As it worked nicely last time and I'm forever a creature seeking habit, I'll offer another ToC.
- Working Player's Survey of Corrhéo
- Session 1 - Corrhéo - West Marches - "To Bero's Boon"
- Session 2 - Corrhéo - West Marches - "The Stakeout"
- Session 3 - Corrhéo - West Marches - "Resolving Veel"
- Session 4-7 - Corrhéo - West Marches - "Players Split
- Session 8-9 - Corrhéo - West Marches - "The Mine & the Prison"
Since I didn't get to
/ Retrospective: How AI will fails you/ Making imprisonment complex/ The fear of darkness/ How faeries have entered my weapons
All grouped under but not originating in:
/ Session 10
/ Retrospective: How AI will fails you
I don't know how well this moment in my thinking will weather time, but important to write down what you see happening.
My relationship to AI has been roughly equivalent to my relationship with social media, maybe. Initially an excitement, an indulgence, a sense of 'riding the ride', a recognition of the social landscape that begins to develop around it, a sort of quiet shame, a self-questioning, a seeing of failures, a setting aside, a revisiting.
A has-it-changed.
I don't think these are 1:1 thoughts. The two are not the same. But I have come and gone on social media at various point, making and deleting accounts, using fake names, trying it for business only, building restrictions for myself, over-indulging, and ultimately settling on a weird quasi-relationship that finds the least healthy moments are the moments when I'm really trying to study whether it's good for me or not, whether it's a Good Me or not. I don't know that this relationship will change, but I get a little smile at the side of my mouth when I realize that this is another moment of assessment.
I do want to pick at the scab some, of AI, which I've yet to do. Social media is whatever. I'll deal with it elsewhere. AI is not 1:1 with social media.
I've found some very effective uses. I solved my air conditioning on my trailer. I've scraped fast probability charts in an effort to make decisions faster. I decided not to jack the roof of my remodel by asking questions of AI.
But bombs, I've also developed lesson plans for ESL classes, fast dialogues for students with large blank spaces to be filled in. I've brainstormed ideas for kids in a biology field class. And recently, around Session 6, I did a bit of brainstorming alongside AI that ended up failing me tremendously and I thought about it for awhile and believe I know why. I'll just state the reasoning and then back it up a bit with the use case: I think that AI-generated content is not intimate.
I think that AI-generated content is very cool. It is amazing to watch the machine work. It is amazing to watch it personalize itself to your requests and what it knows of you, and ultimately the scale of what it can generate, the raw quantity of content it can put out, is astonishing. Just like watching a factory produce candies or hot dogs or whatever.
But roleplaying at its best is intimate. There is an intimacy between characters and DM, between a player and her character, and between a DM and her world. There are moments when things become so intimate that that boundary ceases to exist. The DM becomes her world. The player becomes her character. We don't associate with each other within the restrictions of our relationships, but instead simply create something together that is almost born. It's a very precious thing, and only sometimes does it happen.
Other times we're much more aware of ourselves.
But for me anyway, that's the thing I chase. Spontaneous intimacy. I'm not sure what it does. It's not commodifiable. It's just a thing that fills me so me and my players walk away gushing.
Very metaphorical, but very real.
So, AI use-case and my proof.
My players were in Bast. You'll recall this if you've been reading along. They fell into combat and killed some agents in a bar. They also had every intention of visiting Zugg Dax's adopted family farm collectThe Collect has strong trade in wild rice, rye flour, the ‘Brunswick Blocks’ (q.v.), chive butter, eggs, and cress. Secondarily in all matters of husbandry (though this has dropped off a bit since Zugg’s trip), dyeing and cutting dresses or saddles, and, more quietly, ‘security.’ These Zugg would surely recognize on sight:
—in family proper, Dallas Brunswick, the margrave, early 60s, hale, savvy, shrewd;
Rebecca, margravine, 55, who sings in the evening, makes fine preserves, and the so-called ‘Brunswick Blocks’ (very hearty seed cakes, with bog yarrow , berry, and angelica);
Jason, 23, heir, and an excellent horseman;
May, 17, a dyer and weaver of real local repute, and the one who finds the dewcaps for trade (no one knows how, or asks);
Pearl, 15;
Dallas Jr, 6.
—& among the hands, Ficus, or ‘Miss Lee,’ an elderly, blind berrylman servant in charge of the bog yarrow and the hogroot patches, and the little glen therefore;
Skulker, Miss Lee’s wolfhound, a kind of seeing-eye dog who ages very slowly—has been in strong adulthood for near 15 years;
Forrest, the metalworker and welder—Zugg, Dallas, and May also know him as a Stand colonel gone rogue for cause;
‘Willie, Esquire,’ 40, a dark-skinned ploughboy, very sturdy, & thought to be half-dumb, though he speaks exclusively in pithy epithets; & the six ‘fieldhands’ (Thaddeus, Clive, Simon, Judith, Shyera, Samuel) living barracks-style northeast of the old silo at the Yaddish border, calling themselves ‘Old Thunder.’ Time to time, a green Zugg made seven. before they did any killing but they stopped in a bar and did some killing.
—in family proper, Dallas Brunswick, the margrave, early 60s, hale, savvy, shrewd;
Rebecca, margravine, 55, who sings in the evening, makes fine preserves, and the so-called ‘Brunswick Blocks’ (very hearty seed cakes, with bog yarrow , berry, and angelica);
Jason, 23, heir, and an excellent horseman;
May, 17, a dyer and weaver of real local repute, and the one who finds the dewcaps for trade (no one knows how, or asks);
Pearl, 15;
Dallas Jr, 6.
—& among the hands, Ficus, or ‘Miss Lee,’ an elderly, blind berrylman servant in charge of the bog yarrow and the hogroot patches, and the little glen therefore;
Skulker, Miss Lee’s wolfhound, a kind of seeing-eye dog who ages very slowly—has been in strong adulthood for near 15 years;
Forrest, the metalworker and welder—Zugg, Dallas, and May also know him as a Stand colonel gone rogue for cause;
‘Willie, Esquire,’ 40, a dark-skinned ploughboy, very sturdy, & thought to be half-dumb, though he speaks exclusively in pithy epithets; & the six ‘fieldhands’ (Thaddeus, Clive, Simon, Judith, Shyera, Samuel) living barracks-style northeast of the old silo at the Yaddish border, calling themselves ‘Old Thunder.’ Time to time, a green Zugg made seven. before they did any killing but they stopped in a bar and did some killing.
The immediate drama revolved around these killings, obviously. I began to make assumptions about what would happen as a result. They would investigate What's Duethe dissective end of druidry, jailers, torturers, executioners, judges, and Investigators; rigorously in search of cleanliness; as feared as the Stand is mocked, surely. They would go to the farm collect, possibly. The local 'police' would regulate things. I needed to have answers for each of these scenarios because I hadn't fleshed out anything. When I look back on my pages from these prep sessions, they are brimming with details.
I'll tell you what: I ran out of time. I spent so much time prepping the What's Due engagement, making a little 8-point adventure ("The Old Perny Worship House: Bast's well-endowed Church of Hold & once-orphanage has been commandeered in its disuse by high-paying renters") that I was running out of it.
Maybe an hour or something until session?
Weeks later after this prep-session having run five to six games with less than an hour prep apiece to plenty good results, I smh. Stab my heart.
So I turned to ChatGPT and was like: let's talk. Or more accurately, you talk. I'm out of talking time. Read this, tell me what sort of plants might be on this field. Let's aim for 'slightly magical but not to the point of being useful beyond food and trade'.
Boom, listThreshbarley – Heavy-headed grain that grows in threes; husk splits with heat not threshing.
Bluecorn – Cold-hardy maize with dusky kernels; ground into dye-rich meal.
Candlewheat – Pale, waxy grain used for breads that stay fresh for weeks.
Greenspelt – Ancient, low-gluten grain resistant to blight; long simmer required.
Quellrice – Wetfield crop with calmative properties; a staple among older folk.
Sparrowmillet – Short-growing grain sown between larger crops; eaten by all classes.
Cinder Rye – Grows fast after fire or soil stress; used in emergency planting.
Roots & Tubers
Knuckletatoes – Fat, gnarled tubers that grow in clusters; sweet but starchy.
Redcleft Beets – Dual-veined root used in brining and pigment.
Goldnut Yam – Gilded-skin root with a buttery taste; luxury starch.
Saltcarrots – Thrive in brackish soil; have a faint mineral taste.
Burronions – Hairy-skinned alliums that store exceptionally well.
Stoneleek – Leek variant with a fibrous base prized for stock.
Ironparsnip – Earthy, tough, mildly metallic taste; needs long roast.
Leafy & Fruit-Bearing Crops
Fenleaf Cabbage – Swamp-adapted green with loose heads and bitter bite.
Spindlebean – Climbing vine with twisting pods; young shoots edible.
Wispgreens – Fast-growing, faintly luminous salad green; loses glow when picked.
Torchberry – Bramble fruit that glows faintly when overripe; used in preserves.
Plumtomat – Small, purplish fruit with tangy, almost spicy flesh.
Fallowgourds – Hollow-bodied squash used as bowls or musical instruments.
Bloodfigs – Oozing red fruits that ferment easily; consumed carefully.
Herbs & Medicinals
Hearthmint – Sharp-tasting herb burned in sickrooms and winter feasts.
Sleepleek – Mild sedative leaf brewed into tea; mildly addictive.
Gilfern – Bitter, fibrous herb whose smoke drives off rotflies.
Chainroot – Ground into paste for setting bones or binding sprains.
Sagevine – Twisting vine with waxy leaves; brewed into clarity tonic.
Thornmallow – Flowering plant with soothing sap and stinging hairs.
Utility & Specialty Crops
Lintreed – Blue-flowering fiber crop for clothing, netting, and binding.
Branethatch – Roof-thatch reed that bends but never breaks in wind.
Ashfrond – Charcoal-rich plant burned for ink and warding powders.. Quellrice that's vaguely soporific; asparagus that glows faintly at night. It was cool stuff. It was poorly named. It was simple combinations of unexpected things. It was all based in the real world. I was writing it down when I could stop myself from asking more questions. AnimalsAnimals:
Herd & Labor Animals
Greathorns – Broad, slow cattle with spiraled horns used for plowing and milk with slight numbing properties.
Blassox – A heat-tolerant ox with white hide and black tongue; thrives on dry weeds.
Whicksters – Shaggy goats with a taste for metal salt; their breath smells faintly of copper.
Croptail Mules – Short-legged, strong-backed hybrids, bred to resist hillside erosion.
Brindle-Sows – Fat, striped pigs who forage efficiently and birth in high multiples.
Clayhoof Drayders – Pack-beasts with wide, dish-shaped hooves suited for muddy roads.
Hallowhens – Pale, egg-heavy birds that roost in cryptic, high places and sing low harmonics.
Flaxbirds – Flightless avians whose long neck feathers are combed and spun with linen.
Fence & Field Fauna
Hurdleharts – Small, antlered ungulates that leap hedge-rows; once sacred, now pests.
Skyrams – Tufted-horn sheep that bellow at cloud cover changes; prized for thunderwool.
Needleback Boars – Bristly swine with back-quills; useful for clearing brush, dangerous when cornered.
Dimgeld Ponies – Sure-footed, half-feral, used for hill-tilting and youth trials.
Pellwings – Black-furred chickens with flapflights of two meters; unpredictable but popular.
Rotdogs – Half-wild hounds bred to scent spoiled root or deep mold; rarely liked.
Thorncats – Barn-prowling cats with thick haunches and spiked tails; the bane of burrowmice.
Burrowers & Rodents
Quist – Large, burrowing rodents used for early frost detection by their migration.
Grist-hoppers – Grain-colored hares that shed edible, bitter fur.
Mireferrets – Swamp-trained, ribbon-bodied hunters that scent out eggs or root-grubs.
Dustcoons – Masked scavengers with a habit of sorting trash by type.
Flumeweasels – Sleek, waterway-bound mustelids that keep irrigation clear.
Pond & Margin Creatures
Reedjaw Toads – Huge, croaking amphibians that bloat when storms are coming.
Wimpling Ducks – Heavy, silent ducks with bright under-eyes, bred for stealth egg-laying.
Chalkswans – Long-beaked waterfowl that eat water rot and leave fine white waste useful as lime.
Blotfish – Farm pond fish that turn color if soil runoff is toxic.
Loopneck Eels – Raised in barrels for brine-flesh; they knot around sticks for easy catching.
Companion, Unusual & Borderline Creatures
Singerslugs – Glowing slugs used for gentle light in children’s quarters and nighttime stables.
Whistlechickens – Loud, scrappy birds bred to alert at intruders or unusual sound.
Glimmercows – Born only once per ten years; give milk said to be lucid-dream-inducing.
Knucklehorns – Stubby deer bred down to the size of dogs; used as companions or garden grazers.
Candlehoots – Night-faring barn owls with pale eyes and wing-tips that glow when near feverish animals.? What about some of the ways a Rot might begin to creep into this. Let's say you had a map that looked like this with five or six things on it; a pond, a glen, an underground passage from the watchers' hut to the silo?
Bluecorn – Cold-hardy maize with dusky kernels; ground into dye-rich meal.
Candlewheat – Pale, waxy grain used for breads that stay fresh for weeks.
Greenspelt – Ancient, low-gluten grain resistant to blight; long simmer required.
Quellrice – Wetfield crop with calmative properties; a staple among older folk.
Sparrowmillet – Short-growing grain sown between larger crops; eaten by all classes.
Cinder Rye – Grows fast after fire or soil stress; used in emergency planting.
Roots & Tubers
Knuckletatoes – Fat, gnarled tubers that grow in clusters; sweet but starchy.
Redcleft Beets – Dual-veined root used in brining and pigment.
Goldnut Yam – Gilded-skin root with a buttery taste; luxury starch.
Saltcarrots – Thrive in brackish soil; have a faint mineral taste.
Burronions – Hairy-skinned alliums that store exceptionally well.
Stoneleek – Leek variant with a fibrous base prized for stock.
Ironparsnip – Earthy, tough, mildly metallic taste; needs long roast.
Leafy & Fruit-Bearing Crops
Fenleaf Cabbage – Swamp-adapted green with loose heads and bitter bite.
Spindlebean – Climbing vine with twisting pods; young shoots edible.
Wispgreens – Fast-growing, faintly luminous salad green; loses glow when picked.
Torchberry – Bramble fruit that glows faintly when overripe; used in preserves.
Plumtomat – Small, purplish fruit with tangy, almost spicy flesh.
Fallowgourds – Hollow-bodied squash used as bowls or musical instruments.
Bloodfigs – Oozing red fruits that ferment easily; consumed carefully.
Herbs & Medicinals
Hearthmint – Sharp-tasting herb burned in sickrooms and winter feasts.
Sleepleek – Mild sedative leaf brewed into tea; mildly addictive.
Gilfern – Bitter, fibrous herb whose smoke drives off rotflies.
Chainroot – Ground into paste for setting bones or binding sprains.
Sagevine – Twisting vine with waxy leaves; brewed into clarity tonic.
Thornmallow – Flowering plant with soothing sap and stinging hairs.
Utility & Specialty Crops
Lintreed – Blue-flowering fiber crop for clothing, netting, and binding.
Branethatch – Roof-thatch reed that bends but never breaks in wind.
Ashfrond – Charcoal-rich plant burned for ink and warding powders.. Quellrice that's vaguely soporific; asparagus that glows faintly at night. It was cool stuff. It was poorly named. It was simple combinations of unexpected things. It was all based in the real world. I was writing it down when I could stop myself from asking more questions. AnimalsAnimals:
Herd & Labor Animals
Greathorns – Broad, slow cattle with spiraled horns used for plowing and milk with slight numbing properties.
Blassox – A heat-tolerant ox with white hide and black tongue; thrives on dry weeds.
Whicksters – Shaggy goats with a taste for metal salt; their breath smells faintly of copper.
Croptail Mules – Short-legged, strong-backed hybrids, bred to resist hillside erosion.
Brindle-Sows – Fat, striped pigs who forage efficiently and birth in high multiples.
Clayhoof Drayders – Pack-beasts with wide, dish-shaped hooves suited for muddy roads.
Hallowhens – Pale, egg-heavy birds that roost in cryptic, high places and sing low harmonics.
Flaxbirds – Flightless avians whose long neck feathers are combed and spun with linen.
Fence & Field Fauna
Hurdleharts – Small, antlered ungulates that leap hedge-rows; once sacred, now pests.
Skyrams – Tufted-horn sheep that bellow at cloud cover changes; prized for thunderwool.
Needleback Boars – Bristly swine with back-quills; useful for clearing brush, dangerous when cornered.
Dimgeld Ponies – Sure-footed, half-feral, used for hill-tilting and youth trials.
Pellwings – Black-furred chickens with flapflights of two meters; unpredictable but popular.
Rotdogs – Half-wild hounds bred to scent spoiled root or deep mold; rarely liked.
Thorncats – Barn-prowling cats with thick haunches and spiked tails; the bane of burrowmice.
Burrowers & Rodents
Quist – Large, burrowing rodents used for early frost detection by their migration.
Grist-hoppers – Grain-colored hares that shed edible, bitter fur.
Mireferrets – Swamp-trained, ribbon-bodied hunters that scent out eggs or root-grubs.
Dustcoons – Masked scavengers with a habit of sorting trash by type.
Flumeweasels – Sleek, waterway-bound mustelids that keep irrigation clear.
Pond & Margin Creatures
Reedjaw Toads – Huge, croaking amphibians that bloat when storms are coming.
Wimpling Ducks – Heavy, silent ducks with bright under-eyes, bred for stealth egg-laying.
Chalkswans – Long-beaked waterfowl that eat water rot and leave fine white waste useful as lime.
Blotfish – Farm pond fish that turn color if soil runoff is toxic.
Loopneck Eels – Raised in barrels for brine-flesh; they knot around sticks for easy catching.
Companion, Unusual & Borderline Creatures
Singerslugs – Glowing slugs used for gentle light in children’s quarters and nighttime stables.
Whistlechickens – Loud, scrappy birds bred to alert at intruders or unusual sound.
Glimmercows – Born only once per ten years; give milk said to be lucid-dream-inducing.
Knucklehorns – Stubby deer bred down to the size of dogs; used as companions or garden grazers.
Candlehoots – Night-faring barn owls with pale eyes and wing-tips that glow when near feverish animals.? What about some of the ways a Rot might begin to creep into this. Let's say you had a map that looked like this with five or six things on it; a pond, a glen, an underground passage from the watchers' hut to the silo?
Now it's spitting engagement at me. I'm giving it character names, it's suggesting the hound is sick, won't stop barking at people it finds familiar; forget the donkey whose lips are peeling back. Forget the blotfish in the pond turning up, the sickly color of that asparagus at night.
We walked all the way to conflict, final encounters, a blight elemental of sorts, a lumbering embodiment of the Rot in the form of a plant-zombie version of the old wet nurse. It was cool stuff, man. I felt like I was walking along with a very imaginative friend.
Problem was: I didn't imagine it myself to start.
I was going to try to be my friend when it wasn't there. I was going to be a cheap knock-off of the Ever Generative Mind, and I had no attachment to any of its ideas except, 'Cool.'
So I didn't use any of it.
Okay, I've called a stand of brush 'quellrice' since, but as far as running the game that night, I didn't touch a single one of the AI lists, from Sounds of the Misnan Keep to Upgrade Suggestions for Corteya's Shop After She Acquired Crystal Dust From the Company and Began to Experiment.
I have -since-, but didn't then. And still feel a little... I don't know. It feels like a resource I can call on but one I'm unsure of its caliber? I tend to prefer my blots of wisdom as like single powerful blots of a strange catharsis, something that when I manage to spend the time untangling my handwriting and reading it, I'm exported—I'm sent to—another place where I was when I blotted? And with AI, I mean, it pumped out such a place for me and so quickly, it just didn't register with the slow impact of an actual thought. Maybe I'm just not fast enough to be intimate with a robotic idea, but I don't know if I can help that, and so I let it pass. Say, 'cool, that's really impressive; doesn't move me.'
And if it doesn't move me, I can't use it to move other people. Which is all I'm trying to do.
/ Making imprisonment complex
This is ongoing. I'm still making imprisonment complex.
One of the more individualistic characters, Maddeson of Genemene, turned themselves in to the \Corrhéonic Stand
Okay. I started my first game of D&D ever in a prison cell. I ran my last campaign starting in a prison cell. It's a box, it has bars, you don't want to be there. Motivation by blunt force claustrophobia.
I've caught characters being bad. Being naughty in the world. Insulting their betters. Disrespecting 'my lands'. My town. Taking liberties that felt offensive. I've brought the police.
I can't say much for either circumstance. Or won't.
Instead: Maddeson volunteered to the police to be put in a cell. Maddeson wanted justice.
To confront justice? I don't know. Maddeson is Maddeson. I suspect Maddeson felt like if the truth of the matter was that what they'd done was wrong, they'd receive punishment in accordance with their crime. That their would be some equivalency of action and result. That the world ins't driven by chaos but instead sits on reason. Maddeson might just believe in God. Maddeson might believe in fate. I can drum up many reasons I'd do it. But my report indicates that they walked up to the gates of the Grey Misnanthere is a great fortress called Pennat Hall which is the Standsometimes "Knights of the Stand"—an order of knights drawn from the diminished upper class whose political power has faded’s stronghold. There are two rings of larger keeps / garrisons that center on the stronghold. Milsen Keep / The Grey Misnan is on the outer ring of these strongholds in the north.
and reported like they were going to detention.
So now what do I do. The other characters are at a pace of adventure that I'm trying to keep. They're in a mine trying to rescue a Magister from a well. Or having philosophical chats on a mountainside about good and evil. They are not waiting for a lawyer.
This character didn't want an escape. I offered twice.
They wanted to have a trial, but I didn't want the other groups to suddenly leap forward in time, and tracking both sounded nightmarish. It has proven not, within a session of prison play, Maddeson bowed out of the current foray and turned to Play-by-Discord-Message to continue their story at a more summaratic pace.
This is exciting. I'm enjoying opening up to the idea that Maddeson would continue via a significantly different route than the remainder of the groups who are meeting in person. Maddesoon doesn't act often, but I can take it slow and provide more laborious exchange— they're on work detail building stove-edge barriers against raiders from the north— they don't -not- get to manual labor just because they want a trial! They submitted to justice! Justice is work!
(And let me say I don't think Maddeson expects a free ride either; I'm talking brashly like my father to emphasize that I'm not doing any wrong, when I probably am.)
I think I'll make a quick chart for myself. 2d6 is the way to go right now. Great quantities, great probability. The six-sided die, man. I found a jar of them recently and didn't realize how much I love the dots compared to the numerical counters of standard polyhedral sets. I only throw 3d6 with black-dot bone-white dice now, and live for it.
2d6 Ways of Making Imprisonment Complex
- 2 - Get bought.
- 3 - Conscription.
- 4 - Someone goes on food strike.
- 5 - Constitution checks - how can they be interesting here? Make a 2d6 chart.
- 6 - A trio of foreigners who speak a different language are a physical presence
- 7 - A new enemy is also imprisoned for different reasons
- 8 - Someone makes 'friends' but really wants three strands of hair for a ritual
- 9 - Jailbreak?
- 10 - Sleep is hard. No lights.
- 11 - Someone digs their way in.
- 12 - Recess.
/ The fear of darkness
Reading through Shadowdark's rulebook, or the cheap free starter rulebook, the dominant aspect that jumped out at me and that I've held onto is light as a resource, or darkness as an antagonist. I think I've been inclined in the past to hand-wave atmospheric effects. To a degree, I'll say I still am 'handwaving' aspects of it in that I'm not hard-measuring torch durations, but .. well it feels like as DM you have a certain capacity to keep x number of elements in play near you. Depending on what you like keeping track of or that you've found actually work to create tension, suspense, and interest, these are the things you call on most regularly. Light and weather have never felt like I used them appropriately. Oh, it's raining... (forgotten thirty minutes later).
Again: vested interest here in continuing to get better at DMing. Three characters enter a mine. The mine has no torches and no built-in method of lighting.
This, if you're reading along, was/is the trio of Godfrey, Peets and Zahir. Magister Hardy had come stumbling down the mountainside as they were pondering which character to follow and convinced them to save Wygmy, to save fellow Magister Kohl. Evidently, they'd suffered a horror in the depths of Wygmy's Silstone Jet VeinI've been leveraging, for my mind's sake in prep, the idea that 'the proximity of nearby hexes drives action', rather than engaging in random plot developments on a broader scale. For instance: rather than drawing on my more than obvious fascination with the mysterious workings of Carga the Electric Lord, I rolled Lord Wygmy into play from Villa Chi's 2d4 chart, as the Siltstone Jet Vein is right nearby.
At first I thought this was just going to be a way of curtailing PC action so that they didn't decide to tromp through 3 hexes in one day. Lord Wygmy and his magisters would disappear when PCs opted to go trap otter instead.
But it struck me that the PCs had set something in motion by going to Villa Chi and seeing him. So I set him in motion with one of Alexander's / (whoever invented it?)'s faction clock. Now each time downtime happens between adventures, I will likely advance the clock.
As a result, in three downtimes, Wygmy will have gained access to the seam of jet in Lord Wygmy's Siltstone Jet Vein.
Then I imagined the changes to the area. Suddenly there are imports and exports. There are environmental disruptions. Nearby hexes are re-shaped with new populations of travelers, laborers, protesters, etc. This would, presumably, shape the landscape nearby the PCs.
So, though the PCs had no proper interaction with Wygmy outside noticing him, he becomes a form of 'faction' or 'weather event', similar to what I'm imagining happening with the Almanac, where hexes through which the PCs travel 'bloom' after their departure, so as to change for their return trip back through. Familiar landscapes laced with rain. , which he'd finally gained access to. He being Wygmy.
At first I thought this was just going to be a way of curtailing PC action so that they didn't decide to tromp through 3 hexes in one day. Lord Wygmy and his magisters would disappear when PCs opted to go trap otter instead.
But it struck me that the PCs had set something in motion by going to Villa Chi and seeing him. So I set him in motion with one of Alexander's / (whoever invented it?)'s faction clock. Now each time downtime happens between adventures, I will likely advance the clock.
As a result, in three downtimes, Wygmy will have gained access to the seam of jet in Lord Wygmy's Siltstone Jet Vein.
Then I imagined the changes to the area. Suddenly there are imports and exports. There are environmental disruptions. Nearby hexes are re-shaped with new populations of travelers, laborers, protesters, etc. This would, presumably, shape the landscape nearby the PCs.
So, though the PCs had no proper interaction with Wygmy outside noticing him, he becomes a form of 'faction' or 'weather event', similar to what I'm imagining happening with the Almanac, where hexes through which the PCs travel 'bloom' after their departure, so as to change for their return trip back through. Familiar landscapes laced with rain. , which he'd finally gained access to. He being Wygmy.
They arrived at the site in the evening, and this is the second time an adventuring foray has gone into an adventuring site directly on arrival. Again, thinking perilous aspects of reality that are hard to keep close to mind: nighttime exhaustion and bedtime habits. If a group traveling all day arrives at site and there is imminent ... threat? in that location, is it imperative on them to enter? How does this affect their bodies and minds?
I'm allowing tangents from every direction to enter the body of these thoughts like so many arrows into the body of a sagging Swyver. I'm remembering David Hoskins illustration in Swyvers, which I hope he won't mind me referencing now. Picture this short set of thoughts at Gustave's, riddled with tangent arrows.
This portion of the essay, as a metaphorical body.
crd: Swyvers / David Hoskins
Okay: so darkness. The Company arrives in the dark. They know that this Lord Wygmy and another Magister are in that mine. That something has killed a lot of people, miners, guards. That it's imperative they go in and save them. But they also don't know anything, really, about Wygmy, about the mine. They have zero intel and are driven by a sort of internal set of heroics that may or may not guide them appropriately. But they're brave. They're level two.
Recall: Shadowdark says darkness is an antagonist. Light is a resource.
They started talking about all the things they were doing and it became sort of petty of me but also important for me to be like: guys, you can't see -anything-. You can hear some things, but you've got this mental picture all wrong, okay?
Oh, they said.
Yeah. So let's talk this through again. The tunnel has sloped downward like a caterpillar crawling down the branch of a leaf. You sense the space opening up, but your hands don't give you much as the cavern widens..
Quick tangent arrow coming in: I've been sewing different potential encounters in the area to make it more likely the characters would get drawn in. Wygmy's has always been inhabited (by its initial descriptionImmediate: On an unencumbered hill that juts up like an incisor is a seam of black jet struck through with pyrite inclusions thick as a human head.
Deeper: Yes, it has been found and even has been claimed, though Lord Wygmy's range of enforcing power is limited to routine surveyors and "mineralists" who continue to sap his money redrawing plans of attack for freeing the enormous wealth of gemstone without bringing the entire hill down in their efforts.
These efforts remain as crude scaffolding of imported timber [mud-caked].
Within the seam whose jet runs into the hill nearly 2/10ths of a mile, a family of aquatic perapsi paddle about in a series of freshwater pools and falls whose dark hollows are lit by the energetic sprig fae ever tapping the jet for light and warmth. ) with the perapsi and the sprig fae. That's it. This, of course, to have some sort-of indigenous culture or existing culture that might revolt or exchange with the PCs as they come in at Wygmy's behest. Honestly when I first wrote the landmark, I'd imagined PCs would be serving the miners or Wygmy himself (and when he rolled into the campaign, he was trying to figure out how to gain access so the option was there). Regardless: at some point I felt that the Jet Vein didn't have enough 'creep' into the world around it -- the perapsi being sort of homebodies and the sprig fae being similar. So I introduced the biñas, or soot beetles.
Deeper: Yes, it has been found and even has been claimed, though Lord Wygmy's range of enforcing power is limited to routine surveyors and "mineralists" who continue to sap his money redrawing plans of attack for freeing the enormous wealth of gemstone without bringing the entire hill down in their efforts.
These efforts remain as crude scaffolding of imported timber [mud-caked].
Within the seam whose jet runs into the hill nearly 2/10ths of a mile, a family of aquatic perapsi paddle about in a series of freshwater pools and falls whose dark hollows are lit by the energetic sprig fae ever tapping the jet for light and warmth. ) with the perapsi and the sprig fae. That's it. This, of course, to have some sort-of indigenous culture or existing culture that might revolt or exchange with the PCs as they come in at Wygmy's behest. Honestly when I first wrote the landmark, I'd imagined PCs would be serving the miners or Wygmy himself (and when he rolled into the campaign, he was trying to figure out how to gain access so the option was there). Regardless: at some point I felt that the Jet Vein didn't have enough 'creep' into the world around it -- the perapsi being sort of homebodies and the sprig fae being similar. So I introduced the biñas, or soot beetles.
As I reckoned, the soot beetles were tertiary to the other two major elements, but once I knew that Wygmy had penetrated the mine properly (by himself without PC aid), and once I knew that it wasn't good for him, I let the beetles free. These things just consume fire. The notion of jet as a mineral is further honoring the peat / bog aspects of Corrheo, the softer burnable aspects of Corrheo, and so something that eats old stone+wood materials made sense to me and that it ate high-carbon things was also neat to me.
But this became a potential challenge to players. If they lit a torch (which they did, obviously), the beetles came. And they were pretty big. Not 'immediately kill it' big, but 1-2' big. And they swarmed light sources.
Wygmy's Silstone Jet Vein is this standard adventure site size I've been sort-of hooked on for the length of the campaign so far. It's six nodes/rooms/spaces big. But man: when light is threatened, six rooms started to feel like a megadungeon. The players got so hung up at every juncture or turn that they managed to find only Magister Kohl and about turned around right there. He was two rooms away from the entrance.
Granted the fae were also utilizing mind control so there were additional terrors, but really, if the whole thing had been lit up and the little sprites had been realized for what they were, it wouldn't have been ... 1/4 as intimidating.
As it stands, this particular group has now run 3 sessions at and in the mine, and have been to three of its six spaces. They feel simultaneously compelled to 'complete' a tour of it, but also really fraught with the frustration of its impermeability. Light without fire. They don't have light without fire. This has been good. This has felt very Shadowdark, to me.
/ How faeries have entered my weapons
I mentioned mind control. The sprig fae are playful but dark. They exist in the caves in a healthy equilibrium with the perapsi (and probably elsewhere across Corrhéo but for now, just here). The initial mining group that went into the mine, Wygmy included, were swarmed by the things.
So first sighting of this sprig fae, it's got Magister Kohl at the bottom of a dark well. It's briefly torch-lit. It's got a perfect little body and he's saying 'I love digging. I love digging' and the creature's saying, 'You love digging. You love digging.' It's all very playful and horrible, right?
PCs are immediately horrified anyway. But he's 25' down and they're 25' up and there's all the stuff I just finished talking about regarding light, so lights go out and now they can just hear the Magister digging (I imagine the little creature made him step off the well edge in the dark, breaking both his legs when he hit the ground).
Okay: PCs are here to rescue Kohl, whoever he is. They climb down and spook off the faerie. Then they've gotta get him out. That's a struggle. None of their equipment is lined up for mountain rescue. None of them are exceptional at figuring out a way to get him out. Plus they're small. A goblin and a waifish priest up at the top, the big guy down at the bottom. No light, nothing to tie to.
So they all come down the well. I keep calling it a well but it's really a big circular pit. There's no water.
They gather up. The waifish priest gives him a good healing but doesn't set the bones right so he's healed a bit crooked. He's a bit cranky, obviously. Three days under mind control. Hands are in rough shape too. They're not meant to dig, them Mitts of Aristocracy.
PCs decide they can't make it back up and out this way. Okay. Well: there is a dig-out that goes deeper into the mine (and yeah, eventually you'd find your way out that way). But it also leads through these honeycomb passages with tiny faerie tunnels that allow the sprig fae to move about the mine in the way of an ant. And again, there's no light.
So PCs bottom out exploring alternatives at the sprig fae citadel.
Really just my opportunity to celebrate stalagtites/stalgmites for a little while. Nobody's attacking them even if they spooked the one that had Kohl by the mind-leash and I and they think it's pretty much a sure death if they 'invade' the sprig fae sanctuary but they're being cautious so I let them stare across its celebrated depths. They make the decision to turn. But they also made (a moment ago) the decision to let Kohl stay behind attached to a rope. He didn't want to go any deeper; he wanted them to rescue him.
Okay: as a DM I think half of my work is dismantling my reaction to things I react to emotionally as a human and channel it through the environment instead of my heart. Characters making assumptions about how NPCs will react is one of those things I react to dubly. Characters assuming success or assuming 'this will just happen if I say so' is another. In this case: they left Kohl behind on another long leash and I'm like.. well this place isn't safe, and there's these faerie tunnels you just came through, and all you really did was spook the sprig fae away; it didn't disappear or go to bed or go work on its next book project. It's probably just lurking, watching you. So when you leave the Magister alone by himself...
When they got back to him, he was gone. And not far gone: he was back up the tunnel, under mind control again. But this time the faerie was aware of the PCs. So broke-healed-and-clumsy, the old man was a sort of strange puppet attacker who floundered against Godfrey's armor while Godfrey tried to push past him to the puppet master.
Again, all this in the dark. And all this so close to the fae sanctuary... all this clanging and noise.
One little bonus sprig fae popped out of the tunnels behind them (I've been obsessed with ambush and changing the nature of the fight midway through it).
It told the waifish priest that the waifish priest was no longer the owner of his own body. And this little whisper was strong enough that it was true.
No light. An old man thumping on mercenary armor. The priest suddenly seeing only a purple-black peach where it should be able to see player action, decision, etc. Shit got desperate. Peets, eternally young goblin, threw his knife. The fae had high AC. 18. But 1hp.
Godrey swung his barbed sword. Another high strike.
Both fae dropped in a round. Kohl recovered and collapsed. Zahir shuddered and recovered himself.
Run, everyone said.
And that's where we ended that session.
But: it was my brother's birthday soon after. My brother plays Peets. We were driving up to go camping. My wife had lapsed into silence beside me. I was high on a marijuana soda. So was he.
I looked at him in the rearview.
'As Peets grabs his weapon and runs down the hall behind his friends, the knowledge that his knife has become sentient dawns on him.'
He just said, oh shit, and then we went on to camp and celebrate and sober up and cook marshmallows and so forth.
So: designer thoughts on this moment.
The sprig fae were never meant to be an antagonist directly. Sure, they caused mischief, and sure they got upset at this Wygmy guy and his miners, but they were angry the way a very 'playful' group of wasps would be. The PCs didn't -really- choose a side, or certainly didn't go to the lengths that a devoted group of side-takers would: going through the city, unrooting the wasp nest, spraying it with chemicals, finding the queen, looting her treasured honey. They just got Kohl and bailed, but getting him ended up in the death of two of these beautiful little creatures. I had even given them names.
So when they just got slaughtered, part of me was very sad.
And that part of me said, well they don't really ... die. They just move to a new body. In this case the weapon that destroyed them.
Now they can be complicated antagonists. On one hand: everybody wants a blade with a mind of its own. But if the mind is a mischevious dark-loving fae creature... it won't always be easy. In fact, as Godfrey was trying to climb out of the pit, the blade increased in density, 35lbs of extra metal on his back. When Godfrey stood and fought a beetle in the morning sunlight, the blade itself winced and fired chill joint-damning energy back up his arms. There'll be other moments of conflict. At one point he pissed on the blade, he was so frustrated with it.
But he oiled it too...
But I get to keep a creature I wanted to live in, and an antagonistic one to boot, while the characters get nameable weapons.
Seems a faer trade.
Alright. I hit puns. I'm going to skip away but leave promises to myself to talk about the following. Since starting this post I've had five more sessions (just had #15) and four new characters from three new players.
Things are changing, moving faster. I'm trying to keep up. If only there was a Fast Thinking High-Generating Mind that Could Just Write My Summary Essays For Me...
Future ToC/ Day Dice?/ Plot Clocks/ Session 11 - 15
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