Crystal Serpent - Session Two
Capturing the Crested Dawn
At the end of Session 1, Arabella Cain arrived at the island of Kiora, spotted the Crested Dawn, and decided to capture it. A bold move! But how is she going to pull this off?
I decided that her best strategy was to use stealth and cunning, enhanced by her sorcery.
Ironsworn is very much a "choose your own difficulty" game, but sometimes I like to use Ask the Oracle for balance issues, especially for freeform magic. Here, I asked if Arabella could use magic to hide the Swiftsure entirely, giving it a Small Chance, since turning an entire ship invisible seems pretty challenging. The Oracle said no, as I expected, so I asked if she could make the Swiftsure look dilapidated, damaged, and harmless? This I decided was Likely, and the Oracle agreed!
I made the move Secure an Advantage +spirit to see how well her spell worked and got a Strong Hit. With the Swiftsure looking deceptively scruffy and unthreatening, Arabella ordered the ship's sailing master, Rowena Zhou, to bring them up alongside the Crested Dawn.
Time for combat! I decided that capturing the Dawn would be a Formidable objective, but if the trick worked, the surprise factor would reduce the rank to Dangerous. I rolled Enter the Fray +shadow and got a Strong Hit. The handful of crew on the Crested Dawn were confused, but not expecting any trouble.
From there, the combat progressed very smoothly. Arabella and her crew boarded the Dawn, where she successfully cast another spell to stun the enemy sailors. It was a decidedly one-sided fight. I rolled Take Decisive Action with 8 progress and got a Weak Hit. "It gets complicated: The true nature of a foe or objective is revealed."
I decided that after taking the ship, Arabella searched the captain's quarters and discovered that they were full of arcane paraphernalia such as spellbooks, arcane instruments, and alchemy ingredients. Captain Fitz Hadley wasn't just a relic hunter -- he was a sorcerer!
I rolled Gather Information to see what else Arabella could discover from searching the ship and interrogating the captured crew and got a Weak Hit. I rolled on the Story Clue oracle and got the result "Contradicts a previously understood fact or clue," plus a 10 on my cursed die.
After some consideration and a few more Oracle questions, I decided that Captain Hadley's expedition was targeting a cave on Kiora, not a ruin, and that this cave was full of monsters. Specifically, night weaver spiders -- one of the options from the Beasts of the Land tables in the Sundered Isles guidebook.
Look, a cave full of treasure and giant spiders is just classic!
To The Caves
At this point, Arabella had to split up her crew. She sent three sailors back to the Swiftsure and left three others plus Master Zhou in charge of the Crested Dawn and its captured crew. That left her with roughly half a dozen crew to bring with her onto Kiora.
I decided to roll up another face for the crew, since Zhou was staying behind. Vesper "Harrow" Dias (she/her) is a former pirate who joined the Swiftsure after some calamity destroyed her old ship. She's youthful and tattooed, and her trademark weapons are a pair of matching hatchets.
I asked the Oracle if Arabella's investigation yielded directions to the caves, and it said yes, so she Set a Course. After a Strong Hit, she arrived at the caves without difficulty.
The entrance to the cave is in the side of a rocky hill. The afternoon light pours into the entrance, revealing a set of worn, carved stairs descending down into the dark. Arabella notices something on the wall just inside the cave -- a spider, crudely painted in black.
She purses her lips. Going into the caves with only six sailors as backup against thirty human enemies (including a sorcerer) and an unknown number of night weaver spiders is far too dangerous.
She turns to Vesper Dias, the young woman who was the first to volunteer to join Arabella on this excursion. Arabella doesn't know her well, though Dias is the only member of the Swiftsure crew close to Arabella in age. Dias keeps to herself, doesn't talk much. When Arabella tells her that they'll be setting an ambush for the enemy expedition, Dias just nods and gets to work.
They prepare the area around the cave entrance with traps and tripwires and set up some crude barricades to take cover behind. Arabella isn't taking any chances, not when they're outnumbered five to one. She intends to take out as many enemies as she can with the initial ambush and then force the rest to surrender.
With their preparations made, Arabella and her crew settle in to wait. The sun sets. Cinder and Wraith are both shining tonight, bright but not yet full.
It must be near midnight when noise begins to come from the cave. Arabella shifts, nudges the arm of the sailor next to her.
Ambush
Arabella and her crew entered the fray with a Strong Hit. I decided that the enemy expedition was a Formidable threat, mostly thanks to its sorcerous leader. After a strong start to the fight, Arabella found herself in a bad spot as Captain Fitz Hadley emerged from the melee to challenge her directly.
Before her blow lands, she is shoved backwards by an invisible force. Arabella stumbles. As she steadies herself, a figure emerges from the mass of enemies.
It's a man, graceful and distinguished, wearing a battle-scarred breastplate. He has a silver-hilted rapier in his hand. The sword's blade is enveloped in icy frost.
This must be the Crested Dawn's captain, Fitz Hadley. A sorcerer.
He lunges forward with his enchanted blade. Arabella grits her teeth and tries to parry the blow with her dagger.
As she blocks the attack, the blade's magical frost creeps up her arm, followed by an unnatural feeling of despair. Arabella snarls. She will not be cowed by some half-rate sorcerer! A sorcerer who serves the Hand of Theya, no less!
She lashes out with her own magic, trying to knock the rapier from Hadley's hand.
But Hadley wasn't playing around! They traded blows and spells for a while, with Arabella taking some serious damage to her health and spirit. She eventually managed to turn the tide and sink her dagger into Hadley's neck. As he fell to the ground, Arabella shouted for his crew to surrender -- a Strong Hit on the progress roll brought the fight to a close.
Arabella ordered Dias to secure the prisoners while she checked on Hadley. She discovered that Hadley wasn't dead, or even dying. A thick trail of frost was creeping up his arm to his throat -- he was being healed by his enchanted sword! Luckily, it seemed to be a slow process, so Arabella had plenty of time to address her own wounds.
After a quick Heal, I rolled Gather Information to learn about the expedition's trip into the caves. A Miss! As Arabella interrogated the expedition crew, she learned that they had failed to recover the relic within the caves.
"Captain only brought us out of the caves because of those fucking spiders! We couldn't rest down there. Couldn't even explore properly! He didn't want to stop searching, but they were picking us off one by one. And we still had to beg him for mercy!"
Arabella hisses, frustrated. She can't just walk away. This cave isn't a secret anymore. Other relic hunters will come looking sooner or later. Arabella has a duty to the Order to discover this cave's secrets first.
But she also has a bunch of prisoners to deal with, a captured ship, and an enemy captain covered in magical ice. She'll need to sort all of that out before she can delve into this spider infested cave.
Conclusion
This was a pretty exciting session! A lot of magic, a lot of action, and a few dramatic twists. Arabella has made some decent progress on her starting vow, but to actually fulfill it she'll need to head into the caves and face off against the night weavers. She's going to need some serious preparation to tackle that challenge, which we'll get into next session!
I know we'll get into it next session, because in between writing the previous recap and writing this one, I played...checks notes...eight sessions. Holy backlog, Batman! What can I say, this game is just too much fun.