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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9365828" data-attributes="member: 42582">After a long hiatus (caused by my unavailability on weekends) we played a session on Sunday: me and two players (Golin and Fea-bella).We spend a bit of time recapping, given the gap between sessions. The two PCs had only injured as their conditions, which can't be recovered via prologue, so the fact that the GM had to give the prologue didn't cost them anything.They chose Goals: Fea-bella wanted to make it to Nulb alive, and Golin wanted to find something useful on the way to Nulb.I then rolled for Weather and Trouble on the Road. Although it is only mid-Autumn, it was snowing (+2 toll), and the PCs found themselves lost (+2 toll). The base toll for the trip to Nulb is 2, and each PC took on a role for the journey (Guide for Fea-bella, to try and recover from being lost; and Forager for Golin, to try and achieve his goal). So they were looking at 7 tool each.Golin used his Instict to forage when the opportunity arises, and I let him make a Scavenger test against Ob 4 to try and find some cast-off materials. He failed (my memory is he used a trait against himself to have zero dice: 2D for skill, -1D for injury and -1D for being overly acquisitive in the snow), and (as per the suggestion in the weather entry for snow) found himself exhuasted.The Pathfinder test failed, and and I decided on a twist: they found themselves off the path and in the icy waters of the swamp, and then made their way back onto the path, and through the snow could see some sign of civilisation - they were back at the Moathouse!Because they hadn't actually journeyed to Nulb, I didn't impose toll beyond the 5 for weather, lost and roles. Raiment provided its aegis: Fea-bella -1 toll for her cloak, and Golin -1 toll for his galoshes (he was cold, and wet, and his feet were freezing, but his ankles were toasty warm). They had no food to complement their drink so as to buy it off; and so it was all suffered as conditions: Hungry and Thirsty, Exhausted, Angry and Sick for Fea-bella; Hungry and Thirsty, Angry, Sick and Afraid for Golin.Golin's player declared that, in his mentally unbalanced state, Golin ran straight through the Moathouse gate to shelter. On the principle of "fun once", and reasoning that the bandits would not keep guard in the snow, I decided that nothing would stop him making it to the great hall. Fea-bella followed him. They drank water and so recovered from H+T.I described the hall:This was clearly once a great audience chamber, but has been thoroughly sacked and despoiled: leaves and dirt cover the floor; the furniture has been destroyed; along with tattered banners and tapestries, cobwebs hang from the walls and from the ceiling above; heaps of rotting cloth have been thrown into the corners. Looking up, beams and chunks of stone poke through.I mentioned the heavy door in front of them, in good repair, and the doorways to the left and right. They knew the left way went past the stairs to the dungeons, and so decided to go right. With no tinderbox, a Survivalist test was successful to  light a candle (and then another candle was lit from that one). (Following advice from [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER], this did not clock onto the grind.)The first thing they saw was the stairs "covered with dust, crushed stone, broken wood, and burned heaps of cloth. At the landing half way up they are completely choked with rubble". Fea-bella's player decided to jury-rig a torch, and this survivalist test was successful, so they extinguished their candles.They could see two doors on their right, one on their left, and an opening at the end of the hall in front of them. They tried the left door. I read to them from my notes (taken from the module):There is a bat colony in here, flying in and out through the arrow slit. Detecting the bat colony doesn’t require a test as long as the players indicate they’re proceeding slowly and scanning their surroundings, as the stench of bat guano is usually overpowering, and guano is plentiful in this area, useful for alchemy, cooking fuel or torch-making. However, bats are sensitive to acute stimuli: loud noises, pyrotechnics or light (like torches or lanterns) will cause them to swarm. If disturbed by bright lights or noise, scores of bats will drop from their perches and swarm the adventurers. The adventurers may avoid disturbing the colony by dousing their lights before opening the door . . .Around about here the PCs decided to sweat out the fever - Fea-bella's Jeweller dropped from 2 to 1, and Golin's Scout from 3 to 2. Fea-bella also gritted her teeth, and her Labourer dropped from 2 to 1. Somewhen or other Golin did the same, dropping his Health from 6 to 5. (In case this seems unbalanced, in the previous session I had dropped Fea-bella's Lore Master from 5 with 7 tests marked, to 4 - so this session I was being a bit easier on her, and a bit stricter on Golin.)We all noted that the PCs, so far from having doused their lights and proceeding slowly, were proudly brandishing their jury-rigged torch, and so the bats swarmed them! Fea-bella tried to shut the door on them - she was conflict captain in a Flee test. The bats had lost only one disposition after driving the PCs to zero in two volleys (so I only got to boast of, but didn't get to roll, my third-volley Feint scripted against the players' Defend). My compromise to the players was that the bats didn't bite them, and so I was not going to roll to see if the PCs became Sick again! But their torch was dropped an extinguished.The corridor now full of swarming bats, the PCs retreated to the space at its end. There they re-lit their candles, amid lamenting about the failure of the jury-rigged torch play. I described the breech in the wall here, with rubble spilling into the moat, and a Survivalist test to find potable water succeeded.The camp was a dark camp (to avoid further aggravating the bats) and dangerous (the PCs did not know they were camping in the place where a giant lizard sleeps), but the event roll was good and they actually found some useful gear: one portion of forage, which Fea-bella put in her backpack. With three checks, both PCs recovered from their Anger, but Golin remained Afraid.After their camp, they refilled their waterskins, and headed off again to Nulb. This time the weather roll was friendly (crisp and cold) and the Trouble on the Road roll made it even better, Clear and Cool. Fea-bella decided to forage (taking advantage of the +1D from the weather) and Golin to cook. Scavenging succeeded, and some more forage was found. Golin then cooked both portions, to offset the two base toll. This roll failed, and so he made himself Hungry and Thirsty in the process - he drank his water to feel better.Toll was therefore base 2, -2 for cooking, -1 for weather, +1/+2 for roles: so Fea-bella suffered no toll, and Golin only one (becoming hungry and thirsty again; Fea-bella gave him some water). At Nulb, they met a tinker whose hand cart was stuck in the mud (Remote Village event roll). When I mentioned the Ob 5 Labourer test to help move the cart, they balked and so offered instead to help carry his goods into town (which I said would be only Ob 2). I called for Persuader against Ob 2, and Fea-bella succeeded. So they helped him out, Golin with a successful Labourer test that took him to Labourer 3; and Fea-bella with a failed one. (She drank her last bit of water to recover from her resulting thirst.)Talking to Nink, the tinker, also gave them a bit of information about the hostel and tavern in Nulb. He offered them a gift for helping, but they declined and so instead got to mark Nink as a friend.Given they needed to recover from various conditions, and in a tavern you can only recover H+T and Angry, they decided to sleep in the stables. (There are no other accommodations in Nulb.) They also levelled up to level 5 - Fea-bella learned the Song of Serenity, while Golin's cousin Aldric (who comes from the Dwarf-hold in the Griff Mountains, where Golin's parents were exiled from) was waiting for him at the tavern.Golin bought some wine to help him recover from Afraid, but failed the roll. Fea-bella then successfully brewed an elixir that restored Golin's courage, and he benefitted from her Song of Serenity to recover from Exhaustion. Fea-bella's own recovery test against Exhaustion failed.Fea-bella decided that she couldn't afford the Lifestyle cost to memorise spells (no free check for that in the stables!), and so went shopping instead. She bought candles, a tinderbox, food and wine. Golin also bought a large sack, candles, and food that Aldric will carry. Then he made his free roll to haggle, and failed but to no practical cost (the market for cashing in loot was closed to him, but he had none to cash in). He then decided to make a Circles test to find shoes on the black market (shoes are not normally for sale in a remote village). This had +1D for being on the docks, and succeeded, and Grud Squinteye ("perhaps a Half-Orc", I mentioned) took him to the back of the market and tavern. But he then failed the Resources test. I decided on a twist, and so also got to roll on the Docks Events table. This roll meant that, as Grud led Golin to the docks "where he would have to meet Tolub, who is arriving this evening), Golin noticed that his pouch, with his 4 new candles, had been stolen!We had already established that Fea-bella was with Golin (she was also hoping to acquire shoes), and after first asking whether she was going with Golin I decided that this was also the end of the town phase. So Lifestyle checks were made. Golin succeeded, and so recovered a point of taxed Nature (he had been burning Nature to buff some of his tests, to little avail, and so it had dropped from 3/4 at the start of the session, to 1/3 before this recovery).Fea-bella failed, however, and so the first turn of the Adventure Phase was Skole (proprietor of the Boatmen's Tavern and Nulb Market) sending his three thugs to have a friendly word with her. The module says that they have leather armour, shields and daggers and that one has a crossbow. I decided that they had left their shields at home, but otherwise were equipped as described. Golin's player asked "Are they in a group?" I said yes. And so Golin hurled his green slime grenade at them, that he had been carrying with him since making it in the Moathouse dungeon. I told him to make a Fighter test, and then I would roll against this for each of the thugs to see if they kept coming. Two of them failed, and so only a third came on. (Golin thought that his green slime might dissolve the others pretty badly, but I talked this down a bit - the Torchbearer creeping ooze is corrosive, but not quite as deadly on immediate contact as it's D&D cousin.)Grud stepped aside and said to Golin "This should be interesting; but don't kill him!" So Golin's player said "We'll capture him, then!" The players succeeded handsomely on their capture test, suffering no loss of their own disposition, and so Grenin is now in their custody.We finished the session there, two turns into the adventure phase and with Fea-bella exhausted but the PCs suffering no other conditions. Fea-bella earned persona for achieving her goal, for mouldbreaker (as she had more than once in the session trusted Golin despite her Belief that Dwarves are greedy and cannot be trusted), and for teamworker. Golin earned fate for pursing (but not achieving) his goal, and earned persona for mouldbreaker (as he had found Fea-bella reliable, despite his Belief that Elves are fickle and unstable) and for MVP (nominated by me, for the green slime grenade pay-off).I'm hoping it won't be five months before our next session!</blockquote>

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