Hey there, season's greetings, etc., etc. Hope everybody's keeping warm right now, or at least as warm as is comfortable. So my group just dealt with the biggest fight so far of the campaign, and I've got here a blog post describing it as best I can. This mostly completes the 'Hunt for the Admiral' arc -- there'll be some follow-up stuff next session, but we managed to fit the thrilling climax into this one. (I was a little concerned we'd have to split up the fight, but we managed to do it in one.)
I do something a little different at the start of this write-up. I just saw an opportunity to emphasize a few details I didn't get a chance to do much with in the fight itself, or simply forgot to describe in the moment or whatever, and went with it.[0] Let me know if you think it works and if I should do more stuff like it.
Under other circumstances, Danai would have almost found the sounds of battle soothing. He'd grown up with armed conflict. Combat training at a young age, then the local navy, and then more years than he cared to count hunting pirates until he was middle-aged with a fine tan and hair sun-bleached white. He was good at leading men and women into battle, and used those skills for the safety of his people. But that was a different day and a different life.
This day... has been a very long day. Long enough he's greeted the sun three, maybe four times? He lost count, but in his head the day wasn't 'over' until he'd slept. A very long day ago he was drinking with the sailors he'd accompanied into Dragon's Jaw, regaling them with stories of fighting pirates (with a few details shaved off). They listened to every word, having bonded quickly with their special passenger.
When the monk came in and nobody else said anything, Danai took it in stride. It never occurred to him that nobody else could see the monk. On instinct he dodged an unexpected paralytic nerve strike aimed for his neck, and everything blurred before erupting into brightly-colored violence.
With talents he barely knew he had, let alone understood, he fled the city and lost the Hunt crossing the River of Queens (or so he thought) before heading south into the farming plains and swamps of the Shore Lands. He stopped in a village called Hue Yên to catch his breath, but before he could do more than get some food in exchange for menial labor the monk had arrived with allies and soldiers.
He tried, by the gods he tried, but he couldn't save Hue Yên. First the people suffered to draw him out. Then they fought back, but despite fighting well couldn't stand up to a group of Dragon-Bloods and the whole damned talon of troops they'd brought. He was forced to abandon them to try and draw the Realm forces away.
Now, later that day -- or four or five days, by some peoples' counting -- he ducks between buildings of a small town called Phong's Promise as the afternoon sun beats down on them. Soldiers in Realm armor clash with the local townsfolk, who while not warriors handled themselves as if he'd personally trained them. He's come to understand this is part of some strange magic he brought back with him from the ocean. This magic has apparently made him Anathema, though not of a type he knows from the stories.
The Essence coursing through him speeds his movements and empowers those around him. He channels it through the weapon he carries: a wicked short sword on the end of a chain, the blade looking like someone started making a proper (if nasty) sword and lost interest halfway through. The chain looks like it should be far too heavy to do what he's doing with it. Once upon a time he wore it like a costume piece because that's all it was good for, but now he gracefully whips it around like a child's yo-yo. But that alone wouldn't be enough to turn the tide against nearly a hundred trained soldiers, even before accounting for the 'Princes of the Earth' and their own magic.
Now, all around him, farmers and townsfolk fight like trained marines against those soldiers -- significantly diminished over the length of the chase and now as they fight in the streets. In the meantime, he dodges arrows from the Immaculate monk and a squad of mundane archers while he darts around the town with unnatural agility and some tricks contained within his blade. The Starshot Anchor, the Lintha had once called it. With its assistance he's been trying to split up the Dragon-Blooded, and finally manages to get the brawler with the sail-cloak alone for long enough to take him out of the fight.
Danai lures the V'Neef, as he's assumed from the mon on the cloak, into an alley where he's pretty sure the archer and the axeman can't see him. He lashes out with the Starshot Anchor, the chain reaching from one end of the alley to the other, but the Terrestrial's quick enough with those damned jade gauntlets to deflect the blows. Then, with a flash of deep sea blue, the man blurs and lunges at him, hitting Danai with a blow that sends them both back out into the open street where townsfolk and soldiers clash and collide all around them like proper armies at war.
Without missing a beat the older man springs to his feet and brings the Anchor around to try and snake its way past the man's blocking arms to strike him directly. A bright pink glow, the color of cherry blossoms, flickers over his body and along the chain as he whirls it around with attempts to beat the Dragon-Blood's defenses. To the mortal eye the chain blurs with its constant movements, the cherry blossom haze of the Essence-tinged afterimage offering translucent glimpses of the deck of a ship and the sea beyond. Through that haze, as well as a black-and-white swirl underlying it, the villagers look like the naval fighters he once led, and the Realm solders conversely look like pirates. A symbol on his forehead shines and glitters in that same bright color...
Danai ducks under one of the brawler's strikes, feeling something like sea spray coming off of the Essence-laden black jade smashfists, and prepares to bring his own blade into an opening in the V'Neef's defenses... until the tingle of Essence along the back of his neck draws his attention. He yanks the chain back, swirling it around like a lasso behind him, deflecting a volley of arrows from the monk archer. He curses inwardly and sidesteps another punch that craters the earth where he stood, letting the flow of Essence carry him away.
He flows through a window that should probably be too small for him. The house is empty, the owners either hiding in a closet or in the street parrying a soldier's sword with a frying pan. He rushes to the back and dives out into an alley he then follows to a side-street... where the crimson-armored warrior carrying the red jade and obsidian axe, fiery Essence flickering over him, awaits.
"Fuck me," Danai mutters as the axe-wielder charges at him. He shifts his grip, moving to parry the axe with the Anchor, and the expected clang instead becomes a crash when the obsidian axe blade shatters, spraying him with miniscule shards. Caught off-guard by the explosion he staggers back and falls, as with a flick of the Dragon-Blood's wrist a small burst of what could only be lava emerges from the axe haft, immediately drying and hardening into razor-sharp obsidian.
As he raises the axe for a killing blow, Danai becomes faintly aware of a thundering, repetitive noise. He glances over to see a horse, dripping with what might be seawater with kelp in its mane, galloping towards them full-tilt. He has just enough time to wonder What the hell? before the horse leaps... and transforms in mid-air into a massive sharkman, glowing a bright silver as he tackles the armored figure through the wall of a nearby building.
Left on the ground, Danai looks up to see the archer on another rooftop and in position to take aim, only to watch an osprey shift to its own humanoid form, shining with a swirl of blue, purple, silver and white. The birdman directs a kick towards the monk, who spins around and manages to parry with her bow, 'catching' his boot on it and sending the hawk-person flipping off of it to flap there just above the rooftop. His vision drawn by movement, Danai looks down a nearby alley, where at the other end the brawler readies another charge. But first, a human-sized monkey whose own glow shifts from one color to the next appears seemingly from nowhere, slides between his legs to get behind him, and comes up to slash him across the back with their war fans, sending him staggering.
While not necessarily ready for the form it's taken, Danai recognizes that help has arrived. He gathers up the Starshot Anchor's chain and moves.
Back up on the rooftop, Verdant Wren stares down Shango and remarks to him that she was just starting to get bored. It's tough to tell whether she's taunting him or just naturally sounds sarcastic. She moves like a young woman, but her pale green face has lines resembling bark and in my head her voice sounds like 'old lady Toph' from Legend of Korra. Her hair is short, nearly-buzzed but not quite, and her eyes and lips are bright green. She's wreathed in a matching anima banner that seems to sway and drift in the breeze as she comes at him with Emerald Wasp, her green jade powerbow. Its surface is carved to resemble an insect carapace and streaked through with yellow stripes, and she uses it like a staff to jab at his pressure points as he leads her on a merry chase around the rooftop.
Elsewhere, in the front room of a house where bits of dust and wood drift around them, Cathak Cacek Tapi looks out from a full-face mempo at the Bonetaker -- not merely an obvious Anathema, but a monster at that. His eyes blaze red with his anima banner as he whispers "Glorious" and comes at the massive sharkman with his axe, Heseish's Blackened Fang. The Bonetaker opens his jaws wide enough that the only visible light from the outside is through his gills. Somewhat shaken, Tapi's attempt to strike into the void is stopped when the Lunar catches the blade in his teeth.
V'Neef Bahav takes a swing at Hǎifēng, who leans over to watch one of the young fighter's Benthic Breakers, his black jade smashfists, fly past their face in near slow-motion. They roll around behind him to set up another shot at his back, but he reflexively lashes out with a backhand as his Essence flares, giving Hǎifēng the impression that they're facing a tropical storm with fierce waves surging at them. The blow sends the monkey Lunar staggering back as the brawler regains his own footing.
Behind Hǎifēng, a handful of arrows fly straight at their back, but with a flicker of cherry blossom pink and the jingling of a chain, Danai blocks them and goes back-to-back with the Changing Moon. "Here to help?" he simply asks back over his shoulder. Hǎifēng just responds with a big monkey grin, and the man nods. "Let's get it done; we'll talk after." Danai lashes out with the chain daiklaive, spearing a building with it and zipping off as he uses it like Link's hookshot.
And now we cut to commericalChris as the Storyteller to go over the combat sequence we've gotten into. It's a major fight that underwent a few revisions in my notes over the course of a long planning phase, and I set up some special stuff for it. To give you an idea of how the mechanics are translating into the narrative, I'm going to share with you a few notes (not verbatim, just the gist) I gave to my players at the time.
First off, the ground forces. Long story short, the soldiers and the townsfolk are a pair of battle groups, roughly evenly-matched. The locals, while a larger group and less-experienced, are being enhanced by Danai's Charms (which he's mostly using subconsciously). Thus, rather than spend time and energy dealing with both enemy and ally battle groups, I had them basically cancel each other out until and unless the PCs would directly engage with them. There's still a dedicated squad of archers, but as they target one character at a time that's relatively easy to manage.
Second, Danai -- referred to simply as 'the Admiral' during the session because the group wouldn't catch his name, but I'm declaring narrator's privilege here. You'll all learn more about him next session, which is why I'm not explaining exactly what he is here but someone familiar enough with the current edition should be able to piece it together from the clues. While I sort of have a sheet for him, to cut down on how many distinct characters I spend energy to manage in is otherwise a three-on-four (including the archers) fight, I decided not to run him as a full NPC.
In any case he's tired, he's low on Essence, and it felt like he'd be better-utilized as a support character, so that's what I made him. I gave him an action per round that the player characters could 'spend' to incorporate him into a stunt, and if he still had his action at the end of the round he'd make an attack to whittle down the archers or potentially one of the Dragon-Bloods. I also felt that running him like a full character ran the risk of a stupid-lucky roll causing him to upstage my players' characters, so I also put a cap on how much he could do to the Dragon-Bloods if he took a swing at them.
Finally, after this session my players were going to have accumulated enough XP to hit Essence 2. I decided to toss each one an 'Essence coupon' that they could use as part of a stunt to go ahead and hit that point early, allowing for a cool power-up moment that would flare up their anima and give them an Essence pool refresh.
As a quick note, unrelated to the mechanics, because so much of this fight consisted of one-on-one matchups I'm massaging the narrative to emphasize the back-and-forth rather than stick to strict initiative order when describing the action.
And now, back to the show.
Facing off against the V'Neef brawler, Hǎifēng drops one of their war fans, catching it in a prehensile foot and coming around with a roundhouse kick, hitting him hard enough to stagger him back again despite his attempt to block the blow. Music and bright colors flow around them as their anima goes iconic, making the movements seem part of a dance as they kept going with another strike, managing to actually hurt him a bit.
Up on the nearby rooftop, Verdant Wren shifts her grip on the bow, her own anima banner flaring and surrounding Shango with what appeared to be a thick forest full of dangerous predators as she strikes several of his pressure points. A thorn of deadly Essence pierces his soul, marking him as her prey. Shango comes back with a series of kicks, putting everything he's got into the strikes to successfully take her off-balance.
And speaking of prey, elsewhere the Bonetaker's own anima banner goes iconic, giving Tapi the impression that he's trapped under the sea surrounded by horrors too deep for the sun as the sharkman puts him against the wall and looms over him to use his massive jaws to crush that armor around him. The Cathak comes back up with the axe to try and pry the jaws off of him, but just can't muster the leverage.
Outside, the archers unleash arrows at Hǎifēng, who ducks under an overhang while Danai manages to spring over the rooftop where they're located, cutting down a few of them with the Starshot Anchor before slipping back down into the streets. Hǎifēng comes out from under the overhang to be greeted by Bahav lunging at them. They unfurl their war fans in his face to blind him and duck underneath the strike.
Hǎifēng then runs up some barrels under an eave, grabbing it and wrapping their tail around Bahav's neck. They swing off the eave and drag him to the ground, grip his neck with one of their prehensile feet, and snap it with a twist and a crunch. As the V'Neef's anima banner sputters and flickers into nothing, Hǎifēng all but collapses against a nearby building, fanning themselves and catching their breath.
Nearby, the Bonetaker has the Cathak's upper half held in his jaws. He shakes his head, letting his teeth saw through him (much like actual sharks do in the wild), and the man goes limp as the Full Moon all but chews him in half.
Up above, Shango whirls around Verdant Wren as fast as he can, trying to make her dizzy. The mortal archers take advantage of a chance to hit him, but he's just too fast and in their moment of distraction Danai is able to finish them off. Shango strikes at Verdant Wren, trying to get her off the roof, but she deflects it with her bow. She then finds a gap in his movements to get past him, leaping to a nearby rooftop. In mid-air she turns around and shoots at him. And despite his efforts to flap hard enough to fly over it, that thorn of Essence embedded in his soul guides her shot. The arrow grows thorns as it flies through the air and pierces him, putting him into initiative crash.
The monk lands, taking a moment to feel the thrum of life around her, and turns to take a shot at Hǎifēng as they catch their breath next to her dead comrade. The monkey Lunar, however, springs back into action to dodge it. They then leap up to the rooftop, calling upon their Essence and breaking through a barrier they hadn't realized was there.[1]
They go into Laughing Monster Form in mid-air, their arms splitting as the ephemeral music and revelry from their iconic anima encompasses everything. They call out to Danai for assistance, and so he lashes out with his blade. Verdant Wren reflexively brings the bow up to block the strike, leaving her open for Hǎifēng to grab the bow with 98 hands and rip it from her grip. They announce "That's enough of that" and fling it off the roof.[2]
The Bonetaker lumbers out of the building where he'd been fighting the Cathak, carrying the aforementioned Dragon-Blood in his mouth. The building collapses behind him as he finishes chewing the Terrestrial in half at the waist. He then grabs the guy's legs and throws them at Verdant Wren, hitting her and crashing her as she makes a sound like a startled cat.[3] And while he has her attention, he then coughs up the Cathak's upper half as well. Shango takes advantage of the opening to divekick her.[4]
The Bonetaker then throws himself against the building hard enough to shake it and throw Wren off-balance. Hǎifēng gets in her face with their illusory arms to obscure her vision while they duck down to catch one of her feet with their tail and yank it out from under her. And as soon as she loses her footing, Shango literally swoops in, grabs her, and pulls her into the air over the side of the building. He then kicks down, driving his feet into her and slamming her into the ground. The earth craters around her as Shango hears a crack like a tree about to fall in the woods, and she goes limp as her anima banner collapses.[5] He then staggers off to the side, breathing heavily, muttering "Fuck... that... bitch..."
And we left off there. Barring incident, next week we should be able to wrap this up with an epilogue and get into the next adventure.
[0]-- Now, to be fair, my little mini-fic shifting perspective to an NPC guest star does technically skip over a little bit of stuff at the start of the session, but about 99% of that could be summed up as "The group follows the trail of a military force moving across the countryside, to a town where they see the Dragon-Blooded chasing their quarry. They see anima banners flickering around, pick their targets, and go in."
[1]-- In other words, cashing in that 'Essence coupon' I alluded to earlier.
[2]-- I just wanna spell out what Zac did here, because it's pretty clever. One of the options I had for Danai is he could use a version of the distract gambit to give someone some extra initiative as part of a decisive attack. Well, using a gambit at all is a decisive attack so while Hǎifēng was back at base initiative after finishing off Bahav, this gave them just enough to make the disarm gambit worth attempting.
[3]-- We joked in the moment that when he did this, the nearby fighting among the background NPCs stopped, watching half of a man flying through the air, and one of the peasants whispering "The Immaculates were right; they are monsters." Which probably didn't happen, as tempting as it is to say it did.
[4]-- Because we were hitting the end of the battle and because I already have some mechanics allowing for something close enough in the house rules, I let the initiative gained from Xương's attack go to Shango at Sean's request.
[5]-- Again, we were running low on both time and stamina, and had hit a point in the battle where finishing off the last Dragon-Blood was all but assured but it was going to take a couple of rounds of building up initiative to set up the attacks for it. (Which would have taken forever, because unbeknownst to the players, she had a buttload of health levels, a healing ability, and could have taken on Wood Dragon Form to get even more health levels.) So instead, we abstracted it. We decided that Shango got the killing blow for this one and let everyone narrate a single action to set up and deliver that blow.
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