The ongoing playtest of Bodil’s Gap continues! In part three, the PCs battled giant-spawned crab monsters on the beach at Askarfjord, the creatures having been drawn by Ylva's out-of-control seiðr leaving the sand and water awash in whale's blood.
The Cast
Ingvild Scoreslayer, Dýrsark - Ingvild is an old and bitter warrior, cunning but prone to the rage of a berserker. He was brother-in-law to the murdered Þejn, Arnolf, and was once a close advisor to the Laxbrynjung clan's leadership. However, he has since had a falling out with the new Þejn, Trond—Arnolf's younger brother—over the execution of Arnolf's will.
Mundr Ivaldisson, Óttimaðr - Mundr is a promising but untested young man endowed with the strength of giants by a mysterious incident during his travels abroad. A Laxbrynjung by birth, Mundr the only child of the late Ivaldi, the youngest of Arnolf's brothers. Since Arnolf's death, he has ingratiated himself to Trond in an effort to keep the family from splitting apart.
Ylva Blood-Cup, Seiðkona - Ylva is a sorceress endowed with the power to see and speak with spirits, and uses her magic to curse her enemies with great misfortune. Though dwelling apart from the clan in the woods, Ylva is an ally of the Laxbrynjungs, having been a close friend and confidant of Arnolf's murderd heir, Steinar.
The Game
With the beach cleared of the nárikrabbir and the PCs satisfied that their conjured whale's blood is an effective bait for drawing the creatures out, the party turns to preparations for their trip to the crab's lair. There they will need to find and recover the sail and figurehead of the Askarfjorders' wrecked ship so their kinsmen can join them on the raid that will be taking place in a few days' time.
The crabs' half-submerged mound is just up the coast, but getting there poses a challenge. The creatures have already proven they can wreck a longship, and the PCs don't want to put their own vessel in danger unnecessarily. At the same time, getting to the mound out on the water will require a boat of some kind.
Ingvild, who has the most experience planning raids and fighting enemies, proposes a course of action: the party will take two smaller rowboats up the coast while sending some men on foot to shadow the boats along the shore. In the event of danger the rowboats can quickly land, and the crabs can be fought on the beach by greater numbers instead of by a few out on the water. When they get to the mound, one team of warriors will form a shield wall on the shore and use Ylva's cursed goblet to draw out the crabs while a smaller team ventures into the vacated warren to find the sail and figurehead.
Pleased with their plan, the PCs solicit volunteers to go with them. Various fighters from their own crew and from among the Askarfjorders sign on, but only two are of note. First is Froda, the steersman of their own ship and the veteran sailor who is showing Mundr the ropes of his first command—and a loyal partisan of Trond's, keeping an eye on the potentially rebellious PCs for the new Þejn. Second is Valdis, the daughter of the chieftain of Askarford, Skadi Battle-Brand. A young and brash shield-maiden, Valdis is eager for battle and impatient of any delay in finding it.
With their crew assembled, the PCs set out for the nárikrabbir's lair, which is a massive mound of half-submerged timber somewhat akin to a beaver lodge. When they get in sight of it, Valdis and majority of the men disembark to prepare the defensive position on the beach, and take Ylva's cup, still sealed inside a barrel, with them. Once ready, they crack the barrel's seal and whale's blood comes pouring out, tell every crab nearby that dinner is served. As the sea begins to froth with scuttling horrors pouring out of the nearby mound, the PCs and Froda take the other rowboat out to the crab's lair and prepare to delve.
Ylva starts out by separating her spirit from her body in order to scout ahead. Travelling in spirit-form down towards the mound, she's drawn to one side of the structure, where she can sense another spirit in distress. Passing through the rough wall, she enters a chamber where what appears to be a soaked and naked woman sporting several bleeding wounds huddles behind a makeshift barricade, clutching a flint knife.
Approaching softly, Ylva learns that the woman is indeed a spirit of some kind. She claims to have entered the mound seeking her stolen skin, which was in the possession of some sailors whose ship the crabs wrecked and used to expand their warren, but that she underestimated the beasts' viciousness and has since become trapped, unable to recover her skin or to leave.
Ylva's knowledge of spirits helps her recognise that the woman before her is a selkie, a seal-spirit of the sea that can take human form by shedding its skin, but that cannot transform back into a seal without it. She promises to recover the skin if she can, and the selkie offers her a boon if the skin is returned to her.
With that, Ylva returns to the rest of the party to report. The PCs decide to forge onward, and enter the mound through one of three apertures visible at water level. They land their rowboat in a chamber filled with sticky silt and mud washed in by the tide, and have to struggle through the muck to get deeper. Moving past, they enter a chamber filled with deep water through which a strong current appears to be flowing, as evidenced by the dragging leaves of the branches that hang from the ceiling down into the water.
To avoid the current, Mundr begins to cross the room hand-over-hand, climbing from one branch to another while trailing a rope to help the others cross. There is a moment of peril when he almost slips, but manages to cling on and reach the far side. Aided by the rope, the others have an easier time, and soon everyone is able to press on.
The way forward seems to be a tunnel, but as the party get farther in it slopes down and submerges. Scouting ahead once more, Ylva turns into a fish to investigate the tunnel, and finds that it does indeed emerge into air once more. The way is dark and murky, however, and progress requires a hair-pin turn that would be almost invisible in the gloom for someone who didn't know it was there. Forewarned, the party is able to swim through without getting trapped, and emerge into a chamber that appears to be constructed mostly out of a large, intact section of a ship's hull. Near the back, a jumble of chests seem to comprise the ship's cargo, while three bloated and waterlogged corpses seem to be all that remains of its crew.
Remembering the selkie's words, Ylva goes to investigate the chests, but as she draws near, the corpses leap to their feet as draugar, and battle is joined. Ingvild and Mundr lay into the revenants with their weapons aided by Froda, while Ylva curses them. The draugar are tough, but their weapons are corroded, and everyone escapes with only minor injuries when the last of them falls. Alongside the selkie's sealskin, which Ylva takes for safekeeping, the wreck's cargo also includes some more mundane treasure, in the form of trade goods—most notably, a small earthenware jar of rare spices.
Forging on, the party passes through a chamber that appears to be a larder, where pungent carcasses of sea life are laid out next to mounds of mouldering bones. The party have to dodge some territorial moray eels that have taken up residence in the submerged tangles of the uneven wooden floor, but are able to pass on, ascending a rough tunnel shaped out of planks torn from wrecked ships, the walls and floor bristling with rusting nails that protrude from the wood. Ylva uses her seiðr to blunt their points, while the others pick their way through carefully.
Arriving now near the top of the mound, the party emerge into a chamber positively swarming with crabs, where the creatures are hard at work expanding their home. A swath of the mound stands open to the sky, while even as the PCs watch, crabs drag water-logged timber up to continue constructing the chamber.
There is little time for talk, as the party is quickly noticed by the crabs. Scuttling swarm of the things descend on them, and the fighting is close and brutal. The crabs' tough shells prove as difficult to penetrate as before, and it takes Ingvild's berserk fury and the magic of Mundr and Ylva to dispatch the creatures.
During the fighting Froda is badly injured, his side torn by a crab's pincer and his blood splashed liberally across the wet floor. Ingvild, always opposed to any follower of Trond, is in favour of letting him die, while Mundr feels a sense of loyalty to the man who has helped him learn the ways of the sea. Ultimately, they bandage him as best they can, but little else can be done; he cannot continue on with them, but nor can he turn back unaided. Froda volunteers to remain behind in the chamber, propped against the wall with sword and shield within reach, and promises he will stay alive long enough for them to come back for him once they've found the sail and figurehead. Concerned about both Froda and the party left to fight crabs on the beach, the PCs are without time to dither, and are forced to press on.
Fortunately, immediately upon moving on from the chamber where they left Froda, Ylva recognizes the next passage—the barricade to the side, there, marks the entrance to the room in which the selkie is holed up!
Breaking through the barricade, the PCs find the spirit still lingering. Ylva takes out the selkie's skin, and the spirit is overjoyed to receive it again. Thanking the party, she promises again to grant them a boon, and as what they wish of her. After some debate, Mundr asks the spirit if she can do anything to help Froda, who is still inches from death and lying only a short distances away.
The selkie agrees, and together they venture back to the previous chamber. There they find that Froda has passed out, and is lying unconscious. Seeing his wounds, the selkie says that she will have to take him away to heal him, but that she will return him to his home once he has recovered. Ingvild and Mundr are dubious, but with Ylva's reassurances that selkies are not usually malicious, they finally agree. The selkie wraps herself in her seal-skin, takes Froda in her grip, and dives out the open wall of the chamber to disappear into the sea without even a splash.
And beyond that chamber, at last they find what they're looking for.
The cracked mast of the Askarfjorders' ship seems to be partially supporting the roof of the chamber, and from the crossbeam the sail still hangs. Below, sunk beneath the deep water, the dim outline of the figurehead can be seen.
While Ylva transform into an octopus to haul the figurehead up, Mundr climbs the mast, but neither task goes smoothly. Mundr almost slips on the slick wood, while Ylva struggles with the figurehead and ends up cracking the wood. In the end, however, both are able to recover their prizes. And without needing to recover Froda, they are able to depart the mound without too much additional danger, retracing their steps back towards the rowboat.
It only remains to see how Valdis and the warriors on the beach fared, and to return the Askarfjorder's items back to them so their new ship can be properly outfitted. If all goes well, they and their kin will be able to sail home to Ymafjord just in time for the raid, and find Froda alive and well, waiting for them.
If all goes well.
Behind the Scenes
This was the party's first dungeon crawl of the campaign, and rather than lay out the mound as I might for another dungeon, I wanted to use a random generation system that I've had some some success with in the past. I wrote some descriptions for six different chamber nodes and six different linking passages, and turned each into a table to roll on. Then I wrote the following move:
Whenever you try to find your way through the mound, roll+WIS.
- On a 7+, you reach a new Chamber.
- On a 7-9, you must cross a Passage first.
- On a 12+, you must cross a Passage but reach a Goal Chamber.
For every two chambers you've visited, take +1 on your roll.
I had initially kept the sail room and the figurehead room as two separate Goal Chambers, but we only reached the first one towards the end of the session, after I had run out of normal chambers, so I ended up merging them into one.
All in all, I'm pleased with how things went—especially the drama with Froda, who they've been very conflicted about. Ingvild especially started out keen to get rid of what he considered Mundr's babysitter and a spy for Trond, but after Froda fought at their side and risked death against the crabs, everyone became a lot more fond of him. When the PCs used their boon from the selkie to save him instead of asking for something to benefit themselves, I was incredibly proud.
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