Age of Blood v0.5 / Playtest 1, Session 0: Character/Town Creation

Age of Blood v0.5 / Playtest 1, Session 0: Character/Town Creation

Interspersed with a lot of discussion of playtest intent and thematic goals, we finished initial creation and introduced (most of) the PCs and the town. As will the rest of these, this took place via voice chat on Discord with handouts and dice rolls on roll20. The party consists of:

– Lord Baldwin, the Captain, dispossessed noble and last of the Baldwin line who fled east with the remnants of his honor guard when he was betrayed at the height of his house’s civil war. He seeks redemption for his hand in the deaths of his kin and a safe haven from the vicious mythical greatsword, Veritas, which has been foretold to be his end.

– Eberhard Monheim, the Cultist, practitioner of a completely pragmatic and reasonable tradition of pagan blood magic who left his tribe to seek his fortune among the Vanderians (the ‘civilized’ feudal kingdom of the setting, most characters will be of Vanderian descent unless otherwise noted). Eberhard pays tribute to his Gannic ancestor spirits and hails from the Nightwood, a forbidding forest that slumbers in the shadow of the Dragonspine Mountains.

– John Keats, the Ascendant, a simple farmer who died when his farm was burned down (by who, or what?). His miraculous resurrection by the god Coroz was terribly inconvenient for the clergy, which eventually sent him on a holy mission to the impious town of Wygrove to be rid of him. He has been sermonizing in the collapsed chapel in a debatably-successful bid to revitalize faith in the Church there ever since, while vainly waiting for all the help he was promised.

– Kasseri, the Voice, an orphan and former nun of the Quiet Sisterhood who began to uncontrollably Speak with the divine power of Coroz. The sisters would have cut her tongue for defiance of their precepts but she escaped and fled east (it’s the fashionable direction to flee in-setting. Nobody looks for you in the East. Proven fact.). Kasseri unfortunately had to cancel for the town creation session at the last minute but will be properly introduced next week.

All players except for Eberhard are veterans of a Blades in the Dark season we concluded last month.

I and the three players who were present agreed to run generation on the town of Wygrove as an in-character exercise, which I framed as Lord Baldwin learning more about his destination as he continued through the Eastern March. In the regional capital of Balfar, last point of civilization before the final week-long trek to Wygrove, Baldwin observed mercenaries employed by the Margrave shaking down merchant caravans for stiff taxes and holding the city in an uneasy state of martial law. Seeking audience with the Margrave proved fruitless, for Baldwin’s family name meant nothing to the arrogant militia sergeants he met. Baldwin was unwilling to linger in lands he knew little about with the threat of pursuers on his trail, and so chose not to press his luck and interfere. His initial impressions of the Eastern Marches and the rumors he overheard of Wygrove gave him a distinct impression of Savagery (town’s initial Reputation).

As his overland journey wound down to the ‘crossroads of the East’ and the lonely hill on which Wygrove squats, Baldwin stopped in a crumbling roadside tavern to consult his charts and take the lay of the land. He had decided to rebuild House Baldwin starting here in this forsaken country far from the eyes of court intrigue, but where to station his exhausted handful of men? Though it’s battlements are rotting and the walls broken, the Old Fort at the crest of the hill seemed an ideal location (HQ).

It was at this moment that John Keats stepped into the tavern, drawn by the rumor of a lordly knight and his entourage approaching town. John had been expecting help (perhaps a band of noble crusaders?) to arrive for weeks, and threw himself at the Captain, thanking Coroz for the arrival of his town’s salvation. Nonplussed, Baldwin nonetheless invited the raggy parishioner to join them for the suspicious stew that the tavern had on offer.

From cautious discussion with John, Baldwin ascertained that some secretive group had been dwelling within the fort for several weeks. Though the squatters had been careful not to disturb the sleepy hamlet below, John was absolutely certain that unwholesome cult activities were being performed… hooded members entered and left the fort at odd hours, and strange lights flickered within the fort at night. Seeing an opportunity to boost his esteem among what passed for ‘authority’ here, Baldwin agreed to rid the keep of this threat.

Eberhard meanwhile had been cautiously observing the new arrivals from afar, and sensing the rich scent of Coin approached the table offering his services as a local guide. Although clearly of Gannic origin and thus instantly distrusted by John, the sallow stranger quickly earned Baldwin’s respect through assurances that he knew the lay of the land far better than the charts of dubious cartographic worth the Lord had obtained in Balfar. Eberhard also demonstrated his abilities as a scribe who could both read AND write (2 dots in Study coming in handy!), and was subsequently hired on the spot.

The next morning the band struck out for the Old Fort early, accompanied by Sergeant Garth, the mostly-useless town constable. Pressing into the partially-collapsed Fort, they observed that it was a claustrophobic and unimaginatively-built military structure from the Conquest period of Vanderia’s past: stone foundations built up with wood and left to decay for around the past decade. Faced with a band of soldiers led a knight commander, and one irate parishioner, the inhabitants promptly surrendered and revealed themselves to be a trio of young adepts dedicated to the Entalian Circle, an ancient and disgraced order of Magi. They stated they were using the Keep as a watchpost to observe dangerous cult activity by Harthkin clans in the region, a claim which seemed passably acceptable to 2 out of 3 of the PCs. Lord Baldwin elected to let them go despite John’s protests, while Eberhard took great interest in a circular runic warding glyph drawn in salt that the adepts had hastily erased at the group’s arrival. The party elected to compensate the Entalian Circle for the trouble of taking the fort (-1 Coin, no faction standing loss), and negotiated for some maps and charts of the underground warrens in the local region that the Circle had commissioned (improving to +1 faction standing with the Circle!). A gentlemanly exchange all around, really.

Back out in town, the team quickly looked to establish a mercantile base to begin revitalizing Wygrove’s economic fortunes: out of the woodwork emerged a starting cohort, a tenacious but wild pair of Blacksmith Brothers, eager to once again ply their craft. These smiths were cast out of the Balfar Mineral Rights Commission for their debauched and drunken behavior, but maybe they can be reformed…? Or at least inebriated back into a useful state from time to time. Meanwhile Orista the Antiquarian (town contact) arrived on caravan and set up shop, hopeful that this influx of bold adventurers might help reopen the roads and start a flow of valuable relics from the numerous dangerous ruins of the region. Or maybe she can just pawn some oddities off before moving on to the next town. Capitalism, ho!

All of this logistical mobilization combined with the rugged nature of Wygrove leads to a rather Militant outlook in the town’s dealings (Special Ability: +1d to Assault plan Engagement rolls). Clearly our erstwhile band of adventurers does not plan on going too gentle into that good night! John Keats hopes to bring the light of Coroz to burn out the banditry and wild beasts overflowing in the region. Lord Baldwin seeks to clear these lands and instill order in a resurgence of his family name. And Eberhard thinks he can make a coin or two from the rising fortunes of the region.

I can’t wait to see how well all of that works out for them!

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Thoughts : Coroz was independently picked as a patron deity by a whopping 2 out of 2 of our “divine” characters, which is interesting perhaps (the central religion of the setting consists of a three-god pantheon or ‘trinity’, though unlike the RL christian trinity they are reckoned separately and not considered different aspects of a monotheism). Coroz is a genderless god of flame, sun, and warmth, and doesn’t have much of an overt ‘agenda’ in terms of branding so it makes sense that it might be the most inviting of the pantheon in a way. Unfortunately the two characters didn’t have a chance to interact as Kasseri was gone for the town creation RP, but one thing that will be fun is to introduce agents of the various Church factions and see how that interaction plays out. The Church has “a whole lotta Tier” counting all it’s various sub-factions, possibly a plurality within the setting when taken altogether, but is intended to be very fractious, riven with dissent and internal conflict.

I was still grappling with an issue related to roll20 chat field corruption (there’s a lot of tinkering with custom sheets going on in the background of this one), so we unfortunately couldn’t get any dice rolling results this first time around. Fortunately no particularly risky actions were called for as everyone was just feeling the setting and each other’s PCs out. I am prettty sure I have it sorted out for next time (the trick is to erase chat history using an option from outside of the game client).

The below map is super rough. Green blobs are woods, there’s a blue shape west of the town (the lake of Brittleloch), and the black squiggles are mountains. I need to clean this one up for next time but it’s intentionally got a lot of blank space for now.

#AgeOfBlood