This is the fourth session of A Band of Bastards. The group has been resized to Kieran, Lauren, Liam, and Nash. I also have introduced Company rules to the party in the hopes of trying them out in the new future. They’ll certainly get some healthy modifiers from today’s game. 

If you recall back to the last session the band had been on their way to the secret warehouse where the steel ingots had been hid. The Band struck down the thugs Doto and Leddo but only to have defeat snatched from the jaws of victory when the watch arrived to arrest the Band for “stealing” the ingots from Doto and Leddo.

Session Four: Making odds even is not even odds

For three days they lounged about in the Watch house unable to leave. They were certainly not maltreated but definitely not free to leave. The magistrate threw a big rant filled with big gestures, the loud voice, and other displays of showmanship and the Band had to wait before Jegro could force their release.

While the rest of the crew had to lie in their cells and ride it out, Hoto was somewhat pampered when she wanted, but no one suffered and they were allowed luxuries unheard of by other prisoners like proper food, warm blankets, extra coal in their coal-pots, and gardies tipped and scrubbed as often as the rest of the barracks.

Eventually Drennet arrived to let them free after paying an agreed-to fine. It seems the magistrate was hopping up and down about making examples of the dirty thieves making Riverrun fall to wrack and ruin. Lucky for the Band that Jegro still has some sway with the Watch. Hoto, Prime, and Uisgane went with Drennet. Pisoshi tagged along. Drake went to his wagon and three apprentices and assistants to set up shop. During their three days in prison, New Riverrun had changed dramatically it was full of the bustle of the earliest signs of spring. The tree line had become green, snow had receded, and the sun’s warmth was waxing day by day. Everywhere people put out winter bedding and near the Empty Quarter large fires dotted the skyline.

Across the river, the Band cleaned and changed clothes and a bitterly fuming Prime Honour went to deck out in Drennet’s leather and stoutly soled boots and sharped his knives. When Hoto had finished convening with her employer, Prime called her to one side and asked for her assistance, to which she agreed. Pish Tosh was summoned and the three went back across the river, armed.

On their way back across the river new sights dazzled them, a horde of magicians clustered around a large bonfire, women danced and flared flames into a bonfire, bent old men made flowers bloom prematurely on kindling logs, and others, sweating with loosened robes, waved their arms with wild gestures, which pulled gouts of scented smoke out of the thick black column and hardened into a type of dark smoke-stone. In the sky people with wings flew in great spirals and stilled the wind. All the wizards from surrounding lands got in early to build the ceremonial bridge over the Long Marching River connecting New and Old Riverrun. Even the dimmest of unthinking people felt the weft of all the sorcery. Animals hid, babies cried, and children stared in fascination.

After winding and weaving through the throng of new people babbling and screaming in oddly accented languages, did the band find Drake and his crew and wagon bordering the Empty Quarter and the Magicians Bazaar. Prime requested all of them.

They all agreed to meet there at Sun’s Dimming at the Empty Quarter (although the smoke magicians had already erected huge, squat buildings that faced the sun with sloping walls in the three days the Band was imprisoned). Afterwards, the all divided up to run tasks and errands although most just wandered and stared at the profusion of filled buildings when there was once nothing but crumbled walls and broken flagstones.

Pisoshi went to the Magicians’ Bazaar to beef up his repertoire of spells. He quickly found many people have disdain and glare at the mention of shadow-binders but eventually he was directed to a poor-dressed man in a thick hooded robe leaning on his staff, flexing his sore clog-wearing feet, his robe had been pinned up exposing his thin, scarred warming legs. The man had tired, wind-burned face around the glassy black-filled eyes of a master of the Darkened Path, and he was named Strength Gollet.

Pisoshi was quite taken aback at the shabby clothes and wooden peasant-shoes Strength was wearing, but was pleased to hear the sorcerer would indeed be prepared to sell two shadow-binging spells to him for the price of a good pair of boots. Lacking funds, Pisoshi dug his hands into his pockets and felt their emptiness. Pisoshi then enquired more of the Darkened Path and initiating himself into their magic. Strength admitted he could “brace Pish with special wounds in the dark so Pish would be able to meet the blind things face to face”. He did add that Pish would have to commit completely to the thin, unseen Things or they might strike him mad as punishment. Pish felt a little overwhelmed.

Pisoshi thanked the remarkably pleasant shadow-binder and went back to help Drake set up his shop and drink tea until the sun darkened.

Sure enough, they all soon enough met up and inside Drake’s wagon, went with Prime Honour back to Filgo’s house.

As soon as they arrived, Pish snuck back behind the house, near the backdoor with the rubbish heap, and pulled his sword and a floppy doll.

Prime took a deep breath and rapped on the door. The little latch opened, Gammo peered out, and Prime kicked the door back into him. The door’s quick bar slid off and the door opened. Gammo looked at Prime who strode into the house, pulling his knives. Hoto followed with Drake and his gang. Prime asked Gammo where Filgo was. Gammo pointed upstairs. Prime went up. Hoto drew her thin sword and followed. Gammo upped and ran like fuck.

Around the back, Pish heard the door’s crack, poked and watched through the rag-stuffed broken-glass hole in the wall. He saw Gammo snake toward the back door. Gammo flung it open and dove outside, into doll swung at him. It burst into lots of little quick, biting things. Gammo staggered, drunkenly trying to fling the little bug-crow-shapes off his body. Pish whacked Gammo with another exploding doll. It was too much. Gammo yelped and dived to roll on the ground like he was on fire. While he rolled and scraped in the dirt, Pish walked up to him and calmly kicked him in the head. Gammo went still. Pish watched him and thought.

At the top of the stairs, Filgo stepped suddenly into view, and Prime stopped back in with a little unspoken fright at the big, wide-shouldered alpha male and a doubt had waved a white flag through his cowardly fleeing rage. [Man, you just got to love intimidate rolls with an MD].

Filgo took a step forward but stayed on the landing, Prime could not step back without pushing into Hoto. Filgo pulled out his sword and asked Prime what he wanted here in his house.

Prime took a breath, composed himself and said he wanted the steel ingots which belonged to Jegro, which Filgo’s man Gammo alerted to the Band. Filgo laughed and said it was too bad, that if Prime and Band left now, he wouldn’t hold it against him.

Prime lunged his dagger cruelly into Filgo’s sword arm. Filgo lashes back with a solid kick to Prime’s chest. They both stagger back. Luckily Hoto hugs Prime and re-balances him with his winded breath.

At the bottom of the steps, Drake and his men wait, unable to move up but keeping watch and nervously clenching their weapons, palms sweating when Drake jerks, dodges in a fright at a movement and a sword flashes past him to dig into the wall. Holding the sword his Flaross. Drake winds Flaross a shot in the face with his staff. Flaross’ face snaps under the blow and he drops limply but awake, blood pouring from his nose and mouth. Drake turns to watch up the stairs again while an apprentice practices his healing skills on Flaross’ smacked upper jaw.

Atop the stairs Filgo swings his left fist at Prime but Prime just leans back and Hoto, forward and jabs her sword into Filgo’s bloody sword arm as he swings back. Filgo staggers and Prime lances another knife at him, across his chest. Hoto lashed her sword at him, making him stumble and drop his sword. Prime ends it with a vicious hilt-knuckled fist to Filgo’s face. Filgo jerks back, stunned, dribbling blood and blinking to focus his suddenly-blurry vision. Prime steps up with a quiet, toothy snarl, grabs Filgo’s coat, and with a heel-swivel grunt, flings Filgo down the stairs.

Hoto and one of Drake’s gang get out of the way. The second apprentice is slammed by Filgo’s limp, unconscious body and soaks the impact – which may have saved Filgo’s life.

Flaross sees Filgo lying broken and panics. He pushes the apprentice and bolts for the open front door (which has gathered quite a crowd) and without hesitation, Prime whips one of his daggers into Flaross’ back, causing him to stumble and flop and squeal with shock. As Flaross tries to squirm and crawl toward the door and freedom, Prime walks over and yanks his blade free. He boots Flaross onto his back and asks, “where exactly are the ingots?” Flaross gives directions to an address of a squalid little place in the Far Yards past the Empty Quarter. The ingots are there with Doto and Leddo.

With that Prime Honour walks out the front door, the rest follow. They look and see Pish dragging Gammo naked, his clothes bundled under his arm. Pish sees their stares and answers: “his boots were nice and I figured it could hurt to throw in the clothes too.”

They merely nod at Pish’s accomplishment and they securely bind and bundle Filgo, Flaross, and naked Gammo into the back of the wagon. They ride off. Their audience knows their job here is done. There is other work elsewhere.

The wagon trundles off to the Far Yards also known as the Plantation of Whores where the lumberjacks bring timber and live when they come to burn money in New Riverrun.

It isn’t long before they stop outside the place where Flaross’ terrified directions told them to go. It’s a crude house of logs caked with grey mud-and-straw. In front various people sit on chairs doing little chores. Little dirty and muddy children stop playing and stare. Women husk vegetables and cast their peelings into fire-browning pots. No one says a word. All talking has stopped.

The people here are the poorest that live in New Riverrun. The lumber industry is not rich but it never stops, year in and out. Boys from the Far Yards become cheap thugs and suffering lumberjacks. Girls become whores and are traded to rich merchants.

Prime jumps down from the cart and steps up between where the people sit and pokes his head into the door. No one stops him as he does so. He knocks on the wall and calls out. Suddenly Doto looks around from inside the house and his eyes grow huge. He ducks back and Prime chases him. With two steps they’re out the house, with another step Prime leaps the low back wall, with the final step, Prime launches and tackles Doto, flopping them both heavily into the cloying, cold mud, and holding on as they come to a complete halt. Prime gets up and hoists Doto up, with his face an inch away and everything below his eyes drenched in stinking black mud, “where are the ingots?”

There’s a moment of silence as Doto looks at him, pondering. “They’re in bags in hole in the house.”

“Show me.” Doto does. They troop off into the house and Doto gets some family members to lift their sleeping pallets and shows the hole filled with big, heavy bags. The bags are filled with ingots, each stamped with Uld seals. Dropping Doto onto the floor, Prime Honour calls the Band to help him load. At Doto’s strange colloquial dialect, the family helps out to. Soon the bags are all accounted for and Drake’s wagon is filled, the Band of Bastards ride off towards the Puckered Roost at riverside except for Pish who leaves to find Strength Gollet hanging about in the Magician’s Bazaar.

At the Puckered Roost, they meet up with Honesty lounging about. Prime tells him to get a message to the Captain of the Watch, Beglend Redlow, to send across the river for Jegro Barnevith for the urgent matter of the business of recovered ingots. Honesty scoots off hurriedly.

A cold rain starts to fall. As uncomfortable as it is, it thankfully isn’t freezing sleet. The thaw has started.

The Band asks the landlord for a bucket of water, and to give them the stables and livery for a few hours. The landlord gives them the hayloft but tells them if he hears any sort of screaming he’s calling the watch.

They hoist the three captives up and splash water on them to awaken them. They’re in a fair amount of discomfort, tightly bound and gagged. Prime address Filgo and tells him, the debt with Lily Drum is going to get paid off and cleared away. All the events that lead to the recovery and retrieval of the ingots to clear Lily Drum’s will be forgotten. If any word otherwise refuses these fair and equitable measures, then the one who spoke the refusal is going to get a knife to the eyes.

Filgo is angry but also trussed up and facing people with daggers, swords, and sorcery. He realises his and his Dirty Boys own greed got him here. He agrees. The band leaves them trussed up with Drake and his three apprentices until the exchange of ingots and money is cleared away.

The Band wait until Drennet arrives with some guards and papers at the Puckered Roost. They call Lily Drum. He is very excited and eagerly signs his ingots over to Drennet who authorises the exchange with a promissory bill sealed with an official seal. Drennet thanks the Band and leaves, his men lug the heavy bags to a number of small boats and row back across the Long Marching River.

Lily Drum is ecstatic with Prime, Hoto, and Drake until Hoto mentions the payment of the debt Drum owes to Filgo.

Back in the Magicians’ Bazaar, Pish finds Strength Gollet keeping out of the rain by squatting under a discarded carpet. Strength is joyful at his new boots and fancy clothes. He strips in the rain and dresses right there. He is so happy he agrees to teach Pish two spells; instruction to start immediately.

When he understands the Band has Filgo bound and gagged, Lily Drum tries to weasel in an alternative: kill Filgo and they can receive twenty pounds for the task. They refuse and he goes up to twenty-five pounds, thirty.

Suddenly Drum composes himself, initially he’s horrified at having to pay the owed fifty pounds but and quickly angers. He flat out refuses, his fat cheeks wobbling in a manufactured moral outrage at being insulted by commoners.

…Until Hoto suggests that if he, Lily Drum, wishes to renege on his debt to Filgo, then she fetch Filgo so Lily Drum can explain to Filgo personally. Drum is stunned with fear, his eyes go wide, his mouth droops and his cheeks go ashen. Hoto places a kind hand on Drum’s shoulder and keeps it there while Prime goes off to get Filgo.

The exchange of fifty pounds goes between Filgo and Drum goes quickly, Drum wants to get away from Filgo, Filgo want to get away from the Band, and the Band want to get away from both of them and get Prime clean because he now smells of wet turd.

At the end of the evening, Drum is short fifty pounds and sulking, Filgo is suffering from a savage beating and sulking. The Band is out of the rain, freshly scrubbed in dry clothes, and eating hot food.

Out in the night, Pisoshi is being taught secrets of darkness and squirming shadows.

End of Session Four and Notes

I was on kind shaky ground with the session but everyone said it went well. Liam said his idea of Prime Honour facing off Filgo didn’t go as he planned in his head to which I said, that only by facing the threat and beating did it mean anything. Filgo was Prime’s antithesis and thus richly deserved his beating although having Hoto help out is fair considering Filgo’s seven dice in Body + Fight.

The session ended with two events, an adventure seed for next crappy thing a pick-up and delivery of a bag of carved wooden disks from a black-eyed sorcerer called Dog Stone to another sorcerer, the as yet unnamed Sidle Muizen who lives in the woods outside of New Riverrun. Yes, the next story arc is going to feature wizards and wizards and wizards and all their magic and hungry shadows. (I hope that Reign Supplement #3 is up when the magicians start shooting it out. I want to create some spell variants and alternatives to the listed spells to keep people on their toes and entertain the players with cool stuff). I’m planning to use some violence and murders for entertainment*.

The other event was the conference to stat up the Band of Bastards with me saying yes, no, or giving an alternative. Since no one else has the rule book, I tried explaining as best as I could with everyone kind of tired.

COMPANY: The Band of Bastards
GOAL: To accumulate prestige, standing, and finally independence while greasing Jegro’s political wheels.
LEADERS: Prime Honour with Hoto Hori as First Mate-ess.

Influence: 2
Might: 1
Sovereignty: 2
Territory: 0
Treasure: 1

The Band of Bastards works primarily through Prime Honour who was thrust into leadership purely by being the longest existing character. Hoto is a close second because she’s pushy and able to back up her words. The odd thing about the Random Roll generators is that Hoto can do whatever Prime can do backwards, in high heels, with magic to make her sword burn like a medieval light sabre. Prime actually has very little over her skill-wise except some skill with long-fingers and sneaking.

It seems the squabbling duo have settled nicely into their roles, complementing each other tactically.

Pish Tosh has developed into someone with some ideas and aspirations. I like that he’s a Dindy (insulting nationalistic nicknames already!) and studying a vilified sorcery of Imperial rednecks. I want Supplement #3 for those promised DIY spells and school systems to create some versions of shadow-magic which aren’t listed.

Drake is sort of featureless. He needs an entire session around him and his three apprentices or assistants. I have an idea or two about this… Mu ha ha ha ha ha!

Drake is the appointed Captain of Industry and expert with the monies. His assets and the parties’ pooled money makes for Treasure 1.

Drennet is not just Jegro’s handy GMC, but also a go-between, and advocate for the Band of Bastards. Drennet’s role will change in the future if I get to run the story with the migrant Truil circus.

Kieran 2
Kieran displays lots of D&D tactical gaming, she just needs to put everything in it’s place and not treat her three apprentices as weapons.

I’m going to stat Drake’s three Threat 3 followers up as characters. To start, their names are Eader, Ossoss, and Acorn. I’m going to use the generic, Imperial, and Dindavaran generators set to the same careers for a little variance. I also created an Esoteric Discipline for Healing which I’ll dole out and give them to Lauren, Liam, and Nash, to run under Kieran.

Lauren 3
Although Hoto gets prissy a lot of the time, she built up and given a lot of potential story with her own lord who is not Jegro but “someone else”. This will get tangled and messy later when all the dirty secrets start oozing out.

Leanne 10
I’ll gladly mug old people to keep Leanne in cooking money although I’ll blame Liam for the crime.

Liam 3
Despite Liam’s protests about avoiding and being sucky with leadership roles he’s the smart bomb – he can go off more than once.

Nash 0
In lieu of experience, Nash is getting new spells, Shadow Refuge and Nyctopian Promise. He might go for Attunement. Sweet…

Chris 0
Not drawing a character portrait for Kieran, gets me a -1 experience penalty for being lazy.

I will draw Drake’s picture soon but not promising-anything-soon soon.