[The Mountain Witch] Angst Ascendant, pt. 1

[MPOSullivan]

Dan and I have been friends for a while.  A mutual love of Rebecca Borgstom brought us together in the dizzying bustle of Philadelphia, and our mutual love of all games independent has been the glue of our friendship.  We sit around and just talk games and theory and Battlestar Galactica for hours.  We are both resplendent in our shared geekery. 

Yet, for the longest time we've experienced problems in keeping a gaming group going.  I've changed jobs three times within the past year, all of which have been in the retail field.  He designs computer interaction thingies and is often swamped at work and pulling ten hour days.  We're both exhausted and neither of us has a very steady schedule.  We decided this needed to change.  We had both had Mountain Witch on our respective shelves for a little while and wanted to play it, so we focused on that.  We could get in touch with a couple more friends, organize far enough in advance and pull together three sessions in a row, one session per week, and tell a complete story.  Dan was point man on this.  He was going to be the GM, organize the group, host, the whole nine.  I was boosting, writing emails filled with excitement and fielding question and answers amongst the group members when we were all in a room together. 

We pull together a marvelous group: Dan and myself, Star, Neil and the other Dan.  Five players, all psyched up for some good gaming.  We arrange the schedule; three Saturdays in September, with the just-barely-hinted-at hope that if it all went well, maybe we could make this regular. 

Last Saturday was the opening night.  We got together in Dan's kitchen.  He had his laptop on the table with some music queued up in iTunes and a device set up to record the session audio.  We all talked for a couple of minutes about the game, what we could all expect and what we were looking to do.  Then Dan lit a candle to signal the start of the game (thanks, Polaris!) and we were into it. 

First up was character creation.  We all had intentionally held off on defining what our characters were going to be like until we all sat down at the table together.  I had an image in my head of what my character would look like, as I normally do since my brain works in images, so I broke out the drawing and said "This is my character.  I have no clue what he does, but here's how he looks."  I did draw him holding a Japanese horseman's bow, so I knew he was an archer, but that's about it.  Everyone else had images as well, though I'm the artist in the group so I was the only one that brought a drawing to go along with it.  Star and Dan were both playing female ronin, Neil and I were male.  It all broke down like this:

Dan/ Takenochi Majiko: a female ronin who was the mistress of her master and loved him dearly.  She shamed him when he was committing sepuku.  She was unable to cleave his head from his neck before he let out a scream of pain.  His spirit now haunts her, quite literally.  He'll pop up and belittle or berate her, all for the rest of the group to see.  She is also infused with magic, being able to see the future through fever dreams and keep spirits at bay with her calligraphy. 

Star/ Baba Namie: a female ronin who had seen her family slaughtered.  She was broken by the event and has been wandering ever since.  She is a person deeply in tune with nature and has an intimate understanding of the human heart as well as the plants of the earth and the creatures of the woods. 

Neil/ Ozuki Yoshiro: was disgraced when he was caught out stealing from his young master.  He was banished and lived a long time hiding in the shadows.  He has incredible eyesight and a strong sense of honour in spite of his debasement. 

MIke (me)/ Ryuiji Kensaku: the chief assassin, I displeased my master, when I was unable to kill a seven year old boy, the son of his most hated enemy.  For this failing my thumb was cleaved from my hand and i was tossed into the street.  I learned how to use my bow in a different, foreign way and kept on, earning just enough money to stay continually drunk and get into trouble with loan sharks.  My supernatural grace has kept me away from most conflicts, yet those that have touched me scarred me deeply.  I'm the most classically Kurosawa-inspired character in the group. 

Then came the Dark Fates.  By now most of ours have been revealed in game, so I don't mind saying what mine was here.  I drew the Darkest Fear fate, and I must admit, i was completely lost.  I had no clue what my fear would be.  I'd already lost everything, what else could hurt me?  That was something that could be figured out during gameplay. 

Oh, and dig my Actor stance.  I'm fucking method. 

The others drawn were Pact with the Witch, Other Motives and Enemy in the Group.  Please keep in mind that I don't have the book in front of me, so I know those names are wrong, I'm just trying to set the facts up.  We all thought that we definitely had a group of characters that were bound to never get along.  We wound up being oddly wrong about that, but more on that in session two. 

Dan takes a moment to explain the basics of the ruleset.  We're using those nice demo character sheets with the rules outlined on the one side of them as well, so good job Tim on making those and making things easier on the new players.  Never was a book flipped or a page bookmarked with those handy sheets.  After the explanation, we're off.  Dan wanted to open the game with a very specific conflict to get the ball rolling and to introduce the system.  He sets the stage.  The group of us have started our ascent of Fuji when a discussion breaks out: who is to be leader?  He asks who takes up what side of the argument and lays out how to set stakes. 

Nobody was really biting at it, so I figured "what the hell, I'll take the plunge".  I state that my character is arguing that someone must be leader, and very expressly not him.  Star hops in on the other side, saying that her character argues for the side of no leader, saying that we have a mission that leads us, not men.  We roll off and she gets a partial success.  She points out that none other in the party can truly lead, in as civil a way as possible, and says turn to leave.  I get my little dig in and say a quick "Of course, Baba-sama." and fall into place behind her.  Not only did this little scene and the fallout of the role establish a little bit of group dynamic, it had an incredible amount of impact on the relationship that Baba and I would develop later.

Further along our path up the mountain we find our group walking through a sacred forest, all of the trees bound in ceremonial ropes and prayer scrolls.   Dan narrates that Neil spies something hidden behind the trees that surround us.  Neil examines it further and calls for my character to draw my bow on it.  At this point I figure that my character actually seeks some kind of direction and leadership and, without giving up too much individuality, I decide that I will likely follow most given commands.  With this in mind I draw my bow and declare my stakes, saying that I want to pin whatever thing this is against one of the trees.  Dan says that he wants the thing to duck away and come toward me.  We roll off and I score a full success.  I narrate that I walk forward quickly, a little hop in my step, and knock an arrow.  I look off to my left and fire to my right.  The arrows slices through the air and picks this thing up off the ground and pins it against one of the trees.  Dan then narrates that the creature is a wolf and that it lets out a pained cry, after which three more wolves step into the clearing including one which is twice as large as the rest.   

Stakes we declared immediately.  Dan wanted the wolves to attack us.  Neil and the other Dan wanted to strike right back.  Star said she wanted to appeal to the alpha wolf and negotiate her way out of a fight.  I found my character falling in line with Star's, in spite of our animosity and sided with her.  This was the first time Trust came into play.  I spent a point of Baba-sama's Trust and gave her my dice while Neil spent a point of Takenochi's trust and tossed his dice in her pool.  The roll went off and Neil and the other Dan won, getting a double success on the wolves and beating Star and I with a partial success.  It was Neil's die that was the high roll though, so he narrated that Star spoke with the beast and had started to calm things down when one of the wolves growled.  At that, Takenochi leaped and attacked the alpha wolf.  Rather than simply slicing it to ribbons with her blade, she held the beast down at her throat and choked it to death with the flat of her katana.  His gurgling and whimpers echoed throughout the forest.  The other wolves backed away and ran. 

After this we made camp for the night.  I pulled open my bag and grabbed out a jug of sake and got decidedly drunk.  Takenochi skinned her kill.  Baba-sama and Ozuki went to sleep.  After that I approached Takenochi and we started talking.  She asked after my past and we discussed it for a little while, declaring then that though I was unable to kill the seven year old boy, I had no problem killing all of his older brothers.  After this I started to proposition Takenochi in my drunken haze, something that she wasn't really into.  She was going to take it to conflict when I was suddenly struck with what my Dark Fate meant.  I narrated that I saw the smoke trail lifting off of a campfire in the distance.  I broke off from Takenochi immediately and used my supernatural grace to hop from treetop to treetop and look down over the encampment.  What I saw were samurai, all in beautiful, well-crafted armour, drunkenly laughing around a fire.  From their bannerpoles flew the crest of Harumaki-sama, the boy I had failed to kill, now grown to a man. 

I leaped back, landing in a cloud of snow, and said that I had found nothing important, then leaped to the top of a tree and watched as the fire went out.  While I say in the tree Dan narrated that large birds started flocking over head of me, cawing out the phrase "How much longer?"  I whispered "Soon enough".

During the night a large crow landed on my shoulder and asked after someone it was supposed to talk to.  Knowing that Baba-sama could speak with animals, I sent the bird off to her.  The bird engaged with her for a moment, and then decided that Baba-sama was not who it was looking for.  It took off back to the Witch's fortress. 

The next day we gathered up our things and went further up the path.  We passed by the broken camp of Harumaki-sama.  There, Takenochi asked who they were.  I said that they were the honour guard of the boy that I had not killed.  I said that they could be trouble for us.  Baba-sama said that we are there only for the Witch.  The boy's soldiers were of no consequence.  I stood pale and shook in the wind. 

Our path lead to a cliff face whipped at by heavy winds filled so thick with white snow that nothing could be seen.  As we crossed the perilous cliff Ozuki was able to make out a figure floating in the winds, a woman dressed in a married woman's kimono, dark blood caked on her chest and arms.  Dan declared stakes as an avalanche coming down the mountain and knocking us down.  We all said we wanted to maintain our ground.  Of course, we all failed. 

We all fell and were crushed under by terrible whiteness.  I pulled myself from it and yelled out for Baba-sama.  She was there, but the other two were not.  I went over to her and helped her from the snow.  "What do we do now?" I asked.

"We find the Witch.  That is our only task."  I smiled at her, begrudgingly, and went for my pack.  Inside i found that all of my jugs of sake were broken.  I through the pack to the ground and pulled apart the ropes that were binding it.  I tied them around our waists, connecting us, and took the lead in trying to find our way back to the Witch's fortress.

I declared a conflict.  My stakes were that I would find a passage that would get us closer to the Witch's lair.  Dan said that his stakes were that I would get us lost even further.  We rolled and I won a full and partial success.  I narrated that I found a man-made cave, it's entrance covered over by a couple of tumbled rocks form the avalanche.  I like to use my partial successes to add in character stuff from other player's characters, so I narrated that as I was pulling away the rocks I uncovered the broken body of a child, a boy no more than four or five.  The same age as Baba-sama's child when he was killed. 

Okay, enough for now.  More of session one next post.  Oh, and Dan the GM is on this forum sometimes, so maybe I can get him to pipe up a little.

[timfire]

We got together in Dan's kitchen.  He had his laptop on the table with some music queued up in iTunes and a device set up to record the session audio. 

Ooh, does that mean the audio will be available online at some point?

This is a good post, but at the moment I don't have time to respond. I'll write more when I get a chance.

[MPOSullivan]

I'm hoping to see the audio go up.  It would be a biiig file though, as I'm sure it wouldn't be edited and we did play for about three and a half hours.  Maybe there could be a little clipping here and there.  I'm not sure.  That's something for Dan to figure out. 

Tomorrow, the rest of Angst Ascendant, then House of Wolves. 

(btw, I'm titling these as I write them up.  Dan might have titled them differently but I'm doing the writing here.)