This section of the adventure is much more free-form. Prince Hektor tells me that my best chance of finding his sister, the oracle, is to ask the Huntress for advice. She lives in a forest north of the Trident, and I must bring a trophy as an offering if I want her help. That gives me a direction to travel in and a goal.
There is a question about what happens to the town. Does the kraken leave it alone now that Xanthos is not summoning it? Could Arcturus and his hoplites defeat it? If so, is it dead? Looking at the available forces, and if Xanthos’s hoplites help (to try and save their own lives and win some goodwill), I think they could defeat it. If the battle went on for more than a few rounds, which it is likely to, I could have returned and helped out with my fire bolts, Myrrine was also there to help with healing. I will assume then that the kraken is dead, and Illos is free of its curse until I know any different.
The book says that his servants, the cultists and hoplites, know pieces of what was happening. The cultists are dead, but three hoplites survived. There are conveniently six facts. I assume that Hektor and Arcturus will question the surviving hoplites.
- He poisoned the king using a venom called Gorgon’s Kiss, given to him by the Psysserians.
- A Psysserian messenger came to bargain with him weeks before, promising him gold and the throne of Illos should he help them.
- Seduced by these riches, Xanthos had his men take Alexandra down the secret stair to a waiting Psysserian ship. Xanthos, observing from the terrace, saw the ship was well supplied with soldiers and slaves.
- From the shadow of a structure on its deck, he saw the flash of a woman in a golden mask.
- Xanthos plied the messenger with wine and learned from him that the Psysserians are seeking the mythical island of Atressos.
- The Psysserians need an oracle to find the island of Atressos.
I roll 3 times on the list and see if they give up some useful insights, I will not re-roll duplicates. I get 5, 3, 3. The hoplites can tell me that Xanthos kidnapped Alexandra for money and took her to a Psysserian ship, loaded with soldiers and slaves, this is confirmed by another hoplite. The other hoplite was there when Xanthos got one of the Psysserians drunk and learned that they were searching for the mystical island of Atressos.
At least now, I am not completely in the dark!
In the Labors of Fate, there are several quests and 20 well described random encounters. The nice thing about these encounters is that they are not really part of the adventure, but they add to the feel of the setting.
I encounter some athletes on their way to some games, there are wrestlers, some hoplites and villagers watching the sport. I am not really the kind of person to challenge a wrestler to prove my prowess, so I watch the fun for a while, and then carry on.
When I get to my destination, some three hours later, I barely survive an ambush by some really tough Merrow. The very first attack was a natural 20 and did 22 damage and I only had 25 hit points. fortunately, when I leveled up I learned Invisibility, and had prepared it that day. The disadvantage on their attacks saved me, and I got away.
I was able to double back and rally the hoplite audience and the wrestlers to come to the village and kill the monsters. The adventure said that javelin throwing was one of the contests, so I told them to bring all the javelins, and that is how we killed the Merrow. We stayed out of the water and pelted them with the javelins, and I used Magic Missiles and Fire Bolts.
Once that quest was complete, I returned to Illos, and the oracle said that Hektor was getting impatient and I had to go and find Atlande the Centaur. I had wanted to do more adventures before hand, but I also wanted to keep my heroic reputation, so I set off following the river Trident north and east.
At this point, I really need a Muse. I have mainly used Oracle, and that has been fine. Most of the details have come from the written adventure, but as random encounters start to become more of a thing, I need to have the tool on hand. I create a simple countdown timer/drama dice tool for the Merrow ambush. I was invisible, but I had walked into an ambush and was surrounded. What I wanted to do was get out of their circle, so I created a pool of dice, and as I managed to discard each die (when it rolled a 6), I had maneuvered so that one of the merrow was out of reach and behind another so it could no longer reach me. Once I was down to one die, it meant that I was on the outside of the circle and could withdraw from the fight.
I tend to use one of two types of Muse. The first one is typically two tables of 100 words. These are typically a table of adverbs and a table of verbs. You roll one word on each table and put them together. Traditionally, these words are derived from tarot cards in both the correct and inverted layouts. The second muse I use is a collection of d20 columns. Each column has a theme, and you pick two or more themes that fit your scene or situation. You still end up with a few words to interpret, but you are more likely to get words that have meaning in the current context, and you can exert some greater control over the random words.
For example:
If I were to overhear two agents or spies talking, I could choose to roll on Talk, Change, and Place and get a result like Argument + Break + Mansion and I could interpret that as one agent resisting orders to break into a mansion, which gives quite a lot of detail compared to a typical adverb/verb word pair.
I am considering using this second type of Muse, as it is relatively easy to remove castles and incorporate more setting-specific words, add extra columns that refer to Arkadian places and people, and include Arkadian monsters.
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