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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Old Fezziwig" data-source="post: 9378368" data-attributes="member: 59">I thought it might be interesting to post our next session, to give a more complete arc of play.  Also, when we played again last Thursday, things got complicated.  By which I mean they went badly off the rails and in which Yorath and Vahid conspire to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. We started by checking in with the expedition to the Barrier Pass.  For context, two sessions ago, after the feast celebrating Yorath's Indemnification of the Stonetoppers*, Elder Pryce approached Yorath, Vahid, Emrys, and Tedora** at the public house.  We've had some disagreements with the steading elders, but Pryce is generally all right.  It might have been the whisky, but he says the quiet part out loud and asks Tedora, "Do we need to send an envoy to Barrier's Pass to train and bring back a midwife?"  She blanches, but it's a good opportunity.  And so she agrees to go.  In a show of good faith, Pryce sends Emrys with her as well as three of the most trustworthy watch members, Stonetop's cart, and Stonetop's horses.  He tells them to winter there, saying to "Bring her back safe, bring her back learned.  And bring back the horses, we'll need them for the sowing."We picked things up with them in the mountains.  It's late fall, and it's wet and cold.  The five of them aren't far from Barrier Pass, but there's a storm, and they don't have a lot of supplies left.  Exposure's certain to be a problem if they press on, but running out of supplies is a definite issue if they bunker down.  So Emrys has to choose whether they stick or twist.  He decides to stick and finds an overhang that shelters them from the rain and the worst of the wind, but they're on strict rationing.  Tedora and Emrys are holding up well, but the three watch members are getting a bit itchy.  One night while they're sleeping, Aeronwen, the youngest of the watch on the journey, breaks into the supplies and takes some meat.  Emrys notices her, waits, and follows her.  He finds her sitting out in the cold, up against a big rock, feet dangling over a ledge, eating a big old turkey drummy.  About ten paces from her is a cougar.  Emrys throws a rock to get her attention.  Somehow, she picks up his meaning, throws the half-eaten drumstick one way, goes around the rock the other way and back to Emrys.  He waits until they're back at camp to impress upon her the importance of sticking together literally and metaphorically on these sorts of journeys.***Meanwhile, back in Stonetop, Yorath, his sight restored, is preparing to hold a public ceremony to show off the gold ring he picked up in the Gwead.  He's looking to lay some seeds for a reputation for Stonetop.  When the crowd gathers, he starts in on the ceremony and speechmaking.†  Vahid and his dogsbody, Erez, stand in the back watching the spectacle.  Yorath has put the ring on a chain and is getting ready to present it to Unirra††, but as he does so, he touches the ring and gets a shock of biofeedback.  It's an open question whether this is the Void's air spirit, Persefoni, rebuking him for touching a relic of Helior or Helior rebuking him for having Persefoni as a passenger.Yorath examines his relationship with Helior: what's going to happen when I trigger this ring?  His sense is that Helior and Persefoni are struggling against each other.  Helior's p.o.ed that Yorath's giving the ring to Unirra, but Persefoni's hellbent on getting Yorath to give up the ring.  Yorath, ever the showman, ends up giving the ring to Unirra and asking her to put it on him. He gets a little zap from Persefoni from his trouble, but the crowd loves it.††† In the back of the crowd, Vahid cocks an eyebrow and makes a mental note.‡As the ring goes around Yorath's neck, he feels Persefoni welling up inside him, trying to force him to his knees and ruin the ceremony.  Feeling the urge to get a hold of the situation, he puts the ring on.‡‡  A powerful warmth pervades his entire being, and it's clear something has happened here. The Stonetoppers present have the sense of having witnessed a miracle.  What they don't know is that, in putting on the ring, Yorath has incurred Persefoni's wrath and is once again mostly blind.   In the time between the last session and the start of play here, Vahid has been sending Juda and Jown, the two outriders from the TotG, out of Stonetop on reconnaissance to check on an encampment the Ferrier family has set up outside of town.‡‡‡  This time, things go badly wrong, and Juda contrives to catch fen blight.§  His condition worsens, and Jown comes back to Stonetop with murder in his eyes.Before he can reach Vahid and kill him, he's intercepted by Bryn††, who dissuades him from killing Vahid right now.  And the outrider stalks back to Juda to see him through his dying moments, while making it clear to Bryn that, if Juda dies, the duel will not be the reason he kills Vahid.  (Boy, Jown's a little high-strung.)Bryn goes from there to Yorath, who's relaxing in the Pavilion of the Gods. "I think Juda’s gravely ill, but Jown said he is changing. And he doesn’t think that his brother will last the night.  I don’t know what he’s going to do.  He’s got a murderous look in his eyes.  I couldn’t stop Jown from going out, but I fear that there could be an outbreak in Stonetop if anyone else goes out."  As Yorath takes this in, he notices a Bryn has a peaty smell — a known symptom of fen blight.  And there's no one in town that can do a damn thing about fen blight.  Except Helior.  "Helior’s the one that fixes bad things. Bryn, ask for the blessing of Helior." And he lays hands on Bryn and, with a visible manifestation of Helior's power, takes on her fen blight himself.  His skin mottles.  The Stonetoppers in the Pavilion panic.  Bryn mouths a "thank you" to Yorath and runs to take care of her daughter.§§Vahid witnesses this from his front porch.  He sees Lim, a local urchin from Marshedge, point at Yorath and say "fen blight."  He grunts.  He has some bendis root that can slow the spread.  Then he notices that neither Jown or Juda are here and deduces that one or both of them are gravely ill with fen blight.§§§While he's putting this all together, Yorath is headed out of town into the Great Wood.[SPOILER="Footnotes"]* Persuade, +CHA, +Piety, 10.  If Stonetop survives what happened in this session, there's a good case to be made that this will be remembered as the first of Yorath's great works by future generations.  ** Emrys is the captain of the watch and Yorath's buddy.  Tedora is currently between jobs, with experience in witchcraft and faking midwifery. #OpenToWork*** For this sequence, AbdulAlhazred played Emrys, and I played Aeronwen.  They're statted up as NPCs/Followers, and their tags grant +1 on relevant die rolls.  This paragraph had a Forage check to find shelter (Emrys, 2d6+2, watch-wise, skeptical, 9), another check to notice Aeronwen stealing (Emrys, 2d6+2, as above, 7), and a check for Aeronwen to pick up what Emrys is putting down (2d6+1, cunning, 10).  The last bit ("He waits until they're back at camp...") is Emrys paying Aeronwen's cost (gentle attentive instruction).  This'll give him Loyalty with her that he can spend later, when he needs her to do something she doesn't want to do or to resist her tags or instinct.Aeronwen, Reece’s younger sister (failed engineer, undisciplined, kind of feral)tags: fighter, wasteful, cunninginstinct: to buck authoritycost: gentle attentive instruction3 hp, d6 dmg, shortsword, 1 armorSentry Emrys (finally grew up and out of his youthful hijinx, wiry, mumbly)tags: watch-wise, warrior, skeptical, Yorath-friendinstinct:  to never let a newcomer out of his sightcost: help him help the people of Stonetop6 hp, d6 dmg, [not sure about his gear; it was 0 armor when he was first introduced]† Silver Tongued, +CHA, 10.  Yorath holds 3 Nerve, which can be spent 1-for-1 to avoid trouble.†† Unirra is the granddaughter of Elder Elfryth. Yorath and Donal rescued her mother, Bryn, and her from the Thunder of the Gwead (TotG) four sessions ago.††† Yorath spent 1 Nerve here to cover up the change in plans.  ‡ In the back of the crowd, Vahid clocked the magical energies and uses his Countermeasures move to assess how Persefoni might be countered.  He gathers that the air spirit's freelancing here and suborning the Void's authority by acting out.  Per the move, Vahid has advantage to act on this in the future. ‡‡ Yes, my preciousss...gollum...  The ring is in fact a minor arcanum (a gold ring).  Yorath has already checked off one of the three requirements to unlock its power ("participate in the devout and proper worship of Helior") and will check off another later this session.‡‡‡ Some youthful indiscretions on Yorath's part led the Ferriers, a powerful family from Marshedge, to blame Yorath for their daughter Imogene's demise from fen blight (fantasy leprosy, highly contagious).  To be fair to the Ferriers, they're not entirely wrong — Yorath did lead her out into the Fens, though he didn't give her fen blight.  She got that honestly (which was not a specialty of Yorath's at the time) from a fen troll.  In any case, the Ferriers have been massively ticked off at Stonetop since she died, sending fen spores (fantasy bioweapons) to Stonetop in hopes of giving the entire steading leprosy.  So far, we've lost two horses to fen blight, but kept it away from Stonetop itself.  Give it a paragraph, though, and we'll fix that.§ Mechanically, it was a Deploy move, 2d6+2, 8. And so, I decided that Juda died.  I think I had advantage on the roll, and Manbearcat let me pick the effect.  I can't speak to what sort of lunacy inspired me to pick Juda's death rather than "It's less effective than you expected."  I mean, it's a nice echo of Vahid's brother's death on the journey to the Titan's Bones earlier in the game and gives Jown some more depth, but it's the beginning of a bad couple beats for Yorath and Vahid.§§ Know Things, +INT, 5, followed by Borrow Power, +WIS, 6.  This was the second requirement checked off the ring, too — "perform an act of charity while wearing the ring, one that changes the recipient's life."§§§ This was a Seek Insight, +INT, 10, so Vahid will have advantage dealing with this when we pick things up again.  But he'll have to pick where he spends it — to help Yorath, to help Jown/Juda, or to help Stonetop.  [/SPOILER]</blockquote>

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