Masters of Carcosa - Session 18

The previous session the players rolled a 1 on the Hazard Die when travelling back to town. We didn’t want to play out the encounter at midnight, so I told them it’s how the session would start. I had an idea in my head: the blue men the players had saved were actually bandits! The session opened with a fight through the town.

A circle of Bone Men stand watch around ancient Snake Men ruins. They exist in a state of undeath, and will not attack the party, but simply scream when they spot someone.

The Bone Men the players encounter were a magical trap guarding the now reoccupied Snake Men ruins. They surround the ruins and warn the Snake Men when people approach. The Bone Men were those taken from the Castle of Decline. If the campaign ran longer I think the players would have done more with this thread, but as it stands these ruins would remain unexplored.

The lack of treasure in most of this game was a running joke the entire time we played. I wouldn’t change a thing.

You can contrast the recap that follows with my Carcosa-style hex descriptions.

Players:

• Eric Boyd: Orange Julia, Orange Women Fighter
• Gus: Normangina, Yellow Woman Fighter
• Dion: Asha-Rea, Ulfire Women Fighter
• Stephen M  - Chongo

Recap:

• The 3 injured Blue Men from last session were in fact bandits!
• Their leader Aboye killed the person who runs the towns infirmary, and ran off into the town to try and flee with some supplies and a new weapon.
• The party aides in the capture of the bandits, killing the leader.
• The town guards execute the other two bandits
• You fear the incident may play into the towns already existing rampant xenophobia.
• The next day the party decides to head to Invak, but travelling towards the Snake Men ruins first, to investigate the strange bone man sightings.
• On the way there, they bump into the Space Alien Strike Force, which has been laying low recently.
• It turns out they had been exploring to the East, in the towns the party rarely frequents.
• Many towns to the East are friendly with the slavers—someone has to be buying the slaves, after all
• They think the party are foolish to be heading towards the Snake Men ruins—they seem to be superstitious when it comes to the Snake Men
• The party continues on, coming upon a solitary bone man standing alone.
• As they try and move past him they see that there are other such bone men in the distance.
• Chongo decides to investigate what’s up with these Bone Men by cutting the first one they saw down.
• As he charges the man spins his head around and starts screaming—perhaps they have some sort of supernatural alertness
• Chongo kills the bone man, no problem, though even in death the creature seems ‘off’
• The party hide to see if anyone comes to investigate the murder, and sure enough a group of bone men sprint out to the scene, and then proceed to sprint off in search of the perpetrators.
• The party attack!
• In the melee Chongo is killed, but his death is avenged by Normagina!
• The Bone men are all butchered in the end, their bodies piled on pack lizards as the party races off to Invak to investigate who or what they may be!

Treasure:

• None! Classic Masters of Carcosa.

Monsters Killed:

• 6 (Mysterious) Bone Men
• 1 Blue Man Bandit

Post Session Notes:

• Some of the Bone Men in Invak, originally from The Castle of Decline, recognize the bodies as their former friends and allies!
• The two towns the Space Aliens mention to you in their travels to the East are Joi (an Orange Men village) and Torok (a Bone Men village)

Comments:

• Eric Boyd (2015-12-16 01:49): Seems to me it would be easy to bait those Bone Men into a tripwire/pit trap/etc.
• Chris P. (2015-12-16 02:57): So how come all of you haven’t all been strung up for murder yet?
• Ramanan S (2015-12-16 03:46): They have done enough good stuff for the town people believe their story. (And it would match what the merchants shared the previous previous week.)