Grimmswold Sessions 1-4

Grimmswold is my survival horror sandbox setting, and I've started running it regularly again, despite it being under heavy redevelopment. I might as well get in the habit of summarizing sessions here as well.

The first 'season' of Grimmswold ran for over a year, and was run using a personal hack of Knave 1st Edition. It was a very successful open-table campaign, with each session usually consisting of a complete expedition out from the relative safety of a settlement, into the forests and swamps of the Grimmswold, and the players return.

I put it on hiatus as Knave 2E came out, including Ben Milton's own takes on many of the systems I bolted on top. I also was running into issues with how I'd organized the world, and struggling to keep creating new content fast enough to match player exploration. A pause and a reset to the new edition was in order, as well as a re-drafting of the hexcrawl.

Despite not completing the rework, I decided to start running Grimmswold games again, as a way to hold myself accountable to my players and keep me inspired for the creative process. I'll also try summarizing sessions here.

The Player Characters

Emilie 'Em' Urchid, (level 6), is a pragmatic Jack that has survived more than she should. Her arm holds dimensional dislocations, unsettling glimpses into the flesh composing the crooked limb. She keeps her distance from others, but fights to bring everyone home all the same. It's not always worked out.

Samentha Winter, (level 4), has been a little out of touch lately, working her way back from a chawl bender, trying to get clean. She's following Em's lead though, and trusts the more senior Jack to get them through.

Chawl: An addictive paste derived from a local herb placed in clams. It stains a long-term users teeth a fine china blue. It is rubbed into the gums for a sensation of euphoric contentment.

Prior Events in Sessions 1-3

Em and Samentha had rescued an eleven year old girl named Portia, who's been infected with lycanthropy, a saliva-borne affliction that causes wolves to grow within the bearers flesh and emerge on the full moon. The victim is a perfect polybody with every wolf, and their human perspective is diluted month by month. Portia has shown remarkable endurance to have survived five months as a werewolf.

The Annulary Brotherhood, an organization of healers, surgeons, and medical researchers have sought out Portia. They wish to study her, as ethically as possible, and seek a treatment or even a cure for her lycanthropy. The full moon is fast approaching, and Portia needs all the help she can get to survive it.

Barathrum, the local apothecary, had approached the PCs as well. A cat-headed man by the name of Hoseas Golden had hassled her about her master's master, the infamous poisoner Tuesday Slitten. She fears that Hoseas, if that's his real name, might recover Tuesday's lost recipes. Potentially he might learn them from the ghost of Tuesday herself, where she lurks in Stillwood, a region of Lowmire swamp.

There's no races/ancestries in Grimmswold. Everyone is considered human, even if you have hooves and horns, koi-scales or patches of bark. The Grimmswold has a way of marking those within it, and Wold culture has normalized these differences.

The party, having already done some research into how to lay a phantom like Tuesday to rest, agree to look into the matter.

Session 4

The Spirit Vessel

As they did not know where Tuesday's body lay, nor if there was some action left undone that kept her lingering, the party reasoned they needed to pursue the third method they'd encountered for dealing with immaterial undead: The creation of a spirit vessel, and sealing the phantom away within it.

A spirit vessel is constructed from a clay vessel, with a glaze incorporating ashes of the species to be bound. A rune-carved copper sheet lines it, and then a living creature must die inside it. Finally, an item associated with death or decay is placed inside to maintain the spiritual void.

Starting at the Jack's Guild in the young frontier town of Ulvikhold, the PCs located a potter willing to take on a commission for the public good, and then realized the moral complications of trying to source human ashes.

Elisabet and Ashes

Heading for the pyre grounds, Em sent the more personable and presentable Samentha in to negotiate with Elisabet, an older woman who performs the day to day maintenance of the building.

Burial is a risky affair in the Wold, and so the dead are traditionally burned on a pyre. This building, consisting of a open-walled shelter encircling the fire pit where the pyres are set, is somewhere between a graveyard and a funeral home.

Samentha spoke with Elisabet for a long while, discovering the woman's concern was less for the mission, but more for what effect being incorporated into a vessel would have on the departed. A compromise was reached, wherein Elisabet would provide the ashes, but the filled vessel would be returned and buried under the pyre grounds. Samentha accepted, and was entrusted with a small container of ashes from the heart of the fire pit.

Reuniting, Em worried that the grounds wouldn't be secure enough to keep the potentially sought-after vessel, and considered sneaking in to steal what wouldn't be given. Elisabet had mentioned that Tuesday might have still living relatives in the nearby city of Talmanbrun. This idea was also discarded, as the travel time wouldn't leave enough time to help Portia during the full moon, even if living relatives could consent, and the ashes of relations would make the binding much more effective.

The Construction

Visiting the Annulary Brotherhoods recently established offices, Em and Samentha encountered Sister Alyssa Wyrdh. Alyssa was a young woman with ferret-like features and a complicated relationship with Em, brought to an end a month ago. She was friendly and professional though, and provided the Jacks a bottle which had been used to store a mix of really strong painkillers and sedatives, usually administered to those beyond the Annulary's aid.

Delivering the ashes to the potter and working on the lining themselves, the party worked into the night. The next morning, Portia happily did a favor for the Jacks and sent her wolf bodies out to capture a rabbit.

The jar was picked up, the lining installed, and the rabbit sacrificed. The medicine bottle was placed inside, and the vessel became imbued with a spiritual void, waiting to be filled.

The Journey Out

Without wasting any further time, the PCs departed, having an uneventful but slow trip out into the Lowmire. The weather was warm for early spring, and the jacks made reasonable time along paths well established prior.

The hexmap might be being reworked, but not any of the areas passed through this session, plus the travel hazard die favored the party.

Arriving in Stillwood, the Jacks could tell they'd entered Tuesday's domain by the high-tide marks on the trees, gritty residue left well overhead. Making for a large fall of trees and intending to make their stand there, the party spied a group of four canine creatures, their brindled hides smoothly covering the swell of muscle where a head and neck would be expected. No mouth, eyes, ears or other features marked these headless hounds.

All prior encounters with these creatures had been at a far enough remove that neither of the Jacks knew what they were capable of. Having a canoe for traversal of the swamps water, the Jacks paddled quietly within range, and then opened fire with their guns.

The Grimmswold is considered a dangerous backwater by the neighboring Brellish Empire, who are undergoing a period of industrialization. The invention of firearms is transforming warfare, and both Jacks favor these novel foreign weapons.

The hounds fled from the stand of trees, dropping wounded into the water and vanishing without trace. Samentha, a moment late to the realization, wondered if something without a mouth could drown. Before she'd finished speaking, the canoe was overturned and the jacks dropped into the chest-high water. Headless hounds tried to drag Em under the water with jawless, telekinetic bites, but she resisted and cut down one of the dogs.

Samentha unleashes the power of a charm she carries, summoning a worm of smoke and force that happily grapples away the other dog that had latched onto Em.

Not all Knave spellbooks in Grimmswold are books. Charms are motes of power-stuff captured in fetishes. Some reckon these to be shed parts of gods, others the arcane knots underpinning existence.

The grappled dog is slain, and the remaining hounds flee, leaving Em to butcher them for supplies and Samentha to recover the canoe and their gear. Both work together and lash together a rough platform in the branches of the trees above the tidemark. They finish just before nightfall, and Tuesday's arrival.

The Restless Dead

Silty dark fog rose rapidly, the jacks knowing from bitter experience that it was far too thin a fluid to swim in, but thick enough to displace the air and leave one drowning on land. Distant choking screams echoed through the night, and Em called out for the ghost they were seeking.

Moments later, two pale hands scrabbled along the edge of the platform, and Tuesday, panicking and believing herself to be drowning, clung to the edge and pleaded for them to help her. As Em prompts her, she breaks out of her trauma and panic, and has the horrifying realization that she's already dead. It's not the first time Em has spoken with the phantom, and as the two converse Tuesday becomes more and more cogent, asking about how the world has changed since her death, and starting to recall the answers prior Jacks had already provided.

She reminisces about the few people that she can remember, who are still alive in the present day. Tuesday slips unsteadily between nostalgia and mournfulness, and shrewd, probing questions to the Jacks.

They ask if she wants to continue to relieve her drowning nightly, or if she'd take another way out. After some consideration, she asks about the process, and wonders if she'd stay conscious in the spirit vessel. The Jacks have no idea.

"There's nothing out there, you know. It's like a cliff above an endless void and I'm trapped on it's lip, drowning. I don't know if falling forever or being stuck in there would be worse."

She agrees to do it though, and asks if the Jacks have a drink. Samentha produces a bit of chawl, and Tuesday tries it, complaining that it doesn't affect her fully as a ghost. She mentions offhandedly that it's using her formulation, and asks Samentha to tell her supplier that the later refinement stage is fucked, and gives Em the nod.

A sickle hooked under the chin, and Tuesday fades into mist, something desperate scrabbling at Em's mind before vanishing. A semi-substantial grey pearl is placed in the jar, and it seals succesfully; Tuesday Slitten is bound to the vessel.

A Burial and New Management

The next day dawns somberly, and despite the bitter weather and the spirit vessel weighing on them, the Jacks make very good time back to Ulvikhold, managing the journey back in a single day. They do notice that someone has set up a new area with beds full of chawl-clams, freshly transplanted ones, but don't stay to investigate, arriving after dark.

The next morning, the Jacks discreetly visit Elisabet, burying the vessel under the pavers and fulfilling their promise. The two stay for tea and conversation with Elisabet, topics changing from fallen comrades and the perils of the profession.

"I see too many of your type here for the wrong reasons. It's a hard job and I don't rightly understand it, but I think people don't thank you enough."

Finally, they depart to the Jacks guild, letting Barathrum and guild leader Hano know that Tuesday has been dealt with, but little more. Secrecy is the best way to keep the vessel safe. Although they don't speak of what they've done, they spend some time with Portia, and Em is unusually clingy, holding one of Portia's wolven bodies for a while.

Later that day, Samentha visits Brooka, a butcher and Samentha's dealer on the side. Brooka stresses the balance of the situation, the small, responsible group of clientele she cultivates, and confesses that something might be up. The supplier upstream of her seems to have changed, the notes in the dead drops have more legalistic phrasing, there's more chawl delivered than she wants, and the notes demand she expand her clientele.

Samentha asks Brooka to pass along Tuesday's critique of the chawl, and leaves the shop, reckoning that the production of chawl seems to be under new management.

Afterword

This session was a lot of fun, and it felt truly momentous in a way I can't capture in a single blog post to bring Tuesday's arc to a close. She's been a recurring NPC for a while, and the player's research into how to give her closure has also been a story in itself. Now that the Stillwoods are no longer drowned in sympathetic muck every night, who knows what might change. And what will Hoseas Golden do, if the Jacks have managed to cut off all his leads on Tuesday's lost knowledge? Finally, what is up with the chawl trade, which the jacks have brushed up against more than a few times.