Adventures in Westport | Shadow of the Weird Wizard 8.13
I'm happy to finally have played Shadow of the Weird Wizard, especially with MTB at the helm as our Sage. He offered us the Weird Ancestries backgrounds, so I chose a Revenant. My co-player Hawks was a fighter who is most definitely a normal human man. Probably.
I named my Revenant Gaspar and made him a Rogue with a criminal background in forgery. Weird Wizard's physical features tables are delightful--I think there's something of a theme on my blog now of loving procedural tools in games--and with them I created a Gaspar who looks like this:
Gaspar has pale white skin, dark black hair, eyes that were once green, and an unpleasant smell as that of a corpse. He seems smaller than average. The veins in his nose are burst, suggesting an old eggplant lying fallow in a field. A smell of jasmine and lilac swarms his body, not quite masking his corpse scent. Long, raking fingernails adorn his pale fingers. If one were to peel off his wet shoes, they would find webbed toes...
We decided quickly that the forgery could be related to the manner in which he died as well as the manner in which he cheated Lord Death.
I loved my spooky guy. I was impressed with how much variety and flavor Weird Wizard offers in character creation for how fast it can go. Stats are pretty simple as well. With an experienced Sage, we were able to get moving with little friction.
Gaspar and Haven arrived at a bar called the Salted Lemon after hearing that the priest to the temple of Fetch, god of thieves, was offering work. We chatted up the bar proprietress and heard some stories from her about mysterious, high profile thefts popping up around the town of Westport. Of the various feats these unknown thieves had pulled off (like stealing someone's ruby eye), our first target for investigation was a local tomb of unknown ancestry.
When we arrived at the tomb, it was clear that a waypoint of inexperienced guards were set up to prevent future thieves from raiding the depths. Gaspard and Haven hatched a quick plan to throw Gaspard, feigning death, into a wheelbarrow and pretend their entrance was nothing more than a routine corpse delivery. The plan worked, and the pair made their way inside. After rappelling down on a rope left behind by recent thieves, we found ourselves face to face with a visage set into the floor that loudly proclaimed we should get out immediately. Gaspar turned his back and forged some quick ancestry papers that proved he belonged in that tomb. A Luck roll adjudicated success, and we made our way inside with no further screaming.
As often happens in tombs, we got in a fight with some skeletons who proved no match against Haven's club. Combat consisted of several turns of inexplicable misses--jokes were made about if the manifestation of Marc Miller was punishing our rolls for playing something other than CT. We eventually defeated the skeletons and went on our merry way with new treasure...
We didn't find much information in the tomb, but we did get loot. After exiting and making our way back into town, Gaspar and Haven witness a miracle: a state of a Saint venerated by thieves accepted an offering of coin and spoke to our two adventurers. They were advised to seek a specific garment shop, but whatever they should do there, the statue couldn't say. Makes sense, because statues speak so rarely enough as it is.
Gaspar and Haven tracked down the garment shop in the dead of night and set to opening the door. Revenants--having deadened nerves--are quite clumsy, so even an average lock bested poor Gaspar. His attempts were quite noisy, and evidently someone inside woke up. Gaspar changed tactics and began banging on the door, begging for help. As soon as it opened, he gave a final gasp and tottered into the waiting arms of the irritated shopkeep. Haven appeared out of the darkness and asked if the shop owner had murdered his friend. The shopkeep shook his head and recommended that Haven bury Gaspar quickly, to which he replied "I already tried that... it didn't work." We all shook ourselves off and admitted to the shop owner that the statue of a Saint of thieves instructed us to find this place. He assented, and led us inside to a room containing another statue with yet another pair of outstretched hands waiting in offering.
Gaspar sacrificed a beautiful silver mask claimed from the tomb in order to proceed. He and Haven made their way in through a secret door, where they finally caught up with the secret Priest of Fetch. He thanked us for gathering information about the unaffiliated thieves and procured payment in the form of... the mask!
We may play again, picking up plot threads about a group of Goblins hoarding something called the Key to Everything which this Priest badly wants back.