Black Watch Seven: Safer Calamities, Together

Scribe Notes

Summary

Adventure: Black Watch Seven: Safer Calamities, Together
GM: Ben Tabener
Season: Winter 826 WK
Night: Saturday
Level: Low

Party

• Hrothgar Bronzebeard - Mad Dwarven Binder - Alex (Party Leader)
• Kharmul - played by Chris (Scribe)
• Firenya - played by Mandos (Mil Sci)
• Athos - Dwarven Warrior / Namer - Martin
• Mattin - Halfling celestial psycho - Kyan
• Celeste - played by Dean
• Nick Bone - Elven Necromancer - Heather

Time on adventure

1st of Winter wk to tbc 826 WK

Employer

Harry Kale

Mission

Act as subject matter experts and mentors in identifying magic, strategies in magical combat, and participate in the preparation of some initial scenarios and drills. Advise The Seagate Watch training staff on Guard procedures in regards to interactions with magic. Review some new tools that Watch is trialing.

Pay

8000sp, access to training, and first pick from the original Secure Arcane Evidence Room decommissioning (AKA the closet that the Station Master has been threatening to brick over if something isn't done about the voices and glowing.)

Scribe Notes

Session 1 - Seagate

Duesday 1st Frost

We meet at the guild and discuss the mission with Harry Kale. Tarahell Alatáriël is here to ensure his 'daughter' Celeste is in this party. Harry is a liaison for the Seagate Council, and he, along with Acting-Senior Sergeant Shadrock have approached the Guild on behalf to retain the services of some adventurers to help them structure and administer a training course for some recently graduated guards over the course of the Winter 826wk.

After the regrettable events of the Summer 824wk (Black Watch: Let it Burn), Aka "Impapalooza", the Watch has been working on evidence based policing and outreach strategies to improve their ability to detect and mitigate supernatural factors and engage with criminal elements using magic, as well as strengthening it's partnerships with the community. Naturally, that includes Cazarla's most far ranging and heroic practitioners, the Seagate Guild of Adventurers. They have stressed to the Guild Council this is not intended to slight or supplant the Guild's expertise in these fields, but to aid in speedy and accurate assessment of disturbances on the scale between "tipsy firemage" and "literal lord of hellfire" scenarios.

We address the guild issues and then head into town to the Guard Headquarters. We then head off to Harry's place which is the The Dukes Arms that he operates with his wife 'Becky' (An understandable mistake - Rebecca Kale is the manager and the fact that they are married mostly means that Harry has slightly more leniency with pitching up at short notice with "council guests". And as the Duchy has a stake in the establishment, it's less about funneling of taxpayer funds and more about supporting local Ducal interests) and we have good quality food and drink. We get illuminated about a training centre outside of town we are to use - its a deserted village' from the time of the Dark Circle, known as Duntow Ruins. We have a quiet evening and an uneventful nights sleep.

Session 2

Th'rsday 3rd Frost

We rise early, grab horses we had sent here and ride to Guard HQ. There we gather up a wagon full of supplies and 2 other associates (Michelle Serento and Vivian Serento) and depart the city heading SE towards South_Gate (the Carzalan town - not to be confused with Southgate in Southern Ranke).
Michelle is dressed warmly in White robes while her brother Vivian is bundled up almost completely on the cart in dark hooded robes. They stay on the wagon along with some of the party who choose not to ride horses for the day.
The day passes uneventfully and we arrive in SouthGate before dusk, get lodging in The Golden Sheath Inn and have a good meal before setting watches to include Vivian who stays with the wagon in the stables for everyone's safety.
Night Passes uneventfully.

Frysday 4th Frost

We rise early and after breakfast we are quickly on the road again, heading SW to Broken Arrow and then East to Duntow Ruin. We arrive at "Camp Jamieson" by noon and from a distance the camp looks a bit of a mess, nestled as it in between apple orchard and ruined buildings without much order even after being here for 6 months (since Summer 826wk). Sgt Shadrock reminds us that we are here as ‘Instructors’ to bring the men up to a standard where they can better cope with magical events and incidents.

We enter and meet the assembled troops and their command Sergeants! There is Sergeant Oats, Sergeant 'Lofty' Lyons and 24 recruits assembled on the parade ground. There are 4-foot patrols of 5 men each and a mounted patrol of 5 and they each have an interesting if rural name based on fruits and vegetables - obviously a vegen or some such determined the names.
• Apple Patrol – a foot patrol of 5 people. Betsy, Pip (hayfever sufferer), Theo, Larry and Freddie (the beefy lad)
• Pear Patrol – a foot patrol of 5 men.
• Swede Patrol – a foot patrol of 5 people. Ponty, Claudio, Sarah, Jeremy and 'Chad x.
• Carrot Patrol – a foot patrol of 5 men.
• Rhubarb Patrol – a mounted patrol of 2 plains barbarians folks, 2 ex Brastor scouts and Brother Buzzard a shaman.

We introduce ourselves to the troops an each identify our areas of special training.
We quickly put our stuff in a secure tent and then some of us take troops for a run to assess their fitness, some undertake training exercises to assess ability, some snoop around the camp and others assess the new mechanical and alchemical supplies we have bought with us.
Kharmul and Mattin accompany Michelle and Vivian in a walk around the area to ensure we don’t have any detectable undead or such nearby. We definitively check the pond, the graveyard (which is empty of occupants) and the Duntow Manorhouse itself which is largely fallen in but likely a lower basement that is inaccessible without some hard work.
In the evening a meal is had, and watches set. We tell the troops that we will be testing their watch skills and thus ensued a session of non-lethal ‘Murder in the Dark’ ,where we snuck up on sentries, tied their shoelaces, stole the daggers from their sheathes and such jocularity.
Night passes otherwise uneventfully.

Reapsday 5th Frost

Morning dawns and the night watch troops look scared, haggard and tired. We discuss what happened over breakfast and offer some advice for the future when on watch. We 'Instructors' discuss how we are going to instruct the troops in terms of scenarios, practicing magical crime technique and detection of such, plan to expose the troops to lessor undead etc. Also a rider is sent to the nearest Castellan Borderers or army unit asking we be informed if there is any trouble nearby as we could use it as a training opportunity.

Session 3

Reapsday 5th Frost (continued)

NOTE: we remember that 6 months ago some local guards had tracked some bandits down here

We arise on a misty and frosty day, we breakfast and review the results of last nights test of the sentries.
We consider:

• Apple appear to be youngest, barring Theo who is in his 40's, and are enthusiastic but overall have less martial and worldly experience than the other patrols. They seem well acquainted with one another and have already knit as a team.
• Swede to be more martially trained and possibly a lot of ex-mercs who are martially capable

A number of the recruits seem tired and perhaps a bit scared but we'll harden them up before we're done!
We see a rider approaching, - wait a person riding a skull comes down the road and Nick Bone joins us.
We decide on some jobs for the day and we want to build some obstacle courses and pseudo walled areas so we send Carrot and Pear patrols off on a march with wagons to collect solid wood for us to use from the forest some 5 miles away.

1. We start making up a book of Seagate Guard - Standard Operating Procedures (magical) (SOP) of how to deal with certain situations for the recruits.
   
2. We identify some possible equipment that the guards could use - see Seagate Guard - Suggested Anti-Mage Kit
   
3. We test the Anti-Mage Grenado - Mk1 we have bought down with us. The results are mixed and we think the guild might get involved in their manufacture, storage and security as well as 'helping' Mr Charmichael, the semi-notorious Alchemist who helped develop it.
4. We decide we need some bones and after some looking decide to recover the assortment of cow bones from the pond

We notice someone is missing from the work parties and so we go look for Chad. We follow tracks and detect a hole on the side of the Manor’s eastern side, which we follow a small shored up tunnel until it comes to a drop to a deserted room below.

We drop in and find in the darkness a small 2 ft tall rock that had been carved into small statue form with a face – after DA’s (it goes to memory) we decide to touch it and we found ourselves in the same room but slightly blurred. With still noone else here we exit the room and go outside to find a nice sunny day – we DA a plant and get POO as Memory.

We look south and the old wall seems more present. We look around and find Chad or as he’s known – young Charles, the grandson of Old Jim who used to work the land for Sir Duntow in around 795wk. Chad had left something behind from childhood and it was the statue.

We talk with Chad who seems confused so a hypnotism is undertaken, which backfires but seems to be vary efficient. Chad was part of a party of highwaymen down here some 6 months ago. One drunken night they had an old brass ring and decided to put the ring in the old cow skull on a pole nearby. The effect was to bring on a phantom/ghostly/spirit bull which ran around and killed all his friends. Somehow Chad was lucky and trapped the spirit bull and removed the ring which caused it to dissipate, and he throw the ring in the pond.

He was reminded of last summer before he fled and remembered that the cows had disappeared and were replaced by odd patches of yellow flowers like ragwort but not. The cows when they disappeared came back nastier and more aggressive.

The brass ring it turned out had been stolen from a merchant they robbed who had a lot of junk. The ring had special markings in it. “With this ring I thee dead”

The young Chad relates that his grandfather had carved the statue from a piece of the grandfather rock down by x which had broken.

Session 4

Reapsday 5th Frost (continued)

We return to the camp with Chad. We notice that there is a lot of yellow flowers around the camp.
Questions:
• Ring in the pond
• Old one horn is mostly in the pond being recovered
• Where are the bodies of his old companions?

Dr Costard a skull doctor companion of Frenya talks about bad ragwort, it doesn’t have a way to propagate
Divination of the flowers – they are phased into a spectral underworld space and there are a lot of cows there – angry cows.

Nick summons a cow in the field and michelle controls it. We see that it has another set of bones inside it – unnaturally so. The cow was caused by the ragwort and how long animated 30 years ago.DA the inside bones – magical undead human skeleton from 30 years ago. He died during the dark circle. We surmise that this might have been part of a Rashak invasion plan to get undead in via cows.

Evening dinner, set watches, night passes.
Note: we need to check out the spring.

Sunday 6th Frost

At the spring there is an unusual rock – a grandfather rock. Ancient div on stone
Its a High mana rock, it holds the conditions of the environment, it helps constant stability and it is part of a network
We check out the graveyard and its stones there are made of the same material.
There is an area of instability bounded by the stones and weird ragwort only inside the area of instability

Session 5

Sunday 6th Frost (continued)

We continue investigating while giving orders and sorting out the draining of the pond. We get the obstacle course built using the extra wood that arrives with the other half of the camp. We keep track of the patches to assess their influence. Rebuilt the waterwheel.
We plan to do training on cantrip resistance that night using 'volunteers'.
Night passes

Moonday 7th Frost

Breakfast and we continue work (at least we direct the squads) on the pond etc.
Things to do:

• Obstacle course
• Fey Health & Safety
• Rebuild cottages
• dig out better facilities
• build a small fort called Ragwort Redoubt
  

Lunchtime... and afternoon, there is a commotion and we all swing into motion. Mattin and I fly down from the fort, Celeste leaps 400ft into the pond, becoming a hot muddy mess. the others charge in form nearer locations. We see the bull with a ring and a number of other cows. Combat ensues.

Calendar

Winter: Frost 826 (7)
	Moonday		Duesday		W'ansday		Th'rsday		Frysday		Reapsday		Sunday
		Samhain	1	Guild Meeting Seagate. Dinner at Harry's	2		3		4		5		6
	7		8		9		10		11		12		13
	14		15		16		17		18		19		10
	21		22		23		24		25		26		27
	28		29		30		1		2		3		4
Winter: Snow 826 (8)
	5		6		7		8		9		10		11
	12		13		14		15	Solstice	16		17		18	Yuletide
	19	Days of Chaos	20	DoC2	21	DoC3	22	DoC4	23	DoC5	24	DoC6	25	DoC7
	26	DoC8	27	DoC9	28	DoC10	29	DoC11	30	Twelfth Night	1		2
Winter: Ice 826 (9)
	3		4		5		6	First Plough	7		8		9
	10		11		12		13		14		15		16
	17		18		19		20		21		22		23
	24		25		26		27		28		29		30