This was a session of Troika! running The Hand of God. I decided to start the adventure outside Rezkin’s Folly, and run that as a dungeon by itself. The players are told that:
- Wizards are all bastards.
- There’s probably loads of treasure in that tower.
Sure enough, we rolled up some characters and got stuck right in.
Rogues on the Lawn
Standing in the (relatively) pleasant gardens outside Rezkin’s Folly we find a flat-capped Gremlin Catcher named Keith Weasel, accompanied by a small and vicious dog named Down Boy and carrying a gremlin in a jar named Arthur the Bastard1. Beside him, winged and clawed and hoofed, a Sceptical Lamassu named Jeri. Next up Tiny the Argent Giant of Corda, followed by Ronald Quixote the Questing Knight astride Patrick the horse. Bringing up the rear, clanking and leaking, is Bolt the Thinking Engine.
The tower looms above the topiary bushes, giant red orb humming menacingly far above. Jeri decides that the ominous hum as they approach a flower bed is “nothing to worry about”, but is proven wrong in pretty short order, as the orb throws a fireball at them. Fucking Wizards.
Luckily though, the door is ajar and open, so on we go. Down Boy rushes ahead into the wide open room, and fortunately doesn’t weigh enough to trigger the pit trap. As Down Boy’s scampering about on it, the party notices the floor appears to be flickering.
As a test, Ronald tosses a coin onto the trap. This doesn’t trigger the trap, but does activate Keith, who dives after it. He lands with a thud, and the floor vanishes under him and Down Boy. Keith manages to grab onto the edge, but the small dog is suspended in mid-air and falling. Ronald extends a lance to try and hoik him, and Jeri tries to fly down and catch him in mid-air. Two wretched rolls later, we hear a soft splash from below as Down Boy falls down into the pool of the Eel King. “He’ll be fine”2, insists Keith.
Notule Panic
Well, with that out of the way, lets see if we can find some treasure. Door on the right, heavy machinery packed in all around. Tiny makes a successful haberdashery check to identify these are arcane machines to turn notules into items of clothing. Nothing to loot specifically in this room, but there is another door leading further in.
Rummaging around in the boxes at the back of this second room, Tiny finds a black veil on an iron circlet. As he picks it up, Ronald spots a notule emerging from behind a crate and readies his lance.
A brutal fight in the darkness, against the freezing shrouds of the notules, Ronald cuts a path through them with Lance & Sword. Back in the pit-trap main room, Jeri is still not exactly sure what might be happening in the storerooms.
Keith decides its high time Arthur the Bastard makes himself useful. He’s loosed from his jar, just to immediately turn on Keith and lunge for him. Unfortunately for Arthur Keith’s pretty good at handling gremlins, and the little blighter ends up being scooped back into the jar mid-lunge.
Ronald fights bravely, but is unable to defend his ally Tiny who is eventually completely cocooned by the last remaining Notule, killing him but sparing the party as the creature is pretty content to finish its meal.
The black veil falls to the ground, and Bolt picks it up. I mean hey, Tiny wasn’t using it anymore. As this happens, the dwarf who was trapped in the storeroom emerges - Hugh Mungous joins the party.
Into the Reeking Dark
Back to the doors on the other side of the main room, we root around until we find a shiny key resting on a suspicious black cloth in a bucket. Ready for it this time, Keith handily traps it in one of his spare jars. Hugh takes a moment to carve an axe out of a discarded femur in one of the rooms, and hefts the plastic table onto its side to serve as a rudimentary shield.
Up the stairs now, and onto the first floor’s maze. We can do a bit of scouting, by tempting Arthur the Bastard with the promise of pork scratching, perhaps he will go out into the maze and tell us what’s ahead. Perhaps he’ll get torn to shreds by Zoanthrops. Only time will tell.
A short while later, the party hears what sounds suspiciously like a gremlin being torn to shreds.
Ah well, nothing for it now I guess.
Into the maze, the party loops through the dark corridors until they find the Meat Room. Its gross in here, but that doesn’t deter Hugh who’s pretty sure his “shield” will be much improved if he straps some meat to it. Who am I to argue? Keith agrees, no use letting meat go to waste. Why not grab some handfuls to put in our backpacks? No-one takes him up on this offer, weirdly.
Now, smelling strongly of meat3, the party continues down the corridor. In a flash, Ronald is grabbed from behind by grizzled hands and dragged clean off Patrick (the horse). The zoanthrop hunting them is trying to make off with his prize before anyone can do anything about it!
Thinking fast, the party hurls some meat behind the creature, then grabs hold of Ronald and braces. Seeing itself outnumbered, and with an easier option having been thrown at its feet the zoanthrop scarpers (with two big handfuls of offal).
Keith’s Really Bad Day Out
Continuing on, the party arrives at the staircase up. Hugh is a professional metalworker, so he’ll have this locked trapdoor open in no time.
Turns out not be quite quick enough, as two more zoanthrops stalk out of the darkness. Bolt fends them off with a soldering iron, not necessarily a weapon of war, but a great tool for causing pain. Jeri lashes out with a vicious hoof kick, but is very nearly clawed to death for their trouble.
Keith decides to leverage his trapping skills, by holding out a pork scratching, and preparing to club a zoanthrop in the head if it goes for it. He’s warned by a voice in the back of his head, that if this goes wrong it’s going to be very bad.
He reaches out invitingly, and a zoanthrop takes the bait. It opens its jaw wide, revealing vicious sharp yellow teeth and the stench of an abandoned abattoir. It lunges, and Keith completely misses its head. It clamps down, and rips his hand off at the wrist, dealing terrible damage and leaving Keith bleeding profusely from a ragged stump.
Eventually the zoanthrops are driven off, and the trapdoor springs open at last.
A Normal Wizard
As the party creeps up into the wizard’s laboratory on the top floor, Rezkin cries out in his most imposing voice. What are you doing in my tower? And can you please piss off? After a short debate, Hugh offers to paint Rezkin’s portrait. Being a normal wizard, and extremely vain, Rezkin enthusiastically agrees.
Unbeknownst to Hugh and Rezkin, the rest of the party hatch a plan to murder Rezkin while he’s posing. They seat him on Patrick (for dramatic flair), and Jeri waits behind to snatch him up into the air and leave him vulnerable.
Patrick is spooked by a swift smack to the rear, and Rezkin goes flying. Jeri misses him on the way down, and he crashes heavily to the ground.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the wizard’s first rodeo4, and as he scrambles to his feet he mutters a fell chant to cast: HURRICANE. Battle is joined, by all except Hugh who continues to paint from the eye of the storm.
Keith releases the notule right over the wizard, but unfortunately it fails to find any purchase on this slippery old man, and eventually flutters off in the high winds. Jeri is caught in a vicious blast of lightning and, after the wounds sustained from zoanthrops, is completely obliterated. They turn to ash, and their remains begin swirling in the storm.
We look briefly over the shoulder of Hugh, he’s capturing a dynamic scene in absolutely stunning detail. Really great colour work, excellent sense of motion throughout.
It looks like all might be lost as the party is struggling in the overwhelming hurricane, but as the painting is completed Hugh lifts it above his head and cries out. Stunned silence, the hurricane drops.
“Wow”
The wizard Rezkin is mollified, and well pleased with that painting. Hugh’s managed to capture the exact moment Jeri was incinerated, and Rezkin cuts a pretty dashing figure (and you can barely see his bald spot). He offers payment, and even a replacement small and vicious dog for Keith.
Closing Thoughts
I’m hugely proud of Rezkin’s Folly, it’s my favourite part of The Hand of God, and I love running it. This was a great session, with a bunch of ace players who really played the damn game. It’s fun to make bad choices sometimes.
I always feel absolutely awful when a party pet falls into a trap. In my heart, they all live on forever, but in the game I’m playing hardball. Rest in peace Down Boy. I guess also rest in peace Arthur the Bastard?
We ended pretty sharply as Hugh lifted the painting, but we were coming up on time and it seemed a good place to finish.