The Bleak + The Pearl Part 23: In Search of the Harcuram Mantle, Session 1 [Shadowdark + SoloDark] [Offline Recap]

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A light blue and black artistic rendering of a photograph taken at a cold Norwegian beach.
Original image by IdaT (Pixabay). Alterations by Doug Bolden.

 

Previously, on The Bleak + The Pearl...

The Blue Delve Boys have returned from the Everburning Forest, exhausted and recovering from injuries. Meanwhile, Gryffin Grunkheart has decided to throw his lot in fully behind Cal and has gathered up a group of unlikely heroes (well, hero-ish). One each from the other four families who, centuries ago, worked with the Grunkhearts to build the original Lighthouse. A strange "ninja turtle" named Boris who consideres Gryffin to be an old-brother-by-way-of-soul has also joined. This group, the "Lighthouse 6" are traveling to the northern most islands of the Gray Channel: Isles of Andrek. One of the fuel stone relics was taken there over 250-years-ago, though the person who took it never returned.

About The Bleak + The Pearl

The Bleak (Barthus) and The Pearl (Silt) are large twin islands. Once home of an Ancient Empire that fueled its machines and miracles by tapping into the primal forces found upon each (Becoming and Being, respectively). Two thousand years after the fall of the Ancients, the Barthic Empire that grew up in its place (one of many over the years) faced its own cataclysm as The Bleak (the corrupted version of Becoming) spread like a disease. Those who stayed were subjected to rapid mutations and strange changes: their own bodies warped into monstrous forms as even the land lost its sanity. The last great project of the Barthic Empire—The Lighthouse—stopped the Bleak from overrunning the city of Grunce. Then its creator, Jonias Grunkheart, disappeared.

Three hundreds later, a decendent of Jonias Grunkheart has gathered a band of unlikely heroes and seeks to train and hone them to protect the future.

Content Warning: Fantasy Violence, Occasional Body Horror.

This post is in RECAP style. See the about page for this blog for more details. The system used to play this is ShadowDark by Kelsey Dionne and the Arcane Library with SoloDark (same) acting as the oracle.

Part 23: In Search of the Harcuram Mantle, Part 1

A Few Quick Notes

Reminder, see Intermission #5 (A { Short | Mid | Longish | Un- } Hiatus from the Mainline Plot) and Intermission #6 (New Icons, Learning Rolls, and Meet the Lighthouse 6) for the speediest catch-up to why this so different from the previous session.

Basically, the four main characters—aka the "Blue Delve Boys"—have a need for a month or two of rest and relaxation and learning/honing some skills. Meanwhile, Cal and Gryffin Grunkheart have formed a kind of Suicide Squad-esque band of misfits from the original five families (plus a fairly literal Ninja Turtle) to try and finish up some quests and to find new allies (and new treasures) to support the cause.

That's the in-universe story. The in-real-life story is I have usually between three and four campaigns going at all times and as much as I love them all, and especially love The Bleak + The Pearl, I need a campaign that allows me to focus on less creative writing, roleplay, complex plots, and complex mechanics. I need a campaign that uses different parts of my brain while giving me the freedom to zone out a tad more. This was the original intended purpose of The Bleak + The Pearl but over time it drifted and crossed over with other campaigns and was losing its distinction pretty hard (while also being a great test bed for a lot of style and element changes). For now, though, I am hard resetting back to its origins. At this point, I am unsure if the series will transition to the old format or not.

The way I am playing this version has five parts:

  1. (usually) A pre-built dungeon/module [a few fun exceptions will crop up]. Thanks to the way that the majority of Shadowdark dungeons are written, it is kind of easy to play them room by room without much in the way of spoilers. I will make some changes—from fairly slight to fairly large—to the content as written to add in history and elements of the campaign.
  2. A Google Document where I write a fairly rapid version of my gaming journal. Like all my journals, it will vary from time to time in how much focus is spent but the overall idea is for very few elements to take up more than a paragraph or two (as opposed to others where encounters can take pages of dialogue, tables, and oracles).
  3. A GIMP file (see the downloads is you want to get an idea how it might work) that has maps locked into place (maps from the pre-generated dungeons in the module), a "fog" layer, a metric ton of labels and tokens (tokens taken from Games-Icon.net from various creators), a torch item to help figure out where to disperse the fog, and then a layer's tab with many notes.
  4. A Google Slideshow that allows me to keep up with the character sheets in a fairly compact way.
  5. A copy of Shadowdark with SoloDark.

These recap sessions for The Bleak + The Pearl "Season 2" adventures will make the actual-play-journal a download but they are not exactly complete. Some dice rolls are just summed up instead of written down in detail. Some stuff is actually coded on the GIMP file. Some stuff will change previous sections so the final version reflects the status at the end of a session, not a live look at everything. Especially with the map where doors or tunnels or characters that played a big part might not there in the shared variation because of things that happened.

I am going to call this style "Offline Recap" since the idea is that I am sharing my session's final state but unlike something like The Bloody Hands where you get a pretty flow-readable set of actual play notes that show changes and updates while retaining the original, these are much more Doug's constant working document rather than Doug's pretty showing document.

The Mantle Is Lost

Elude Harcuram spent many years working with Jonias Grunkheart by providing the paperwork and legal services that arose during the construction of the Lighthouse. For this service, Jonias granted Elude one of the fuelstone relics used to start and manage the Lighthouse initially. This was the Elude mantle.

As the years passed, and it became clear there was a flaw in the Lighthouse that would require a miracle to fix, Elude passed on and the new House leader was his son Adren. Adren upheld the legacy of Elude at a fairly steep personal and family cost. Finally, after Jonias disappeared, each of the four families agreed to take the relics and spread them far from Grunce in case someone else was able to finish the Lighthouse. Adren took his father’s mantle north to Isles of Andrek, where the Harcuram House began centuries before moving south.

Adren was searching for the legendary King Skorgald Harcuram’s tomb. He did not return.

The Isles of Andrek and the Town of Valthis

Gryffin Grunkheart (Human Ranger) has gathered five others into the boat The Marius Crossbow. The ship, a galleon-class, belongs to House Marius but has been bequeathed for the personal use of Dhelia "Del" Marius (Human Swashbuckler). Besides Gryff and Del: there is Boris Loo (a Bleak-Touched Chelonian who fancies himself a Ninja), Louis Harcuram (Human Bard), Ronick Mistamere (Dragonborn Pit Fighter), and Ada Bittermold (a Witch of unknown genetic ancestry). Whether demon-kin or Bleak-touched, Ada has deer antlers and deer legs and the ability to talk to plants and mushrooms.

Cal Grunkheart had located a very old map of the Isles of Andrek in the Lighthouse library. This marks the destination Adren Harcuram had in mind but it is essentially 250-years out of date and would not be anything like acurate for the more socio-political aspects. Still, this enables Gryffin and Del to plot a course to be near the sea caves where Skorgald should be buried.

The Crossbow sails within a few miles of the farming hold of Valthis. In the spring (which it currently is) and summer, the village dedicates itself to sheep and vegetable growing. In the fall and winter, though, the fighting men and women are sent south on raids to plunder and claim. It is led by Signe. She has been troubled by a would-be Jarl Karsgald from a nearby island who—besides once betraying Signe during a raid—is slowly moving towards declaring himself Jarl over all of Andrek. Egrid, Signe's Seer, has had visions that unless he is stopped, Karsgald will bring ruin to the whole area.

Hearing reports of possible warriors from the south, Signe is intrigued. Here could be allies to join her cause or, if enemies, someone worth stopping before they aid Karsgald. She has a longboat sent out to hail the newcomers and invte them to Valthis. Gryffin accepts this offer and heads towards Valthis bringing only Ada along. Ada's appearance as a friendly young woman with deer-antlers fits his stereotype of what he hopes their stereotype might be of some sort of truthbringer. The fact that she can be a bit weird should only add to the intrigue. The plan works and both Signe and Egrid take to Ada and Gryffin.

Hearing Signe's plea, Gryffin gets swept up in the story—very swept up—and agrees to take Egrid's oath to Odin that he will defeat Karsgald. Just, first he needs to see to the mantle. Signe laughs at this. Surely having her on his side with her 200 warriors would be better than any piece of cloth. (Gryffin does not explain that this is not a piece of cloth but more like a fuelstone carving of a mantle meant to fit upon the statue of Elude Harcarum.)

He explains that his people are new to the fight but capable of great deeds. He just needs to spend some time letting them work together and finding their new potential. Signe actually appreciate this: a leader guiding his men on a quest. She accepts that it will likely be some time before they are ready to face Karsgald but she holds him to the oath. The others are brought in off the Crossbow. They have a feast that night and gather some information before heading out the next day.

DOUG's NOTE: The Marius Crossbow definitely has some crew on-board. However, rather than dealing with any kind of system where I roll encounters and such while the crew is left behind, I basically only roll encounter checks and the like if one of the main characters is on it. The rest of the time it is considered something like auto-pilot. Over time, this might change to where the crew has their own character sheets and show up on some expeditions. I just wanted to get the Lighthouse 6 established, first.

Entering the Sea Caves and the Hall of Murals

The Crossbow continues along the coast going towards where the map says the sea caves should be found. Del locate them after a few hours of sailing through driving winds. They spend a couple of hours exploring the exterior and realize that there are several entrances to the caves where water flows through (in and out, depending on the tides). After some consideration, Gryffin opts for the northern side which allows them to slightly hide the Marius Crossbrow and gives them some cover for their launch craft.

They follow the narrow tidal channel deeper into the caves until they come out into a dverg-made structure. At one time in the past, these gnome-kin craftsfolk built a suitable tomb for Skorlgald and his fellow Sea Wolves.

The tidal channel splits this initial large chamber into two and Gryffin always heads to the right-hand side first so they head over to the west.

The first site of interest they find is a place of sacrifice and a hall of murals. In the former, a bowl meant to collect blood is in a large altar. In the latter, three murals of the Nordic gods are in each their own alcove. Ada recognizes the dried blood is some humanoid—in Barthic Tongue, "human" includes humans, dwarves, elves, and goblins at least so can be confusing without context—so Gryffin has the team enter into battle readiness as they head up into the hall.

It is Ronick who realizes the relationship between the altar and the murals. His family has embodied the concept of sacrificing their body to pledge allegiance to strength. He pours his dragonborn blood into the altar bowl and then approaches Odin—they only have a vague idea of what these figures represent—so they choose a mural more or less at random. Three others join in. Gryffin chooses Loki. Del also chooses Loki. Boris chooses Odin. Louis prefers to not damage himself and so refrains. Ada is dedicated to the Willowman and will not pledge herself to another god. All those who completed the sacrifice feel just a bit stronger in various ways.

On the way back out of the hall, Gryffin spots a zombie who has shown up, attracted to the blood. Gryffin pulls forth his longbow and scores a precise shot, dropping the zombie in a single hit.

Proud of themselves, they head back into the main branch and next head to the Hall of Pillars.

The Hall of Pillars, the Sons' Tomb, Spiders, and Stingbats

Entering into a hall of four large pillars, they carvings of short, beared men hammering stone. The group does not much about the dverg history though they heard the name mentioned back in Valthis. To the north of the room is a door with carved runes in the Nord-style. Unfortunately, no one is able to read them. Not even Louis, who knows dwarvish runes. Gryffin pushes the door open, anyhow.

They find a series of alcoves with five Nords in stone coffins. Each coffin is left uncovered and the bodies inside have been decapitated and turned upside down. The group does not fully appreciate the symbolism of this act. What Gryffin does appreciate is the fact that these coffins are covered in large spider webs. He calls for the others to retreat but as he does a giant spider falls down upon him. He gets his shield up to block the hit. Four of the others back out of the narrow tomb but Ronick runs in and brings his greatsword down to finish off the spider.

The threat out of the way, they each take one of the five tombs and search to see if they see any sign of the mantle. They do not. They do, however, find a signet ring with the crest of the Skorgald can. Louis recognizes it as an old symbol for the Harcuram's before they settled down in Grunce. He pockets the signet ring.

Moving south, the party is pushing through a door on the other side of the pillared hall when a pair of stingbats attacks Ada and Boris in the back row. Even as Boris manages to fend off the attack, Ada is struck and knocked unconscious as the stingbat starts to feed off of her. Del leaps onto Ada and cuts the stingbat down but the deer-antlered witch is unconscious and fading fast. Gryffin struggles but manages to make a healing concoction and pour it into Ada's mouth which revives her enough that they get her stabilized.

A bit shaken, Louis stops and sings a song to raise everyone's spirit.

Holy Water, the Sea Wolf Skeleton, and the Tomb of the Seer

The next room they enter is a large chamber with the western walls taken up by an elaborate series of high-relief carvings. Six warriors raise their swords towards a holy woman. The holy woman has her hands cupped and full of water. Ada sniffs it and realizes it has some holy blessing upon it—something of which is not the biggest fan—but she still takes the bottle that Gryffin had used earlier to save her life and fills it with water from the cupped hands. She pockets it and figures she will use it at some later time.

To the south, the dverg-carved tomb gives way to a natural cave. To the east, someone has piled rubble and trash to block a door. Gryffin decides to clear that while he sends Boris and Del to give watch on the cave. After the stingbat attack, the group is more aware of the potential for surprise attacks.

Finally getting through the rubble, Gryffin takes Ronick, Ada, and Louis with him into the next area. This is another tomb but these corpses are shown much more honor. The skeletal remains of six warriors hold great axes while their eyes are adorned with gold coins. Three of the group refrain from disturbing the corpses just yet but Ronick is not afraid of a potential haunting. He reaches over and grabs the coins from the nearest skeleton, which rises up and starts slashing at Ronick with an axe. Gryffin screams to put the coin back but Ronick laughs off the threat and manages to smash the skeleton to bits. The dragonborn pockets the coins and says he might take more.

Gryffin squares off and the first true test of his leadership takes place. After a few minutes, Ronick concedes to follow Gryffin's orders and leaves the other tombs alone.

While this is going on, Ada has been poking the walls around the tombs and is surprised to find a secret door. It opens and the four go further north into it.

The find a monument to a seer of old. Louis actually sort of recognizes her from the family history he found, but cannot place a name. A statue of her holds a golden wand with dwarven runes reading "Welcome" upon it. Ada, after looking at the others, takes the wand. She can sense it has some magic but not exactly what. The statue luckily does not come to life. Gryffin tells them to not bother the tomb any further—especially because of the warning to not mess with a woman's corpse in these caves. This time, the unruly bunch listen and follow him out.

Meeting some Sad Bandits, More Stingbats, and Death

Going south into the cave, they run into a group of six sad bandits. The chamber the bandits are camping in is another large room once again split in half by one of the tidal channels. The bandits are on the south shore. The heroes are on the north.

Once again, Gryffin immediately greets the strangers, this time with Louis joining in. The bandits are more curious than hostile. Both groups share first names and Gryffin asks about the mantle in a fairly roundabout way, trying to hide its real value. The bandits know not a whole lot about it. Their leader saw it in the cave and went to look for it and other treasures, taking their boat, but has never returned. This has effectively stranded them inside.

While the conversation is taking place, a larger group of stingbats flies into the south side of the room and starts attacking the bandits. The heroes shoot arrows—and Boris uses his long razor chain—to give support. Before the stingbats can be killed, the currently acting leader of the Bandits, Thurgston, is struck and killed. The rest of the stingbats are beaten but this breaks the spirits fully of the sad bandits. Trapped in a cave killing them off one by one, there only hope would be to risk swimming out through the tidal channel.

Gryffin offers to come back in some hours and get them out but he needs to keep looking for the mantle. He tells them to stay alert and stay calm.

The Makeshift Ferry, The Haunting, the Longboat, and the Undead Sea Nymph

Heading north, two things occur. First: the group realizes that they are being followed by a green glowing ghost. Second: they find another tidal channel blocking their path and a makeshift raft—possibly the bandits'—caught up against some rocks and partially submerged by the water flow.

The ghost does not attack, just floats nearby, and seems as though it is more curious than hostile. Gryffin wonders if their attempt to save the bandits called up this Nord spirit who sees them as fellow heroes. He asks the others to leave it alone.

Boris pulls the raft free but it would be hard to get it out of the water and back down the cave to the bandits. Besides, they have a need for it. Using Ronick's rope and grappling hook, they set up a makeshift ferry. This way they can cross back and forth over the channel. They do this and continue north. The ghost follows them.

The next room they find is another large dverg-made tomb. In fact, it is the eastern half of the very first chamber they entered through. Unlike the previous one, which was mostly a hall, this one houses Skorgald's longboat. The massive ship was truly the vesself of a king and sits upon stands with the Skorgald/Harucam drake symbol in carved into its side and masthead. Jonias brings Louis and enters the vessel while the others wait outside and keep guard.

Inside, he finds the body of an old woman and once again does not interfere despite her having several valuable jewels and pieces on her mummified (not skeletal) body. As he leaves, the ghost that has been following hovers nearby and seems pleased they left this particular tomb alone.

Passing along the side of the longboat, they see the caves go south next to a large indoor lake. Taking this path, they come near the slain body of a sea nymph. Trying to stay some distance from her (Gryffin is very punctual about listening to that particular rumor), they still get too close. She rises as an undead nymph and attacks Gryffin. In the process of defending themselves, they have to cut her down (hiding the fact of what caused her death, a group of nords also in the caves at the same time).

South of there they find a dead end but can just make out an old door with more dverg-runes: "Wisdom is the key that will open the way." Louis brings up the wand that Ada took and she takes it out and waves it at the door. Then looks for a place to put it into the door itself. Finally, she taps it against the door and it opens up. She wanders inside and the group finds a massive trove of treasure. Massive by their standards.

Gathering the Treasure, Returning to the Crossbow, Tidal Surges, and Saving Bandits

Since part of his mission is to acquire funds for the rebuilding of the Lighthouse, Gryffin is only momentarily disappointed that this trove does not have the mantel. He goes into practical mode. They can take this and make their way back to the longboat room. Their boat is there—Borish had previously used his own grappling hook to pull it over to the easter bank where they can access it without having to backtrack—and Del can take the boat by herself back to the crossbow. Then come back and get them and they will head out for the night, find a way to save the bandits, and rest before returning the next day.

On the way back, they only run into a single stingbat—Gryffin shoots it—near the body of the sea nymph. They load up the boat and send Del off. Unfortunately, near disaster strikes shortly after.

A tidal surge causes the channel to overflow and wash everyone back before the water then sucks back into the channel. Del was too seasoned to be caught off guard but had to spend a bit mooring to the walls. The others mostly resist but Boris is swept into the channel. Luckily, the chelonian is naturally ok with water and a trained ninja. He smokesteps back onto the shore while others are calling out his name (the damage he took from being knocked over and pulled into the water took a lot out of him, though).

Del returns an hour or so later and the group heads back to the Crossbow. Gryffin works out a path to get to the bandits and picks the remaining five up. He can tell that though they are grateful, they have a certain glint in their eye and so does not trust them staying too long upon the Crossbow. Del pilots the ship a few miles east of the sea caves, opposite of where Valthis is, and they drop them off with some food and supplies.

The Crossbow crew rests for the night and gets ready to return to the caves in the morning. Over night, the strong winds die down finally.

Maps at the End of Part 23

Snippet of a fantasy style hex map showing sea caves and a town called Valthis.
Hex Map originally by Kelsey Dionne and Cameron Maas. Tokens by Delapouite of game-icons.net. Colors and labels by Doug Bolden.

 

 

Click to enlarge (etc) to see better the details recorded for this session.
Map by Kelsey Dionne. Tokens by various contributors from game-icons.net. Colors and labels by Doug Bolden. See credits for more information.

DOUG'S COMMENTS AND NOTES

This represents roughly four to five hours of playtime with the caveat that some of that time (surprisingly little, but definitely an amount) was spent making some tokens, figuring out some graphic techniques, and just generally enjoying the aesthetic aspects of my creation.

I wonder how many blog posts this would be if I kept it in the previous method. I would guess at least three, pushing four. Of course, this means scenes like the one with Signe (and possibly the one with the bandits) would have a lot more dialogue and character building. I think it is an ok trade. Some of my other series will have an entire chapter of dialogue. It gives me some different vibes and mindspaces.

Here are some some various things I noted during and after the session.

SYSTEM OF DAYS | MONTHS IS NEEDED. I have been highly inconsistent with time keeping on a longer scale throughout this campaign. I think it has gone back and forth between spring-ish, summer-ish, and autumn-ish a few times in the past couple of IRL months. For now, just to set a time and start keeping track of it, Barthus is currently in LATE SUMMER SPRING MONTH (FECK, I got this wrong...Winter would start with Longnight, not end. Whoops, I'll correct it next session, but this session being days 21 through 23 of Late Spring Month). I haven't a good name for the year but let's call it Crossing 301 being the 301st year since the Barthic Empire officially moved across the channel (and collapsed on the other side). The idea I am thinking is you have Spring starting [not ending which is the mistake I made during the session] on Vernal Equinox. Summer starting on Longday (Summer Solstice). Autumn starting on Autumnal Equinox. and Winter starting on Longnight (Winter Solstice). My current idea is to name the months after trees (probably using some naming generator but essentially being the equivalent of real world trees). Spring would be flowering trees. Summer will be fruit trees. Autumn will be trees with bright autumn foliage. Winter will be evergreens. After winter will be Thorn which will be a 5 day period of celebration and ghost stories leading back into Spring.

RUNES CONFUSION. When we got to the "Hall of Pillars," I took "runes" to be Nordic runes [which is correct, probably]. I rolled to see if this had been studied and got no so the characters had no idea what the runs meant on the door or on the Wand of Wisdom. When I got to the door which uses the Wand of Wisdom to open, the game text says "Dwarven Runes" (presumably Dvergen Runes). Because of this, I swapped and thought that all the runes were by the dverg builders. However, that is inconsistent with other world building in Cursed Scrolls #3. That led me to making it a bit easier than it should be to figure out that door. It was a lot of treasure, relatively speaking, but I won't sweat it too much. Had I been running this for players besides myself I would have made the same mistake and deep down having a few hundred gold pieces to blow on carousing won't run much immersion for me. The gentlest retcon is the wand and door are both dwarven but any others are Nord.

COMBAT and TORCH TIMING. I realized in the middle of this session that I had screwed up combat timing for a minute (no pun intended). Since the shift to theater-of-mind occurred, I have been very loose on timings. I slipped back to the old Dungeons & Dragons habit of treating combat as shorter round inside of the longer timing of the non-combat game. Shadowdark is "real time"—which gets trickier in solo play—but really I should have been keeping that consistent this whole time. I had to make a mental correction now that I am back to the old school style of dungeon crawling. ON THE OTHER HAND, I have been using the SoloDark recommended 10-rounds=1-Torch metric. I think I might up that to 12-rounds. Maybe. That would better match roughly an hour's-worth of gameplay to a single torch.

Going Back to Downloads for This Series

This campaign is not only going back to its original style of solo play but so are the blog entries for it. As I said above, my notes for this style of playthrough are much more a working document meets technical log than the kind of frilly back and forth style of my usual write-ups (which are like a slightly rougher blog post with a lot of asides).

In other words, I will once again share some of the maps and text notes as downloads instead of trying to format them into a blog-first-like presentation. This way people get to see a fuller take on my various play methods.

Actual Play Downloads

NOTE: the actual play document contains material that is not mine with a lot of material that is. Direct passages from Cursed Scroll #3 has been copy and pasted [usually in a player-facing way]. The maps come from that document with colors and labels added. The tokens used for characters, mobs, and features are taken from games-icon.net and various contributors. See Credits for more details. Just note that downloading these files does not grant any additional permissions to use the parts not original to myself.

I plan to fix this better in the future with credits baked right into the documents but these files were made without it and it would take a lot of time to start editing it in now. I apologize in advance. I try to be big on giving credit, here.

I should probably do a fuller write up of that last one.

CREDITS

This campaign is played using Shadowdark and the solo rules from SoloDark. Both are by Kelsey Dionne with various others contributing art, etc.

This session is played using materials from Cursed Scroll #3: Midnight Sun including the Sea Caves map used for the main adventure, the text from the "Hoard of the Sea Wolf King" adventure, and the Isles of Andrek used for the hex crawl. "The Hoard of the Sea Wolf King" and all maps used in it are by Kelsey Dionne. Used here for personal use. The hex crawl, including Valthis (etc), are also creations of Kelsey. The hex map cartography is by Cameron Maas.

All references to The Bleak, The Lightouse, Grunkheart, Grunce, Harcuram, and other stuff more directly related to the campaign are by me, Doug Bolden, and are a byproduct of months of playing. Those elements are free-to-use if you want. I honestly do not mind.

I have used GIMP to add colors and notes to the player-facing maps. I still do not own the maps. Be good, please. Better yet, get your own copies from the Arcane Library. They are a good company and this is a great game.

The tokens used in the map are from game-icons.net and were provided by that website for use under Creative Commons CC-BY License 3.0. Contributors used include Carl Olsen, Cathelineau, DarkZaitzev, Delapouite, GamerAce135, Lorc.

The image used to make the splash art is "Waves, Beach, Norway" by IdaT provided under the Pixabay License. As usual for Shadowdark themed posts, I use GIMP to reduce the image down into two-colors and then pick some pleasing-to-me combination. Intended as flavor rather than a precise representation.

The images of the maps from this session were created by myself using GIMP and a mixture of the above resources. Shared here only as demonstration.

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← Previous Eustace Delmont Session || Next Eustace Delmont Session → Chapter 5 <<Hitomi Meyers>> It was only the next day when I asked Morgan if she wanted to come over and hang out. I was getting lonely. Eustace was off somewhere instead of coming into work like I thought (again, later, I found he had been in jail). She said yes and I played it off coolly despite the fact that I had picked up supplies the day before. I figured in the mean time, I could spend some time browsing the local library.  Morgan had suggested I talk to someone called "Mrs. Zable" about local legends.  The Maidenstead Public Library was tiny but in a cozy way. A rack of new releases wrapped in plastic dust jackets looked largely up to date and several shelves of fiction and non-fiction books looked well-loved and well-used. A smell somewhere between oak, dust, and cinnamon wafted around the place. It was a deeply pleasant location. Old folks read newspapers around tables and a fe...
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