The Gloaming, Session #3, part 1
A one-on-one Shadowdark RPG campaign set in The Gloaming, from Cursed Scroll Zine, Vol. 1: Diablerie!
So… what is this?
This is the third session in an ongoing Shadowdark campaign with my wife, Diane, as the player and me as the GM. If you missed the first and second sessions, you can read them here and here but to summarize:
So far...
The campaign is set in The Gloaming, a setting presented in Cursed Scroll Zine, Vol. 1: Diablerie!, published by The Arcane Library.
Diane’s character, Mannon Blackbeak, has been staying in Marin’s Hold, the largest town in The Gloaming, for just over a week.
Before her arrival, demons called skrell attacked the town and killed several residents.
In the aftermath, the town held a sham trial for 3 women for practicing witchcraft and supposedly summoning the demons. Reeve Tarley Winters ordered them burned at the stake.
Mannon also learned that Regina Pence, a local merchant, was overdue from a trade run north of The Gloaming. We established that Mannon and Regina had met years ago and were friends.
While searching the forest for Regina, Mannon fought a giant spider and was paralyzed by its venom. She later freed herself from its webbing and managed to kill it. In the lair she found a strange black candle.
The next day she found the body of Ikam, one of Regina’s guards, and followed wagon tracks into the forest hills.
She discovered a camp with a black, lizard-like statue and robed figures wearing dragon masks. She killed two masked guards, freed Regina and her two surviving caravan guards, Remy and Rowan, and escaped into the perilous night.
On the road back to Marin’s Hold, a demon called a dralech ambushed them. It killed Rowan, but Mannon and Remy managed to slay the horrible thing before it could take the rest of them.
The next morning, Regina told Mannon that prisoners were taken from their shared cell each morning, one-by-one, never to return. She also overheard the guards discussing “the wyrm” and “torak.”
Mannon then questioned Maron, proprietor of the Crayfish Tavern, learned of a secretive order of warrior monks living in the nearby Greywall Priory, and drew the attention of Reeve Tarley Winters.
After traveling to Greywall Priory--home to the Knights of St. Ydris--in search of supernatural aid, Mannon spoke with Inquisitor Justinia Morvin. The Inquisitor confirmed the black dragon’s name, Ixidian, spoke of ongoing demon incursions in The Gloaming, and told Mannon that if she wants a weapon strong enough to face the dragon, she must retrieve the lost Emerald Blade from the haunted ruins of Myre Castle.
Today
For this session, we only played for maybe a couple of hours in total, but the write-up is almost 4,500 words! For that reason, I’m going to try breaking this session into 2 parts. This is part 1.
Bookkeeping
Not much to do here, as Mannon hasn’t been using a lot of resources, preferring to adventure during the day and returning to the The Broken Net, an inn in Marin’s Hold, to rest and recover.
We hit the ground running
We get right to business in this session. We don’t have long and Diane has a clear goal: get to Myre Castle and find the Emerald Blade.
Approaching Myre Castle
Mannon leaves Marin’s Hold and approaches Myre Castle from the north on the main road. Because the castle is in a marsh, I decide its elevation is lower than most of the rest of The Gloaming, which is what caused the area to flood. The difference in elevation gives Mannon a clear view of the castle from a good distance away.
The castle is fully surrounded by flooded marshlands, and the best way to reach it is by a long, winding causeway. The castle itself is built on a steep mound, raising the base of its walls over 1 full story above the water. It has clearly been abandoned for generations. Its walls have collapsed in several places, creating piles of rubble that act as decent climbing surfaces for anyone who might want to enter the castle through the gaps. Even from a distance, the walls are clearly covered with moss, vines, grass, flowers and bushes, with plenty of growth obscuring any clear view of the interior despite the structure being in shambles.
GM Note: This map is still pretty rough, but I’m the only one who needs to use it, so it suits its purpose. I’ll post a version of the map without any of the damage (which I greatly prefer) at the end of the article.
As Mannon approaches the castle, she begins to hear the long, low, moaning wail that she heard when she passed by the castle on her first trip to Greywall Priory. Other than that, the marsh is eerily silent.
While moving along the causeway, Mannon can see that the portion of wall between the gatehouse and the left turret has collapsed. She can also see three separate, peaked roofs forming the top of the main keep rising above the castle walls from the back of the complex. The left face of the keep has a set of large, narrow frames that look very much like they once housed a chapel’s stained glass windows. Knowing that the Knights of St. Ydris are a sect of religious warrior monks, and that the knights who lived in this castle were a related order, she thinks that the chapel is a good starting place to search for the Emerald Blade.
When she reaches the gatehouse, I roll 1d6 to see if the portcullis is closed. On a 3 or lower, the answer is yes. On a 4 or above, the answer is no. I get a 3. Mannon finds the portcullis closed, but badly rusted. Breaking through it would be fairly easy, but it would also be loud.
While examining the portcullis, Mannon can see the courtyard beyond. As she watches, she sees a human figure slowly shamble across her field of view. Because Inquisitor Morvin told her that the knights who once lived in this castle weren’t blessed with a restful death, Diane assumes the figure is a zombie. She wants to know if there are more of them in the courtyard, so I have her attempt a DC 15 WIS check. She gets a 19, and Mannon is easily able to tell that there are 4 zombies in the courtyard. She is a little apprehensive about trying to tackle that many foes on her own.
I remind Diane that the wall has collapsed in several places, including the portion immediately to the left of the gatehouse. Climbing the rubble would be an easy DC 9 STR check, but she’s wary of the zombies in the courtyard. She decides that the chapel is her first goal, but wants to see if there’s a better way in than the front entrance.
Searching the perimeter
Diane wants to explore the castle perimeter and decides to go to the left side first, since she she saw the two collapsed portions of the wall from the causeway. I tell her that leaving the causeway means traveling through the marsh at a much slower speed, which she’s fine with. I measure the rough distance that she’d have to move to the corner and roll a couple of times for random encounters, but the trip is uneventful.
Once Mannon has reached the left-most corner of the castle, she can clearly see that two portions of the wall have collapsed, one of which appears to be part of the chapel. Diane decides to approach the chapel wall, so I measure the distance again and roll a few more times for random encounters. Again, nothing happens as Mannon trudges along through the marsh.
When Mannon arrives outside the chapel wall, it’s a simple climb up to the collapsed section. I call for a DC 9 STR check, and she succeeds.
The Green Chapel
As Mannon climbs the rubble and approaches the collapsed wall, she gains a better view of the inside of the chapel. Even before reaching the opening, she can clearly see the branches of a massive willow tree filling the broken windows.
Once she makes it to the opening, Mannon is greeted by an empty window frame in the massive, 5 foot thick wall. Peering through the gap, she’s able to see very little in the darkness created by the castle walls and the hanging branches of the great, haunting willow tree growing up from the center of the chapel. Time has caused the towering walls, stone rubble, and wooden pews—all covered in moss, grass, creeping vines, and flowers—to look more like the inside of a great cave than any chapel.
Design Note: When designing my take on Myre Castle, I knew I wanted to pay homage to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which I assume to be the inspiration for the Green Knights of this setting. In the story, the Green Knight demands that Gawain meet him in “the Green Chapel.” The Green Chapel is not a normal medieval Christian chapel, however, but an overgrown cave. Fortunately, that aesthetic fits well with a ruined chapel in an ancient, abandoned castle, so I’ve decided that the entire place is overgrown with moss, grass, vines, and flowers. The rubble, worn down by time and covered with plant growth, looks more like logs and boulders and than cut stone and hewed beams.
I wanted a fey influence, as well, because wielders of the Emerald Blade are able to speak with animals, but also because one of the patrons in the zine is Titania, Queen of the Fey. It makes sense to me that the Green Knights would be followers of Titania before they fell, and she likely gave them the weapon as a boon for some great deed. Massive trees and a melancholy atmosphere feel pretty fae to me, so I thought it would be fitting for the chapel to be dominated by something that embodies both characteristics. I personally feel that willow trees have a beautiful, haunting, melancholy appearance, and the that fact that the setting also has a monster/NPC/patron called The Willowman pretty much sealed the deal on the choice of tree.
Taking a few moments to stake out the chapel, Mannon is able to make out 3 zombies moaning and shambling around in the darkness. But there’s also a fourth figure, and it isn’t making noise or moving like a zombie. It’s gait is too strong and regular (its a wight).
Mannon starts to move through the chapel, but needs to do so quietly. I have Diane attempt a DC 12 DEX check for stealth, but she fails. I decide she steps on a branch and the noise catches the wight’s attention. Everything in the room stops and turns its attention to Mannon.
The Fighting Dead
I decide to make a reaction roll and get an 8. That means the wight is suspicious, so I decide that it chooses to do its version of a parlay. The wight draws its sword and, in a rasping, wheezing voice, tells her to get out of the castle, go far, far away, and never come back. The living have no place here.
System Note: In Shadowdark, a reaction roll means rolling 2 six-sided dice and adding them together, plus the PC’s Charisma (CHA) modifier. The higher the total, the better. Anything under 7 is bad, 7 or 8 means the creature is suspicious, 9 is neutral, 10 or 11 means it’s curious, and 12+ means it’s friendly.
Of course, Mannon doesn’t oblige. Instead, she asks the wight if he knows where the Emerald Blade is. As soon as she mentions the sword, the wight lets out a raspy wail, which is returned by several others from deeper inside the castle, as well as who-knows-how-many zombies.
With that, the 3 zombies in the chapel converge on Mannon. She has 20 hit points, but I’ve boosted the zombies slightly, so they each have a +3 to hit instead of +2, and they get 2 hits per turn instead of 1. Mannon’s AC is only 14, but her position relative to the rubble in the room means that only 2 zombies can actually get within striking distance at a time. Both of them fail on one attempt to hit her, but succeed on the other and manage to deal a fair amount of damage (1d6 each)
After this, its Mannon turn and she gets 3 attacks. Swinging her warhammer, Souldrinker, with both hands, she manages to destroy one zombie and do significant damage to the other. But they just keep coming. The third zombie joins in and their attacks drop Mannon to less than 10 hit points. She falls back and tries to finish one off with her short bow, but only manages a single point of damage. The wight begins to move toward her.
At this point, Diane realizes that Mannon is sorely outnumbered and outgunned, so she elects to live to fight another day, sliding down the rubble and fleeing through the marsh. The wight does not the follow.
Tune in for part 2 to see what happens next! There are
End of Session 3.1
More maps of Myre Castle
Still some work to be done to make them prettier, but I like them so far.
More on the way!
Stay on the lookout for the future sessions. There will also be sessions from my solo campaign, and from another one-on-one campaign with 10 year-old son as he runs a party of characters exploring the Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur.
I want to hear from you!
Do you enjoy playing D&D? Do you play Shadowdark, or a some other take on the world’s 1st roleplaying game? Perhaps you enjoy playing D&D with small parties, or even solo. Let me know in the comments!