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Depths & Wilds (Main)

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WlfSamurai

Maelstrom Engineer
This is our IC thread for our Dungeon World ”Depths & Wilds” game.

Starting situation prompts:
  • We are exploring a legendary battlesite that lies deep in an ancient forest, seeking the crypt of a forgotten hero.
  • We are here to stop the release of an ancient evil guarded by crazed cultists and an alien horror.
 
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Session 1

Geratius, Venaar, Kersh, Kotezira have made their way deep into the Tyne Woods, an ancient site none have traveled to for centuries. This motley group of adventurers have put together that this is the site of a legendary battle that took place long ago. It is here they seek the crypt of the forgotten hero Galaeron Loraqen and the crazed cultists within.

The stories of these woods speak of restless spirits and ancient curses. It's easy to see why. Despite the bright half-moon and clear sky, there is a shroud of darkness that seems to press against the light of the group’s torchlight. Mist fills the spaces between the trees making visibility beyond a few yards difficult. The silence is sickening. Nothing stirs as if the trees themselves are a holding their breath.

And yet, it feels to the group that something is watching them.


(What do you do?)

D. Rex D. Rex Random Word Random Word Vaneheart Vaneheart Pumpkin Spice Cyanide Pumpkin Spice Cyanide
 
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Geratius Volus
Human Fighter


Geratius didn't like the unusual and oppressive silence of this forest. It felt unnatural to him. The gloom and darkness felt as if it was a living inhabitant of the forest itself, pressing against the torchlight, trying to get at the people surrounded by its radiance which acted as a invisible warding fence against the grasping tendrils of the night. His mind occasionally drifted to wild thoughts of ridiculous things, like bog witches, necromancers, imps, ghosts, and the walking dead, and his eyes darted immediately to any perceived movement in the trees and bushes. Steeling his thoughts, he thought to himself You're spooked! If your drill instructors could see you now, they'd get a good laugh. Not every creepy forest has creepy crawlies to match. Most of the time a forest is just a forest, plain and simple.

Geratius never liked the forests of the world much. While he had moved to a farm in the countryside during the height of the Oppression in his late teens, he had spent the majority of his youth on the mean streets of the great Neldarin city of Rimini. To him it had seemed in his youth that forests, especially old forests, were places of elves, druids, wisps, faeries, trolls, gnomes, bears, wolves, animals, and strange old things that men of the city just weren't suited for. He was reminded of stories his aunts used to tell when he was a child, stories perhaps to frighten children into behaving, of creatures of shadow called the taken. Strange boogeymen who hated the light, who only appeared at night, that could take the shape of people who had disappeared (perhaps "taken" by the taken themselves) and could mimic their shapes and voices, and would coax people, especially wayward children, into leaving the safety of torchlight and following them into the darkness to be devoured and maybe turned into taken themselves. On reflection he knew that these stories were simply to remind children not to wander off and to behave. This idea was reinforced in that no one he knew as a kid had actually, reputably claimed to have encountered a taken themselves, only that they had heard from a "friend of a friend" or a "distant cousin, thrice removed" or some such thing. And yet, here in this forest right now, he seemed to better understand where these stories and legends came from.

Yet despite all of this, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched. He looked to his traveling companions, idly scratched his shortly trimmed beard, and broke the oppressive silence, saying "I feel like we are being watched, and by nothing friendly at that. Have any of you seen anything?"
 
Trees, Venaar thinks to herself dryly, I've seen trees. A quite frankly unnerving number of trees. Countless trees, with countless more lurking behind them, in an ocean of uninhabited hostile wilderness that felt like it stretched to the ends of the world. She had seen a map before. She knew it didn't. Yet her gaze remained firmly on her sore feet, for she knew if she looked up she would see no one beyond this motley assemblage, and were she to strike out into the darkness no one beyond that, and should she walk for days unceasing no one still. It was unnatural. A lifeless desolation devoid of thought and artifice and culture.

At least I'm not cold, she comforts herself as she shoves her hands deeper into the pockets of her thick fur trimmed woolen cloak, half white with golden tracery, half black with silver, with polished brass clasps and thick boots to match. She felt a pang of shame; had not the state provided her with everything, from the finest education to the best equipment modern artifice could provide? These ignorant peasants were as much citizens of the empire as anyone, even if they didn't know it, and she had a sworn duty to better their lives. She was an ambassador for the spirit of nation and people, here to demonstrate the myriad benefits of unity. And what demonstration did they ask of her? Not a better mill to grind their grain, nor a motive tractor to plow their fields, nor a fertility engine to enrich their soils. No, they wanted her to beat sense into their wayward distant cousins, valiantly striving to outdo them in ignorance and, somehow, in defiance of all good reason, succeeding.

Still, this was her duty to the state, there was no shirking it, and the soldier was by far the most sane of the others and not someone in whom she could afford to engender ill will. So resigned, she casts a desultory glance at her surroundings and, lo and behold, sees trees looming in the darkness. "No," she replies curtly.

She dips into the almost unfathomably deep reserves of ambient umbral aether, drawing a small quantity forth and, clasping thumb and forefinger to open the brass and silver venous access port implanted into her wrist, circulating her blood through glass tubes in the complex arrangement of metal, crystal, and glass wrapped around her concealed left hand. She reflexively performs the simplest and most wasteful of Imrigan's transductions to convert the umbral aether directly into its luminiferous complement through the medium of her blood, then she guides it to wash away the exhaustion in her legs and soreness in her feet with a most pleasant innervating rush, a faint green glow visible from her pocket. A derrick built here could power half a metropolis for decades. These people were living next to an almost inconceivable source of wealth and power, and they had avoided it for centuries out of superstitious fear of noetics. Absolute madness. Thankfully for them, she was here now.
 
Then, through the mist. Movement. The group can see a shape shifting. Beyond the torchlight, it's difficult to make out. It only takes a moment to hear the pounding footsteps and see a man surge from the mist. His eyes are wild and wide as saucers. The top of his tattered blue robe dangles around his midriff baring his chest and the runes and sigils painted in blood on his skin.

He charges at Venaar screaming, an axe in each hand, one raised to bring down on the mage.

Behind him, two figures in the same blue robes—both foaming at the mouth—draw and aim bows at Geratius and Kotezira, about to loose.

Between them, a blue-robed woman cackles maniacally and holds her hands together, concentrating on the mist spell.


(What do you all do?)

D. Rex D. Rex Random Word Random Word Vaneheart Vaneheart Pumpkin Spice Cyanide Pumpkin Spice Cyanide
 
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A distant part of Venaar's mind contemplates the deeply regrettable oversight that lead to the dearth of axe wielding madmen in her preparatory curriculum, but the rest is entirely occupied with screaming at the top of her lungs and tumbling backwards, arms crossed rather ineffectually in front of her face, serving largely only to offer some small solace by blinding her to her onrushing death. While theoretically aware that what she does not know can very much hurt her, a sentiment oft repeated by her supervisor, never in her short career had she so fervently wished for a gulf between theory and praxis.
 
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Seeing Venaar bring up her arms in what he sees as cowering, the wild, blood-painted man at the last minute wraps his arms around her and scoops her. Her carries her into the mist over his shoulder. Another prize sacrifice for his master!

He doesn't realize his prize is no helpless peasant...

The other robed men with bows prepare to loose at their targets, Geratius and Kotezira.
 
Venaar's scream comes to an abrupt halt when the savage drives his shoulder into her chest and the wind out of her lungs as he picks her up bodily and carts her off. As the shock abates anger swiftly takes its place, the pain bringing back memories of her least favourite classes in the odious arts of destruction. Their regrettable necessity had never been more apparent. She grits her teeth and slams her thumb and forefinger together, blood leaping eagerly from her veins to fill the umbral transducer around her hand as a brilliant green light spills from her sleeve.

As streaks of flame cut through the fog around her, she resolves to determine whether all this power sitting beneath her feet could save her from one mad - and now thoroughly distracted - peasant before Kersh can incinerate her. First she would need to bait and bind a noetic entity to act as animating intelligence, for strength unguided would do her no good. She casts out luminous flux, the shining light of life stirring something - so many somethings - from their slumber and calling them like moths to a flame. One awakens and pounces with frankly alarming speed, but beggars hanging over the shoulders of mad axemen can't be choosers, and with no time to spare she performs a pure abcissic binding by will alone without the aid of a diagram, a feat that would alternatively leave her noetics teacher proud and aghast. Or it would have if the spirit had bothered to resist. So eager was it to see its unfinished business done it all but binds itself. Immediately she channels the spirit to tap into the deep well of residual umbral flux from whatever ancient calamity struck this place and the bones of the fallen, inexplicably preserved against the ravages of time, leap from the ground to heed her call, assembling themselves into a mighty hulking warrior with a speed and enthusiasm the likes of which she had never seen, each of its many limbs bearing arms that look surprisingly sharp for their age, its eyes shining with ethereal green light. She wasn't sure if she hoped the desires of the body aligned or conflicted with the spirit. If they conflicted, the construct would undoubtedly be wracked by internal conflict, but at least it may prove easier to control.

"Defend me!" she gasps from still-recovering lungs.

Cast Spell! 2d6+2 = 10; 2 power points
Venaar sacrifices 2 HP (lowest die result) to gain a power point. She voluntarily takes the negative effects of a 7-9 result (You draw unwelcome attention or put yourself in a spot) to gain another power point for a total of four. Probably because she's spilling the energy of life all over the place like pouring buckets of blood in the water.

That's enough to summon a Quality +3, Loyalty +2 follower with 6 HP and the reckless, warrior, and construct tags.
Instinct: Take things too far when given a chance to indulge
Its Cost is up to you - whatever this spirit and these bones want so badly in this world. Vengeance? Glory? Good? I guess it could even be Debauchery if the giant skeletal warrior wants to get smashed.
 
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Well this took a turn the worse really quick. But this was what they get for rushing... no matter.

No sooner had the madman taken Venaar than Kersh had already jumped into action. Moving fast on his heels. Geratius and Kotezira would be fine. Should be fine. They could handle themselves... but Venaar? She could handle herself... if she learned to stop using those overcomplicated long spells and actually USE magic!

Flames had spurred to life in hands, but he had to be careful. He did not want to risk hurting her. In that position, he could just as easily hurt her as the cultist. And even as much as he griped, he wasn't about to risk melting her face off.

What could he do then? He could get the man to stop. Or at least get his attention off Venaar long enough for her to retake control. He could already see her working her magic, so he was sure she had the cultists destruction thoroughly planned out.

"You aren't taking her anywhere!" Kersh roared out angrily. Fires swirled down his arm unleashing themselves from his fingers as a ball of flames to fly dangerously close by the cultists head.

A warning shot, but the cultists didn't need to know that. Making it well clear the dangers of what would happen if he didn't focus his attention on Kersh.






Using the Defend move.
When you take up a defensive stance or jump in to protect
someone or something else, roll+CON. *On a 10+, hold 3. *On a
7-9, hold 1. Spend your hold to:
• Suffer an attack’s damage/effects instead of your ward
• Halve an attack’s damage/effects
• Draw all attention from your ward to yourself
• Strike back at an attacker; deal your damage with.

Wanting to at least Draw all attention of the attacker from Venaar.


Roll: 10
3 holds gained.

Spending 1 hold to Draw all of the cultists attention to Kersh WlfSamurai WlfSamurai Random Word Random Word
 
Kersh yells out and fires balls of flames just past the the crazed cultist's head. He turns and looks back at Kersh giving Venaar the extra moments for form her spell.

In your next post, describe this construct in detail. Then, tell us how it defends you. If whatever it does falls in the scope of its tags (reckless, warrior, and construct), roll+quality.
Random Word Random Word
 
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Kotezira had been caught distracted.
In attempts to rally her mind, she jumped back just less than far as she could into the mist and out of sight.
There, behind the curtain of fog, she quickly considered her options and decided as soon as she felt certain.
Kotezira would circle around, shrouded by the inky whiteness, and try to catch the archers in an enfilade.
She focused on the sounds of the battle and tried to get a mental image of the area based on the little she caught glimpse of and what she sees now.
Moving swiftly but silently, Kotezira positioned herself and made ready her attack.
She beckoned the spirits of the forest, calling upon them to lend her the form of a direboar intending to charge and gore their attackers.

Defy Danger 6+0 (:T)
 
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Kotezira leaps backward.

An arrow WHISTLES through the air. It sinks into Kotezira's right abdomen mid-leap.

(6 damage)

The orc SLAMS into the dirt. Arrow stuck in her.

The cultist lowers his empty bow and stands on his toes to see where Kotezira landed. He draws another arrow.
 
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The hulking six armed humanoid construct of bone - which Venaar decides she will call Samedi - has an undeniably noble bearing, which isn't an adjective she often finds herself applying to centuries - millenia? - old bones, still shedding the earth from which they were so recently exhumed. It must be some residual aura from the bound noetic entity. It carries a spear, a round shield bearing no heraldry she recognizes, and four swords, the metal portions of which seem not to have oxidized, though their hafts and hilts have been replaced with bone.

Venaar's eyes go wide at the sight of what she has created. This is treading well beyond the sanctioned and well understood uses of her art, the preparation of the vessel, normally taking days of careful construction, having been entirely eschewed in the necessity of the moment. There are no cured ligaments nor formaldehyde soaked muscles to hold these bones together, no steel to clad and reinforce its form, nor cloth and incense to conceal it from ignorant and fearful eyes, only faintly luminous tendrils of green energy tethering each bone of the next in pale mockery of human biomechanics, and yet it moves. How it moves. Swiftly and surely, almost gleefully, the point of the spear leaps forward to impale the madman, whose attention has only just begun to shift from the admittedly alarming jets of flame piercing the darkness of the forest to the hastily assembled warrior of bone before him. [7; 6 dmg if it does damage]
 
The construct's spear-thrust is nigh surgical. As the axe-cultist is mid-headturn, his innards are eviscerated and dangling from the end of an ancient rusted spear that now skewers him. He lets out a small gasp as the spear is forcibly removed from him in a spray of blood.

And then, the axe-cultist drops like a sack of potatoes and lands on top of Venaar, pinning her down. Blood floods over the wizard's trapped body. Only her head and arms are able to move freely. Kersh comes running up out of the mist to see the bone, six-armed construct, Venaar, and the ruined cultist she's trapped under.
 
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Venaar grunts as the wind is knocked out of her, and struggles to shove the stinking and profusely bleeding mass of flesh off her before growing frustrated, binding the freshly unwoven noetic remnants back into the corpse, and using a small fraction of the energy within it to impel it to lift itself off her and roll to the side before she severs the binding and it stills like a puppet with its strings cut. She takes a moment to recover her breath, then slowly stands, still dizzy from blood loss, and surveys the damage. Nothing broken, some minor bruising, the aforementioned extensive blood loss, and of course it would be astrally difficult to get all of this blood out of her coat.

She beckons to Samedi to follow with one hand, nods curtly to Kersh, and cautiously retraces her steps through the mists, following the sounds of battle.
 
Venaar and Kersh get back find the rest of the group. The hulking bone construct stalks behind them.

Kotezira lays on the ground with an arrow in her abdomen. Geratius stands next to her.

The enemy has faded back into the mist. It's quiet again.
 
Venaar sighs. Bested by savages. Alas, the state wasn't paying her to mope about it. She steps forward to loom over Kotezira in her blood soaked coat, examining the arrow wound. Her understanding of orc physiology was weak, but she was fairly certain it hadn't lodged in any important organs, and most importantly hadn't pierced the stomach. "That will need to be removed, then I will seal it. You or I?" she asks brusquely, gesturing at the arrow. [She's asking who Kotezira would prefer pulled and/or cut the arrow free.]
 
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Kotezira waves Venaar away. "I'll do it." Without hesitation, she grips the arrow and—with a deep grunt—she wrenches the arrowhead free of her stomach. Tossing it aside, Kotezira sits up.

It's then that Venaar's bone construct lumbers out of the mist. Kotezira grits her teeth and tries to roll to her feet. Geratius reaches for his bastard sword.
 
The colour in Venaar's cheeks, brought out by the chill wind, deepens, "It is admittedly not my best work, but I had limited materials at hand. We are unlikely to find a textiles market or a foundry during our extended stroll, so you will simply have to habituate yourselves. Now sit still while I seal that wound." She mutters, "I wouldn't have had to create it if you had prevented that vile smelling madman from carting me off."
 
Kotezira tsks and stands with a grunt. "Fine," she relents. While Venaar seals her wound, Geratius takes a few steps in each direction, looking for any indiction of where Loraqen's gravesite is.

"What in all the hells is this damn mist, anyway?" he demands. "Are they creating this, somehow?" Clearly, he's referring to the cultists the group just encountered.
 
When everyone is patched up and collects themselves, the group presses deeper into the mists, keeping a watchful eye for any more cultists.

Eventually, wandering deeper into the mist-infested forest in the direction the cultists had retreated, the party finds a stone structure in the shape of a small ornate house with a cross over the doorway. Inside, there are steps leading down into an underground catacomb.

Kotezira snorts. "This looks like the place."
 
"I'm not sure..." the Wolfman said, trying to peer through the opaque veil of mist to little success. He suspected it might have came from the place itself. With the storm coming, the cultists would have had no need to have made the mist in the first place.



At the entrance to the catacombs, Kersh put a hand in the archway that led inside. With a small gesture, he summoned a ball of flame into his hand to give the party some light for the trek down. "I'll be damned if it isn't." He agreed. "Though I was expecting a greeting party. Maybe they got themselves fortified further in."
 
Venaar gives Kotezira a look of mild disdain at the question about mist, "I do not do weather." Weather was decidedly aetheric, and everyone with half a brain knew predicting it was impossible and manipulating it foolhardy.

---

"Maybe they've just invented bathing and in their exuberance all dashed off at once to try it," she mutters as she sizes up the descending stairway. She sighs, reluctantly pulling her hands from her thick gloves to face the cold as she sets about partially disassembling Samedi, sending a headless torso and legs ahead, disconnected arms clattering down each step as they're pulled by a rope behind it, the large head cradled in her arms as she follows. She does her best to quickly reassemble him in the chamber below before gesturing for him to advance into the darkness beyond Kersh's demon light, "Clear a path."
 
Venaar gives Kotezira a look of mild disdain at the question about mist, "I do not do weather." Weather was decidedly aetheric, and everyone with half a brain knew predicting it was impossible and manipulating it foolhardy.

---

"Maybe they've just invented bathing and in their exuberance all dashed off at once to try it," she mutters as she sizes up the descending stairway. She sighs, reluctantly pulling her hands from her thick gloves to face the cold as she sets about partially disassembling Samedi, sending a headless torso and legs ahead, disconnected arms clattering down each step as they're pulled by a rope behind it, the large head cradled in her arms as she follows. She does her best to quickly reassemble him in the chamber below before gesturing for him to advance into the darkness beyond Kersh's demon light, "Clear a path."

More of her nonsense about magic... wisely, Kersh kept silent. Though the rolling of his eyes hinted at an unsaid retort....


____




Kersh looked back and arched an amused brow at her, "Why? Scared of running into a dozen bathing men?"

He, however, did frown when he looked into the darkness of the structure. If they were here defending it... it could mean they needed every hand for the ritual.

Raising his hand, he sought the flame and found it. Conjuring a ball of it in his hands to create the light... and entered.
 
Venaar, Kersh, Kotezira, and Geratius press into the depths below. The first room at the bottom of the stairs is antechamber filled with broken pottery and smashed prayer kneelers. A long time ago, those who wished pay respects to Galaeron Loraqen or anyone else buried here could take insence or pray here before entering the tomb proper.

Venaar reconstructs Samedi at the bottom of the stairs. The ceiling is low, so the creature has to stoop to move down here.

There are two passages out of this entrance room: one wide enough for two people to stand abreast. The arch over it is ornate and carved with runes. The other passage is narrow. Both are dark.

"Which way," Kotezira asks, her voice almost a frustrated growl.

[You can tell the hero’s’s tomb would be through the wider passage. The smaller passage might burial chambers for other people or storage of some kind.]
Random Word Random Word D. Rex D. Rex
 

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