I've been delaying and delaying closing the page on this chapter, but:
The Bell Ringers have made their last journey together.
Adventures So Far:
Report 1(Not Really): Clowns, Handspiders, and Lions
Reports 2, 3: Ew, Gross
Report 4: Generic Wizard Tower
Report 5: Pepper Dies (Again)
Reports 6, 7, 8: Don't Go To The Library
Reports 9, 10, 11, 12, 13: What's the Worst that Could Happen?
A Recital
Since our last recap, there have been many sessions with new players and deadly adventures. The guild finally entered into Honorwatch, the dread keep ever on the horizon. The first foray brought them through the hidden tunnels uncovered by Corin the Smith. While they found great fortunes within their brief exploration of the dark tunnels, they very quickly were forced to flee from wights and knights that haunted the halls. A chance encounter with the bandits holed up along the south road to Yonwell breeds enmity as they suffer heavy "taxation" from the bandit king in exchange for free passage and sanctuary.
Rallying once again from Yonwell, they journey with a larger party to Honorwatch itself and seek a ground level entrance. On the way, they battle with the notorious drake, Kesselwyrm, before reaching the decrepit town on the outskirts of Honorwatch proper. There, Stratford Slee meets his demise under a cavalry charge of dead, and the party escapes into a hidden tunnel in a ruined chapel.
From here there were lengthy trips into the fetid halls- treasures were won and nascent adventurers were slain. Retreating back to Yonwell the guild sought treasures in the east, across the Greenspine and in the court of the rumored Fairy Queen. They journeyed there and defeated devious traps, attended a strange party, and were cast out by attendants of the fae court. High up in the mountains they broke upon a golden tomb and robbed it of its worth before returning to Yonwell once more.
Here, the core of the adventuring party began to move (literally) on- and I decided the time was nigh. These adventures ended not with a bang or TPK (as they'd always thought it would)- but as must always happen, the wheel of time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend.
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| Max Bedulenko |
In the Beginning
I made the Yonwell campaign about two years ago with the intent to run it with a rotating cast of players and focus on exploration of the world and dungeon crawling. In many respects this was a success, and through ~11 players the group forged a guild, fought a war, brought rune magic into the world, and much much more.
Knave was my system of choice here mostly for ease of pickup for newer players and simplicity- encouraging the more modern-system focused players to engage with the world over the system itself. I also experimented with many, many rule tweaks and procedures, system changes and add-ons. Some were dropped, like the death and dismemberment table, but others such as the simplified hexploration procedures stayed relatively unchanged.
>>Messy and unedited house rules heavily borrowed from others here<<
In fact, contrary to my usual tendency to over-worldbuild, Yonwell started extremely light on work after prep of the initial 10x10 hex area immediately around the town. The world doesn't even have a name, still (only a single player asked about it, once), but thanks to really leaning in to only preparing things the players will interact with it felt like all of the prep that I did saw use. Dungeons were lifted wholesale from other products, including the Tomb of the Serpent Kings, many Trilemma adventures sites (handwolves were put into a random encounter list after finding them in the glossary, they grew to become a frequent comedy encounter), the previously discussed rune dungeons, the entire Freeport adventure, and more.
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| In memory of loyal party donkeys Ser Dunkelton (RIP) & Dunketello |
Last Questions: Secrets Unveiled
And now, before closing the curtain on Yonwell, there were a few questions from my players to answer.
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| Forrest White |
A: Honorwatch started as a big ruined fort on the hill, some skeletons on the random encounter tables for the surrounding plains, and the warning from the first npc out of town to not sleep within sight of it. After a few early sessions, it took a more developed role as the world got fleshed out wherever the players interacted with it. So, let's dump some lore.
There were Duke Conrad of Yonwell, and his brother Duke Konrad of Honorwatch. Naming conventions aside, years ago the Duke of Yonwell plotted against the Duke of Honorwatch- intending to kill him and seize Honorwatch. Honorwatch itself was a bastion of researchers, having a grand ruin underneath the castle proper, and the Duke of Honorwatch kept the peace honorably in his lands until his brother's betrayal.
Essentially, the Duke of Yonwell made a secret alliance with the Witch Queen and gifted a cursed amulet to the Duchess of Honorwatch. The amulet corrupted the Duchess and eventually laid root and turned the lands into the Witch Queen's native swamplands, marshy and riddled with vampiric thorn bushes, allowing the Witch Queen's magics enough ground to teleport directly into the ruins beneath the castle.
The ruins, as was discovered by the Duke of Honorwatch, were a great pristine seal- over some great power sealed away by the ancients. There were three swords that acted as keys to open the seal, and at the time the Duke of Honorwatch had located two of them: Eventide and Hierophant. The Witch Queen sought to harness this power herself, and tried to break the seal without the third blade. Her attempts backfired and she barely escaped the site alive- but the seal's magics brought the curse of undeath to the Duke of Yonwell and his lands- binding them to keep the seal intact.
This all draws into the further lore backgrounds of what was sealed and why- but essentially what we had was a snakeman empire overthrown by men who discovered how to wield Godbound-tier magic. They overthrew the snakemen and built a great utopian empire, with six of their number being the de facto pseudo-pantheon. Over time, they began to restrict who learned their magics, as in the hands of any lowly peasant it could destroy the works of kings. Eventually their empire grew more and more insular, elitist, and cruel. One of their number attempted rebellion, and trained legions of commoners in secret. A great war, sometimes known as the Runic War, scarred the land and broke the empire. The remaining five were not able to kill the unnamed sixth, but were able to erase their name and form and seal their seat of power- but in doing so had to seal away their greatest magics.
Time passed and they ancients sealed their greatest city and all its technology behind the mighty Shieldwall mountains, chaining another of their own who had become corrupted to guard it eternally (this being Azamax the Cursed). The rest scattered, with some being lost to time, others still live in the setting (The First Wyvern, the Lich King). Eventually, the much less magical civilizations of the world were formed and after many many years we have Yonwell- just 20 hexes from the sealed magical city and ten from the great seal underneath Honorwatch.
All this was in no way in place at the design of the campaign, and it wasn't until they discovered the teleporter cairns some 15 sessions in that it was set in stone. At the beginning, all I had was Honorwatch being a cursed castle and there being big mountains to the way way north that hid something.
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| Ben Zweifel |
A: That was how to unseal the city behind the Shieldwall. Two hexes out of Yonwell and not discovered until 10-12 sessions in to the game, there was a monolith just in the Shellwood atop a cairn. The party fought a vampire-vine-beast inside and explored the remaining three rooms. One held dozens of stone statues of people in various stages of life, another held the tomb of one of the five Ancients as well as a pool of magical healing water, and the third held the teleporter.
It's a simple system, there's a crystal that powers it and the players had to find it (stolen by the vampire thing) and activate the system. There were four reels filled with symbols that could be lined up into combinations of four and a lever. The way it worked was a simple dialling system, put in the right combo and teleport to the corresponding cairn. They had already worked out the address of the cairn they were in and were satisfied to leave- but one player wanted to try a few hunches.
Fortunately for them, I had planned for that. The first success was all four Tree symbols- this led to the "Cathedral". It was a building set beyond the Shieldwall and filled with six statues, one smashed, each which when touched would give a vision of the corresponding cairn. Each statue looked like one of the six ancients, and if all six cairns were activated then the barrier in the cathedral blocking the exit would be broken.
The second successful combo was the four dragons, which led to a floating castle above the bay of the lost continent Wyv. The sheer number of wyverns around the castle led to the players to quickly decide to leave and not come back- unfortunately for them.
Q: Is magic everywhere now? How will it affect... things?
A: Rune magic is, at least. The players were already seeing some fall out from when their lantern boy taught all the other lantern boys how to make magical rune-powered light, and they also taught even more to a second henchman. Rune magic was one of the magics sealed in the Runic Wars, being the easiest for the common person to use and benefit from.
It will take time for people around the world to see the old runes in ruins are working again and figure their inner workings out- but what happens once magic is readily available for even the lowliest peasant is anyone's guess.
Q: If it had gone on for long enough, would we eventually have gotten involved in the southern wars, or is that an off-screen thing?
A: There's a physical line drawn south of Yonwell that the players were told we don't go to. Conceptually, this is because the south lands are filled with mundane war and generally suck, so they left and came to these frontierlands by Yonwell. Mechanically, it encouraged players to explore north out of Yonwell- but no, there were no plans for the south lands- players were free to name the wretched and boring countries of origin for their characters at will (all I can remember were Florida and Ohio).
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| William Stevens |
A: "DRAGONS?" was written all over the player map at various points- but I believe this refers to the area north of Starmoore. North of that destroyed town was a narrow coastline hedged by brokenlands, which opened up into a grand plain spiked with plateaus atop which were the Dragon Baronies. These were to very feudal-themed cities which maintained knights that rode atop drakes as well as legions of footmen that were used to battle each other and the seasonal tide of orcs from the east.
Q: What did we not get to that you are most disappointed about?
A: I could have directed or hinted better, but that floating island with wyverns? It was empty. There's no monsters or ghosts or ghouls or even wyverns inside it. The only things inside were treasure and the means to move the island at will. It was a giant flying castle filled with treasure that you could just move wherever you wanted it to- but as it turns out the wyverns outside were so scary the players just never left the parlor.
Let's take a last quick tour of some of the mysteries and denizens around the world of Yonwell- and reveal just how poor my hook management was for this campaign.
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| Chaim Holtjer |
A freshly excavated tunnel in a farmer's lands lead through the snake-emblazoned temple deep beneath the earth, scales slide against stone as the ancient necromancer prepares his next concoction- oblivious to the rediscovery of his laboratory.
In the deep cavern beneath the Ranger's Guild, a brass brazier burns fiercly outside the Unbroken Tomb, its contents awaiting the worthy.
Undolant the Purple hums a merry tune- conjoining the last set of arms to his new batch of handwolves.
Atop the Greenspine, the bumbling grobkins work in their stolen brewery, feeding the great hunger that commands them.
Thunder rumbles from the mouth of the Castle Demon- squat among the glassy ruins of Starmoore. Furtive figures dart to and from its hidden passages, stoking the flames of its dreaming engine.
Deep in a snaking cave a not so ogreish scholar connects wires and cables and invokes the ancient oaths, trying to resurrect his dead god.
Vibrant greens choke out the twisting red vines creeping at the heart of the Shellwood, a silver pond undisturbed at its heart.
Balanced on the fanged mountains in the sea north of Shellport, the ever-fought battle of ancient automata continue in blasted halls and spiralling stairs.
Down dark alleyways and behind closed doors of Gnarledshore, the remnants of the snakeman empire conspire and plot- dreaming of their empire's return.
The great pale ziggurats of the dead in the far east mill with tired corpses under the empty eyes of the Lich King.
Coins tumble from enormous piles of treasure heaped amongst the far mountain altar as Azamax the Cursed's flaking gold scaled-head considers the horizon.
The priestesses of Magda offer a freshly harvested crop of Man-Locusts to their False Mermaid gods, feeding the beast they build in their temple.
A new bandit king crowned, the roads from Shellport to Yonwell prove to be ever valuable- as long as they pay their taxes to the Duke.
Ribboned trees line the forest paths where half-elves tend to the ghosts of the dead play court with their Half-dead queen.
Drake-mounted knights dive and cut at hordes of pallid-fleshed orcs in a pitched battle on the plains, banners unfurled and blood splattered.
Bristling black spines and fiercely cut chitin adorn the blood red Wyrm that emerges from the ruins of the blood altar- now fully recovered it sets its eyes to reclaiming its title.
Centaurs skirmish with the twisted minions of the Witch Queen in the snowy hills of the Beastwarren. From her fetid pit of Felltine, she howls and slinks; plotting anew to break the seal.
High amongst ancient pine trees, the feathered Serpent Lord glides in search of prey- and vengeance.
In taverns throughout the bustling city of Yonwell, stories are told of adventurers mad and mighty- and the bells they rang and the tales they sang.
The high bell tolls at her shrine and Alia wishes safe journeys to a fresh faced band of adventurers and their dog, eager to make a name for themselves on the frontier.
Through a Nearby Mirror
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| Tim Hansz |
All in all, I'd count this grand West Marches-ish a success. Knave was a good choice to be sure, but I don't think I'd choose it again for a longer campaign like Yonwell ended up being. It could have been my tooling around with the system constantly that made it into something I didn't quite like- but either way it'll be good to go back to something with a bit more structure and classes, even.
Long ago I had found hexcrawls to be an intimidating prospect to set up- with there being dozens of guides and articles on how to do it properly, on how the procedures need to be, on how to build the world- but ultimately focusing on smaller 10x10 hexes to start with and keeping things flexible the first few sessions worked wonders.
Above is the real- actual-, current and up to date map for Yonwell as well as the player made map for comparison. Each little yellow tag- for those not familiar- is where I made an entry for that hex- an encounter or something similar. Astute players of mine may notice there are many hexes that they explored which do not have an encounter shown on my map. To them, the answer is I Improvised A Lot. Sometimes they were encounters or locations I knew I wanted to use and just waited for a good time to adapt them- sometimes it was a roll on some roll-up tables to make the place on the spot- but something I really leaned on heavily throughout the game was improvisation and not sweating the prep- and to my mind this ended up being fairly smooth with only a few bumps.
Looking back at it all and reminiscing, there's plenty I would have done
differently if I started again today- and that's just fine. I had a
great time running this world with all my players, and now it's time for the next adventure.
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| Thanks for playing |