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.