Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Season Two, First Session

First Session (14 page pdf) – “After the Flood” – Riddleport is rocked by a tsunami and the PCs find love and danger in the aftermath.  And then there’s unexplained murders and Salvadora of the God Squad calls in her marker for the PCs to help investigate.  It’s Katrina horror time in the kickoff of our second season of Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

Well, we finished out the first huge year-long plot arc of Reavers last time, a mashup of the Freeport Trilogy, Second Darkness: Shadow In The Sky, and a raft of good 3e/3.5e adventures.  Everyone agreed to re-up for another run, so Season Two has begun!

When we last left our PCs, a tsunami had hit Riddleport.  In Second Darkness, this is mostly brushed off as color and it’s on with the story.  I wanted to dwell on it more.  Coming from the Gulf Coast originally, natural disasters like Katrina’s flooding of New Orleans and Galveston’s regular destruction by hurricanes are real threats and I wanted to reflect that in game.

I did some description of the aftermath, but the players filled in a lot for me.  They really got into the spirit of it.  There were exchanges like “I bet it smells like that time my apartment’s parking lot flooded and water got into my car and the carpet molded.”  “Ewwww!” It worked out pretty well and added a definite feel to the session.

Then it was time to meet up with all the people they left behind.  They were clearly considering just up and killing Saul for hanging them out to dry, but no one acted on it. The rest of the Gold Goblin crew was in evidence too.  And they went to rescue Lixy from her collapsed apartment, through the sewer grate she nearly threw Wogan’s gun down back in the day.  There was a lot of stuff that recurred from previous sessions. They even got to talk with Clegg Zincher.  Believe it or not, I didn’t realize what I was doing – Clegg owns this big coliseum and it made sense to me that they would put injured and homeless there, and then someone said “Oh, it’s the Superdome!”  I actually wouldn’t have done it if I’d thought of that analogy just because it was a little too-Katrina.

And then it was time for girlfriend visits.  Tommy’s visit to Lavender Lil was as usual intrigue and sex-soaked.  And then Serpent went looking for Samaritha.  That was more unexpected.  He has always been a little ambivalent about her, and was really irate once it turned out she was a serpent person; I personally wasn’t sure if he’d just forget about her, or try to kill her, or what. I thought it was brilliant how he got drunk and decided to go tell her off.  His interaction with the gendarmes guarding the Cypher Lodge was really funny. For some reason he kept rolling natural 1’s this session, but it wasn’t ever really dangerous, just funny.  After the gendarmes turned him away he wanted to sneak in, but rolled a 1, so he did the drunk-guy thing of wandering ten feet off and then trying to just walk by them again.  Then he tried to climb up to her window and fell off the building.He wasn’t playing it for laughs, and that made it even funnier but also more real.

I was pretty proud of the role-playing.  I know the player is somewhat uncomfortable with RPing relationships, and it wasn’t any more easy with the rest of the group kibitzing him (they were all really into this scene).  When he got in her window, he declared, “I unload all over her!” Everyone collapsed in gales of laughter.  “Uh… Physically, verbally, or sexually?” I inquired.  “No, I mean I really let her have it!”  More laughter.  “Again, physically, verbally, or sexually?” Then he tried talking with her.  It was tough, she was sure he would hate her and either Serpent or the player wasn’t letting much tenderness seep through, and so she was hard to convince.  He rolled a couple Diplomacy checks that didn’t go anywhere.  “You’re going to have to use the ‘L’ word!” the rest of the group advised him.  He finally showed a little bit of intimacy and that convinced her; she was really looking hard for anything to prove he did like her, and it took him a while but he came through.

And then it’s off with Salvadora to investigate some weird problem.  And with that we segue into the Richard Pett horror special, Carrion Hill.  Mmmwah hah hah haaaaaa! Pucker factor is high!