TNU Play Report 1: Catching Up On Past Sessions

If you are a player in this game there’s some secrets in these! Don’t look! Eagerly awaiting the day we can talk about em!

This is gonna be a long one. Future entries should be shorter and more focused on a lot of my decision making processes as a DM, on account of planning to write them immediately after a session rather than reconstructing my notes months later. That’s what I get for procrastinating/being busy!

Akela Ayad (she/her) is a wrestler and former revolutionary from Agados, a nation across the sea. While her fellow revolutionaries would succeed in the overthrow of the royal oppressors, Akela was one of many imprisoned by other forces of the Kingdoms of Law and was shipped off to Catage, which is in the process of being brought under lawful hegemony. She has spent five hard years in the Wall of Catage, the gargantuan and ill-understood prison that also cut this kingdom off from the plagues that wiped out its neighbors in centuries past. What she does not know is that the revolution she fought in happened fifty years ago.

The Nanny (she/her) is a faith healer from the impoverished districts of Catage. She drew the attention of the Merchant-Industrialist authorities when enough people flocked to her to constitute a movement. The authorities would have been happy to put her talents to use for their own ends, but when she refused to humor this idea, the fallback plan was a campaign of harassment leading to an eventual raid on her home and the arrest of herself and many followers. Mundane prisons overflow with potential sympathizers to her cause, so she was sent to The Wall. (Regrettably the player of The Nanny had to drop out of play due to scheduling, so she will stop appearing at a certain point. I tend to imagine that she took up residence in one of the settlements the party has reached, which is what I probably will treat as true if she has an opportunity to re-join)

Burhanettin (he/him), “Hant” for short, is an assassin of the Holy Mountain. Raised in an isolated mountain community by a revivalist sect, he eventually traveled to Catage to begin enacting the Mountain’s goals in this turmoil-gripped land, ripe for turning to secret ends. A senior member of his own order, gripped by a crisis of faith, promptly sold him out and had him imprisoned in the Wall. Hant repeatedly escaped into the Wall’s interior, but found it confounding to navigate, never quite reaching an exit.

Almuund (he/him) is a cultist, con artist, and catboy. He arrived in Catage (don’t ask from where!) as an associate of a strange organization deeply concerned with the movements of ghosts and spirits, peddling protective wares and wards of dubious effectiveness (don’t ask why ghosts are suddenly such a problem!). Disaster struck one client too many, he was tracked down, and given the extraordinary strangeness of his work and entire being, a strange and extraordinary prison seemed appropriate: the Wall of Catage.

The Merchant-Industrialists of Catage, being dedicated humanists and desperate to distinguish themselves from the execution-happy royal family they overthrew, have devised an alternative project to deal with their overflowing prisons: small groups of prisoners are selected to be put outside the walls and sent forth into the wilderness together. If they return in two years time, as a full group, it will be taken as proof of resilience of spirit and rehabilitation to cooperation, leading to a potential reevaluation of their suitableness to live in the great city-state. These four were thrown together by this project, given their confiscated goods minus a few things the wardens stole for themselves, and put into the wilderness outside the wall on hex 1014.

One of The Nanny’s starting items was a random hireling, and I rolled up a neutral vagrant named Yasmin (she/her). I conferred with the players and we decided she was an only lightly faithful Nanny-follower who happened to get word her former employer was going to be released and decided to ingratiate herself. The party met her on the trail just outside the gates of the wall, and she set about providing some basic info and rumors about the world: the location and basic vibes of the settlements at 0208 (abandoned city now re-occupied, dominant factions being anarchists, transcendentalists, and marginalized cultists trying to build an earnestly better society. Recently kicked out a lot of reactionary elements after some conflict), 0708 (encampment built around ancient bridge, used for fishing and trading by basically everyone out here), 0807 (another abandoned city re-occupied, dominated by royalist restorationists dreaming of a chance to reinstate the King of Catage), and 0305 (mountain town built by the transcendentalists, who are huge weirdos and some of the only people coming out here on purpose).

The party decided to head for the crossroads and see what’s up from there. Notable events of the trip were encountering what looked to be a case of horse theft by a group of outlaws who glared at them some but did not pursue. While sticking to the road hexes adjacent to 0809, Akela recognized the overgrown hills as being the remains of deliberately constructed fortifications from ages past, and ancient long-destroyed wagons and weapons in such disrepair that they crumbled on touch were found in the tall grass. At night, the sound of gunfire echoed from the direction of 0809, so the party pushed through a sleepless extra night of travel to get to 0708.

In the settlement, the party did some shopping, bartering, and interfering. The Nanny began preaching her work to passers-by, and was approached as a result by a communist soldier separated from the rest of his team of operatives when they fled by boat to this land. He hoped her rhetoric meant she was sympathetic. She was, but not enough to agree to follow him on his quest right away.

Hant encountered another assassin of uncertain allegiance, under cover as a jewelry peddler, and the two began talking in circles at each other. Part of Hant’s ploy involved confronting a thief thinking of robbing the other assassin by pretending to recognize him, and so “Hant’s good friend Jonas” came into being — the thief played along with Hant’s bluff and embraced playacting the name Hant gave them. The other assassin was amused and bemused.

Akela learned about a business opportunity. The only loosely organized “Salvager’s Guild” has made a business of going upriver to dredge up strange and useful objects that can be found there, source unknown. A messenger from upriver found the haul of the year: a waterlogged but seemingly intact and working printing press, the second to be found there. It was estimated that it would take five days to get it back down the river. The gears began turning in Akela’s head about how to turn this information into money — a process still in progress through the last session.

Almuund gambled and talked. He mostly got more details on the nearby settlements, particularly the hostility between 0208 and 0807. He also attracted attention: The Occult-Futurist spy Rubello (he/him) took note of the party in general and him in particular, and wrote a report to be passed off to the next messenger of his faction to stop by.

A thing I’m trying to take seriously on my end during this campaign, which I haven’t always, is how long it takes for information and rumors to spread. Rubello’s spying is an example of this: he is an agent of a group with big goals and lots of power, but any information he has must necessarily get all the way to 1407 to have large scale decisions made about it, leading me to track the speed and direction of a team of couriers doing a circuit of checking on dead drops. As the Occult-Futurists advance, so could the location of the decision making process.

A distraught traveler arrived that night with news that something was blocking the path to The Thicket Collaboration (0208) and also made him lose his donkey and cart. Seeing an opportunity, the party encouraged a “brave” local to venture ahead as bait, and followed along to see what could be gleaned. Brave local walked down the road to 0508, encountered a patch of ornately arranged trees, with moving lights inside, that had grown across the trail (the first proper nightmare the players encountered directly, though they had passed close by several others without knowing) and vanished inside, soon followed by glass shattering sounds and a yell of horror. The players decided to wait for the sun to come up and then go in to look.

Inside, branches with hands offered valuable rings to the party and passed painting frames showing their great desires around the wooded passageways. A glass body that looked like the brave local was found on the floor, shattered. Lizards with human skulls for heads stalked the party, whispering encouragement to mistrust and betray through the branches. Almuund stole the painting depicting a room full of wealth, and Akela was drawn after a painting of a white horse from her childhood memories. She was confronted by a painting of King Runalt Wiegold, whose identity and kingship were supernaturally conveyed to whoever looked at the painting. She was able to enter the painting and confer with the king who offered her the horse in return for luring a particular member of the Thicket Collaboration to him. This person’s identity would be conveyed by a smear of paint Runalt left on Akela’s hand.

After Akela’s escape and a fight with the lizard creatures, the party decided to leave through an exit that would let them continue along the path. Hant collected the clawed hand of one of the lizard creatures for later research.

The party got to the Thicket Collaboration and were welcomed by Coordinator Amaya (she/they), an elderly anarchist whose job is to make sure people arriving are housed promptly. Akela mentioned the name of a revolutionary contact of hers in hopes of getting in touch. Amaya knows the name because said contact was her partner, and now is dead of old age. Amaya is now very suspicious of Akela. Akela also caught the eye of the Coolest Motherfucker In Town, Vashti of the Sandstone Stair (she/her), a communist insurgent cavalry officer from a group operating in the Kingdoms of Law who came across the sea to recruit and train revolutionary allies. Akela is desperate to hang out with her because both of them are ripped as hell and like horses. They agreed to hold some sparring matches in the near future.

The next day Almuund discovered he has a cultist catboy coworker in town: the overambitious and often unlucky Nougat (he/they). Nougat refused to detail exactly how they ended up here, but Almuund has worked with him before and is pretty sure it wasnt of their own accord. It turns out a city mostly run by committed revolutionaries is kind of hostile to a psychopomp pyramid scheme, but Nougat has been carefully building up a reputation as a bumbling harmless weirdo rather than an over-ambitious and ruthless little shit. Almuund helped Nougat buy groceries and introduced them to Akela, magically revealing that they are Runalt’s target.

Hant tried to get info on the lizard creature claw, and generated the first resentment of the game. I rolled “someone becomes your enemy and begins to slander and libel you, trying to ruin your reputation,” and began scheming about who that is. The choice became clear pretty quickly: Hant’s next actions gave me the answer: he did a spider themed spell purification ritual in public, and so the transcendentalist gossip Mr. Guyver (he/him) misinterpreted this as a completely different religious practice and started talking mad shit about how wrongheaded Hant was.

This campaign has necessitated me doing some mild adjusting to resentment for necessarily non law-aligned locations, kind of akin to how Thieves Guild resentment has different criteria. An object from or representitive of chaos wouldnt do much to spook anyone in this town, but an implication of a threat to the stability of their project would certainly ruffle some feathers.

That night Akela sold the party on the ideas of making money off the printing press and also dragging Nougat to Runalt (with the idea that they could pull a fast one if they decided Runalt was too untrustworthy or dangerous). The party set off to the Nightmare woods again, and through loud posturing managed to spook the lizards into not attacking immediately. They found the painting of Runalt and everyone but Almuund went in (it wass decided that the person who knows the most about magic should probably be ready to save everyone else from the Obviously Magical situation they were going into). The lizards realized Almuund was alone outside the painting and started stalking him.

Akela and Hant confronted Runalt and discovered that this painting of Runalt has an incomplete understanding of his own goals. He seemed to know that he had a plan to press Nougat into service in his court, but not why. He also, when pressed by an increasingly delighted-to-get-angry Hant, could answer what he is the king of. He started crying paint thinner as Akela pinned him in a wrestling hold to make sure he couldn’t cause problems. Akela, Almuund, and Nougat fell out of the painting as it was ruined, frightening the lizards away again, and discovered that the ruined painting frame could now open like a door to lead to a new part of the dungeon: a gross basement below the woods where paint thinner pooled like water on the ground.

Poking around the rooms, they discovered the object anchoring the nightmare: a Trash Crown made to look like the crown Runalt had in the painting, worn by the biggest lizard, who had dressed himself up in mockery of Runalt: trash robes, trash throne, and two undead attendants trying to feed him treats and perform entertaining acts.

Almuund turned the undead, while Akela and Hant brawled with the Trash King Lizard. Hant was badly injured and decided to help Nougat carry a box of treasure away rather than risk outright death, so those two fled the dungeon. Luckily Akela is an absolute truck of a character, and she choked out Trash King Lizard, took the Trash Crown anchor, and in a show of contempt decided to burn the trash throne. Paint thinner is very flammable so the party and remaining lizards ended up in a panicked scramble out of the hell inferno Akela had just created.

The anchor was successfully removed from the dungeon, which retracted from the world leaving behind just the horse Akela was promised and the two very confused undead servants that the party never actually killed. A random wilderness encounter placed something on the road near them though: a group of 12 bandits and the elk they were hunting. The bandits reacted, reasonably, with fear and confusion at the vanishing of a patch of woods and the appearance of a horse made of oil paints and start yelling and shooting arrows, so the party booked it off the road into the hills and found a reasonably hidden spot to sleep.

Next day the party decides to head back to the thicket collaboration to drop off their haul — the treasure was mostly in the form of dried aromatic flowers (thank you &&&&&&&&& Treasure by Luke Gearing) and they didn’t want that ruined by rain. I rolled another travel encounter and get exactly a 20 and had to contain my excitement. They became aware of what they thought was a man on a horse following them, a man wearing a huge dark grey cloak that dangles down the horses sides.

Hant decided “fuck this guy” and with a quick bit of sneaking looped behind the Horseman, announcing, “I want to dismount him by slicing his leg.” The complication here was that this guy does not have a leg under there. It’s all one creature pretending to be two so it can spy on humans. Hant rolled real well so I let him try, realize the problem, and bail into the underbrush as the Horseman immediately started trying to sniff him out like a dog. It couldn’t quite do that so it approached the rest of the non hiding party instead and pointedly asked if they had any other travelers with them. They denied having any, and it told them what amounted to “well if you do meet anyone, tell them to be real careful.” It then left.

Party returned to town shaken by the Horseman encounter. Hant in particular was in a bad mood — being the Scariest Most Mysterious Guy is supposed to be his deal, how dare this horse-person-thing put one over on him! Luckily this is when Guyver’s trash talking got noticed. Hant identified this as a chance to 1. use this misapprehension as cover for his actual activities and 2. vent his frustrations, and set out to slander this guy in turn, showing up to do some Good Faith Debate on transcendentalist doctrine. It was in fact a very bad faith debate, where Hant spent big to make sure a bunch of people got very drunk and then insinuated that the shit talker transcendentalist was insulting them, resulting in Guyver having several institutions in town no longer willing to deal with him.

Akela started sparring with Vashti. The two of them also began the process of figuring out how to feed and care for a horse made of paint. People are scared of the weird horse and Akela earns a point of resentment - consequences of which are still in the air.

Almuund and Nougat got in touch with management. Nougat spun up a plan – he thinks that nightmare anchors like the trash crown will let him fuel the right spells to cement his psychopomp services as a necessity to the community, but he needs more, so he wants to basically get his and Almuund’s boss to pay for the anchors and promise of good to come from them to fund getting more. It kind of works — Cashew, as seen as an ominous cat-figure cast by a ritual lantern, agreed that the anchors are worth researching but would only shell out a mere 20 coins to fund looking into the trash crown. He also made sure it was clear that the two cultists knew failures on their part would be scrutinized intensely.

The cult now offers a new service — consultants! For a fee, a member or trusted outsider can speak to an entity skilled in matters pertaining to the movement of souls. You do have to roll to see what one is available though, there’s no guarantee. The party hasnt quite put this together yet, but the consultants are all other psychopomps or similar entities that the catboy cult has driven out of relevancy, given a last chance to (or coerced to) try to assist the world by coming on board the agency as basically an overworked troubleshooting hotline.