Se7en Sagas

If you’ve been following my posts, you know I’ve been using my solo deck to play Durandal. Last we heard of him, he had a couple of things to process: the contested Chapel of the Broken Altar, a hungry relic, Raoul the Unbending’s shadow hanging over everything, a blocked causeway, Roderic the Cautious in the fens, and a risen corpse that named a price never paid. So let’s keep playng to find out what happens.

The situation

Zelik stands at the edge of the Reed-Choked Fens with Roderic the Cautious. The risen corpse has just spoken and fallen still. The relic at his side feels heavy and awake. The causeway is blocked by Raoul’s patrol. Roderic holds the herald’s horn and offers it as a possible key.

Zelik’s first decision: does he take the horn and blow it, trying to invoke the old truce and force passage past the patrol? Or does he try something else?

A man of Zelik’s nature, with Acumen 3, Perception 3, Lore 3, the Insightful distinction, would not act before he understood. He would want to know what the corpse said, what it meant, what that price was. He is not a knight who charges. He is a man who reads situations the way he reads texts.

First action: Zelik examines the corpse and tries to make sense of what it said, drawing on his Lore and his Perception.

This is a routine action. One card draw.

Draw:

• Answer: Maybe — but only if you are willing to take a great risk
• Difficulty Rating: Difficulty 3
• Event: A sworn rival challenges your honour
• Descriptor: The air smells of ash and steel
• Name: Renaud the Unyielding
• Place: The Shattered Oak
• Item: A knight’s ring inscribed with a forgotten name
• Emotion: Defiant
• Wild Card: Forgotten saint’s name is carved into fresh stone
• Supernatural: Pilgrim ghost offers quiet blessing

Resolving the action

Zelik commits Effort. His best path here is Acumen (3) + Lore (3) = maximum 6 Effort. He also gets +1 from his Insightful Distinction since he is closely observing the corpse and the situation. He bids 6 Effort, bringing his total to 7 with the Distinction bonus.

Difficulty is 3. His total of 7 is more than double the Difficulty of 3.

Critical Success. Zelik gets to add something extraordinary to help him, and I’ll let the Oracle help me on this.

Effort Pool drops from 20 to 14.

Now the Oracle colors the result

Answer is Maybe — but only if you are willing to take a great risk. On a Critical Success, Maybe means the victory opens new questions or leaves something important unresolved. He learns, but what he learns demands a choice.

The Descriptor gives ash and steel. The Wild Card places a forgotten saint’s name carved into fresh stone. The Supernatural offers a pilgrim ghost with a quiet blessing.

What happened, in Zelik’s voice:

I crouch beside the corpse and I read it the way my father taught me to read a disputed contract. The livery is old, Raoul’s house colours but faded, from a generation back at least. The herald’s seal at his belt has been pried loose, leaving only an outline in tarnished metal. His last sentence, the one the water carried out of him, named three things. Raoul. The chapel. A price.

My Lore turns over everything I know about this corner of the marshes and this line of lords. It comes together slowly and then all at once, the way a page of Talmud suddenly resolves when you find the right reading.

This herald was sent by Raoul’s father, not Raoul himself. He was carrying not a relic but a letter of agreement, a compact between the elder Raoul and whatever spirit or power holds the chapel hill. Safe passage in exchange for something given. The compact was never honoured. The herald never arrived. And the chapel’s ancient tenant has been waiting ever since.

The price named was a ring. A knight’s ring inscribed with a name I cannot yet read, because the stone and the light are wrong, but I can see the outline of letters pressed into the dead man’s palm like a brand, still visible after all these years. He was carrying it. Someone took it from him before he died or after.

This is why the relic feels hungry. It was meant to seal that old bargain. It has been circling back toward this place for decades, passing from hand to hand, and now Raoul the son has sent it here by the hand of a wandering Jew who has no idea what he is carrying.

The pilgrim ghost of the Supernatural line I keep as texture. At the moment I rise from the corpse, I feel rather than see something old and gentle at my shoulder. Not a Christian saint. Not quite anything. A presence that has watched this road for a very long time and is quietly glad that someone is finally reading the signs correctly.

But the Answer holds. Maybe — only if I am willing to take a great risk. I know what the compact requires. I know the ring was taken. I do not know who has it now. And I do not know whether completing a bargain made by a dead Frankish lord is something the God of Israel would call wise or foolish.

I look at Roderic. He is watching me with the careful eyes of a man who expected me to understand less.

You knew, I say. Not everything. But you knew this was more than a delivery.

He does not deny it.

State of play:

• Effort Pool: 14
• Stress: clean
• Zelik knows the shape of the compact and the missing ring
• Roderic the Cautious is revealed as someone with partial knowledge and unclear loyalty
• The patrol still blocks the causeway
• The relic is awake and purposeful
• A question hangs: who took the ring, and where is it now?

The story wants Zelik to ask Roderic what he knows. Or to use his Perception and Insightful distinction to read whether Roderic is ally, obstacle, or something more complicated. What shall I do?

If you enjoy this story, you can ride into the chanson yourself. Pick up the Durandal core book and the Durandal Solo oracle deck on DriveThruRPG – and be sure to leave a note on purchase! Every purchase and every review helps these games find new tables, so thank you for your support.

On another note, American Dread is also on sale as PWYW.

And the Durandal mega-campaign is coming along fine; it’s a five act epic that will take you on a voyage through all the corners of the Carolingian empire, meeting all kinds of compelling npc’s, interacting with historical and mythic figures, with the backdrop of intrigue and time pressure weighting heavily against the players.

And… a special weird fantasy noir setting for the 5th edition of the biggest ttrpg ever is coming… What is The Scar City?