Play Report: To Death, Frost, and Doom, Session 1
Recently I've had the pleasure of joining one of Sahh's games: "To Death, Frost, and Doom" or "Hilt's Quest" and boy has it been a blast so far. This will be a combination report of both Session 0 and Session 1 since we did get a bit of real play done in Session 0.
Characters Present
Grigori - Level 1 Magic User (my character)
Hilt - Level 4 Fighter
Lucia - Level 1 Fighter
Waylon J Smithers Jr. - Level 1 Specialist
The Events
Our game began in Schwarzfus on a deep winter morning, on 6th December 623, snow and ice covered the ground. Hilt had put out a call for aid in fulfilling a promise she had made to Saint Gacis to reseal an ancient evil into Pale-Tooth Mountain. The most obvious route would take us through Thrawl, a town that - as far as we know - has been overrun by monsters. Rather than contend with that - we have enough on our plate with this quest already - we decided to head south-west along the road for one day, before heading south into the woods and then hiking straight south-east to the mountain.
Exploration and travel is being handled by splitting the day into 6 Watches: 1-4 are daytime Watches, while 5-6 are night Watches. Each day, Sahh has us draw 2 Tarot cards - or rather, enough cards so we have 2 in our hand - from which we choose 1 to be added to a collective pile. One-by-one we each turn over one of the cards, which dictates something that happens throughout the day. Major Arcana are random encounters, while the Minor Arcana have a theme relating to their suit and intensity relating to the value of the card.
The Events
As this day happened during Session 0 I regrettably took less detailed notes than for the days after.
Day 1
First Watch: The journey begins hiking along the road, and Hilt raised a toast to us and our quest, thanking us for joining her.
Second Watch: Continuing on, Grigori shared with the group that he felt a sense of nostalgia being out on the road like he was when he traveled with a military troupe while growing up. Despite the harsh conditions, he enjoys the journey. Lucia recalled being on a job back in the city, chasing her target through the streets and into the undercity. Both Lucia and her target were so exhausted from the chase that when they finally came to blows it was a bit of a "pathetic" melee (Lucia's words).
Third Watch: Halting their march for the day, the group sets up camp. Grigori and Lucia decided to scout ahead a short distance and find some evidence of deer further into hills. Blessedly, no sign of wolves nor any recent paths or disturbances made by other travelers. Hilt and Waylon tried to gather some firewood but only barely manage to find enough for the night as we're out in what is essentially a barren plain.
Fourth Watch: Hilt and Waylon try to find more wood but fail to find anything more. Meanwhile, Grigori and Lucia forage for food and try to hunt some deer but have no luck in doing so.
Fifth Watch: Uneventful rest.
Sixth Watch: Uneventful rest.\
Day 2
It is the 7th of December, the weather turned colder during the night and snow has fallen to ankle height around us.
Cards
3 of Pentacles: as camp is broken down, Grigori is concerned by the lack of firewood. If things continue this way then the journey will become much more difficult.
Temperance: A figure approached us, too tall and thin to be a person, we initially mistook it for a dead tree. It was in no hurry but was steadily moving towards us. We waved to the figure who appeared to be woman-like, dressed in an ill-fitting nightgown. She seemed awkward and out of place, it was like someone tried to draw a person from a hazy memory, too gaunt and slightly snakelike. As she got close she spoke in broken Church-Common: "Warm? You've got warm?" Hilt took off a layer of her winter clothes and offered it to the strange woman "Small, too small. Do you have anything bigger?" was her response. The woman told us she has come from the east "they call...Farthing" and she is looking for help for her sick mother. The woman - we think she's a child - tapped the side of her head twice to indicate that her mother's mind is sick. Hilt told the woman to seek out her friends in Schwarzfus and that they would help her. We brought her with us a short way into the forest, intending to help resize some of the winter clothing she'd been given and get wood for a fire to help her warm up.
2 of Swords: As we were walking, Lucia thought of an early fight she lost as a young adult. There was a man at a bar who was always trouble for people, she thought of this fight because he had so much more reach than her and the strange woman's lanky build reminded her of this. She doesn't trust the woman we're with, but she's confident in how her skills have grown and her ability to plan.
10 of Wands: Waylon feels happy to be away from the small town where everyone was always badgering him. He's happy to be traveling with Hilt on this quest.
9 of Swords: (Sahh's pull) The closer to the forest line we got, the more vocal the strange woman became. Her vocabulary was still basic but she began to protest our course more and more, grabbing at us to try and pull us back. She wanted to go in the direction she was pointed in for help, quite reasonably. We tried to convince her to come with us just a short way further so we could help her get warmer, but she refused. We helped adjust her warm clothing a bit and Grigori gave her his gloves and we sent her on her way.
First Watch: Traveling with the strange woman, Hilt lost a point of warmth because she gave away one layer of warm clothing and failed her save.
Second Watch: We continued traveling into the forest, we managed to gather some wood as we walked without needing to spend too much time on it.
Third Watch: We split, Grigori going to chop wood and the other three go to forage and hunt. He managed to gather 3 useful bundles of firewood. Waylon gathered a couple days worth of food (a brace of rabbits and a fox). Hilt found 1 bundle of berries. Lucia hunted some more small game for us, 2 more bundles of food. Hilt lost a second point of warmth.
Fourth Watch: Grigori and Hilt decided to scout ahead for this watch (Lucia and Waylon continued hunting). The ground became more uneven as we got up into the hills; there are more evergreens and cliffs as we climbed. There were more deer tracks and droppings up here and bark stripped from trees. The tracks pointed to south-east to north-west travel, we though about using this to set some traps the next day.
Fifth Watch: Grigori took the first night watch, which passed without much incident. The cold fog began to disperse and it felt a touch warmer than it did during the day.
Sixth Watch: Lucia took the last watch. The sky cleared and the night continued to get warmer though still cold enough to see your own breath.
Day 3
The 8th December, the weather was clear and sunny, milder than it had been on the previous days. At this point we were out of fresh rations and didn't have enough for all of us and the 5 dogs we had bought to pull our cargo sled. Food was a priority for today.
Cards
Wheel of Fortune: Travel began fine, but Waylon noticed as we got into the hills that the shadows on the trees seemed to be dodging out of the way of us. He tossed a rock towards one of the trees to see if the shadows would glide away but they didn't, they only seem to react to us. Waylon circled the tree while the rest of us stayed in the open, trying to force it into the light. Something was gliding around the tree, gripping onto the side of it. The shadow did not appear to have any beginning or end. It was about as tall as Waylon and looked almost like a fox on its hind legs clinging onto the tree bark. Waylon tried to poke it with a stick, the thing rushed up the stick and washed over him. He needs 1.5x XP to hit level 2 now and he briefly felt cold to the bone, but the sensation passed. Hilt pressed a silver symbol against the back of Waylon's hand which felt warm but had no other effects.
King of Cups: After watching what happened with Waylon, Grigori remembered his earliest interactions with magic. It was wonderful, strange and terrifying all in equal measure. He remembered a particular event in which a spell went wrong, washing over him in a similar way to how the shadow passed over Waylon. It scarred his face and left him with near-constant migraines. Hilt offered to make some tea to ease the migraine that had set in as he recalled this memory.
Queen of Wands: Lucia asked if anyone had traveled with companions before. Hilt seemed excited at first but quickly turned glum, things have been hard for her, and relationships rarely last. Lucia commiserated with Hilt, saying that people often feel like liabilities rather than companions, it can be lonely.
The World: As we crested one of the hills, we saw at the bottom a site of complete devastation. The snow was stained bright red, a number of deer carcasses littered the site and various carrion birds and scavengers were having a feast. This was most of the herd that Grigori had counted the night before. The source of food they'd hoped would solve their supply problem. Grigori rushed down to the site - to the great annoyance of the carrion birds - wanting to know what did this. The air stank of blood but it was very clinical, no hint of rot to it. Leading away from the site in the direction the group was headed were tracks and drag marks as though some of the deer were dragged away. Inspecting the bodies, it seemed some of the ribs had been shattered inward, but more interestingly there were unnatural trails of frostbite running up the bodies. Hilt believes this to be the work of skeletons based on the fact her arm shows similar trails of frostbite across it from an encounter with skeletons. Disturbingly, she said that her arm was actively trying to kill her, and that it was likely some of these deer may have actually killed themselves. We decided to try and salvage some of the deer meat that wasn't touched by frostbite and managed to get enough food for a few days. We were left with a pretty disturbing question: what use did skeletons have for dead deer? Why had they dragged some away?
4 of Pentacles: Later that day Grigori noticed a flicker of a shadow in Waylon's eye and pointed it out to everyone, checking first if Waylon was ok. Hilt, going from 0 to 100 in no time flat, was extremely enthusiastic about removing Waylon's eyes. Waylon, surprising no-one, was less enthused about this idea. Remember how happy he was to be traveling with Hilt on this quest? Waylon did, however, agree to lie down and let us inspect his eye to try and find out what's going on with the shadow. After poking at his eye with pliers to see if the shadow was separate from the eyeball or within it, the shadow rotated to the other side of the eye. It continued doing this whenever the pliers were brought close. There wasn't really anything more we could think to do without actively harming Waylon, though the idea of having him slowly insert a silver-tipped spear up his nose was discussed. Frankly, I was getting big Prometheus vibes from all this.
First Watch: Traveling into the hills and the event with Waylon and the shadow fox thing.
Second Watch: More traveling and finding the site of the massacre.
Third Watch: Dissecting the deer corpses, gaining around 3 days worth of food for us and the dogs. We set up camp a few hundred meters away from the dead deer.
Fourth Watch: Waylon and Hilt gathered 3 wood bundles, while Lucia made some warm soup for everyone to help stave off the cold. Meanwhile, because I had been presented with delicious looking goo, I had Grigori scout down the trail the deer had been dragged along. Where the trail ended, the terrain flattened out save for a few bumps in the snow. Where the deer had been dragged, snow had been brushed away, revealing moss-covered headstones. Wiping away more snow, moss and grime from the stone revealed script that definitely wasn't Church-Common. The writing was more runic than modern writing and had been weathered away with time, these were several generations old at least. Nearby stood an old well it seemed the deer had been dragged to. It was too dark to see down into the well, but it radiated cold and Grigori could faintly hear a strange clicking noise from below. When Grigori got back to camp we talked about potentially heading down into the well in the morning to see if we could find out what was going on.
Fifth Watch: Grigori took this first Watch of the night. Between his rounds and tending the fire, he heard the sound of a horse just outside the tent. Opening the flaps he saw a large draft horse directly in front of him with a saddle and bags but no rider. He turned to wake the others and saw a dirty hand pushing into the tent and rifling through Waylon's backpack. Grigori shouted, and that's where we ended the session.
Closing Thoughts
So far I'm having a brilliant time playing this, Sahh does a fantastic job of conveying the tone of the world and giving us weird situations to navigate. It took all my restraint to not climb down into the well then and there, but I knew it would have been a really bad idea. The goo shall just have to wait for another day.
Until next time folks, take care!