the matter of norfydd, part four
This session was a fun one, but it began to really show what we most like and what we most dislike about Mythic Bastionland!
First off: we decided on a short time skip of a couple of weeks. This isn't just a decision that we made on our own - the game actively prompts you to think about this, which I think is great.
At the end of each session, or during a natural break in their journey, the group decides how much time will reasonably pass:
• None: Pick up where you left off.
• Weeks: Continue on to the next significant seasonal event.
• Months: Move to the next Season.
• Years: Begin a new Age in Spring.
There's then also a table you can roll on for the passage of time, if you want to let fate decide. It also has "downtime" prompts that better and worsen things - I especially like the "Unresolved Situations" table. This is a small thing, but I think it does a great job of prompting the GM to think about the game in the sort of episodic way that Arthurian legends are arranged in.
So! It's a couple of weeks later, and the company of knights have traveled to the supposedly-haunted coast on the west coast of Norfydd in search of the Damned Seer, who they have heard is in the area. Matilda's player is now playing Squire Lumpe, who naturally seeks to become a knight himself, as all squires do.
Along the way, in the dunes, they encounter the first Omen of a new Myth:
A joyous farmer skips and sings, leading an ox made entirely of gold. She claims she wished for the ox after drinking from a mysterious pool. Hasn’t got much of a plan for what to do with the ox.
The farmer, Dolm, couldn't find the pool again, and told the knights to let her know if they found it themselves. She and the ox - a living, breathing creature of gold - were a fun juxtaposition to the bleak beach, which had only a few fishers who kept to themselves. The beach was windy, and seemed to have howls of pain on the wind, which gave the coast its haunted reputation.
Lumpe spotted a campfire on a nearby island, and Aluna bartered with a fisherman for use of his boat in exchange for their steeds as collateral. Goyon remained ashore, and the rest set out for the island to investigate.
Here we ran into one of the moments in Bastionland that makes me really furrow my brow. I wanted a dice roll here, since taking a boat out to sea in unknown water that has sharp rocks in it is a fun moment for the knights to try and prove themselves. But as we've alluded to before, the knights do not have good stats.
This could have been a Luck Roll (a mechanic I forgot about because it's on the Refereeing page and not the Basic Rules page) but I instead had all three players roll, and said they needed 2 successes out of 3 to arrive safely. They could even pick which Virtue they were rolling against, so long as they could justify how they were doing it.
Even with this, all three of them failed. Which in and of itself isn't bad, except that when you look at the stats involved, this was probably what was going to happen, and there's very little the players could have done to either push their luck or turn things around.
Now, the game does say:
Failure means negative consequences, not always a failed action.
... and I followed this by saying they arrived at the island, but their boat was busted along the way and taking on water pretty badly. But still - rolling a "Save" and failing doesn't feel like "getting a mixed success" in Blades, either logically or emotionally. If I'm "Saving" against something, it feels like I'm trying to resist a consequence, and I either succeed or fail. And it's not fun to feel like you're failing whenever you roll dice!
So. Stranded on the island, Burgith declared that she would repair the boat, and sent the rest in search of the fire they had seen from the shore.
The fire turned out to be Karlov, the Damned Seer that they sought: bound to a pole, burning forever like some sort of immolated Prometheus. Aluna tried to knock him into the sand to put him out, but to no avail - the post was well-entrenched in the sand. I described him as looking like Ignis from Planescape Torment.
Karlov gave a task to Lumpe, who would be knighted: An abbey, near the coast, had within it a great seal which held a mighty force of some kind prisoner. In spite of this, the Seer decreed that it must be set free for the good of the kingdom, and charged Lumpe with shattering the seal. He agreed.
While this went on, Burgith hunting for scrap wood with which to repair the boat, and in doing so found the second omen:
An elderly man, crying out for help. Claims that a curse has left him old, previously a healthy young hunter.
This poor fellow, Funkirk, claimed he'd found the pool on this island, rather than ashore. His presence helped establish a couple of different things: that the Pool moves, that the Pool can give blessings AND curses, and that someone else was here on the island with a boat that the knights could use to get back to shore (phew!)
Once the group reunited and Burgith was properly introduced to the Seer, Aluna asked for further detail on how to reverse the curse of the Pool. For this knowledge, Karlov extracted a further guarantee from her: that she would lay claim and rule a Holding within Norfydd, so that the realm might be led by knights of honor. (The one holding we've been to, remember, was ruled by a Seer that didn't seem to have anyone else's interests at heart.) In so doing, Aluna learned that the blood of a great whale could reverse the Pool's magic.
That night, on Lumpe duty (I meant to write "on guard duty" but "on Lumpe duty" is quite good), Lumpe heard a man's beautiful voice, and discovered that it was a seal, singing to the moon in some unknown language. Thinking of the need for whale bait, he considered clubbing it, but held off for love of the creature's beauty. He woke the next morning in the place where he listened to its song.
Making their way back, the company found that the fisher had taken their horses, assuming (perhaps rightly) that the knights would never return. Goyon had fallen asleep. Funkirk recognized the fisher described as Darby, and said he would direct the knights to their village of Howe, provided he was carried, as he could not make the journey in his withered form.
At Howe - a village in the marsh north of the beach - it was discovered that Funkirk was married to none other than Dolm, the farmer with the ox!
The knights retrieved their steeds and pack animals, and that's where we ended for the session. The abbey is on the other side of the marsh, so we expect to head that way next time.