Actual Play: Hall of Judgment Play Report
This is a play report from my friend Euan, who goes by (E) on Discord and the SJGames Forums. He finally got a chance to play through Hall of Judgment…
Characters
- M
- Gamal
- A thief with the cover profession of healer. Nominal team leader.
- Kierra
- Lugh (lou)
- Barbarian, ST 21 spear and shield plus quirk points into brawling and wrestling. Possesses a very impressive moustache.
- Mike
- Drift/flotsam/hey you.
- A contender for the simplest background ever, “I washed up on the beach with no memory”
- A slightly off template Swashbuckler who uses axe/mace and axe throwing and is aimed at having a armed brawling combat style. Has Extra Attack 1 (anything other than an axe strike)
- Erin
- Epli, a Druid Stormcaller (a purely nomenclature change as Stormcaller sounds better than Elementalist).
Section one: Isfjall
The party meets prior to traveling to Isfjall, they have decided on the destination because they want to have Lou throw a fight or two during a festival to make some money gambling.
This idea came up during early game prep and my internal GM’s voice dryly noted that nothing ties a group together like a common enemy. The possibilities for NPCs who are potentially irritated by the PC’s planned irreverent actions include wealthy locals, religious folks, competitors and even a few of the local gods.
The party found out that the festival had no less than three trials, though only one of those, Auroch wrestling, was an official part of the festivities. The other two competitions were a race to climb one of Isfjall’s decorative stone quarry face’s and an anything goes bare knuckle/wrestling event.
To this end the party entered the town separately, Gamal went to socialise and investigate the favourites and see what betting action he could find. He struck up a conversation with a well off and locally renowned livestock breeder and felt he was on the right track.
Lugh went to scope out the competition for the bare knuckle fights and ended up going to watch the climbing race.
Epli decided that she had a chance of altering the outcome of the climbing race and bumped into Gamal to pass the message along.
Drift wandered into town and realised that there were some quite generous people who had tapped a cask or two of mead and ale, given that the plan only involved him placing a couple of bets he decided to partake and generally enjoy the festival.
Epli decides a distraction would help her succeed, so after some round about communication Lou goes and picks a fight with Drift. Drift then completely fluffs his roll to throw a fake punch and decides that Lou can handle a couple of decent hits. Drift begins pounding away at Lugh in earnest, after a couple of rounds Lugh gets fed up enough to have an all out attack and throws a deceptive punch to the torso. This lands, inflicting a dozen points of damage before armour.
While this is going on Epli sends a wisp of fog across the expected climbing route of the favourite and then chills the area, making it icey.
The party wager about a third of their coin on the outcome of the second favourite winning. While the favourite slips and falls on the ice, the dice do not however agree with them and another climber again wins the race.
The party heads to watch the Auroch Wrestling and spend a considerable amount of time discussing how they can rig the outcome, they fail to come up with a plan that they can agree on and then head to the docks to watch and compete in the bare knuckle competition.
Gamal wanders through the crowd scoping out the competition and looking for people to wager with. Drift decides that entering the competition is a great idea and joins along with Lugh.
Lugh and Drift have a series of bouts with the locals, the fights did nicely show off the “flavours” of combat available in DFRPG/NORDVORN/FDG/GURPS. The first fight was a simple enough brawl with all the dirty tricks coming into play. Two of the following fights were more considered wrestling encounters while the fourth clash between a battered and slightly drunk Drift and an arrogant Huscarl was a bruising MMA style clash with both parties switching between skill sets as needed.
At this point Lugh and Drift came up against each other and fought, the fight was over quickly enough when Lugh landed a light blow on Drift’s stomach which caused a HT check to keep all the Ale and Mead down, Drift failed this roll…
Lugh managed to get into the final and looked like a sure thing, Gamal challenged the Livestock breeder to a bet at this point and managed to get the breeder to gamble a matched pair of his latest draft animals, which Gamal thought would be ideal for a later travels and failing that should be worth a pretty penny.
Drift, worse for wear and well lubricated with a couple more drinks happily backed Lugh to win, even betting his highly valued seal skin cloak.
Lugh dutifully followed the plan and threw the match…
Gamal and Epli collected their winnings, with the livestock breeder promising delivery in the morning.
Drift was invited to spend the evening in the Jarl’s hall and spent the next day recuperating with a very junior soldier showing him about town. The dice were kind to the young soldier and his local knowledge allowed Drift to pick up some supplies quite cheaply.
Gamal on the other hand was working against the clock as a rapidly spreading rumour was going around that there was something dodgy about him. Rushing to cash in on his bets he collected a pile of very dodgy rations as well as a second hand ox cart. When he got to the breeder he was presented with a pair of young, well trained draft animals, that happened to be goats. At this point a determined priest with several large followers was spotted at the end of the street, Gamal made his way casually in the other direction but was cornered by some of the locals, at this point Gamal was given the quest, a geas and the Tiwistakn. Gamal was not offered the option to refuse it, but instead was told in no uncertain terms that he and Lugh were not welcome back into the town of Isfjall until they had appeased the god of storms.
Gamal and Lugh then left town to meet up with Epli and Drift. Where a… version… of what had happened was passed along.
The party had made a reasonable amount of money gambling but had completely missed out on the chance to spend any of it before being faced with a wilderness trek. The exception to this was Drift who had managed to spend all his remaining money on supplies, unfortunately while he had gotten a great discount he had little money left and was down a warm and waterproof sealskin cloak.
We call it a night at that point.
Section two: The Wilderness
The first encounter the party has while traveling is a Pair of Ominous ravens, Epli applies her knowledge of ritual and gives thanks to the Allfather for the bounty of the clear spring. Seeing the shining silver coin sitting at the bottom of the pool she sacrifices a silver coin of her own, Gamal and Lugh follow suit. Drift gets nervous as he doesn’t have a silver piece to his name. This proves that sometimes you can lead the players to treasure but you can’t make them pick it up.
The next encounter of note was when the party (Epli mainly) spotted a herd of Elk, a plan was swiftly formed where Gamal, Drift and Epli would wait beside a narrow part of a stream and let Lugh spook the animals in their direction. Lugh rolled a 3 and managed to scare not only the Elk but also a mountain lion, dozens of birds and a couple of wild boars.
The party now no longer had to make do with rock hard smoked fish and and wormy oats, instead they had many pounds of meat.
An encounter with Nordalfs, a volley of stone tipped arrows strike the group as they travel through a heavily wooded area. Everyone fails to identify where as well as what and who the arrows are coming from, and rush to hide behind Lugh, Gamal is the furthest away so he decides to hide behind the goats instead. For some reason the players decide that attacking a prepared and concealed foe isn’t wise and flee.
The next encounter is a friendly trapper who has a bottle or two of good wine put aside for a special occasion. Unfortunately he decided to start drinking before cooking dinner and the character’s digestive systems suffer the following day. Epli reveals why a druid is welcome on a traveling party by rolling a critical survival roll to find a campsite. Spotting some yellow minerals on the bank of a stream she follows it back to the source and finds a hot spring.
Mad women in trees
Hearing screams, everyone is alerted to a woman who has climbed a tree to flee from a bear that isn’t there. Rather than investigating further the players decide that she is mad and discuss tying her to a tree for their safety.
Time being what it is I had to come up with a logical stopping point as it would be awhile before we could have another game.
I rolled up a small hill village using the village generator from Citadel at Nordvorn and used the bandit camp encounter roll as inspiration.
The players decided to take the poor girl plagued by imaginary bears back to her village, and the group arrived just in time to help the village with a bandit raid.
Some 30 odd bandits, a bandit chief as well as a wizard who had raided the ruins of Logiheimli to gain control of four Druegr.
The bandits used a long rope and a pair of captured oxen to tear the gates from the village and then swarmed the gates with the Druegr ahead of the main group to act as arrow sponges. Drift and Lugh engaged the undead with missile support from the locals and initially Epli and Gamal.
The opening clash had Lugh shield slam one of the draugr into a pit that Epli had created with shape earth, a spell that she let fail to let the overhanging wall of earth collapse.
Drift and Lugh slugged it out with the remaining three Draugr while Gamal attempted to vault agilely and silently from the village wall to deal with the enemy wizard. One sprained ankle and will roll to stay silent, Gamal was on his way.
Epli meanwhile was proving how useful a druid can be in a fight with a massed foe, a simple shape air spell split the main force from the wizard as well as disrupt their charge.
Gamal sneaks up on the wizard and quickly deals with the pair of bandits next to them and then battles it out with the magic user.
The fight at the gates between the undead and the two fighters of the party eventually goes in their favour, though both PCs end up having to scavenge for weapons at one point.
Gamal succeeds in his battlefield assasination attempt at about the time as the two fighters defeat their foes, as the mass of bandits hits the gateway a dismissive deceptive thrust to the vitals from Lugh defeats the bandit chief before he realises who he is fighting (2D+ impaling will do that). Epli throws a mystic mist spell into the narrow gap left between the gatepost and the path of her shape air spell. The rest of the bandits provide a negligible challenge at this point so Survival and Glory rolls (from Third Edition Mass Combat) are made instead.
The loot is tallied up and we end that night’s game there.
Quotes
- “I pity the Ghoul” following a shield slam by the ST 21 Lugh on a Draugr.
Notable events
- Lugh rearming himself with a spear by ripping the weapon arm off a draugr.
- Drift having an epic MMA style brawl with a Huscarl.
- Epli using what I initially thought might be a limited spell list to great effect at the village.
- The party in general missing so many hooks that the game went in strange directions from time to time.
