Head Slapper moments

[Persell]

Hey all! I figured for my first post I'd share something that happened in my campaign today over email and see what similar things you've seen.


The Circle has been travelling towards the Invisible Fortress on rumors of treasure hunting. They've heard of other hunters including a woman named Mahina V'Neef. They know she's a dragon blooded noble, but everything they've heard of her has been favorable.


As two of them travelled through the tent city around her temporary home they saw ample evidence that she was a good person, mostly consisting of people she's helped survive failed attempts at hunting for artifacts in the frozen north.


They go in, and one of the characters does most fo the talking. In the middle of a sentence she recognizes the boy travelling with the Solars and it shocks her completely. The following is what transpires:

Mahina looks thoughtfully at the boy, then continues. “Well, child, do you have any proo –“
Her glass drops to the ground, shattering on the frozen boards. The wine within drips between the cracks and turns to ice wherever it dips below the level of the floor. “GUARDS!â€

 

[The Mad hatter]

A friend of mine created a Abyssal story, carfuly and painstantkly designed everything in it, and contingencys so to speak in case we didnt do what he expected.... except 1 thing...


It turned out the whole story would be based off a object a dead person was carrying after the group of loyal deathknights of Mask of Winters were investgating a battle site, basicly this item would leave clues and lead us to finding some big grand and terrble object.. we never found it of course because the whole storyline was killed within 5 minutes..


it turned out our Daybreak had some...necrophilac tendencys (stress from being a necrosurgen mabey?) and from all the emphisis about the paticular dead body and how pristine it looked... the Daybreak descided he 'wanted' that corpse.... item was lost, duckcast got himself a shag, and the group would up persuing other storylines

 

[FluffySquirrel]

Why did Mahina go all weird over a boy?.. what was I missing?.. I'm a bit curious really.. if she seemingly did it out of the blue then I'd be kinda alarmed too ^^


Remember, players not too trusting when DB's start pulling powerbows on them and such... ^^

 

[Persell]

They met the boy three years prior in game time. His village had been destroyed and his parents were missing, so they took him under their wing along with the other few kids (and one artist) that had been spared. He later exalted as a fire aspect dragon blood in the middle of the night (surviving a boa attack because of it). They kept him under their wing, and never really investigated his background, although hints have been dropped every so often that his parents were nobility. For instance, he knows quite a bit about the workings of courts for a villager.


She reacted because she recognized the boy by tying his appearance to his name. While Sessus Lahor is close to the thrown, Dugan is even closer. Thanks to the oddities of people that live hundreds of years, Dugan is Lahor's grand uncle. His parents took him out of court life when he was still a baby and hid in a remote village in the North East forests, knowing that he would probably be assassinated before he could talk if the members of House Sessus who back Lahor found out about him.


Mahina referred to him as The Heir in one of her outbursts, and the resemblance to Sessus will be almost unmissable now that their minds are working that way, so it probably won't be long before they find that out somehow.


It isn't that I'm shocked that they're now in combat with a dragon blood, it's that she has been clearly painted as one of the few good DBs and there's only two cicle members and the boy in the tent with her and her nine gaurds (the rest are off talking to Miles Wangler).

 

[h*o*]

I think that V'neef Mahina would initiate a social combat before engaging the suicide. It is maybe her first enconter with anahema but a wyld hunt party rely upon a legion and surprise for one of them.


Given her caregiver nature, she will not despise the havock the boogeymen can provoke in the tent city.


Plus they've got an hostage, and she could try to understand the meaning of this situation to advance the V'neef agenda.I don't think she might help them but if they conviced her that they care about the boy, she could consider that they are not just rampaging monsters.


After the encounter, her curiosity will be triggered and she could spy them by a way or another. She could have a man whose sole purpose will be to convey the intel she has gathered to the nearest large scale of terrestrial forces if they threaten her life.


If she is not caught and they are "bad" people, she will organize an ambush with Sesus Lahor in the widerness and lot of men. If they are descent people, maybe she will join forces with them to get more depth intel about them.


edit : sorry i thought it was an advice ask.

 

[Persell]

I thought of that too, but too late. Once they've dropped a bodygaurd or too we may drop back into a social setup (if the PCs allow it). Or the players may flee instantly. They're outnumbered 10 to 3 and one of their number is a boy who is decent against extras but can't really hurt anyone with a good DV or soak.


But this thread wasn't meant to be about that. I'll start another thread if people want to talk about this stuff. Let's hear some head slappers!

 

[Persell]

Honestly... a single dragonblooded (the 10 mortals don't count) against 2-3 Anathema? She's gonna retreat and call for help if she is not Peleps Deled or someone on that level.


Apart from that, in my last few sessions, which was the final act of the prelude to my campaign in the west, my girlfriend really surprised me. I knew she wanted to play an eclipse who forges alliances between humans and spirits. Well, they wanted to attack the nascent shadowland of midnight caste abyssal who got herself her own little cult in a coral garrison. They had the help of the last few upright officers and that is it. Well, until cho aysu, the eclipse of my girlfriend got the circle's twilight to travel around a bit with her and forged an alliance of Emissaries of the open water, a local reef goddess and a minor elemental dragon. She has now some errands to do for them ( a la free my godblooded child who was crafted by the raksha noble women Stormblossom into a spear, and stuff like that), but in the end they attacked the shadowland with the help of two dragonblooded, a minor elemental dragon and a powerful goddess. It was not a jawdropping surprise, but I really did not expect a beginner to handle being eclipse that well.


Apart from that, it is hard to surprise me these days, I am storytelling for 13 or 15 years now and I learned that plans rarely survive the first contact with the players. So I stopped doing plans, and started doing notes.