The Road to Willoweed

Since we won’t have the full complement of our regular players for a bit, we started a shorter adventure this past session. It’ll give us a chance to play a number of sessions with our Beginner Box Hack rules too and work out any obvious kinks. Austin, Rachel, and Todd were joined by a new player, Jim, for this session. Spoiler Alert: The foundation for this mini-campaign is Fangs from the Past published by 0one Games. As is often the case, we didn’t really get too far into the published part of the adventure but there are still big spoilers for it below the break.

Characters were created in under an hour and include the following.

• Aaron: A human fighter played by Todd.
• Aurora: A human cleric of Saranrae played by Rachel.
• Remel: An elven wizard played by Austin.
• Theoden: A dwarven rogue played by Jim.

As the players started on their characters, I simply told them that they needed to be traveling towards the small logging village of Willoweed. In the module, the village is actually called Gafolweed but I just found that awkward to say so I changed it.

As I have been known to do in the past, I immediately tossed the game into the proverbial lap of the players. I asked them why they were traveling to this small logging village. The first question was whether or not they should already be together or should they meet in Willoweed. I suggested that it would be better if they were already together.

Austin said that he was on some sort of elven walkabout to explore the world and was traveling from one port town to another. Todd was next and, given Austin’s reason, I told him and the rest to assume that they had not yet met Remel. Todd quickly suggested that Aurora was returning home to Willoweed to visit her parents (not sure why it wasn’t Aaron returning home). Rachel went with that and said that Aurora had left Willoweed to complete her acolyte training at a temple of Saranrae in a larger city, Beachfront (a play on Sandpoint since that was where we had done the prior session’s one-shot).

Todd wanted Aaron and Aurora to already know each other and have a reason for traveling together. He and Rachel agreed that the two had become good friends (no, not that kind of friends) and Aaron was accompanying the cleric as Willoweed was on the frontier and not necessarily the safest place to travel to alone. Jim chimed in and it was settled that Theoden had met Aaron in a tavern in Beachfront and had decided that the dwarf was “needed” to help protect the two humans on their travels…not that the two humans necessarily seemed to feel like the dwarf would provide much protection.

A quick aside…is it just me or is there a rather strong tendency amongst a lot of players to not want their characters to have a definite reason to be going somewhere? When I ask why your character is, for example, traveling to Willoweed, it is giving you as a player the opportunity to add to the game and to indicate to me what you want to see. Just traveling or just passing through as a response kind of tells me, as the GM, that you don’t want your character to be important to the story…just a bit player instead…and let the other characters, the ones who have a reason and are tied into the adventure, be the stars of the game.

We started play with the trio, on the morning of their third day of travel, walking down a road in some rather thick woods. As they approached a bend in the road, they could hear voices and a tittering–and not very pleasant–laughter from up ahead. Although no one could understand what was being said or see the speakers, Theoden recognized the language…goblin!

Reaching the bend, the trio caught sight of the goblins and their strange activity, though given their maniacal, psychotic behavior not one that would necessarily be out of the ordinary. Five of the little two-footed vermin were standing in a circle around what was likely either a human or an elf. It wasn’t really possible to tell since the person was tied up, wearing a hood, and trussed up and hanging upside down from a tree by a crude rope. The goblins were taking turns whacking the body with a stick, sending it spinning and the goblins into peals of laughter.

Aaron shouted and charged the little menaces while Theoden and Aurora readied their ranged weapons. A moment later, as the goblins surrounded him and had drawn their rusty and wicked looking cleavers, Aaron was reconsidering the wisdom of his charge. After one of the goblins was dropped, another said something in crude Common about how they killed one of his friends then he’d kill one of theirs and chopped at the person hanging from the tree, connecting solidly and drawing a considerable amount of blood.

Although the trio were each injured–and Aaron badly so–they dispatched the goblins without too much trouble. As Theoden made sure the goblins were dead and looted their bodies, the others cut down the object of the goblins’ prior amusement. Removing the hood, they found that they had rescued an elf. With the aid of Aurora’s healing magics, the elf had a full recovery.

He introduced himself as Remel (as if anyone hadn’t already guessed that) and the last thing he remembered was settling down for the evening in the woods. The goblins, he reasoned, must have taken him in his sleep. The same goblins, it turned out, had also relieved the elf of his belongings…the same belongings that Theoden had just looted off of their lifeless bodies. Although he initially attempted to “sell” the most valuable of these items, a silver ring with small garnets (actually Remel’s bonded item), a few stern words from Aurora convinced the dwarf of the errors of his ways…at least momentarily.

With introductions and healing out of the way…oh, and the restoration of goods to their “proper” owners, the trio was now a foursome as Remel decided to travel on with the party. After a couple of more days of travel that passed without incident, a familiar laughter could be heard coming from a short distance off the road and deeper in some woods. While the gurgling of a nearby river did mask the sound some, it was quite clear that the party had stumbled upon more goblin vermin.

Theoden crept forward through the woods…well, he attempted to creep forward. He stepped on a downed branch, snapping it with a loud pop. Mumbling something about how there are no trees to have to worry about while sneaking around underground, he pushed forward. In a small clearing, three goblins stood over a body…most likely a human body. The were poking it with their cleavers and then one bent down and bit a nice chunk of flesh out of the leg of the body. Theoden let loose with a sling bullet, dropping the still giggling and chewing goblin. The other two were slain with little trouble by the party.

Here’s where the spoilers for Fangs from the Past start.

Realizing that they were only about an hour away from Willoweed, Aurora feared that this latest goblin victim was someone that she might know. As the body was turned over such that his face could be seen, her fear was realized. The victim was a logger she knew by the name of Hamil. The party also started to realize that the goblins probably were not responsible for Hamil’s death. They found the tracks of a large feline creature leading away from Hamil’s body. There was also a trail of blood running along with the tracks. Hamil’s lumber axe lay a few feet away from him and its head had blood upon it too. When Aurora examined his body, it was confirmed. He had numerous large claw marks raked across his torso and a bite mark upon his throat.

Aaron and Remel followed the tracks to the river where it appeared that whatever creature had left them had entered the water. However, they saw no other sign of the monster. When Theoden lifted Hamil’s body to take it to the river to clean it up some before taking it to Willoweed with them, Aurora noticed something drop from the body. Picking it up, she found it to be a large brass earring still attached to some flesh…a leathery bit of (presumably) ear covered with a tawny fur interspersed with gray hair.

This was enough to jog Aurora’s memories and she realized what the creature might be…one of the ancient Sturgimates that terrorized the land centuries ago. As she remembered the old stories (and relayed to the others), the Sturgimates were evil creatures…a cross of some kind between a sphinx and a manticore. Five of them had ruled this area until challenged by the Sage of the Sundered Cliffs, a well-known wiseman that lived in the area. Knowing they had a sphinx’s weakness for riddles, the Sage challenged the Sturgimates to a riddle contest. They would each ask him a riddle. If he answered all of five of the riddles, the Sturgimates would have to forever leave these lands and bother the people no more. If he could not, they could eat him.

Knowing that these creatures were evil and treacherous, the Sage would also pluck a fang from each of the Sturgimates for whom he correctly answered the riddle. He would enchant the fangs such that a curse would befall them if they ever returned…assuming he won the challenge of course. The Sage had answered the first four riddles when it became the turn of the fifth and most treacherous of the Sturgimates to ask a riddle. Instead, the beast leapt at the Sage, intent on devouring him. Expecting such treachery, the Sage held the fifth still with a mighty spell and deftly plucked a fang from its mouth.

Having lost the challenge, the Sturgimates had no choice but to leave or face the curse of the Sage. Leave is exactly what they did. Now, however, it appeared that they may have returned and, as far as Aurora knew, the Sage of the Sundered Cliff had not been seen in a long, long time.

Taking Hamil’s body with them, the group resumed their journey to Willoweed. As they got closer, they spied a couple of other loggers traveling on the road as well. Aurora hailed them and, as they all traveled together, the party learned that Hamil was not the first to be slain. Over the last couple of weeks two others had been slain in a similar fashion. The village guards had started traveling with loggers as they went out to work and no one was supposed to travel alone but there simply weren’t enough guards for all the loggers. These two did not know why Hamil may have gone in the woods alone, assuming he had.

When the group finally reached Willoweed, the two loggers took off. They were obviously spreading word of Hamil’s death. Aurora and the others were heading for the village square where the mayor, priest, and sergeant of the village guard all were based as a crowd was forming about them and getting larger. A young woman, who Aurora recognized as Nissa, came forward and saw Hamil’s body and dropped to her knees in inconsolable sobbing; Nissa was his betrothed. Sergeant Lucent came and took Hamil’s body, saying he would take it to the temple and asked the party to stay in the square.

Someone in the crowd came forward and made a comment about how Hamil was a fool to head into the woods on his own. Another logger took offense at the comment and a fight was about to break out. Aurora stepped between the two and said it was wrong to speak such ills of the departed. When the rude logger called her a whore and told her to move, Aaron solidly punched him in the face, knocking him to the ground. One of the logger’s friends helped him up and they departed, indicating that this wasn’t over yet. Although Aaron commented sarcastically how great it was that he was already making friends, most in the crowd looked pleased with what the fighter had done.

Remel then noticed that a couple of women in the crowd had pointed at Aurora and were whispering something to each other. As he pointed this out to Aurora, she saw her mother approaching in the crowd. As the two made eye contact, Aurora’s mother broke out in tears. Someone in the crowd whispered to Aurora that her father had been the first victim found dead…

And that, of course, is where we stopped for the night even though we had only played for a few hours and usually went for at least another hour. 😉

This is also why I find the “I’m just traveling or passing through” motivation to be shallow. Rachel, via Todd’s suggestion, has a character that has an attachment or hook to the game world. Instead of the PCs just passing through and ending up being potential heroes to the people of Willoweed, there is a personal component for Aurora and, by association, Aaron. It makes the game so much richer and the experience more fulfilling…as Todd put it, I was giving him goosebumps with all this. I’ve heard many players say things like they don’t want their character to have any relatives or anything that makes them vulnerable or gives the GM something to “hook” into. But, I gotta ask, why not?

As I was thinking about what we could do for out next campaign, I posed a question to my long-time players…why had the Company H campaign been so successful? Everyone in the group except Austin and now Jim had played in that campaign and everyone looks back on it with a great deal of fondness. One of the things that was brought up–and I think it is key–is that the campaign “got personal” for the characters (and thus players) really quickly and stayed that way. Yep, I think that is pretty important and, thanks to Todd and Rachel (and a little quick improvisation by yours truly), there is already an element of that for this little fill-in campaign.