Skörne - A Thousand Dead Babies - Two-Shot

Session 1 writeup by Panna's player (Cosmic Orrery)

Arrived in town, observed various locations from the nearby heights, went down and headed straight to the church.
Met the local twink priest, fumblingly introduced ourselves as very legitmate trouble solvers from the church, got some general information about weird tracks in the wood (unless it was the head of the lumbercamp who told us that?) some sort of cult, and such woes, decided to head off to the lumbercamp, arrive and talk to the foreman who confirms about the weird tracks, mentions seeing an elf once, and hearing cries at night from the woods keeping him awake, trying to shrug them off as nightmares.
We learn about a worker who went crazy tho and go to talk to him, babbles, convince him to draw what he saw which is some kind of fucked up bat/goat/moth/bird/knight thing? (unclear), he gets panicky and we let him rest with his fellows, rub our chins and traipse off towards the nearby farm, halfway there we see a weird pile of guts by a stone and a cottage, investigate, it's deer, knock on cottage and are met by a gruff weirdo woodcutter who is dismissive of stuff in the woods and boastful of his own prowess, politely scamper off and arrive at the farm, meet the farmer, and his daughters (including Marilyn who gives Panna some eyes) and eat a meal with them, he starts rambling about the witch-herbalist who probably needs to get burned he thinks, Panna is invited to the barn by Marilyn and has a brief and lovely time, depart and go to visit the old lady (I'm pretty sure we did that before going back to town) talk to her, interrogate, she denies being a witch, mentions lack of childbirths in town, talks about how she goes out into the woods, mentions someone visiting the farmhouse at night, is generally a bit standoffish, depart and head back to town, briefly pestering the twink priest about staying in the church (so we can spy on him) but are rebuffed.
Go to inn, and do some drinking, learn about a dubious local locksmith type, afterward we catch some sleep then decide to head out into the night to spy on the farmhouse.
On the road, we spy two different figures, one heading towards the lumbercamp and the other towards the farmhouse, decide to follow the one to the farmhouse and see them go into the barn, sneak up and peer through a knothole to see it's the twink priest and Marilyn, who have a little dinner, then start getting it on, after ensuring neither of the two turned into a demon, we depart and head back to the inn for the night.

Session 2 writeup by Oomst's player (Jack)

Waking up at noon from uneasy dreams and after a nice meal, the investigation continued with Ally [village waif/orphan], whom we heard was spending her time in the woods during the day. Orienting ourselves with the markings on rocks and trees, we find our way through the forest and found her pretty quickly, talking to a fox, at which point she awkwardly introduced herself to us. After a slight moment of embarassment for the knight, she let us know that the animals of the forest complained of the state of a certain tree in it, and Ally let us know that it is sick before pointing us to it.

After a moment looking for it, we arrive at an altar composed of a bloody stone slab surrounded by pyres in the shape of a pentagram located in front of the tree we were looking for. Not much is to be found here but a ray of light still illuminates what appears to be an opening underneath the tree, which can be dug out with shovels. As such we decide to go back to the village to retrieve the equipment to dig, and stumble upon Duncan who greets us with enthusiam. His tone and shit-eating grin let us know something mischievous is brewing. He asks questions regarding our investigations, which we attempt to dodge gracefully. Nonetheless we let him know of our need for shovels (for mushrooms) and he offers to lend us some from the village, with a pickaxe that we decline.

Now equipped with shovels, we return to the tree and dig, which takes up the rest of the afternoon. We find that the opening underneath the tree is the entrance to a cavern/dungeon of sort where we decide to enter. In there, we find corridors with granite walls and a fungi substances growing on them, including a well filled with a writhing mass, a wall we cannot break with merely shovels or our weapons, and a spherical fungi mass in which rest two skeletons. When entering one the rooms, the fungi starts to sprawl from the walls taking a humanoid shape, trying to grab us in an effort to overwhelm us and sporify us. In a last effort to put an end to the altercation, Panna uses an alchemy fire which kills all fungi in the room but leaves her with severe burns and harms Oomst. At this point we are both in critical situation and need to leave.

When crawling out, Panna gets caught by one of the cultist, different people from the village, most of them naked, wearing leather hoods, at the exception of Duncan (who we recognize by his voice), a craddle on the altar, and a horsed black knight, standing next to a giant demonic figure with a goat head, the body of a gorilla, and hooves for feet. Duncan calls for Oomst who before coming out to be stripped naked and taken hostage uses his scroll of disassembly to remove his hand which starts to scuttle away unnoticed. The cultists are about to tie us to the tree but using the detached hand, Oomst stabs the goat demon from behind which leads it to scream and creates enough commotion for us to escape. On our way to the village, Oomst is taken by the knight but Panna manages to go the farm and alert the villagers of the danger in the woods before fainting. A certain number of villagers gather as a mob to go get those cultists.

There ensues a confrontation between cultists and villagers which leads to a stalemate where both parties encounter great losses, but the hunter John manages nonetheless to slay the demonic beast. Marilyn frees Oomst from the cultists and runs after the herbalist/witch with him. After letting him kill her, they flee together with the remaining survivors and the baby craddle, leaving John to fight the knight who is still standing.

Epilogue at the village, where the remaining villagers hide in the church and get informed of the current situation by twink McKenzie. Twink proceeds to break down until he sees the newborn baby. With death, new life, so it's all okay in the end.

--- What Jack left out is that they gave a cursed craddle to the community that spawns babies every morning. What kind of fucked up wizard comes up with these things?

Some Thoughts
- Investigative scenarios are my favorite I think. Lots of talking to people, going around, meeting folks. There's a bit of everything in this adventure and it is rock solid. The short paragraphs really help, I read some here and there directly to the players too. Took about an hour and a half to prepare the first evening, for about five hours of play (and we skipped ahead with me giving off key informations through Ally, could have lasted a few more).

- We started using Hits as Dilemmas:

    x take 1 hit or be grabbed by the hands crawling out of the walls
    x take 3 hits or be piled on by zombies and infected with weird spores
    x take 1 hit or fall prone
    x survive but get hideous burns (had like 1 or 2 hits left, alchemical fire is rough)

And it was like the missing piece from a method of handling violence I already thought was probably my favorite (see Diceless Shadowrun / Dreamlands of Carcosa which I run with APIE mechanics back then). You keep the visceral combat of diceless, and the dilemmas are a great way to inject more agency and make moment-to-moment decision-making in combat revolve around creative thinking (it keeps our thoughts in the game world). Wondering when to ressort to a save vs death "death's door" kind of move though. In this case, I don't think rolling for it would have made the alchemical fire scene better or even feel more fair, so as it stands this worked perfectly. I think we'll invoke Death's Door when it seems like a trade would be too easy or not make sense.

Writing Skörnepunk now.