Convergence, Session 5

General Summary

Trace at Home

Back in Perpetual Bernville, Trace is working on a surveillance network. He manages to establish good camera coverage of the town, without any of the residents noticing, over the course of several hours.
When he returns to Trace's Safehouse, he sees a large monster appear in town. It has a giant, spiked turtle shell, six bear legs, a serpentine tail and a face resembling a lion's. He sees Perpetual Bernville's defenders struggle in fights with it - a couple are killed and several are injured. They eventually drive it into the water, but they didn't appear to really injure it. Trace calls the rest of the Convergence Player Characters to let them know about the monster, but their scenes are playing out of sync, so this happens several hours into their exploration of The Castle.

Beating Legion

The group square off against Legion in the Bathhouse area of The Castle. They beat it pretty easily, within a couple of rounds, with a few hard-hitting attacks.

Dvorak-46 with Volkite Blaster Sketch by Phoebe Herring

Navigating the Church

The next area is a run-down, gothic church. The group fight a strange (undead?) being - a woman tied to an angelic statue. They navigate the church and reach the final area - a crumbling bridge corridor where many sections of the floor have fallen away. Using the various sections of floor and clambering along handholds on the walls, they must cross to the other side. Toho "Ultrathem" Tanaka relatively easily scouts ahead and spots a safe route that a couple of others could use. Iolo magically leaps across, trailing a rope to help the others. Toho returns to carry Leofe to the far side. Taxi Varlik magically buffs Atreyu and Dvorak Four Six as they try to cross together - Atreyu and Taxi cross, but Dvorak falls during an early jump and clambers back to the beginning. Cyprian Kernow flies across atop the reanimated corpse of Gaibon as Dvorak succeeds at a second crossing attempt, using Toho's path and Iolo's rope.
The group rest for an hour at the other side of the treacherous corridor, recovering some stamina. Iolo upgrades Toho's PDA, but unstably.

Esdras and Perpetva

The group confront Esdras and Perpetva and take them down with relative ease. Atreyu lands the killing shot on Esdras.

Taking a Shortcut

The group propose a shortcut, skipping the second half of The Castle's gauntlet. They climb atop the Church's tower, which lines up with the underside of The Regent's Throne Room. Dvorak and Iolo modify a gravity detonation Cypher that Atreyu is carrying - they alter it such that it creates a sort of gravity lift that will carry the group up to The Regent.

Confronting The Regent

The group talk to The Regent for a while - some try to negotiate or learn more, but he seems fairly confident that they are in the most danger and he will continue to strike out at Perpetual Bernville. Trace contacts the group to tell them about the invading monster. Dvorak attacks The Regent with a Cypher, beginning the fight. The group take some damage, with a few members getting close to injury, but ultimately they overcome The Regent using their abilities, Cyphers and some clever tactics involving the curtains of the Throne Room. Atreyu again lands the killing shot.
On The Regent's death, The Castle begins to shake and crumble - it seems to be collapsing. A silver goblet, containing blood, materialises in the middle of the room. The group discuss what they might do with it and how they might escape the collapsing castle...

Rewards Granted

• 8 XP total from 4 GM Intrusions
• 3 post-session XP for all
• The Unholy Grail

Missions/Quests Completed

• Defeating Legion
• Navigating the Church and defeating Esdras and Perpetva
• Reaching and defeating The Regent, and claiming The Unholy Grail

Character(s) interacted with

The Regent

Created Content

The creation and use of the gravity lift was mostly adlibbed - I think I even suggested it. The group were keen to get straight to the end of The Castle, so something needed to happen to get them there.
Questions were asked about the creature in the Church area, which was taken straight out of Blasphemous. I didn't know enough about the lore of the game, so we had to just chat about it and look at wikis.
I hadn't decided much about The Regent's personality or motivations, so had to adlib and sort of sidestep some concepts when the group tried to talk to him.

Notes

Slowing Down?

It felt like this session moved much more slowly than the last couple. Part of that is probably because much of it was spent in combat, in boss fights. In terms of separate encounters and explorations of spaces or ideas, it felt as though we only really covered a handful. I think there's a lesson in pacing here - I need to be more careful with balancing out different types of encounters / actions for the party. Combat-navigation-combat-navigation started to drag and negatively affected the play, I think.

Remembering GM Intrusions

I remembered to use GM Intrusions this time! Well, one near the beginning and a few during The Regent boss fight to up the drama a bit. I think they paid off - they mixed up the situation a bit, which I think increased interest, and the players enjoy getting XP.

Bad Castle Design

I mention this in the first point, but I think the design of The Castle was poorly thought-out. The rigid structure of exploration and bosses, with little specificity and detail in the individual areas (ironically, to try to avoid bogging the game down) led to it feeling like a repetitive grind. I think the restrictive, railroady nature of it exacerbated the problem. I should try to remember to make any necessary similar sequences shorter, and to generally plan for more open chapters with clearer specificity in their design.
It felt a bit shallow - the adlibbed parts lacked oomph because I didn't really have a clear picture in my mind of the rationale of the place or the motivations of the characters. I'm wondering if this is going to be a bit of a problem throughout Campaign: Convergence, due to the throwaway, mash-up nature of many of the elements. I can try to steer upcoming chapters in more interesting directions.

Too Crunchy?

I felt like the rules got away from me a few times during the session. Partly, this was due to tiredness, but also there are an increasing number of unusual abilities in play and some of the basics of the system still haven't embedded in my or the players' minds yet - complex interactions between assets, effort and other roll modifiers, for example. I think I could knock up a better reference document for the players to help a little here, but much of this will probably be addressed with practice and good energy for the sessions.

Related Adventure

Campaign: Convergence, Chapter: The Castle and The Regent

Report Date

13 Apr 2021

Primary Location

The Castle