Mediums and Messages

Eyes Unclouded - Session 12

Kawase Hasui. Detail from Cryptomeria Avenue, Nikko. 1930.

These are the records of a lightly modified game of Cairn 2e that I am playing with an in-person group. I've expanded Eyes Unclouded, a now out of print collection of Studio Ghibli themed 5e adventures, into a more open-ended sandbox. You can find our last session here. I'll try to keep these spoiler free, so enjoy!

Asking Questions

This week our dramatis personae were:

The party wrapped up their business at the Verdurous Court and prepared to head out towards the Heart of the Woods. Before they left, they made a few stops.

First, they checked in with Anais, the fastidious conjurer who was busily setting his study back in order. After helping him tidy up a little, they asked if he would be able to teleport the party directly towards their destination.

Anais, flinching, explained that teleportation was a tricky business as the object teleported arrive with a velocity reflecting the distance it had just travelled in a fraction of a second. It was safer to teleport inanimate objects and easier to pull something from somewhere to him than vice versa. That said, he agreed to look out for a signal if they wanted to send something back to the Verdurous Court in a hurry.

Second, they went to speak with the plants of the Blue Woods. September cast Speak with Plants and translated for the party. By pinging the forests' mycelial network, they were able to locate two places:

It turns out Ismene could cast Speak with Plants too, so the party was able to exchange a few messages albeit slowly and imprecisely. She was apparently helping some trolls and requested the party bring medical supplies and another court wizard, Ophiane.

Ophiane still has an axe to grind with the party. They had attempted to intimidate her and then had embarrassed her in front of Aviquin. The party found her bending a brass bridge in the center of the tower to make a traversable path. They asked if she would answer Ismene's call.

The evoker reluctantly agreed, but she would not travel with the party. She knew of two paths that wound towards the area they described - one passed an old cottage and the other, a ruined tower. The party chose to take the former, so Ophiane set out along the latter.

Setting Out

The next morning, the party led Sir Horsius (and presumably, the other absent party members) down into the basement and out through the hole in the foundation left by the retreating roots.

For the first time, they were travelling through the Blue Woods proper. The forest was dense with thick pines and tangling brambles, but seemed natural enough. Only an occasional duplicate tree, shifted a few feet from an exact copy of itself, signaled that anything was amiss. They travelled along deer paths and hopped from clearing to clearing. September and Madrigal scouted ahead while Sir Percius and Flame brought up the rear.

In the late afternoon, the weather took a sudden turn for the worse. Heavy rain poured down and thunder rolled over head. Only Madrigal was dry in her fancy silk cloak. The party pressed on as best they could, but eventually had to make camp. September, trained in druidic meteorology, knew that such a fierce storm would blow itself out soon enough. The party decided to settle where they were, a few hundred feet from the next clearing, rather than pressing on towards the unknown.

As evening turned to night, the party arranged two watches. Flame and September took the first, but didn't notice anything concerning. Madrigal and Sir Percius kept the second. It was well past midnight when they heard a distant creak of wood, followed by the sound of tumbling earth from the direction of the clearing.

Madrigal went off to check it out while Sir Percius lingered behind ready to rush to her aid. She approached the edge of the nearby clearing. In its center was a small wooden cottage, old but not ancient by any means. It was surrounded by deep furrows, as if the ground had recently been tilled. There was no sign of smoke, light, or any movement. The duo decided not to wake their fellow party members. They waited and listened for more information. Madrigal heard a faint, metallic sound - like someone setting down a kitchen knife - but that was all.

The Crossing

When the party awoke, the forest was wreathed with mist. They considered next steps and eventually decided to investigate the clearing rather than move laboriously around it.

September spoke with some of the nearby trees. They weren't immensely helpful, not being able to see, but they shared a few details:

The party proposed a few theories, ranging from spiders to the tower standing up on giant chicken legs, to a witch and her attendants.

September decided to brave the crossing, climbing a tree and gliding from one side of the clearing to a next. As they flew, they saw huge gouges in the ground that radiated from the cottage. They landed safely on the other side.

Flame went next. The fire spirit tied a rope around their waste and passed the other end to Sir Percius before stomping out into the clearing. As soon as the spirit was a dozen feet into the clearing, the entire cottage angled back as an enormous trapdoor spider sprung out!

As the spider scrabbled forward, it snipped with pincer-like forelimbs. It was 30' across with a plated, central body the size of an ox. Flame managed to stagger back to the rest of the party unscathed.

September cast Speak with Animals and yelled for the spider to stop. She said the party members were poisonous, sharp, and wouldn't make good food. The spider considered this and, against all odds, listened. "Fine," it rumbled, "then bring me something else to eat." It moved to block the rest of the party's passage.

Flame and Sir Percius tried their best to look intimidating, but only the fire spirit was able to bare-face past. The spider extended one scythe-like leg to block the knight before he could push by. Flame began to sneak past to set the spider's cottage on fire, but didn't make it before Sir Percius drew his sword and moved to strike.

Madrigal was faster though. The halfling (for the first time!) transformed into a small bear and threw herself onto the spider's face. It reared back, distracted and blinded. It managed to throw her clear, but not before Flame and Sir Percius struck.

Flame erupted from the automaton as a torrent of fire, igniting the spider and scorching its armored carapace. Sir Percius stabbed at the creature's vulnerable eyes and it squealed as the blow rang true.

In the meantime, September had called on the surrounding forest for aid. The old growth here resented the cleared land around the cottage and was eager, if slow, to help. The trees sent slow tangling vines to ensnare the spider.

September, for their part, transformed into a serpent. Just as the spider began to retreat back into its hole, the vines snagged it and the druid-snake struck, finishing it off with a single bite.

Picking Over the Wreckage

Flame, still blazing bright, began the work of cremating the giant spider's remains, while the rest of the party searched the cottage. They didn't find much of note here: just old, old furniture that looked like it has been tumbled and smashed by years on top of the spider's hatch. Based on their best guess, it looked like it might be hundreds of years old, but not thousands like the yam-shaped ruins they had encountered before.

Next the party decided to check out the compartment below. With the lid propped by one of the spider's limbs, Madrigal and September were able to crawl inside. In the dark, they found a horrible tangle of animal bones. Most were deer and other forest creatures, but one relatively intact set belonged to a human in rusty chainmail. At their hip, in a scabbard that crumbled at the touch, was a polished silver shortsword.

The party brought it back to the surface to investigate. Flame could tell it was enchanted and with a lick could say it had some sort of "false fire" to it - a flame that burns cold. No one complained as Sir Percius volunteered to hold onto it.

GM Notes

It's nice, at long last, for the party to be tromping through the forest. I had prepped all these micro-locations and sprinkled them across the forest map during my initial prep, but the party jumped directly into teleporting around into the "spirit world" side of the setting. I am using DIY & Dragons Obvious / Hidden / Secret format and it worked quite well here. I was a little bit under-prepped for closely describing what was in the spider's "horde" but otherwise felt like I had enough to easily run the session with just three lines of text for the location.

This spider was no joke - 16 HP, 2 armor, d10 damage, and multiple actions per turn (with the caveat that only one of those could be an attack). If it had gotten a turn to strike someone might have gotten seriously hurt. It was the right call (I think) for the party to blow through resources like transformations or Flame's burn bright ability that will leave them exhausted for the remainder of the adventuring day.

That does put an interesting question to the party. I have stressed often that the setting is ticking away in the background - factions are moving and no doubt making the situation more complicated if not exactly worse. That sets a nice tension here. Do they press on with the remainder of the day or rest and recuperate? What happens if the next place they end up has another giant spider?

#Cairn #Eyes Unclouded #session reports