Through the Oldoak Forest

Daphne has not yet reached Askalon. When she woke from her sleep, she felt her hunger raging vigorously. I allowed her to take another Foraging test with the failure clause of getting lost (7 dice vs. Ob 2, doubled to 4, +1 Ob disadvantage due to hunger – failure). Daphne was wandering through forest valley and over hilltops and collected whatever she could find – berries, mushrooms, roots. At noon, she was sitting below an old oak, having eaten and realizing that she had no idea on how to get back to her horse. I called for an Orienteering test (Base Ob 2, doubled to 4 – another failure). Daphne went astray in the forest and when she finally found her way back, her horse had wrested itself free and was nowhere to be found.

Fortunately for Daphne, her horse had left obvious tracks on the soft ground so she succeeded at an Ob 1 (2) Beginner’s Luck test for Tracking and finally found her horse on a small forest lake at nightfall. Daphne tied the beast to a tree and then climbed the latter and made rest in a comfortable crutch.

When the next morning came, Daphne continued her journey in an eastern direction. Just before noon, she found a road that was winding through the woods which Daphne took in order to advance a bit more quickly. After an hour or so, I had Daphne take a Perception test which she failed, so she didn’t notice the ambush she was riding into: Suddenly three men jumped out of the thickets before her, two in her back.

Startled as she was, Daphne took a Steel test and hesitated for 4 heartbeats. This activated her Raw Talent of course and as the infernal might built up in her mind, an Aura of Fear manifested around her, so the thugs – that were none other than her pursuers – hesitated as well, one heartbeat longer than Daphne did.

The girl took the chance and put spurs on her horse, the beast whinnied and reared up, trying to throw Daphne out of the saddle, but the girl held fast and finally the horse jumped over the thugs and down the road. Moments later the thugs ran for their own horses, cursing angrily – a chase!

Daphne’s horse failed all three linked Speed test and so a complication arose: A fawn had fallen into a hollow next to the road, whimperin miserably and obviously unable to escape the pod that was filled with water from the recent downpour. Out of compassion, Daphne went with her belief, jumped off her horse which continued to gallop down the road after receiving a clap on the back and having bit and bridle removed. She then climbed down to the pod, grabbed the fawn and bolted for a wayless scarp some paces farther away from the road. With 5 successes on 5 dice for her Beginner’s Luck climbing test (Ob 1, doubled to 2, +1 Ob disadvantage for carrying the fawn), Daphne managed to hustle up the slope with the dexterity of a monkey, leaving her pursuers behind.

When she had reached the top, Daphne realized, that the thugs were audibly arguing. One of them stated that they had continue their pursuit of the “witch”, the other disagreed, telling him that she was way beyond any area that was of interest to Arcadia and so they didn’t care about her any more. The other man grudgingly agreed, so eventually, the thugs left and Daphne was free to go wherever she liked (except for Arcadia, of course).

Daphne next tried another Beginner’s Luck Animal Husbandry test to assess the condition of the fawn, linked to a Beginner’s Luck Field Dressing test to splint the fawn’s right front leg which was broken – success, Fate point earned.

So Daphne’s could finally continue her journey, yet she was without a horse, again. After she had waited for a while to make sure her pursuers were really gone, Daphne climbed down the scarp again (Let it Ride) and tried to track down the beast – failure. The failure clause we had negotiated said that Daphne would be able to track her horse but the beast would have gotten into distress:

At sunset, Daphne arrived at a clearing in the middle of which there was the ruin of an ancient tower, desolate and crumbling overgrown with vines and obviously occupied as there was a reddish flickering light shining from the window holes, the merry tune of a fiddle, laughter and song could be heard. Daphne sneaked up to the building (Beginner’s Luck Stealthy vs. tower-dwellers’ Perception – success) and glanced into the building through one of the windows. Inside there were four men, sporting enormous beards, drinking wine out of bottles, dancing around a campfire and singing obscene songs – forest brigands as it occured to Daphne.

The tower also had a wooden outbuilding, obviously built more recently and with less skill than the tower itself. When Daphne approached that structure, she could hear a horse stamping its hooves and snorting inside. Daphne plucked up her couraged and knocked against the crudely crafted wooden door that was barely fitting into the door frame of the tower ruin.

Immediately, the fiddle ceased to play and song as well as laughter fell silent: “Who’s there?” a craggy voice asked from behind the door. Daphne didn’t reply but simply opened the door and entered which confronted her with four startled brigands pointing their weapons toward her. “Are ye mad, lass?” one of them, obviously the leader, asked with a confused expression on his face.

Daphne then explained to him that she had been a captive of a caravan of slave traders passing through the forest but she had managed to escape with one of the slavers’ horses but then she had been thrown out of the saddle and the beast had ran away. She had tracked it to the tower and now she was here.

When she mentioned the caravan, the brigands pricked up their ears and examined her doubtfully as they hadn’t seen any slaver caravans in this forest yet. Daphne insisted on her story and so I told her to take a Beginner’s Luck Falsehood test that would act as a linked test for her Oratory which she would then test in order to establish her Body of Argument for the following duel of wits. Daphne’s BoA was 7, the brigand got 0 successes from his test, so he only had his will – BoA 3. Daphne’s intent was to convince the brigands to go and look after the caravan in order to raid it. The brigand’s intent was to settle the fact that the girl’s story was nonsense and that there weren’t any slaver caravans passing through this forest.

In the first exchange, Daphne scripted point, point, point, the brigand leader scripted incite, avoid, rebuttal. Daphne added details to her story, trying to adapt her manner of speaking to the rude ways of the brigands and added some Soothing Platitudes as well as a little Seduction (dangerous game, you are playing, girl!). Anyway, she only to reduce the brigand’s Body of Argument to 1 during the first exchange, so another one was scripted. In that one Daphne started out with a Dismiss – successfully (but barely: 2 successes on 8 dice versus the Brigands 1 success on four dice).

The brigand leader looked to his companions unsurely: “Well, maybe, we should at least look after it?” The others agreed and so Daphne remained at the tower with the fiddle player while the other three brigands headed out into the twilight.

Once she was alone with the fiddle player, Daphne tried to convince him to leave the tower with her (I didn’t understand exactly *why* she was doing that, but anyway). Beginner’s Luck Persuasion, base Ob 3 (brigand’s will), doubled to 6, +1 Ob disadvantage for Daphne really having nothing to offer and the brigand having no reason to trust her and leave behind his companions; 4 dice from will, FoRK from Oratory, Seduction and Soothing platitudes, so 7 dice vs. Ob 7 – 2 successes – uh oh.

The fiddle player ceased playing, yelled at Daphne to shut her mouth because he couldn’t bear her gibberish any more, and then he grabbed her, bound her with a piece of rope and bumped her into the outbuilding next to her horse after kicking her with his boot for a light wound.

At dawn, the other brigands returned and, oh sweet surprise, they were in high spirits. They actually had found a “caravan”, a group of cowards on horses, armed with artisan tools who surrendered as soon as the first of them had taken a cut from the brigand leader’s sword. The bandits captured the horses as well as some coin and the tools of the cowards. Those cowards were Daphne’s former pursuers, of course. The brigand leader ordered the fiddle player to immediately release the girl from the outbuilding. He told her that she was a nice little rascal, laughed and finally introduced himself as Diodorus, King of the Oldoak Forest.

He then asked Daphne for another favour: He had once been a simple peasant in a village east of the forest, called Harran. When he was caught committing adultery with his brother’s wife Mariam, he was exiled from the small community and forced into a brigand’s life. Yet Mariam had been beaten terribly by her husband and back then, Diodorus had promised her that the two of them would leave Harran and travel to the free city of Arcadia were nobody knew them so they could start a new life. Diodorus finally asked Daphne to travel to Harran, contact Mariam and convey a message to her for him.

This is a minor complication I introduced because Daphne had failed every single test that happened after the Duel of Wits. She was at the fiddle player’s mercy and didn’t succeed at anything that would have granted her freedom. So I played on her belief to “Always concede a favour” to throw another obstacle in her way that she will have to overcome until she finally reaches Askalon.

—

So that’s it for now. Actually I had a rather hard time as a GM because Daphne failed almost every test (except the easy ones in which she got 5 successes on 5 dice). Interpreting failure is cool but if there’s only failure, the story meanders a little aimlessly. Maybe, in our next game, we will start out with 4 LP characters.

Advancement is also pretty slow at the moment because most of Daphne’s skills are not that useful in the wilderness (Read, Write, Oratory, Seduction, Soothing Platitudes and Book-wise) and it takes an eternity to open a skill via Beginner’s Luck (Daphne still needs at least 3 more tests for her skills being learned). Anyway, she is only 1 challenging test from advancing her Speed to B5.

Conclusion: Prefer a variety of low exponent skills to a set of very limited but good skills during character burning.

Escape from Arcadia

Yesterday I played out another vignette with my girlfriend who plays Daphne, a young noble woman from the Free City of Arcadia. Her family has been engaged in devil worship and was hence slaughtered by an angry mob of citizens with Daphne being the sole survivor, as in the light of certain death, something stirred within the darkest corners of the girl’s soul and suddenly, the rioters fled from her in panic.

Daphne managed to run to the stables, jump on the back of a horse and bolt through the city gates, leaving behind the city of Arcadia. When Daphne hit the road, our session began.

Riding along the cobblestone street, Daphne realized that behind her, that behind her in the dark, there were fiery dots in the darkness, marking the torches of a group of citizens who had taken horses themselves to pursue her.

It had started to rain, so Daphne decided it would be best to search for a hiding place in a nearby village. Unfortunately, Daphne had been a rather studious girl in the past few years, so she had spent a lot of time in the library of the Academy of Arcadia, yet neither had she explored the countryside nor had she learned riding so only with luck she found a village in which she hid her horse in an already partially occupied stable and the sneaked into a tiny hovel were she waited until her pursuers had passed by (so far we had some Beginner’s Luck tests for Countryside-Wise, Riding and Stealthy as well as a Routine test for Perception which didn’t count for advancement because of Daphne’s B5 Perception).

Shortly after the mob had passed by, the door of the farm opened and the farmer’s silhouette appeared in the door frame. Only now did Daphne realize that she was soaked to the skin, tired, hungry and freezing and so she stepped out of the hovel to address the farmer, not even minding to put the rope back in its place which she had grabbed before.

As she approached the farmer, the man started to shout at her: “Who in Heaven’s name are you? Come no closer, I warn you.”. While he was talking he fidgeted with a wooden club in Daphne’s direction. In turn, the girl tried to use her Seduction in skill in order to play on her weakness, helplessness and miserable condition. I granted her an advantage dice for being soaked to the skin and also allowed her to fork Soothing Platitudes (an honorable man like you wouldn’t leave a miserable girl out in the rain, would you?). The dice were cast – failure. “Shut your mouth, lass! Your kind ain’t welcome here!” and then he added: “Wait a moment – is that MY rope you are carrying?” angrily he raised his club and stepped up on Daphne, trying to hit her with the club.

Daphne tried to toss the rope at the angry farmer, gloriously failing with three dice on an Ob 1 (2) Beginner’s Luck test for throwing as the dice all came up as 1s. So Daphne tossed the rope to the ground and then the farmer hit her hard with the club, inflicting a light wound before Daphne managed to crawl away into the night.

Although having been beaten and being bruised, Daphne recovered quickly from the wound thanks to her B5 Health. She then returned to her horse and rode on into the night, ignoring fatigue and hunger until she finally managed to find a resting place via a Beginner’s Luck check for Survival.

In the early morning, the rain ceased to fall, and so Daphne was awakend by the morning sun on her face. Immediately her stomach reminded her that she hadn’t eaten in a day and was also very thirsty. While she managed to find some water (Beginner’s Luck survival Ob 1 (2) with an advantage die for the downpour of the preceding night). Anyway, Daphne couldn’t forage enough edible roots and berries to satsify her hunger which we interpreted as a superficial wound (+1 Ob) that wouldn’t go away if she didn’t find anything to eat soon.

Daphne continued her flight on the road that led to the northeast in which direction she knew was the village of Askalon where her family owned an old manor although it had been deserted for decades now. After a few hours, Daphne arrived at another farming village, where she hoped she would be able to find some food. Anyway, as Daphne had failed the Countryside-wise test to locate a village in which she could rest and eat, She noticed about ten horses in front of one of the building. As horses are expensive in Ethrea, Daphne figured that the villagers of a tiny hamlet like this wouldn’t be able to afford for so many animals. This, of course, meant that her pursuers were inside the building.

Carefully, Daphne tried to pass through the village without attracting too much interest (Beginner’s Luck Inconspicuous Test Ob 2 (4) – Failure). However, a downtrodden noble girl on a horse passing through was not a familiar sight in the village so I ruled that the villagers would notice Daphne and tell her pursuers as soon as they rose from their beds (they had been riding for almost the entire night). So the sword of Damocles was still dangling above Daphne’s head.

In the evening, she arrived in the forest were she found a suitable resting place via Let it Ride from the last evening. Daphne hid herself and her mount in a hollow and held out watchfully until the angry mob arrived and began to scour the forest for her. Fortunately, Daphne was very successful on her Beginner’s Luck Stealthy test, so they couldn’t find her and passed by, deeper into the forest, while Daphne bedded herself on a soft patch of dosh and quickly fell asleep under a blanket of leaves.

So far for our first session. We will probably continue this on Thursday or Friday so that Daphne arrives at the manor in Askalon just in time as she will meet the other characters from the Askalon group right there. The next challenges will be to find something to eat, of course, and then get rid of the nasty pursuers.

Burning Peddler

Back on Saturday, Patrick and I played the first session of our Skype-based 1on1 that is also set in Ethrea and revolves around the destiny of Hesiod, son of Faustus the village peddler in Askalon. Hesiod sets out on an adventure, approximately one year before Princess Kyrila and her friend rescue the captives from Nimrod. Patrick summarized the first session in the Burning Peddler thread over on the official Burning Wheel forums, so If you’re interested, you may read about Hesiod over there. For now, I can tell you that we had a blast. BW seems to be predestined for 1on1 games.

Thanks to Rafe from the forum who has posted the Burning Shepherd AP which actually motivated us to give 1on1-Skype-gaming a try.

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.

Welcome to the campaign blog

So here it is, the blog accompanying our campaign. This will be used to publish news on session dates as well as a campaign journal (that I will post parallely over at the Burning Wheel forums). The next date is the final character burning session that will take place in my appartment on Sunday, 21st, beginning at 7 P.M. Then, hopefully the first gaming session will take place on Friday, 26th. My players, please read the information I’ve published on the campaign wiki.