Khareo's Tale #7 - Fairies and lizards

Shadows in the night

Karim, self-portrait.

Karim was shuffling in the dark on his way back from a day's work. He knew that something was wrong, but couldn't explain why until he heard the muffled steps of feet on the pavement. He slipped behind a pile of refuse and let the shape of two hooded men walk away. Something was indeed wrong: He could smell danger. 

They came back a few minutes later as he resumed his walk. This time, there was no way to hide: the hooded men came from ahead and from behind. Karim climbed up a waterspout and reached the roof of a building. Four hooded men arrived and saw him slip away. Karim was scared. He peered down to try to find out who his pursuer were. 

Leila was a tree fairy. She had little to worry about for as long as her plum tree remained a secret. That night, she was fluttering over the sleeping city when she spotted a panting boy on the roof of a house. Below, there was a number of agitated hooded men. 

Curisosity got the best of her as she flew down to see what was going on. She could see three men. She flicked her fingers an lit the nose of one of them with a bright light. The light revealed the face of a lizard. Leila felt the cold in her hands, but mustered enough mana to summon more magic. Dust flitted from her hand but got swept away in the wind. The lizardmen were startled by this sudden light and stopped paying attention. Karim took advantage of this distraction to climb down on the other side of the house. 

Leila guided Karim through the streets without showing herself. When they got close to Kassandra's home, she became visible.  She led the way through dark streets until they were safe as the hooded lizardmen were converging all around. Kassandra shut the door, hid Karim under the table and held her breath. The footsteps grew distant down the street. 

There was something about this boy that she couldn't put her finger on. 

Khareo's Tale #6 - The back streets of Lorthalen

Hired sword wanted

The Lothal sisters weighed their options. They figured out that they would need some brawn to assist if they were to leave town. They posted ads around the city markets [ successful influence check with local merchants, +1 for advertising ].  Mary tried to skimp on salary, but eventually settled to offer 35 silver crowns per month plus a vitality amulet. A number of candidates knocked at the door [ Propaganda-10, +1 city size, +1 advertising, -1 failed use of "common sense/IQ" as supporting skill, +1 increased wage, +1 Charisma, +1 Status, +1 Wealth. Target:15. Success by 1 ]. A bankrupted bakers who had been convicted for fraud and desperate for work, a scary looking father of four looking for a better paid job, and a retired Navy officer with area knowledge in the Golden Archipelago. The sisters settled for Horatio Mar, the more expensive retired navy officer. They scoured the dock area for a ship heading for Lorthalen. They settled with a captain to depart on the following day against 4 silver coins each and the pledge to share the workload with the crew.

The trip was difficult but interesting. They learned much about seafaring and made friends among the sailors.

Khareo's Tale #5 - A devil's untimely end

In this session, the Lothal sisters are trying to finish the work started in the last session where they confronted a devil that was destroying the life of a noblemwoman. The devil turned out hard to kill, and the first contact ended in a withdrawal from Merbaum (the devil). 

Looking for Lorenz Lothal

The day after the confrontation with Merbaum, the sisters assumed that things would get quiet. They decided to head for the court of Sharna III to investigate the circumstances of their father's disappearance. They met with someone from the chamberlain office. It turned out that this man, named Karmen, personally knew their father. He left the sisters in a lobby while he knocked at a few other doors.



When he came back, Karmen told the sisters that their father has set out on a diplomatic mission to Lorthalen, a sovereign island in the Golden Archipelago. He set out on an independent sailship, never came back. As a result he was declared missing and his salary was terminated a month ago.

The sister went back home and worked for the rest of the day. Martha drew a star chart for her father and found out that within the last 6 months, her father had indeed been in the Golden Archipelago. Not a lot more could be read from the chart. At least the two pieces of information corroborated.

Tracking Merbaum through Khareo

Merbaum entered back into the sisters' lives with the knock of a door. Lady Fremton was waiting on the threshold with the crumbled remains of an amulet in her hand. She explained that the vitality amulet had shattered into the night. Mary recognized that Merbaum had possibly attempted to do her harm, and that the amulet had stopped the ritual. Mary advised Lady Fremton to wear the ring that she made to poison Merbaum since it was also a vitality amulet.

Both agreed that Merbaum would not let got of this easily. They anticipated a time where Lady Fremton could end-up without Mary's protection. Something had to be done, soon. The problem mainly was that there was no way to find out where Merbaum was in the first place. Lady Fremton didn't want to return to her flat for the time being.

The sisters splitted to attempt to find traces of a devil in Khareo. They knew that Merbaum was probably preying on other wealthy citizens in the city. However, the odds of finding any of them bragging about their curse were very low. Mary, whom had a fantastic rapport with the business community, decided to tap into this network to scrounge for rumors. She asked around for anecdotes about recently destitute or otherwise gloomy upstanding merchants. Unfortunately, a full day of running around left her empty-handed.

Martha was at a lost for rumors: most people that she knew treated her either as a child or as a weirdo. She got sneers from neighbors and shooed away from market stalls. Her best bet turned out to talk to Sheriff Stanton, a grumpy horologicalist with enthusiasm for tax collection. Martha had fallen in his good book by being so openly at odds with the local Architecturalist congregation.  

Stanton came back to her a few days later with the tip that a goldsmith called Elmira Acker had suddenly closed shop and isolated herself from her social circles. If her problem came from Merbaum, then he really had found the best kind of professional to harrass.

The curse of Elmira Acker, goldsmith.

Merbaum tangled into the net while Martha takes her sweet
time aiming.

When the sisters knocked at the closed shop's door, they were quickly turned away. Martha interjected and mentioned Merbaum by its name. The goldsmith, a woman in her forties, let them in and asked about everything that they knew about the devil. Her story was similar to Lady Fremton, except that her husband had left her a long time ago and didn't get killed by it. The sisters inspected the goldsmith shop and her adjoining apartment on the upper level. They then hatched a plan. Mary convinced Ms. Acker to invite them over that night so that they could ambush Merbaum. Hopefully, to wipe him from her life for good.

On the way home, Mary bough a net in the style used by demonstration fighters at festivals. She spent the rest of the day figuring out how to throw the darn thing. Martha loaded both flintlock pistols and wrapped them in a piece of canvas. Merbaum was about to get a taste of Lothal medicine.

The ambush according to Chloe ( Martha )

Later into the night, the sisters went back to the goldsmith shop. They consulted with Ms. Acker to find a good ambush setup. Usually, the devil came from the back door and got fed on the counter of the shop. Mary and Martha found dark corners in the store to hide.

Merbaum arrived late into the night. He was rude and threatening to Ms. Acker. She led him down to the store and manipulated her lantern such as to have the sisters on the other side of the glare. Merbaum landed on the counter and began wolfing down a few gold pieces.

Mary threw her net at him. He recoiled to dodge but slipped off the counter and landed on the ground, completely tangled. Martha walked to the powerless fairy and carefully shot him to the heart. The devil was leathery tough! Once the smoke cleared, Martha could only see a graze on his chest.  While she switched pistol, Mary hopped on the counter. Martha shot at Merbaum again: a great rift opened in his chest and yellow sparks were streaming out of it. Merbaum had given up on escaping the net and was instead trying to chew his way out.

Merbaum realized that a dodge retreat is impractical atop a
glass counter. 

Mary jumped down to the ground and trample him. She snapped her vitality amulet off her neck and shoved it into the rift. A surge of white light filled the room and the screaming got the best of Martha who fled to the upper level. Mary had been badly burnt by her last move and couldn't move her hand anymore. The devil tried to plead with Mary to let him go: Mary would have none of it. Martha came back in, snapped off her amulet from her neck and shoved it in the rift as well. Merbaum's body was now smoking, his mouth frothing. The sight and the pain from her burn sent Mary retching to the floor. As Martha was about to draw her foil, Merbaum stopped writhing and became silent. The devil had eaten his last golden meal.

The ambush by Sophie ( Mary Lothal ).

Peddling the body

The sisters had a hunch that a devil's body would fetch a good price from an alchemist. After a bit of negotiations, they managed to sell Merbaum's body to one of them for the great sum of 500 silver ( nearly a years' salary). It could have proably fetched a lot more, but this would have required an amount of leg work that the sisters weren't ready to put forth.

Mary and Martha realized that they now had enough money to support their mother and family home while they travel to Lorthalen to investigate the disappearance of their father. Hopefully Mary will be able to recover from her crippling burns on her right hand!


GM's notes: 

1. A net is a very potent weapon in GURPS!
2. Sophie had the brilliant idea to use the white magic of a vitality amulet to poison the devil: this is pure awesome!

Khareo's Tale #4 - Yelling a devil down

This session report is a continuation of the previous session: Speaking of the devil. 

Act 2, Scene 3 - The poison apple

The sister decided to head for the Arc society to consult the library. Neither managed to find something about devils, but Mary convinced another member to help. Martha eventually found out that devils are usually insubstantial and invisible. Devils are made of black magic and are motivated purely by malevolence. Interestingly, they are repelled by true faith and white magic.

The following day around lunchtime, Lady Fremton came to talk. She confirmed that they really had been sent by Silvardo Torrens. Reassured, Lady Fremton explained that she was haunted for two years by a devil named Merbaum. He first preyed on her husband for a reason that she did not know, requiring to be fed gold every night. Once that he got on the brink of bankruptcy, her husband attempted to resist. Merbaum use wicked curses to make him sick until he died. Since that day, the devil visits her almost every night, demanding more gold. Lady Fremton obliged under the threat that Merbaum will go after her relatives. Lady Fremton was now penniless and tormented by creditors.

Mechanism to adjudicate Astrological Divination

In the campaign Khareo's Tale, a lot of the plot revolves around astrological divination rituals. Knowing what to provide as the outcome of a divination spell can be difficult to gauge. This is particularly so if you want to consistently scale the usefulness of the information with respect to the margin of success. This post describes how we are doing it on our campaign. 


This is a joint post with Sophie Blouin, who brainstormed with me and had the idea of buying destinies using powerful prophecies (which I find very cool). 

In a nutshell

Astrological divination is concerned with position and timing. The better is the divination roll, the more precise is the prediction in these two scopes. Astrology is a ritual subject to normal ritual modifiers (GURPS Thaumatology) and some specific one about the object of the divination. A star chart prop was designed to simplify the adjudication of divination checks. 

The star chart. The number indicate the MoS cost of each area.
Latin is used for flavor, but the English word is shown in smaller print.

This post is further divided into three sections: Ritual Magic modifiers, Interpreting the results and examples.

Khareo's Tale #2 - The pendant and the foil.

Act 1 is an introduction to get the players to settle into their characters. I picked two of these events as they involved fun play from each PCs. 

Act 1, Scene 1 - Martha's swashbuckling at the fair

GM's note: I thought that a bit of action to send the campaign off would work well with a 6 years old gamer! Chloe isn't familiar at all with Martial Art's combat options, but I narrated the combat as best as I could, using figurines and acting, and proposed options for her. She totally loved the ideas of feints and to use the serendipity engine to find combat openings. It worked very well: the action was fast paced and engaging. All that I needed to do is to translate what she wanted to do in GURPS terms, and tell her her target number before rolling. 

Mary and Martha went for a whirlwind tour of the Chilkarro Market to pay off outstanding tabs. The month of July had been good for business. At the fair, Martha spotted a fencing tournament and decided to enter. Her opponent was a tall man: not as fast moving as she was, but definitively with a longer reach. To win the 10 silver crowns, all that she needed to do was to score three hits. Martha played safe at first: a few parried strikes were exchanged to size up the competition. Then, she carefully evaluated her opponent and waited for him to slip and leave something open. While he was looking at her smallsword, she slapped him with her off-hand [ Serendipity Engine Opening, off-hand attack +1 to strike / -1 to defend vs waiving the ability to dodge this turn. ][+]. This blow was just enough to shock her opponent and get him to miss on the counter-attack. Martha made a feint low then scored a point on the man's chest.

Khareo's Tale #3 - Speaking of the devil.

Act 2, Scene 1 - Something wicked written in the sky

Martha woke up late as usual: her night spent on the roof peering at stars and drawing on sky charts had this way of flipping her sleep cycle upside down. In the kitchen, she met with her mother and her neighbor, Silvardo Torrens, a prosperous fur trader. Silvardo seemed worried. He asked Martha for advice about helping a friend that he thought was in trouble. Martha asked him some details about his friend such as full name, birthplace and time of birth. Silvardo was worried about Lady Fremton. He was hoping that Martha could help.

Khareo's Tale #1 - Introducing the Characters

This mini campaign is designed to be played with my two daughters: Sophie and Chloe. They are eager to play GURPS, and have some interesting ideas to seed the story. Sophie wants to try her hand with Ritual Path Magic using the Energy Accumulation mechanics (with black and white aspected magic). Chloe wants to play a swashbuckling gal with a fond interest in Astrology. I chose the Alchemical Baroque setting, which they gave me for my birthday (hint, hint). I am also using the most interesting Tome of Adventure Design to create stories and NPCs.

Starting Point

The location is Khareo, a semi-independent city state on the Southern Plains of the Known Lands. Khareo is a port city with a mercantile tradition. Fishermen are bringing a boon from the sea and export fresh and smoked stocks inland. A steady stream of traders from the Golden Archipelago also come ashore and flood the city's market with exotic wares from the Sudentland.  These goods are then sold for export to the prosperous North. The majority of the Khareo citizen are of the Architecturalist denomination, although there is a sizeable Horologicalist community that co-exists in relative peace.

Khareo's politics is somewhat tumultuous: an attempt on the life of Queen Sharma D'Ossani III was made 3 weeks ago. The unlikely assassin: the Lord of Saffronderry, a Solar noble betrothed to her. One stream of rumours claims that the Lord was caught and executed on the spot: war with the Solar empire is imminent. Another rumors stream claims that Lord Saffronderry was bewitched into the murder attempt, then mysteriously disappeared.