Hill Cantons Session Report - Sessions 1 and 2

I’ve had the chance to play in Chris’s 5e experiment…thing set in the Hill Cantons, and while I didn’t write a session report for the first game I figure I’ll do one now and combine them.

The Characters

Misha the Wide - War Bear Fighter (Level 1)

Nazgul - Human(Kozak) Ranger (Level 1)

Grubler - Human Motivational Speaker(Bard) (Level 1)

Session Recap

The characters met outside Marlinko as they all realized they were heading east for the same reason. They had all found themselves in the recent possession of a very legitimately looking certificate declaring them sub-boyar of the village of Hovno Potok (Shit Creek in the language of the Overkingdom). With dawning realization that their sub-boyar duties were clearly going to have to be shared the party was soon joined by a shit-covered man named Goran the Gobshite and his ever exasperated son. They were both also headed towards Shit Creek, Goran having purchased a certificate granting him the title of Head Peasant of the village in question (while uncertain what the duties of a head peasant involved, Goran was sure it was important work).

The party soon found Hovno Potok, a beautiful and picturesque walled village styling itself as a miniature version of Marlinko (even being divided into 4 contradas). A visit to the local “headman”, a polite but exasperated lady, she explained that this was New Shit Creek, and their deeds were for Old Shit Creek, which nobody lived in anymore, due to being so awful. It was also clear the trio were not the first ones she had encountered with such documents, and delivered them the bad news (well further bad news) that these certificates also came with a 300 gold sun debt worth of processing fee and filing taxes back in Marlinko.

In the evening the trio decided they were not leaving empty handed and proceeded to rob the village’s watchtower, stealing a whole stack of blank sub-boyar title certificates from a crate with a false bottom, as well as some gold-painted human skulls.

After some more travel and encounters with progressively more jaded, shit-covered and unpleasant villages, as well as a pair of cat men, the party finally made it to the ruins of what looked to have once been a sizable settlement.


Old Shit Creek currently seemed to have two peasant hovels and housed a pair of women who each had identical twins (one set boys, on set girls), along with a wiry gentleman in Marlinko clothing and a talking corgi, all arguing loudly about the two peasant women not wanting anyone to be sub-boyar of their village and just to be left alone.

Misha the Wide intervened and after picking up and chatting with the talking corgi named Samo (because really, who could resist?) he also took away Milovoy’s (the man from Marlinko) certificate, with the man acknowledging that there really was nothing he can actually do to stop the rather massive bear.

Deciding to go investigate the nearby red marbled construction up on the hills overlooking the village, the trio ran into the laborers who seemed mostly interested in just playing dice games and laying around, apparently being paid good money regardless of what was being done. The construction was some kind of monumental ziggurat being built for the Overking’s son, on orders from some official who was not present, but who the laborers were rather weary of.

Exploring the half-constructed building the party found the doorway to it trapped with an electrical barrier and then found the keystone in one corner of the building to contain a hatch. The hatch was blocked off by the sacrificed (relatively recently by the looks of him) corpse of a master stonemason. His mouth stuffed with grain stalks and with slivovice in one hand and a bag of flour in the other he was blocking a second hatch leading down into what the party realized was an inverted ziggurat underneath the mountain and of Hyperborean origin.

Map of level 1 along with annotation and loot.

Exploring the first level of the dungeon the party encountered magic mouths spouting riddles whenever the doors were touched (and then continuing to do so as the group ignored them and simply opened the doors), a table with three desiccated and old Hyperborean (presumed) corpses dressed in the outlandish over-the-top fashion typical of the declining period of that civilization, as well as a fancy cauldron containing the writhing remains of some corpses.

The mass of reanimated corpses attempted to leave and attack, but through oil and fire were quickly dispatched. Inside the cauldron Misha found a fancy sparkling and shimmering pitcher, apparently the effect being powered by a glowing orange ring in a glass cylinder that slotted into the pitcher’s base.

The party also found a secret door but no means to open it, to which Misha offered the straightforward method of kicking a hole through the stone panel, revealing the mechanism (it was the cauldron in the adjacent room!)

Inside they found an illusion of an Earth Mother shrine concealing a black pedestal with a metal cylinder on top of a vacuum tube delivery system. The cylinder contained a spell scroll as well as some very fancy and ornate looking paper written in Hyperborean (possibly the actual deeds of ownership to this place?)

Satisfied with their finds the party went back to the room with the tree corpses…only to find that one of them had in fact left behind their backs (taking its strange curvy sword along) and out through the hatch they came in from.

Deciding to be safe, Misha and Nazgul proceeded to behead and remove the legs off the other two (apparently the two corpses being quite sturdy and even seeming to twitch at the acts done to them) and then chucked them in the cauldron room, before heading back out to go find the third one.

 

Personal Observations

It’s great to finally be able to play in the Hill Cantons even if it is using this strange barely-by-the-book version of 5e (which, second session in, we are already discussing simply giving up on and just going back to B/X). The main thing I noticed, system wise, is that it takes so SO fucking longer to make a character, even using just the Basic document which is supposed to be the more stripped down version.

But hey, I can say I’m playing in a 5e game (barely)! The sessions themselves are a load of fun, with the typical cast of colorful characters typical of the Cantons. I am also deeply enjoying the experience of playing a huge, fat and hairy tank who’s main solution to problems is intimidation and direct violence. Ah the joys of being a bear!