The Blog of Roon

I think Monrroyo is about to wrap, unfortunately. It started off well, but it’s not dealing well with my scattered attention span (job-hunting is a cast-iron bitch), and I haven’t done a very good job at involving several players with the game.

I may be able to resuscitate it later, with some fresh blood and more work on my part to help the group pull together, but I don’t think this incarnation is going to last. Advice on plug-pulling etiquette would be helpful at this point…

I’m not calling it a failed experiment. I’m thrilled with the amount of inter-player drama we didn’t have (zero drama, in fact), and I got some very good writing out of a couple of people. But as new GMs will, I didn’t do the best work possible with what I was handed. So it goes.

Rennie and her pals have just fended off a fairly well-planned but otherwise inexpert kidnapping attempt on Rien. The deal is, a bunch of nobodies from nowhere are hunting Rien for (prophesied) reasons vague and very possibly nefarious—but it’s clear as the proverbial bell that Rien is not actually the one they want. The trick is going to be convincing them of that, preferably before they damage Renate’s pet Mage Knight.

Aryk abandoned a fourteen-year-old girl for whom he was specifically responsible in order to pitch in with the fight, which is about to earn him an epic telling-off from a horrified Renate. (I cleared this with Aryk’s player, of course, because I really don’t approve of drama.)

Coming up: the return of Dorothy Durai (which implicates Aryk as well as Renate this time), more happy-fun kidnapping attempts I shouldn’t wonder, Renate trying her sweet best to charm a Heaven Knight without going too far, Aryk growing the heck up finally (I dearly hope!), Rien coping with his jealous streak, and… possibly… a turning point in Renate’s life.

I owe Monrroyo posts. I have no energy to write them. I’ll do it tomorrow. Sorry, guys.

I am learning that one of the pleasures of GMing is the added little fillips of drama and irony when one’s players discuss situations they don’t have all the answers to.

Especially when the answers are really gonna hurt. If they ever find them, which they very well may not; they can cope with the situation without all the answers.

Ximun is methodically getting to the bottom of the ugly attack on his fellow mage Miryam, using some good old-fashioned formulaic spells. (I didn’t plan this to play into his spell-list, but I’m not at all displeased that it did.) Looking into the past a piece led him to a burial and a curiously dispassionate priest, Whom (I may say, as it’s not much of a spoiler) We May Expect To See Again.

Jullanar and don Bermudo have sped off to Logroño to beg some vis from any mages passing through. They have found a mage, and are about to make their request. I know whom they’re addressing, and I know exactly what he’s going to do with their petition.

Arnau is returning to the covenant, having discovered that the local Jews’ fears of a pogrom in Estella were (thankfully) unfounded. Scratch one hypothesis for the attack on Miryam. Or so he thinks.

Theo and Cano have gone up into the hills to assay the area for iron-mining. Theo had a nasty dizzy spell, which (unbeknownst to him) corresponded with a minor earth-tremor back at the covenant. I’m going back and forth between two explanations for this; pretty soon I’ll just have to up and pick one.

Paul and Justin have gone off to Estella to canvass the rest of the town for news; I’ve taken that thread silent, as Justin’s player isn’t posting and David wants to concentrate on don Bermudo. I’ll bring Paul back as an NPC with appropriate news. I had a mini-adventure ready for them, but it can go into cold-storage for the next group to hit town.

All in all? Not bad.

I am having just entirely too much fun with a hairsplitting Monrroyo back-and-forth on the nature of time. Dangers of GMing, I suppose.

And normally I hate these kinds of discussions…

Players, they have this curious habit of not responding to signals.

The bomb I dropped on Monrroyo the other day was a serious assault on two of their number, a mage and her guard. I gave every signal I could that the pair of them were going to die, but my players weren’t having any. One knocked himself out (literally) with Creo Corpus, and another is bringing her Kabbalah knowledge to bear.

So, okay, fine. They win. I’ve thought of another way of getting rid of this mage (because in a meta-game sense I need to; she belongs to a player who didn’t show up for the start and as best I can tell isn’t going to), one that doesn’t involve death or Twilight.

And one which might open up some very intriguing and quite unexpected leadership tendencies I’m seeing in, of all people, Ximun.

Dropped a bomb on Monrroyo. Waiting to give everyone a chance to respond to it. Thus far, they are oscillating most satisfactorily.

It’ll get worse, though. They don’t know how bad this is. Yet. And they’re almost certain to misinterpret it.

Mua-hahahahahaha. I think GMing is bad for me.

Our Rennie’s still stuck in Bad Headspace, but in a piece of fluff I finished this morning, she reached out as best she could for help. She admitted to Coris Nightblade that she was in a bad way, hinted obliquely that she knows he is fond of her, and did the time-honored “drop the handkerchief in front of him and see if he picks it up” trick. (No, she really did, and it wasn’t nearly as sexist-cliché as it sounds, promise.)

All in all, it’s not a bad match, Renate and Coris. Aside from the pronounced age difference, that is. They’ve both got that realistic, low-key self-image, the ability to look failure and defeat in the face without flinching or trying to spin it, the social grace, the inward conflicts and doubts. Right down to the silly pseudonyms.

They’re in Glenworth at the moment, that being Karlbotel’s neighbor province and pet enemy. It just so happens that Coris Nightblade used to be a Heaven knight, and his sister just so happens to be Aaron Wrenfall’s wife and also a Heaven knight, and it just so happens that Coris’s-sister-Aaron’s-wife is hanging out in Glenworth at the moment—and it’s not at all coincidence that Aaron left Karlbotel on “reconnaissance.”

So Coris and Renate are walking on eggshells in Glenworth trying not to be recognized (Coris is persona non grata in Heaven after his abrupt defection therefrom, and obviously Renate is persona non grata in Glenworth) while entering an all-comers tournament against CsAw’s Heaven detachment in order to find Aaron and bring him home before he gets hurt or worse.

I have an idea of the shape of things to come, and I know how I want to bend it… but I’ll need an opening from Alan. We’ll see if I get it.

In Monrroyo, Suhayla has finally spread a few of her cards on the table: she thinks the Catholics are trying to take over the world (and she’s not exactly wrong), and she wants to see it stopped, or its harm mitigated if it is in fact unstoppable. The rest of the covenant has yet to respond. Jullanar, however, has been accepted as a covenant member despite the slightly irregular manner of her arrival.

And for those of you on Pseudonym Watch, Renate’s going by Reyes l’Aigle in Glenworth at the moment.

Suhayla doesn’t hurry. Ever. She takes whatever time she thinks she needs to think something over or do something. She’s not a ditherer, not at all, and she can act very quickly indeed in a situation she’s had time to prepare for—she just won’t let herself be rushed to judgment (or whatever). I didn’t know this until play started.

It is in the main a good thing, I suspect, but it can also be a weakness. I shall have to ponder what kinds of trouble it may get Monrroyo into.

So I dumped all my players in a room (two rooms, actually, one in the covenant proper and one in the guesthouse), and after a slightly slow start, they did start talking to one another.

And they’re giving me all kinds of rope to hang them with. Caves? You want caves? Yeah, sure, I can do caves. Can I ever do caves.

I didn’t set anything up, I swear I didn’t. They’re setting themselves up on my behalf. I didn’t realize players did that.