Mothlands: Game 3
Blood in the Turf
The start of game 3 had our fellowship struggling to benefit from their newfound reputation to earn a bit of scratch before the beginning of The Month of Moths. Having earned a pretty penny hawking auger (predecessor devices of mundane and spiritual power) the group naturally turned in that direction, preying on a bauble hawker in market and following him home to his suppliers, The Serpent’s Coil.
The serpents, it seemed, had discovered a predecessor ruin and were mining it for useful artifacts and valuables. We decided the mission would be a split plan. The first leg was a simple deception to dupe the merchant, Nadir, into setting up a delivery. The second was an assault plan to take over the smuggler’s boat and then their claim.
The first portion went of without a hitch, leading to some important intel that scored them a crit on their engagement roll. With that in mind, we decided to start the second half of the mission with the players already having taken over the ship and headed to the secret camp with a hostage in tow.
This was great, but the crew hadn’t seen much action before and the ensuing battle for the camp would take a toll on them.
The Serpent’s Coil were a small gang but they weren’t pushovers. Even with several of them being taken out nearly immediately, a few failed rolls lead to a tense brawl between The Spear (think Cutter) and their freed hostage. In the struggle, The Spear was pushed into the trauma zone. We decided she had become Cruel and we ended the fight with her nearly twisting the man’s hand off.
The fight highlighted a few difficulties the crew would face in the future. Namely that some of the crew are a bit hesitant to resort to violence while others are more than happy to get their hands dirty.
They also have a penchant for befriending one another’s rivals. This has caused a bit a tension as one such Ally/Rival loaned the fellowship his barge as a hideout in exchange for hiding his stash of yet to be fenced goods … something our Favorite (think Slide) wouldn’t be too happy about.
And in downtime we got to advance some interesting clocks, including deciphering the strange comings and goings of a mysterious individual who, we determined, was hiring a group of nobodies to help the Emperor capture a Moth to display in the Zoo, all under the radar.
I’ve been really happy with how our games have run, even with one of the players often having to drop out early. The loose threads we create in each session are more than adequate to keep the action going and we can all see how the rules compliment the underlying concepts of the game.