Our Mythic Bastionland, Session 15

Here’s the play report for our fifteenth 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.   

This one was a very short session: we had to end it after just an hour, and there was a lot of banter, so this summary will be pretty short. I did take some notes—I’m trying to be better about that these days—but honestly I still wrote this mostly from member. However, since the session ended early, I did manage to set it down while it was still fresh in my mind.  

When we last left off, the Knights had convinced the Scab Knight: 

… to hand over the late Canker Knight’s mysterious sword. The Knights then encased it in an ingot of steel, and while chatting with new friend Sir Leif:

… they learned about the Tomb of King Aeldrin, a barrow-mound in the hills south of Caerwyn Keep. They were considering  setting out for the Garden of St. Bristofast, directly southeast of the keep, to see if they could get a little more intel regarding the Tomb, rather than attempting to ride straight toward it. 

However, before they left Caerwyn Keep, the Knights took care of a couple of things. Sir Yorick:

… met with the late Pearl Knight’s advisor Veralak:

… and explained that they were setting out for the Garden, and then he asked her whether she needed help sent from there. She told him that she suspected the Seat of Power was already aware of events at the Keep, and that help was probably enroute, but that she would happily accept any aid sent from the Garden if it were forthcoming. When Yorick asked whether she had any means of communication with the Seat of Power, she explained that none remained in place, but that the monks at the Garden might have some means of getting a message to someone there.

Sir Yorick also went and found a birdcage for Sir Tyack—who aspires to catch a songbird that can sing him to sleep, a necessary prerequisite of his power of transformation. Meanwhile, Sir Tyack’s new appearance:

… was slightly unsettling, but his manner of speaking was much more unsettling. (Seriously! It was sort of halfway between an old-timey hobo and a modern-day tweaker. It was a truly hilarious horror to behold.) 

Since it was getting late in the day, the Knights decided to spend the night at the Keep and set out in the morning. (If I’m correct, and I think I am, that makes it ten nights since they parted from Enkel the Giant, which matters since they have only a month to get. back to Enkel.) 

The next morning was overcast, the hills gloomy, and on the way to the Garden of St. Bristofast, they sighted what seemed at first to be fog on the horizon, but turned out to be smoke. As they traveled further, they found its source, a burnt-up corpse of trees, and a curious figure working busily in the midst of the wreckage of the woods. The trees had been completely consumed, and the man—who was dressed in peasant garb, but had a shield upon his back—was wearing gloves as he worked. It turned out that he had a soup ladle and was scooping up ash from the ground and dumping it into a sack. The Knights spoke to him, and learned that some kind of “giant fiery lizard” or “salamander” had burnt up the forest in the night and then run off to the east. Sir Yorick asked the man what he was doing, and the man admitted that he was gathering up the ash because it was a deadly poison, winking suggestively as he said it. They asked whether the lizard might have burned up the Garden of St. Bristofast, but the man had no idea, having not ventured out that way since the fire.

The Knights continued on their way, eventually discovering the Garden completely intact. During the night previous, the monks had seen the fire that consumed the copse. but they had had no idea what caused it. 

Once again, the Knights had an audience with the Abbot, at which spiced fruit and Footman’s Ale were served. The conversation spanned the following things:

• The Knights caught the Abbot up on events at Caerwyn Keep, specifically about the death of Sir Augustine and the Canker Knight. 
• Sir Leif asked about the church that had once stood at the site of the Garden, for in his time, there had only been a church, but no garden whatsoever. It was confirmed that the old catacombs still stood beneath the Garden grounds, but the church had been destroyed in some kind of titanic battle approximately a millennium ago. The Abbot was quite surprised to hear anyone even refer to it. 
• The Knights asked the Abbot for any information he might have about King Aeldrin’s Tomb, and learned quite a bit from him. Between Sir Leif’s hazy memories and the Abbot’s lore, they figured out that King Aeldrin had once possessed a sword that for some reason he “set aside.” The sword was taken up by a Lord Remford at Remford Castle (now Blackwort Castle, the current Seat of Power). Lord Remford had been slain, and his sword passed on to one Lord Callon, who was Remford’s murderer and successor. Lord Callon then slew King Aeldrin with the same sword in some kind of major battle near Caerwyn Bridge, but then had in turn been slain by Knights faithful to the late King Aeldrin. Then the sword in question had been buried with King Aeldrin in the depths of his barrow-mound. 
• Asking for geographical guidance, they not only did they learn that King Aeldrin’s Tomb was the biggest of the barrow-mounds in the area southwest of the Garden of St. Bristofast, but that this area of ancient hill tombs was not directly accessible from the Garden, because a large crevasse blocked the way. The quickest way into the barrowlands was to go west (through the territory they’d been told was “noxious” and “stinking”), but the preferred route was to go southeast through the Elder Wood and then cut south and then east round the southern edge of the crevasse.  
• Sir Yorick passed on Veralak’s request for any aid that could be sent. (Sir Yorick specifically suggested that wayward “troublesome novices” could be sent to bolster the keep’s guardsmen.) 

By the time the Knights were ready to set out, it was raining heavily, so they opted to stay the night at the Keep. Sir Yorick spent some time training Davith in the arts of fighting—allowing the lad to use his dagger, and instructing him in the technicalities of fighting armoured opponents by seeking the chinks in their armour’s plating—and then headed to the Gardens’ monastic library to try learn more about King Aeldrin and his tomb. (The player will be sending me questions between sessions, which I’ll address at the start of the next session writeup.) Meanwhile, Sir Tyack retreated to his room, having Sir Davith sing him a song so that he could cocoon up and metamorphosed again. At the same time, Sir Leif happened to look out beyond the edge of the Garden wall, and saw what looked like a small fire burning perhaps a mile to the northwest. It flickered briefly and then went out, as the rain began to fall harder. 

It rained all through the night and into the next day, steadily falling much more heavily, so that travel would have been impossible even if Sir Tyack hadn’t once again been undergoing metamorphosis.

The next afternoon, Ser Tyack reemerged from the cocoon, once again looking like an elderly woman:

… and, to the relief of everyone, sounding like her old self again. (Her previous persona was amusing, but we were all joking out of character about killing him off!)  

And that was where the session was cut short!

Next time, the characters plan to set out in search of the Tomb of King Aeldrin. That’s what I’ve prepped for, at least. but we’ll see what happens then…