Mörk Borg - Session 1
I really enjoyed writing play reports of my sessions of The Isle and A Dungeon Game at the beginning of the year. I think session reports are an important part of the space, a record of how games are actually played that have waned in popularity in recent years. I’d like to see them come back.
As with my other play reports I’m less interested in narrativising play - though that will of course happen - as I am in showing the “behind the screen” workings and how they impact play. GMing has been something of an oral tradition for a long time and I think part of the hesitancy people feel about running their own games is that fear of “getting it wrong” or a feeling that they don’t really know what GMing looks like on a practical level. My hope is that play reports such as these might help with that, simply by saying “here’s how I do it”.
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My prep for this session was building a small dungeon in the crypts beneath a church. I intended to run it as a funnel, with each player having 4 characters each (which meant 12 characters total). If you're a Patron you can look at the actual prep for this session here.
Names used in the report are those of the characters.
Session length: 2 hours
Content warnings for mind control and suicide, along with all the usual sorts of horrible violence you’d expect in a Mörk Borg funnel.
Session 1
The group arrived at the Hangman’s Church in the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead. Crypt Breakers in the employ of King Fathmu IX in Schleswig, they had been given a map and a task: go to the Hangman’s Church, delve into the crypts beneath it, and return with a map of the complex and whatever relics you can pull out of the earth. If you find evidence of the presence of Verhu, so much the better.
Before entering the church the group decided to scout the grounds, heading to a nearby mausoleum to look for something to loot. The first encounter roll yielded a result of five mindless undead, dice telling me that they were 200 feet away. Having described cloying mists and poor visibility I decided that these creatures would be heard but not yet seen.
Hearing the shambling horde they decided to stop fooling around outside and get to their task. Svind’s small but vicious dog, having smelled the zombies, began barking and pulling at his chain but was forced away. Gotven’s four monkeys, meanwhile, were not at all bothered by the approaching hoard.
Approaching the church, a ruined skeleton of masonry long lost to time and fire, the group realised that Harga’s wagon and donkey probably wouldn’t be able to make it up the steep stairs to the main door. Rather than spending time finding another entrance they elected to tie them up outside, concealing them as best they could behind fallen branches and hoping that the undead would wander past.
Inside the church the group were immediately greeted by the sight of multiple bodies hanging from old rafters around a thick central column, their flesh bloated and ready to pop. They gave these corpses a wide berth, heading up to the altar in order to investigate a bookcase that looked like it may hold some texts of value.
My first regret, here. In my notes, one of these bodies is possessed by three devils. One of them came here with purpose, seeking the avatar of the Hanged God lurking in the catacombs below, and the other two hitched along for the ride. They’re trapped inside this corpse, in a constant battle for control of the flesh. I rolled to see which devil was currently running the show but, because the group didn’t show any interest in the bodies, I didn’t do anything with it. Only one of the devils is able to actually move the dead corpse slightly and this wasn’t it.
In hindsight I should have drawn some attention to this, because the players currently have no idea that they exist. That’s not a huge problem, as you’ll see when you keep reading, but it would have been nice for this encounter to happen.
Beside the bookcase they spotted a door that opened onto a spiral staircase leading down into the crypts. Gotven, the heretical priest, started to investigate the books but found that they crumbled to dust when touched and so immediately lost interest. Another slight GMing mistake here, which I’m putting down to not having run a game for a few months and to nerves from running for a group made up of mostly people I’ve never met before. I’d stashed some scrolls in this bookcase - which are how Mörk Borg characters get access to magic - and I didn’t do anything to let the player know that there was more than just rotting, useless books on this bookcase, which meant he didn’t find them.
Harga tested the stairs and noted that they shook slightly under his weight, with an ominous creak. Ignoring this, he, Gotven, Eldar, Brint, and the monkeys started to descend. With a shriek of twisting metal the staircase collapsed underneath them, sending the pair and their troop of monkeys crashing down 30’ to the ground below. A failed Agility test meant full damage for Gotven, who succumbed to his wounds and died - as did the monkeys.
Because I’m running this as a funnel I’m not using the Dying rules for this session, so there was no d4 roll to see what the effect of hitting 0hp was. Once everyone is in control of just one or two characters as of next session we’ll be using the rules as written.
At the bottom of the shaft the survivors picked themselves up, lit a torch, and immediately looted Gotven’s corpse to find that he had been carrying 3 elixirs of health. At the top of the stairs, the rest of the group affixed two 15’ lengths of chain together and then went about trying to decide how to secure it at the top so that it could be climbed. One suggestion was to remove one of Gotven’s legs and fix it across the width of the door with the chain wrapped around it, but they decided instead to run the chain through the heavy brass ring handle on the door, fixing it in place with the blade of a short sword and hoping that it held. A bear trap was placed across the mouth of the door as a deterrent to anybody who might want to follow the group down.
At the bottom the group found themselves in a passage that led to a chamber filled with sarcophagi. Many had been broken open, and the bodies of historic looters were strewn about the place in various stages of decay. Several of them bore large impact wounds to the chest as though they had been shot. The small but vicious dog immediately started chewing on a femur.
I had given the corpses a 2-in-6 chance of animating and the roll didn’t give me it. In hindsight, this being a funnel, I should have just had them come to life. I had also placed grave guns in some of the unlooted sarcophagi - foreshadowed by the gunshot wounds to the chests of the corpses - which I hoped would kill one or two PCs, but the group showed a complete lack of interest in opening any of the remaining caskets.
The room had two exits, identical doors to the north and the south. The players chose here to split the party, with most of the group heading to the north door but Eldar and Qilnach going south. To the north they found a crossroads, with a door to the north as well as doors to the west and east. To the west the door was off its hinges, the doorway filled with the dead body of a looter who appeared to have been choked to death. Searching him turned up a map strapped to his leg.
Meanwhile, the pair to the south had discovered an identical crossroads, though here all the doors were intact. Choosing the west door, Eldar and Qilnach found themselves standing at the base of another spiral staircase. Climbing it, they discovered that it emerged from a door concealed behind the bookcase in the church. Having already seen members of the party die and expecting that things wouldn’t get any better, the pair decided to cut their losses. Heading outside they discovered that the donkey and wagon were still were they had been left, so the pair took hold of the donkey’s reins and simply left.
The player made this decision because he wasn’t enjoying running four characters at once. In hindsight I should have come up with a stripped-down “level 0” style character generation method for Mörk Borg ahead of the game just so that there wasn’t as much to juggle. The reason funnels work in DCC is because your characters are just a name, a couple *of stats, a length of rope and a rubber duck.
Back up north, unaware that they’d been abandoned, the rest of the group was exploring. In the northernmost room they discovered lots of old furniture covered in dusty sheets, and an ornate mirror mounted on the north wall coated in a rime of frost. They spent quite a lot of time trying to figure out what the deal with it was, before vowing to come back on the way out and loot the thing.
In the room to the east they found a large tapestry on the wall depicting a hanged figure with a crowd of peasants gathered around his feet. The crowd feast on his flesh and drink from wine glasses filled with the blood running from his wounds. They also discovered that the map that had led them here had grown warmer upon entry into this room, and begun to glow with a soft light. The vellum the map was inked on felt more alive, like it was thrumming with a gentle heartbeat.
After some experimentation they began to use the map as a compass of sorts, determining that it grew warmer (and brighter) the further east they moved. Not seeing any way out of this chamber (if they’d removed the tapestry from the wall they would have found a hidden passageway) they headed south in search of their companions, and in doing so discovered that the map also reacted to being taken south. Passing the open door they spotted the stairs and decided that this would be a good time to take the mirror to the wagon, which they promptly discovered was missing.
Vowing revenge on the deserters they headed back into the crypts. With a choice between identical doors to the south and east, and only the reaction of the map to go off for navigation, they chose the east door. This opened onto another small chamber, with a huge stone door in the eastern wall that was hanging at a dangerous angle on rusted hinges. The stonework around it was filled with cracks and trickles of dust fell from the ceiling as the door they came through banged on the wall.
For the second time Harga displayed a complete lack of caution, pulling the door open only for it to collapse backwards into the room. As the dust from the door and partially collapsed ceiling settled the group saw that Harga had been crushed to death, but there was no time to mourn him (or, more likely, loot him). From out in the passageway they had entered the room from, somewhere beyond the southern door, rose furious, bestial screams of rage. Hearing the door begin to open, the group fled over Harga’s corpse and the fallen door and into the partially-flooded passage beyond
I had been rolling encounter checks this entire time but getting nothing, so it was nice to have an opportunity to inject some urgency/a sense of danger into the action by having a monster in a nearby room react to the noise and begin to give chase. The creature in question (which the party never actually saw) is huge, and can’t fit through the passageway they had entered, but there was no reason for the group to discover that without choosing to stand and face whatever it was.
Having to act quickly the group chose to head south rather than north in the passage, based on the fact that the map had reacted more strongly when heading south previously. They spilled into a square chamber where every surface was covered in small, angular writing in a language nobody recognised. They judged that their decision had been a good one, as the map began to grow warmer and smoke began to rise from it. Brint, carrier of the map, was gripped by the urge to press deeper into the crypt to “reunite with the Host”, but managed to rid himself of the compulsion (a successful Presence test).
As the group barricaded the door against whatever was creating the hostile noises outside, Borda decided to try and decipher the writing on the walls. Although it was not written in a language he could understand he found that he could read it, and began to learn about The Hanged God who is destined to slay Verhu and prevent the end of the world. Though the god is currently dormant, stripped of his power, the willing and joyful sacrifice of his followers could potentially provide the means to bring him back to full force.
Borda was enraptured, overcome with the urge to sacrifice himself to the Hanged God and begin the return. He immediately thought of the chains that had been used to descend the collapsed staircase, and begin taking apart the barricade on the door to head back to them and hang himself.
The group immediately tried to stop Borda taking down the barricade and an argument ensued, with Eldar (A different, second Eldar, Wretched Royalty rather than the fanged deserter who ran away with the wagon) commanding his followers to cut Borda down. Compelled to die but not lacking in his other faculties, Borda argued that if Eldar’s men were going to kill him anyway they might as well let him be about his business, since the outcome was going to be the same but they wouldn’t have literal blood on their hands. This diffused the situation immediately, and after checking that the monstrous noises from outside the room had subsided the barricade was taken down and Borda was allowed to go about his business.
Here I called for a Presence test with a range of DRs rather than a binary pass/fail as Borda read the writing on the walls. I didn’t explain this to the group, just asked for the result of the test and compared it to my list. The result was a complete failure, and so the worst effect took hold. What followed was all interspersed with regular check-ins with the group, including Borda’s player seeking - and receiving, enthusiastically - consent from everyone to play out Borda’s ritual suicide.
After taking a few moments to gather themselves and tend to their wounds, the group pressed on to the east. As they moved the map began to burn, and as they stepped into what would be their final chamber the ink began to slough off the page to reveal more writing hidden beneath a palimpsest layer, writing that matched the text on the walls in the previous room.
The final chamber was a large chapel, ornately decorated with carvings of the Hanged God. At the far eastern end steps rose to a dais above which was suspended a truly pitiable figure - a man suspended from thick black rope by his neck, his arms and legs severed and his flesh flayed repeatedly in several patches. Somehow he still lived, eyes rolling in his head as he muttered to himself in a language nobody understood. In front of him, at the foot of the dais, a large gold lectern held a massive book. Many of the pages had been torn out, and it was immediately clear that the map the group had used to navigate to this place had been drawn on one of said pages.
Attempts to speak to the hanged man, who the group assumed must be the Hanged God himself, were unsuccessful. (I made a reaction roll and got a result of Indifferent, so decided that he simply was not aware of their presence. I also made another encounter check as they entered the room but came up with nothing.) Seeing that they would get no sense out of the hanging figure, the group decided that taking the book definitely fit their task of recovering relics from the crypts. There was a brief discussion about the other part of their task, i.e. mapping the catacombs, and a debate about whether they should continue to explore, but they decided that they shouldn’t push their luck and instead returned to the surface with the book. The session ended with them standing at the exit of the church, trying to decide what to do about the missing wagon.
I only had one successful encounter check this session, the horde of mindless undead outside the church right at the start of the adventure, so they had a fairly easy run through the place. That’s just how it works sometimes, and everyone seemed happy with the way things went. In hindsight, because I'd wanted this to be a funnel, I should have relied less on random encounters and put some more nasty things in specific locations on the map. With that said, this session did a nice job of setting up some things that can reappear in the future and we ended with the party seemingly intent on tracking down Eldar and Qilnach and getting their donkey and wagon back.