the new lock had been haggled (Horatio tried to raise the price, but Marduk resisted, so Horatio only earned 1 Resource die), the three conspirators set the last part of their plan to work. Through a secret message, princess Kyrilla informed her warriors to begin with the feigned attack. Marduk’s daughter herself hid in one of the ruined buildings around the market place and waited for the alarm. When finally chaos broke loose, she notched an arrow on her hunting bow and took a shot on one of the two – valiantly remaining – cage guards. She hit him for a superficial wound and now the two warriors tried to spot the ambusher who had just attacked them. Unfortunately, Kyrilla had chosen a building on the western end of the market place, so the sun that was going down over Lake Tangir made it almost impossible to see what was going on within the deep shadows. Kyrilla won almost all positioning tests in the ensuing Range and Cover conflict and finally managed to wound the soldiers so severely (actually both took a light wound) that they failed their Steel test and ran screaming: “Beware! The rebels are already in town! There’s an archer batallion on the market place!”

That was when Kyrilla jumped out of her hiding place and down to the streets and rushed for the cage. The lock was easily broken and so she could rescue her friends with no further complications. On the oxen cart, Kyrilla, Horatio and the rebels could escape from Nimrod at the eastern barricade that wasn’t guarded due to the feigned rebel attack in the south. They headed for the hidden rebel camp in the woods where Baldur would join them some days later.

—

So that’s it. Our first session was – mostly – awesome. The rules turned out to work quite well and my preparation prooved to sufficient (I was afraid I wouldn’t be sufficiently saddle-fast rules-wise but that was not the case). We had no Fight! or DoW conflicts although we had thought about having Horatio’s negotiations with Marduk be resolved by a DoW. Yet we decided that for the first session with beginner players, simple versus tests would be enough (and we had Range and Cover, regular tests and Circles come into play, so I think that’s ok).

The characters’ beliefs did work, at least most of them, with Horatio having beliefs to detached from the situation at hand. We will adjust them before the next session which has not yet been scheduled.