Mediums and Messages

Eyes Unclouded - Session 17

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!

On the Road to Mal-Aqat

This session, the party was composed of:

We rejoin the party as they ride on the backs of their troll allies headed west. The land began to change as they pressed on. Wet, sucking ground gave way to hills cut by ancient glaciers.

Nanaki and Ambrose were experimenting with the orb-and-vines they recovered from the clearing. When the vine touched the mirror, it sent a signal to the orb, which pulsed. When it touched Ambrose, it pulsed again, but it also began draining his life force, leaving him winded and listless.

They arrived around nightfall. From a wooded rise, they saw the sprawling ruin of Mal-Aqat, spread laterally across the forest like a toppled layer cake. Orrlock shared that the city "came down" in their parents' generation, which the party decided may have been around a thousand years ago.

With the darkness rapidly closing in, the party decided to make camp and begin exploring in the morning. The trolls, who only sleep recreationally, agreed to keep watch.

Pre-Recon

After a restful sleep under the soothing influence of the Nap Stone, the party woke around dawn. The trolls relayed that the night was quiet, but that they saw light and smoke emanating from a relatively intact tower in the north of the ruins.

Before they set out, September cast Speak with Plants and questioned a nearby tree about what lived within the ruins. The tree reported many inhabitants: insects, gulls, bats, mushrooms, stone men, a metal man, and a bear. At September's request, it gave the bear's exact location, a den in a half-toppled structure along the southern edge of the ruins.

While this happened, Nanaki snuck ahead to scout the nearest entrance. Through two looming arches, they found a hall filled with stone automata, slumped in nooks along the walls and tangled with bundles of silver cable. Metal beams hung overhead, bristling with hooks and chains. Nanaki decided not to linger and quietly rejoined the party.

Flame asked Ismene if she could read the Mal-Aqat script. The court wizard confirmed that she could, but asked why Flame wanted to know. Flame revealed that the language could be used to program the Mal-Aqat automata. Ismene found this very interesting.

The Raised Orchard

The party briefly considered seeking out the bear, possibly with Madrigal transforming to make a good first impression, but eventually decided to save that for later. They needed to find the teleportation chamber urgently, and Flame asserted the best bet for that was in the center of the ruins.

Instead, they began working their way around the ruins clockwise, looking for an entry point. Soon, they encountered a raised orchard, neat rows of trees sprouting from a two story tall ceramic structure. Madrigal and September climbed up to get a better look and found citrus trees and carefully mown grass.

Looking down, they noticed another structure. The roof of a Mal-Aqat building, with its signature tapered knob, was submerged in the undergrowth and fallen leaves just nearby.

After some persuasion, Ophiane agreed to lift the party up using a conjured energy hand. Flame threw down a rope so she could follow. The wizards agreed to join the party in exploring the ruins. The trolls, too large to navigate this space, said they would wait behind for a day before continuing on their way.

The Catfish Door

Across the orchard was a human-scale archway leading into an open chamber. The party entered, finding themselves in a ruined agora. Long picked over wooden stools leaned against the walls, supported by tangles of vines. The space was dimly lit, light piercing down from cracks in the ceiling.

To the left, an archway opened into a ruined hallway that abruptly ended in a stone wall. It seemed sloped, suggesting this was an exterior wall of another building that had collapsed here and that it might be climbable. To the right, another passage led into the darkness. A door carved in the shape of a catfish's open mouth was faintly visible.

Huge footprints tracked through the dust and debris, heading from the garden and out toward the catfish door.

The party followed, briefly splitting their efforts. Nanaki, Ambrose, Madrigal, and September investigated the room beyond the fish door, emerging into a courtyard and then a banquet hall strewn with discarded silver. Two amphorae stood upright in wire holders on a long, low table.

Sir Percius, Flame, and the two wizards followed the footprints north, passing the door and entering a large, tower-like structure filled with collapsed stone. A hole in the ceiling revealed a second story, a rope dangling down from above. The footprints passed around the rubble and out an archway on the far side, taking a left up a ramp on the exterior of this building. After a brief look, they decided to backtrack and regroup.

Company?

Back in the banquet hall, Nanaki inspected the amphorae and found them filled with sour wine. They were not remarkable except that they were upright and full. At Ambrose's suggestion, the party began gathering the scattered silver, loading it into the mountebank's cart.

As they collected the last of the silver, the sound of booted footsteps echoed nearby. The party quickly hid, except for Sir Percius, who had just stepped into the room.

He moved forward to greet the newcomer and found himself facing a figure in familiar armor, their head encased in a high, frog-eyed helmet.

"Hark!" the figure called out in a nasally voice. "Who goes there?"

GM Notes

I'm writing this more than a week after the fact, based on a hasty scrawl of notes, so some details might be a bit murkier than usual.

This was not my best GMing. In particular, I immediately made a poor call. In the session before, Ambrose and Nanaki were playing with the orb ensemble. Between sessions, I realized that this absolutely would be harmful to a living being and that I was leaving out relevant information about the artifact. This session, I started by having Ambrose take damage, describing the experience of having the artifact drain their life force into the orb. In retrospect, I should have rewound the clock, re-telegraphed the danger, and offered more opportunities to safely investigate.

For some reason, I opted to prep this whole site as a single, two-column sheet at something like 6 point font. For next session, I plan to have a slightly larger version, with a little more detail on the way different spaces are interconnected.

This dungeon is stocked using the B/X procedures. Somehow, the party managed to cut through almost exclusively "empty" rooms in rapid succession. This felt like it produced decent suspense, but maybe it would have been nice to have a little more interaction. Notably, they did not really stop to investigate any of these spaces more than a cursory glance either.

Session two with an Underclock. That system is doing work with this group. We only play for about two hours at a time, which is just enough time to get one encounter if they are lucky, maybe two if they are not. It feels like it adds a nice sense of urgency to the proceedings without obliterating their agency.

#Cairn #Eyes Unclouded #session reports