Astral travel to the Rotten Woods
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Play report of the 29th day of Lana Vanne’s ascension to the occult campaign using Seekers Beyond The Shroud.
You may want to read the first, second, third, fourth, 5th & 6th, 7th to 14th, 15th to 17th 18th to 23rd, 24th and 25th-28th parts of the campaign.
Monday, new moon - Day 29 at the Omphalos
Lana enters in the Omphalos, it looks like any other day but the same
unwelcoming and ungrateful man that asked her an athame before and looked
down on her because she hadn’t consecrated one is back, and is asking random
strangers for the same thing. ‘I have a consecrated athame’ Lana thinks ‘but
I am NOT going to sell it’. She is feeling very proud of herself and walks
with a smile on her face when a member of the Causa Scientiae comes towards her
and gives her a tip about possible dangers that could be lurking in a mission
and asks her to be careful. Encounter: a man in need Event: inside info
+10 defensive skills
I’m going to take another mission instead of continuing with the consecration rituals to make the most of this defensive bonus.
There are representatives from the Causa Scientiae and the Kadmonites in the Hall of Orders. Lana’s reputation after Mary’s death is not good with the Kadmonites, and she wants to make amends; she walks towards their stand. Mary’s substitute is a gaunt looking woman with a leaf-green mohawk and a pristine suit.
I use Knave’s character generator for this.
Lana introduces herself and the woman flinches, she has recognised her
name. She composes herself and tells Lana that she is Annabella Doyle. She
wants her to make a pact with a spirit in the astral domain, a
vestige. Mission: spirit pact (astral) 16 stages
‘An astral mission is not what I’m expecting, it would be my first, but since we can’t die in the astral and we have the +10 to our defence we should be alright, and we can always run away from combat.’ that is what I thought, but turns out that we can’t run away from enemies in the astral…
Annabella hands her a Potion of Astral Travel and accompanies her to their
meditation room. Lana tries to enter the astral by meditation, but she fails,
so she takes the potion. Meditation check fail
I don’t know if this is legal (Edit: it is)
In the Astral: The Rotten Woods
So, in the astral we use SP instead of HP which is great since Lana has 115 SP and 110 HP; we use our psychic attack & defence skills in combat, which is 50 for both skills in our case, but due to that +10 defence, we have 60 for psychic defence so not that bad at all.
Stage 1
Lana wakes up in an eerie forest, the leaves and trucks of the trees are rotting, everything smells of decay. It’s her first time here but she thinks that it is beautiful.
I imagine this forest as the Red Forest from the 12 Monkeys series, go watch it if you haven’t!!
As she is contemplating the landscape, a Spirit levitates towards her, it has evil intentions.
Lana deploys a barrier using her Psychic defence and uses bursts of energy with
her Psychic offence to try to drive the spirit back. Even if she is doing great
for her first combat and her first time in the astral, the spirit is very
sturdy, the battle prolongs, its now a matter of resilience. Lana is very badly
injured, her barrier wasn’t strong enough to stop five attacks (-18, -28,
-21, -30, -11), but slowly and steadily she scores hit after hit to the
Spirit and finally drives it off. Stage: enemy
Holy moly. We are at 7SP. This is just he first stage (out of 16, sixteen!!) and I can’t even try to heal her since I don’t have any magic that does that. Sh*t we are doomed.
But!! we cannot die here, so let’s see this as an acclimatization exercise or something and see how far we can get.
Stage 2
So, in the astral we roll a d4 for each stage and that tells us how many path Options do we have. For each option we roll a d6 and it gives us a result (Enemy, Event or Discovery).
I’m going to try to avoid all the Enemies, hahaha.
Path options: event
The forest turns black and the darkness surrounds her. -10 combat skills
Event: darkness surrounds you
We are doomed in the next combat. Definitely.
Stage 3
Path options: enemy, discovery
Lana becomes lost in herself, the forest is darker, she is walking in a tight
space, she sees two different paths… which one is the good one? Sanity
maximum -10 Discovery: the abyss
Oh my!
Stage 4
Path options: enemy x2, event x2
Somehow Lana feels better thinking about a possible future life were she is
happy. Skip next stage Event: shortcut!
YESSSSSSSSS
Stage 5
(skip)
Stage 6
Path options: event, enemy x2, discovery
Lana enters into a shop in the middle of the forest, it is a tailor’s workshop,
there are a lot of clothes laying around, but Lana is attracted to a headscarf,
she takes it. Skip next enemy encounter Discovery: spirit shroud
THANK YOU!!
Stage 7
Path options: enemy x2
Lana is able to pass unnoticed through the enemies thanks to her spirit headscarf.
YESSSSSS
Stage 8
Path options: event, discovery, enemy x2
Lana wanders along the streets of a red city, good memories accompany
her. Ignore next sanity lost Discovery: good memory
I have this magic relic that absorbs up to 200 sanity lost so Lana was already good enough on that point, but if I can make the relic last longer better for me.
Stage 9
Path options: enemy, discovery x2, event
There is a fountain with the most transparent water that Lana has ever seen, it
turns out that it is pure vril instead of water. Lana drinks it. INT test
OK Recover 50 VP Discovery: fountain
Lana is incapable of using magic, but well, everything good is welcomed.
Stage 10
Path options: enemy, discovery x2, event
The forest is left behind and Lana enters what seems to be a throne room. She
sees a crown and she takes it. Offensive skills +10 vs angels/demons
Discovery: the crown
I hope that we don’t have to use those offensive skills.
Stage 11
Path options: enemy x3, event
I thought that I was done here, 3 enemies in a row before a non-combat path option appeared.
The forest is back, but is not the same, Lana feels a strange sensation and the
air feels weird. Bound spirits banished Event: banished
Woah! This event is the absolute worst. If I had a bound spirit I would be very angry at this event woa. The astral is veeery mean.
Stage 12
Path options: event
Lana finds another shortcut! Skip next stage Event: shortcut
Stage 13
(skip)
Stage 14
Path options: discovery x2
Lana is surrounded again by darkness, she is terrified and feels ill
inside. There are two paths again to choose from -4 sanity (ignored by the
discovery at stage 8) Discovery: the abyss
Stage 15
Path options: discovery x2, event x2
Lana continues her way, there is a bottomless hole just in her path and some
creature with tentacles attacks her. WIL test
fail -9HP
I thought that this was a typo and the book should say SP instead of HP but I asked in the discord and it was indeed HP. Otherwise we would have failed the mission here since Lana is only at 7SP.
Stage 16
The spirit that Lana was looking for appears, a Vestige. She tries to
persuade it talking about her strength overcoming the astral travel half
dead. Persuasion check OK!!
HOLY F*** we did it! Here is a picture of my lovely dice passing the persuasion check!!! They rock!!
Also, this is why I don’t pass first aid checks, my luck is spent everywhere else.
Mission recap
Things that I did wrong: on page 98 of the rulebook it says that you recover 25% of your max SP every 5 stages.
So I kinda went hardcore without wanting to in this mission
- +10 order points
- +150 favour with the Kadmonites
- 500ø
- WE ARE STILL ALIVE AND KICKING!
I am thrilled. We did it! This was very stressing but also very funny since I knew that we couldn’t die in the astral, that was reassuring. I laughed a lot and had a couple of critical moments when the d4 of the path options rolled lower numbers and I was hoping to get anything but an enemy. This was very fun, but the astral is very difficult at this point for my character. Also, I think that I prefer non-astral missions since I usually encounter NPCs and there is a bit of interaction, but well, I’m glad that we have tried it and survived.