TNU Play Report 9: Cleo

The party says their farewells to Patience, who promises them what small hospitality she can offer if they end up back in these woods. She makes it clear that she cannot offer safety or even comfort, just some small kindness. Hant has been considering the ways that various people’s resentment of their wretched lot in life might be turned to the advantage of his order, and brings up the subject of nightmares. Patience replies: “If I were near one, I would leave.” There is nothing to be gained by remaining in a place with such clear spiritual poison, she thinks.

The party sets off into the swampland, towards the river, to search out the missing printing press.

It is slow going. The journey through 0412 ends up taking a full day of travel. Even with Patience’s advice about what is safe to navigate, the whole experience is a slow wet slog. The party finds a copse of trees with enough dry land to sleep on and settles down for the night.

In the morning they have a visitor. Akela awakens to find a woman in the uniform of Hare House standing nearby, watching the party. She is understandably wary of this intruder, and asks for explanation. The Hare House member replies that she saw the group’s journey through the swamp and thought they could use a seasoned guide. She would be willing to do the job, she says, and get them where they need to go more quickly and safely, and she can cook reasonably well too. All she asks is 50 coins a month and the first opportunity to dress and claim a part of any hunted game or slain creatures. By this time Almuund has awakened and is interested in the offer (he isn’t over fond of the damp swamp), and Hant is pretending to sleep but listening intently.

The allegiances of Hare House are discussed. This person has no qualms about admitting that she remains loyal to the deposed royalty of Catage. Akela unexpectedly is the one to offer up the money. She does not trust this person, and would prefer to have her close by than lurking unseen in the swampland she seems to know better than the party. Should this prove to be an enemy, Akela reasons, she can just kill her to get the money back.

The Hare House member introduces herself as Cleo. She immediately delivers on her promise of expediting travel, so much so that the party suspects some sort of magic involved, especially when they notice small ritualistic gestures she makes as she judges the path forward. The party arrives at the river with plenty of daylight to spare. Cleo is tasked with setting up a campsite, which she does on the northern side of the river before heading off to hunt. Almuund finds a toy boat with a toy bird in it, stuck on a rock along the edge of the river. He keeps it.

The party splits up to do some searching before the sun sets.

Almuund stays on the southern shore of the river and walks east. He sees wreckage from an old ship, but one both different in design and much older than the barges that the salvagers who were retrieving the printing press use. He also notices the chunks of ice bobbing down the river. Seeing a shape in one, he fishes it out. Frozen inside is what appears to be a normal chicken egg. He keeps it.

Hant pretends to walk east on the northern shore, but is really using this as an opportunity to spy on Cleo who he mistrusts. He sees that she treats the campsite with utmost seriousness, securing all food where it would be hard for animals to reach, expertly constructing a fire, choosing the best ground. She also engages in small ritual gestures on the completion of each task. Hant then watches her hunt a duck. She expertly shoots it with a bow before the assassin sees its nest, and begins cleaning it immediately. At the end she uses a bloodstained finger to draw something on a stone before licking her hand clean. When she leaves, Hant investigates. The symbol drawn is a small stylized rabbit. Hant rushes back to camp in order to already be there when Cleo returns.

Akela walks west on the southern shore. She sees ropes across the river where smugglers cross with heavy goods. Only a few miles away from camp she discovers the salvager’s barge, wrecked on a rock, with the printing press sitting at the bottom of the river. Lacking the ability to immediately pull a ton of waterlogged wood and metal ashore, she begins walking back.

When they all return to the campsite, the party eats a meal of roasted duck while discussing how to proceed. Cleo asks what they are looking for exactly, but the group dodges that question while requesting she guide the party to the smugglers at 0213. The party hopes that with their help the press can be lifted from the water. She can do that in a single day, she says. Get some sleep and be ready to leave early in the morning.

Behind the curtain:

Cleo has been following the party ever since Almuund sold the expensive meats to Clancy at the bridge crossroads. Hare House is incredibly intrigued by the existence of catpeople, and Cleo as a very capable tracker was put on the party’s tail. This opportunity to get closer and make a quick buck in the process is welcomed. The party has already noticed that Cleo seems to have some consternation about Almuund, but have chalked that up to the usual surprise about unexpected catboys in a human-centric world rather than a specific freak hangup about predator animals as creatures to be ritualistically defeated and dominated. I’ve decided that Cleo is who killed the King’s Dogs in the previous play report.

The Occult-Futurist scouts who got word from Rubello are a mere day away from their grand warship, the Molars of Leviathan (named for this Wayne Barlow painting I like). It wont be long til an expedition sets forth based on Akela’s false information.

RUNALT

He’s going to get a proper post at some point but for now it’s worth doing a smaller explanation, as the calendar reaches the end of the month in the game.

Runalt lives beneath 0506. In response to human presence, he has begun to enact a plan to return to power. Every month, his undying interred servants carry one of his many portraits into the world and plant it to bloom into a grove of nightmare, through which he attempts to bring more victims under his sway through offering them paintings of what they desire most, implicitly promising that they will become real. I use the wandering rules in my home hexcrawl to see where the servants end up. The dull red line above is the first one that the party destroyed, and the brighter line is one is a new nightmare that I rolled the location of, though it wont actually exist for about one ingame week.

I would like to shout out The Thawing Kingdom by Rowan A for its waterlogged item charts (from which came the boat toy, frozen egg, and sunken ship piece), and for generally having a lot of ideas I’m borrowing from in this campaign.