Mediums and Messages

Eyes Unclouded - Session 20

Last week we picked up again with our Studio Ghibli-inspired Cairn 2e campaign. You can find our last session here.

Rapid Excavation

This session, the party was composed of:

One can only imagine Nanaki was there, but just opted to be invisible, and September was curled away in a pouch somewhere. The party was accompanied by Sir Egerain and Ismene of the Verdurous Court.

We rejoin the party at the center of a huge dome. Some 100' above them, Ophiane retracted the rope they had used to descend into the ruins of Mal-Aqat. The dome was striped with molded stone benches in orderly rows. One quadrant was home to a cordoned-off area full of brass barrels. Raised pathways extended from the center of the room to the north, west, and south.

Most pressingly, a reciprocating whirr could be heard approaching from the south of the chamber. The party quickly scrambled over rows of seats to the northeast, toward a partially collapsed tunnel September had just scouted.

The tunnel itself was all but blocked by crumpled slabs of masonry and a fine scattering of mosaic tiles. Sir Percius glanced back and saw five hovering blue lights enter the dome to the south. Ambrose noted that they were flying in an organized search pattern.

With little time to spare, Madrigal and Flame set to work making a hole in the rubble. Madrigal figured it was more a matter of shifting the right stone than just smashing through. With a little luck and the help of Flame's hydraulic limbs, they managed to punch through into the teleporter room beyond.

In Eleutheria

While Nanaki checked on the teleporter, Sir Egerain voiced his confusion. Hadn't the party just agreed to join him in his quest to find the immovable spear in the ruins below? The party hemmed and hawed a little bit, but ultimately declared that the stakes of their quest were more pressing. They offered to bring the knight along, but he refused, opting to stay behind in the ruins. He seemed rather disappointed.

Nanaki rotated the device in the center of the room, and the room shifted subtly. Outside, strange orange trees could be seen against blue leaves. They were out of Mal-Aqat and back in Eleutheria.

The party made their way briskly through the ornamental gardens (noticeably less wasp-filled than their last visit) and came to the entry gate. There they were greeted by the familiar guards, Jaspern the magpie and Viora the toad. They asked to be taken to the Cat King, but the guards just looked at one another with consternation. "Sure, but, well, he's entered something of a... long season."

At the Cat King's court, the guards threw open the doors to the banquet hall. There the party saw some indeterminate segment of the Cat King's torso, stretched laterally through the hall before winding up the spiral stairs to a higher floor. If they wanted to meet with him, they'd need to climb.

After some debate about whether it would be rude to intrude, Ambrose asked Jaspern to fly a rope up to the roof, and the party climbed up behind him, arriving outside of a glass solarium. Inside was the Cat King's huge napping head, with long arms extended out a door to the side. The party quietly let themselves in.

Audience with the Cat King

After gently rousing the King from his slumber, the party asked him for advice about their current predicament. They showed him the dull bark orb and told him about the clearing at the heart of the corruption spreading through the Blue Woods. They asked for any information on the story of Eirnos and Alfiann or the wolf spirit Fyrir.

The Cat King was extremely bemused by their situation. A quick summary of his thoughts includes:

Eirnos and Alfiann were married. They seemed to have been a very happy couple, though the Cat King was (rudely) not invited to the wedding. Eirnos died when he gave his heart to restore Alfiann. This was figurative and literal. The Cat King did not know Alfiann's whereabouts afterward.

Fyrir detested humans, seeing them as the greatest threat to the Blue Woods. While she would not willfully cause harm to the forest, she would absolutely turn an existing catastrophe against them. On a similar note, Fyrir was unlikely to greet the party warmly, but might be willing to meet with them if they positioned themselves as a dagger against Wealdstone.

The orb was something like the distillation of a great spirit's power, or the remnant left when you boil away everything else about them. The Cat King seemed ambivalent about it, but suggested either destroying it under safe conditions or keeping it somewhere secure. He noted a strange similarity to the ooze that plagued the Blue Woods. If the orb was a distillation, the ooze could be some other alchemical byproduct or runoff. He mentioned his court wizard, Merlina, who was running some experiments.

The party learned a few details of the Cat King's earlier life. He was once a domestic house cat in Wealdstone who had escaped into the woods. There he was taken under the wing of a previous great spirit and groomed to assume his current role. How a new creature becomes a great spirit is mysterious, but it can take an entire lifespan for it to happen.

Their audience concluded, the Cat King allowed Ambrose one brief pet of his enormous frame before ushering them out of his private study. The party clambered down to ground level and discussed meeting with Merlina before potentially setting out to find Fyrir and get her side of the story.

GM Notes

Another session largely structured around a little bit of exploration followed by a long conversation with a single NPC. Fortunately, the Cat King is both fun to play and a favorite of the players. I'm not great at actually acting as NPCs, so it's nice to have the practice.

We discussed pivoting away from the Underclock this session, though we didn't really stick around in a dungeon long enough to see the results. The fact that it basically produced an encounter at the exact end of every session was good for drama in the short term, but I felt like it would start to get old soon.

I think I might run a few turns of solo Cairn to see what Sir Egerain gets up to. The party has spent about 30 minutes in Eleutheria. How much trouble can he get up to in that amount of time?

I made a single novel ruling with mixed success in this situation. I framed clearing the rubble in the Mal-Aqat tunnel as a pick-two-of-three situation: quiet, safe, and fast. The players opted for safe and fast, then I had them roll an attribute test. On a success, they got their choice of the two and fortunately rushed away before the consequences of the noise befell them. If they had failed, I would have asked them to pick whether safety or speed was the problem after all. I do not think I have ever adjudicated a test quite like this, but it seemed to work well in terms of pace and making meaningful decisions. If I do it again, I would make sure to play up the specific results of their choice a little more.

The players have a few potential travel options next session, but they're a nice mirror of the options from a few sessions back. They could go back through Mal-Aqat, trek through the Woods Inverted, return to the Verdurous Court and trek through the Blue Woods, or hypothetically return to Wealdstone and set out from there. All of these feel like juicy, easy-to-run sessions that our Cairn variant should have no problem handling.

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