#AgeOfBlood
Age of Blood v0.5 / Playtest 1, Session 2: Fuller House
Our characters are:
– Kasseri, the Voice.
– Lord Eddard Baldwin, the Captain.
– Eberhard Monheim, the Cultist.
– John Comber, the Ascendant.
and introducing:
–Sir Rowen, the Slayer.
With the town of Crumble pacified, our crew of adventurers marched home through the night. Our first action was to address the Complication that I rolled off-screen: Band Trouble. One of the blacksmith brothers had a tavern tussle with a fellow who was traveling through town, and the fight spilled out into the cold night and was being played out on the side of the road near what remains of Wygrove’s north gate. The players stumble upon the two in the final awkward moments of their drunken brawl: the sort of sad, slow-motion embrace of two exhausted boxers.
Lord Baldwin separated the two gentlemen to discover that the blacksmith’s adversary was a relatively well-done man wearing a coat with the heraldry of an apocryphal family: House Sanguine. He does not immediately recall any information about them, perhaps they are an obscure Eastern nobility. The fellow, apparently drunk beyond rational comprehension, has a note tucked into his belt. Baldwin takes the note without the man noticing but before they can restrain him further the courier breaks free and stumble-runs off into the night.
The note is sealed with a wax signet stamp but is otherwise utterly unremarkable, and is addressed to someone named “Ciel”. As they return to the fort the players comment OOC upon the ethical ramifications of pilfering the note (Lord Baldwin reveals here an interesting hint of opportunistic amorality), as well as the possibility of a perceived slight that their cohort has inflicted upon House Sanguine. They elect to make a public example of their cohort.
The morning after, as the seasonal laborers and farmers of the town gather to dole out assignments in the town square, Lord Baldwin takes a stage on what was once the town gallows and lectures the people on orderly and civil behavior, a shamed blacksmith at the side. We took this opportunity to introduce our fifth character, Sir Rowen, a former duelist instructor and bodyguard to the crown who was shamed and reassigned to the east. Sir Rowen is looking for an opportunity to pledge his service to a noble who will provide him employment, and moves to speak with the group once Baldwin is finished. He’s hired!
Now onto downtime actions:
Sir Rowen trains and acquires some temporary laborers to begin working at assembling rudimentary town defenses. I rule that this long-term clock, once completed, will result in a fleeting bonus to help against the first attack/raid the town sustains before they crumble uselessly (actual serious fortifications, like a permanent Stockade or the rebuilding of the Fort, are Holdings that must be acquired through the expedition reward structure, and I don’t want to undermine that system).
Eberhard opens the note that was swiped from the courier and discovers that it is an encrypted communication with scrambled letters. He embarks on a long-term clock to translate the letter, interspersed with a strong gather information (Study) roll on House Sanguine’s couriers. I tell the group that the couriers are regional locals who, judging by the somewhat careless way they dress in their House’s liveried coats, appear to be newly pressed into service. The same one is never seen twice, and they uniformly pass through the south-east gate of Wygrove on their way west. They appear somewhat dream-like in their actions, as though short on sleep.
Lord Baldwin clears stress through a Pursue Motivation roll, which we decide is a scene of him praying in the chapel alongside John. He also seeks some healing for the light sensitivity harm he acquired last session.
Kasseri helps decode the letter cipher and leads a short pilgrimage of a few faithful townspeople back to Crumble to throw sacred ash upon the Eternal Flame that they lit, advancing Coroz’s influence clock. She sees a vision in the flames of a Harthkin chieftain assembling warriors in a newly-built longhouse, which both starts AND completes a long-term clock for the party to anticipate the incursion being planned by Edric Stonehand.
John pitches in on the town defense preparations as well as gets some training in the ritual mysteries that Kasseri is employing.
The letter from House Sanguine was fully deciphered through some strong Study rolls, and it’s determined that the coded missive is a list of lost or buried relics of House Sanguine’s past in the region of Vanderia’s capital Trinehold. It looks like the House is attempting to build a historical association of legitimacy in an effort to regain status and peerage in the noble court…
After some gather information, debate, and a little GM nose-leading, our next expedition ended up being a Transport plan where the players move to defend a wagon train of valuable minerals on behalf of the Balfar Mineral Rights Commision, which they want to earn back some favor with. The BMRC employs mercenaries to guard it’s wagon trains but the expense is considerable and their forces are stretched thin, so having assistance would go a long way to quelling their discontent. Sir Rowen realized that he had a contact who could help us here; his rival, Isawa, a “foreign mercenary”. Delighted, I threw that +1 die into the engagement roll (one of my goals with this campaign and the AoB ruleset is to give more incentives for the players to dredge up their playbook contacts, especially Rivals, more often).
The wagon train is predictably attacked by Harthkin raiders led by Jurgen Wolfheart, a vicious jarl seeking to expand his foothold in the region through violence. Horns echo through the foothills as the wagons approach a vulnerable valley river crossing. More on that later though…
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Session Thoughts :
The expedition planning was a speed bump this session, which isn’t immediately concerning (in Blades in the Dark I felt that as GM I was still spoon-feeding score plot hooks for the first several sessions as well, until the momentum of the existing clocks, entanglements, and faction statuses lifted the whole thing off the ground) but it’s worth thinking about filling in my map with a few more close-by plot hooks. I don’t want the area around Wygrove to be too crowded however, there should be a gentle push within the game to get players to want to embark on more ambitious expeditions.
With a fifth player joined I’m officially calling this roll20 campaign at maximum capacity. I’m not sure how this load test will go, and was careful to let the players know that I have no idea, but if this session was any indication it might go much smoother than I had worried. Based on feedback it feels like we successfully hit plenty of interesting scenes without leaving anyone behind, at least this time. It will be interesting to see how different Expeditions look to my previous Blades in the Dark game, which had 3 PCs and was a very personal experience.
