Wherein a Great River is Crossed and a Fierce Beast is Fought…

Having crossed the desert, the great caravan now faces their next obstacle: crossing the River Kashk, which is very high due to the melting snows from winter. While the engineers debate over whether a ferry or a bridge is best, scouts are sent out to ensure the camp’s safety, especially considering the discovery of the Vasar corpses some days earlier. Zistral opts to swim the river and reconnoiter the western bank where he soon comes across a long-abandoned elvish camp but finds little else of note. To the north goes Ilanna, where she finds old game trails and what seems to be orc spoor, also long abandoned, while Thor’ndil heads south, finding little of note save signs of beasts.

At the campsite, the engineers continue their dispute regarding the river crossing but it is eventually decided that a bridge is the best option and work is promptly begun. As work progresses, Yusuf finds time to romance a young woman in the caravan at the expense of his actual duties, but is discovered doing so by a furious Ser Malfoy who drags him before Finn and demands punishment. The knight wishes five lashes at first, then increases this to ten when Yusuf mouths off to him, but Finn prevaricates and suggests a permanent latrine duty for Yusuf as well as promising to address this personally; Malfoy is displeased at the decision, no doubt thinking that Finn is being too lenient, but accepts the judgment. When he storms away, Finn then gives Yusuf a very stern talking to about duty and responsibility, two things that the gladiator has not had much experience in.

The construction of the bridge is fraught with delays and issues, with the various engineers continuing to bicker and dispute how things should progress (which definitely does not bode well for the rebuilding of Castle Defiant!) As it turned out, the bridge was not seated correctly and, as a result, was constantly being flooded once the first of the wagons began to cross. Several days pass before the convoy begins crossing and, as a precaution, a rope line is stretched across the river some distance down from the bridge for anyone unfortunate enough to be swept off into the water.

As the last of the wagons are crossing, the bridge suddenly shivers and shimmies – Finn, who is in the middle of the bridge and trying to keep everyone moving, shouts for an engineer to explain what just happened, but the would-be builder – Paedrag Parcell – has barely had time to reach the younger Sardock’s side to reassure him about the bridge’s structural integrity when a great beast erupts from the water and seizes the poor man! Mayhem ensues as the many tentacled beast begins laying about wildly, smashing apart wood pylons and trying to seize more tasty, tasty long pig.

Panic erupts among the three wagons still on the bridge with horses suddenly insane with terror and thus incapable of forward momentum. Finn, being an unlucky sort, scrambles out of the way of an immediate tentacle attack, while several of his companions – Arn, Ilanna and Zistral – are momentarily stunned by fright, while the others charge toward the danger. A fierce skirmish takes place with the beast flailing about while the more martial of the adventurers lay about with their weapons, intent on severing or crippling any tentacles they can reach. Thor’ndil gets one wagon clear of the bridge while Ilanna, who is on the opposite side of the bridge, moves to relocate to get a clear shot. In this chaos, the beast submerges for a brief time, giving the adventures long seconds to rush others of the smallfolk to safety.

When the beast reappears, it does so squarely under the now rickety bridge and the fight continues with half of the adventurers attacking and the other half desperately trying to get people to safety. One of the wagons is lost, with its pair of horses so panicked that they go over the side into the water, but no more civilians are lost as they are hurried away from the source of conflict. Finn abandons his attempts to calm the horses and shouts for the driver to abandon his wagon and flee, then stays alongside the man to protect him; Haruki simply seizes the man’s terrified wife who is clinging to the back of a wagon and forcibly carries her to safety. Seeing that Finn has not succeeded in calming the horses, Ilanna races forward and springs atop a panicking horse which she spurs forward, directing it and its partner (plus the attached wagon) across to safety. Noting that Arn still seems stunned from fear, Yusuf charges toward him and bellows at him to snap out of it.

Again, the beast emerges from the water and the fight resumes with Yusuf and Zistral attacking first and often. Finn also pitches in with his naginata as he retreats alongside Mister Thatcher who he is escorting to safety. Arn, now recovered, hurls a fireball at the beast. Meanwhile, Haruki is still evacuating children from the last wagon as he’s faster than their mother. Having sustained severe damage, the river beast sinks back beneath the water and moves again … but Zistral is having none of that and springs off the bridge to drive his spear deep into the creature. Both vanish in the river and all goes silent for a long time. Those on the now badly swaying bridge hurry to get the last of the civilians (and wagons) to the other side while trying to brace for another attack. Long moments pass and, just as Zistral is presumed lost, he emerges from from the river, gasping and swearing that the creature is not dead. Unwilling to stay this close to the river, Ser Dane orders the caravan to move away and conveniently, Zistral knows of a nearby elven camp. As the caravan sets out, behind them, the damaged bridge collapses entirely.

On the caravan presses,with Ilanna and Zistral leading the way.Throughout this time, they feel as if they are being carefully watched and followed, though they find no one. Some days before they reach Defiant, as they are traveling across the plains, Ilanna and Zistral observe an orc scouting party in the far distance that retreats as soon as the pair are sighted. They do not necessarily feel that these orcs are related to the sensation of being watched earlier.

The expedition reaches Castle Defiant without further incident and there is a great celebration as they stand there, looking at the ruins that are intended to be their home.

In a postscript “after credits” cutscene, the pale-skinned orc who was leading the scouting party enters a barbaric-looking hut wrought of wood and pelts and announces to his shadowy, hooded master that “fires burn at Castle Defiant.” The ‘camera’ sort of zooms in on the shadowy figure and reveals only his sinister eyes…

Player Notes:

• Viewed dispassionately, we actually didn’t get a whole lot accomplished this session. There was some pre-bridge scouting along with bridge setup/construction and then the bridge fight which really ate up most of the actual session. Well, that and the GM getting it set up because it was a spur-of-the-moment change to his original plan.
• Second session in a row where the technical difficulties were minor enough to be counted as insignificant. We did have a big period of dead time (~:27 minutes) where the GM spun up the improv bridge encounter, but that doesn’t count.
• The GM had one of the players – Herodian – make a roll for the bridge construction and the result was an 18. This led the GM to rejiggering his plan in the middle of the session – evidently, he’d intended for us to fight some elves but thought better of it – which led to the “river kraken” fight. There was some confusion about the nature of that die roll: Herodian thought it was a ”universe reaction roll”” where the GM was thinking a skill check for the engineers.
• Feste, Yusuf’s player, used the stern talking to by Finn as a reason to start buying off Selfish. As Finn’s player, I was totally unprepared for the bit with Malfoy – in my gaming experience, I’ve never seen one PC be responsible for the whipping of another and figured that Finn is still wide-eyed and naive enough to seek alternate options. If we were playing in 1700s on a ship, a flogging would have been his first option though. Still, I am interested to see if this situation recurs because if it does, Finn will likely have no choice but to order the flogging … how will Yusuf react to that, I wonder…
• Herodian earned a bonus CP at the conclusion of the session for Zistral’s dive into the water. Some of us halfway suspected he wasn’t going to make it considering how rough the “water kraken” was.