Our Mythic Bastionland, Session 7

Here’s the play report for our seventh session of Mythic Bastionland, which we played last night. If you’re just joining us, I’d recommend starting at the first session and reading forward from there. It’s all organized in a series, so it should be easy to find the posts that follow the first.   

Today’s post was helped along by some session notes, so hopefully there aren’t any big gaps in the action!

At the start of the session, Sir Yorick Childermass:

… especially had some questions for Terro, the peasant whom the group had just rescued from a board attack:

He discovered that Terro’s main occupation was as a forager, and that he specifically was a gatherer of things like nuts in the woods. (He’d been in Caerwyn Town to sell a load of harvested nuts, in fact.) Given Terro’s familiarity with the forest, Sir Yorick asked him to tutor their new squire Davith:

… in forest survival, which Terro agreed to do. To Davith, Childermass instructed that he now had four masters—the Knights, plus Terro—and that Terro would teach him of the forest. Davith assented, a little annoyedly. 

As the group traveled north, they speculated about what might lie ahead, and Terro mentioned stories of a giant in the area dating back to his grandmother’s time—a giant who was gentle and kind. They also speculated about what sort of bone Sir Yorick might be able to take from a dead giant—assuming they ended up having to slay one. He was teased by Ser Lyssa:

… and Sir Augustine:

with the idea of changing his use of the bones, perhaps fashioning a helmet from them and becoming the “Bone Headed Knight” rather than just “The Bone Knight.” 

(Ah, but the players did riff and riff.)

As the Knights made their way back toward the north, they reached the barrier of broken trees and fallen, massive branches from the Tree. They once again became able to hear the sound of running water, off to the west, and followed it until they reached a clearing where the trees were, miraculously, all still standing and intact. The clearing, however, was clearly magical in some way, because not only were the trees unharmed, their leaves were also gloriously golden and red and orange, as if it were autumn and not springtime. They glanced backward at the ruined foliage behind them, seeing nothing but green. 

They ventured into the clearing and saw a small waterfall on the far side of it, feeding into a pool which fed a stream running to the east, into the autumn trees. Birds sang in the branches of the trees up above, but no other creatures were visible. There was something in the air that whispered the calm, quiet beauty of fall to them. 

When Sir Yorick approached the pool, he glanced at the water, and found there were fish swimming in the pool—but swimming verrrrrry slowly. Puzzled, he asked his fellow Knights whether they ought to stay or move on. Terro was clearly baffled by the place, never having seen it before, and after some discussion they agreed to travel northward, now that the barrier of broken trees had ended, and then cut back east toward the fallen tree. 

They crossed the stream without problems, for it was very shallow, but found on the north side of the clearing that the trees and foliage were grown incredibly thick. They considered going to the west instead, but saw that the forest was thick there, too, and that their access to the north was cut off by the bluff from which the waterfall ran. Glancing at the stream, they found it ran to the northeast, into equally thick foliage. 

Sir Augustine rode over toward the beginning of the thick trees, and whacked at some foliage with his mace. The body of the plant disappeared in an instant before his eyes, leaving only the leaves, which gently fell to the ground, leaving some space for him to proceed. He next struck a tree with his mace, and the same thing happened. Sir Yorick and Ser Lyssa followed him into the bush, accompanied by Davith and Terro. Sir Yorick dismounting out of curiosity. His strikes also made the trees disappear, and he bent down to pick up a leaf. It seemed real. He hit some more trees, making them disappear, but then, during a particularly flamboyant tree-strike, he spun and looked backward, only to find that the disappeared trees were back in place behind the group. 

They traveled on some ways through the autumn forest, until finally reaching its edge. Beyond lay the same sort of ruined landscape as before—green, torn-up trees and fallen branches from the gargantuan fallen tree. The group traveled eastward until they spotted what looked like the ruins of a town. Terro broke into tears, recognizing it as what was left of his village. They entered the ruins of the town, and Terro went into a broken house, calling a name. There was no answer, and he emerged ashen-faced. The group searched the remnants of the town for survivors, but found nothing but one hound. Belfin Village lay ruined, its citizenry dead… well, almost all. Terro named a several individuals whose bodies he could not find, including the mayor Escorial, a “Lady Penneth,” and a few others who Terro described as “faithful churchgoers.” When asked if there were any underground places people might have taken refuge, he mentioned that there were catacombs under the church, but pointed to where the church had stood. Ser Lyssa had no idea what “catacombs” meant, given the fact she’d grown up in a landscape just as devastated as the one in which they now stood. 

The church was not visible in Belfin Town. Instead, at the far edge of the ruins where it had once stood, the ground rose gently, and then sharply, in a slope. The church must have been destroyed and buried by the earth dislodged when the Tree fell. From where they stood, the Knights saw that the Tree, or at least part of it, must be just beyond that rise, as a massive branch rose into the sky there, and, a little further away, the broken, twisted remnants of a massive tree’s root system.

Sir Yorick dismounted and climbed up the rise, to discover that it was in fact the edge of a crater that had been formed when the tree fell. The portion of the tree visible from where he stood ran from the southeast (where the roots were visible, not far away) off into the distance in the northwest, the crater running all along its length. Atop the tree, a pair of cloud creatures-much bigger and more frightening than any they’d seen so far:

… seemed to be chasing one another, though whether they were about to fight, or about to mate, was not clear. They did not notice Sir Yorick from where he saw them. Down in the crater, he saw faint shapes moving around, mostly very near the tree. They were difficult to make out from such a distance, but after some time he worked out that they looked like some sort of large, dog-sized insects:

… and around them lay what looked like large acorns, apparently fallen from the Fallen Tree. Just then, Davith piped up, asking whether anyone else could hear what he was hearing. The group went silent, and just barely made out a deep, basss voice singing from somewhere relatively nearby. After a little listening, they realized it was coming from the crater, so they circled round the southern end of the crater and then  climbed up the edge of the crater until they glimpsed the source of the sound. It was a thirty-foot tall giant:

… though less greenish than in the picture (more pale of cast), just as heavily muscled, his hair and beard long and tangled wildly, nude, down in the crater and gathering the large, beach-ball sized acorns of the tree and piling them up, singing to himself off and on as he worked. The songs he sang were familiar folk songs from the countryside. 

The Knights decided to talk to the giant, and discovered that, far from what his brutish appearance suggested, he was quite articulate and polite. They learned that:

• His name was Enkel.
• He came from the west after seeing the great Tree spring up, and passed through Belfin Village on his way to the tree.  
• He too had had confrontations with some of the Cloud Creatures, and did not know what they were though they seemed to come from the sky. 
• He hadn’t seen any surviving humans after the fall of the tree. 
• Although in his mother’s mother’s mother’s time giants had been numerous in this land, they had been hunted nearly to extinction by men, but Enkel did not hold a grudge. Also, in his mother’s mother’s smother’s time, enormous giant-sized forests apparently covered the land, or so Enkel had been told. (Giants being long-lived, he could be talking about any number of thousands of years ago.) 

At this point, the Knights speculated that perhaps the acorn had lain dormant in the ground for centuries or millennia before sprouting. Perhaps nobody had planted it, but it had simply been in the ground, waiting to sprout. In addition, during the discussion of the near-extinction of giants, Ser Lyssa hinted that she might be a suitable match for a giant? The possibility was not seriously explored, however. 

Further, they learned that:

• Enkel had a giant leather bag made from the skin of many cows, to carry his acorns in. 
• He had been climbing the tree—the better to collect its acorns—when it fell, injuring his arm. (There was a scabbed-over gash on one of his arms, presumably from which the blood in the blood trail had dripped.) The Tree had seemed sturdy when he started out climbing, but then a crack rang out from below, and the Tree had fallen.  
• He was gathering acorns for the purposes of planting them. 
• His long term plan was to harvest more acorns from those future giant trees, so that he could eventually plant himself a forest in his own size. He planned to use lumber from the trees to build himself a proper wooden home and live a “dignified life.”

The Knights realized that if he planted those acorns, a dire threat faced the Realm. After a long back-and forth, during which they presented objections and he found solutions that nonetheless involved planting those acorns anyway, they finally convinced him that the acorns might only grow in the immediate area where the first Tree had grown, but that at the same time, some pests—the giant termites Sir Yorick had seen—would probably kill any new Trees to grow in the area. 

Enkel was insistent that he would have a home, and live a “dignified life.” The Knights acknowledged his right to do so, but struck a deal with him: he could stay at a place they knew about where he would not be harassed, and which was big enough for him to fit inside, and in a month’s time they would return with information about a better place for him to do his planting and establish his giant homestead. They gave him instructions to the Temple of Mavrydd. After considering using some of Ser Lyssa’s booze, Sir Yorick instead produced  with the bottle of Footmen’s Mead that he had taken from his room in Caerwyn Keep. Enkel was horrified by the taste, but swallowed his tiny sip of footman’s mead, as did the other Knights, sealing the deal.  

Enkel, satisfied, set out for the Temple of Mavrydd, and explained to Terro and Davith what had happened. Terro was despondent, for he sat in the ruins of his entire life, his family all dead, his life ruined. Davith, on the other hand, was amazed and impressed that the Knights and especially Sir Yorick had gotten onto a first-name basis with a giant, befriending the great being. 

The Knights discussed briefly what in the world they could do to find the giant a new home, and whether they would be able to do so at all, for the alternative probably meant visiting Enkel with a warband. Davith, listening in, suggested they ask a Seer, since Seers supposedly know everything.

They knew vaguely of the locations of three Seers so far:

• The Brazen Seer on Brass Isle, which lay off the coastline to the north.
• The Painted Seer, who lived in a mansion in the mountains to the southwest.
• The Scarlet Seer, who lived in a swamp not too far to the east from Caerwyn Keep and the Garden of St. Bristofast. 

As they prepared leave the tree, Sir Augustine decided that they should take one of the acorns left behind by Enkel, though, with it being the size of a beach ball, and heavy besides, he was unsure how he could transport it. They looked in the village but found only the shattered remnants of a cart. They considered traveling down into the crater to perhaps harvest some giant termite eggs, in case Enkel broke his promise or otherwise ended up planting his acorns. 

Will they venture into the crater? How will Sir Augustine transport the acorn? What will he do with it? To which Seer will the Knights travel—if they indeed do so immediately? What will come next?

All that, we’ll learn next time.

Oh, and the Knights gained one Glory, for having gotten to (pretty much) the bottom of the Mystery of the Tree.