THE BIG BARSTON BAKERSFIELD CHRONICLES RECAP, PART 3 (ADVANCED FIGHTING FANTASY)

 

In part 2 of this big recap, I discussed some of the various characters and elements that had shown up over the months of playing and the general BIGGITY [technical term] of playing out a campaign so deeply decided by random dice rolls. I also hinted that I was needing to parse some things and get back to the Barston Bakersfield core. 

Barston and company had cracked open a big conspiracy. I wanted to do one last dive into the Humb-issue quests and solve the problem of the missing people so I could be freed up to dial a few things back. But, before I could really do that, I had an issue inherent in the whole "always expanding" campaign world: what was meant to be the first or second quest, destroying the red warlocks, had never been attempted. It was time. By the lore of the campaign world, the warlocks were entangled with some of the missing people (*cough* zombies *cough*) but also controlled the northern paths. 

By returning to the campaign roots I would open doorways to more adventures, several which had been seeded and glimpsed in excursions. 

-- The Return to the Forest Ick -- 

Using the original Harper's Quest 2 sessions, I had a rough map of Ick that I could use to track back towards the base (the same place that Shellyton died at the very start of this campaign). I did build up some random tables using Mythic's Location Crafter and I built up some random encounters that made sense and worked out some various objects and complications I wanted to face. It was a way to control some the randomness while still not having a clear impression of what the team - being the now definite main team of Barston, Derron (street punk become something of monk type), and Astrid (elven bard who had developed into a fairly powerful nature mage). Derron has a backpack full of highly explosive fire oil. They plan to go full "goblin sapper". 

It would honestly take 2 to 3 long posts to cover ALL the details of these sessions, so I will sum it up into six quickish sections...

- 1. The Sennas Faith - 

A growing theme hinted at in part 2 was the idea that Humb had somehow been tied to a now lost faith. This faith involved a god of beauty and art called Sennas, appearing as a supremely beautiful male youth and whose symbols was a gauntlet pouring a rainbow of colors. Humb and Ick were still connected to this faith, though most trappings related to it were missing. Barston has pledged to find out more and finds himself drawn to the mystery. He seeks to return a statue to the ancient Sennas temple (now a place full of bohemians and artists drawn to it).

During this adventure, Barston is deeply wounded and has to limp off into a safe spot to try and heal. An encounter leads to a meeting with wood elves (from Ick) who love that he is trying to take down the warlocks. The warlocks have been destroying large swaths of the forest in their spread while the elves have been trying guerilla warfare tactics but know if the warlocks learn too much about where the elves live that the elves will be outnumbered. Dice rolls and oracles lead to a plot twist here where the elves are followers of Sennas. They have kept the faith alive for generations while the humans have let it lapse. Barston is invited to seek out the village. When he is ready, he will be able, though there are some "conditions" initially applied.

- 2. The Warring Reds - 

I realized I had made a slight mistake in that the blue warlock tribe (once more powerful than the Reds) had been largely destroyed so technically the Reds should have been running rampant. I decided to take a side trip and run a short session from the viewpoint of the red warlocks, partially using Mythic Magazine #41's Villain Crafter table to set some scenes, combined with a few Meaning Table rolls. The end result was that the Reds were at war with themselves. The powerful leader, focusing on demonology, had been deemed too theoretical in his tyranny and a younger upstart, focusing more on martial skills and rule-by-force, had started to push him out. Both considered themselves to be the true follower of Malakar Brite. 

On top of this, the remaining blue warlocks had decided to try and take over the Red territory. A few miles from Humb, a bloody war was going down, largely unnoticed. [At the end of each scene, day, etc...I would roll a basic opposed test and keep track of the relative damage each side was sustaining]. 

- 3. The Order's True Place in the Tale - 

Towards the end of these sessions, another clump of plot twists revealed that a major player in backing both sides of the warlock war was The Order of Illkar. The cultists-pretending-to-be-merchants were behind not only the missing people but also behind the gutting of the Humb churches and temples. Barston is able to lay claim to many stolen artifacts (and later, Derron is able to return them) and help start a pretty massive healing project around town. 

- 4. Ick Is Fighting Back -

There is a scene where Ick shifts into a more primal version of itself, an ancient forest full of strange creatures and large mushrooms. A group of warlocks who had been torturing and killing another group of warlocks is trapped inside the event and killed. Barston realizes that the forest is far more deeply magical than he realized and something is reawakening in it to protect itself from the increased destruction by the warlocks. 

- 5. The Great Storm - 

Also near the end, the team gets caught up in a trap that threatens to bring both groups of warlocks down on them. Astrid burns off essentially all of her magic points to create a massive storm. Since the Blues are also decently powerful weather mages, they inadvertently join in and power the storm even more. Portions of the forest are flattened and many warlocks are outright destroyed in the hurricane force event. The entire forest is charged and the trees glow and pulse in the energy. This act weakens Astrid considerably but allows the team a chance to get closer to the warlock base and to try and carry out their mission. 

- 6. The Team Suffers a Loss and Barston Undergoes a Crisis of Faith - 

Right as they get near the warlock base, they find the warlocks in a final death struggle. Too distracted with killing each other to notice the team of heroes sneaking in. Alas, some terrible dice rolls reveals that a telegraphed threat - a wood demon summoned up by the Reds to guard their base - is actually worse than intended. Random rolls all go from bad to worse as Astrid is snatched off the path into the trees. While Barston and Derron try, and fail to free her, she is hit several times and crushed. Derron and Barston are both deeply injured before the dice suddenly "turn back on" and Derron just flips out and pummels the demon into woodchips. 

Barston snaps and takes the backpack from the very-nearly-fatally injured Derron and just runs full tilt into the warlock base (he was here before, it was wear his bow was found), lights all the fire oil, and tosses it in. 

For every dice roll that went poorly for Astrid (and the trapped team that led to her summoning a massive storm), every dice roll about the extent of this explosion agreed: kaboom. The Reds, who use fire magic as a base, have explosives built up in their own plan of wrecking everything. Except now Barston has intentionally but also accidentally set it off. 

The explosion flattens him, kills off many Red, destroys many of their "stored up" zombies, and knocks many tall trees down. 

We have an unconscious, 1-ish HP main hero, his best friend that has around 2hp, and a dead friend who had been a core of this campaign for months. 

- The Aftermath - 

While the team bled out at the doorway of victory, the wood elves they had met a few days before showed up and gathered our fallen heroes. They are all three taken into the secret village of the Ick wood elves - Tarlanei - and there Astrid is buried with her kingdom's crown (used for some time by her as a magical focus) returned to her own elvish people. Derron recovers fairly quickly and returns to Humb with news. Barston stays in Tarlanei and dedicates himself to becoming the new high priest of Sennas. A process which will take months in game-world time. 

Astrid's troupe, the Skipping Faun, has a new leader: Athella. She was taken from the solo adventure "Bringing Back the Princess" in The Warlock Returns #11. I adapted it as a stand alone scenario for Barston and it ended with her joining the Faun (as always, based on a lot of random oracle rolls). 

The Sennas temple, still infested with Bohemians in a now thriving art community, has many of its artifacts restored and awaits Barston to take on his new role as leader. 

Derron keeps the outward appearance of a street punk but is now much more mature and deeply dedicated to understanding himself. He will follow Barston when Barston is ready to lead.

Humb is now freed of the years-long warlock interference and the Order has been destroyed. The town is suddenly finding itself bustling again. 

-- The End of Volume One and the "Truth" of Malakar Brite --

I had a problem on my hand. The main major threat of a year of playing seemed resolved EXCEPT we never got around to main baddie. And it felt like shoehorning in the big bad at this point would lessen what was actually a fairly upsetting (to the characters and to myself) death. Astrid was always a bit of a back up character but she was, inversely, kind of meant to be the one who lived on and told the story so future generations of Bakersfields (possibly half-elf Bakersfields since early meaning tables had essentially set up that her reasoning for following Barston was romantic interest) could follow along. In world terms, Barston and Derron got on people's nerves even though people trusted them. Everyone, including some of the not-so-good people, loved Astrid. 

Prior to this point, I had Brite shoved into every random list, sometimes more than once, and the dice always avoided having him surface, so I basically decided to forget the oracles and just go with my gut.

Brite was an old man when Shellyton and the other Bakersfields fled Humb. That was now 41-years-ago. He would be in his 90s or even over 100. While fantasy wizards, especially evil ones, tend to outstay their welcome, the campaign had clearly painted him as a threat-by-proxy and never something more active. In fact, oracle type rolls to see if the warlocks had received missions "from him" had basically all come back as "no" or "exceptional no" type results ever since the Order was destroyed a couple of months back. 

To wit, my own interpretation of these too-many-rolls is that Malakar is gone. 

Dead? A man who got turned into a legend while being essentially innocent? Whatever. Just "left". Maybe Ick absorbed him. Maybe he is in an alternate Humb painted on a different canvas. In his place, the Order had used warring bands of warlocks by pretending their missives were from Brite himself and had played them off of one another to fill their own pockets. For years. Maybe decades. The destruction of The Order led to the in-fighting led to the downfall. Brite himself might return but it is obvious that Shellyton's beliefs of a Xagor-esque Warlock were the byproduct of a kid who had long processed the loss of his childhood home through some grief-tinged revenge fantasy. The warlocks were real but Shellyton's take on Brite was, at best, outsized. Maybe. Maybe this is the long con. 

At any rate, it barely matters. A final scene played out in the aftermath with Barston and Athella (The Skipping Faun remains loyal in their support of Barston) ended up with the conclusion that Barston now wants to be himself. No longer a continuation of Shellyton's quest. No longer a warlock smasher. A man who is finding his faith while refinding a lost faith for an entire region. 

All the characters tended to anti-adventurers. Barston was a book printer in training, a herbalist by hobby, who beat warlocks while wielding an old family mace. Derron was a kid who took care of animals and got into drunken bar fights. Astrid was a run away princess bride who now played music and hung out with a pair of losers. That theme kept going for all the heroes - the conman, the reformed warlock, the shaggy dog, the amateur detective, the struggling merchant, the crackpot professor, the bard play-acting a mayor, the great-and-powerful wizard who is also kind of a petty power player. 

Barston is now a priest in the proper fantasy sense of the word, struggling to reawaken a faith that is built into the lifeblood of the land. Derron, his best friend, takes on the role of a friar monk and right-hand-man. The two of them will return, eventually, in much more seriously minded storylines. For a campaign about un-heroes, the two of them are now full blown heroes of the realm. Yet, people have barely heard of these two men. I like that contrast. 

But the campaign does not merely end because its titular main character is less of of a main character and has now become an entire plot device. There are plans afoot. 

I had planned to wrap this Big Recap up in three parts, but there will be a part 4. We will finish this up talking about how the campaign will continue with four (or more) different faces: the new city guards, the treasure hunters, the con men, and the priests. And that's not even getting to the grumpy goblins, the young rangers, the town beset by werewolves, the glowing figures in the hills. or the massive power struggle as Athella's mom attempts to take over an entire dynasty.