Session 2 - The Great Vespa Race
Thoughts
I'll try to make this one shorter as I don't have much to say. It went well! Players seemed very engaged by the new procedure I used - the Ironsworn progress bar, where you mark a tally per success then roll 1d6 + Tallies to try and get more than two separate d10 dice, succeeding at a cost if it exceeds one and succeeding more definitely if it exceeds both.
I still feel like they are grasping a bit every so often, unsure of what to do. I suspect the procedure might feel a bit too restrictive, but they've been doing things outside of it and, I think, noticing it doesn't have to be so rigid.
Recap
Deep Autumn, Week 1
They get wind that Halloween is fast approaching and everyone has a little project. Theirs, it is decided, is getting a bunch of vespas together, adorning them with beetle costumes, and making vespa-beetle jousting with it. Most of their actions this month concern this.
This week, too, Cora (Eterna) kicks a football at Rina the Queen Bee (NPC) and spills her water all over. Alessa (Mr. Mann) decides to mediate and wipe, but she puts her giant stag beetle in Rina's lap, and she promptly throws it up in the air while yelling. Alessa slaps her in the face, Rina challenges her for a duel, the two fight for a while but we (me and the player) decide the duelling procedure was... a bit flawed, and iit was lasting for too long, so we call it a draw.
Deep Autumn, Week 2
While the two others are getting everything together for the project, Cora is on the beach collecting shells when she is almost hit by a biplane flying low. It lands in the water and out of it jumps a man, introduces himself as Benedoro Petrani, and immediately enlists Cora as his personal assistant because his biplane blows up. This was a professor unlock, he can teach her Engineering and Piloting.
Deep Autumn, Weeks 3 and 4
Alessa finds a little baby rufous-bellied thrush on the ground and decides to care for it for the next two weeks until it gets good enough to fly on its own, even as the deadline of the project fast approaches and the other two are deeply focused on it.
By Halloween weekend they manage it, they close down one of the streets and the project is mostly a success! It would have been a resounding one, but they miss it by 1 point. The group decides this is because Rina was throwing a Halloween party and not enough people attended it to really make a splash.
Late Autumn, Week 1
Fiorello tries to become more Responsible, Cora tries to become Prouder, and Alessa sells the vespas they used to a circus get some cash back. By the weekend, Cora tries to go out with Belina and fails again, and decides to give up on her. She's been trying for about a month and a half now to get closer to her but she's been rejected three times already.
Late Autumn, Week 2
Alessa loses a beetle fight and £20, Fiorello hangs out a bit, and Cora seeks books on the peasant history of Gabadona and local beliefs and superstitions. She talks to the librarian of the Abbey of Santa Maria, a monk by the name of Belard of Silvanus, who tells her that sometimes, something appears to peer out from the ocean at night, its eyes alight like a pair of fishing boats. And also that there are many ghosts in town, so beware!
Cora also finds that this monk, Belard, is a Lyonessian, an itinerant people who travel around the world ever since their island sunk beneath the waves many hundreds of years in the past.
In the weekend, Cora decides to inform Corina, her changeling twin sister, of the sunken kingdom of Lyonesse, thinking it might be of interest to a halfling like her. Unfortunately her words are ill-received and Corina tries to fight her, but Cora begs for forgiveness and Corina also says sorry, that her temper got the better of her.
Late Autumn, Week 3
Fiorello gains £10 in beetle wrestling after a tight and very hype match, Alessa starts training her beetle. Cora decides to go off into the Sierra Francatta to look for ghosts. Instead, she finds the wedding of a pair of foxes, with a bunch of animals handing them presents. She decides to gift them too, handing them the shells she was getting earlier, and receives a blade of grass she can whistle later to call for the foxes as a favour.