Two Saturdays ago was the second session in our Undiscovered Countries campaign, using the Verses RPG rules system. In my last post on this game, I gave some details into the setup, the system, and the campaign premise, so I'll skip all that and get right to the meat.

The Cast

• Alex, playing the part of Captain Daylen Forgrun.
• Gaston, playing the part of Calvo Sotelovich.
• Nathanael (me), Arbiter, playing the part of Mihoaela Tatiana Kojimirin.
• Nievita, playing the part of Aeroica Mindal Tsvetkov.
• Scott, playing the part of Khazimir ibn Zalikahn.

The Story Thus Far...

In our last episode, we met our questionable heroes as they embarked upon an off-the-records job to retrieve stolen papers of bureaucratic importance to their sometime employer, one Mister Kabalaros (an old childhood friend of the Captain's). They were offered a decent sum of money for this task, and a hefty bonus should they wreak additional "burning vengeance" upon those that stole the papers.

After an encounter with some Navigators resulting in the acquisition of a strange skychart, the mission was on. Our heroes succeeded in retrieving the goods, in addition to finding some strange egg-shaped objects in the process - four of them, to be exact. The Captain managed to rescue a prisoner in the process, who turned out to be the daughter of Kabalaros. A failed attempt to free some slaves was made, and most of the escaping bad guys were put to flame, but a few did manage to escape and spread the word, adding a bit more infamy to the name of Captain Daylen Forgrun and the crew of Oblivion.

The requested goods were delivered, the eggs were hidden away, and fathers were reunited with daughters in a variety of ways. The crew sailed away into the Blue, paid and supplied and ready for more work, but with the knowledge that Kabalaros most definitely wanted those eggs, yet for some reason was hesitant to ask for them. However, the following questions were introduced, yet remained unanswered:

• What are these eggs, and why does Kabalaros secretly desire them?
• Who were the folks who stole the papers?
• What is the importance of the stolen Navigators' skychart?

And now, on to the second session. I'm going to break these down into bullet points, instead of a moment-by-moment recap.

The Story Continues : Episode 2 - Embers of the Past

Scene 1: The Storm

* The game session opened with the Captain in his quarters. The captain was looking with sad nostalgia at a pair of small hand-carved figurines of his late wife and son. It was established that his culture typically encouraged the tradition of making your own figurines to commemorate the loss of loved ones.
* Gaston established that the ship will be stated up as a supporting role character, with an aspect, resources, and three traits.
* We also established that the ship has tubes connecting to the rooms allowing vocal communication.
* The Captain's reverie was interrupted when he was summoned to the deck, and the summons was accented by a trash of thunder and the ship rocking in the sky.
* A massive freak storm loomed ahead, like a barrier of some sort. It was established that the group had followed the maps stolen from the "Rogue Navigators" in Session 1, which led them right to this location.
* After a series of Versus tests, the ship passed through the crazy storm, taking damage after the windspeaker failed to negotiate safe passage with the storm.
* What should be found beyond the storm, but a charred, blasted rock of an island, just barely afloat in the sky... (Scene)

Scene 2: The Pit

* Scene was framed by Gaston, opened with the characters (except Aeroica) all around a freshly dug pit, on the charred island. It was established that, through exploration, the party found a cave on the island, but it had long since collapsed beyond being dug out. However, Khazimir used his affinity with the wind to seek cracks and weakness in the soil, and found a spot above the cave to dig down into it.
* As the scene opens, it is also established that Khazimir has finally broken into the cave and found a rotting old scroll case. Contained within is another piece to the strange shifting Navigator map. Just as this is revealed, the characters are ambushed!
* Two guys popped seemingly out of nowhere, with heavy cranking crossbows. It is established that they had been on a smaller ship which was following Oblivion, but didn't survive the storm intact and crashed on the far shore of the island while the characters were busy trying to survive the storm on their own.
* These two currently-nameless thugs (introduced as walk-ons, with one being quickly elevated to Supporting Role status) attempted to make everyone get in the pit so they could seal it up and hijack the ship. However, Aeroica's unexpected arrival surprised them, allowing Khazimir, Mihoaela, and Calvo to get the jump on them. They were captured. (Scene)

Scene 3: The Wreckage

* I framed the next scene, opening on a precipice overlooking a "beach" on the far side of the blasted island. On this shore were the scattered remains of the wreckage of the smaller stealth craft which had been following the party.
* Khazimir and Calvo inspected the wreckage for any loot and plunder, but found only pieces that could serve as patchwork repairs for Oblivion in the future... and a lone survivor, barely clinging to life.
* This man was identified as being from Khazimir's homeland! Aeroica was brought to help him, and barely managed in getting him stable and off of death's door before he passed out. But before losing consciousness, he mumbled something unintelligible, and drew some creepy spiral patterns on Aeroica's face.
* Near his body was found a scalebound writing journal, towards which he was apparently reaching. In this journal were pages of notes in Khazimir's language about how he planned on hunting down The Vile One (Khazimir) and making him pay dearly for his crimes. However, the notes break off a month prior, and then resume a few weeks ago with increasingly illegible rants, and a growing amount of drawings and spiral patterns.
* It was then established with a complication token that those same patterns were glimpsed by Calvo when he had occasion to catch the Captain at his own journals...
* Somehow (I don't remember how - interrogation? quizzing the other captives?) it was established this man has been hunting Khazimir for a long time, and followed the trail to Dartenspire, where he arrived only a day or so after they left upon completing their job there. The man hired a small fast ship to follow them, and in fact hired the ship and the two-man crew (the other two captives) directly from Kabalaros.
* They took the wounded man aboard the ship, lodging him in Aeroica's bed so she could tend to his wounds. The other two were thrown into a makeshift brig.(Scene)

Scene 4: The Office

* The scene opens with Calvo and Khazimir confronting the Captain in his office, bringing the existence of the spiral-filled notebook of the captive to the table with them. Daylen explains that he's been idly drawing those patterns since "The Incident."
* The "incident" in Daylen's past involved everyone on his home island setting themselves on fire, having been brainwashed by some unknown "immolation cult." His own wife and son were burned during some kind of ritual cleansing, and the Captain returned from a job just in time to see them die. In the end, that island had looked just like the charred island they had all just left in the previous scene.
* The captain exploded with fury, and decided to kill the two captive hirelings. he stormed out, but Mihoaela talked him out of it with some cryptic bits of dialogue. (Scene)

Scene 5: The Patient

* In this scene, Aeroica is with the patient in her room when Calvo and Khazimir enter. They discuss some things, but I'm not sure what else happened, because it quickly segued into the next scene.(Scene)

Scene 6: Galley and Deck

* The crew minus Daylen meets in the Galley to discuss what to do about the prisoners and the captain's connection to the situation.
* The Captain then bursts in, yells about how he can hear them all through the wall, and they are going to do things his way. First thing they are doing is dropping the two hirelings off on a distant shore, the nearest rock they can find with huntable fauna. After that, well, he'll figure something out. he storms out after that.
* The others reconvene on the desk, where the winds mask their talk. A new revelation: Mihoaela holds open the patient's journal, pointing at the final pages: there is a mad drawing of spiraling flames originating from the chakras of a man holding two egg-like objects. Something about the nature of these flames disturbs even Mihoaela, a woman known for her truly fiery tempers and wild control of her flame pacts.(Scene and Session)

New Mysteries

* Why is there a charred fragment of an island off in the middle of a violent windstorm beyond the fringe of nowhere?
* Why did the Navigators have a fragment of a map leading to this island?
* Why was another fragment of that map on this island? How did it get there?
* What crime to Khazimir commit that was so heinous as to have bands of vigilantes hunting him down for justice? What is the patient's connection to this crime?
* What does Kabalaros have to do with all of this?
* What is Daylen's connection to this fire cult, if any?
* Seriously, what the hell is up with those eggs? The drawing shows two, but the party has four...

Design and System Notes

* We decided that it should be noted in the rules text that when detrimenting you are not actually giving dice to your opponent. Instead, you are allowing them to roll extra dice. The dice do not come from your own dice. However, thinking on it a bit more now I have a notion that it might actually work better by giving them the dice. You detriment a Trait, giving your opponent a die from your stash, and at the end of the conflict you add that die back to your aspect. I think we should try this out next session.
* Another important note: regardless of the number of traits pumped/detrimented in a conflict, if you meet the requirements for Training you only train one mark in one trait per conflict. This has now been added to the newest incarnation of the character sheet.
* In future games, I want to try returning to the original intended focus of stakes. Currently, we've grown accustomed to using "If I win, this happens," but I had initially intended more of an "I do X, because Y" implementation, with the Outcome Accents allowing more meta-control of the results. In our next session, I'd like to attempt going back to this method, and see how it works. We could discover that the more meta-gamey approach works better, and keep it the way we've been doing it.

Other Notes

I recorded this session, but have yet to listen to it. Five hours of a game is a hard thing to find the time to listen to again, but I'll probably listen to it over the next few nights while working on my plans for the next session. I think next time I'll try and keep more of an active focus on the recording, and only record the bits that are actual playing and not us just fooling around.

That's all for now. Please comment with observations, and let me know if I forgot anything, or got anything wrong.

- Nathanael Phillip Cole