I Played Netherlight!

Yesterday, I got to play in Revenant Quill's Netherlight, a World of Dungeons hack set in a homebrew setting inspired by the Treasure Planet animated flick as well as Warhammer Fantasy.

Naturally, I play a space pirate - Charlotte "Charlie" Merceau, pictured below. Gaya Hakimi (wendi) and Charlie are on a journey to find the mysterious Tartarus Gate and unlock the secret of Hypercosmos. Did I mention Gaya's a space wizard?



What Happened

- We started out on the Angila, a river skimmer, near DeGrouse, surrounded by fog. With us was our patron Raymond Oakes (the scion of a merchant trading house), as well as Captain Reiko, his old mother and a crew of Kisovians. Raymond wants us to reach a work camp where he's having a mill built. The Kisovian workforce refuses to touch the black standing stones that hinder construction, so he hired us to excavate them somehow.

- On the third day, the old woman (Vadoma) brought attention to the river banks, muttering prayers and making warding signs. Gaya opened her third eye and saw the spirits of many dead men and women, begging or pleading us from the banks. She also noticed a giant pike trailing the ship, and after we warned the Captain, his crew started shooting the fish.

- One crewmate got his hand bitten off, although I totally shot the fish with a trick shot and saved the day. Not sure exactly what happened next but a clumsy crewmate still managed to get grieviously injured and lost his pulse carbine, which blew up part of the skimmer's engine, forcing us onto the river bank. Gaya healed the injured though, also perhaps unlocking his hidden psychic potential.

- There, Gaya went to touch one of the ghosts' featureless face, and had a vision: our ghosts were dead Kisovians left to starve on this planet by the Galidar (or Galidan?), an ancient, sinister civilisation, after using them to raise standing black stones for unknown purposes. Gaya sworn she would bring the ghosts to rest, and I agreed - although right now we needed her to rest as the psychic strain seemed to be taxing on her body and mind.

- A few days later, we reach the work camp on foot. The skimmer was too damage to go on water but could hover above ground at a slower pace. There, Gaya spent some time learning more about the local culture with Vadoma, while I scouted the area, noticing the circle of standing stones not too far ahead into the fog. After overhearing a conversation between Raymond and his boss, Joanna Stiegler, as well as her assistant/handyman the dwarf Thulgrim, we bumped in and cut the middle man, introducing ourselves to Mrs. Stiegler. She was pleased but busy, and we quickly moved on with Thulgrim who led us to the stone we needed to excavate.

- Opening her third eye again, Gaya noticed dark energy emanating from the stone as well as something beneath it, that looked like a large sarcophagus. Whatever is inside, it's bad. We'll figure out a way to get rid of the evil and hopefully prevent anyone else from becoming victims of the Galidar.

Some Thoughts

Netherlight is a WoDu hack, so it flows fairly well. Most tricky actions were handled with a 2d6+Stat throw against the 6-/7-9/10+ range, with middle results meaning a setback or "partial success". The GM's style here is fairly collaborative, with negotiation as to how to interpret the dice rolls being shared around the table (although we still follow what the fiction dictates and when we make up aspects of the world they're previously undefined and specific to what our characters would know). Fun! I'll be running Netherlight myself soon, although probably with a lighter framework, either diceless or something like Galaxy Far Away/APIE/Landshut.