The Bloody Hands episode 2: Out of the Wild

Doug's Notes: Eventually I am going to run out of rihaij's soap bubble photos and might have to actually make art for this campaign. Heh. 

Reminder: Set Up and Recap

If you found this post and are curious about the context, there is a discussion about this solo campaign's set-up and first episode. To sum up: it is a solo rpg campaign played in shorter burst episodes using Tricubes Solo for the general engine, The Guardians of the Shadow Frontier as the scenario, and a homebrew oracle of my own design based broadly on the I Ching coin flip method. 

Considering Jalmar Dax

I mentioned in the previous post that I wanted to have an episode dedicated to Jalmar Dax since he had the roughest time of it. While thinking out what that might mean, I realized that if I stuck true to the 90s genre TV that inspired this campaign, the nature-tuned, woods-living, beast-master character would 100% be Native American. Maybe not played by a Native American actor. Maybe not actually based on any real tribe or tribal beliefs. Definitely a bit outsized and prone to talking about "my people." Still, fans would know exactly what was down. Keep in mind that Andre Norton's original The Beast Master novels (heavily altered for the movie) feature an excellently portrayed Navajo ex-soldier dealing with some of the genre's own inherently pro-colonial past. 

In my case, Jalmar is going to explore a different element of the world: the Wildkin. It is inherent in my world building that The Dark changes people and things and that The Wild is an opposing force. Humans cut off from struggling civilization are being shaped by the energies at war. He is going to be Woodkin, something like a proto-wood-elf. The analogs are still going to be there but hopefully I handle them honorably. 

Scene: Assault on Precinct Fellig

Fellig is a small town south of Hub founded in the shadow of The Ord Wood (still residing in the shadow of its massive trees). During the long decades of Chaos, the Ord took on a semi-mythical state with the people. Many of the Darkling monsters came from The Ord but there also some of the Felling people went to live in the woods and became one of the groups of Woodkin.  While they never fully abandoned their Fellig past, they began to live separately from Fellig main, embracing a new way of life and having new growing powers. Over time, distances between the communities grew. 

Once the Order built the Resonance Tower in Fellig, and the Bubble began to grow, some of the Woodkin became increasingly tempted to return to Fellig where their great-great-grandparents had lived. Woodkin communities were considered outsiders by some Fellig people, but others were glad to have their long separated townsfolk working together again. 

Now, as Fellig's Bubble approaches the edges of The Ord itself, there is suddenly push back from some Fellig people who feel that the old, tall trees will hide Chaos and allow it to sneak back in and that some of the Woodkin will be unable to live among the civilized. Fellig is at least a year or two before merging with Hub and so is vulnerable to having its resonance disrupted. 

A group of thugs and agitators are especially aggressive in keeping feelings flared up. An attack on some Woodkin houses on the edge of Fellig ended up with the Ord Woodkin elder Jonathan Cruz being arrested when he tried to seek justice. The team is dispatched to handle this situation which might disrupt the spread of resonance. It matches the methods used by The Bloody Hands.

The team arrives in Fellig to find that Cruz is in jail and a group of Woodkin are gathered in a mob. Cruz being arrested for defending his rights was something of a last straw. Fellig townfolk, even though sympathetic to the cause, are standing off and both sides are near blows. Prenty grabs a large cart, hefts it in the air, and smashes it down between them. "This is the line. Any of you cross it, you cross it through me and the Guardians."

Arden talks to Sheriff Harold Ross, who arrested Cruz. Ross is against the thug behavior and has no idea who is causing the issues. He mostly arrested Cruz to stop the Woodkins from giving the thugs "an excuse". He agrees letting Cruz go is the best course of action and Jalmar takes the Elder back home and spends some time befriending the Ord Woodkin and convincing them that working with Fellig is best. "We are the same. They are of the city and we are of the wood but we are working together against darkness." 

Arden and Prenty begin researching who is causing chaos. Arden feels that The Bloody Hand is involved but the connection is fleeting, if he does not find the connection soon, he will once again lose the lead.

Scene: Death in the Streets

While Arden and Prenty are talking to Ross and Jalmar is talking to the Woodkin, a young woman (Elena) is being chased by some of the thugs in the Fellig's streets. She is driven out into a main throughway where she is struck by a cart and killed. This immediately casts the investigation into a whole new light. The Woodkin agree to give Jalmar a small amount of time. The team go into overdrive.

Arden taps into his Seer powers to try and find out who is responsible but instead of seeing anything clearly he has a vision of a blood-red river flowing across a dark landscape. A pale figure on the other side points upstream and right as Arden looks in that direction, a strange shape floating in the water starts to turn over and rise up and the pale figure screams and the vision is lost...

Jalmar takes the streets and talks to people. He realizes that the headmaster of the school is acting cagey and has let slip a few phrases that suggest anti-Woodkin sentiment. Jalmar rushes to the school and finds the thugs are students that have been picked out by the headmaster to work as his personal henchmen for this cause. Arden and Prenty join him. Arden decides to give up chasing The Bloody Hand (once again) to help another community to grow. 

A fight breaks out that involves some heavy blows against the team but Jalmar, along with his animal companions, manage to round up the angry young men and turn them over to Ross. Jalmar stays behind to smashes up all the anti-Woodkin propaganda the headmaster had them making in the school attic. 

Another guardian shows up in town: Kate Corazon. She is self-obsessed, showy, and prone to believing in her own genius. Something of a foil to Arden's brooding intellect. She initially is looking to get a one-up on her fellow junior guardian by reporting his mishandling of the case but after a brief exchange, comes away with a positive interaction with Arden. She will not report him but she will keep an eye on him. 

Scene: The Funeral

Again, the episode ends with a personal aside. Elena's funeral is being held by the Woodkin. A few hours before, Jalmar showed up at one of the busier taverns in Fellig and gave a full on lecture about the importance of these two communities realizing they are one. Mistakes have happened but a new future requires them to work together, to return to the old family.

In response, a huge number of Fellig folk, including some of the families whose kids were part of the thug group, show up to give honor to Elena. Ross and the town mayor make it known that the two communities will work together. 

Kate waves goodbye and leaves the team behind as the resonance hits Ord and sparks of light from the forest begin feeding into the Bubble, causing it to strengthen and grow even faster. 

End Results and New Truths

Another success in foiling the Bloody Hands but also another set-back in choosing to help a community instead of going after the masterminds behind the problems (though, in this case, the natural prejudice of the community pre-dated the Hands' involvement). Arden continues to show himself as someone who will sacrifice his career to do a good thing. We finally see another guardian and we finally start working out if this world has anything like "demi-humans". More will show up in future episodes.

New truths include:

• The Woodkin now differ in non-specific (as of yet) ways compared to humans who stuck to the villages and towns during The Chaos. They are still human enough to want to join in with the Order's attempt to restore resonance. 
• Jonathan Cruz is the Elder of the Ord Woodkin. 
• Kate Corazon represents the first other guardian we see. There seems to be a difference between "guardians" (folks like Arden and Kate) and the support team (Prenty and Jalmar). Arden continues to make friends with folk despite his broody nature making it (literally, in game terms) hard.
• Fellig is an ex-lumber town, now more of a just a general...you know...town. 
• The Ord is one of the old forests. It maintained itself against The Dark even though some Darklings rose up inside of it. 
• The Bloody Hands continue to fade pretty fast when Arden shows up...almost like someone is tipping them off. Hmm. 
• If Arden cannot tap into a vision (i.e., get successes on the roll), he is prone to having much more symbolic visions. What is the bloody river? 

Vibe Check and Notes about Mechanics

Two episodes in a row in which Arden is struck with a pair of kings, one red and one black. This back and forth nature is now going to be part of the lore of the world. Arden is exactly the sort of guardian who could have been rising in the ranks but has actively sabotaged his own career. 

I keep working on getting into the Tricube vibe when it comes to treating failures as "yes but with a twist" while some successes are more like "No but with a twist". The example given in the main book is that "a master thief would never believably fail to pick a simple lock, but it might take her longer than expected, or lead to a complication." On the other side, "an unarmed scholar couldn't defeat a dozen elite warriors in melee combat - at best, he might make a clean escape." [Both of these are on page 21 of the 8x5 "home printing" version]. 

The most obvious example in this case is that Arden is going to see something when using his seer powers but it will not always be obviously or immediately related to the case at hand. You better believe you that vision of the bloody river will return. By the way, that was mostly created by using the various twist icons on "The Guardians" sheet and making dream-like sense out of them. 

Both Jalmar getting through to the Fellig crowd and the number of people who showed up were left to chance (much like Arden making up with his brother). Jalmar got a hard crafty roll success and I rolled 1d6 to get an idea of how many people from Fellig showing up and got a 6. It made for another nice moment, even if it involved a character created after she died ("horrific violence" as a prompt and the type of violence came out blending a few prompt checks). 

One thing I tried out this time was pushing the characters outside of their archetype. Most of the social/Crafty rolls were by Jalmar this time, etc.