My group played a third session of Prince Valiant today.
The
first session saw a group of knights get themselves into trouble in Kent. The
second session saw the surviving two knights further north in Britain, and having hooked up with a squire and a travelling performer. At the end of that session they were ready to continue on their travels in search of fame and fortune after enjoying the hospitality of a noble lady whose son they had saved from unfair condemnation for sorcery.
The player of the performer was not at today's session, so we imagined that that character returned to Warwick while the knights set out with their squire. The players made checks to see how their PCs' hunting was going (they don't like spending money on provisions!) - and poor rolls lead to the conclusion that they were rather lean and hungry, all three of them suffering a 1-die penalty to Brawn until they could get a good feed.
I had decided to use The Wedding in Green episode from the
Episode Book, and so told them that as they rode through the forest they could catch just the faintest hint of the smell of roasting meat. And then they heard a cry not far ahead, and the whinny of a startled horse. As they crested the rise they were expecting to see poachers vs gamekeepers, but instead saw bandits, led by a woman, trying to pull a cleric from his horse. They recognised the rider as one of the abbots who had participated in the sorcery trial from the last session.
Taking the view that a man of the cloth had to be protected from banditry, the younger knight (Sir Justin) couched his lance and charged down the slope. But the outlaw he was charging at was able to leap into the woods where he couldn't be followed (successful Agility vs Riding check). The leader then challenged him to dismount and fight her on foot, which he did - and he defeated her (choosing to disarm her and force her to her knees, rather than killing her). But then a bandit clocked him with a cudgel from behind and knocked him out. (The scenario gave the bandits two "fiat" effects - Knock An Opponent Senseless in Combat, and Hide. This was me using the first of those.)
In the meantime, the squire also decided to charge a bandit, but his player also failed a riding check sufficiently poorly to be tricked by a bandit into clotheslining himself on a tree branch, being knocked from his horse and also hors-de-combat.
That left the older knight, Sir Gerren (Sir Justin's father), who rode down to defend his son and protect the abbot. He slew two bandits from horseback and the remaining one fled. And he took their leader, Mariel, a prisoner. For this effort I awarded him a "Storyteller Certificate" - the system's version of a fate point.
Once the two unconscious PCs had regained consciousness and were ready to travel on (taking an hour or so in the fiction; automatic at the table), they headed off with the abbot towards his monastery - the house of St Sigobert. But at this point, I used the Hide ability, and the PCs (and abbot) were ambushed by the bandits while fording a stream. This was our first use of the archery rules, and the bandits turned out to roll somewhat poorly and so the PCs' armour protected them from 7 arrows. They then drew swords and engaged: the squire was pulled from his horse by one bandit, and Sir Gerren was facing two and having trouble, but Sir Justin defeated two, and then was able to aid his father, killing a third. The surviving bandits fled.
The players decided that it was better for their PCs to accept the abbot's invitation to accompany him to his monastery, rather than hunt bandits through the woods, and they did so. At the monastery, after some legal disputation which was inconclusive (tied checks of Sir Gerren's Presence vs the Abbot's), it was agreed that the monks would try Mariel for violating cannon law by attacking the abbot (the alternative view being that violence on the road was a logically prior violation of the king's law). She insisted that she was simply seeking a priest to officiate over her brother's wedding, and would have let the abbot go safely on his way afterwards (though was more coy about what she would have done with his money - "Everyone knows that you have to bring a gift to a wedding!"). Mariel was duly found guilty, and excommunicated, and then handed over to the knights as the temporal arm to deliver non-spiritual punishment. But they didn't have the gumption to punish her themselves, and so decided to take her to the nearest lord, whom - the abbot informed them - was Lord Murran of Castle Hill. In the meantime the squire helped with various manual tasks around the monastery, while Sir Justin helped care for some of the ill in the hospice, earning the sobriquet Sir Justin the Gentle.
I chose Catlie Hill as the destination because it would take the action closer to the coast, which fitted another scenario I wanted to use. (We are using the map on the inside back cover of the Pendragon volume that I got as part of the Prince Valiant Kickstarter). But the PCs' trip to Castle Hill gave me the chance to use a different scenario - the Rebellious Peasants in the main rulebook. The PCs were riding through a village surrounded by a low pallisade, having entered from the west, only to find the east gate shut against them and a band of peasants armed with pitchforks and crude spears behind them. Their reputation for favouring wealthy abbots over salt-of-the-earth outlaws had preceded them!
Sir Gerren tried to calm the peasants, but the rolled check failed (his Presence is not that strong and at that point he had not developed any Oratory). So his player decided to cash in his certificate to activate Arouse the Passion of a Crowd: his voice grew stronger and more sure, and he explained to the peasants the importance of mutuality and justice between all the king's subjects, which begins with free travel on the roads. The leader of the peasants acknowledged the truth of what he said, and apologised, explaining that it was their hunger that had driven them to such extremes. The PCs expressed sympathy, supped with them on some gruel, and rode on.
By this point all the PCs had earned enough fame (the system's analogue to XP) to take another skill rank each: the squire boosted his Arms skill, as did Sir Justin; Sir Gerren took a rank in Oratory.
Arriving at Castle Hill, the knights presented their prisoner to Lord Murran to pass judgement as to her punishment. Sir Justin indicated that he wanted to influence the Lord to a degree of leniency, and he succeeded in a Presence check to this effect: so she was sentenced to spend a lengthy period in the stocks.
Lord Murran then confirmed that the PCs were knights errant, and requested them to undertake a task for him - he wanted to learn why the Crowmaster who lives on an island in The Wash (a bay on the east coast) had declined to provide the Lord's Master of Hutches with crows when the Master had last visited him. The PCs (and players) were a bit curious about this, but Lord Murran explained the use of trained crows to carry messages and the like (as per the scenario A Wild Hunt) - "Like pigeons but stealthier!" (my own ad lib).
The PCs travelled to the coast without incident, and went to a village to see what they could learn about the Crowmaster and also to see about the use of a boat to travel to his island. But (again, as per the scenario) the villagers wouldn't open the village to them, fearing them to be brigands - and the Oratory checks made in attempts to explain that they were knights on a quest failed. So they instead found an old couple living in their hut on the coast (the players' idea, which it made sense to say "yes" to) and befriended them with the payment of a shilling. They learned that the Crowmaster has an apprentice, Engres; they were also fed the meat of a roasted bird more stringy than a typical gamebird - and with a successful Presence check the squire noticed some black feathers on the floor of the hut where the bird had been prepared for cooking. Apparently with drought in the area, the locals had resorted to shooting down the Crowmaster's crows for food! (This was the published scenario's framing, although I went with drought rather than the fowl-plague that it mentions.)
The old man took the PCs to the island in his coracle, where they met the Crowmaster. He wanted the villagers to stop shooting down his crows. He also wanted to know what had happened to his apprentice, Engres, whom he had sent to speak with the villagers some weeks ago. The PCs promised to do what they could, as these seemed to be necessary steps to getting crows for Lord Murran. (They also dined with the Crowmaster: at his command four crows - one at each corner - dropped the cloth onto the table, and then they carried over light tankards for the guests to drink from. There was some discussion about whether or not this was sorcery.)
Before nightfall they returned to the mainland, and then at night they returned to the village. The squire took off his armour and scaled the pallisade - and he could see the villagers were having some sort of feast (of crows, of course) in their main square. He had no trouble sneaking in and opening the gate, and the knights rode in. Once again protestations that they were not brigands went unheeded, and the villagers scattered to their homes. But when the knights sat down in the square, and made sure the roasting birds did not burn, the villagers slowly returned and accepted that these were not brigands here to steal their grain and birds, but rather were knights on a quest. Conversation revealed that tomorrow was the day of the village's annual Wild Hunt, to be led by the Huntmistress Tryamon. The PCs also found Engres in the village, apparently rather friendly with Tryamon. Fellowship checks were made to see who was able to stay sober and extract information from Engres, and the squire succeeded - he learned that Engres didn't really want to go back to the island, on account of his desire to stay with Tryamon.
The next day the PCs joined the villagers on their Wild Hunt. Sir Gerren, the squire and Tryamon each succeeded in finding a boar - in statistical terms quite fierce combatants. Sir Gerren successfully killed a boar, and so did Sir Justin (who took the one the squire had found). A commotion around the third boar drew the attention of the squire, who found that the Huntmistress had gone missing, leaving poorly-equipped and unskilled villagers trying to take down a boar on their own. He drew his sword and went in to help them - and though not too strong a combatant on his own (7-odd dice compared to 10+ for the knights), with bonus dice from the villagers he was able to defeat it without a single villager being gored. But that still left the mystery of the missing Huntmistress and, as it turned out, a missing Engres as well.
The PCs returned once again to the Crowmaster's isle, to report that with a stock of boar the villagers would no longer need to poach his crows; and that Engres was alive, and well, but missing since the morning's hunt. Their attempts to calm the Crowmaster at the loss of his apprentice ("He is like a son to me, who will carry on my work!"), and even to offer to find a new apprentice, all failed; but the Crowmaster was able to send his crows to hunt for Engres, and they found him heading southwest with his own flock (and Tryamon). The PCs returned to the mainland and road off in pursuit, but Tryamon was a stronger rider, and a 1 die bonus for her and Engres' passion offset the penalty for having two riders on the horse. (And I also rolled quite well, as well as having the larger pool.) So the PCs couldn't catch them.
They then came up with a new plan. First, they hired a tracker in a local village, who (with a succesful check) was able to lead them to the hamlet where Engres and Tryamon were in hiding. And then the PCs went to make them an offer. Engres sent his murder of crows to scare them off, and the squire's player failed a Presence check, but the two knights were not perturbed. The crows then swarmed around them, and Sir Gerren - not wanting to kill them - was not able to push through; but Sir Justin was (getting a bonus die for his greed, given his plan) and was able to make an offer to Engres: that he should return with the PCs to Castle Hill, where he could marry Tryamon and serve as a Crowmaster for Lord Murran, living in his castle. (The scenario says that "The Adventurers might convince the apprentice to return to the Crowmaster, or convince the parties to accept some other solution (or perhaps they have let the young lovers escape in the confusion)." I thought the idea my players came up with was a pretty good one!)
A rather easy Presence check was successful, and so Engres accepted. So all returned to Castle Hill, where Lord Murran was mightily pleased to be delivered not just trained crows but his own Crowmaster.
And at this point the squire had earned enough further fame to trigger another skill boost, taking Courtesie to facilitate his plan to woo Violette (a matter carrying over from our second session); and I thought they had all earned a Storyteller Certificate.
I was pleased with the amount of content we got through - bandits, a monastery and a trial, two villages with unhappy peasants, plenty of social interaction, and a nice player-driven twist in the resolution; and also that it turned out to have a surprising thematic unity - hungry peasants, weddings, and maintaining a judicious balance between upholding authority and allowing individuals to pursue their desires.
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