Hi all,

Yesterday we played the second session of my new RQ III campaign, using the Vikings sourcebook, IMO one of the finest historical sourcebooks ever done for an RPG. After some time running modern horror games, I had a real itch for some fantasy. So RQ it is.

The players are all newbs to RQ and its magnificent glory, but so far they are enjoying it. We've been friends for some time, and tried some other games together. We intend to play on a weekly - to - biweekly rate, due to RL stuff. These are the players and their PCs:

- Mario / Gunther Thorvaldsson: a young son of the jarl of Agdir province, 22 years old at the beginning of the game, sent with his farmer uncle so he learns humility and the works of the land.
- Ingrid / Ingrid Swift Feet: a young farmer/ fisher, cousin of the Stonedale, who daydreams with becoming a volva (shaman) some day. Family dead by causes yet to be decided, so she lives with her relatives.
- Cristina / Bjorn Hordsson: the youngest son of the Stonedale, gifted with an amazing Stamina (18!), a farmer who wants to see his clan as a revered one instead of just a poor family of farmers.
- Victoria (Missus Imperator) / Thyra Hordsson: the 3rd child of the Stonedale, also a farmer, but looking to escape the traditional role of a woman. Also probably the prettiest girl of the province (APP16).

As you can see, all the PCs belong to the same family, the Stonedale. Apart from them, we have there Hord Stonedale (father, no a very good farmer), Gyda Stonedale (stern wife and mother), and the two elder sons Otkel Wheelfoot (smart, is improving the wealth of the family) and Olvir the Fat (not so smart, but with some knack for farming).

My players could choose for the start of the saga either to be Stonedale (poor but hnest) or Ulfstead (rich but a bit sinister, neighbours of the former). As they chose the Stonedale, I decided that the Ulfstead would be after stealing their lands to increase their wealth, as a recurring motif on the campaign. My players liked the idea.

For those who own the RQ Vikings sourcebook, we set the play area (Hafursfjord) in the province of Rogaland, kingdom of Norway.

We intend to have a very slow pace for the campaign. As a general rule, a year will pass between scenarios. We will use an adaptation of the Winter Phase of Pendragon to manage what happens on that time. The usual routine is to sow on spring (everyone is a farmer here ), to raid on summer if possible, to reap in autumn and to be sheltered in winter (training, learning new magic, etc). In winter the PCs get additional experience according to their professions, learn new magic, children are born, and so on. The idea is to see the clan develop, and grow over the course of decades, maybe centuries. We will see.

On the magic level, I decided to keep it middle-to-low for the first sesion (apart from starting magic and that), and gradually increase it as the PCs venture into the outside unknown world (all the players stated emphatically that they wanted to get a drakkar and raid the shit out of many places). When we find the level of magic/supernatural we're happy with, we'll stay on it.

That's for the setup. Let's move on with the actual play!

Session 1: The Hunting (winter, 780 d.C)

For our first game, I chose a simple scenario, following the recommendations of the sourcebook, and fleshed it out a bit, as seen below. All the comments about OOC mechanics are in italics. I'm not writing a novel here.

Backstory
The Ulfstead leaders, Ari the Black (a ruthless landowner) and his elder brother Gest the Assassin (a renowned berserker and raider) tried to force Thorin Sorensson to join their clan so his lands would be theirs, by marrying Thorin with a young girl of the clan. Thorin would have none of it, because he hated the guts of the Ulfstead and his land-acquiring tactics, so he told them in uncertain terms to fuck off. Gest went apeshit (he's a berserkergang, able to channel Odin's spirit) and killed Thorin, and after that he went on and massacred every person on Thorin's farmstead, with the help of his brother and some other relatives (murder is the worst crime for Vikings). So now the land is free for the Ulfstead to take, but they got scared of possible consequences (after all it is an horrendous crime) so they just left, thinking on how they could get the land without getting framed. After all, it was just a week before Yule, so many people is already isolated by snow. No one would notice the Sorensson's disappearance until the spring, probably. And no one knew yet that Gest had returned from a viking went awry, so no one could think of him as a possible murderer. So they hid Gest and waited.

That very night, Thorin Sorensson raised from the cold earth as a draugr, a terrible undead monster twice his size, swollen like a drowned's corpse. He went back home instintively, thrashed a bit the corpses out of rage, killed some farm animals, and attached to himself some scraps of chainmail. In some part of his dead brain laid the desire of exacting revenge so it was only natural to get his armor.

Skip four days. The draugr has been wandering by night, killing some animal at random (and an isolated farm with only an elder marriage), coming back to his "home" to spend the days. By chance, he arrives to the farmstead of Bjorn, a friend of the jarl. He kills almost everyone, all the cattle, but leaves a survivor by accident. Then he gets back to his resting place.

We start the game at the Yule party that's being hold at the jarl's settlement. It's been a good year, and everyone's enjoyin' themselves. Gunther sits near the jarl, talking about friendship and alliances with the province of Agdir. Ingrid is talking to the old volva, trying to persuade her to teach them the secrets of seidr magic (Ingrid started trying her change of profession from minute 1). Thyra is flirting with several houscarls, specially with one Thorbjorn, letting them boast about their prowess. Bjorn is drinking heavily (testing the drinking rules, with STA 18 is easy)and boasting about how the cleverness of his elder brother Otkel is making them richer and richer. This chit-chat doesn't falls on deaf ears, and Ari the Black is suddenly teasing Bjorn and making sly jokes about how inept Hord Stonedale is as a farmer. Things get quite heated, but before blood is drawn something happens.

A badly wounded man breaks into the hall. He is Harald Bjornsson and tells everyone that a dragon (Vikings were very vague when naming critters)has attacked his settlement 3 days ago and killed almost everyone. He asks the jarl to do justice. The jarl shouts something to the effect of FUCK YES! and asks everyone to arm themselves and go on a hunt. After a bit of discussion, the two girls are admitted at the Stonedale hunting party (Ingrid knows Healing, Thyra is a better fighter with her spear than Bjorn with his danish axe), and they recruit Thorbjorn the houscarl to pack a bit more punch. For this NPC I used the Elite Viking from the book.

Everyone gets assigned a zone to look for the dragon's lair, as the snow will have covered every trail by now, and start moving. After a few hours march, the PCs notice a group of almost 10 persons following at some distance. Ingrid gets a critical success and realizes that is an Ulfstead group. They surely are up to no good, they were assigned to another zone! The PCs are really worried, but before they freak out Gunther takes control and orders the party to go forward and look for the dragon. The Ulfstead don't have necessarily to be after them. He's wrong.

Of course the Ulfstead are behind them. Ari is shitting his pants thinking about what may happen if the PCs discover the Sorensson's murder, so he wants to make sure that they get stranded in another direction. Also, he has a bad feeling about this "dragon." And he's right. So they're following the PCs to make sure they don't  see anything they shouldn't.

The evening of the second day, almost at dusk (hard to tell in Scandinavia in winter), the PCs have still the other group tailing them. Bjorn finds some tracks in a clearing that imply that there was a fight (the trees are very tall and dense here, so the blood of Thorin is still there to be seen). Also, he sees a motherfucking huge trail of something that goes down the hill, but cannot see where it ends. With that trail ahead, and the Ulfstead behind them, everybody is scared.

They decide to hide and, if the worst happens, ambush the Ulfstead (if they're discovered), and probably go to Valhalla. They roll Hide amazingly and are undetected when Ari and two of his cousins enter the clearing in the woods. The Ulfstead discuss nervously about the murder of Sorensson, mention Gest (a-ha! moment here), and they decide to circle the zone, on the hope that the dragon meets the Stonedale and eats them. If that doesn't happen, the Ulfstead will take care. Oh, one of Ari's cousins mentions that Thorin's corpse is nowhere to be found. Maybe the dragon ate it.

After the Ulfstead leave, the PCs decide to follow the dragon's trail, and see what happens, as the Ulfstead badly outnumber them. They arrive to Sorensson's settlement, which they recognize, and can see some human and animal corpses strewn around. They shit their pants, specially when they hear (another critical roll) some noises of stuff breaking and growls inside the house. They device a cunning plan.

All the group but for Ingrid hide behind the walls of a barnyard. Ingrid, being the fastest and less encumbered PC, will approach the large house with a torch, to try and draw the dragon out. Then she will draw it to the barnyard, and the rest of the group will fall upon him from every direction, like a pack of wolves.

As Ingrid approaches the house, the draugr hears her and charges through the wall. Ingrid, out of panic at the sight of the monster and the realization that her spear is losing edge under the sight of the draugr, throws the torch at him ("I hope it hits him in the eyes!") and tries to flee. She has a Movement of 3, and the draugr has a 9, so...

She manages to hit him right in the fucking head. The player asks for a Luck roll to see if the torch can blind the monster, so its power of Nicking Blade Gaze won't work anymore. She rolls POWx1, so I rule that the monster can see her blurrily and attack normaly, but the power won't work for some rounds. After all, the beast can do 4D6 dmage wth its claws. Also, the draugr stops a bit, so she's able to make it to the barnyard.

Short after the draugr enters the area in hot pursuit, and Thorbjorn and Gunther tank him, so Bjorn, Thyra and Ingrid can attack him with flanking bonus. The fight is really tense, and only the strong shields and heavy armor of the warrior saves them from being maimed (Mario spent part of his starting money on getting a metalic armor, and it paid), but Thorbjorn is knocked to the floor by one of the mighty blows. Then everything goes to shit for the undead.

Thyra manages to score a fucking critical impalement on the undead's head, which doesn't incapacitate him, but definitely ruins his style.Short after, Bjorn breaks one of its egs with his brutal axe, while Gunther scores some solid blows with his warhammer. Finally  the beast falls... over Bjorn, who barely avoids death, thanks to Ingrid readiness with Healing spells. Bjorn was attacking the monster's back and Thorbjorn's last hit was an special success with his axe, so the draugr was pushed and fall. RQ has this kind of things.

The group cut off the draugr's head and kept it as a trophy (horribe idea, as we will see). They decided to burn the settlement down so other search parties could come after them, apart from the Ulfstead. And with this, we called it a night. A really thrilling session.

I don't see any magic in your write-up. Have you chucked it out?

No, not at all. We use the standard rules for RQ Vikings, but no spell was decisive but for the Healing-3 that saved Bjorn from being crushed to death under the draugr's corpse. People have spells like Bladesharp and the like, but they're low level yet and against the draugr were only a small help.

Really yummy, I hope you'll keep up posting about the campaign. Three women at your table, joder ! And they also look forward to play games about drakkars and pillages ? You lucky bastard I wouldn't mind learning Spanish to join this game.

Quote from: boulet;288865Really yummy, I hope you'll keep up posting about the campaign. Three women at your table, joder ! And they also look forward to play games about drakkars and pillages ? You lucky bastard I wouldn't mind learning Spanish to join this game.

In summer they play in bikini, as we live near the coast And yes, they love the viking thing so far.

Regarding joining... if you happen to pass around here, give me a call You're welcome.

I will catch up with this ASAP. Hope this weekend I can put the other 2 sessions.

Sorry about  the delay with the updates, folks, but RL has been getting messy of late. On with the AP of the following sessions.

Previous to this session, the PCs discussed what to do with some of the discoveries they made while fighting the draugr of Thorin Sorensson. Shortly:

- though some of the corpses had been mauled by the undead monster, all of then had cuts and signs of harm by human weapons. So those people were dead when the draugr arrived, and therefore someone had to murder them.
- they heard the Ulfstead discussing about Thorin's murder, and they're quite sure that the Ulfstead were interested in the PCs not finding out what happened.

Doubt was: should they accuse the Ulfstead in front of the thing, do nothing or try to blackmail them? They decide on blackmailing them so they make sure the Ulfstead won't try to acquire their farmstead through their usual means.

Attending the thing
Since the moment they arrive, PCs are looking nervously for the Ulfstead. Ingrid sees them and also notices that Gest the assassin is around (he's not supposed to, being on a Viking on France or something). That makes even more possible that Gest was the murderer of Thorin, and that his family's been hiding him to avoid suspicions. But then, where's the rest of Gest's crew? Questions, questions... Ingrid warns the rest of the group, so everyone's on their toes now.

Günther and Bjorn decide to attend the trials that will be held in this thing, particularly since there's a murder trial (and Günther said that seeing it would be a good learning exercise in case they decide to accuse the Ulfstead). The situation is the following: a berserker by the name of Vestein from Uplands has allegedly secretly murdered some Hrut Hrollasson and his thrall, because of a discussion about the loot of a viking expedition. The accusation is made by Skapti Thorgeirsson, a well known and liked chap, very distant relative of Günther. Skapti is representing Hrut because this man had no family to stand for him. Vestein is not present (but has sworn to kill every person who speaks against him in the trial), so his brother Vigfus is standing on his place.

According to witnesses, Hrut was last seen with Vestein, while they argued furiously. Skapti's jarl and many persons from the area support the accusation. On the other hand, Vestein happens to be a close friend of Gest the Assassin, and the Ulfstead are trying really hard to recruit support for Vestein and Vigfus, and also threatening any person who speaks against their friend.

See, in a viking trial witnesses are persons who speak for you and say that you're a right man and not a criminal. They don't need to be actual witnesses of what happened, so recruiting support is really important.

At first, the PCs are considering neutrality, but then they decided to blow everything to hell and support Skapti, even if they're no close friends and won't get any share of any compensation. Then the Ulfstead (Ari and some cousins) approach them in a friendly manner, asking them "to stay apart from other person's business. You know, Skapti is just a very distant relative, Hrut was no friend of you, and we know him to be a good man. You don't need to get into trouble." Many false smiles and back-patting around.

PCs tell them in unambigous terms to fuck off, and insinuate that they know something... Ari gets nervous, so Günther tells him that they can meet at midnight near the Stone of Law (which should be deserted at that time) to discuss some stuff. They agree.

Menawhile, Ingrid and Thyra attend Freyja's feasts. There's a parade, and the priestesses and volvas are sending blessings and reading runes. They cause good impression on the priestesses and get invitation to a night celebration, so Thyra gets Freyja's blessing for her upcoming marriage. After that, Thyra heads straight for the trials court, while Ingrid looks for some present for her shaman. The she sees two Ulfstead tailing her, and trying to drive her to a lonely place, far from sight. She manages to leave them behind (she's not called Swift Feet for jokes), and warns his relatives. As nothing has really happened, they cannot make any formal accusation, so they wait while the Ulfstead assemble at the other side of the court.

The trial ends with Vestein being declared guilty. Vigfus, his brother, protests the decision saying that the compensation is more than their farm is worth, and that would ruin him. No one cares, so Vigfus says he won't pay, and he will ignore the jury's decision. Thus, he offers to solve the matter with a holmgang, a first-blood duel. It seems like dead easy, and Skapti is happy because he hired an experienced champion for the trial, an NPC by the name of Egil Asbjornsson, so he agrees.

For this fight, I offered the players to play the NPC champion so they could do something. My g/f volunteered to make the rolls, so off we went. The very moment they are about to enter the duel area, Vestein appears to fight in his brother's place! And he's fucking huge! And he's a berserker! Well, no one's happy with that, it's a dirty trick, but he can do it. Both fighters cast some spells before fighting... and then Vestein becomes berserkgang.

Let me explain you how bad is that: when a fighter is berserkgang, he doubles his attack %. Again: he DOUBLES it. Also, he becomes invulnerable to any cutting and piercing weapon, is inmune to exhaustion and it's completely nuts. Then he tries to swarm Egil.

And then my girlfriend had the best idea: a holmgang ends when blood stains the white fabric used as floor, or when one of the fighters steps out of the ring. So she decided on parrying Vestein's blow with the shield while her NPC bull rushed the berserker in hopes of throwing him off balance and making him fall out of the ring.

Guess what? A warrior in berserkgang halves his DEX when he has to roll for it. For example, to keep balance. Also, the missus rolled an special success when tackling the fucker, so the guy literally flew 4 meters before crashing out of the ring. Problem is, he was still bloodthirsty so someone should neutralize him. And there the PCs went, bravely facing the berserkgang's axe.

Well, actually they swarmed him while he was still lying there, kicked the axe far away, and three of them grappled him while Thyra took his helmet out and kicked him in the head the best she could. You see, blunt trauma is effective. So they managed to pin the huge berserk long enough for Thyra being able to K.O. him. Fuckers.

Of course, lots of renown were won, and Skapti awarded them some reward for their effort. Vestein and his brother were deemed outcasts, and had some time to flee the region before someone decided on killing them. An outcast, after all, can be killed without any lawful consequence.

After that, some more ceremonies took place: both Thyra and Bjorn swear as houscarls for the jarl Sigmund, so they now can become proficient warriors. Also, they had to move to the jarl's settlement, to their parent's grief. Apart from that, Thyra and Thorbjorn got engaged to marry that summer, and everyone was very pleased (apart from Vestein and Vigfus, of course).

The last thing to be solved in the session was the nightly meeting with the Ulfstead: Gest, Ari and 2 more cousins attended. My players had a good chance of getting something from the Ulfstead but Mario is not the most socially skilled guy around, so in the end they ended saying something like "leave us alone and no one's getting hurt." Ingrid reminded the Ulfstead that she was a volva's apprentice, so she could just ask Thorin's ghost who killed him, given that the PCs still kept the draugr's head in an undisclosed location. The Ulfstead are furious, but they agreed for the moment to leave the Stonedale alone.

And that was it for the day. All things considered, a really good session, with lots of roleplaying, some combat, and funny insights into setting color (like vikings law and that). Everyone was really pleased.