Mediums and Messages

January Dungeon Mail - Session 4

The royal skyship Their Grace flies by the Great Tower.

I'm playtesting Dungeon Mail, my work-in-progress fantasy roleplaying game about couriers delivering weird mail to weirder beings. My friends agreed to run a micro-campaign of it. I'll record the details of our sessions here, as well as some (hopefully) spoiler-free notes. You can find last week's session here.

Special Delivery

This week, the party consists of:

After a week to rest and recuperate, the couriers have another job. The postmaster gives them a wooden barrel marked with the royal seal and a stamp that says "Do Not Open with Sharp Objects." He asks them to deliver it to King Charles XV, today.

The complication is that today is the day of his sister, Queen Evelyn wedding. The Sibling-Monarchs will be aboard their skyship, Their Grace. The postmaster has hired a skipper to take them up there and the job should pay 200 silver each. Antonia requests a dolly, which the postmaster grudgingly permits on the requirement they return it in one piece.

The party accepts and does some preparatory shopping - mostly armor, parachutes, and medical supplies. Zachariah buys a number of brown paper packages and tries to check-in with his compatriots in the plot to kill King Charles. Eerily, he finds them gone, their former haunts now empty storefronts.

Up and Away

The party reconvenes at the skiff - a small propeller powered glider with a covered basket for them to sit in. The monosyllabic pilot flies them up.

Their Grace is a huge converted battleship hovering under the power of a multitude of propellers spinning over its colossal wings. Smaller crafts come and go from a hangar on its belly and whizz around to take in the spectacle. Two larger gunboats lurk nearby in escort. Crowds have gathered, filling the rooftops of the Palatia District below.

The party's skiff takes them up to the hangar where three other vessels are unloading - a marching band in bright orange uniforms, a delegation from Kai Banal in ceremonial dress, and a load of catering supplies. Zachariah recognizes members of the marching band as some of Kylox's Clockmakers. The hangar has two exits - one to the fore and one to the aft.

As they touch down, two guards approach. One, a Charles, asks them their business. When the party say they are couriers, he says that all gifts must be delivered to the aft. While the rest of the party distracts the guards, Zachariah produces some forged paperwork that says the wedding can't go on until all packages are delivered. Either confused or duped, the guards let them through.

The party decides to go aft, climbing a flight of stairs up to a gun deck. Colossal cannons are mounted pointing down at the city below. Shells the size of a human being stand in a rack in the middle, waiting to be loaded. Everything is strewn with flowers and decorative ribbon. In the middle, a crew of gunners argue with a group of smartly dressed molefolk, saying this space is off-limits to foreigners. Evelyn (Bentnose) notes that the molefolk have an Evelyn with them - the same woman who they fought in the Works on their last job.

Gulls and Ladders

Slipping past, the party leave through another hatch to the fore. This one opens onto a narrow gantry that connects to another hatch some forty feet away with open air on either side. A ladder halfway across leads up, but its is blocked by a group of six giant gulls, each with six wings.

Zachariah opens one of his parcels to reveal he had brought along a bag of fish. He throws them overboard as a distraction and the giant gulls dive after them. Using the distraction, the party scouts the area.

Antonia opens the far door, revealing a forward mounted battery at the prow of the ship with two doors going left and right out of the room. Melek climbs the ladder and hears bustling from the far side. They open it to reveal a room filled with busy caterers, prepping a buffet. One burly caterer crashes a cart into him.

A surprisingly good sport, the caterer helps Melek up and asks what happened to the gulls. When the party says they distracted them, the big man urges them to hurry up and get inside before they come back.

Zachariah and Evelyn climb up with a rope provided by Antonia and secured to the barrel. Evelyn uses her colossal strength to hoist the barrel and dolly up through the hatch. As they do this, the gulls return.

Blackguard turns and casts torch, singing the birds and sending them into a panic, but dramatically depleting his stamina. With the danger cleared, the rest of the party climbs up.

Quite a Pickle

Shutting the hatch, the burly caterer asks them where they are headed. When they say they have a package for the king, the man tells them they can head to the fore to climb, through a gallery and up some stairs to the cheap-seats or they can go aft, through a buffet room to an elevator.

Blackguard takes a quick rest in the caterer's break room. Meanwhile, Melek and the others investigate the barrel. The container is full of liquid with something heavy floating in it. Speaking to it in the language of Flesh, Melek gets a reply. After some questions, they determine that there is probably a body in there in some kind of preserving liquid.

The party decides to head aft. On the way, Zachariah tries to steal some liquid fuel cans from the buffet supplies, but makes a racket. The burly caterer storms over and kicks them out, his patience expended.

The party pass through the buffet room without incident, then aft to the elevator - a metal cage wrapped by a spiraling staircase that rises at least three stories. Blackguard calls the lift.

When it arrives, it is occupied by a strange featureless figure seemingly made of white plastic. It speaks and demands to know what they are doing here. The party says they are couriers delivering a package for the king. In a series of fleshy twangs that Melek recognizes as the language of Flesh, the being asks if any packages are expected. A negative reply twangs down from above.

Zachariah produces the forged paperwork again. The white figure unhinges their face, revealing they are wearing some sort of form-fitting symbiote suit. They open a gill-like membrane and secret the papers inside before asking the party to join them in the lift. The party complies.

The elevator clanks up three floors to an emptied guard barracks. Inside two more symbiote-suited figures are waiting. The trio insist on inspecting the package. One opens the sealed cask with its fingertips. Inside is the nude corpse of a Charles with a wispy beard and long fingernails. The number two is tattooed on their chest. Evelyn is astonished and reverent as are the guards.

Satisfied, they send the party up the elevator again to see the king.

Royal Visit

The party ascends with one of the guards, finding themselves in a manicured English garden atop the highest point of the ship. Behind them is an infinity pool pouring off the back of the ship and the two distant gunboats. Ahead is a wooden pavilion with two more symbiote guards, an Evelyn, and a Charles in a resplendent uniform.

Evelyn leads the party in approaching Charles XV with due deference and he welcomes them in a soft-spoken voice. He urges them to come stay in the pavilion until the wedding starts and sends two of the guards to retrieve the party's pay ands some more chairs.

As they climb up, they see that the pavilion overlooks the flat deck of the ship which has been prepared with rows of benches, mostly full of guests. They recognize the molefolk from before and the Kai Banal delegation in the nearest row of seats. The marching band in orange approaches, playing a patriotic tune.

As the king congratulates them, the band leader blows a whistle and the band reveal that their instruments convert into crossbows. They ready to fire a volley as the party springs into action.

Zachariah decides to aid the assassins and grabs the king, holding him up as a shield. Unfortunately for him, Antonia whips her grappling hook and knocks both of them prone. Evelyn rushes over to seize the king and shield him.

Blackguard steps up and casts a colossal torch. The fire scourges the band but cascades unexpectedly, setting the wooden deck below ablaze. Melek casts Impress, imbuing their Flesh-speech with commanding power to drop the injured band members to their knees.

Miraculously, the band members maintain their composure. Some fire bolts that deflect harmlessly off of the railing or Evelyn's shield. One grazes Antonia. The party prepares to flee or retaliate.

Then, there is a colossal crunch like something huge being lifted.

Then, a single word materializes in curling pink script on the horizon: Ankhbayar.

Then, the party sees a glimpse of a far off city against a pink horizon.

Then, as if unfolding from that city the entire Turntable District materializes into the air. The neighborhood spins erratically, levitating above Their Grace and blotting out the sun.

GM Notes

Now more of those rumors from our collaborative world-building are coming to bear. Perhaps too many as some players who weren't here for every session seemed a little bewildered at weirdness like the symbiote suits, Kai Banal, or Ankhbayar. I think it hung together, even if only on spectacle.

We talked quite a bit about the assumptions on how couriers should act. Do they open the package? Do they steal on their way to make a delivery? Are they a government agency? We resolved many of this questions, but I think the final game should lead on some guidance for these points.

Magic feels better, but some quick math reveals that using d4s instead of d6s means that casting with 3 MD has a ~62% chance to miscast. That feels not entirely desirable, but on the other hand, maybe powerful spells are gated by the chance to go horribly awry as much as they are by the self-inflicted damage. Perhaps a feature could mitigate this as well?

Another interesting sticking point is gear. Inventory slots matter a lot here. You need to count them for injuries and you need to carry the damn package. The rogue archetype grants a custom kit on character creation which we've ruled can be unpacked to produce appropriate items, but I don't want those kinds of kits to be widely available. They also might horn in on the Always Prepared feature that Zachariah has been making such good use of.

This links to another issue which is costs. I have a (I think) very elegant system for spitballing costs via Fermi estimation. The issue is that this leads to needing to ask me what the cost of every single object is. I can play that game all day, but I might as well just provide a price list (or more explicit guidance) for another GM.

A lot of this session was marked by the characters being challenged by an NPC, them saying they are here to deliver a package, then those NPCs either letting them past or not. If this is going to happen all the time, I should probably have a mechanism (or procedure) to handle it.

The party managed to arrive just as the marching band assassins triggered their scheme. I couldn't have staged it better. I had a whole wedding itinerary in my notes. I they had arrived 10 minutes earlier, Charles would have been making a commencement speech. If they arrived 20 minutes later, he would have been shot and the Turntable District would already be overhead. Truly wild.

#Dungeon Mail #session reports