Forgotten Suns: Log - Beginning

Forgotten Suns

This section contains excerpts from the "playtesting" sections of the Forgotten Suns adventure.

Gutts, a dawn caste solar with a huge sword, started as part of a mercenary company operating in the plains south of Nexus. He dreamt of standing on spire watching the rising sun, surrounded by jungle. His perspective in this dream, on one spire looking out, meant that he never saw the other spires in his dreams, which turned out to cause a lot of conversation later on. He followed the pull to the south fairly readily.

Guen, a changing moon caste lunar who doesn't like other lunars much, started just after her rites of passage, hanging out around the Ten Tribes of the Oak. He dreamt of a moon rising over a five-spired building surrounded by jungle (while in cat form, at night). He followed the pull to the southwest easily.

10th day of Resplendent Water, RY 769
Eastern jungle	6 January 2004

Both Gutts and Guen approached from roughly the same direction. Guen was in cat form and Gutts 'smelled unusual' to him. They discussed their dreams very soon after introducing themselves. To cross, Gutts used his massive sword to cut down a tree. One of Guen's animal forms was an alligator, so the two crossed the 60 feet of tree, then swam the remainder. The swimming roll was made less difficult for Guen in alligator form and, with Gutts holding on and both of them rolling pretty well, they made it across.

11th day of Resplendent Water, RY 769
Eastern jungle	6 January 2004

Gutts and Guen dispatched the spiders without much problem, though they did take damage. They learned a lot about exalted combat, as well as their own strengths and limitations.

12th day of Resplendent Water, RY 769
Eastern jungle	6 January 2004

An NPC (Cruxis) was introduced in this encounter. Having been ambushed in his sleep while making camp on the lake shore, the bandits were rifling through his belongings and celebrating. Cruxis spent the encounter hog tied, as the circle pretty much annihilated the bandits.

13th day of Resplendent Water, RY 769
Eastern jungle	6 January 2004

Guen, a lunar, has a crocodile as one of his forms, which proved able to kill the serpent nearly single handily.

14th day of Resplendent Water, RY 769
Eastern jungle	6 January 2004

The pursued was the NPC Jorias, who used Graceful Crane Stance and Monkey Leap Technique to run across the tree branches (and, consequently, glowed brightly). After a brief conversation, combat erupted. The speed of Volaris' blade kept Gutts dodging most of the combat, though he eventually cut him in half (as well as some infantrymen). Guen took his woolly mammoth form and, though taking a lot of arrows, disarmed and later killed Mordock. Cruxis eventually managed to kill an infantry man that was harassing Gutts (and was extremely proud of himself). Jorias managed to pretty much savage Suriel, who used Shrouding the Body and Mind to evade him after taking a lot of damage. He also transferred some damage from Gutts to himself, allowing Gutts to continue the fight.

Suriel, meanwhile, attempted to keep attacking, as her comrades were still alive at that point. Her wounds made this difficult, however, and her attacks allowed Trieste to locate her. He used that moment to switch sides and (with a really lucky shot), he put an arrow in her chest. The combat finished soon after, with everyone but Trieste being killed. The last of the infantry died most spectacularly when Guen (still in mammoth form) hurled him into the air and Gutts (on Guen's back) bisected him in midair.

Trieste was spared, and he delivered his proposal to the party. After some discussion, they agreed to send word to a specific bar in Nexus to arrange a meeting with Trieste's benefactors.

17th day of Resplendent Water, RY 769
Eastern jungle	6 January 2004

The party was confused by the Lady of the Vine, and distracted by her nakedness. They behaved themselves, though, and the Lady gained an improved opinion of them, though she elected to remain mostly neutral in what followed.

18th day of Resplendent Water, RY 769
Eastern jungle	6 January 2004

The first of the mutant thunder lizards didn't last a turn, as he had no interest in dodging. His mate was harder to kill, however, and managed to do a little damage before succumbing.

The party didn't detect the barrier until someone went through it. They all decided to go through and take the essence drain without investing much in stopping the effect.

The circle did 40 points of damage in two rounds, so the spine chains didn't last long.

Through a convoluted variety of techniques, including numerous shape shifts, the characters managed to attach a makeshift rope to the lower balcony of the Dawn tower and climb up.

19th day of Resplendent Water, RY 769
Manse	6 January 2004

As the circle was new to Exalted, and neither player character had any lore skill to speak of, the NPC Jorias (pg. 54) educated them on manses. Guen attuned to it on the first attempt. Gutts required several, having only one die to make the attempt. Just by coincidence, Guen's dreams were not very powerful or frequent, which led the players to believe that lunars were not as strongly connected to the manse.

The clinching strategy proved fairly effective against the circle initially, particularly since the parrots initially only faced two of the characters. Once the rest of the group entered the combat, the parrots were not much of a problem, though the combat went on for more rounds than expected. The circle, apart from the lunar, also elected to use these birds as food.

The circle befriended the Groundskeeper and tended to call on him when they were confused.

20th day of Resplendent Water, RY 769
Manse	6 January 2004

After all of Qurrl's planning, his plot was interrupted when the party's lunar tracked him by smell and found him alone in the magic library (solar sublevel, pg. 41). He immediately unleashed charms, but Gutts was uncharacteristically interested in negotiation. Completely surprised by this, Qurrl simply asked them to turn the barrier off. Guen convinced the party to do this, but only on the condition that the demons return to directly to Malfeas. To enforce this, the demons would be locked into the testing room (solar sublevel) when the barrier was turned off. The demons readily agreed, swearing to return to hell.

The flaw in this plan is that once the barrier was turned off, the demons could just dematerialize and leave the manse undetected, which is what they did and are now roaming the jungle. Unfortunately for the circle, the only member with enough occult skill to spot this flaw in the plan (an NPC) botched his roll.

The deal with Morakken was more cordial, and he just left once the barrier was reversed.

21st day of Resplendent Water, RY 769
Manse	6 January 2004

The solars passed through the barrier while the party was investigating the lunar sphere. After resting to regain their essence, Yrminas and Adrios scaled the courtyard wall while Righteous Glimmer remained in his cloud trapeze.

After a quick tour of the solar tower, they moved to the central building. Yrminas bored of this, and left to explore the lunar sphere while Adrios remained in the central building. The players saw Yrminas coming through the archway of the central building into the lunar courtyard. Given her jade armor and arrogant attitude, they assumed she was dragon-blooded.

After some well-meaning but ill-fated negotiations, two circle members walked out to meet Yrmanis. One of these was Guen, a lunar who bows to no one and really hates dragon-blooded, so Yrmanis' ultimatum did not go over well and swords were drawn pretty quickly.

The length of the courtyard, as well as a Magma Kraken spell, kept the party separated for a good deal of the combat. This proved nearly fatal to Guen (particularly with some lucky damage rolls by the solars in the first round); however, Yrmanis figured Guen would be of more use to her alive.

The Magma Kraken spell was not as lethal as it might seem, though it would have been more so in a more confined space. Towards the end of the battle, Gutts pitted his Peony Death Blossom against Flow Like Blood. The verdict: a blossom plus grand daiklave creates a flow of blood, though Gutts was also fairly badly wounded.

One party member (Cruxis) spent an entire round doing nothing but trying to spot the source of Adrios' arrows, so managed to defeat him. By sheer coincidence, both Yrminas and Adrios were brought down to exactly incapacitated, and the party spared them.

Adrios accepted an offer to join the group. Yrminas avoided death by swearing (and sanctifying) an oath to a) leave the manse, b) release Adrios from his oath to her, c) never attack the circle again, d) show people more respect and e) 'try to help people'. The party returned her armor and weapon, and she left. Glimmer managed to flee in his cloud trapeze, but passed through barrier without enough essence and plummeted to his death.

22nd day of Resplendent Water, RY 769
Manse	6 January 2004

Two characters spotted Saerssa trying to sneak out of the lunar Sphere and managed to tackle her before she could escape. She took on her beastman form and broke away, but was soon tackled again. While struggling, the lunar managed to calm her down and convince her to talk. Ultimately, she agreed to trade the hearthstone for permission to attune to the manse and training in how to do so. While being trained, Saerssa took a fancy to one of the NPCs (Cruxis, pg. 52) as a potential (if temporary) mate.

1st day of Descending Water, RY 769
Manse	6 January 2004

The party took in Regret willingly, and brought him back to health.

2nd day of Descending Water, RY 769
Manse	6 January 2004

The lunar turned into a bird to scout out the approaching army. He managed to slip into the line and talk to the slaves, but was nearly discovered and had to flee.

Meanwhile, the rest of the circle dug a trench around the solar tower (where the main doors are) and filled it with spikes. They also scouted out several ambush sites to use in case the shield failed. From an earlier encounter (pg. 24) the players had access to huge chunks of obsidian, which they used to build deadfall-type traps.

3rd day of Descending Water, RY 769
Manse	6 January 2004

This encounter has been changed somewhat because of what happened during field testing. Originally, Carrionis delivered the ghost's message in person, yelling it from the edge of the jungle. The circle was able to hunt down Carrionis before he could exit the shield (lunars that can fly tend to be able to outrun anything on the ground) and kill him after a pretty brutal battle. This threw all of the plans into chaos.

4th day of Descending Water, RY 769
Manse	6 January 2004

Due to the circle's killing of Carrionis early and subsequent actions, only the early stages of this plan were brought to fruition. Vision had long since fled by the time a negotiation with Makarios would have been completed.

The circle managed to kill Carrionis early (pg. 29) and had a number of methods of reconnaissance available to them (though it took them a while to realize the scrying pools (pg. 39) could be used for this purpose). Guen realized that, being a Changing Moon, he had the ability to appear as Carrionis. This idea was all the more effective against fairly mindless creatures like zombies, and the circle brought the strategy to bear with devastating effectiveness.

Disguised as Carrionis, Guen visited each working group of zombies, pointed to the manse and said "go". Because the zombies had been raised by the Lover and given instructions to follow Carrionis (and after some really good manipulation + performance rolls on Guen's part), the zombies moved in groups to the manse, where upon they destroyed themselves one after the other against the shield. A fight broke out with one of the spine chains before Guen got to it, but the circle took it down. The other chain happily strolled into the shield. Guen saved her best rolls for the exquisite undead aide, who also was convinced to assault into the shield (leaving behind a sturdy, if confused, horse).

The same tactics proved as decisive when brought to bear on the other side of the manse. Guen even managed to fool Vision, though her robes were not fooled at all, and attacked Guen. When Vision realized what this meant, she ran. Meanwhile, Gutts couldn't resist swinging huge pieces of obsidian in great arcs to crush many zombies at once. Some of the zombies and deathrings got sidetracked by this and started to attack Gutts, though they were soon redirected by Guen.

As the zombies shambled towards the shield, the captive humans scattered. A couple of them were killed by a fleeing Vision to feed her essence pool. With the zombies dutifully incinerating themselves, Guen took the form of a hawk and tried to track down Vision Consorting with the Dead. By the time the circle caught up with her, she had sacrificed her horse and entered the Labyrinth.

Of the different plans, this one was defeated last. Using tactics similar to they way they defeated Plan D (pg. 34), the characters managed to free most of the captives and convinced the undead to destroy themselves. Vision managed to escape, however, after a chase.

The characters allowed the humans into the manse for a night and though Guen tried to convince them (particularly the monk) they had nothing to fear from anathema, Gutts tended to toy with the humans, somewhat defeating Guen's case. All of the surviving mortals were allowed to return home, including Moraj.

Interlude

5th day of Descending Water, RY 769 to 25th day of Descending Water, RY 769
Manse	6 January 2004

Jaguan responds to summons. Agrees to train Saerssa if:

• He can attune to manse.
• Guen and Saerssa agree to scarring ceremony.
• Saerssa gives gift in exchange (she chooses horn of the ways).
• Fox gets free access to manse and Saerssa's domain.

Regret bails. Increasingly paranoid about Fair Folk. Resonance increases. Screaming matches with Kruxis on occasion.

Ardios wants to stay behind and guard the manse. Digs the simple life.

Jorias discovers water communication (visual only).Jorias may want to stay and study the manse, but eventually elects not to.

Lady of the Vine makes a proposal: turn off the shield most of the time, and she will alert us to coming intruders.

NPCs during two months:

• Regret of the Sun: Headed into desert, possibly to Gem.
• Trieste: Travel back to Nexus.
• Vision Consorting With the Dead: Walking the Labyrinth
• Yrminas: Witnessed approach of army of dead. Shadowed the group of mortals back to their homes. En route, they were attacked by predators and hobgoblins, and she interceded to save them. Once they reached the village, she left the mortals and a legend behind.
• Qurrl: Exploring the world.
• Limonis: Returned the hell.
• Render, Spew & Margruff: Materialized just outside the manse and traveled through the jungle and into the Marukan Alliance. Raped, slaughtered and ate a village. Discovered and enlisted by Fair Folk.

Circle training at manse.

26th day of Descending Water, RY 769
Grey River	6 January 2004

While en route to Nexus the circle finds a guild checkpoint on the river who have bound Mikani, a water spirit, with a magic jar and are using her to extract tolls. The are destroyed and the spirit is set free.

Downriver, a village on the river is on fire. The smoke can be seen from many miles away. All of the inhabitants have been killed or dragged away. By the time the boat gets there, it is mostly just smoldering.

Griffin, Gutts' old commander walks the ruins with seven soldiers. They just got there and claim they are tracking some supernatural force that is tormenting Varsi. Reports vary, but it could be Fair Folk, demons or a cult. They always seem to have disappeared by the time the Band of the Hawk gets there.

Griffin is intrigued to see Gutts, but the others will give him the cold shoulder.

Varsi

1st day of Ascending Earth, RY 769 to 3rd day of Ascending Earth, RY 769
Varsi	6 January 2004

Fair Folk have subverted a Barbarian horde. The diplomat feeds on their religious fervor. The cataphract feeds on their lust for battle. The diplomat is also trying to fill the dreams of the inhabitants of Varsi with terror. To this end, they have recruited the tree demons (Render, Spew and McGruff), who sneak into the town and brutally kill three people each night, usually well guarded people. The barbarians (who hold the ape sacred) will eventually invade, with the demons charging with them. If possible, the Fair Folk will attempt to bait and ambush hunting parties looking for the barbarians. Fair Folk frequently enter city, having taken over ownership on an inn.

Barbarians, demons, fair folk. Birds, snakes, etc. Aquire moonsilver box from a merchant named Jarvick, who pays them to deliver it to Milo Divivovich in Nexus.

4th day of Ascending Earth, RY 769 to 20st day of Ascending Earth, RY 769
Grey River	6 January 2004

Mikani sped Cruxis' pocket boat down the Grey River tirelessly until reaching Nexus.

Horde of karmeus stealing local children for food. What to do with the child? Thorbin from Bounty. Training. Snakebud when near Nexus. Jorius gets nervous as the circle approaches Nexs and wants disguising. Disguised as "Kerrick".

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