Lamentation in Colours of Pentagrams - Session #2

Session #1 can be found here. 

Where we last left off, the ragtag party of irregular people had escaped a pack of wolves to the roof of an old log-cabin from where they finished off the few wolves trapped inside the now burning cabin.
The first few rays of the rising sun painted the scenery bright orange, complimenting the flames that were slowly consuming the cabin as our group collected themselves and started to asses the situation.

Current party members:
Angelo, magic-user with partial amnesia.
Claude Vursk, a fighter in search of a different missing girl from his own village.
Thrallmar Righthand, a dwarven cleric who is now looking to regain his honour after cowardly playing dead to avoid being torn apart further by the wolves.

Blue's player couldn't join us for the session due to sudden work things, and Dron's player likewise had to drop from the game entirely due to scheduling changes with their job situation.

New Day

As soon as the situation seemed to have calmed down and there were no wolves to be seen around, Dron took a mad dash somewhere into the woods towards the way the group had come from. Not everyone is made to handle violence and danger, and some men simply snap under pressure when the possibility of one's own death becomes more than real.
Not answering any shouts from the rest of the group or turning back, Dron disappeared to the forest. 

The party decided that since they hardly got any proper rest during the night they would rest now in the morning since it was still early enough for them not to waste all of the remaining hhours of daylight and with that everyone laid down for some well deserved rest while tending to their wounds the best they could.
Thrallmar prayed for minor healing for his leg that one of the wolves had made a bleeding mess out of and rest of the wounded used up the healing salve they had found from James' little cabin of hunting gear in hopes that the combination of patching up the wounds the best they could, a six hours of sleep and rest and the salve would atleast alleviate the pain.
Claude who decided to attempt his best skinning and butchering the wolves for pelts and meat noticed that Dron had even dropped his backpack as he fled back towards Talen, and thus Marvin the henchman was given a bit more convenient way to carry some of the surplus equipment as well as the few scraps of meat that weren't completely ruined by Claude's crude attempt at cutting off eatable chunks from the wolves as well as the bloodied pelts.

Having recovered a bit from their nightly encounters, the sun had climbed all the way to above them indicating that it was closer to mid-day as the group finally set out to follow the faint trail through the woods in hopes of finding James as well as his daughter.
Since there was no obvious trail leading anywhere from the cabin it took a bit, but noticing more weird symbols etched into the trees and deciding to follow them Angleo, Claude and Thrallmar as well as Blue and Marvin folowing behind them came upon a large open area as the trees became sparser and sparser as well as started to grow more withered. What everyone saw extending in front of them was a bog covered in shades of brown moss and murky water, and standing alone in the middle of the swampy land, a lone tree looking nearly as twisted as the remains of the table Angelo's misfired spell had bent when he was trying to barricade the front door against the wolves last night.

The Swamp

Seeing no tracks leading left or right, and neither more symbols carved onto trees the party surmised that to stay on the tracks they would have to wade through here.
Testing the ground ahead with a branch snapped from a nearby tree the bog proved rather unstable for footing as just from the edge of it there was a large variance of spots where sometimes it would only be ankle deep, sometimes up to one's knees and in worst cases even up to their waists which for Thrallmar already meant that such depth would be near impossible to wade through as he'd be up to his shoulders in the muck.
Deciding to hopefully mitigate some risk of the dwarf drowining, Claude suggested tying a rope between him and Thrallmar and this idea was quickly extended to cover the whole group.

The trek through the swampland was not completely uneventful even if ignoring the wet moss, roots and animal bones sticking into everyone's boots and making the travel difficult, as passing the lone tree sitting in the middle of the swamp Thrallmar felt a weird tingle in his neck almost as if being watched and it was from this point onwards as they were halfway through the swamp that proceeding forwards became increasingly difficult.
Now not only was it the muck and dead moss pushing against their feet and making it difficult to shove ones feet forwards through this foul soup that was slowing the group down, but it felt like the roots running through the swamp were actively trying to grab onto their feet and any time they would come to a halt they would slowly but surely start to sink in where they were standing.

Only quarter of the way to go and it was becoming a proper feat of strength to push forwards when Claude who was the first in their line of rope connecting between the members of the party fell face first into the brown waters. With nowhere to grab save for the rope connecting him to the rest of the group it was a struggle for Claude to push and pull himself up again as he emerged from the swamp retching up whatever foul water he might've accidentally swallowed.
Assessing the situation, Claude was now properly stuck. No amount of pulling up his legs worked as everyone watched him slowly sink deeper and deeper, his waist lowering down so that the rope tied between Claude and Thrallmar was now resting straight rather than pointing upwards from Thrallmar's waist.
Not falling into a state of panic everyone started puling on the rope tied around them and with considerable effort Claude first stopped sinking, then slowly but steadily getting dragged up before flying backwards towards the group accompanied with a loud popping noise and shlurping as whatever muckus had been pressing against him rushed to fill the space he had been occupying a moment ago.

Taking a moment to think their options, the party concluded that they'd bring out the grappling hook which they had used earlier to climb away from the wolves that had attacked them at the cabin and would use it as an anchor to pull themselves forwards. Someone would throw it as far as they can and hopefully manage to catch onto a tree so that instead of having to push themselves through the swamp they could rather pull themselves forwards, and following along their plan some gruelling moments later everyone reached the dry and stable land safely.

Gnarled tree in the middle of the swamp

Other moments of note during their travel through the woods include:

• Spotting a bear and it's cub in the distance while carefully avoiding the animals.
• Coming across a cliff atop which they found a very deliberately built campsite that had been trashed.
• A completely un-eventful night of rest with a beatiful sight from atop the aforementioned cliff overlooking the forest.
• Finding some supplies stashed inside a hollowed out tree including, a knife, few arrows and packed cured meat.
• Coming across the corpse of James the hunter by another cliff-face with a crude spear sticking out of him. They picked a ring he was wearing with them.
• Climbing up the second cliff and finding two discarded spears along with several small footprints scattered and disappearing into the forest.
• The forest growing more sparse and thre being no signs of wildlife safe for the occasional mosquite and a flock of ravens.
• Finding a hot spring, hearing the splash of water and upon getting closer noticing wet footprints going away from the spring.
• Arriving at a lone stone house in a clearing in the forest with a small tent and two campfires atop which black pots were steaming.

The House

When approaching the clearing the first thing the party noticed was this old stone cottage with hay roofing. In front of the house stood a small teepee-like tent made of animal skins along with two campfires atop which pots were hanging. The teepee and two short pieces of fence formed a half-circle in front of the house and bit further away from the bits of fence were two spots in the ground that were covered in leaves but not in the way that someone might rake leaves into piles but instead looking like they were very deliberately spread out as a thin layer.

Not daring to get much closer from the treeline, Thrallmar approached just enough to be able to toss one of his empty lamp oil containers towards this campsite to see if he could evoke any sort of reaction. As the glass bottle flied over and landed near one of the pieces of fence and shattered upon impact with ground the party stood there, waiting for any signs of movement, but in vain as there was no indication of whoever might be here.
Having no other indication of someone possibly being in the small camp built around the house or in the house itself other than the two still burning campfire the ground decided to carefully approach. Wanting to see what these suspicious spots of leaves on the ground are, one of them snapped a branch off a nearby tree to brush some of the leaves away with, revealing a dirt pit the depth of 1.5 metres.

House and it's surroundings

Now reaching the camp while being wary of any more better hidden traps the group investigated the surroundings wondering if this might've been one of the hunter's camps in the woods.
Poking their heads into the teepee they found two figures huddled together at the back of the tent, both clad in furs and one of them wearing a deer skull without it's antlers. The other figure, the one with no deer skull, seemed to be a young girl not much older than maybe ten years.
Trying to talk to these children(?) the party heard the loud growling of a bear from somewhere inside the house.
Turning around and preparing for having to either fight or flee from a bear, another small roughly human shape covered in furs stood in the doorframe of the building wearing a bear skull and tossed over it's back was a bear skin with it's front claws still attached that the creature was holding on to. It roared again like a bear would. Not like a person imitating a bear, but like an actual bear was stood in the doorframe.

Before it managed to do anything further, everyone jumped in together to tackle this creature to the ground!
Angelo was the only one who got a proper grasp of it while everyone else either couldn't get a good enough hold or were aiming for where the creature had been standing before Angelo jumped into it and the two were sent into the house with Angelo laying atop this bear skin wearing thing.
Even though it's frame was small and Angelo was quite literally laying on top of it with all his weight, with a mighty roar he was sent flying against the doorframe as the creature stood up, followed by Thrallmar's pistol shot clipping right through it's shoulder which Claude then promptly followed up with a sharp stab at it's ribs. Angelo too tried to finish it off as the creture stumbled backwards and fell on it's knees but even in it's weakened stage it managed to dodge the hasty slash of the stumbling mage.
It was at this moment that two more of these things ran in through the half-crumbled back wall of the house both too clad in animal skins and one wearing a deer skull with small antlers and the other wearing a wolf skull.
Both of them yelling variations of "Jacob, no!" as they ran to shield the bear skull wearing one with their bodies.

The combat came to a sudden halt as the things spoke human words down to a point that Thrallmar ended up offering to heal the one that the group had wounded. A lot of persuasions of letting the party help Jacob were had and these creatures (people?) reluctantly accepted while Jacob kept gruntling things about them bieng adults and thus should not be trusted.
Thrallmar prayed for minor healing on Jacobs wounds as everyone was asking what was going on in here. Apparently this was a group of children who had gone to the forest to play since they didn't like adults telling them what to do and had claimed a witch's house for themselves. The kids had not seen said witch anywhere but looking around the insides calling it a witch's house was not a big stretch of imagination with the top shelves still having vials, jars and bottles of different colours as well as some wet specimens like lizards, rats or small birds and a large map of what one might've assumed to be of constellations.
Angelo got a permission to look around the place on the condition that he wouldn't take anything since this house now belonged to the children. Looking around there was not much to see but one thing that caught his attention was a red book which contained some sort of a runic language he couldn't quite read. The text itself didn't contain any spells, he checked with his magic but checking the book itself there seemed to be something magical with it.

Further discussions with the children led to the party finding out that it had indeed been them who had killed James the hunter and even eventually got them to admit to having Bell, the hunter's daughter that they had been looking for.
They were lead to cellar of the house where she was being kept and after being showed her father's ring she went along with the party without much further issues.
Now having achieved their objective, the group started making their way back towards Talen. With the remaining hours of daylight they had left they managed to make their way up to the swamp before deciding to camp out the night. 

Afterword

Cramming four hours of a session into one blog post truly does seem to take up a lot of space even with some stuff glossed over. Maybe I should learn to simplify the more detailed descriptions of what happened as they're now pretty much going over everything in those scenes moment by moment for the most part.

Depending on how you're counting time they now have either reached the time limit of three days that Blue was given, or they have one more day to make it back. Only one way to find out ;)
The group also decided to camp out next to the swamp after atleast some of them had pretty much been convinced that the tree sitting in the middle of it was very much evil so we'll see how their night goes next time.

Answering Vayra's setting questions

 If you follow the OSR blogosphere you've likely seen half a dozen of people having done this already, but it really is a neat little way to solidify your own views on both your world and rules system which is why I too am joining in on the trend.
The original post by Vayra can be found here.

1) What class knows the most martial arts? Are they real martial arts like kung fu, or made up ones like krav maga?

Fighters are the obvious answer here. Rules-wise in LotFP fighters are the only people who progressively get better at hitting things as they level up and are considered to be people who already have some experience on inflicting violence upon others.
As for any martial arts, different weapons have distinct uses for them and while the fighting style might differ slightly between regions it's not really enough to be called different sorts of martial arts.
Clerics however are taught more non-lethal means of fighting as it is one of the teachings of the church to not harm fellow children of Varchic.

2) Can I start out having already made a deal with the devil or do I have to do that in game?

Currently there does exist a Diabolist class that starts with sharing their body with some sort of otherworldly being if that's your jam, but other than that you could start off as someone worshipping the Deep which is essentially a giant infinite leviathan's carcass rotting somewhere in the depths of the sea and plead your life to it.
Having interesting reasons to not turn back from life of adventuring is always good so I would more than happily work something out, but should you encounter terrible enough beings with enough intelligence you might also be able to strike a deal with one of those. 

3) Do you want me to write an 8-page backstory? Can I write an 8-page backstory, if I want to? If I write something down in it like I'm the timelost princess of the brass city and the daughter of the sun and I commanded legions in the Hell War but was betrayed by my father's vizier but I don't know that, or that I'm elf conan and cooler than everyone else, will that be true?

I would encourage not to write too long of a backstory as depending on how things turn out you might die faster than I can read through the whole thing, but if you aknowledge that you may lose this character in a sudden turn of bad events I won't hold you back.
As long as all those super cool and epic facts leave you in a similar starting position as the other characters -that is, near penniless and with having a reason to delve into danger for coin- then I don't see why not. I would tell you to work any major things through with me as to make sure it doesn't wildly break the world I've built up but as long as the tone matches the world it should be mostly fine.
I reserve the right to veto stuff from such novel, and you won't start with any tangible advantage over the other characters.

4) If I eat someone's heart, will I gain their powers? What about their brain?

In this world there exist dozens of old pagan religions with all sorts of beliefs and gods, as well as the Deep which is said to have been the state of things before land was formed.
If you have the correct rituals, invoke the correct higher powers, do either of those things by an accident, or eat someone deeply influenced by higher powers there is a fair chance that you will gain something.

5) These classes are boring, can I be one from somewhere else? What about from a different system entirely? 

If you show me another class that you'd like to play I can see about porting it to the system we are playing with, but if I feel like it'll break the setting or the type of game we're playing I'll say no.

6) If I make a sword, which one of us gets to name it?

You may call it whatever you wish. Wether or not that will affect anything will depends largely on the name and whatever situation you happen to find yourself in.

7) Am I allowed to kill the other player characters? What would I have to do to be allowed to? Do I win if I kill them all? Actually, how do I win in general?

This is something that would likely be atleast touched on in session zero with how do people prefer things to be, but at the very least you could be able to do opposing checks should any situation escalate to that point at which point Out Of Character it would be good to clear how the involved people are feeling about the situation before escalating it further.
While I expect the PCs to work as a team, any team will have the occasional conflicts.
Other than that, this is not the main focus of the game and killing other PCs will not result in any sort of victory or triumphant reward. There are no true victory conditions apart from having fun and any personal goals you might set for your character.

8) What language stands in for 'Common'? Or what are we all talking to each other in? Like the party, mostly, but also everyone else?

The world I've currently built is only one region so you'll be speaking the language of the common folks, the "cattle-herder dialect" if you will with no proper name to it.
Other languages might know or have heard of are Varchian, the slightly better regarded language that a lot of city-folks speak with much less dialectic differences and also spoken and written by nobles.
Third one is the church language heavily resembling Latin that is mostly used for sacred texts or sermons and mostly only known by nobles and church officials.

9) How do I learn how to talk to rocks? No not once a day just, like, normally?

Some of the old pagan religions might know spirits of soil or earth that you could converse with should you learn to see them, or by going deep underground where the common sense and civilization have not reached and even more primal existances dwell that you could learn things from should you not die on your journey towards this knowledge.

10) Which kinds of wizards get to serve kings and live in towers and shit and which ones are run out of town or stoned to death in the streets? Can I be both? At the same time?

Church and religion have quite a strong hold within the lives of people and thus have more influence than magi who are more from academic backgrounds.
Those who've either evaded suspicions from the church or lead rather boring and non-magical researches do often like to isolate themselves from the questions of the lesser learned folks of academia and some may even be employed as advisors for nobility. On the other hand, those magi pursuing more out-of-this-world subjects are always at the risk of church learning about it and dragging the magus away in their sleep, so they too do want their privacy by whatever means they choose to employ.

To be a magic-user who would get stoned as they pass by common folk would be to live somewhere where the church won't simply come and make you disappear. A modern scholar seeking solace amongst pagans of the old world, or a hermit living in the woods that gets regarded as a witch by the local villagers perhaps.

Deep Maw - Festival of Swords play report

So roughly half a week ago I got my hands on the Dark Peaks: Deep Maw rulebook.
The system seemed very interesting to me, and I really enjoyed their concepts like the "Level Dice", "Risk Dice" and "Fate Dice Pool" which all come together to make the base system very minimalistic while still keeping the game from becoming a full on storygame and resembling something like PbtA.
Now a word of warning, the whole book could really do with someone checking for both spelling errors as well as making sure that the rules the author has sprinkled within the book are coherent and add up. In more than one instance did I find sentences with rogue words left in the middle of them like the author was writing one sentence, then changed their mind on how it should end and didn't realise they needed to erase one more word, or sentences that flat out make no sense although those were much more uncommon.

Also the cover is rad as hell

And that's my super condensed mini-review of the system, now let's get into the play report!

For this session I only had two players with me, one of whose only experience with trpgs was watching few episodes of Critical Role (although this did not slow down or hamper the play in any way, guy caught on pretty fast).
We started the game with character creation which is really simple in Deep Maw, everyone starts with 1 in all of their attributes and then chooses a background which will give them an extra point to two attributes, one skill level with a weapon appropriate to their background as well as a weapon according to what weapon skill they got. After this you roll 2d6 to determine the motivation of your character which in further expeditions would be used to set personal goals for you to accomplish, as well as another 2d6 for a fear which will treat all your attribute and weapon skill scores halved on all your rolls in the presence of situations triggering that fear.
After getting the characters set up, I gave a basic rundown of the rules along with warning that I too was still in the process of wrapping my head around them so mistakes would be made (and we did in fact forget to use some rules)
Now onto the game proper!

The Maw's Foot

The adventure included in the quickstart rules is called Festival of Swords and it introduces the characters to the Maw, a mountain underneath which lays a monster only known as Dweller. Whenever a new Dweller makes it's home beneath the mountain, the other monsters start pouring out like from a chalice overflowing with evil and with nowhere to go they spill out to the surrounding countryside and terrorize the continent.
Whenever the rangers and professional adventurers living at Maw's Foot, a small town build into the side of the mountain, cannot handle all the monsters by themselves it is evident that a new Dweller has set up residence within the mountain and the Festival of Swords is held.
During this festival hundreds of people from all different backgrounds come together to fight against the horrors spilling out from underneat the mountain in an attempt to either cull their numbers or break deep into the depths of the mountain to slay the foul Dweller.

And like many others, our story began as two weary travellers with former background in sewing and tilling fields were lining up in the town square along with hundreds of other anxious newcomers for their turn to step into the equipment tent as the festival promises to arm all those attending.
Merriment, worried murmur and the odd shouts filled the air but faded slightly as our two would-be heroes stepped into the tent to get their equipment.
Borat of Honeyfield was handed a half-torn chain mail and a worn looking bronze spear with it's point bent, now only serving as a slightly longer quarterstaff. He also had a wooden sledgehammer he had brought with him to this place.
Zeno of Iguana Bay likewise ended up with a large flimsy looking wooden shield and a quarterstaff held together with generous amounts of glue and good faith. Other than the quarterstaff, the former seamer had a pair of shears with him.

Getting pushed out of the equipment tent by the line ever moving forwards with other attendants of the festival eager to get their promised equipment, the two now found themselves slowly approaching an older man with white stubble and heavy sleepless rings underneath his eyes shouting orders on top of a wooden box that he was using as a makeshift stand. A small group of people would form in front of him and he'd discuss something with them in a less shouty voice, gesture either to one of his sides or the large gate behind him leading into the mountain and the group would slowly start heading towards where he had pointed.
When it came turn for Borat and Zeno to step in front of this man, he assesed them as somebodies who might be able to help him and told he'd even pay them. See, his nephew -or rather an orphan boy he had picked up- had also head into one of the many caves dotting this mountain. While this old man would have liked to go after him himself, he had a duty here to instruct the people attending the festival and had been looking for any individuals seeming capable of looking for his boy Yui.
The party agreed to help him, but as they did a group of four people who in their previous lives might've been described as thugs or bandits elbowed their way into the conversation, pushing Borat and Zeno out of the way as the largest of the four loudly explaimed that Pilon of Oxfall would gladly accept this task of retrieving poor Yui and wouldn't even need any advance payment. The old man seemed rather annoyed by this sudden butting in, but Pilon went on about how these two who had never even seen comabat would be too cowardly and not up to the task. Some remarks were exchanged and Pilon ended up making it a race between the two groups on who would save the missing nephew and thus did the two goups head off into the direction of one of the many entrances into the depths of the Maw that Yui had allegedly been seen entering.

Stopping short of the indicated stone entrance, Pilon's group that the party had been following from distance stopped for a moment to discuss something among themselves.
Zeno crept a bit closer to them and managed to overhear bits of their conversation. Something about one of them knowing another way into what should be the same part of the dungeon.
Pilon them prompted Borat and Zeno to step closer and in a berating manner told them his group would graciously let them use the front entrance while he and his companions would enter from another entrance that required some climbing to access.
And with that Pilon of Oxfall and his thugs disappeared behind a bend in this path set on the steep mountainside and our adventurers-in-the-making were left advancing into the corridor leading into the mountain. Atleast the organisers of the festival had left a barrel full of bundles of torches there at the entrance and lit up some torches leading in...

Into the dungeon

Some ways into the mountain, the corridor split up in a T-junction with a body laying in the middle of it. From the left the party could hear this occasional cackling noise and judging by the bloody trail left on the ground it was the direction the man laying dead on the floor had come from.
They promtly searched the body, finding a rusted scimitar but naught else of use and decided to head right, away from whatever had caused the several puncture wounds on this man.

Heading right they came up on a large room filled with barrels and crates strewn about as well as the remains of a small stone bridge. The bridge had collapsed in the segments with less supporting structure and those gaps had been covered with rickety wooden platforms. From the center point of the bridge it extended both forwards into darkness as well as turned left with another wooden platform laid atop a gap to make it walkable. 
The two ventured further towards the bridge to get a better look at the chasm it was built over as well as the large rumbling sound below that they were thinking must've been the river they saw flowing out of the mountain when first entering Maw's Foot, when suddenly three shadowy figures stood up at the middle section of the bridge. A torch was lit by one of these shapes, revealing them to be some sort of human-bodied and ox-headed creatures with hooved feet and clad in rags.
Largest of the creatures stood there watching Borat and Zeno, heaving heavy breaths from it's bull face and brandishing a large metal shield and a cleaver of some sorts while the other two skinnier looking creatures with similar ox-like features started to gather up javelins that were resting against the railings of the bridge.

What followed was few frantic moments of finding cover, taking a mostly intact table to use as large mobile cover, trying to communicate with these creatures they had now deiced to be minoutaurs and getting nothing but a furious mooing in response, Zeno taking a javelin to his leg, Borat being stabbed in the chest by a javelin that broke through the table, a lot more missed javelins, an attempt to roll a burning barrel over the makeshift wooden platform to the middle of the bridge that the minoutaur creatures were still staying at but it getting stopped and kicked down into the darkness by the large one in the front.
By this point the more frail looking creatures had run out of javelins and were just shifting behind the larger one which was lowering it's head and preparing to attempt to gorge it's agressors.
Just a second after Borat and Zeno decided to turn tail and run they heard the table they had been holding up splinter behind them as the sound of stampeding hooves approached them at an alarming pace. Not wanting to get run over, they decided to both split and turn sharply to left and right in order to not get ran over by an angry bull-headed muscled freak of nature.
The creature's charge came to a halt as it used it's momentum for a wild swing aimed at Borat that managed to leave a long bloody streak across his back. As Borat attempted to retaliate the creature brough up it's other hand behind it's sword, and Borat's swing collided with the worn metal of the minotaur's shield. This however meant that Zeno was able to slip behind the creature and sink his shears into it's back, finishing it off.

Now standing bloodied in front of the corpse of this creature they had decided on being a minotaur, the party heard the clattering of hooves on stone floor disappearing somewhere to the north and looking back to the bridge the smaller minotaurs were nowhere to be found.
What followed was bit more exploration during which they found what had likely been used as a storage room either by these minotaur creatures or someone before them and looted six more javelins on top of those that they managed to salvage from the earlier fight. Borat had also picked up the shield wielded by the minotaur the two managed to defeat.
They found another way heading towards where they had first heard the cackling noises, deciding yet again to not go that way and instead follow the way the smaller minotaurs had retreated, which meant a jump over a large cap into what seemed like a pitch black room.
Burning two of their fate dices brough them to two dice left but ensued a safe crossing of the gap and lighting a torch Borat and Zeno found themselves in what was an empty room with few more javelins scattered about, likely as replenishments for the group posted on the bridge that thay had disperesed.

Further into the darkness

Moving on, another corridor leaves the room and turns to the left where they see this loooong dimly lit chamber. All kinds of animal and more humanoid carcassed hanging from hooked chains, blood everywhere and another of these minotaur creatures hunched over one of it's kin laying atop a raised stone slab. Further in the darkness they can make out two scrawnier shapes at the end of the room.

While Borat and Zeno discuss how to proceed there's suddenly a loud crashing sound and the slap of bare feet on stone floor as four shapes just smaller than your average human dash into the room from somewhere at the back, surround one of the two shapes hanging by the back wall and impaling it with spears. The minotaur hunched over on the stone slab in the middle of the room snaps towards these smaller shapes and prepares to charge while the one smaller minotaur left at the back of the room with it's assailants tries to hit them but fails to land a blow.
Decisions have to be made, and our duo decides to atleast temporarily fight alongside the minotaurs to expel this new unknown threat, charging in and throwing their many javelins which manage to hit two of the smaller humanoid shapes that had burst into the chamber and downing them.
Following their attack the minotaur charged into the fray but it's weapon found no target as these short pale-skinned humanoids with no noses and eyes like vertical slits speared the remaining scrawnier minotaur full of holes while now starting to slowly advance backwards and attempting to keep the party and the remaining minotaur at bay.
By now the party is at a distance where they can both charge into the rank of these smaller pale creatures they've named ghouls and Borat does exactly that while brandishing the large wooden mallet he had arrived to Maw's Foot with in two hands, charging in and obliterating the jaw of one of these ghouls while the minotaur finishes off the other one that Zeno couldn't find the opporturnity to get a strike on.
The party now intends to stop the violence as they are left alone with the one lone minotaur, but this creature had only seem something dashing right next to it from the corner of it's eye and is still in full combat mode, thus leaving Borat with a large bleeding gush across his cheek as it quickly turns to slash him without much aim in it's strike.
Seeing as the violence didn't end, Borat distracts the minotaur enough for Zeno to get a critical strike on it, driving his shears into the creature's flank is several quick stabs and it collapses to the floor.
End of combat, three fate dice left and both Borat and Zeno needing to burn fate dice on every hit they receive lest they risk dying.

Now that the action has settled Zeno has amassed enough experience points to increase his archery skill by one to have easier time hitting with the javelins while Borat has divided them across more weapon skills and has thus not improved in any yet, and the two of them check on the minotaur laying on the stone slab only to come to the conclusion that the slab has once been used as a table and the minotaur was likely being treated for the large laceration wound on it's chest.
Deciding to leave the minotaur to it's fate the two of them head to the break in the wall leading to a cramped and dark tunnel that these ghouls had burst out from.

Bit further into the tunnel they come across a fork in the tunnel as it turns west while another way continues south. They also notice one more of these pale humanoids covering on the floor.
As soon as it notices the light of their torches the creature scampers backwards, motioning something that Borat and Zeno interpret as "be silent". The duo stops to listen for a moment to figure out why this creature is acting so frightened and apart from the slow crackling of their torches they hear a faint skittering sound coming from somewhere on the ceiling of this tunnel towards south, thus deciding to step over the ghoul covering on the ground and head towards west. As soon as they pass the creature they again hear the slapping of bare foot against stone as it hurries away.

Reunion with Pilon

The tunnel heading west worms it's way slowly upwards untill a bright light shines at the end of it, and beyond the light they hear the familiar bombastic and overly-confident voice of Pilon of Oxfall barking out something that they can't quite make out.
Not wanting to repeat the incident with the minotaur in making Pilon assume they are hostiles, Zeno steps into the light while calling out to the thug and now properly sees the situation he's walking into.
The room is another part of a dungeon, littered with fresh corpses of ghouls of seemingly every age from child to elderly with some burning in campfires surrounded by cooking utensils, and at the back end of the room stands Pilon with his sword pointed towards a young man covering on the ground.
A short argument bursts out as Zeno is shortly followed by Borat, and Pilon expresses how they should just back off as he was the first one to find the boy and will hand him over to the old man himself. Borat and Zeno are curious about the fate of Pilon's other party members which he tells have been cut down by these savages save for one of his men who they notice hanging back and sticking to a corner of the room. Further pleas to let the boy go and suggestions on how to handle the situation devolve into Pilon claiming that if it is not he who brings in the boy then none will!

Borat and Zeno spot a rope hanging from a hole in the ceiling which must've been the other way that Pilon had mentioned his group was going to be using, and deciding that it's better if they let him hand over the boy, our duo makes a dash for the rope. Before Pilon or his thug manage to catch them they're gone and have reeled up the rope with them followed by an obscene amount of threats and curses from the room below.
Taking a moment to asses their options, they decide to lower down the rope again and dash further into wherever Pilon must have come from.
They eventually find somewhere to hide and decide to wait for Pilon and the boy to pass them to make sure they get out safely before leaving the place themselves.
Some thirty or so minutes have passed when they see Pilon limp past them, bloodied and covered with wounds, he is holding his left arm that's dangling along with his hobbled steps and the boy is nowhere to be seen.

Now worried, both Borat and Zeno step out from where they are hiding and Pilon demonstrates just how bad of a shape he's in as he tried to turn on his heels to point a sword at them but barely manages it with even half the pride and bombast he's been acting with before.
Asking for an explanation as to what has happened and where they boy is, Pilon tells them that he and his comrade were attacked by these degenerate savages shortly after the PCs left. He watched his remaining comrade get chopped into pieces in front of his eyes and had to fight his way back up just barely escaping. The boy he has no idea what these cannibals might've done with, but he swears that Pilon of Oxfall will have his revenge on these dim-witted troglodytes before turning back towards the way he was going and disappearing behind another turn of the corridor.

Finding the boy

The party decides to go back to where they last saw the boy but all they find is that some of the bodies of the dead ghouls are missing and there's even more fresh blood strewn about the room with Yui, the boy they were set out to find, nowhere in the room.
Very obvious dragging marks on the floor made in all this blood point back towards the tunnel that the PCs had first entered this room from.

Following the drag marks in the cramped tunnel, they arrive back at the intersection where it is evident that whatever made this trail has gone south towards the skittering sound.
Zeno decides to go grab one of the animal carcasses hanging from the long chamber this tunnel connects to before proceeding any more south in this tunnel in hopes that if there really is something in there and it is agressive they might be able to distract it with food, and so the two continue down the tunnel.

A moment later the tunnel has another small intersection that ends up in stone wall while the dragmarks continue deeper in towards the slowly downwards sloping path, but the PCs decide to stop for a moment to examine the stone wall.
Poking at it with one of their many javelins, the stones seem rather loose and Zeno pushes one of them in. What they hear is stone falling on stone followed shortly by the same cackling noise they had heard twice before already, and just like twice before they decide to leave whatever is making the noise well alone and to continue on the tracks they were following.

Having passed any of the skittering sounds in the tunnel they now advance downwards in ever steeper tunnel untill arriving at what appears to be an old mineshaft. With the light of their torches they do not see the bottom of it, but do decide that they should head down there as there is a ladder built into the supporting beams of the shaft.

And that is where our first session ended.

Afterword

Boy did it feel botched on my end but I'm glad both of the players enjoyed the experience. The biggest issue with the system was how do the fears and ambitions play into it, and that's one of the rules that I totally forgot to use in play along with the rule of different weapon types giving bonuses when fighting against specific types of other weapons but I hope to adress this in the next session.

Towards the end this quickstart adventure is supposed to end in the players facing off against Pilon and more of these creatures the game calls Dusklings bursting into the final room through a door and then leaving the dungeon afterwards to return the boy, but since they wanted to go up the way that Pilon and his gang had come into the room from I decided that the thugs would get overwhelmed and only Pilon would make it out because I think he makes for an excellent re-occuring non-monster adversary.
Likewise the soutwards tunnel is supposed to end at the stone wall but since I cut the door that these dusklings would normally burst into the room from I decided that they instead have more tunnels leading deeper into the mountain so I'll now be designing another dungeon where the creatures have retreated to since my players wanted to continue their search! \o/

Lamentation in Colours of Pentagrams - Session #1

 Yes, I know it is a very creative name for a game being run with Lamentations of the Flame Princess by someone with a blog called The Colours of Pentagrams but hey, atleast I have a game that is planned to continue for several sessions even if it is bi-weekly.

Now that we have that bit out of the way, let's get onto the game itself.
The setting here is the very same that I've been rambling on about in here on occasion, the world of Land and Sea where religion plays a big part in just about everything. The general tone is grimdark and Lamentations (atleast to me) also leans towards horror genre so lots of spooky things are to be expected. In fact, this is the pitch I gave when looking for players to subject to my machinations:

A grimdark fantasy setting, taking inspiration from Darkest Dungeon and the likes. You don't start as heroes, but rather nobodies who might in time come to be known as heroes.

The game will begin in a countryside village where a local hunter had set out to the woods to save his daughter who was "stolen by little devils wearing animal skins and bones" but has not returned for the past three days.

The cast for our adventure consists of the following individuals:

• Angelo, an amnesiac magic-user. 
  He was found by some people of church, crawling out of a cave completely malnourished and grasping a weird milky-white crystal. The man had lost most of his memories and thus given the name Angelo and cared back into shape. He now looks for way to regain his lost memories. (a character carried over from a oneshot, afflicted with madness from encounter with Lamenters deep underground).
• Beau 'Blue' Smith, a magic-user condemned to death.
  Blue was caught translating texts the church had deemed heretical and has been sentenced to death, unless he can procure a miracle as well as witnesses for this deed within a year. He has a church official following and watching over him to make sure he commits no further heresy as he carries on his repentance.
• Claude Vursk, a headstrong fighter.
  Claude had taken on himself to travel to Talen after hearing rumours about the recent disappearance in hopes of learning more about it as a child had similarily gone missing from his village.
• Dron, a fighter looking for coin.
  A drifter who had originally set out from his hometown to find more work, but quickly found out that nobody trusts any proper work to an outsider and has thus resolved to make coin any way he can. Dron hopes for a reward for finding the mising people.
• Thrallmar Righthand, a dwarven cleric.
  Treated as a cleric for purpose of class, Thrallmar comes from a small religious sect consisting mostly of dwarves. The group makes all manner of scrolls, symbols and other small crafts requiring precision and he has set out to collect enough funds for a passion project of his own.

Our group began -like any good group- in a small roadside tavern on the edge of the assortment of loose scattered houses that is collectively known as the village of Talen.

Mount and Blade imagery, it's almost like these are made exactly to vaguely depict places

In the village

After a short introductions from everyone as the PCs shared a drink or two while the church appointed official looking over Blue kept his distance with his two servants, the party decided to first collect information about what they might be walking into or dealing with and headed to meet the village elder. 
The old man mostly repeated what they already knew about the incident, while also pointing out where the wife of the missing hunter lives as well as mentioning that some fifteen years ago a group of children had also gone missing in the woods and were never found.

Thanking the elder for what little help he could offer, the party bartered for some extra supplies as well as hired one of the local youth as a torchbearer before heading out to meet the missing hunter's wife.
The woman, Birgit, was surprised by the sudden appearance of these strange men on her doorstep but after a brief explanation on their intentions to look for her missing husband and daughter she gave them some more details to help them in their search. A favoured hunting spot, as well as sharing a detail of her and James, the missing hunter's, past as asked by Blue as a precation against the possibility that they might find something imitating the shape of the missing hunter.
She also gave the party a permission to go through James' shack that he used for curing meat as well as storing most of his gear in. Inspecting the insides, they found nothing out of ordinary but did (with permission from Birgit) take some of the equipment that James had stashed in there, most notable of which was a small jar of healing salve.

One last stop before heading into the woods was by a groggy female elf who they found steadily getting drunk at the tavern, as the party suspected she might have some insight into what goes down in the forest with being an elf and all.
While it took a bit to get her talking, she did end up dumping all sorts of more-or-less useful history on the party about the olden ways before the church of Varchic had shown up, mentioning things like people having lived in the forest before the village slowly moved out of it, what people would nowadays call a witch that atleast used to live there, about spirits and how they might seek to drive people out of their lands as well as the creation of elves by the means of offering your firstborn to spirits as a vessel which creates these un-aging half-humans that she is one of and how the church ostracises them.
Having rambled on for a while, she eventually proclaimed the history lesson to have ended, and then off to the woods it was for the party accompanied by Marvin the torchbearer as well as the church inquisitor and his retinue.

The Shadewood, starts out just normal but gets denser and denser

Into the woods

Following the path they were pointed onto by Birgit, the party eventually ended up at a dried-up riverbank on the far side of which they saw prints that might've been left there by someone or something falling and crawling up to the other side of the river. Taking a bit to search the surrounding area the picked up on a faint trail obviously few days old, which matched with how long it had been since the hunter had gone off to look for his daughter.
At this point the inquisitor gave Blue an ultimatum before heading back to the village, "I'm not an unreasonable man. You have three days Blue. Three days just like the hunter, after which I will assume you've taken this chance and fled. And know this, after the three days. I. Will. Find. You."

With those parting words, they party watched the inquisitor and his retinue head back and started to follow the tracks they had picked up deeper into the woods.

What followed was several hours of following a spotty trail of old tracks, finding some form of idol made of small bones, a makeshift camp that had been left behind in a hurry with no efforts to conceal it, some sort of symbols carved into the trees as well as eventually an old ruined single-room log cabin that the party decided to spend their night in.
At this point they were deep in the woods and found themselves not being able to quite procure enough food from their surroundings which meant having to dip into their supply of rations.

This is where things started to head south.

The Night

Turns for taking watch were divied up, and the first half of the night passed on rather calmly.
However, a little past midnight Claude started to hear this slow rustling sound moving around the cabin, something was circling around them in the dark. Doing his best to peer into the darkness he could only make out a an occasional shape moving between the bushes and decided to wake the party.
Blue casted light in the distance, and as the ethereal moonlight spread amongst the woods everyone could make out the back of a lone wolf slowly moving out of the light. It stood there, staring.
Claude raised his shield and started banging on it with his shield while slowly approaching the wild animal, which scared it away and everyone did their best to go back to continue their rest.

That is not where the wolf menace ended however, as on Thrallmar's watch right after he could also in turn hear the slow rustling of the underbrush. This time the wolves were closer, and there were two of them. They slowly approached all the way to the porch of the cabin before thrallmar decided to try and scare them away by tossing a torch in the doorway (the reason these wolves were being a nuisance in the first place, the cabin's front door was laying half-rotten inside the building).
The wolves stopped for a moment, leaning back on their tracks as they examined the still burning torch. Rather than scared they seemed curious.
Thrallmar picked up a piece of firewood from the campfire and swinging it from side to side approached the wolves, firing a warning shot into the woods from his pistol waking up the camp and driving off the wolves.
At the end of his watch, a howl could be heard from the distance as Thrallmar went to get any precious rest he could, leaving the guarding of the camp for the final watch for Marvin.

The next thing anyone noticed was panicking Marvin shaking Blue awake 
"Boss! B-boss! The wolves! There's a lot of wolves!".
And the young man was right, by the light of Marvin's torch the party counted eight pair of shining eyes at the edge of the light. The eyes creeped closer as the wolves came into view proper, their bodies pressed low as they approached ready to pounce.

Blue was the first one to make a move, casting light on the eyes of the biggest wolf of the pack. The creature started wildly trashing around, biting the air as it tried to make sense of the burning brightness that now occupied it's vision, which in turn released the tension as the rest of the wolves sprang forwards in a charge.
What followed was few short panicked moments as Angelo rushed to fix a table he found to serve as a barricade to the doorframe, trying to affix it in place by casting Hold Portal on it which miscasted and ended up twisting the worked wood into impossible angles and thus rendering it largely useless for his intended purpose.
Thrallmar landed a good shot on the blinded wolf, figuring that taking the biggest one which probably is the leader out might disperse the rest of them. Unfortunately the shot was not quite enough to put the animal down and thrallmar was left with an emptied pistol that would take too long to reload to be of any good use in the few following moments.
The rest followed suit in peppering the wolves in a small volley of arrows and sling bullets, managing to wound one of them.
A flask of lamp oil was thrown in front of the doorframe and set aflame in hopes of deferring the wolves from coming inside as the barricade plan with the table had fallen flat.
It did actually work to an extent, as the flames stopped the wolves on their tracks and made them hesitate as they snarled and barked at the party that was now trapped inside the cabin by both wolves and flames.

After taking another volley of arrows and sling bullets, one of the wolves braved the flames and jumped over them to get to it's prey. The wolf promptly met with Thrallmar's staff as the dwarf had laid in ambush by the doorframe, but in retaliation to the blow the wolf did try to snap at Thrallmar although without it's jaws meeting with any of the dwarf's fleshy bits.
Three more wolves braved the flames afterwards, one more pouncing on Thrallmar and managing to gash him on the cheeck. The two other ones went for Angelo who was still lingering near the doorframe with this twisted lump of wood in his arms that he managed to fend the wolves off with and suffered only minor damage in the process.
Blue decided to try to blind one of the wolves harassing his comrades, and as the wild animal's eyes started shining in dim white light all it could do was try and attack against anything it might hit by trashing in place.
More arrows were released at the wolves surrounding Angelo as he made his retreat, also firing at his agressors and the total volley managed to down one of them.
In the meanwhile Thrallmar gave a good whack to the ribs of the blinded wolf, which sent the poor animal laying on the floor with it's claws swinging wildly in the air as it had no idea what was going on.
The party now looking for any possible venue of escape decided to have Marvin set up a rope up to the half-collapsed roof of the cabin with a grappling hook as the remaining two wolves fixated on Thrallmar.

Latching onto his foot and shaking it violently, one of the wolves was close to finishing off the dwarf and as Thrallmar heard the tempting whispers of the deep inside his skull with his vision starting to dim, he decided to go against his honour as a dwarf in a desperate attempt to defy death. The dwarf went limp, laying in a pool of his own blood slowly trickling out of his leg he decided on a gamble to play dead and hope his comrades would dispatch of the wolves before they devour him.
The rest of the party however had different plans, with the rope now set up people started hurrying up as they saw Thrallmar fall.
The wolves however, now trapped inside the cabin with the fire slowly spreading inside and the rest of their prey having fled to the roof were rather confused with the situation and thus the dwarf was saved.

As Thrallmar look around discreetly, he too noticed the rope and suddenly bolted up from where he was laying, further confusing the two wolves he shoved aside as he practically flew up the rope to join up with the rest of the party, who now had nothing but time to pick off the remaining two wolves.
From up there, they could see the blinded wolf that was assumedly leading this pack and gotten shot by the dwarf was now laying down on the ground unmoving, and the rest of the wolves outside the cabin were starting to wander off.

The first few rays of sunlight started to penetrate through the woods as the party climbed down from the roof, with the front porch of the cabin still burning and the wolves gone a new day was ahead of them.

Afterword

Wow that's a long post. In the future maybe I should condense some of the details a bit or no-one want to slog through the entirety of that again.
I feel like we made good progress within the content that I had prepared for this forest and everyone atleast claimed to have enjoyed it, so not a total failure by any means I don't think.

The combat was handled completely in theater of the mind without even any sort of sketch of the building, which might've made it a bit easier to get a better picture of where people were situated but I don't feel like that ended up as much of a problem.

The Mind's Eye - a monster concept

I often get these weird -and possibly very stupid- ideas about things to do with trpg games, be it encounters or locations or entire mini-settings.
Just idle thoughts really, but sometimes one makes it's way to my mind that I feel like is worth noting down just to ensure I won't accidentally forget about it.
So here's one such thing. A creature, or more specifically an encounter with a creature.

I had this thought come to me as I was waiting in cold winter weather for a person to come show me around my possible new apartment, this thought about a party of adventurers entering a large room -or maybe a cavern- and they suddenly start feeling ever distant from themselves as if their life was happening from a third-person perspective. They would feel like they are but flies on the wall, watching themselves enter the room. The perspective starts to slowly lower towards the floor...
Then for a second their vision returns normal as they hear a meaty *thud* of something dropping to the floor behind them, and they are once again observing themselves from distance, watching themselves from behind as their selves turn to face their vision with an expression of disgust on their faces.
They watch as their third-person selves draw their weapons and start charging at their vision. Roll initiative!

The party is now in combat with... itself?
Within this confusion it would slowly become apparent that the party is actually fighting a monster, but also being the monster at the same time. 
You wish to attack, but what are you attacking? Yourself and your friends charging at you? 
Unsure, you go to draw a weapon just to defend yourself if nothing else, but quickly realise that not just are you not armed with a weapon, but neither are you wearing armour of any kind. All you can do is raise a ghoulish hand in front of you in protest.

After the person who won initiative is done with their actions, everyone's vision returns back to themselves for a brief blink of an eye. What the party sees in front of them now that they're observing the situation from their own vision is a vaguely humanoid shape, withered and shadowy even in direct light of their lanterns. The person next in initiative gets to have their turn as their regular self facing against this strange ghoulish creature.
And then we swap back to what is by now quite apparently this thing's vision.

I have no clue how this sort of creature would be percieved by the players but it would certainly be an interesting encounter, twisting even the mechanics of the game against the PCs.
What is the right answer here? Let the party kill this thing which's vision you are sharing? Fight back and possibly injure yourselves? Is there a trick to this thing?

In it's eyes are the people under it's control, or is it those controlling it?

For real, what is this thing?

Here's the fun part, I have no idea!
Maybe it's some sort of a bodysnatcher that moves in to the things it kills and lives off of the body's nutrients, sucking it's host dry and then needing a new one to keep sustaining itself.
Perhaps instead of being predatory, it is in fact a prey animal that uses the exchanged vision to drive off attackers.
Or it might be some sort of being from the other side of the veil posessing the body and simply wishes to mess with humans for whatever reason such being might have.
It might even simply have been another adventurer, all withered and worn from being held in this hellhole by some other monster which is causing this weird switch-up.
Or maybe there's some sort of weird drug in the air which is causing all sorts of dis-associative issues within those inhaling it.

Mechanics-wise I would probably play this as a creature with HD equal to the amount of enemies it is facing, and attack equal to the player whose turn it is to control it.
Roll individual initiative for this combat, and the players each control the creature on their turns and the creature controls the party on it's turn.
When you come around to the player that rolled same or closest to the creature on initiative, everyone briefly regains their vision and that player gets to act their turn normally as themselves. (This represents the creature blinking, during which it cannot exchange visions.)

The older religions and traditions of the elves

 Before the established religion of the church of Varchic, men lived simple lives and worshipped entities much older and more in-line with their ways of life.
Gods and their spirits were something one might converse with on much more personal level, and they were something you could witness with your own bare eyes. Men had traditions, traditions upheld by generation after generation as well as stories explaining the importance of these traditions. Places had their own local spirits, and spirits had gods watching over them.
If the spirits were upset with people barging into their space or living too greedily alongside the fair folk, they would complain to their gods or revolt against the humans and drive them out. Sometimes clever humans might even commune with the gods themselves rather than deal with spirits directly.

Elves and their rituals are one of the eldest remnants of these ancient religions. Said to be the union of man and spirit, elves do not naturally age or even die. It is rumoured that elves are the result of pagan folks offering their firstborns to the spirits, and this is often claimed to be the reason that elves themselves are not capable of reproducing by biological means.
Where a mere man would die, instead an elf's spirit leaves their body and it begins to age at a rapid rate and their spirit can walk free. The spirit can then slip back into the body after it gains enough hold on it. For this reason, it is believed that elves are much more spiritually in-tune with the world and were often carrying the role of mediums, shamans and druids in communities of the old times.
For this reason, a lot of elven rituals involve different sortf of blood-lettings or poisonings as they deliberately induce damage on their bodies in order to drive out the spirit and cause physical ageing to better represent the age of their spirit.
A lot of other rituals are also recorded to having been practiced by elves, but those are nowadays largely considered heretical under the eyes of the church.
The church of Varchic has also issued a mandate that no elves may employ a high position of power in neither politics or any other seat for they are beings not truly considered children of Varchic and thus not trusted even if they a recognised as intelligent person's of their own free will and mind. An elf caught masking their race to blend amongst humans is a criminal offence and will be dealt with according to the harm a potential slip-up might have caused had the elf not been recognised as one.

Such times are now in the past though, save for places far away from the reach of the church of Varchic. In lands un-touched by modern men and un-tainted by their commerce and civilization there still exists the beliefs of wild spirits and gods that are neither good nor evil, but rather beings of immense age and wisdom.
Nowadays within the reach of the church, these beliefs mostly exist in old wive's tales and stories told around campfires by people in the countryside.

In their efforts to further expand their reach and stabilise the sacred ground their god has blessed them with as they unite all the scattered children of Varchic, the church has aggressively pushed to even more far-off lands from the capital. Expanding towards lands beyond the horizon and bringing us all under one roof just as we stand atop one land, they have tirelessly spread the truth about this world and will continue to do so untill all the children of Varchic one day stand united like they did when they first followed the god-giant Varchic out of the Pit in the earth.
In doing this, the church has trampled over many pagan religions and continues to enforce the weeding of them, seeing them as nothing but the Deep trying to worm it's way to the minds of people. Those caught practicing any other faith are either apprehended and brought to the church to be taught the proper ways or executed as heretics and enemies of the church.