Yesterday I was scrolling through Itch looking for anything interesting, as one does, and happened upon
. I've never really been one for solo games, but recently I've been feeling the itch to revisit my Souls-inspired world that I ran for some of my friends back when I was first testing out
.
A world that is essentially a kind of "shadow real" based on my current sandbox campaign world. A place that is forgetting itself and thus allowed to be just bits and pieces woven together. Place where memories are tangible things that one can collect, and the more you have the more sure you can be that you exist.
And as such I thought I might as well give this solo play thing a try, since with my current schedule I'll more than likely not be able to shove yet another game in there.
For the base system I am going with the aforementioned Tales of the Burned Stones, but forgoing the implied setting even if it is extremely loose since I have a world in mind already that I wish to play in.
For oracles I have a Rider Waite tarot deck, the oracle tables in Burned Stones, as well as Chris McDowall's Ask the Stars.
That being said, from this point onwards will be my journalling of the journey of Dyrkyr as I stumble onwards trying to make sense on how to generate things on the fly for myself. The journal bit might have typos but I at least try to write something that can be understood when read by someone else than just me.
Chapter 0 - Where am I?
Somewhere where there are no rulers left, the proverbial throne has been emptied by the way of the sword. That much is what I remember.
There's an empty throne room, wands and staffs broken and scattered on the floor. But no bodies.
Wrong.
There's a single dead person here. Emptied out eye sockets stare from hollowed out cheecks and rubbery mummified skin. He, or she, has been wrapped in heavy wallcloths and placed laying on the throne.
I choose not to investigate any closer, instead opting for the wrenched open double doors barely standing on their hinges. They lead to a hallway.
The light coming in from the windows is meager, it must be late into the evening right now.
Wherever I am, I have no recollection. I barely remember my name. Dyrkyr.
The corridor take a turn to the left from here, it appears this room is at the end of it. Whatever devastation had come here is not present outside the room. All I see is moth eaten and mouldy carpets, enormous roots poking through the ceiling and having crashed through the walls as well as the debri of stone brickwork they have strewn about.
I choose to inspect one of the larger roots more closely, try to figure out what it is.
The root is dry, fine ash gathered on it's uneven surface. Was there a fire here?
Glancing back at the corridor, blackened streaks and the disappearance of the long carpet past a certain point suggest it's possible. Just that the fire for some reason hadn't reached all the way here, which is why I hadn't realised it at first.
Now, time to move on. I still have no idea of my bearings.
Where does the corridor take me?
The corridor is dotted with windows on it's left side, letting in the orange light of dusk or dawn.
At the end of it an open archway where stands a rusted metal cage, like a birdcage but mansized. It hangs precariously over a dark pit on thick metal chain stained with rust. On the floor of the birdcage, there is a large pressure plate.
I carefully prod at the bars of the cage with the pole of my maul to see how bad the rust is.
Couple bars clang free from their frame, bouncing off the stone walls and making a terrible racket on the way down.
If there's anything in here apart from me, it now knows it's not alone. The clattering was loud enough to raise the dead.
And this contraption does not look safe.
Now what?
I start trying to ascertain if the pit itself looks climbable, there are the enormous roots breaching through the walls of this place after all.
Yes, my intuition was right. I might've not heard the bars bounce off of them but the longer I spend looking down into the darkness the more I can make out roots of differing sizes invading into it from the sides.
However, it's pitch dark down there and I have no light with me.
I start checking through my gear, looking for something to start a fire with.
No luck, although hanging from my belt in a small leather harness is a book I don't recognise. I only vaguely remember it's supposed to contain magic.
Perhaps something that might help, I hope.
I take a couple of steps back from the birdcage contraption and sit down, the large maul I have been carrying rested against the wall and ready to be grabbed should anything startle me.
And begin studying the contents of the book.
It contains the following spells:
- Hammer - conjures a large phantom hammer to crush it's target (d8)
- Salve - heals by 1+\[dice result over 4\] (d8)
- Hitbond - grants two targets a shared pool of extra Resilience equal to 1+\[dice result over4\] (d8)
// (End of session 1 @ Random encounter. Did it come from the elevator drop? Yes, but... it was silent enough to get a jump on me)
I am too absorbed in studying the book and the spells within, several ashen spectres like dust and sand in the vague shape of a man are swarming out the archway and obscuring my view of the birdcage contraption.
The position is bad, there are more of them than there are of me and they are already within striking distance.
I choose to employ my strength, the one thing I have going on for me right now, to swing my maul wildly at the many-faced cloud of ash and dust now lunging at me from the archway.
I manage to repell them, but at a cost. The maul slips from my hands, sent flying towards a window on the left hand wall by an unexpected lack of grip strength. It mashed through the windowsill, leaving a cloud of plaster and flinging stone shards in every direction. And then is to not be seen again.
Fuck.
The force of the swing dissipated the form of the spectres, but they now start to emerge again from the scattered ash swirling in the hallway.
I am surrounded.
I flee, turn tail and dash straight through the one that had gotten behind me.
I am left with my eyes covered in stinging ash as I leave the spectres behind, half stumbling and half running back down the corridor towards the throne room.
I attempt to outrun them, there were staves laying in the room. My hope is that I can use them to fight off these things.
They are fast, soon enough I see the gray ash swirling around me at the edges of my vision. They are too fast, skeletal hands with no solid form claw against my sides and slip in through the cracks and joints of my plate armour causing stinging burns.
I arrive at the double doors leaning off their hinges, the room is like I had left it. Empty, save for the once-royal carpet leading to the throne occupied by it's mummified sovereign. And the ground, littered with staves and wands. I quickly dive down, grapping a staff in both hands and start swinging them wildly in order to scatter the phantoms tormenting me.
Unfortunately all this achieves is spreading their forms all around me, causing myself to once again be surrounded.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, several of the wands and broken staffs on the floor start to stand up and float into the air like as if pulled up by strings.
Before I have the time to react, several staffs come flying through the ashen spectres and straight into me. My armour takes the brunt of the blows, but my body definitely feels the reverberations as they tenderise my muscles.
Worried for my own life, I slip through a gap in the swirling ashes that I have those flying staffs to thank for and bolt towards the door. Back into the corridor.
By the time I've broken visual contact with the spectres I notice my belt feeling lighter. A pouch hanging from it has torn open and is now empty. I think I remember keeping money in it.
Never minding the pouch, I continue running. My mouth dry and eyes filled with ash. Heaving for air, I collapse onto my knees by the end of the corridor.
I look behind me but see no signs of the swirling cloud of ash that had been tomenting me. I do however notice the contents of my quiver, my three arrows, scattered halfway through the corridor.
I choose not to retrieve them for I fear the floating staves or the reappearance of the ashen spectres.
I weight my options.
Going down the pit would require light which I do not have.
The windows look wide enough to fit through, but the view from here opens down to a sprawling city. I mist be several hundred metres high right now, a fall that I cannot afford to take.
Going back is a dead end, both figuratively and literally.
I need a weapon.
I come to the conclusion that attempting to climb down the dark pit is my only option. There are footholds in the form of the number of roots penetrating through the walls, but beyond the first few meteres there will be no light.
I begin the climb, making may way past the man-sized birdcage hanging inside ths shaft and lowering myself to the nearest root.
Gritting my teeth, after the first few metres it no longer matters wether my eyes are open or closed. At that point I'm doing the climb based on my sense of touch alone.
The dark gives me time to think and be immersed in myself and I come to realise how little I know or remember about why I am here. In fact, I realise I barely remember much of myself at all.
Digging deep inside my head, out of the small number of things I am able to conjure up the memory of a grand gallery filled with paintings and beautiful wall cloths swells to the top. A very warm and loving memory, certain type of fondness and appreciation for the work put into those things and the different things they attempt to convey.
After what has felt like an eternity, I start to notice light filtering in through my eyelids again.
I'm standing in a passagaway drowned in ash. The floor isn't visible, the scene looks like a gray beach conjured into the high arched corridor running left to right from where I'm entering.
This must be where those phantoms had originated from. I shudder at the thought of having to wade through here.
Cautious still, I keep scaning my surroundings for clues as to where I might be or where I might wish to go.
The stupendously high cathedral-like ceiling has collapsed in several places, letting in the same orange dusk-or-dawn light that was seeping in through the windows earlier. Several long polearms poke out from the mounds of ash, all rusted beyond use.
Whatever has happened here must have happened a long time ago.
To my left, the corridor terminates after maybe twelve or so metres in narrow double doors the height of half of the corridor.
To my right, the corridor continues straight beyond what I can see. Larger pieces of the collapsed ceiling blocking my view. Definitely looks like something I could go around and climb over however.
// (End of session 2 @ doom dice 3/6. Grit is used. Now have to decide which way to go)
So far the adventure has definitely been intriguing, and I am slowly starting to figure out where this must be. Finding out that the room I started my journey in was some sort of a boss room or the end of a dungeon was a rather cool one.
Still definitely need to figure out how to properly run the game system-wise since Burned Stones suggest handling combats as challenge checks when playing solo but in the fight with the ash spectres I wasn't sure how to adjucate for how they should be defeated. If running it as a challenge which I did, I needed to succeed five checks but that to me felt like just buying time would mean they would eventually get brought down by time rather than my character.
The next combat I run into I'll be trying to run with the actual combat rules and see how that feels instead.
One difficulty that I realise I'll also be definitely running into is generating the rooms and corridors of the place I am currently exploring as so far I've simply been asking the stars if the corridor continues, does it continue straight, is it a junction, does it bend left, does it end in a large room etc etc.
