Castle Mordengard Session 6
Start Date: 5/23/25
End Date: 5/31/25
Members of the expedition: Thorndike Stromulus, Adept; Xeno, Veteran; Trombly Escargot, Veteran; Lyra Falsehood, Medium; Leslie Meow, Seer
Summary (by Emily)
- Wake up @ CCP HQ1 and decide to explore overland with 3 interns.2
- Walk south one hex. After 3-4 miles, approach road, choose southwest direction.
- Make camp. Consume all rations. Elephant wakes us up.3 Princess plus 9 guards. We all kneel. Elephants leave, we go back to sleep.
- Follow path in northwest/southwest direction. Pass the mountain of Mordengard.
- Evening and quite tired. Make camp at the fork between Mordengard & Mitochondrion. Ominous howling.
- Wake up and walk to Mitochondrion. The entire city is situated on a bridge over a chasm.
- Buy supplies. Sell some wine.4 Camp outside the city.
- Attempt to walk toward Lower Slark. Go southwest.
- Collect 140 besants.5 Give 10 to each intern. Leaves 22 besants/player.
- Walk northwest along the creek (not a true road!). Walk into mushroom forest.
- Fight conservatives6 and win. Lyra gets 7 more besants, conservative ID card, flag.
- Walk to mysterious dome, it's the Scriptorium. Pry open doors and go inside.
- Inside is boring, empty lobby.7 Steampunk guard vs. Trombly. Trombly runs away.
- Leslie climbs inside the chute that spews books. Finds 144 steampunk robot monks writing books. Leaves, we depart.
- Walk toward road toward Lower Slark. Pass sign for Dorifri Tor (?). Rugged terrain as we approach lower slark. Houses are made of stone. Guard assigns me #920.8 Check into motel.
Deaths: none
Foes Encountered: 8 Conservative Bandits (8 killed), 1 Steam Golem, 144 Cyberscribes.
Treasure Recovered: 140 besants plundered from the merchants, 56 besants & 8 suits of leather armor worth 600 besants looted from the bandits. One conservative party flag.9
Experience Points: 1,596 awarded prior to adjustment for level & attributes.
GM Notes
- There was a bit of confusion about how 1 ration = 7 person-days of food. Should have clarified this better beforehand.
- This session was heavy on improvisation, as my overland map is sparsely keyed and I didn't make time to prep before this session. And it turned out fine overall! All the work I did prepping material months ago made for a really solid base to riff on. I was least confident when they entered the Scriptorium, but I had enough of an idea of what was going on in there to sketch out a rough map & plant some foes during the five minute mid-session break.
- My overland map is probably more sparsely keyed than is ideal, but I don't think anyone had a problem with points of interest taking multiple days to reach. What I think is particularly cool is that it provided an impetus to navigate using paths & landmarks -- for instance, the choice to follow the creek in 10 above.
- In that vein, I really like how much information my pseudo-realistic map contains -- it's really cool to be able to casually mention subtle topography changes (see 15 above) & coherent information about hydrological systems.
The Headquarters of the Concavitant Coalition for Progress, the Centrist bandit faction.↩
Fuschia Gorbachev, Coco Garamond, & Friftar Rhizome.↩
This was the entourage of a Proboscidean Prince, The Silent Appraiser of The Firmament.↩
3 quarts of 1008 vintage Macaulayan wine for 65 besants.↩
This account elides the fact that the 140 besants were extorted from a group of passing merchants. What's more, immediately before being robbed they had provided helpful directions to Lower Slark.↩
i.e. members of the Concavitan Conservative Party, a rival bandit faction.↩
Other players discovered a computer terminal with a password entry prompt, and a card catalogue in which the most recent addition was Prolegomena to The Final Completion of The System of Transcendental Idealism.↩
It is customary in Lower Slark to assign every visitor a number upon arrival.↩
Can be brought in to the Centrist HQ for a monetary prize.↩