Attendees:
Experience
Challenge #2 involves succeeding at our task by any means necessary.
We are instructed to get a "saltwater breathing animal" during the course of the challenge. And we are to head to an island in the far south that has cut off contact with the rest of the world. We are to find the manse and its hearthstone and reattune the hearthstone. We are warned that it is currently attuned by something from the wyld.
We manage to do a few pre-mission moves and then book passage on a craft heading south (though not directly to our location). We will have to swim/fly the rest of the way. But in the meantime we commence the Sea Hunt!
We need seawater forms. Karth is the first to endeavor. He chooses to do a sloppy "sneak out/jump overboard" manuever which causes people to think that there's a man overboard. We have to convince them that Karth is simply in his room, not feeling well. Works well enough. Only problem is, he hunts down a dolphin, which is not so much a saltwater breathing form. It's ironic then that this particular detail wasn't important to the mission; Seems we just needed something that could survive in saltwater, not breath it so much. But not knowing this, he'll set up another opportunity to go fishing.
On a separate opportunity, Viox collects fish guts from the minor fishing performed on board the boat. He uses this to chum the waters. His maneuver: Do his super-sneak up the mast, pitch the pale into the water, then go in and hunt. The amusement level gets him some points, and he manages to get something big... a Mako, which he has to defeat in combat.
Davion has Viox steal him a whole fish. He then weaves himself a very strong line that is nearly invisible, then after Viox helps him sneak off in bird form, he uses the line and the fish to bait something bigger. Don't really know what Sailfish eat in real life, but it was such a good roll that he managed to select a big Sailfish.
Kren manages to get a large, mostly useless saltwater fish (Sea bass, I think). I bet he's good eatin'!
We arrive at our destination port and make our way across the ocean in bird form at first (so we can avoid having to go around a peninsula). Some of us sleep on the water surface alright. Some of us are attacked by bears!
Botchface (Boch-Face) -Noun : A facial expression held by certain North American Land Mammals for the duration between when they roll a botch unnoticed by others and when their roll result is actually called for by the GM. Everyone could tell from his botchface that it was going to be a long fight.
It should be mentioned that while Jim's is the prime example of botchface, more than one of us likely had such a look, as each of us had a serious botch at some point during the evening. In this instance, mine was the botch that launched a fight with Razorbears.
It seems that during the night we coasted into an area touched by the wyld. In said area lurked a pair of water-going bears (which seems to be a new theme in our games), each of whom decided to go after karth. Fortunately for him, his new Caste ability allowed him to kick his speed into high gear and flee, with the bears following. The rest of us tried to keep up, but that was when Kern botched his roll and ended up floating in the sea.
(Now Davion had a bid at game immortality as he was almost the first character with a permanent "Chimera-style" disfigurement. I rolled 5 successes on a 3 die roll, where 4 was the difficulty. But then we realized that we'd failed to subtract a die.)
In any event we did our best to track down Karth, and eventually found the island that was his heading. We found safe places to rest and the next day the crew met up again. The rest of the way, Davion would ride in spider form on Kern's Albatross back, regaining essence.
We continued our voyage and at last reached our destination; A land so sugary sweet it could have been a skittles commercial. A rainbow set down in the middle of a perfectly white grecian-style village, settling on a pool, in which played beautiful centaurs, satyrs, and creepy little cherubs, and probably My Little Pony, if we looked closely enough. There's a temple in the middle and a couple buildings at the edges of the courtyard, with a grove of trees right between the two buildings.
Our attempt to land in the forest doesn't go so well. A nearby satyr takes note of us and decides to play a joyous tune on his pipes. Soon two birds and a spider are following along. The birds dance along mirthfully while the spider merely chases them to keep up. The lone ignorer of the pipes is Kren, who manages to resist the song. Seeing the destination, he moves on ahead of them and into a building and transforms to human. There's a small fight as he tries to thump the Satyr on the head (Turtle power!), but turtle martial arts are the equivalent of a joke you "get" on the way home from the party. The satyr is probably just now feeling the blows. Actually, that's not fair: The tortoise struck his foe so hard he stuck him up high in the wall. No more happy tunes for him.
The rest of us try to drink. It takes use of the magic needles gained last game to neutralize the poison.
Now comes the long wait while we scope things out, punctuated by frequent visits by the local residents. It seems our hut is like camp crystal lake; campers keep wandering in and never returning. We keep capturing and binding them, starting with the young pair of centaurs who probably came out there to fool around, and subsequently gathering more centaurs and a few cherubs. Seems the centaurs believe what they're told about us: Humans are destructive, nasty, start wars, and will only come to try and end their way of life. Turns out they're right!
Spider reconnaissance on the temple yields lots of centaur guards and a handful of satyrs. Also a big statue that is obviously their Satyr god. The place smells strongly of wine; so much so that it's going to require rolls to resist running to the wine fountain and drinking it. The hearth has no hearthstone.
This is where spider boy comes back and tells them and we find out from our captives that the god's name is Cinnabar and that he is out on walkabout, as is his custom. He's expected back at dawn. So we either wait until then and ambush him, likely having to deal with everyone here, or we hunt him down first. We send some air reconnaissance in the form of Pelican-boy Viox, who has yet to change back from that form. He goes out and looks and finds what he thinks is the leader. (Cue the botchface!) When he gets back I ask him if he had the stone; turns out he didn't. So we figure we're short on time here and cant afford a lot more search time.
We decide with the cajoling of Kren, to take out the temple first. Our hope is that scorpion-boy Viox can poison some of these satyrs, their pipes being our main foe.
Unfortunately, the ambush is not so smooth. Karth does a good job of taking out some of these guys at the entrance, but eventually winds up with a whole team coordinating against him. Davion keeps being put to sleep by Satyr Lullabyes, and Kren keeps having to stop and kick him awake. And then there's Viox, who was put to sleep long enough for one of the satyrs to impale him on a pylum for some solid damage. The ensuing fight is long and bloody, despite the centaurs basically being "extras".
At the climax of this battle, when all the others are put down, Cinnabar makes himself seen. He steps forward from the Statue that bears his likeness and a new fight immediately commences, with Viox quite injured and Karth and Davion minorly injured. He raises his pipes to play and they are swatted away by... Was it Karth or Viox? Anyway, the pipes land aside and there is a big rush to grab them. But as he grabs them simultaneously so does Davion with his chain and their attack rolls tie! The device is held in check so it can't be used. There's some poisoning from Viox, a tremendous shredding of claws from Karth, and the beast falls.
We recover his hearthstone and re-attune the place. Not sure what the physical differences will be now. Except of course it will be strange and violent, just like us humans.
We now get our first KNACK. I'm thinking since most folks are likely to go
with the combat knacks I *may* (I haven't decided for sure yet) go with the one
that lets me look like people. Manipulation through deception could be great
fun.