Beyond the GLoG - Session 1-3
Eugène Ciceri. Design for a Stage Set. 1830-90.
A couple weeks ago, our micro-campaign group started playing Beyond the Wall, a much recommended old school RPG by Flatland Games. While folks enjoyed the game's detailed character creation and the setting that emerged as its result, the rest of the system left us a little cold. Nothing about the rules really leveraged all those juicy details we had cooked up.
Rather than forging ahead with a system that no one was particularly excited about, we decided to switch over to a GLoGhack designed to support a quick conversion of our BtW characters and preserving the systems satisfyingly detailed magic system. This switch happened to align with a slight easing up of my work schedule, so we're jumping into this campaign's session reports midstream. I'll try to get you caught up.
The Story So Far
The characters are residents of the small village of Swanholm. Many are members of House Setimir, the noble family that has ruled over the village and its surrounding environs for generations. The village lately has been plagued by ill omens - vultures circle in the sky, the dead walk, and ghostly horses run through the streets at night.
The worst of it all was the unexplained death of Mergen Setimir, patriarch of the house. We joined the players, many of whom are blood relatives of the great man, in an ancient mausoleum where the notables of Swanholm had gathered for his funeral ceremony.
Just as the ceremony started, the funerary slab upended, revealing a staircase into the depthbs below and a squad of skeletons decked in antique arms and armor. One pressed a speaking horn to its absent lips and bellowed:
Hear ye, hear ye! Artur Viera Setimir claims his rightful throne! Return to your homes and await his arrival!
A panic broke out and then a melee. Soon only the party were left standing. In the confusion, Master Miller, the village alderman (and soon-to-be father in law to one of the player characters) had been thrown down the stairs to an uncertain fate.
Bravely, the party descended into the depths, following a flight of winding stairs down to a small ossuary where the alderman lay crumpled. He was flanked by two fiery hounds, creatures of smoldering ash that seemed deeply asleep. The party stealthily extracted Miller and carried him back to the surface, where they rested, recovered, and planned their next steps.
The next morning, the party delved back into the depths to end the skeletal threat and to search for answers - who was this Artur Viera Setimir? They overcame the hounds, passed through an abandoned feasting hall, and destroyed a table to build a bridge across a trapped hallway. They used that trap to crush an enormous purple centipede like creature.
Beyond the trap they found a T-junction. To the left, a room with a large fountain. To the right, a short hallway then a glimmering heap of silver in the gloom. They chose to go left first.
The Fountain Room
The following characters joined the delve:
- Nagina Setimir - gifted dilettante, fifth in line to the Setimir seat
- Sabine Setimir - apprentice court sorcerer, Nagina's older step-sister
- Uwe Manfred Deitmar - self-taught mage, soon to be married into the Miller family
- Rold von Dietmar - would-be knight, newly elevated by the late Mergen Setimir
This large room was roughly square except for a semicircular protrusion to the south. A huge fountain streamed from the wall here, splitting into two waterfalls that poured around a stairwell descending down into the earth. The fountain was decorated with figurative tableaus, each depicting a step in a typical funeral - a public viewing, then a feast, then a private ceremony where priests tend to the body, then interment in a crypt.
In the east wall was a small font, embedded in the wall. Over the fountain was a text in classical (which only the Setimirs in the party could read):
THE KING WHO TAMES THE RIVERS
Nagina taste-tested the fountain water, identifying it as holy water by its unctuous texture and fragrant smell. The party dutifully dipped there weapons, except for Uwe who stayed well clear.
The Sarcophagus Room
Deciding to investigate west, the party followed the southern of the two tunnels that headed in that direction. Soon they came to the treasure room they had glimpsed from the T-junction to the north. A stone sarcophagus sat on a raised platform sealed with dry clay. To the left was a dented silver uwer embossed with the Setimir coat of arms. To the right was a chest seemingly overflowing with silver coins.
Sabine and Nagina tried to combine two illusion spells - sound and image - to scare off the weasel. Both spells misfired, however, and the result was a cacophonous roar that shook the complex. This did scare off the weasel, but it also caused a gout of bats to swarm forth from the stairwell below. Soon visibility dropped to ten feet as panicked creatures filled the air, shrieking and slapping into one another.
The bats eventually dissipated, even as the party ineffectually tried to clear them faster. Rold narrowly avoided being pushed onto the crushing trap they had used to slay the the giant centipede-like creature.
The party checked the coffer of coins, quickly realizing that only the topmost shelf was filled with a thin layer of 140 silver pieces. Nagina determined that the the thing was spring-loaded and used her dagger to safely turn aside four flares that would have blinded and singed anyone who tried to search for a secret compartment.
The party decided to leave the ewer to move later, but Uwe quietly cut off a small silver chunk with his pocket knife. They decided not to tamper with the sealed sarcophagus and headed back to the fountain room.
The Font
As they entered, Rold had an idea. He rushed back to grab the ewer, filled it with holy water from the fountain, then upended it into the font in the west wall of the fountain room. Rather than filling the basin, the water seemed to disappear into the stone. Then the font began to move, grinding into the floor to reveal a narrow hidden passage!
The passage turned sharply left just ten feet ahead. Rold set aside his lance and pulled a dagger to lead the way, followed by Nagina, then Uwe, then Sabine at the rear.
Turning the corner, the party was unnerved to find the tunnel lined with skeletons. Rold inspected one closely, revealing that each was wired to the wall but seemingly not connected to any mechanism.
They squeezed past and traveled some sixty feet in the dark before arriving at a wall of skulls blocking their path. The skulls were all turned away from the party. Uwe squeezed forward to pull a skull out, revealing a window into the entrance room where the two hounds had once lain!
From the back of the party, Sabine heard a creaking sound in the darkness. Turning and brandishing her lamp she saw a single skeleton with a rusty sword sneaking up on them. Behind it another skeleton peered around the corner.
The Skirmish
Sabine immediately cast a spell - a blast of bright light that blinds the two skeletons - then fell back to join her comrades.
Rold tried to rush past the other party members. Nagina threw herself aside but Uwe wasn't fast enough and the two became wedged in the narrow passage. Nagina knocked over the skulls to clear an exit then rushed back to help untangle the duo. Sabine cast another spell, this time producing an illusory wall to cover for them.
The illusion bought them enough time to get unstuck. The party fell back to the northern end of the tunnel, taking up a defensive position where the skeletons would only be able to approach one at a time. Nagina handed Rold the Setimir family sword, a weapon he held aloft with reverence.
Soon a curious skeleton pressed through the false wall. Nagina unslung her bow and loosed an arrow at the thing, but it glanced off harmlessly. It charged forwards, followed closely by two more. Rold struck the first with a well-time blow and it exploded in white light - the holy water lending the strike ruinous force. The two behind managed to get tangled up in one another. Rold destroyed them as well with a second slash.
Feeling confident, the party pushed back into the tunnel to track down the blinded skeletons from before. Rold lead the way, emerging back into the fountain room and quickly getting stabbed for his efforts. Two more skeletons lay in ambush here. The blinded skeletons clung to the wall to the north.
Rold and Nagina surged forward with holy water, Rold splashing some from the fountain and Nagina spraying it from a pre-prepared waterskin. Soon only the incapacitated skeletons remained.
The Interrogation
Blinded and confused, the two skeletons awaited their fate. Uwe stepped forward and greeted them in the language of the dead. He gestured at the fountain, asking if these were the rivers the King had tamed. Perplexed, the skeletons asked if surface dwellers don't understand what art was. This was a representation of those rivers, they explained slowly.
After much back and forth, the party discovered that Artur Viera Setimir was interred a few layers below. They also found out that there was an underground river at the bottom of the stairs (a real one, not art) to the right. The tomb was somewhere down the path to the left.
The party debated what to do with their prisoners. Nagina produced a rope and started tying them up, but Sabine grabbed the ewer and matter-of-factly detonated them with holy water. That done, the party decided to re-dip their weapons and head back to the surface to rest and recuperate. The trip back was uneventful.
On the Surface
Back on the surface, the party met Dieter and Noah, the villagers Rold had pressed into guard duty. They ask about all the bats that had emerged an hour ago and Rold tipped them a silver piece each. Sabine gives them the ewer full of holy water to use against future skeletons.
As the party steps out of the mausoleum, the sun burns any remaining water off their weapons. The stuff is light-sensitive.
Their delve only lasting a couple hours, the party had an afternoon to kill before nightfall.
Rold went to oversee the construction of his personal manor. He realized that with Mergen Setimir dead, he'd need to pay the laborers. His major domo, Henrika Falk, gave him some minor details to settle so he would feel involved.
Nagina snuck back to the family manor, which had previously been barred against all comers. Entering via an unused garden path, she encountered her mother, Marthe Setimir. Lady Setimir chided her daughter for going missing, saying that she shouldn't consort with peasants or wander off during a succession crisis. Nagina retorts that she is far from the throne, but Marthe cryptically tells her not to be so sure. Rechtold Setimir, the true heir, is still abroad and messengers they have sent to retrieve him have disappeared. Despite it all, Marthe approved of Nagina's progress in dealing with the undead.
Sabine retreated to her former mentor's tower to research Artur Viera Setimir. In the court sorcerer's library, she found reference to him as a sort of warrior king from an ancient era - far enough back to maybe be as much a raider as a nobleman. He was killed in some conflict with the northmen and returned to Swanholm for burial.
Uwe went to the market and managed to scare up some blackpowder, fishing wire, and other basic trapping components. He inquired after spellbooks, but such things were too rare to be in common circulation.
Re-equipped and refreshed, the party prepared for another delve.
GM Notes
Long post since we're catching up on three sessions worth of action! Plus I feel like I've indulged a little in the blow-by-blow of the skeleton combat.
It's remarkable how much the switch to GLoG has helped the game along. For being not so different systems, this session felt positively spritely. I'm reminded of Skerples' post from just the other day - "The GLOG is like a handbuilt hot rod. It does its job well, but is more of a heap of loosely linked hopes than a practical everyday vehicle. But you built it yourself and you know what it can do... what will make the crankcase turn into a cloud of tinsel and smoke." Even a bit of uncertainty or friction around basic rules resolution with another system can multiply out to really drag down a session.
Merging BtW character creation with GLoG templates worked really well. The playbooks created these characters with idiosyncratic, non-optimized stats, bespoke lists of spells, and very specific skills (trapping, folklore, etc.). Those provided excellent color to custom but still relatively stock fighter-y, thief-y, and wizard-y classes. We did a little tinkering at the start of the session to tailor the fit just right, but the conversion process was pretty painless.
In terms of dungeon design / stocking, I note a couple things I think have been working. First, I'm being pretty detailed with corridor spaces in terms of width, decoration, and whatnot. Second, I'm indulging myself a little bit in going overboard with obvious traps - so obvious that its almost become a running gag, but paired with obvious intrigue or immediate treasure value. Third, I'm really trying to attend to noise. I rolled a lot of extra encounter dice this session - the miscast spell, each round the bats swarmed, and when the secret passage ground its way open. That kept what was otherwise a pretty basic set of static encounters feeling dynamic and interesting.
The players inquired about the fountain towards the end of the session in a way that suggested they have plans for near infinite supply of holy water. I'm excited to see what they get up to with it. Given the prevalence of undead here, it'll probably be a powerful boon for them, but I'm hoping that distance, time pressures, and other concerns will prevent them from just lurking around it all the time.