All Things Under Heaven, Session #1

Our Setting: Iron Springs is a moderately-sized town at the north-western frontier of civilized Tianxia, looking out over a region that many call only The Wastes. The town is built on the broad banks of the Lièkǒu River, the only lifeline that it has back to the Imperial world of bureaucracy and well-tended order, and is supported by terrace-farms cut into the surrounding hill country. It is home to around a thousand souls, making it the largest inhabited center in the surrounding lands.

From Iron Springs a rich tapestry of terrain stretches out towards the sunset: vast and trackless forests, stinking marshes, windswept plains, rugged hills and towering mountains where the workshops of the old Zhang witch-alchemists may still stand. These Wastes are wild, untamed, dangerous, and haunted by beasts and spirits and yet stranger things.

Iron Springs’ extreme remoteness and the wild and untamed nature of The Wastes have contributed to its reputation as a place of last resort, somewhere that only the greedy, the foolish, or the desperate would try and make a life. Those who chafe at the yoke of Imperial authority find the distance from any real governance appealing, while scholars and seekers after the weird and macabre find it a valuable source of information and research subjects. 

The Wastes beyond Iron Springs are the stuff of many a legend, promising all those things that are best in life: wealth beyond measure, endless opportunity, danger to be faced, glory to be won, secrets and wonders to behold and uncover, and a means to transform your life. Tame the Wastes, the buzz in the teahouse goes, and the Emperor has promised that a noble title will be yours along with deeds to whatever you manage to wrest from the trackless wilderness. 

Our Cast:

• Mei-Xiu, a human Monk. Given away as a child to a warlord, one of the Rén catfolk. She was raised as an assassin, and now wanders the Wastes to challenge the strong.
• Ming-Hua, a Wizard. One of the Guàn birdfolk, from the Tribe of the Ibis. She tired of reading about the arcane in dusty libraries, and now wanders the Wastes to study the weird.
• Shi, a Fighter. One of the Rén catfolk from the Tribe of the Leopard. He was a criminal back in the civilised world, and now wanders the Wastes to encounter the strange.
• Sun Thuy, a Rogue. One of the Rén catfolk from the Tribe of the Fox. She was heir to a noble family back in her homeland, and now wanders the Wastes to protect the weak. 
• Xiang Wang, a Druid. One of the Guàn birdfolk, from the Tribe of the Heron. They were a roamer and a vagabond already, and now wander the Wastes to seek the path. 

The Session

The group gather around a table in the corner of Iron Spring's second teahouse, a worn and comfortable establishment with some rougher edges run by an ex-adventurer called Broken Spear. Some nights before, sat around this very table, they had clumsily spilled a teapot and watched as the near-boiling water raised decades of grime to reveal a crude map of the Wastes carved into the wood, an unknowing gift from some past adventurer. 

Pooling the rumours they have recently heard around town, the group are tempted momentarily by tales of the legendary internal-alchemist Xianbal but decide instead to pursue whispers of a tomb out on the Āoxiàn Plains. Cunningly hidden by its architects and lost for centuries, the tomb is said to hold a forgotten hero from days long past and the enchanted sword that he bore. 

Gathering their resources and failing to convince the captain of the town guard to give them any advice other than "don't get killed", the group set off from the town due north-north-west. 

Day One: Travelling at a slow pace (this being their first venture out into the Wastes) the group move through the foothills around Iron Springs, making good time and reaching the river that divides the foothills from the flatlands beyond by early evening. Making camp in a sheltered crack in the last of the hills, they settle in for the night with Ming-Hua's owl familiar keeping watch.

Ming-Hua is woken by her familiar some time around midnight. She douses the fire, wakes the group, and they all watch in horrified fascination as six shrouded figures come into sight following the river and settle down by the river. Familiars are used to investigate and reveal that the creatures are horse-spirits robed and veiled in human-hair cloth, and the group decide not to engage. The horse-spirits unpack miniature looms and settle in to work for a long hour with an eerie clicking and clacking of shuttle and bobbin before slowly moving on. The party return to sleep.

Day Two: While crossing the river, Mei-Xiu's elegant slippers cause her to badly twist her ankle on a loose rock and she goes under for a moment. Weighed down by her water-logged silk robes, she is rescued by Xiang Wang and the rest of the group. Shi is able to fashion a splint with his healer's kit, and the group resumes their journey. 

The group move out onto vast flat grasslands, dry and broken only by spikes of wispy flat-seed, and continue their careful progress. Come nightfall, they find an area where the grass has been trodden down by the wild horses native to the Āoxiàn Plains that means they are safe from ambush and make camp. Despite the chill of early winter they cannot risk a fire, knowing that it would be seen for miles around. 

Day Three: Xiang Wang and Shi, who suffered worse from the fireless sleep, wake the next morning little rested and feeling miserable. The group pick up their pace as they head off again, the landscape changing around them as dry grassland gives way to lusher floodlands fed by streams and rivers from the north-east. 

By nightfall they are fully into greener grassier country, but fail to find a natural camp-site. They are forced to make do, and after the troubles of the night before decide to light a small discreet campfire. The night is even harsher than the last, however, and it is only through the hardier members of the group sacrificing cloaks and blankets that hypothermia is warded off.

Day Four: Turning from their north-north-west heading to go due west, the group push themselves for a gruelling twelve-hour march and by nightfall reach the heartland of the Āoxiàn Plains proper. Having learned their lesson, they make camp by one of the larger streams that run through the area and feed the lush grasses and light a proper campfire. 

Around halfway through the night they are woken again by Ming-Hua's familiar with a report of eight dark shapes moving towards them from the river. Most of the group huddle around the fire defensively, as Mei-Xiu slips away into the darkness to prepare a flanking maneuver. Archery from Shi and bolts of magefire from Ming-Hua manage to bring down one of the creatures as they advance, while Mei-Xiu spots three of them detaching from the main group to deal with her.

As the creatures close into the firelight their nature is revealed: filthy mud-smeared rat-demons, wielding stolen farming tools and broken pieces of metal wrapped and adapted into wicked blades. The battle with the rat-demons is hard fought, and Ming-Hua is knocked unconscious as one slips through her guard after shooting a blazing cone of magefire. 

But through a combination of archery, martial prowess, devastating blows from surprise by Sun Thuy, clever spellwork, and cooperation the rat-demons are overcome, and Xiang Wang is able to revive Ming-Hua. The bodies of the foul creatures slough away into sticky black mud and rotten reeds as the group return to sleep and the owl-familiar resumes its watch. 

And as the group slumber around their fire, a gleam of the waxing crescent moon glints off exposed white stonework on the far side of the river, not too far away...

Chant of the Northlands, Session 1

Our Setting: The Northlands, a cold and frozen region of fjords, high fells and moorland, and towering mountains. In the frigid earth below lies the Underworld, a region of disorder and irrationality with a crude awareness and sentience that wants nothing more than to spread and grow, to imprison those who venture within, and to consume all life. 

Many generations ago the ancients built a series of rune-sealed cairns and barrows atop those spots where the Underworld erupted up into the Waking World. These structures, linked by lines of standing stones and dolmens that wrote out a great runic spell across the rime-bitten landscape, capped the bleed of unreason and atavistic corruption and bound the Underworld deep in the earth. 

Down below the Underworld waited, a 'steep and thorn-choked path' that dead souls had to navigate on their way to the Summerlands deep below. For untold years it poisoned the spirits of great dreamers and weak-willed heroes, and its creatures clawed their way up to those places where the spell-weave was weak to cause havok and devastation. And all the while the wind and rain beat away at the standing stones and weathered the deep-graven runes, and the bindings began to fail...


Our Cast (thus far):

Cairbre, a Chaotic death-cultist and priest of Ithir Dearg. Like a baby suckling wolves, Cairbre consorts with the forces of death and suffering in the hopes of being protected from their wrath. Pain is power, fear is safety.

Eimhir of Assynt Broch, a Chaotic druid disenchanted by civilisation after being assimilated for a few years, who took to the mountains seeking to escape 

Florentia Silverfist, a Chaotic barbarous outsider from the warm moon-washed lands of the South in pursuit of riches and violence. 


The Session:

The party set out from the ancient watchtower of Assynt Broch, pursuing a rumour from the east that a homesteader's workers had spotted a corpse shambling around the mouth of a valley called Blódengard. Eimhir, a native of the region, was able to reveal that the valley had a dark reputation: somewhere the Underworld had always been dangerously close to the surface, and later the site of a great battle that watered the soil with blood and set the Underworld free. 

Arriving in Blódengard they quickly spotted the great barrow built on the lower slopes of the valley, and approached to investigate. The door that had sealed the barrow lay scattered around in ruined flakes, the largest of them marked with icy handprints, and seemed to have been blasted open from the inside. The party approached to investigate as a fell wind gusted out of the mouth-like entrance, and as Eimhir spotted signs that the earth around the barrow had been disturbed pale frost-crusted hands began clawing their way out of the dirt. 

Florentia steps forward and skewers one of the creatures and messily bisects it even as it struggles to rise, while Cairbre slips inside the cairn into the shadows. Eimhir calls upon the memory of the great cats of her mountain wanderings and shapeshifts into a sabre-tooth tiger, pouncing on one of the wraiths and bearing it to the ground where she tears at its throat and rakes at its chest. 

Inside the barrow Cairbre feels the great slow-moving weight of the Underworld's consciousness touch their mind, bringing to their mind a vision of a great natural cave-mouth ringed with thorns and inhabited by some unseen presence. Outside Eimhir continued to tear into the wraith beneath her as another moved to menace her from behind, while Florentia struggled to ward off the last of the frost-crusted undead.

After regaining their senses Cairbre emerges from the barrow, engaging from surprise with the wraith creeping up on Eimhir, who meanwhile returns to her normal form to find that clawing and biting is far less effective with human teeth and fingernails. While she continues to be equally ineffectively at beating the wraith with her staff, Florentia has struggles of her own as she tries to fend off not only the rusted iron sword but the chill ice-taloned hands of her opponent. 

Cairbre's mace quickly pulverises the head of their opponent, but it doesn't seem to faze the wraith and so they slip away into the barrow's shadows with the creature in hot pursuit. Eimhir disengages from her wraith and reestablishes some distance, but it isn't enough to prevent its icy touch from searing her face and arm to the bone with frostbite causing her to fall to the ground as her vision darkens and her soul begins to sink through the earth into Death.

Florentia reestablishes some distance and slices her opponent in half with one brutal swing of her greatsword before spotting Eimhir's fallen body and moving over to defend it from the surviving wraith left outside. Cairbre clenches at their wounds and dedicates their suffering to Ithir Dearg, and the god sends them a vision revealing the wraiths' weaknesses and reaching inside their adventuring gear they find a torch and flint-and-steel with which they burn the pursuing wraith to ashes.

Eimhir sinks into the earth as her druidic teachings foretold, but feels the hungry mind of the Underworld reaching out to unmake and consume her before she can rejoin with the soil. A shroud of raven weathers close around her as their elderly owner, iron-toothed and grey-and-gold eyed, shields her from the Underworld's reach.

Florentia swiftly slays the last of the wraiths now that she has room to use her greatsword to full advantage, while Cairbre notices that a few stones have been removed from the main passage of the barrow just a little way inside and that a dead body is half-hanging out of the hole.  Eimhir's mysterious benefactor reveals that they remain in the Raven's Shade, the half-world that lies between living and dying, and that she will restore Eimhir to life in exchange for carrying out certain tasks and being her eyes and hands and mouthpiece in the world above. 

Tianxia and the Nine Provinces

Since the coming of the Great Emperor of Jade and the appointment of the first Imperial Son of Heaven, Tianxia has been divided into Nine Provinces. These were ruled by the same legendary individuals, blessed by the Great Emperor of Jade, who founded the Imperial Bureaus and whose descendants still rule and enjoy those blessings.

• First was Zhang Dúsù, the Witch-Alchemist, who founded the Imperial Bureau of Alchemy and ruled Zhang Province among the Yĭnmì Peaks, and was given by the Great Emperor of Jade the gift of Cinnabar.
• Second was Qhulā Nèn, the Seer-Exorcist, who founded the Imperial Bureau of Divination and ruled Qhulā Province upon the Daĭgāna Plateau, and was given by the Great Emperor of Jade the gift of Yao-Grass.
• Third was Wōuhún Dénja, the Spirit-Walker, who founded the Imperial Bureau of Celestials and Spirits and ruled Wōuhún Province around solitary Mount Nèizài, and was given by the Great Emperor of Jade the gift of Five-Stone Powder.
• Fourth was Fēng Hánwá, the Five-Agent Adept, who founded the Imperial Bureau of Five-Element Movements and ruled Hánwá Province upon the Jáohi Steppes, and was given by the Great Emperor of Jade the gift of Xirang.
• Fifth was Yǎnguā Ruicao, the Soul-Sage, who founded the Imperial Bureau of Qigong and Neijia and ruled the Ruicao Province in the Fùráo Valleys, and was given by the Great Emperor of Jade the gift of Lingzhi Fungus.
• Sixth was Duān Zhèn, the Pure Censor, who founded the Imperial Bureau of Exorcism and Oversight and ruled Duān Province among the Tōushōu Hills, and was given by the Great Emperor of Jade the gift of Jade.
• Seventh was Chēn Gōngjī, the Battle-Scribe, who founded the Imperial Bureau of the Exquisite Arts of War and ruled Chēn Province within the Dài Basin, and was given by the Great Emperor of Jade the gift of Steel-Silk
• Eight and Ninth were the siblings Shǔlún Jīnbì and Shǔlún Báiyín, who founded the Imperial Bureau of Making and Mending that straddles the Provinces that they ruled. Shǔlún Jīnbì ruled Jīnbì Province through the Mùcǎo Wetlands, and was given by the Great Emperor of Jade the gift of Gold. Her brother, Shǔlún Báiyín, ruled Báiyín Province around the Shǎnyào Delta, and was given by the Great Emperor of Jade the gift of Silver.

Hexcrawl Movement Rules, Pt. 3

Finding Locations

Prominent or visible locations are automatically found, as are locations positioned along a road/river/trail the party are using. Familiar locations can be found with a DC 12 Survival check if the party is in the same hex.

Unfamiliar locations can be found with a DC 25 Navigation check (History, Investigation, or Perception) if the party have access to very good directions or a quality map. Otherwise they can only be found with the help of divination spells or as the result of encounter checks.

Getting Lost

Whenever the party are traveling off of a road, track, or trail then one member must make a DC 12 Survival check each watch to see if they head in the right direction. Access to a map or directions grants advantage, while inclement weather imposes disadvantage. Access to a lodestone compass or direction-finding magic doubles proficiency bonus but travelling at night halves it.  

If the party fail this check they begin to veer away from their intended direction of travel as determined by a 1d10 roll (1-4 veer to the left; 5-6 no veer; 7-10 veer to the right). When the party exit the hex, they exit through the face indicated by their new direction of travel. Should a lost party fail another navigation check their veer can increase but not decrease.

Lost Parties

Each watch, one member of a lost party can attempt a DC 12 Survival check to recognize that they are no longer certain of their direction of travel. Due to the close attention to their surroundings that this demands, they suffer disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks and all other Wisdom (Survival) checks during the watch. Should they spot a known landmark or clear change in terrain they can make an additional check to realize that they’ve become lost.

A lost party has several options for re-orienting themselves:

• They can follow their own tracks, making a DC 15 Survival check each watch to stay on the trail and successfully identify the point where they went astray.
• They can use natural signs to determine true north with a DC 20 Nature check and re-establish their position from there.
• They can work out their new position and then chart a new course that will take them to their original destination with a DC 25 Investigation or Perception check.

AW: Dark Ages - The Saga of Trüng-Holt, Verse 1

Our Setting: The Trüng-Holt, a stronghold bordering on the Baltic Sea that defends a harbour and port and is threatened by a raiders from the sea, an unlawful crown (seized by a tyrant, Miklos of the Zsolt), and a local warlord, ambitious and bold. Its fortifications include a hilltop position, a bottleneck approach up the side of the cliffs, an outer palisade wall, and a deep well; its armoury includes spears, round shields, hide coats and leather helmets, and bows, enough for 10 warriors.

Our Cast (thus far):

Amai the Touched, Wicker-Wise of the Trüng. She is wyrd, wary, and strong, but goodness yet evades her. She is wise in poison-craft and whispers to ghosts. She can enchant someone or something, and is sometimes overcome by oracular visions.

With one hand in each world,
Healer, counselor,
Bloody to both elbows.

Hilda the Right, Peasant Beauty of the Caymbre and Zsolt. She is bold, good, and strong, but the ways of wyrd elude her. She is breathtaking and fell when she appears on the battlefield, and her foremothers were queens of the Old Blood. She is radiant and stunning, and receives gifts and offerings on behalf of the summer, the earth, and the river.

Born free, feet upon the earth,
But in my birth are secret things,
And in my future, fire.

Ritva the Certain, Blacksmith of the Kekkonen. She is strong, wary, and good, but the ways of wyrd elude her. She speaks wisdom to those who come to her for counsel, and has the right to take on a student as her apprentice. Were she wronged, she could muster champions to demand blood recompense and they would come; were danger near, she could rally warriors from among her peers to the defense of all and they would listen.

Scorched and roaring,
Fearless, indomitable,
Sanctified by crucible and forge.

Soku the Swift, Court Wizard of the Laung and Trüng. She is wyrd, good, and wary, but her spirit shudders away from boldness. She is literate in Persian and Arabic and has the right to seek the truth in any troubling situation, unhindered by any. She is able to step out of her earthly life and journey in other places, and can see into the heart of unnatural creatures.

Astrologer, necromancer,
Scientist and sage
Trembling before God

The Session:

Spring in the cliffside Trüng-Holt: the lean time, with winter stores devoured but the first harvest of spring not yet ripe. 

Hilda the Right and the Caymbre spend the season preparing for what their matriarch, Nan, fears is coming and through their trading contacts manage to make arrangements that will double the size of the stronghold’s armory. 

Ritva the Certain spends the season working alone in her smithy, but with only one strong pair of arms progress is slow and she turns her mind to the question of finding a worthy successor. 

Amai the Touched spends the season in rites and celebrations, slaughtering those of her family’s livestock grown old or weak to supplement the scarce food supplies left during the bare time of early spring. 

Soku the Swift spends the season celebrating the rites of her people, shedding her courtly manners and duties to reinforce her ties to the pack, culminating in a ritual hunt and bonfire the night before spring turns to summer.

Summer in the cliffside Trüng-Holt: the weather warms and the winds die down so that the beach becomes a place of revelry and ritual. 

Soku wakes up at dawn beside the ashes of the bonfire with her people laid out hungover and still-senseless around her. She exchanges words with the only people awake, Bian Many-Voice, who predicts the coming of a storm. Obligations to her people fulfilled, Soku returns to the Trüng-Holt and the central household and reports the conversation to Parvana - leader of the Trüng and therefore, by default, the stronghold - who asks her to investigate the nature of this possible ‘storm’.

Just outside in the forge, Ritva sets to work refining the last of the iron ore left in her stores into usable metal. Her work is interrupted by the arrival of her mother Janike, to whom she had entrusted finding her candidates for apprenticeship, and Hilda. Hilda proposes several of the Caymbre, none of whom Janike thinks highly of, and then offhandedly mentions her cousin Gaspar of the Zsolt, whom Ritva likes the sound of and who Janike regards as a passable candidate.

There is only one problem: Gaspar is Zsolt, not Caymbre, and Nan is not prepared to pay his apprenticeship fee, while Janike is unwilling to let her daughter and clan take on an apprentice without a fee to compensate them and to give their kin a financial stake in them doing well. Ritva seeks out Parvana, who had previously encouraged her to take an apprentice and turns out to be willing to pay the cost of Gaspar’s board and lodgings and take this burden off of Janike. This reduces but does not eliminate the cost of the fee, and so Hilda leads the other two off to talk to her parents. 

Soku settles down in her quarters, stepping out of her earthly life and allowing her consciousness to expand out of her body and into the world and the beings around her. Her consciousness expands too far and too fast, however, and Soku soon loses track of the concerns of her earthly life and no longer desires to do anything but pursue the vastness and intricacy of the world’s life-web. 

Amai practices in full armour with shield and spear on the mustering field but soon grows bored and having overheard the conversation about Ritva’s search for an apprentice passing by decides to go off in search of Hilda’s parents’ house where negotiations remain ongoing. Ritva makes a passionate case for the opportunity and lifelong security that Gaspar is being offered and Marta, Hilda’s mother, agrees to pay his apprenticeship fee.

Amai, who had arrived just in time to witness this, is overcome by an oracular vision and collapses and Hilda and her father, Helmich, banish the others to the street to continue the conversation there while they care for the Wicker-Wise. Ritva takes Gaspar aside as Janike and Marta haggle over precise details of payment and cost and takes his measure and explains to him what will be expected and required of him and how he will be treated in return.

In her unconscious state Amai’s vision skates out over the water beyond the harbour that lies at the foot of the Trüng-Holt and she sees the trading vessel owned by the Caymbre, carrying the iron ore and weapons they’d purchased in the spring, pursued by a mass of stormclouds that resolved into a raiding ship. Upon the deck of this raiding ship, barely a hand of time’s sailing away, stands a ritually-scarified pale-skinned man with wild never-cut hair and the gleam of sorcery in his eyes. 

Amai wakes with a start and cries out a warning to Ritva and Hilda, who begin mustering nearby warriors of the Trüng and Caymbre to defend the shore and the ship. Soku’s consciousness jolts and retracts in response to the intensity of emotion developing back around her body. She wakes in time to hear the cry going up of attackers sailing into harbour towards the beach and remembers with horror that her people are still mostly laid out senseless and helpless where they slept the night before after their ritual on the beach.

Monsterhearts, Session 5

The Setting: Drawing, a large forested country town in New South Wales around an hour from the coast, at Saint Valentine’s Academy, a Catholic high-school.

Our Cast (this session):

• Brittany – an icy Queen with captivating eyes who leads a cultic clique who perform rituals they don’t understand at an old ritual site near the coast. (UPDATE: They pronouns) [Played by Kat]
• Kafka – a striking Ghoul with hollow eyes who was killed in a car-accident a month ago, bare days into the school year, but woke up afterwards confused and hungry. (He pronouns) [Played by Kaj]
• Sabrina – a brooding Witch with calculating eyes whose sanctuary from the stupidity of her classmates (an old and abandoned bathroom) is full of occult paraphernalia. (She pronouns) [Played by Jacqui]
• Mika – a distant Infernal with calculating eyes chosen to receive power and influence by an unknown patron who asks only the smallest things in return. (They pronouns) [Played by Liv]
• Floris – a dainty Fae with mesmerizing eyes who dreams of the King in the Greenwood from whom she stole her glamour and power. (They pronouns) [Played by Liska]
• Eva – a stiff Hollow with soulless eyes who was once a beast of the forest before gaining a new furless and two-legged form (She pronouns) [Played by Kettu]

What happened:

Flashback, the afternoon before: Waking up from their strange dream on the boat Brittany decided to check in on Jock, the injured member of their clique. Suspicious of the seemingly-occult cause of his condition they questioned him over the phone, getting a list of people who were annoyed at him that included Sabrina’s name.

Mika spent the night fitfully almost-sleeping, once again comforted by the Dark Power in its raven-like shape and infused with some of its power in order to replenish some of their lost energy and drive.

Kafka woke up in the woods  and headed towards his house, knowing he had to deal with Mika’s blood before he could show up at school. Reaching a road just as Sabrina was driving down it he managed to beg a lift and once back at his house took a shower while Sabrina snooped through his room. 

Noticing that Kafka had left his necklace of shells - made by Mika years ago, which he had never stopped wearing even after the friendship ended - when he put down his stuff before heading into the shower, Sabrina took it as a sympathetic token and Kafka failed to notice its absence around his neck.

At the school Brittany noticed Raven and Lauren having a whispered and slightly-charged conversation and, knowing about Raven’s connection to Sabrina, decided it was worth investigating. They directed their second-in-command Tiffany to move to a desk just behind the friends and eavesdrop and record the conversation on her phone. 

Kafka and Sabrina arrived in class, very late. Sabrina noticed the recording app open on Tiffany’s phone and made a notice of it, while Kafka had an awkward moment of eye-contact with Adam - looking fairly concerned given Kafka’s state the night before - before realising that Lauren was present and seemingly unharmed. The two took their seats, Kafka deciding not to make a scene and to talk to Lauren after class.

Naive and unaware of teenage hierarchy Eva attempted to befriend Brittany and got cruelly shut down and reminded of her lowly place in the high-school social ladder, though Brittany felt a strange guilt over treating her so harshly. Floris rebuked Brittany and they responded by calling Tiffany over to back them up and delivering a threat of social and mystical punishment, but the attempt at intimidation only roused the fey primal wildness within Floris and allowed her to frighten Brittany into a promise to leave Eva alone. 

The bell rang and class ended and Sabrina headed around the room towards Raven’s desk, stealing Tiffany’s phone (from where she’d left it) along the way. Sabrina reached Lauren and Raven and was about to talk to her emo tryst before being given an unspoken plea to give Raven some space and not complicate her already fraught negotiation of friendship with Lauren now that her feelings couldn’t be reciprocated even if she spoke up.

After Sabrina left the room, headed for her sanctuary and followed by Eva, Kafka struck up a conversation and attempted to feel out where she’d gone the night before. Her recollection was slightly patchy but Kafka was satisfied of her wellbeing and the two awkwardly put a label on their relationship (boyfriend/girlfriend) and planned a date in the library. 

Mika, having arrived at school a little earlier, was leaned up against the lockers outside the classroom waiting. They watched as various other students left and exchanged polite words with Lauren and then an uncomfortable moment of tension and unspoken grievances with Kafka. Lauren politely excused herself so they could talk in private, telling Kafka to meet her in the library once he was done. 

The intense tension between Kafka and Mika turned charged and erotic, Kafka pushing Mika up against the lockers they were leaning against and kissing them. Mika wrapped a hand around Kafka’s throat and marched them back into a janitor’s closet where the two gave in and slept together again. 

Sabrina took the phone to her sanctuary and listened to the recording - of Lauren realising that Raven had sex and trying to find out who as Raven attempted to shut down the conversation, unwilling to have that talk with someone she had reciprocated feelings towards - and began to put together what Brittany’s interest in it was. 

Eva chose between following Floris to the library to thank her for her help dealing with Brittany and catching up with Sabrina. Deciding on the latter, she came into Sabrina’s sanctuary and admitted how Brittany had bullied her and received a promise from Sabrina that she was working to shut them down.

In the afterglow in the janitor’s closet Kafka brushed off Mika’s attempts to communicate and trivialised the encounter they’d just had. Mika lashed out over the fact that Kafka wasn’t wearing the necklace anymore and told him to call Lauren next time he was ‘looking to have some fun’ before dressing and setting a fire in the corner of the room. 

The smoke alarm went off, prompting Kafka to hurriedly dress and get out of the room as the flames began to spread while Mika looked on dispassionately and without fear as the Dark Power expressed its approval. 

Wild Seas Under Heaven Regions

The campaign is currently centered on a lowland area below the mountainous border of the Zhang Province. More information on the Nine Provinces of Tianxia is forthcoming.

The party are currently deep in the heart of Gǔlǎo Forest.

Gǔlǎo Forest

A thick and fog-cloaked conifer forest that grows at the foot of the Yĭnmì Peaks, enclosed in a slight hollow between the mountains. Talking beasts swollen to huge and terrible size roam through the damp undergrowth, and it is said that the trees there can hunt and even move.

Nírón Fens

A muddy stretch of wetland around Lake Bōdòng, fed by several rivers running from the south and thick with lampreys and leeches. It is fished cautiously by the townsfolk of Fáchuán, who fear the titanic salamander that lives in the heart of Lake Bōdòng and its children.

Jílǐng Ridge

A range of mountains where geothermal springs and lakes that are dangerously hot and alkaline abound. Goats and ibex roam the slopes and feast on the copious natural salts, and are preyed on by the various avian and air-borne predators that nest up in the heights.

Tuōpí Hills

A jagged stretch of hill-country divided from nearby mountains by the Shétou River, supposedly carved out by the dragon-god Yu the Great. The area is equally well-known for rampant banditry and for the presence of pangolin, useful creatures in traditional medicine.

Āoxiàn Plains

A stretch of dry grassland home to large herds of wild horses which are skittish and watchful to an extreme degree. Malevolent animal spirits walk in large numbers, leading to rumours that the roof of the Underworld comes close to the surface in the area.

Huāngdì Fells

A bare and dusty stretch of high country, poisoned by chemical run-off from the workshops and mines of the Zhang witch-alchemists higher up in the Yĭnmì Peaks. Vultures and toads are among the few animals that have survived here, along with a bare few pathetic humanoids.

Chóngshé Woods

A large stretch of virgin forest, unfelled since the days of the Dragon-Emperors. Tree-choked ruins litter the undergrowth and valuable herbs sought by the townsfolk of Tuánjié are abundant, but the native elephants and snakes mean that caution is required.