Session 1: Jawbone and the Toad

 Seek the Myths. Honor the Seers. Protect the Realm.

Spring. Four days until Sceptremass.

Young Knights-Errant; Baldric the Gilded Knight, a beautiful force of violence in a short-and-shiny package, and his squire Dorf; Brom the Rune Knight, a hulking thoughtful behemoth, and his squire Noll. Visitors from a distant Realm.

They are instantly cursed by false paths amongst eastern bluffy crags. Dorf takes a watch all night and nearly depletes his Clarity to 0 (it is left at 1). The next day the Company runs into a logging team of warty guards captained by Jabek. He wears full plate with a frog helm, but is NOT a Knight. The warty guards mention “The Toad,” and how they’re gathering materials for his castle. The guards deposit massive logs beside the lake and depart on fat donkeys. 

The next day the Company come upon two scouts investigating the prints left in the boggy mud by the overweight mules. They are Scout Tom and Scout Cole, wearing strange leather bodysuits with goggles and daggers. The scouts are trying to find the Toad so they can make themselves useful to him. Entrepreneurs. The scouts have heard rumors, like the miraculous notion that perhaps the Toad's castle has already be constructed. Scout Tom offers that they join the Knight's Company and could provide good benefit!

A small ramshackle stilt house sits within the swamp. Scout Tom exclaims that it's their house and it's proper hospitality to house a Knight for the night. As tensions are getting strange within the hut the Knights start to distrust the scouts. Baldric takes a smoke break outside the hut and fishes an old longsword out of the mud. He comes back inside, sliding on his gold helmet mask. He starts to accuse Tom of dishonesty and betrayal. Eventually Tom notices the longsword on Baldric's side and starts to run. Combat ensues! Baldric and Brom tag team Tom, smashing his gut in and slamming him against the hut wall. Cole runs, but Brom follows and grab him by the leather suit. Baldric smashes his skull in and he, too, crumples. The squires ask about burying the bodies, in which the Knights respond by chucking the corpses to the bog. They find a map of the area on Tom. Brom rummages around where Baldric found the longsword and finds for himself an old horn (twisting, bestial sound) and the horned halberd of the deceased Horn Knight. Baldric searches the hut and finds a pouch of outdated ancient coins and a wishing nut. The Company sleeps in the hut. At night Baldric finds a scroll tied with a green ribbon.

In the morning he shows Brom and they both choke on their thick, honeyed spittle. The scroll: "The Toad invites you to his castle."

The Jawbone Seer is sighted along the banks of a smaller lake. His sanctum, a circle of mud-covered rocks opening up to the water. A giant fish skeleton half-submerged in mud. The Company hunt down a boar for the Seer who looks through the vision of all boars to find the Toad's castle, a few days away to the East. Right where they started... The Jawbone Seer commands that the Toad and his buildings are an atrocity. They are to dismantle his rule and return the castle to a ruin that can be inhabited by fauna. 

Brom calls out to his Seer in the reflective waters of the bank and receives a spinning goblet.

The stars shine during the day. A constellation of the Wheel is seen, slowly spinning.

Afternoon the next day the Company sees the lone guard captain Jabek in the distance. He brings a gift from the Toad: an exquisite flute! For Baldric! Baldric accepts the gift, but does not play. Jabek insists. Brom questions the guardsman. Eventually Baldric flashes the Toad's scroll towards Jabek and the guard averts his eyes and pleads for mercy. He then sneakily doffs his armor, runs a few feet away, and whisper-explains to the Knights that while he's wearing the armor he's supervised by the Toad. The Toad wants them to swear fealty to him and proclaim a new Oath. Otherwise the Company will be killed. Tomorrow afternoon is Sceptremass, where the rulers of the Holdings converge at the Seat of Power and re-swear their vows of loyalty to the Ruler of the Realm. The Company thinks the Toad will be present at the Seat of Power, at Fort Grasp. This would leave the Toad's castle unoccupied except for the Toad's own council. However, the nearby Goyon's Tower would be an excellent place to recruit war bands in case the Toad sends out any of his own. So many choices...




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