vbwyrde
2008-06-02T14:54:00Z
This is an example of Elthos RPG World Weaving as gleaned from the recent Game Test IV:

Today we picked up the story where we left off. Fred spent a day
healing and being healed by the Hamfest Hellhound's favorite cleric
of the Golden Sheaf Monastery, Morgana. Though healed, the wound he
recieved from the Crab-Witch left a strange dark crescent shaped
scar on his right wrist. Nevertheless, soon he would be fit to
adventure again. In the meantime while staying the night in the
barn they were assaulted by a mass of spiders from the ceiling and a
huge mosquito swarm. Going outside and climbing on the roof of the
barn Fred and Maya discovered a large black seething mass attached
to the long beam of the barn's roof. Maya hurled a stone from her
sling at the mass, but the stone simply vanished into it without a
trace, except that it caused the dark shape to ripple. Fred poked
it with a stick and as the seething mass began to climb along the
stick it was gingerly thrown away. A torch was brought and it
became evident that the mass was in fact a large conglobulate of
spiders. This weirded everyone out, but there was nothing to be
done except spend the rest of the night killing spiders with torches
and swatting at mosquitoes.

The next night they decided to stake out the barn. Sitting on top
with Thomas who has the power of True Sight, they waited. Sure
enough a kobold with a large basket of spiders came down the road
and approached their hiding spot. Again, only Thomas with his power
could see it. Fred convinced Thomas (barely, as Thomas is a
notorious weeny) to use his staff to strike at the creature in the
hopes that doing so would make it visible to the others. Sneaking
up behind the burdened creature (it was caring a huge basket of
spiders) he struck and hit. And voila - now they could see it.
After this it was fairly easy for them to surround and capture green
capped kobold. He squealed, and tried to escape and got away from
Fred who was wrestling it to the ground (here I would like to add
that the simplified mechanics of the ODS were particularly
effective - unencumbered by complexity, yet able to quickly adapt to
alternating combat tactics it seems to work out reasonably well).
However, due to the fact that Maya had come up behind it she cut off
it's retreat (zone of control rules). She stabbed at the little
fellow and he squealed - "Don't hurt me!". This came as a bit of a
shock as they had not heard that these creatures could speak the
common tongue of the Glendalites.

They interrogated it, and got some interesting information which it
traded for it's little life, poor thing. He was sent by
his "beautiful queen", the crab-witch. She was sending spiders to
plague the Hamfest Hell Hounds because she was asked to by the
Weasel King, whose bride the Hell Hounds stole from him. Revenge.
He would not stop, said the kobold, until they returned the fairy
princess Weeleena to the King of the Weasels. Further investigation
proved that Weeleena was to be the unwilling bride, having herself
been kidnapped by the Weasel King and held in his Fortress of Stone
until she was rescued by the Hamfest Hell Hounds, the whereabouts of
which could not be effectively determined (somewhere in the vicinity
of the McFearson Hill it was believed). Fred then asked the kobold
about the strange dark moon shaped scar on his wrist... "Oh yes,
this is the mark of the Crab-Witch - it means you are very brave!",
said the kobold with a cryptic laugh and would say no more. They
then gave the kobold the option of promising to not carry more
spiders to the barn, or to die. "Who are you more afraid of, us or
the Crab-Witch?"... Thinking it over he decided "This is a good time
for me to go to the mountains", and so they let him go. Off to the
east the little fellow fled in the dead of night. No one noticed
the crow that followed after him from the apple tree.

The next day the whole crew of the Golden Sheaf Society returned to
Wolfstone Lair to investigate it further. They decided to avoid the
tunnel that lead to the pool of frothing gore in which the crab-
witch lives. They went the other way down a narrow tunnel that lead
to a wolf's den, and then another that led to a second wolf's den.
Nothing unusual was seen there, except an odd notch in the wall from
which Fred extracted... a small feather doll. Odd, they thought.

They marched on down into another tunnel and after a long winding
way came to a solid stone wall with a solid bronze door with a key
hole. They had no luck in bashing it down. So they turned back and
followed yet another tunnel to a small cavern with a dark pool of
still water in it. The cavern was roughly circular and around the
pool were four large stones covered with moss, on the top of each of
which were small mushroom gardens, each of a different color. As
they entered Maya, who was in the lead, heard strange flute-like
music and timbrels. Across the room along the ground she saw a long
line of tiny little lights from which the music seemed to be
emanating. As she approached the lights they all suddenly vanished
and the music ceased. The party stopped in wonder and looked around
the chamber. Fred took some of the mushrooms from a rock while
Thomas used his Herb Lore skill to examine them. "These," he
said, "are Magic Mushrooms!". What they did exactly, however, not
even he could say. Meanwhile, Maya was looking in the pool by
torchlight and noticed a goldfish. Then two, then more. They came
to the surface and swam around near her feet.

Fred, not known for an abundance of wisdom, decided to eat a
mushroom. Slowly over the course of a minute or so he felt very
strange and his hair grew long and he began to hunch over and in the
end he was utterly transformed into a kobold. Thinking that things
couldn't get worse he decided to plunge into the dark pool...
wherein he was transformed again - into a goldfish. He could, he
found, speak with another goldfish who told him that his name was
Thorvax the warrior and he and the other goldfish had made the same
mistake. Swimming to the bottom of the pool where his bag had
descended Fred the goldfish nibbled at yet another mushroom. This
time he grew wings. He tried a third ... and this time nothing at
all happened. And so finally, in a fit of frustrated
inquisitiveness he nibbled at the last kind of mushroom (white dots)
and ... was transformed back to his former self! And so he
scrambled out of the pool, quite naked as the day he was born, and
unable to think of how to retrieve his cloths, or weapons or gear.
Shivering and annoyed, but glad to be human again, they stood there
when suddenly the music returned and all the walls were covered with
tiny lights from tiny little balconies. One light which was
brightest showed the presence of a beautiful tiny little fey woman
in a majestic robe with a tiny crown (really, all of these fey were
the size of half a fingernail at most, and she the tallest). The
thunderstruck party gaped at her. Finally, Fred asked "Are you the
Queen of the Fairies?" ... her response was "INDEED!" and she waved
her wand and all the torches and lights and music went out - and
there they stood in the cold darkness.

As soon as this happened they heard the sound of wolves howling in
the distance, and so the party began to scramble around for
torches. Sputtering and flabbergasted Thomas managed to light one.
At which point Phineas noticed something bad. William, who had been
following up in the rear, was missing. "William...?" Totally
gone. Vanished without a trace. The party then began to move back
up the tunnel from whence they came calling for William. They sent
Phineas down the remaining corridor to see if he could find him
there, but he returned with ominous news. The corridor itself was
covered in spider webs - big thick spider webs, and no sign of
William was there. So they went back the way they came. And as
Fred was in the rear watching their back, he was able to watch as a
giant spider crept along the ceiling toward their party from the
tunnel with the thick spider webs - but from this they were all
hurrying away anyway, and so no one else noticed it but he.

As they passed into the first wolves den again, Maya, who was in the
lead, was suddenly attacked by three wolves who instantly sprang at
her with ferocious growls. However, she is very fast and nimble,
and armed, and armored, and the next in line was the powerful
Warlock Vespasian. They quickly dispatched the wolves, who once
dead, transformed into the corpses of three, now dead, men. They
were struck with grief, especially since Maya had killed the third
wolf with her dagger when after it had been knocked unconscious by
Vespasian's Sleep spell. Alas.

While this battle was going on Fred ran back to the pool and threw
in a handful of the Restorating mushrooms and jumped in. He turned
into a goldfish and told the others to eat the mushrooms, and he ate
one as well. All of the men were turned back into their
former selves, and thanking him profusely, naked and shivering, they
all ran back to catch up with the party.

The transformation of the wolves into humans caused Fred to realise
that the third mushrooms must transform people into wolves. So he
ate one. And sure enough it did, and so he became now a wolf. With
his wolf sense of smell he tracked William.

And so he came back to the nook where he found the doll and sure
enough that's where the scent of William led. Phineas and Vespasian
both tinkered around until they found the magical latch and swung
the secret door open. The torches revealed a flight of stairs going
up. Maya again led the way, but as soon as she touched the first
stair with the tip of her toes there was a rumbling sound, a tremor,
and dust fell from the ceiling. Ignoring this Fred, the wolf, ran
up the stairs. Suddenly the trembling got much worse and stones
began to fall from the ceiling. No one knew what to do. The men
who had been rescued from the pool scattered down different
corridors. The Golden Sheaf Society boldly ran up the stairs after
Fred. Behind them in the distance they heard the pitiful shrieks of
men dying.

And so they followed the gracefully arched corridor and came to a
strange and beautiful chamber... a sitting room in fact. Everything
here was fabulously crafted out of dark red wood, inlaid with mother
of pearl and silver, and ornately carved with elegant designs and
mysterious patterns. The room they found through the first archway
on the right was, as I said, a sitting room. Inside were two coat
racks, with coats, three lovely wooden chairs, a table with tea
cups, two book shelves, and on a stand a steaming tea kettle, and on
the table ... a beautiful book.

Now at this point our heroes were starting to get a little bit leery
about ... things ... and so no one really wanted to pick the book
up, though everyone wanted to. Fred almost did, but Maya insisted
that Vespasian look at it since "he at least can read"... (not to
mention that at this point Fred was a wolf). And so Vespasian
picked up the book and murmured to himself "very interesting! A
picture book! ... how fascinating the scenery is ... hmmmm... I've
never seen anything like ... " and despite various attempts of the
party members to divest him of it, Vespasian sank into a comfortable
chair with the book, and he slowly vanished from view.

Thoroughly alarmed, the party backed out of the room. They were,
they realized, down two members of the group now (three if you
include Robert who perished two adventures ago). They followed
Fred's nose to the next room up a flight of stairs ... to The
Kitchen. Sure enough William's scent was strong here and led to a
cupboard. Maya opened it to find William ... a very very tiny
William in a jar. They gave him a restoration mushroom and in a few
minutes he grew back to his full size, but he too was naked as they
day he was born. It was at this time that Thomas found three tiny
children sitting in little three legged stools on the ledge of the
oven. They were in a state of terror and couldn't speak or move
their eyes from the oven, in which Fred saw three small pies were
being baked. When he stared at them, however, it seemed to him that
he saw a pitch black smoke in the form of children filling the pies
which filled him with a horrible sense of dread. They took the
children from the stools and placed them gingerly on the table, and
took the pies out of the oven with a spatula. Finding a cutting
knife Maya began to cut a slice of pie. All around them they heard
the sounds of a fearful shrieking as the steam came wafting out of
the pie. Maya stopped cutting and put the knife down. Inside the
pie was a black liquid with dark morsels. They could not figure out
what to do. So they asked Thomas if they should burn the pies, or
throw them away or leave them or ... what? Thomas prayed to the
Elkron of the Golden Sheaves... and said that he learned only
this... the pies are made from the nightmares of children... in fact
these very three children, and anyone who ate them would be filled
with all of their nightmares. Meanwhile Thomas had given the three
children little morsels of the mushrooms of restoration and so they
were at full size again, though still filled with terror. Fred was
also restored again, though he too was still filled with a terrible
sense of dread from having seen how the pies were made. And so they
all backed out of The Kitchen. But not before Fred grabbed an apron
from the wall and put it on, and took the kitchen knife with him
too.

The Golden Sheaf Society went back to the sitting room and took the
coats from the racks and found with them clothing as well on
hangers. These, as it happens, were the cloths of the children and
William, and so they were all at least dressed like ordinary people
again. This made everyone feel a little better about things, except
Fred who was still not quite satisfied with his outfit.

Since dust was still coming up from the corridor leading down from
whence they came they decided to forge ahead to the next room and
see if they could not find a way out. The corridor lead through
another elegant archway into a third room, much larger and more
richly decorated even than the others. This large circular room was
divided by a softly waving curtain that separated the bedroom from
the bath. In the bedroom was a huge tear shaped bed arrayed with
gorgeous silk sheets and pillows. There were book shelves with
books and artifacts of various strange shapes and sizes, lanterns,
with three chairs at the foot of the bed and a table on which were a
plate or small honey cakes that no one yet noticed. The bath was in
the shape of a beautiful woman's eye, where the pupil, half covered
by the eyelid, actually formed a deeper well in which a hot spring
fed the swirling waters. On a long shelf along the edge of the bath
were jars and bowls of oils, and small carafe with unknown liquids
in them. The three children, William, Maya, and Fred looked around
in amazement at the gorgeous chamber.

Fred, who was rather tired of wearing an apron, decided to take the
sheets from the bed and make a tunic. As soon as he touched the
cool silky softness of the sheets he felt a wonderful sensation of
longing to slide into bed and fall into the land of dreams and leave
the world of troubles behind. And so he did. And he dreamed of a
beautiful cloud kingdom and the spirits of the Sky King and their
Songs of Glory, and their vast armadas of Cloud Ships, and the Storm
Lord and the Song of the Majestic Sunset, and he was quite happy
there. Of course, no one else in the room was happy at all, and
despite everything they could try to do they could get him off the
bed, but there he lay on the floor, snoring away with a blissful
smile on his face.

And this, my friends, is where we had to leave things this time.
Any and all comments/suggestions are welcome.