The Isle - Sessions 5 to 8
This post isn't really a play report but gets you up to session 4. I want to write up a report for our most recent session, but I figured it would be best to summarise where we're up to so far. My notes (and my memory) of the 3 additional sessions we've played aren't amazing, but here's my best attempt at getting us up to date.
I'll write up a session report from this week's game later this week, and then I'll try and stay on top of things from now on.
If you're in my game you shouldn't read this, since there are still some things going on that you don't know about yet.
Session 5
This picked up where we left off in Session 4, in the middle of the dungeon on level 3. They found a room full of food that they helped themselves to, not realising that this would mean that the Legionnaires on this floor (who they hadn't met yet) would always be hostile when encountered.
It didn't take long for them to actually meet the Legionnaires, who chased the party through the dungeon. They made good use of the mapping they'd been doing, heading to a loop so that they could get back behind the Legionnaires and through the room that they had just vacated. At this point they were still heading northwest and hoping to get back to Fionn's room and the chimney exit.
Beyond the Legionnaire's room they found a fleshy sphincter in the wall that they forced their way through, entering a stone chamber lined with organic material something like the lining of a stomach. Another fleshy sphincter door stood before them, and they decided they would go through it rather than go back to the Legionnaires. At this point the group had started to realise that they maybe weren't where they thought they were.
Through the fleshy sphincter they found themselves in something that appeared to be the innards of a giant creature. Weird seal-like creatures gnawed on nodules of flesh and mostly ignored them as they made their way through the various chambers.
Eventually they made their way to a particularly wet, red room where they met a large white worm who spoke to them telepathically. It asked if they would escort it to "the brain" and they agreed. We ended the session there.
Session 6
We picked up the session in the middle of what the group had realised was the heart of the giant creature they were inside. As they went to leave the chamber with the worm thing I rolled a random encounter ("3d6 Sea-Things, actively hunting you") and they realised that a group of the seal-like creatures was heading in their direction. With no other way out of the heart they were trapped, but they realised that the dungeon was made of flesh and that that probably meant they could hack through the walls. Mapping told them that there was another chamber that they had already come through to the south, so they started cutting.
This floor very helpfully gives guidance about what to do should this occur:
Damaging The Growth
If any of the organs are injured, or if the flesh-walls take more than 6 damage at once, the creature shakes violently—everyone inside must Save or be knocked flat. 2d6 Sea-Things arrive in 1d3 rounds to identify the cause and end it.
It also tells me that 10 or more damage to the brain or heart severely injures them and 20 damage destroys the Growth, and that in either case it begins to die.1 At this point I started tracking damage very closely.
There was a chaotic fight where a few characters failed Saves and went down, getting mobbed by Sea-Things, and the group fled through the newly-carved opening in the wall. After a bit of a frantic chase they managed to lose the pursuing Sea-Things, and started crawling towards the brain.
My notes and my memory let me down at this point, but the exact details aren't important. The group escorted the worm to the brain of the Sea-Thing Growth where it immediately burrowed in and took control of the thing, rising up out of the sea and swimming to the mainland where it vomited up the party onto the beach and headed south, a 25' tall abomination dead set on ravaging the countryside.
The group, heroes that they are, got back on a boat and headed back to the Isle where they could pretend that nothing had happened, and we ended the session.2
Session 7
Back to the Isle and back down into the dungeon via Fionn's chimney. This time the group decided they were going to map the 2nd level of the dungeon and also find some treasure. They seemingly have no interest in returning to the first floor to see what they missed during their escape from the skeletons.
They returned to the All Fire All The Time room that had previously killed one of Monette's retainers, making good use of gear bubbles to equip themselves with thick blankets and crawling along the joins between the floor panels to avoid triggering the trap. Then they headed south and east, mapping as they went. They found some stairs that headed down, which they decided they absolutely were not going to go down at this point, and they found a room full of eels that they know sits beneath a tilting floor trap on level 1 that Donny Good Deals nearly fell into very early in the adventure.
Towards the end of the session I finally got a result other than "Nothing" on the encounter table, and the group met the Witnesses. I've been excited about the group meeting these things since I read them. I'm just going to copy the description here, because I think it's one of the best pieces of writing in a book packed with great writing.
Take a child on the cusp of adulthood. Use an iron chisel to empty and expand the eye sockets. Fill the cavities with molten glass.
As the body cools, a dull, ochre glow emerges from the false eyes. The Witness sits, hunched and motionless, until something touches them or moves within their illuminated cone of vision—then they begin shrieking.
When they shriek, all monsters up to 3 rooms away move to investigate. Roll 1d10 on the encounter table.
The encounter I rolled put them in the corners of the room facing into the centre. Donny kicked a coin into the room to see what would happen, and they began to shriek. The encounter table spat out two shield walls (4d4) of Bonded Dead, and I rolled randomly the determine which of the surrounding rooms the two groups were coming from. The dice decided they were both coming from the same direction at a distance of 50 feet, and the group fell back to a nearby crossroads to lay an ambush.
That fight was the end of the session, with the group emerging victorious but a little bruised. I made some mistakes with the rules here, forgetting that characters deal damage directly to Flesh rather than having to go through Grit first when attacking enemies that aren't aware of them, but once it was pointed out I just had it apply on the next wave of attacks. I chalk this up to us not actually having done very much combat during this campaign so far, which isn't something I'm particularly upset about.
With the fight over I doled out XP for the combat encounters, rolled on the encounter table to see if the group was able to get safely back to Fionn's room and out of the dungeon, and we called it a day.
In reading this again I've also realised that I now need to add the Sea-Things to all of my encounter tables in the spot where "Nothing" would otherwise occur, so that's going to be a fun surprise for the party next time.↩
I had anticipated that the release of a kaiju might signal the end of the campaign, but the group decided they were happy to keep adventuring and frankly I'm delighted by that.↩