Reavers and Rogues [ play report, part two ]
For part one, read here.
Reavers and Rogues is a solo rpg system developed by Joseph R. Lewis of the Dungeon Age adventures. Outside of Luke Gearing and Evey Lockhart, JRL is my favourite writer in the field.
This report was written live as I played it at my kitchen table in the wind.
- Shani: +1 might, +2 guile, +1 luck; +1 food; 5 wounds; 3 progress
- Jaydn: +1 ally
- the ghoul: +1 ally
- bone shirt: +1 luck (once)
Scene Four — Survive the Wilderness
The group leave the city and strike out into the wilderness: a vast flat plains with cloying mists at the edge of vision. The air is dry but things have a habit of hoving into view with little chance of being able to see them coming.
They pass an ancient altar: a great red stone stab shot through with dimly pulsing veins. The ghouls gives a shake of its head and its face is full of concern. Jaydn mentions that predators will often use these sort of sites as hunting ground, because the oddness distracts their prey — surely the case here as a silver wyvern soars through the skies above.
Shani doesn’t fancy fighting this and opts to evade the creature. She notices the movements of a benevolent ghost and follows its beckons to a hollow in the loo of the altar. As she walks towards it, Jaydn shoots forwards with “wait, no — something killed this mortal” but rushes ahead into the very peril he feared, a patch of quickmire. His death was rapid and Shani spilt tears; in her reverie she was able to make out the boundaries of the quickmire and learn to spot those signs again.
- Shani: +1 might, +2 guile, +1 luck; +1 food; 5 wounds; 4 progress
- the ghoul: +1 ally
- bone shirt: +1 luck (once)
- secrets of the stones: +2 luck (once)
Scene Four Redux — Continue in the Wilderness
Shani and the ghoul continue to wander the wastes and before long a great granite arch looms before them. At its feet, in a suspended slumber, there stands a orange fungus ghoul. Shani looks at her ghoul and signs talk?. Her ghoul agrees.
Shani clears her throat and addresses the slumbering ghoul. It looks up at her, sees that a flesh ghoul walks with her, and nods sagely. “Perhaps you would join us? I seek a medical wonder in the Dark Tower.”
The orange fungus ghoul laughs — a bark of septic spores — and shakes its head.
- Shani: +1 might, +2 guile, +1 luck; +1 food; 5 wounds; 5 progress
- the ghoul: +1 ally
- bone shirt: +1 luck (once)
- secrets of the stones: +2 luck (once)
Scene Five — Enter the Dark Tower
Before long, the pair come across the Dark Tower itself, thrust from the ground like a spur of radish. The seek around for its entrance — a natural stone tunnel a short way from the tower itself, its walls unstable and riddled with cracks. And before them too, the Tower guardian — the three-eyed mage [6]. Shani spits and pulls out her bow.
In the first exchange, Shani struggles to get her footing and looses her bow awkwardly — but to no avail as her arrow seeps through a false illusion. But the ghoul leaps to her defense, crushing its jaws around the true wizard and searing its flesh with the ghoul’s poisoned bite. Sadly the wizard retaliates swiftly and severs the ghoul’s head, its vice-grip still clamped about his midriff. [Two harm, loss of ally.] The next exchange is a devastating blow as her arrow strikes hard into the mage’s shoulder but he too is fast and summons a spike of lacerating light [one harm, one wound]. Shani follows up with another devastating attack, arrow after arrow after arrow, all hits [two harm]. The wizard looks unwell. Next, she focuses on his leftmost eye (the sinister one) and lets loose her final arrow. The ghost of the ghoul holds the mage in place and the arrow strikes true [two harm].
“I could remove that arrow safely, if you wanted to join me?”
“You will die, woman.”
“Very well.”
She pulls the arrow from his skull and the mage dies immediately. She searches his body, finding a strange silvered mask and she adds it to her equipment.
- Shani: +1 might, +2 guile, +1 luck; +1 food; 4 wounds; 6 progress
- bone shirt: +1 luck (once)
- secrets of the stones: +2 luck (once)
- silver mask: +1 guile (once)
Shani sends up a prayer to the ghoul’s passing, and makes her way into the Tower tunnel…
To be continued…
