TNU Play Report 3: The Sunlit Redoubt

Hant’s player couldn’t attend this session, and so the stars of today’s show are Akela and Almuund.

The fighter and cultist venture into the structure at the base of the tower at 0809, navigating by lamp light as they begin scouring it for signs of habitation — they discover, beneath a plinth that once held a statue, somebody’s stash of expensive cured meats. Little else on the first floor is valuable and it looks like looters have long since scoured the place. Almuund is suspicious of the second floor (it sounds like someone is walking around up there) but very reasonably would prefer Akela stand in front on the way up. The only first floor door still standing is to what looks to be a jail cell, and it’s dry-rotted such that it’s barely an obstacle. Another lose stone inside the cell grabs Akela’s attention, but it turns out to conceal old human bones.

A gunshot comes from upstairs.

Akela takes point as the two move to investigate. They climb the stairs expecting to find the gaping hole in the tower they saw from outside, and instead end up walking into a set of rooms that look identical to the ground floor, but more intact. The full statue stands in this entrance — a knight bearing a shield marked with a setting sun. Shouts and clashing weapons become audible. Another gunshot rings out and Akela follows it to find three figures standing over two prone bodies, one of which clearly has just been shot. Both the prone and standing figures all seem desiccated, mummified. The one with the pistol points it at Akela. Flintlocks don’t reload that fast, but they think they can bluff her into backing off. They are wrong. Akela breaks their skull against the wall.

The other two mummified revenants flee at their leader’s death, and the party cautiously follows towards the sounds of more violence. They find the room with the stairs to the tower again. It is the site of a violent brawl between two forces of revenants, each outfitted in notably mismatched sets of armor, one trying to force its way up the tower and the other trying to hold the stairs. The party skirts the edge of the room to try to discover this floor’s prison cell analogue. Sure enough it is there, guarded by an exhausted revenant. Akela cows him into handing over the keys.

In the cell several prisoners are chained — all revenants, who cheer under the assumption the party is the force taking the tower and will be freeing them. One stands out to the party due to her helmet’s plastic appearance. The party questions her, and learns that she is from Riccamino, but “joined with the villagers here in the border disputes.” The party is unsure what that means but finds a mention of Runalt and “The Duke” to be intriguing. Akela steals the helmet and leaves the furious prisoners chained.

I am running the revenants as being assembled from a wide swathe of cultures and looking the part. I think it was an oversight on my part to not prep a small table of “what sort of armor does x revenant have,” because in the moment of play having to make that call tripped up my line of thought — I probably could have rolled on a human-heavy subsection of my encounter tables as a quick fix.

As Almuund and Akela return to the room with the tower stairs, they see the force holding the stairs triumph and push the invaders out. The commanding officer of the defenders descends to take control of the situation. He holds a massive book that serves as a ledger of soldier’s under his command, which is immediately recognizable as a nightmare anchor.

There are a few calls I have to make after this session:
On one hand, the party split: It’s lucky that Hant climbed into a part of the (very large) nightmare that is far from where Almuund and Akela went, because I have a reasonable timeline of events in the first level to follow when I catch Hant’s player up, so when we re-convene with Hant’s player in attendance I can pretty accurately run the scarier area of the Nightmare for them for an equivalent time, which I think I like more than the other option of uncommented-on dropping-in-and-out for this campaign.
The other call is what to make of this hidden cured meat. The revenants aren’t eating it, so I imagine someone here hid it and plans to come back to it — I’m considering someone from or near the settlement in 0807 may be squirreling supplies away, and I have to decide why and where they are now.