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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9438809" data-attributes="member: 42582">We played another session on Sunday. (By my count, our seventeenth.) Fea-bella, Golin and Korvin all had players in attendance, although the latter only briefly.We started with a recap from Golin's player. This allowed him to restore one point of taxed Nature. It also reminded everyone that the PCs were on the wharves of Nulb with Grud Squinteye, offsider to Tolub, the river pirate captain.I then described Tolub's black-sailed river galley pulling up to the wharf, with Tolub - wearing his mail and carrying his battle axe - standing at the prow of the fighting deck. I also asked Korvin's player to tell us how Korvin - who was absent from our previous session - found himself on Tolub's vessel.Korvin's player gave us a brief account of how - after the PCs had left the Moathouse - he had tried to sneak aboard Tolub's galley, and been caught, but talked his way out of trouble. He took a failed test for Criminal.Tolub's vessel being a galley, there were rowers as well as sails. Fea-bella's player asked whether or not they were slaves, and  at about the same time wrote as her goal that she will help free the enslaved. Golin's goal was to get one over a pirate. I called for a (Beginner's Luck) Sailor test to determine the status of the sailors; this failed, and so Fea-bella was Angry that while some of the rowers were free, others were clearly slaves.Golin therefore decided to try and sell his captive (from the previous session) to Tolub as a galley slave. This caused some discussion among the participants (not in the fiction) about Golin's propensity to capture and sell beings, and also the morality of this particular action. In the fiction, Fea-bella was shocked by this idea and tried to persuade Golin not to do it - starting a Convince conflict between the two. Korvin joined in on Fea-bella's side, adding a helping die to her roll for disposition (but also costing 1 point of disposition for being hungry and thirsty), but then his player had to depart on family duties and so it became a solo effort from Fea-bella. Golin got some assistance from the bemused Grud Squinteye. (We established that Golin's cousin Aldric was not part of this particular conversation, having been told by Golin to "wait over there" while he dealt with the pirate captain.)Fea-bella has a surplus of Persona relative to Fate, which is going to hinder her progression to level 6, and so Fea-bella's player deliberately scripted so as to lose the conflict - thus gaining the Fate for pursuing her goal but not risking achieving it for a Persona instead. Golin won the conflict with no loss of disposition; in the fiction, Golin persuaded her to butt out of the matter and go and wait with Aldric so she wouldn't have to be part of the grubby deed.Golin then negotiated with Tolub. His initial ask was 2D of coin. During the course of the conflict, he also raised the matter of <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/torchbearer-2e-actual-play-of-this-awesome-system.691233/post-9236423" target="_blank">Tolub's tithe to Lareth</a>. Golin won the conflict but owed a half-compromise, and we agreed that this meant Tolub took the slave, and agreed to sail up the river to the Moathouse in lieu of payment (this was Golin's concession to Tolub).I then decided to introduce my new NPC - the Dwarf Fori came up from beneath the fighting deck, and announced himself to Golin. This is an ICE-authored character (<a href="https://www.ebay.com/itm/195194982119" target="_blank">Fori the Beardless - Dark Minions - Middle Earth CCG - MECCG  | eBay</a>), whom Google reveals has also turned up on <a href="https://notionclubarchives.fandom.com/wiki/Fori_the_beardless" target="_blank">this fan wiki</a>. I had written up Fori as a 5th level NPC Dwarven Outcast after playing a game of Middle Earth the Wizards with my daughter and using Fori to reasonable affect as a sneaky agent.I was relying on my memory for Fori's looks, and so described a full-face mask including beard. Fea-bella's player conjectured that this might be a Dwarven Forge-Mask. I asked if this was serious, and when told yes called for a Lore-Master test. The test failed, and so I described Fori taking off his helmet, revealing himself to be Beardless, and glaring at the two PCs as he told his tale. Both failed Manipulator vs Manipulator, making them Afraid.Fori declared that he knew the truth of what had happened to Golin's parents. Golin asked Fori to tell him, offering to cook a great feast in return - but Golin's player failed the test, and so while Fori agreed to this it made Golin Angry that he had to provide a service to get this information.They then set off in Tolub's galley. Tolub gave Golin use of the (small) galley. The roll for weather indicated that a fog was rising. The base toll for the journey was 1. Fea-bella stood on the fighting deck as a Scout (+1 toll, but her cloak raiment protected her from the fog). Golin was Cook, of course (+2 toll - I'll come back to this).During the goings on on the dock, I had already rolled a treasure for an appropriate loot drop, and it had indicated "a tool of unknown use". I described a strange tool in the galley - a weird skillet, or perhaps even a tenderiser? - and the Cook test succeeded for Golin to identify its appropriate use, gaining +1D to his test to Cook for Fori. Golin's also foraged, using his instinct, but decided to prepare fresh rations as the Ob was lower. He wanted it to be an impressive meal, and so we agreed this was a +1 Ob. This second Cook test also succeeded, and the meal therefore absorbed the base toll for the journey, and also meant that Fori told his story as he had agreed to: he had known Golin's parents, as part of the Explosives cult at the Forgotten Temple Complex (of Elemental Evil). They had been working on a new concoction, assisted by the alchemist Vaxen (who is Golin's town friend as part of his original PC build - <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/torchbearer-2e-actual-play-of-this-awesome-system.691233/post-8796111" target="_blank">in a prior session</a> it had been established that Vaxen had hosted as guests a Dwarven couple with a young child which would fit with Golin's own age and biography). Fori didn't know whether the problem was with the saltpeter that they used, or perhaps the guano from an underground source (white phosphorous?, conjectured Fea-bella's player), but it went horribly wrong, and the explosion killed Golin's parents and left Fori permanently beardless.Golin pondered this news, and wondered how to broach the issue with Vaxen next time that he saw him.They arrived at the moathouse, and with a successful test (Manipulator or Orator - I can't recall now) called their friendly Dire Wolf to them. Golin (as spoken by his player) was very coy about the relationship of the Wolf to the PCs vs Lareth (the Wolf is their secret ally in the Moathouse), but Fea-bella was far less subtle and so I did call for a Manipulator test to maintain the secret; it succeeded.Golin and Fea-bella then travelled with Tolub and Fori through the Moathouse and dungeons to Lareth's well-appointed chamber. I described the rich furnishings, and the players were suitably impressed by the many dice worth of tapestries, silver plate, etc. They then excused themselves to rest (= camp) in the adjoining guardroom while Tolub and Lareth discussed the matter of the tithe.The camp event was "Dust. You disturb a thick layer of dust while making camp: +1 Ob to all tests during this camp phase." Given the PCs were in a guardroom, I described this as smoke from the fire instead. This was also a basis for saying that the guards in the room left the PCs alone, joining their comrades in the outer guardroom. The players had accumulated three checks (at least I think that was it: a -1D penalty on Fea-bella's part, and a tie-break in Tolub's favour during the negotiation on the docks). Fea-bella's Song of Serenity was able to give Golin a free recovery test; but her Exhaustion meant she couldn't use her instinct to brew potions and salves during camp. Both recovered from Angry, but tests to recover from Afraid failed.At the end of the camp stuff, I told the players that they could hear raised voices from Lareth's chamber - in particular, Lareth sounded either angry or upset. They re-entered, to find that discussions had become heated - Lareth was standing with staff raised, and Tolub was fingering his battle-axe. The PCs decided to intervene. I said that, given their rag-tag appearance (no shoes, sooty faces, etc) they would suffer a -1s on social actions in this context. Golin decided to try and even the odds a bit by letting the smoke in from the guardroom, to cause the NPCs to be distracted and/or annoyed by something other than the PCs. A Manipulator vs Manipulator meant that Tolub was affected, and so I said that the PCs wouldn't suffer the penalty against him - which suited the players, as they then proceeded to Convince Tolub to pay the tithe to Lareth; whereas Tolub was trying to persuade Lareth to let his well-armed guards join the pirates in return for a share of the spoils.The players allocated a point of disposition to Lareth so that he could help the PCs (if he liked what they said) - this had the effect of encouraging action declarations that would attract Lareth's support. And the upshot was that the PCs succeeded against Tolub with no loss of disposition, and so he agreed to play the tithe rather than bringing Lareth's guards into his piracy operation. He gave Lareth 1D of coin as an initial payment.Tolub and Fori were then ready to sail on, but the players had collected four more camp checks (a couple of lost tie-breaks by Golin) and so (via a simple test) persuaded Tolub to wait while they rested some more. Lareth agreed to let them rest in his chamber. Able to drink from Lareth's fine liqueurs (+1D to recover from Afraid and Angry) the PCs recovered from Afraid; but Fea-bella failed to recover from Exhaustion. My recollection of the precise sequence is hazy: but Golin tried to Scavenge some of Lareth's liqueur to fill a waterskin, and failed - which led Lareth to tell them it was time to leave, in effect ending the camp phase. But somewhere in there he also used his Beggar to plead with Lareth to provide Fea-bella with a potion that would restore he Exhaustion. The test failed, and, so although Lareth gave Fea-bella one dose of a tonic that will relieve Exhaustion for a turn, the PCs were left hungry and thirsty at the thought of having to forego any more of Lareth's delightful drinks. There was some discussion of whether Fea-bella should drink the tonic on the spot to free up her instinct, but it seemed more sensible to save it. The PCs did eat some food, though, to relieve H&T - this leaves Fea-bella's Exhaustion as their only condition, which Fea-bella's player hopes to relive with a prologue next time.We ended the session there. Fea-bella got two Fate (Goal and Belief (that Dwarves are greedy and cannot be trusted), from the PvP with Golin) and two Persona (for acting on her Creed, that these are dark times and all Elves need help, in the dealings with Tolub and Lareth; and for Teamworker). Golin got two Fate (for acting on his Belief that Elves are unstable, by manipulating Fea-bella in the PvP, and for using his Instinct to forage) and three Persona (for his Creed, that Elves are lost in dreams and need grounding in reality - the PvP again; for MVP; and for achieving his goal of getting one over on a pirate!).It was on my way home that I realised I never applied Golin's two toll for cooking on the journey. I decided, retrospectively, that Fori covered this with a payment of coin to Tolub. Fori will announced this to Golin next time, thus making it clear that Golin is in his debt - this is a standard move for a Torchbearer to make with a PC's enemy, although Fori's status in that respect is a bit ambiguous at this stage.</blockquote>

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