SCUP Playtest Session #3
Since PCs are not supposed to go on Quests, and I had ended the last session inadvertently sending the Spur and Bloodletter on a Quest, I decided to advance time a week, give everyone a Love Letter, and bring everyone back to Castle Stormwrack.
Yessta took a wound on the return trip protecting Terrence Torrent, Sasha discovered that her fiance is intelligent and useful, but old and feeble, Helena got some juicy information about Iron Bandha (he has a sister, an innkeep), and the Old One got its sanctum cleaned up, but is on the Duke’s wrong side. Additionally Helena has been keeping an eye on Fione, feeding him prisoners from the dungeons. Pretty soon she’ll have cleaned them out.
Sasha and Terrence investigated Fione, and learned that it is possible to reverse the effects to his body, but his soul is tainted. Sasha got Yessta patched up. Squire Tobias came to the infirmary, and revealed his problem to Sasha. She got a 10+ on her diagnosis, so we came up with a procedure using some prisms and refracted light to repigment him.
Meanwhile the Old One dropped eaves on the Duke’s council, and learned that the King will be coming to visit Stormwrack. The Old One returned to his quarters, and found Princess Rhala, there to study the dark arts from him.
The Duke’s court was assembled; Yessta’s obligation was in play, so she had a message from Lord Entworth that at some point, someone was going to challenge the Old One to a duel, and Yessta was to answer the challenge. As promised, Sir Jace, the Castellan of Stormwrack accused the Old One of cursing the castle, so challenged him. The Old One laughed, asking for proof. Yessta stepped forward to serve as the Old One’s second, and with her force of personality got Jace to back down, securing her promise to Lord Entworth but avoiding a duel against a member of her Order. Sir Jace compromised with a trial for the Old One. The Old One was released to his own parole.
During this, Helena gazed into the Unspeakable Power to try to figure out who was pulling the strings here, and her attention was focused on Lord Entworth, who seemed unsurprised by all of this. (Later she’d use her faction move to see what her informations could find out about Entworth- he was the seventh son of the previous Lord, whose elder brothers all died in the war or in the plague that ravaged Entworth.) But the price was that she was drained, and fainted in a heap.
Also, the Duke announced that he was going to ride out to meet the King’s party, and wanted Yessta to accompany him.
The Old One, back in his Sanctum, used Dreams Of Unknown Kadath to see how he could transfer the curse on Fione to Sir Jace- a blood transfusion would do the job. He summoned up his mastery of illusions to cloak himself as a servant to sneak back into the castle, and then, seeing Helena with the cursed Tobias, used his mastery of illusions to restore the color to the poor lad. He succeeded, but in doing so rended his original illusion, leaving him revealed where he was forbidden to be.
The webs are being laid, and the screws are being tightened. The pace of the plots are still pretty slow, although the Old One is pretty active which tends to throw a curveball into everything, which is great!
Procedurally, all of the players have complained about the size of the text on the character sheets, especially the advancement and experience checkboxes.
No one has used any Pull yet- the Old One was thinking about using it on Princess Rhala, but he didn’t need to.