The Giggling Dark: Session Twenty, Trait Vote the Second

This session in particular means a lot to me. As it turns out, the longest running Burning Wheel game I've ever run was nineteen sessions. The fact that I never got to do even close to a thirty session campaign was something I really wanted to correct, and this being  session twenty means I'm one step closer.

And Ryan had no idea what he wanted to do. Perfect.

I asked Ryan what he wanted to do, and he said he didn't have anything else he wanted to do with this point of the narrative. He only wanted one thing: to bring back Kora's memories. He told me that either meant one session or fifteen. Laughing, I told him to think fifteen. Ryan told me he expected as much. But after that he thought we should be done. Barring something unexpected I agreed with him. We're on the last act. If this goes according to plan it'll be the first Burning Wheel campaign I've run that wasn't cancelled prematurely. 

With that in mind, we took this Trait Vote very seriously. Sir Xellous' traits are as followed:

Character Traits

Single-Minded

Bereaved

Hard-Working

Blunt

Dice Traits

Prodigy

Chosen of Ikuinen Lampo

Call-On

Aura of Determination

This was a pretty short and sweet. I suggested that we turned Single-Minded to Tenacious (which makes it harder for him to lose a Duel of Wits by bringing him back once if he gets knocked out) and Bereaved to Tough as Nails (which lets him ignore Steel tests from pain and exhaustion). This was because Sir Xellous had pretty much proven to be an unstoppable juggernaut and, given how often he passed the Steel tests for these sorts of things anyway, I thought it would make sense to just make him one hard dude to kill. Ryan liked both these recommendations and made one of his own. Aura of Determination had never really been used, and he found that Commanding Aura (+1D to Command and the ability to help others with Steel tests) would probably be a better mechanical fit. I agreed.

Here's the new breakdown:

Character Traits

Hard-working

Blunt

Dice Traits

Prodigy

Chosen of Ikuinen Lampo

Commanding Aura

We then discussed the upcoming arc, as well as Ikuinen Lampo's role within it. Ryan asked for her to have a greater part in the story, preferably a bit of a love triangle, and I told him that Lampo would want to stop being in Genevieve's body. 

I then explained the difference between "Option A" and "Option B". Option A was a star creating their former body, all over again, and controlling it remotely, and is incredibly powerful. The downshot is that the body isn't actually human, and therefore cannot be healed by normal processes, so if something were to hurt the star's body very little could be done to help her. Option A would last about two to three months. It also required special stuff so that Ikuinen Lampo could recharge the form. Option B, on the other hand, was the reanimation of a human corpse, which is what happened with Genevieve. This form lasts longer, but there is no power that can be channeled. On the other hand, since the body is actually human it's easier to heal.

Ryan wanted Option B. Ikuinen wanted Option A. That would take a session to figure out. And that was before he even talked to the King about leaving his service. Yeah, good luck about that!