And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow - Sessions 16 and 17
Sessions 16 and 17 aren't very connected, so I'll talk about each of them in turn.
Session 16 - Enter: Witch
After retrieving a star for a heart for one of their friends, the gang went back into the mountains, found the gigantic head of the wizard Darnant who once reigned as king (and whose descendants hate knights), tried sneaking inside through his ear and got severely attacked by many lion-sized spiders.
For this part of the session I don't have many thoughts except that I fell back on Pendragon once again to solve combat, because I didn't have a clear rubric for adjudicating hits and it worked well enough. It's Pendragon, I know what I was getting into, but I did make a severe mistake that made the fight much harder: the monsters should have made two attacks that dealt 4d6 damage, and if both hit, they can make one attack that deals 8d6 damage. I jumped straight to the 8d6 because my notes on enemies were bad, and one player lost a mobile suit as a result. I have steeled myself with better notes for the future.
There was still one hour to go so I brought in a little plot point I had half-baked because I expected it to happen next session, not on this one. A few students had their rooms up-ended overnight, and they thought it was other students, so the player smartly stayed as sentries and chased this thing through the streets.
It eventually jumped inside of one of these guys:
He captured two of the players, the third went for help. They were taken to a scenery-chewing witch who professes herself to be Extremely Evil, but has a very weak grip on what that means exactly.
They eventually made a deal with this purported-evil witch and one of the players became her apprentice, so that was as much of a success as I could have hoped from half a page of notes, most of which being ideas for the chase. Also hamming it up with this extremely campy witch was super fun.
Session 17 - Spring, 681
After talking a bit, me and the players decided to go back to my first idea: a game about balancing school life and stress with social life. I had initially eschewed "stress management mechanics" because I didn't know what a grade would be useful for, and because I thought stress would make the game too stressful. Unfortunately, avoiding this only made that initial structure kinda boring, so now we're back to having conflict.
It worked famously too. The only hitch really was that I didn't have good enough notes on any of this, and that made the process of rolling slower than usual, but it wasn't slow enough to affect the pace of the session. I was very in the dumps and low energy at the start of the session because of low self-esteem but I finished it pretty confidently.
The recap goes as follows:
September, Early Spring, Weeks 1 and 2 - They missed these due to adventuring.
SEP Week 3 - Everyone spends their weekend studying and catching up. Cora fights with her girlfriend Belina over something silly.
SEP Week 4 - It's the weekend of the Moon Festival / Michaelmas, celebrating the Archangel Michael with cool fireworks and stalls. Giovanna spends her time studying, Fiorello goes up to the sierra to do poems and watch the fireworks, and Cora tries to patch things up with her girlfriend... and makes everything even worse, having a public tiff and shouting match.
October, High Spring, Week 1 - I don't quite remember, I think maybe we ended up skipping this one without noticing.
Midterms! Each of them had their exams. We decided that the Witch situation of the previous session had happened on the weekend of the 2nd week of October, so all to now was flashbacks. All of them pass their exams, some with more ease than others.
OCT, Week 2 - Cora spends the weekend trash talking her girlfriend to her twin sister, Corina. It doesn't go well, Corina calls her out on her behaviour and says she oughta apologise, fraying their relationship too.
Fiorello, having spent September studying, grew distant of his lads, Carnelias and Briglici. He tries to get them back by playing pinball, and it goes dismally bad. So now they're not just distant, they're fully alienated, the spark isn't there anymore.
Giovanna challenges her rival, Claudia, for a friendly competition and it also goes bad, she loses some respect and alienates her.
OCT, Week 3 - Halloween is approaching so they start making plans. The situation with Corina sent Cora over the edge and she takes her fire elemental and starts setting part of the forest on fire, losing her action in self-destruction.
Giovanna trains for her finals, Fiorello hangs out with his homegirl Francesca and have a pleasant beach weekend.
OCT, Week 4 - This is a packed week. It starts off with Cora and Corina's birthday, which Cora spends money to make a decent party. It goes well for her, not so much for Fiorello and Giovanna, who start trying to outdo one another in feats of derring-do and end up making fools of themselves for the guests.
After that it's coronation day, which is a holiday, and King Constantine VI the Young gives a very long and boring speech on the radio. Fiorello and Giovanna both spend it making Halloween costumes - as a lion and as King Artù, respectively - and Cora spends it studying for her finals.
During Halloween, both of their rivals are throwing parties. Carno Carsi, which the players call "a fascist", is throwing a party for the upperclassmen, and Rina di Boiardi is throwing a party for the lowerclassmen. They're not invited to either, so instead they decide to get everyone who hasn't been invited together and prank Rina by doing a "Stampede". They dress up as animals and crash the party, Giovanna dressed as Artù leading the Wild Hunt, Cora as the Queen of the Stampede, and Fiorello is the lion among the others. They steal Rina's booze, run around making a fuss, and then dip to the beach to make an impromptu luau.
The luau goes great for everyone. Fiorello reconnects with his pals Briglici and Carnelias, Cora patches things up with Bellina, and Giovanna starts making new friends in the person of Bellina. Things are looking great for our heroes, but finals are around the corner!
November, Late Spring, Weeks 1 to 3 - They spend most of the later part of spring studying for finals, except for Cora, who takes the last weekend before Finals week to spend a while at the beach with her girlfriend. They try to learn how to surf, fail, fall on top of one another, kiss a little while no one is watching, hearts stay aglow.
Finals! Everyone rolls their dice and... pass! The dice helped them a lot here, but they pass without much stress.
Last Week - November is ending and with it the spring term. They'll be breaking for summer (this term was shorter than usual) and this is the last weekend before leaving Gabadona for a couple months.
Giovanna takes her new friends, Bellina, Isotta, and Claudia, to the beach to get some ice cream and hang out. It goes horribly; Isotta is far too hyper and Claudia is far too antisocial and the entire vibe is ruined. Alone at the seaside as the sun droops on the horizon, Giovanna does not let herself fall into self-pity, and instead remains hopeful for what the next term will bring.
Cora takes Francesca and her sister Corina to the theatre to watch a horrible tragic play and have a good time. It doesn't feel as final for her, as both of them will be on the train back home, but she's tighter friends with Francesca now.
And Fiorello spends his last weekend on a golden afternoon playing pinball with his boys and getting sodas down at The Truscan, reconnecting with them one last time and saying his byes.
And so ended the spring term. For next week, the gang is planning on traipsing into the Jungle again, this time to the frozen tundra on the north, as they've concluded they're not strong enough to take on the Head of Darnant. We'll see how it goes.
