One Shot One: The Faith in the Desert

The party consisted of Naomi (David), Dinah (Chris), Caleb (Mariah), Esther (Clint) and Ahaz (Jen). Zac GMed. This one-off was played in the Microlite20 ruleset with influence from the Testament supplement by Green Ronin.
==Happenings==
The session started with the party gathered in the antechamber of King Tadmar Eram, king of the nation of Shomrom, the poorest nation in the Sandy Bay. It had barely any sources of fresh water and hardly any steady agriculture. Most of the food came from nomadic livestock herders in the desert and light trade with the neighboring nations.
To the North of Shomrom was the nation of Ghizarel. Ghizarel had the River of Vitality along its Northern border which was surrounded by lush farmland. Shomrom and Ghizarel had been hostile to each other for generations, fighting small skirmishes over the rocks and dunes between their towns. Any Shomromites that were seen in Ghizarelites land were killed.
The party heard rumors and stories of what was going on in the nation from others in the antechamber. The rumors were:
*A violent storm has lasted for weeks around the top of Mount Rovagug far to the North. (OOC: Something related to the Tablet of Destiny perhaps? ;) )
*The missionaries from the nearby Isle of Snake Lovers are coming through the country again looking for converts. They speak a dialect of Mannish, one of the few variations of the only language spoken in the region.
*Traders have started seeing weird items going to Ghizarel. Lots of strange spices and rare stones. One trader says he was contracted by a middleman in the nation of Akaniya to find a scroll on obscure cosmology for a Ghizarelite priest. Another trader says he sold a dragon shaped bong to a Ghizarelite.
*The annual Festival of Atonement is coming up. The rituals performed will cleanse the nation of its sin. A cripple, beggar or criminal is chosen by lot to be sacrificed to Kingu the Sin Dragon who eats the sin of the nation. This tradition is shared by many communities of the Sandy Bay and they travel to his lair together. They dress in all black cloaks and are ritually unclean.
*Another child disappeared near the River of Eels. King Tadmar is considering building a wall around it or at least putting up signs.
*Laban the Bronzesmith has been babbling and belligerent. The priests say it is a demonic possession. The other advisers think his humors are out of balance.
Then King Tadmar called them in and said that he had been spoken to by an angel who said, "Send your chosen few, that they may spy out the land of Ghizarel, which the Lord of Light gives unto the children of Shomrom." He told them to go find information about the land and the people and seek out any descendants of Shomron who lived in Ghizarel.
The party decided to travel to neighboring Akaniya, then get in a boat and travel down the Copper river to the coast. Then they would head out to the Bay and then travel up the River of Vitality to enter Ghizarel from the North, where no one would suspect Shomronites.
On the way, the party faced multiple temptations. First they passed by a tasty looking lost herd of goats. Luckily someone remembered that it is written, "You shall eat no flesh of any animal that has a split hoof and chews cud." Dinah still cut one open.
Next they ran into the Tomb of Eram the Great. Someone was able to decipher the inscription above the tomb door: "Here lies Eram the Great, entombed with his flaming armor, with his ever-sharpened sword and the golden amulet given to him by the Lord of Light, about all of which the stories are endless." Someone else remembered that it is written, "You shall not defile the grave of anyone who has followed me. This is the word of the Lord of Light." While playing a game of [Javelinball]] outside the tomb, Ahazthe athlete tried to show off and threw a javelin extra hard and hit the tomb. This cause the door to slide open and the javelin to fall inside. Dinah quickly went in after it.
When she got to the bottom of a flight of stairs, Dinah found a sarcophagus with a set of armor, a sword and an amulet on it. She hid the amulet under her shirt and when the rest of the part got to the bottom she held up the javelin and said, "Got it!"
Next the party encountered an anzu, a winged creature like a griffon, that none of them recognized. The anzu was not attacking them. Someone recalled that it is written, “Thus says the Lord of Light, 'I will punish Marduq for what he has done. Now go and strike the foul beasts of the sky and utterly destroy all that you see, and do not spare any; but put to death both adult and fledgling" They decided it was necessary to kill the anzu. They ended up beheading it in the Copper River. Anzu are usually guarding some form of treasure. This anzu was guarding an amulet that was identical to the one taken by Dinah.
In Akaniya, they had a run in with some "snake lover" missionaries from Oyashima. This sparked the idea to infiltrate Ghizarel dressed up as missionaries.
 The Party entered the city of Runtus and saw that Queen Tirzah Hershin had her capital there. They also noticed a black cloth thrown over the steeple of the temple of Aroden and a strange language being spoken and sung that none of them had heard of before.
The party split between going to a military academy and going to the temple of Aroden. At the military academy, Esther and Caleb learned that the Queen was planning to bring all the military to Runtus and then invade Shomron.
At the temple of Aroden, the rest of the party found only one priest remained and there was no congregation. The priest had candles in his ears to block out the singing. When asked what was going on, he was surprised and said that the Queen was summoning Papaoutei that night to marry him and gain access to his devil army. He said he was probably going to be sacrificed in order to summon him.
 The party tried to save the priest but ended up surrounded by Ghizarelites. They were shuffled off to the bonfire and summoning circle. Caleb messed up the chalk summoning circle while Esther assassinated Queen Tirzah.
The party ran away but because of her worst fear, a cat, Esther turned back. As the summoning failed, a few devils still made it out from Hell. One took control of Esther and tempted her to attack her companions. Dinah and Naomi were able to banish the devil with the amulet and a silver holy symbol of Aroden.
The attack by Ghizarel was stopped and the leadership was put into disarray. The information brought back by the party lead to a decisive victory for Shomron in the following conquest of Ghizarel and lead to a golden age in Shomron.
==Zac's GM Notes==
I pre-generated the characters and had the 5 players pick from the 6 characters. Once they were decided I handed out secrets on index cards. Each secret had a madlibs style blank to fill in such as "Your biggest fear is______". These were designed to create motivations for actions like beliefs in Burning Wheel.
I also had a system of bastardized Bennies. The bennies were represented by pennies. The system was that doing something that deliberately made the situation worse and fit your character would earn you a Benny. The Bennies could not be spent on your own player character. The benefits included: Reroll any d20 roll, Halve damage from an attack, Automatically make a next hit a critical and Declare a story detail such as having a piece of equipment or knowing someone. The most used one ended up being the declaring a story detail and I think it was the most interesting one overall. It gives the players narrative control which switches up the normal play style. It was difficult to come up with reasonable in character reasons for how the effect would happen and I think it'd be better if it just broke the fourth wall e.g. "The knife that you need falls out of your pocket. It was there the whole time." The Bennies worked very well to encourage players to increase drama and show off the flaws in their characters. The best moment in the game was when Ahaz through a javelin at Eram's tomb to show off, it accidentally opened the tomb, and Dinah ran into the tomb to get the javelin, taking an amulet from the tomb.
I tried to stick pretty hard to the themes: "God is testing his people. He is giving them temptations to see if they can withstand them." and "Doing the right thing is very hard. Doing the wrong thing is very easy." The ending fell apart a bit. I had L'esprit de l'escalier and thought of this alternate ending later: The party does a few more temptation challenges in Runtus, and the final showdown with Papaoutei is a group piety challenge to banish him. This would have stuck with the theme more. I should have taken a few minutes to gather my thoughts when I started losing control.
One very successful part was the use of visual and auditory illustrations. I sat in front of the television and extended my computer onto the television. I could show images on the screen and still have private documents open. This also let me use the stereo speakers. I found some good long videos of sand storms and oud music for the travelling first half. I used French music to illustrate the strange foreign culture in Ghizarel. The implication was that everything in French was in the Infernal language. I also specifically used the song A La Claire Fontaine by Oh My Darling because that was a song sung by The Tiefling in Campaign One: The Ancient Horrors. The implication was that the song was an old Infernal folk song. I used the song Papaoutei by Stromae as a dissonant cult chanting at the summoning in Runtus.
Category:One Shots