Mörk Borg - Session 4
Play time: 2 hours
Prep for this session involved building a small point crawl through hex 29 and mapping and keying the first level of a fairly large dungeon, then rolling for faction/enemy goals. There were some developments on that front:
- Techiya the Devil has a breakthrough (double evens) on its “Find a better host” goal, which is now complete. As it was on the Galgenbeck road pursuing the PCs I decided that it came across the Cult of the Forsaken and has entered one of the gang who fought the PCs. This gives me somebody that they will recognise when it eventually catches up to them Its second goal, “catch the PCs”, suffered a second setback. I don’t really need to know what this is, but I’m saying that it’s to do with the Cult of the Forsaken and some sort of fighting with them.
- Three days passed in game last session. Eldar and Qilnach’s “reach Galgenbeck” goal is a daily one, so I rolled three times. They now have two filled squares and two empty ones remaining before they reach the city.
- The Cult of the Forsaken suffered a setback in their goal to “take over and refurbish the Hangman’s Church”. I think we can assume this is the result of the devil Techiya falling into their midst. They also made a square of progress on “retrieve the Book of the Hanged God from the PCs”, so I’m ruling that a small party is now tracking the PCs south across the countryside.
- King Fathmu IX made progress on both of his goals, “discover the hiding place of Verhu” and “fill the citadel’s stores with food”. No immediate in-game effect from these.
Hexes used this session:
- Mountains. Monastery. Monks try to prevent Miseries.
- Barren. Abandoned village. Burned. Huge (40’) sword buried in a massive anvil.
- Original fill was “Barre. Empty.” but after last session it now reads “Barren. Fallen star amidst ruins of destroyed citadel.”
This session features the group using mind control abilities against NPCs. Consider this a content warning.
The group spent a week resting and recuperating with the cult of the alligator god. The cultists used a scroll to heal Westward Seals The Truth’s broken arm, and the party was able to stock up on some supplies.
When I run dungeon-based games I usually assume that there’s a week of downtime between delves so that characters have a chance to heal, scribe scrolls, etc. Because this is an overland exploration campaign I’ve been running things differently, tracking time day to day and picking up exactly where we left off last session. At the beginning of this session, with the group having found a safe haven to rest in, I explained how I usually run things and how it differs from the way we’ve currently been doing things and asked them what they’d prefer when resting in something we can class as “town” - to track time day to day as we’re doing while exploring, or to assume a week of rest. A week of rest means that they can take advantage of local amenities to do things like heal lingering wounds, but the trade-off is that faction goals and time in the world will advance by a week. The group chose to have a week pass, and we agreed that this is how we’ll run things from now on when they rest in a safe location.
*This meant I had to quickly update some more faction goals. The cult of the Forsaken made progress on taking over the Hangman’s Church (which filled in the previously crossed-out setback box) but suffered a setback in locating the party. Fathmu IX suffered setbacks in both of his goals. Techiya made progress in tracking the PCs. *
Qilnach and Eldar’s goal to reach Galgenbeck is daily rather than weekly, so I made 7 rolls for them. They reached Galgenbeck, but have suffered a setback in their attempts to make contact with the Two Headed Basilisks. Meanwhile, the alligator cult have made some progress in their various goals.
Setting out overland the group headed down from the mountains and out onto barren moorland, Westward Seals The Truth navigating with confidence. After travelling for most of the day they began to see structures of a village in the middle distance, and a large tower of some kind looming over them. Visibility was poor due to the weather and it was hard to make out details. Svind and his dog moved out alone as scouts, with Westward Seals The Truth spending a Power to remove one of his eyes and passing it to Svind.
A short distance from the village Svind saw that the village looked to be entirely abandoned. Roofing was in a state of disrepair, doors were rotting in their hinges, and the ground covered in broken glass and shattered furniture. The tower they had spotted from a distance revealed itself to be an enormous rusting sword. He loaded his sling with Westward’s eyeball and launched it into the midst of the village, allowing the Pale One to scout the area from a distance.
Westward saw that the village was entirely empty, with no movement and no apparent danger, and so the group moved to catch up with Svind and then press on into the village to search it for anything valuable or edible. With night falling they also decided to look for somewhere dry and defensible to spend the night. They located a building with front and back doors and a stone fireplace that they could us, and they set up camp. Svind’s bear trap was placed just inside the back door, and Ator spent some time gathering broken glass into a bucket. Then they set watches and bedded down for the night.
All of this was done narratively. The group told me exactly what sort of building they were looking for and I saw no reason to say no to them. While they were discussing their plans with one another and deciding what to do I spent some time rolling encounters for each watch. With a positive result for Watch 3 (“d6 Crypt Breakers heading out from Schleswig on a mission from Fathmu”, from my own encounter table rather than the tables in *Feretory) I also made an initial reaction roll so that once the group had settled on a plan I was ready to go with no interruption to play.*
The first two watches passed without incident. As Svind sat by the fire with his dog he began to hear approaching footsteps and chattering voices, seemingly making no attempt to be stealthy. The group moved further into town and he was able to make out their words as they discussed finding somewhere to bed down for the night. Very carefully he poked his head out of the doorway, and in the faint light of the half moon (I have the phases of the moon on my calendar for moments like this when it suddenly becomes useful) he saw the forms of three large figures, the light glinting off heavy metal armour.
Svind hadn’t been spotted by the intruders, but he ducked back into the building and began to rouse the group. As he did so he heard one of the voices express surprise that he could see a fire burning in the building the group was camping in, and the party heard heavy steps approaching.
The voice called out a greeting, asking to know who was there, and Ator replied very brusquely to tell them that it was none of their business and that people were trying to sleep. After some back and forth, with the newcomer trying to ascertain who he was speaking to and Ator stubbornly repeating his plea for the group to be quite and go to sleep, the intruders fell back into a nearby building and set their own camp.
This was the combination of an initial neutral reaction (“Uncertain, make another offer, roll again”), the group (surprisingly!) actually making what I could interpret as an offer (“go to bed and leave us alone”), and a further reaction result of “Friendly, accepts offer”. I rolled the second mainly out of habit, with the result simply confirming a course of action I was already leaning towards based on the way the interaction played out at the table.
With the intruders quiet and settled down for the night, Westward Seals The Truth took over for the final watch. He debated sneaking out and using one of his Powers to cast Enochian Syntax on whoever was standing guard for the intruders but chose not to, and the rest of the night passed without incident.
Morning broke, but the sun failed to rise and the group found themselves waking to pitch darkness. (This the result of a roll on Mork Borg’s weather table.) In the light of Brint’s fresh torch they saw the intruders stepping out of their nearby house. The apparent leader was clutching a tin mug filled with some sort of hot drink, and he began to make his way over to the group to say good morning in an attempt to be friendly. Seeing him approach, Westward Seals The Truth used a Power and hit him with Enochian Syntax.
The NPC’s approach was the result of a new reaction roll with a friendly outcome. Westward’s player asked to cast his spell then realised that it was a new day and that he had to roll to see which Power he got access to today (this being a feature of the Pale One class). I was about to rule that since the sun hadn’t risen it wasn’t actually dawn, and that Powers reset at dawn - partly because I wanted to see how this played out, and partly because I thought that that was an interesting consequence of this weather result - but Westward’s player had already rolled and come up with Enochian Syntax as his Power for a second day running. The group were delighted by this and I decided not to say anything about dawn, since this was a fun moment for them and I didn’t want to taint it with bookkeeping (i.e. “actually don’t roll for new Omens, and your spent Powers from yesterday are still spent”) and well-actually rules lawyering.
The Power went off successfully, and Westward Seals The Truth commanded the stranger to “worship me as your god.” He immediately fell to his knees in tears, overawed at suddenly finding himself in the presence of divinity.
Hearing the commotion the other two intruders stepped out of their lodgings, crossbows raised and read to fight. Westward Seals The Truth spent another Power to use his spell again and was again successful, and he now found himself with two followers prostrate at his feet. The third, seeing his companions overcome with this weird fervour, immediately turned and fled into the dark morning.
The third guard fleeing was the result of a Morale roll. At this point the group began to wonder how long this effect on the two intruders would last. The wording of the Power gives no end state, it simply says that one target will “blindly obey a command”. Since the command “worship me as your god” is open ended rather than a discrete task that can be completed, we agreed that this effect will simply continue until something disrupts it. This obviously has the potential to be a very, very powerful ability for Westward Seals The Truth to have to hand, but I’m not overly concerned about it. He needs to roll his Powers randomly every day, so he won’t always have access to it, and in a world as overly concerned with gods and religion as Mork Borg it’s only a matter of time before a much more powerful group learns about this new prophet gathering a following and decides to intervene. The Two Headed Basilisks don’t look kindly on heretics, so this feels like a self-correcting problem - if, indeed, it ever becomes a problem.
Westward Seals The Truth began to read from the book of the Hanged God to his new disciples, who were (respectfully, fearfully) confused. Why, they asked, are you telling us about this god when you are our god? After some back and forth Westward Seals The Truth set his followers a task; return to Schleswig and begin to spread the word of my coming. And while you’re there, see if you can convince Fathmu to start building some roads in the Valley of The Unfortunate Undead. (I don’t know why the group have decided that their long term mission is to develop some infrastructure in the Dying World but it apparently is.)
Before they left the new disciples asked Westward for a gift, something to mark them as his followers and help them prove the truth of their words when they spoke to the uninitiated. He spent a Power and removed one of his eyes, handing it to the first intruder he had overpowered. Without missing a beat the man raised a hand to his own eye, tore it out of his head, and forced Westward Seals The Truth’s gift into the bloody socket. Then, as the group looked in horror, the two men thanked their new god and disappeared into the gloom on their new mission.
This was quite an extreme thing for the NPC to do, and I had the rare opportunity as a GM to see actual shock and horror on the faces of the players during this sequence. I wanted to convey to them the gravity a command like “worship me as a god” and give a sense of the lengths someone being compelled to blind, uncritical faith with go to in order to impress their deity when they know that god-figure to be factually real, alive, and walking the earth. I’ll also admit that I just enjoy this sort of horrible fucked up nonsense, too, and over the past few weeks I’ve grown to learn that the players enjoy it as well. It was also very satisfying to have the NPC be able to mirror or invert Westward’s regular practice of removing his extra eyes. This exchange wouldn’t be appropriate at a lot of tables, and I checked in with people afterwards to make sure we were all okay with where it went.
Still reeling from what had happened the group set off to the southwest, set on finding the citadel. Brint lit a torch to navigate the unnatural darkness and they began their trek cross country. Another successful navigation check meant they held their course, and soon they began to feel the ground changing beneath their feet as it sloped down, becoming hard like granite. After a few hours of trekking through the dark they began to see forms in the darkness of the middle distance - something that looked like a vast archway, and a dully shining metal dome maybe a mile to the east of it.
Here they had entered the next hex, which contains the citadel. As part of my prep I built a small 7 node point crawl to mark the approach to the citadel itself, with two potential entrances connecting to different routes. Given the way I’d described the darkness of the day it didn’t make sense for them to be able to see the landmarks in the two starting hexes, but I wanted to offer them some semblance of a choice rather than choosing where they should enter on their own. I decided to just describe the landmarks as shapes looming out of the darkness, letting them choose from incomplete information rather than providing absolutely nothing.
They chose to stick to the east, heading towards the dome. As they approached it the details began to resolve themselves and they could see that they were heading towards the head of an enormous statue that was lying in the lee of a steep hill. The mouth gaped open, revealing a hollow interior, and a low light flickered inside one of the eyes.
Another Power spent, and another one of Westward Seals The Truth’s eyes launched from a sling. Svind’s aim was true, and the eye flew through the open eye and into the room beyond it. There Westward Seals The Truth witnessed a strange sight, a humanoid figure with a lantern for a head asleep under a blanket, clutching a wicked knife to their chest. The soft eyeball rolling across the floor didn’t seem to have disturbed the creature, so outside the group quietly began to discuss what they should do.
Brint headed into the skull via the mouth, where he found a featureless metal space. A narrow shaft in the roof led up into the space behind the eyes, the surfaces slick with mud and blood. Choosing not to try and climb it, the group instead lashed some rope around Svind’s bear trap and decided to try and use it like a grappling hook to scale the side of the skull and climb in through the eye. Taking hold of it Svind gathered his strength and threw the trap up in the direction of the window, and Westward Seals The Truth watched through his separated eye as the trap clattered down into the room and the strange lantern-headed creature woke with a start, grabbing its knife and skittering to the back of the room to hunch against the sloping wall.
I called for a high DR Strength test to throw the bear trap. Svind failed initially, but spent an Omen to reroll and was able to succeed. I rolled a reaction check for the wickhead and got a result of “Uncertain, monster confused.” Unsure how to interpret this based on the fiction I decided to also make a Morale check, which he failed. A further check for the result of this failed morale test gave me the answer that the creature should flee.
As Brint began to climb the rope attached to the bear trap the creature in the room turned tail and fled, sliding down the shaft inside the skull and running out of the mouth opening in an attempt to get away from the group, but Westward made use of his Power and was again successful. Once again, another reluctant follower was commanded to worship him as a god. The wickhead was less immediately subservient than the humans who had previously been commanded, but he cast aside his knife as commanded and promised to lead the party to their destination.
The wickhead’s lack of fear for this new deity was a result of my “head canon” for wickheads in the world of Mörk Borg, which is informed by my adventure A Waning Light. The wickhead was birthed from the flesh of its people’s living god, and as a result is less impressed by physical manifestations of divinity since he technically is one himself. The group, of course, don’t know this. I also haven’t yet figured out how (or if) this interacts with the longevity of Westward’s magic. I don’t want to unfairly nerf this thing, because it’s a very creative use of the ability that ties directly in to the events unfolding in the campaign and punishing that because it’s being used to steamroll some NPCs would be poor GMing. I also want to keep it interesting, though, and make sure that this doesn’t become the sort of ability that renders every encounter completely trivial on the days where Westward has access to it.
The wickhead led them on past a stone tomb that the group briefly debated breaking in to and exploring (which they may have regretted, as it was Death Temple Sztun) before deciding to press on. He led them into a crack in the ground that opened into a tight tunnel, and when they finally emerged from the other end they found themselves standing in the shadow of a huge black rock - the fallen star. A jagged crack in the base opened onto the buried ruins of the Citadel.
The group scrambled down into it to find themselves standing on a stretch of ancient road lined on both sides by the ruins of shops and houses, the huge weight of the star hanging above them and the road terminating at both ends in immovable walls of rubble after a very short distance. As the group assessed the situation and tried to decide which building to explore to try and find a way deeper into the Citadel, we brought the session to a close.
There’s very little prep for me to do for next time, which is nice. Since they’ll only be resting overnight here I only need to update one faction goal, and there’s nothing for me to build or write. I still need to work out what the Book Of The Hanged God does, but at this point it’s not a huge priority and I’m just letting ideas gestate about it until it becomes more important.