The Bleak and The Pearl (SoloDark): Part 5 - Returning the Spear (Civilization Phase)

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-- Gathering Allies in Grunce --

Returning to Grunce after finishing up their dive into Mad Del Marius's "Lost Citadel," the team has two goals in mind: 
  • Return the spear of House Marius to the current ruling leader, Varren Marius, and ask for her help in the ongoing issues facing Grunce and the Lighthouse. [1]
  • Get prepped to start diving into the tunnels underneath Grunce and return the Marius Diadem to the first fuelstone. 
Rance and Cal (Grunkheart, chief Lighthouse Keeper) start pouring over the notes of each other's research. Rance has connected the various items of power to restart the fuel stones. Cal has learned that the location of the final item, Jonias Grunkheart's "Eye", is in some place beyond the normal realm. [2] He now moves on research what this clue might mean and will try and locate a route to Mistamere's domain. 

The meeting with Lady Varren goes well. She accepts the gift and pledges to aid Cal and his Keepers in their quest. This might be the chance to launch an offensive against the dark. [3] She will not return to the Citadel and try to retake it. "Let the dead stay dead". 

Potential Wrinkle: Her urge towards a more militant approach means she might see the Lighthouse more as a weapon than a protection. A sword rather than a shield.

-- The Free Merchants Plot --

Meanwhile, the Free Merchants have begun to muster their own forces. Their current goal is to disrupt the trade routes into Grunce and use the frustration against the Great Houses to profit. [4] Their plan is to primarily destroy the alliances between the Pearl shipyards and the Grunce ones by refusing shipments and slow rolling the process. The Bleak needs the Pearl more and if the merchants across the Gray Channel feel they are losing out, the number of ships will shrink. 

This will hit both House Allocius (who runs the Grunce docks) and House Marr (who handles many of the Grunce markets) in the pocketbooks, tightening the screws and forcing them to collaborate and compromise more with the Free Merchants. 

-- Mechanical Notes --

  1. Varren Marius, the current Matriarch, strives to create unity among the Great Houses to wage war against the darkness and take by Barthus. However, the sheer greed of the upper houses, seeing The Bleak as a business venture, tends to silence her from doing much. (Note: Her name Var - Ren, and her drive, Unity - Challenge) were both generated with Random Realities. 
  2. Mythic Meaning Tables: Actions 59 Leave, 71 Physical. 
  3. "Does Varren accept the spear?" "Yes." What does she want from it? Mythic Meaning Table: Character Motivations --> 11 Conflict, 97 Support. 
  4. Mythic Meaning Tables: Actions --> 9 Hindrance, 39 Attain. "Are they trying to hinder the Lighthouse?" No. 
  5. Random Realities. Quest, Mission --> 5, 6 Destroy + 5,2 Relationship


-- Doug's Notes -- 

This one was shorter and a bit more awkward than intended. That's a byproduct of some gear shifting that happened in the middle. Originally, when I decided I wanted a dungeon crawl centric solo game, I went with ShadowDark backed with Mythic. Then, with SoloDark out, there was an alternate oracle with a few other bits and pieces. The plan morphed into using SoloDark in the dungeons (to avoid some oddities of triggering a close thread type event just asking "are there still torches on the wall") but then going back to a full Mythic campaign to figure out how stuff was going in the civilization part of the adventure.

This ended up being surprisingly awkward. Grunce is just the (current) backdrop. Threads about the various Great Houses fighting probably won't mean much as the game gets going and the team goes deeper into the Bleak (which is, in theory, only around 10 delves from now). It felt weird and flow disruptive to have a lot of book keeping for a part of the storyline that should be more about weaving an exciting story and giving excuses to fight minotaurs, scarlet or otherwise. This campaign is about enjoying dungeon delves and (soon) hex crawls. 

In the middle of working out this civilization scene I realized I was going to do away with the two phase model (I might try again in the future, but not right now). Instead, it will be purely SoloDark. Civ scenes might be short and brief or they might be more detailed but they will largely just be in-ShadowDark rather than outside of it. I will then back up some of the SoloDark tables with Random Realities and with Mythic's meaning tables. 

Take Doug's Advice: Solo Play is only about satisfying one player at the table, YOU. If something is not working for YOU then it is not working. Move on, try again, rip out parts, shove in parts. Whatever YOU need. 

I'll wrap this up here. Tomorrow I will try and work out the random tables for the next section of the "mega dungeon". Then I'll begin the next delve. 

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