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Wilderlands: Session 3

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This is part of an ongoing campaign. You can find the other sessions over on the sidebar.

This session was run on April 25, 2022.

 

This session began right after the party escaped from Custalcon's Mines by doing significant damage to his manor and violence to his household staff. The party fled into the night headed eastward on the road out of the town of Trollslore. 

For those of you following along at home who have access to maps of the Wilderlands (I suggest Rob Conley's excellent maps found here) Trollslore can be found in hex 2314 of Wilderlands Map 1 "The City State of the Invincible Overlord". This should not be confused with the city map for the city of the same name. They knew they needed to make it to Byrny (hex 2312) to reach safety. Sylvianna told them that they could cross the river at Bularg's Ferry near Byrny.


They left town at a run and followed the road east and then turned with it to the north. About 15 minutes after they left town, they could see that warg riding goblins had been dispatched to hunt them down. 

*The chase was conducted using scans of the original Judge's Guild maps from Mines of Custalcon. You are looking at a .2 mile hex map here. The warg rider tokens indicate 15-20 goblins.

They broke away from the road and headed into the woods in hopes of remaining unseen. The quickly learned that moving through the woods at night is significantly harder than moving along the road, and they got turned around a few times despite the aid of their barbarian guide, Vargr. 

I use a hex crawl system where, when a party isn't using a road, they roll to see if they "get lost" when leaving a hex. In Castles & Crusades I have them make a Wisdom check with barbarians, druids, and rangers getting a +2 to the check. The check is also modified by the night, weather conditions, and terrain type. I do not like the classic system of "getting lost" where the part thinks they are in one hex, but the GM knows they are in another. I find these systems to be tedious, hard to pull off at the table, and that they require way too much bookkeeping on the part of the GM. Instead, I have them roll to be able to leave the hex. If they fail, they still know roughly where they are, they just don't manage to move out of the hex because they encountered a stream they couldn't cross, or thick hedges they couldn't move through and had to find a way around the obstacle. They burn the movement and have to go again. I adapted this from the classic solo game Barbarian Prince.  


As they made their way north through the woods, they caught sight of a group of warg riders on the hill to the south, but they were not noticed and managed to cross the stream and move into hex 2313 to the north.

They moved a bit further north ion this hex, but they had been running for an hour and had to stop due to the fatigue penalties they were accruing. As they hid in the woods, they heard warg rider pass them by to both the east and the west. They decided to camp for the night where they were. 

That night, while standing the third watch, Ugmmar felt a crushing fearful presence pass by overhead. He looked up through the canopy of trees and saw what appeared to be a four winged dragon flying to the north. He woke Duycken, but the dragon was already gone. He decided to tell the others in the morning. 

In the morning they healed up and continued on to Bullarg's ferry. On their arrival, they met Athelnar, a well armored nobleman accompanied by seven men-at-arms. Their shields bore purple half circles which Gwythian recognized as being the heraldry for the Duke of Dearthmead. Athelnar was happy to introduce himself to Sir Duycken, having served with ducks before in battles against pirates. He explained that he was the younger brother of Oramek, the Duke of Dearthmead, and was traveling to Byrny to pick up new armor for the duke's men. Byrny is well-regarded for its armor and its chainmail "byrnies" are in high demand. He explained that Dearthmead, to the south of the City State, is the breadbasket for the region. 

They also learned that he had been an adventuring companion of Sylvianna's when she closed the demon gate under the town of Shewolf. This was the first that the party had heard of this exploit and they decided to ask her more about it when they delivered her items to her. The session ended as they arrived in Byrny. 



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