Hurst's downtime tale.

Explanation: whenever the cancellation of the game is my fault and lasts more than a single missed session, I like to whip up a little narrative on what has happened to their characters, and depending on a dice roll each player makes, I access a random table I’ve made up (and expanded significantly over the campaign). This table can contain Faction points, EP (though I post about my Grim Hack rules, we still haven’t converted over except in one-shots), skills, characteristics, equipment, contacts, cash gains (or losses), new adventure locations, and just some bizarre shit. Most of the results are actually a combination of these things, with a scattered big gain for a single thing.

I usually just pass it on through group texts, but others may find some interest in this, if not mechanically, then for entertainment purposes.

Will post these as I finish them.

This time around since we had such a big break, I asked the players what their characters were attempting to do along with the result from their die roll, and tried to integrate, with the following results:

Hurst, Adventurer Extraordinaire* (Dave) – Hurst, the fate of the refugee/slaves in the mine to the north weighs heavily on his mind, and he gathers a group of Legionnaires and heads north. Caution being the better part of valor, Hurst and his team slowly approached the mine entrance. The ground in front of the entrance is scorched in a roughly thirty yard circle. Evidence of booted footprints with a tread unlike anything he’d seen before go towards the sere ground, but there are no bodies to be found. Odd. Similar tracks lead both in and out of the adit, so Hurst told his men to tread carefully. Investigating the ground he’d previously covered, he found the strange stone past the wizard’s lab to have been destroyed, shattered. Again cautioning his men, they descended down towards the underground city. Finding evidence of a heavy battle and the remains of bio-mechanical spider-like creatures, he had some of the men pick up the most undamaged pieces and ascended back towards the elevator.

Descending down the mine elevator towards the deeper levels he’d not adventured through, the team were attacked by feral (and cannibalistic) refugees, their hands turned black. Twenty-two half-starved souls were put down, but, despite heavy wounds, none of the Legionnaires were lost. A group of six survivors, barely alive, had boarded themselves up in one of the slave pens. After some water and a bit of rations, the Legionnaires fashioned stretchers and began transporting the survivors to the surface.

Returning to the surface himself, Hurst realized there is one more level below the slave pits. How was the elevator still functioning? A survivor, more alert than the others told him “No one went deeper. Not even the Mageregime wizard.”

The survivors, to a man, pledged their undying gratitude to Hurst, while Sergeant Piva pulled Hurst aside. “It’s been an honor, sir,” shaking Hurst’s hand. “We know you’re not officially Legion, but you are to us. We’ll follow you anywhere, anytime.”

Hurst descended to below the WAC headquarters, getting nods and smiles along the way towards his infrequent visits to that damn vault door. Nothing had changed. No fresh ideas came to him, the he heard something on the other side of the door. Was that a woman’s voice? He heard a door close, then nothing. Of course…

The fucking sewers.

Once the survivors from the mine had recovered their health, Hurst was able to find them work around the Stead. Most in the new businesses that had opened up with the coming of more refugees and new investors from the Empire. Needing a second apprentice, Frank Waite the blacksmith, gladly took on Michael to work with him and Jerome at the forges. Frank thanked Hurst but seemed to be holding back laughter. Hurst nodded his head and went back to the barracks for a long deserved rest.

On returning home, on his rack sat a suit of heavy black plate mail. Trying it on, it’s much lighter than it looks… Obviously Siddich in origin, it had been painstakingly adjusted to Hurst’s exact measurements, and of any symbols of Anglypur there is no trace, only the crest of the Legion.

++Legion and Refugee Faction, + unique Legionnaire/Siddich plate mail.

*Note, Hurst is following his own career-less advancement system that Dave developed. I hope to post that here with Dave’s permission sometime in the future.