So this was a one-shot with Bryna and her husband David. They grabbed some pregens, Beren the dwarf (Yes, Bryna caught the troll in his name, Mr. Olavsrud and Crane! I should have recorded her rant and sent it to you.), played by David, and Karolina, played by Bryna. This session was a bit of a tech demo of sorts. After many failures at running Torchbearer I was seeing if I could run even a single session without a TPK. David had tried RPGs before but apparently had a bad experience. Bryna was probably trying to see how many things she could kill that session. Well all had our goals. Off we went!
A hurricane hit the port town. A galley, rumored to be overladen with gold from a far away and exotic land, was upborne by the winds and lodged betwixt two cliffs near the town. It somehow sat there until morning, suspended many feet above the roiling surf. The townsfolk knew about the ship, of course, but the town itself was in shambles, so what eelse was there to do for the moment?
Beren and Karolina felt differently.
The pair trudged up to the beach, towards one of the cliffs that the galley was lodged between. Beren had a grappling hook and some rope. With Karolina's help he threw it up the cliffside. It lodged in a crevice and held. The wind was still howling. They pulled themselves up the rope and walked over the abyss where the galley was suspended. It was obvious from their point of view that the galley was rapidly falling apart; they needed to hurry. So Beren hooked to the top of the cliff and practically threw himself, gleefully, along the cliff. Rolling her eyes, Karolina followed behind, a bit more slowly, cautiously, telling Beren to stop screwing around with the wind.
Getting onto the deck of the ship the pair encountered almost hurricane force winds. They managed not t o be blown off the ship, but only just barely, breaking a rib or two as they were batted about by the wind. Steadying herself, and nursing her ribs, Karolina began to examine the deck, pointing out areas that were critically damaged. Turns out that Karolina had been a carpenter in a previous life. Beren then looked around for any healing herbs or medicinal, and managed to find some inside of one of the barrels that had pushed against the railing of the galley.
The deck of the ship had cracked in half. Beren made his way to the rift and looked down into it. The hull had partially broken on a jutted section of the cliff; a leather strap wrapped around the outcropping. There were corpses in the hold. The stairs were behind Beren, but the clearly glorious thing to do was rappel down and grab the bag that was probably on that strap. Using some of Karolina's pointers about the deck, Beren attached his grappling hook to said deck and launched himself down, confident he had place the grappling hook correctly.
The hook slipped. And then held. it took Beren a minute to recover from the shock.
While all that was going on Karolina took the stairs as cautiously as she could, taking a swig of wine from the skin at her belt. It was just as well that she didn't go down the stairs quickly: the corpses were beginning to move! Brandishing her spear, Karolina threw herself into the fray. One of the zombies bit Karolina she felled it. Karolina felt sick, violently so. On the ground near her foot was a ring. She pocketed it.
Beren had come back up with the bag, which held a lamp. The both of them found there were still bags of gold aboard; three bags apiece. Karolina downed the rest of the wine she had on her and loaded herself down with the gold. The ship shifted; it was time to go. Leaning into the winds, they came back up top. Beren got his grappling hook to the top of the cliff again, despite his ribs. Once he'd climbed up he Karolina, feeling feverish, wrapped the rope around herself and winced as she was pulled up by Beren.
They went back to town, laden down with the Ring of Power from acrost the sea and a magical lamp.
Final caveat: The scenario idea came from the Torchbearer's Discord server. When I get home I'll look up who did it. The folks on there are awesome, thank you!
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