The Witch's Mistake

 Session Notes (04/15/22)

Game: Beyond the Wall

Scenario Pack: The Witch’s Mistake

Players: 3

Not everyone could make it for Call of Cthulhu this week so we played a Beyond the Wall One-Shot:

Characters:

Shimeka, the untested thief

Dumitru, the young woodsman

Ihrin, the witch’s prentice

Session:

We began by making characters and filling out the scenario.  This process in Beyond the Wall is really great and produces a village map along with a list of Important People in the village, all designed by the players when prompted by their character packs.

The adventurers are on the cusp of adulthood, and the shared world creation is both simple and highly inspired.  With a short break, I used the shared work to create a small scenario using one of the game’s scenario packs.  An important detail that had been established was the death of the village witch due to some demonic or spiritual possession of her apprentice.  This led nicely into the “witch’s mistake” scenario!

The characters began the adventure by discovering a large and legendary boar in the forest, dead.  An oddly dressed, corpulent traveler with a strange accent stopped by and asked them a series of puzzling questions before heading towards their village.  The untested thief managed to steal his satchel before he left, and opened it up to discover a blank journal.  The young woodsman cut into the boar and found a strange marble rock in the boar’s stomach, similar to one he had taken from a mysterious ruin.  The witch’s prentice then used her magical senses to discern they both had powerful spells cast on them.

They went to mysterious ruins, where the witch’s sister lives as a hermit.  Over a pot of stew, they learned the ruins can undo illusions.  By rubbing the book against a well, they discovered the book had details on all villagers, written in a demonic script, including whether they were “lost” “claimed” or “captured”.  When the stone was rubbed, it was revealed to be a potent poison.  The young woodsman began to die, but fortune saved him and he dove into a stream, washing it off himself.  The book was actively changing, adding more and more villagers to “captured”, causing them to hurry to the village.

They opted to sneak around, and even though the Witch’s Prentice was loud and clumsy, the untested thief’s guidance helped them skulk about.  They visited Grandmother Weaver’s cottage, to find it empty and full of signs of a struggle.  They then made their way to the inn, where they discovered that the elders were meeting to discuss an illness that had befallen many villagers, as well as a spate of missing people.

The adventurers whipped up some herbal remedies for the sick (all of them had some herbal related skill) and they stole the Inn’s guestbook, which the strange man had signed.  His name was obscured by some sort of spell.  The adventurers returned it to the mysterious ruins where the name was revealed to be ANAXAMANDER.

They tracked ANAXAMANDER and the captured villagers to the secret thieves’ space beneath the smith’s workshop.  There they confronted the demon, who barely had time to get a word in before they banished him using his true name.  They knew they were left with the mystery of what the demon wanted, but were content in having saved their village.

Gamemaster Notes:

I forgot how much I love Beyond the Wall.  I’ve run through 4 of the scenario packs now, and each has been a hit.  My favorite is probably the Opened Barrow, but the Angered Fae is a close second.  The players all agreed that there is something about those character packs that really help them hone in on the young adult aspect of play.  They said that it encouraged them to act a little more “brash, like a kid” than making careful and informed decisions.

The rules are seamless in play, with one of the simplest skill systems in an rpg that still delivers the feeling of being capable.  The magic system as well is really fine tuned, but due to the scenario, neither skills, nor combat, nor magic really defines play.  It is the relationships between characters and the knowledge of the village locations that is most useful to the characters.

I’d love to get a group of folks into a long term Beyond the Wall campaign, so I could try out the Further Afield material.  Creating a hex map as a group project, and seeding a couple Threat Packs would be really fun, I think.  Between the player ideas, published material, and the threat pack, the hex map would be full of plenty of sessions’ worth of material.