Sunrise Generation - Session 1 Play Report
The first Sunrise Generation - my Mythras game inspired both by Japan and Brasil - just happened, it took ~3h-ish, and I consider it a success.
The characters are Cleft (he/him), a big boatman from out of town with a love of exploration, and Albane de Gris (any pronouns), a lanky but agile thief with a talent for disguises.
Before the game, I gave them both 2 rumours:
The Sun School, the most popular school of thought of the current religion, are becoming more firebrand. Something may have happened.
There have been reports of skeletons attacking merchants on the road to the east, and that they were coming from some of the old barrows in the region.
- DM Commentary: I actually was going to start them at a different place entirely, and not let them choose a rumour, but it completely slipped my mind. This is why we write things down lol
They decided to pursue the second one, and we started the session in Sorelois, our main and only city in the region. It is the 22nd of February, the weather is cloudy and mild, and they've just spent the first watch (6h to 10h) going East.
First they came across the Sun Inn, a feature on the west side of the hex, a small cottage with straw on the ground, bales of hay as seats, and barrels for tables that I nabbed from Dolmenwood. They both got a drink, asked around about the skeletons, and got the info that they were actually kidnapping people. They also asked more generally about what else was in this region and found out about a graveyard that knight errants seemed to often go.
They moved on from there and onto Broggle Hill, a feature on the center of the hex with an old pagoda-style tower on top of it manned by a gang of runaway children who were charging a ludicrous price to get inside.
Cleft proceeded to slap the teen bouncer at the door and roughhouse with the others; Albane mediated a bit to calm them down, found that they were led by a lankier teen and offered to get a foot for them at the door of crime if they were around Sorelois. They seemed interested.
- DM Commentary: Cleft essentially started a fight with a horde of children, but considering he's over 6 feet and weighs as much as a panda, and I didn't want to bother with stats for these children, I just kinda skipped over and said he won. A little voice inside my head wanted to roll though, but in hindsight I think it was the right call.
They also asked about the skeletons and the kids said they saw a guy dressed like a priest going over to a ruined temple next to the Postal Town of Orange.
- DM Commentary: I forgot to give them directions to the temple and later retconned to say the kids did give them the directions. That's adventure games babyyy.
They left this region behind and kept going east, where they came upon Orange, basically a single corridor of buildings on either side of the road, and over lunch found that the entire town seemed on edge. When they asked about it, the locals rambled semi incoherently about kidnappings coming both from the forest to the south as well as from across the savannah, blaming the Red Troop (which our PCs don't know what is), and implying that the skeletons are just the latest in the line.
Thanking the good people of Orange, they then spent the afternoon watch looking for the abandoned church to the northeast and found it in a deep depression between two hills; a building surrounded by a wall and veranda with a tower on the back.
- DM Commentary: This was an adaptation of Barrow of the Bone Blaggards, by Chance Dudinack, for OSE Anthology 2, so it actually was going to be a barrow. However, at the last moment I decided the vibe wasn't right for this game, so I put it overland knowing full well that they would likely skip the dungeon crawling part and find another entrance instead. I did rule that there were no windows, just to make things easier for myself, but there were wooden grates.
Albane went ahead as scout while Cleft stood watch from a nearby hill. Luckily there was no encounter surrounding the temple, so Albane went right up to it and looked through the grates to find 6 merchants huddled in a tiny chamber. They then went to the tower and climbed it with their grappling hook.
While they were climbing it, a guy appeared at the top, seemingly bewildered, but kept silent. When Albane reached the top, he explained that he was being kept captive by the skeletons and offered a huge ruby if she helped him get away, but said he was too scared of heights to go through the window.
- DM Commentary: There was a 2 in 6 chance that a skeleton would barge into this room, but none did, luckily for Albane.
Albane tried calming him down and I allowed an Influence roll for that. It just seemed like Albane's human warmth wouldn't be easily conveyed just through declaring the action.
Albane succeeded and convinced the wizard to grab her so they would go down. Seeing this, Cleft began approaching, and they decided to wait on him.
This time the encounter dice came up unlucky, so a skeleton showed up to ask the wizard about the ritual to give him flesh. Not wanting to risk the skeleton due to shitty stats, Albane and the wizard tried to rappel down the side of the 3-story pagoda.
Being this close to another check, I was hesitant to call for one more, but it was just too much of a dangerous situation not to do it, so I called for an Athletics check for Albane to avoid falling. The pagoda was around 9 meters tall, I ruled that they would have fallen from around the mid point, so 1d6 in 1 random location.
Albane just got 1 point of damage in the chest, they fell on their back and got the air kicked out of them but nothing too bad. The wizard, however, fell on top of his right arm and broke it.
Seeing this, the skeleton raised up the alarm. Cleft came running and grabbed the wizard on his shoulders and started running away.
***DM Commentary:** At this point my stomach ache and shitty night's sleep (because of said stomach ache) were catching up to me. I thought of using Mythras' chase rules from the Companion here but I just had no fight left in me to remember them, so I resorted to the next tool in the DM's arsenal.*
I asked Cleft's player how exactly did he intend on losing a bunch of skeletons who, as undead, do not get tired, on an open hilly savannah.
Thankfully, Cleft's player knew there was very little chance of that, so he turned around and threw the wizard back at the skeletons, who promptly stopped the chase and started dragging him back to the temple.
Cleft then asked them why were they so into this guy anyway, and the skeletons said he was a wizard who could do a ritual to give them flesh!
Cleft said that he, too, was a wizard, and knew the ritual better than this impostor. The skeletons, who are kinda stupid and were already getting bored with the other guy and with waiting for him, wanted to believe him, but asked him if he had any proof he was a wizard like he said.
Cleft basically said that only conjurers of cheap tricks relied on visuals, that he was a practical man and would show it to them.
Not having anything to lose, the skeletons decided to give him a shot and brought him back to the main prayer hall they were squatting in.
- DM Commentary: I realize that some would say that this should have required a roll, but I don't see why. The skeletons' only reason to doubt Cleft's word was that he was just trying to steal the guy from them, and then turned around and ditched him at the first opportunity. From their perspective, this erratic behaviour is exactly the sort of thing a wizard would engage in.
There were some zombies in there, who were smarter and smugger, and they tried G-checking Cleft, but he decided to rule by force and slapped them into submission, then asked them what they wanted with the merchants and gave the wizard to Albane to tend (aka slip away scot free).
The undead revealed that they intended on stealing their flesh and blood for themselves!
Cleft went up to the merchants, prodded them, measured them, and said that they weren't good enough for the skeletons, telling the skeletons he could manage to give them better flesh.
Impressed by this display of fleshlore, the skeletons acclaimed Cleft as Skeleton Lord and became pumped to see where this was going.
Meanwhile, Albane was slipping away with the wizard in tow, with a splint in his arm too. The wizard then used some kind of spell or trickery - it's unclear - to put Albane to sleep for 5 minutes and then slipped away in the twilight.
Albane woke up to find Cleft marching in the direction of Orange with 2 skeletons. They said the wizard had put a spell in them and was slapped in the mouth for daring to imply that the Skeleton Lord wouldn't take care of his subjects.
Cleft then proceeded to town with the 2 skeletons in tow with a very interesting, cockamamie, playerbrained scheme.
He looked for the local leader of this town, which happened to be the tired garrison commander, and told him the entire situation, explaining that he had tricked the skeletons and gotten back the merchants. The garrison commander knew this to be true because the merchants had come back to Orange and could vouch for Cleft. He then explained to the commander that he had 2 skeletons with him and wanted to use his men to capture them.
The garrison commander, under orders not to leave town, told Cleft to march the skeletons right through the road. He used his men to grab them with mancatchers as they yelled about being forsaken by their Skeleton Lord, as Cleft delivered an inspirational speech to the town about confronting your enemies and taking matters into your own hands.
This done, Cleft and Albane made a little council scene where they explained the plan: Cleft would bring two brave and stupid people back from Orange to pose as skeletons that he had fleshified to convince them of his mystical powers, and then lure them away from the temple to give Albane and the merchants time to go inside the temple, grab their merchandise and whatever else they find, and bounce!
Meanwhile, Cleft would bring the skeletons somewhere to dispose of them with the help of the postal town's militia.
Will this plan work? Will something stranger and eviler reveal itself inside the temple? Will someone burn something down? We'll find out next time on Sunrise Generation!
