Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Fate of the Norns – Fafnir’s Treasure – Session 4

[Fafnir’s Treasure is an introductory adventure written by Pendelhaven to introduce the game to players and gamemasters.  The Other GM is using it for our playtest.]

[Spoilers – This will spoil the intro adventure for this game system, so if that’s something that worries you, be aware.]

Player Characters
Bodil – a female Daughter of Ratatosk, Death Dancer subtype (Essence: 6, Destiny: 2), Town Guard
Elric Windgazer – a male Galdr, Diviner subtype (Essence: 4, Destiny: 3), Liberated Thrall
Einar – a male Galdr, Enchanter subtype (Essence: 6, Destiny: 2), Gravedigger
Gunnarr – a male Galdr, Enchanter subtype (Essence: 6, Destiny: 2), Foreign Import Merchant
Vigdis – a female Daughter of Ratatosk, Death Dancer subtype (Essence: 4, Destiny: 3), Hero of Renown
Masrur – a male Ulfhednar, Wolfen subtype (Essence: 6, Destiny: 2), Hunter/Trapper

Missed the Session
None!


Day 2, Sometime in the 2nd year of Fimbulwinter
Having finally rested, the group of Vikings packed up their camp and resumed making their way through the Groaning Woods.  As the group pressed through the eerily quiet woods, they heard the heavy tread of trolls ahead.

After a quick consult, Masrur ran a little ahead in his Blood Wolf form.  He kept the immense trees of the Groaning Wood between himself and the trolls, but one of the trolls heard him moving and called out, “What’s that?”  Masrur stopped moving and listened.  He heard troll voices talking amongst themselves and determined there were at least four trolls.  Masrur turned to return and deliver this news to his fellow Vikings when one of the trolls saw him, calling out, “Food!  Get it!”

The other Vikings took cover behind several trees and waited for Masrur to lead the trolls into an ambush.  Masrur ran through the group of trees and when the first trolls spotted the Vikings, the Vikings attacked.  The group focused their attacks on the first troll, attempting to put it down and shift the odds as they could now see 6 trolls.  Gunnarr took tactical advantage [a Passive Power allowing him to move up or down the initiative order] of the situation to be ready for the trolls.  Einar used runes to cast Stitch Kindred on himself, Bodil, and Vigdis.  They would share healing and divide wounds amongst themselves.

Gunnarr had Muspeli Nightmares ready on his lips and sang the words, letting the heat and air of Muspelheim leak through into Midgard.  This did little to stop the troll from attacking the first thing he saw in reach of his sharpened tree – Gunnarr.  [This knocked one of Gunnarr’s runes all the way through the wound track and moved a second rune half way down and gave him Impeded.  The worst part was that these were the rune tied to his healing power (Apples of Idun) and his lone Mental rune, which I wanted to use to Maintain Muspeli Nightmares – the worst two runes for Gunnarr to lose and they were gone at the start of the fight.]

As the two groups closed in and attacked each other, the trolls landed more injury than the Vikings, even though the Vikings killed one of the trolls outright.  Sensing some level of desperation Einar gestured the runes to Beckon Yggdrasil in the air, thinning the boundary between worlds.  The alkas [the thinned areas] landed on Einar and Masrur and adjacent to Gunnarr and Elric.

Unfortunately, with the Vikings packed together to kill the first troll, the otherworldly auras now emanating from Einar and Masrur injured the Vikings more than the trolls.  Gunnarr staggered through one of the alkas and continued past it so he would not affect the others.  He cast Muspeli Nightmares again to harm the trolls, singing loudly to increase the area effected [I chained a Spiritual rune to the rune I used to cast the spellsong, allowing me to double the area to a 20 foot radius].  Although only one troll was initially effected, Bodil drew the ire of all the trolls with her cruel taunts and suckered them into the area of effect [I don’t remember the name of the power she used, but all the trolls now must attack her or spend one rune to allow them to attack someone else – a dangerous tactic with trolls].

Elric picked up the fourth alka and then cast runes for Wrack on a troll attempting to flank the Vikings.  Musrur moved forward to move the aura emanating from him away from Bodil and Vigdis and take the attack to the trolls.  This left him within reach of two trolls.

[By now it was late, but we all wanted to complete this fight to its conclusion, so we took pictures of the battle map, the initiative order, and all the play mats (used to show damage on the characters and the NPCs).  We will resume in mid-fight next week and hope we can fight our way out to success or ascend to Valhalla by our heroic deeds!]

End of Session

[Holy smoke did Beckon Yggdrasil make things complicated.  All three characters part of the Stitch Kindred spell were inside the area of effect of two auras, meaning they took full damage from both.  Ouch!  The auras do not let you discriminate between friend or foe – they just damage everything within 10 feet and our party was all within 10 feet of each other at the time.]

[It also took us about 30 minutes to work out the timing of damage done by the Degeneration condition I placed on the trolls versus their Regeneration power.  The rules say both powers happen during the upkeep phase and allows characters to choose the order they are applied.  This allowed the troll in question to regenerate before taking the damage that would have killed him, meaning he stayed in the fight another round until we finally dropped him with the Auras.]

[These are the kinds of things we wanted to learn by working all the way through a real combat and why we didn’t want the Norn to call the fight at the end.  Some characters were able to use their powers for the first time and also take damage for the first time and see how the damage track really works.  As such, we are keen to finish this combat, no matter what happens.]


Session 1
Session 2
Session 3

Sessions 5 and 6

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