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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Flynn" data-source="post: 4025201" data-attributes="member: 1836">Session Notes - 01/30/2008Good Morning, All:Another week has passed and it's time for notes on yesterday's session. Due to illness, we were down to four players instead of our usual five (Yngvar's player was still recovering from the flu), but we moved forward well enough. In this session, we got to see one player's Hindrance come to the fore, and then I got to present a series of non-combat encounters that still generated action and adrenaline.The Session:The party quickly cared for the "walking wounded" among the bandits and wolves, then elected to set up camp for the night, seeing as how it was close to dusk. The full moon made it easy to guard the group, and in the morning, the adventurers walked back to Greenfell, their two prisoners in tow.Once there, the Warlord Andrus intervened on behalf of the prisoners, requesting Captain Volus to implement a work service program of criminal servitude instead of hanging the two bandits. The Captain agreed. The party then spent the rest of the day relaxing, taking baths and chatting it up with the locals. During Chrysander's bath, Calyt the Shade slipped in and stole back the onyx skull that had been corrupting Chrysander's dreams of late. Later on that afternoon, he pulled it back out to tease Chrysander about having lost it, and the Warlord Andrus took the evil magical skull from the two to a blacksmith to have it shattered and destroyed. In the end, the party talked him out of it, simply to avoid the chance of possibly releasing a demon in the smithy.Elsewhere in the village, the elven priest Anzjin noted that someone was following him, a craftsman of some sort, but was unable to turn the tables and trap his follower. That night, he asked the locals at the inn about the man that had been following him, but no one knew of a craftsman that matched Anzjin's description.Late that night, however, Anzjin had a visitor, for an assassin had come in an effort to slay him in his sleep. What would have been a vicious blow to a lesser man was, instead, a mere scratch due to the elf's reflexes, and a fight ensued. In the end, all but Yngvar, who slept through the action, came to Anzjin's aid and together, they subdued the assassin. After turning the captive over to Captain Volus's men, the party talked at length with Anzjin, and learned that he had been hunted by the Cult of the Black Dawn for almost a decade now, as he himself hunted for his master after returning to the monastery one day to find it destroyed and most of his religious order slain. The Warlord Andrus made note of these circumstances, so that he could take this into account in their future travels.The next day, the party left Greenfell's docks aboard a fishing vessel belonging to a local fisherman, Lorander of Greenfell. A few hours later saw them approaching the Oracle's Island. As the plague-ridden folk of Newport had noticed the vessel sailing to the island, the group hurried to the dock, and took a path up to visit the Handmaidens of Amandrea. Lorander stayed behind, with instructions from Warlord Andrus to flee and leave them behind should any pursuit set sail from Newport.The Handmaidens, their forehead tattooed with a large eye, greeted the adventurers and warned them that the path to Amandrea was frought with dangerous challenges, namely the Trials of the Five Elements: Air, Fire, Water, Earth and Spirit. Each must face the challenges alone, but those that made it through the challenges would be able to pose their question to the oracle and gain wisdom and insight from her visions. All of the party accepted the challenges, and faced them one by one.Riddles posed by the Handmaidens formed the Trial of Air. Each person in turn was given a riddle, which varied from person to person, and each adventurer answered correctly, allowing them safe passage to the next trial.A narrow passage, sixty feet in length, with floors filled with hot coals formed the Trial of Fire. All but Calyt walked the hot coals in turn, with both the Warlord Andrus and the elven priest Anzjin being severely burned in the process. Through the use of magic spells, potions and natural healing remedies, the band recovered enough wounds to allow all to continue. Calyt did not walk the coals, but instead took the form of a hawk and flew down the passage and beyond.The Trial of Water was a slippery stone beam down the middle of a wide corridor, where the rest of floor opened to the top of a raging underground river below. One slip and an unlucky fellow might end up in the racing waters below, rushing to unknown destinations underground. Calyt flew past this barrier and beyond, but the others had to work their way across. The Warlord Andrus lay upon the beam and took his sweat time pulling himself along, crawling to safety on the other side. Chrysander and Yngvar did the same. Anzjin cast a spell upon himself to heighten his pace, and moved quickly across the beam.The Trial of Earth was marked by a large pit (which emptied also into the underground river) that must be leapt across, which led to a pair of double doors. Calyt flew across the pit and transformed back into human form, before pushing the doors open and entering into the Trial of Spirit. The remainder of the party, following about half an hour behind, came to the pit. One by one, they leapt across, though Chrysander and Yngvar did take the precaution of tying ropes around themselves to allow others to pull them up should they fall into the pit and the rushing water at the bottom. Thankfully, no one needed the extra assistance. Then the four entered into the Trial of Spirit one by one.Reunited on the other side of the door, the band descended into a long, twisting passage marked with ruins lit by a whitish blue glow. Tensions mounted, as the runes attempted to induce fear in the party. None succumbed, however, and so they eventually made it past the runes and into the parlor of the oracle Amandrea.Amandrea turned out to be a cyclops, a race of giants that, in the Age of Legends, gave up one of their eyes for the gift of prophecy. She welcomed them, and one by one, she answered each one's question in turn, giving them insight and advice that would assuredly soon be turned into action.And that's where we wrapped it up for the night...The Commentary:The encounter with the assassin was simply a vignette, a single encounter dedicated to bringing up one character's background story into the game. The elven priest Anzjin has a personal quest to find his master and deliver a letter, the contents of which has caused his temple to be destroyed and many of his order to be slain by the Cult of the Black Dawn. Since the cult is Anzjin's enemy (part of a Hindrance), I felt it was time to send in an assassin and remind the players that their Hindrances will be coming up in the game. It worked well, and the group did spend a number of their bennies in dealing with the encounter. Once awake and united, the assassin did not stand a chance.The concept behind the "Oracle's Island" adventure was two-fold. First, I love the concept of oracles in legends but had never used them in my games before, so I provided the party with this chance and they took it. Second, I wanted to create a small adventure that challenged characters, made them spend bennies, kept their adrenaline pumping and yet did not involve a single fight. The Trials of the Five Elements were born from that desire.Each Trial was based on one of the five ability scores within Savage Worlds.The Trial of Air was riddles, which challenged Smarts. If the player was stumped, I allowed a Smarts roll to get help from the others at the table. A raise on that roll gave him the answer straight out, to reflect knowledge the character may have had that the player did not. In this way, the riddles did not take more than five or six minutes in total, yet still allowed those that enjoyed riddles the chance to have some fun.The Trial of Fire involved a low damage (2d4) walk across hot coals, which compared against Toughness, a stat derived from the Vigor ability score. Now, sadly, the dice exploded once on the warlord and several times on the priest, but some bennies helped with some of that. The rest used spells and potions and some time as Healing checks were made during the Golden Hour.The Trial of Water involved a series of Agility tests. I gave penalties for running across the slick beam, and a small bonus for crawling across it. The slower speed meant more checks were needed, but the desire for a bonus was high, and it all worked out. There was definitely some sweating going on, because no one knew what would happen if they fell into the waters below.The Trial of Earth involved two Strength checks, one to jump the pit and one to open the heavy stone doors. I liked the caution that some characters took, particularly with the character of the player that missed the session, so that no one had to make the call to let him know Yngvar had died. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> All went well, but again, more adrenaline.The Trial of Spirit involved a Fear power effect, which required a Guts check to avoid. I had warned the group during character creation that Guts was one of the five skills you should heavily consider investing in, and so all the players put at least a d4 in it. They all succeeded, and that was that.(For the curious, the five "everyman" skills that all adventures should consider investing at least a d4 into are: Guts, Fighting, Notice, Stealth and Throwing. In a modern game, swap out Shooting for Throwing. They show up fairly frequently in many situations.)In the past, I've had troubles at times pulling off a sense of tension with these kinds of scenarios, but Savage Worlds allows even a highly competent character to still roll low and fail. That put all the players into a state of concern for their characters, and boosted the emotional investment of the trials. After the game, the players seemed quite psyched by having survived the encounters, and so I judge the effort a success. The fact that only two players still had a single bennie each, and the others were without bennies, let me know that it was a good challenge.Each question the party asked covered different areas of the game so far, and each opened up a new adventure possibility, but it looks like dealing with the plague in Newport is likely to be the first thing on the agenda going forward with the next session.Again, if you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to post. I definitely appreciate the interest in this thread.With Regards,Flynn</blockquote>

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