[Our Side Trek continues as does the growth of our group’s size. One of the group’s prior players, Thomas, has returned after a stint in the Peace Corps. This was his first exposure to Savage Worlds and we are now up to eight players!
This entry is from Todd. As always, my GM comments in italics and brackets.
When we last left the party, they had noticed the “architect” (as the group took to calling him) directing the swarms of undead critters and re-enter the large barrow mound.
Spoiler Alert: Portions of this session borrow from the adventure, The Garden of Miracles, by Faster Monkey Games.]
Stori watched the shadowed figure go back into the large barrow mound. He comes back to tell us what he saw. While discussing on how to proceed, a voice from up in a tree, interupts us, saying that there are two people to be concerned with.
The newcomer, Volos, says his sister and her husband are the ones responsible for the undead. He gives us some background on how his sister was involved with the torture and sacrifices of their Tuomi tribe. He joins our group.
[Thomas is playing Volos. Volos is a Tuomi who had nearly been sacrificed…along with much of his clan…by his own sister and her so-called husband, an albino Tuomi named Drest. Both turned out to be worshippers of Hela and versed in the control of undead. After recovering from his near sacrifice, Volos had tracked them to this area from the Drachenlands and then discovered the barrow mounds and undead activity. Although he had not seen his sister or Drest, he was pretty convinced that they had to have something to do with the happenings here.]
We go to the secret entrance in the woods. At the back entrance, we encounter one of the mercenaries from Hrafn Point. Snorri informs us that Obi sent him to check up on Ivarr, and lend a hand if it is needed.
[Since Rachel was back and playing Ivarr again, Jamie needed a character. Snorri is it…one of the mercenaries that was serving at Hrafn’s Point. So it is a bit contrived but so what…I had been too busy watching the World Cup to come up with much better.]
We climb down the ladder and make our way to the room with the sarcophagus. Everything seems to be like we left it, except that the door is gone. In place where the door was previously, it is now a stone wall. Searching the wall, Ivarr finds a hidden latch and opens the door. At that moment, an undead creature bursts from the sarcophagus.
The thing is tough. Even with it almost totally surrounded, we can’t seem to hurt it. With a well placed shot to the head, Stori is able to hurt it. Mule lands the killing blow. Searching the sarcophagus, it appears that the creature ahd been laying on top of the bones that we had put there. Where did this thing come from?
[Where did it come from indeed? Could it be that the party had missed something the first time through the complex?]
It is decided that we will go up into the barrow. Mule wants to go first. Ivarr says no, he wants to send someone stealthy first. Mule takes offense by the look on his face. I can feel this might end badly. There is more than one reason Mule is called Mule. After some discussion about how much noise we’ve already made, Ivarr gives in and agrees to let Mule go first. Well, wouldn’t you know it, Mule, once again living up to his name, changes his mind and refuses to go first. He will now go last. There’s no changing his mind now. He is not the sharpest knife in the kitchen, but if handled wrong you will still get cut. And where Mule is involved, it’s gonna to hurt bad.
[Note to self: It really isn’t fair for a player that missed the prior session to get thrust into the leadership role…especially with this anarcho-syndicalist bunch of players. :D]
I go first. Inside the large barrow, no one is there. We all climb up. It’s fairly crowded. I move forward to the opening. Because the are doors laying on the ground, our torch light spills out into the open. Peeking my head out to get a look, I see lots of little critter skeletons turn their heads to look at me and start chittering.
Pulling out a flsk of oil, I pour it out around the entrance to the barrow. The chittering stops and swarms of skeletal critters rush the the barrow. Tyrvi lights the oil. We are immensely outnumbered. I keep feeding the fire with oil to give us time to make a retreat. Someone must be directing the undead vermin, because they ignore the fire and move to start digging through the walls of the barrow.
We climb back down into the secret tunnel to make our escape. Snorri slips and falls down on top of Tyrvi. This was almost fatal for Tyrvi, because Snorri was wearing spiked boots. Gansi heals Tyrvi, and we continue to the exit of the barrow. We push the sarcophagus in front of the secret door.
Once outside, Stori climbs the cemetary wall to try to see the the bad guys. They are nowhere to be found. The little skeletons have gone back to digging out the smaller barrows.
We are at a loss, so we split up the group. Stori, Mule, Volos and Gansi go back to the orc camp to make sure we didn’t miss anything the first time. Snorri goes back down to give the coffin room another going over. Ghostmane, Tyrvi and I are keeping watch outside when we hear Snorri yelling for help.
While the other group is not finding anything at the orc camp, our group runs to the aid of Snorri. Tyrvi is the first to enter the coffin room. A large skeleton with a very large sword gets the drop on Tyrvi. Other than the large skeleton, two things are plainly obvious, Snorri is nowhere to be seen and the door is once again open. Apparently, we have missed something both of the times we have been down here. We can worry about that if we survive our present predicament.
[That’s where we ended…just after the skeleton had done a Wound to Tyrvi. Of course, I totally forgot that Tyrvi was already wounded when we started the next session this past weekend. RJ should have reminded me. I suppose that I’ll have to punish him somehow…suggestions would be greatly welcome. đŸ˜ˆ
We’ve got one more session with the Side Trek and then it is back to the main campaign.
Besides offering a chance for the new players to get a taste of Savage Worlds and letting me procrastinate on dealing with the ramifications of the last session from the main campaign (i.e., the death of Sebbi, Hervara, and the Brighthammer brothers), I did learn one other thing. I don’t like my house rule on Guts simply defaulting to Spirit. Instead, I’m going to have starting Guts default to Spirit and then it is treated just like any other skill. This will allow characters to be “braver” than they might be otherwise but not penalize characters for not spending some of those precious Skill Points on Guts.]
What does anarcho-syndicalist mean?
A style of anarchism but mostly a Monty Python reference.