Lockwood & Co and 100 Secrets

[lathany]

Today has been something of a rush. Yesterday evening, Ryan came back from school with a birthday invite for today. It's for one of his closest three friends (Khalid) and, because of cancellations, we happen to be free. More specifically, bateleur happens to be free. So bateleur has sacrificed his spare time and taken our first born to Woking. We rustled a card up out of the cupboard and an Amazon voucher for a present.

This week marked the start of my work Visits season which means visits to armed forces bases and prisons, hotels across the country (Rutland Water this week) and lots of reading time on trains. The last of these meant that I read the last of my birthday books - Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud (the Bartimaeus author). It's awesome - lovely concept, good characters and a plot (or several). I loved every minute of it. It also left me keen to set a one-off in the world he had created (although, I think I'll run my other one-off first)!

Last weekend featured 100 Secrets. The session went something like this:

• We left our guards and travelled back south to Gods Passage. There we spent our time trying to get into the prison. Eventually we (Aeryn (quisalan)) succeeded.
• The place inside was as strange as promised and seemed stuck somewhat in time. Rat (leathellin) found a rat who knew what humans were. Neddra (me) found a piece (a keystone) from a building that wasn't in there. There were no bones anywhere. Aeryn discovered that if she flew high enough she could see mountains high enough to touch the clouds.
• Then Rat found the well, with the steps. We went down the steps and met two living creatures. Sadly, hostile ones. One of them could create chains and the other had some sort of poisoned blade. We then had an epic round of rolling 100s. The eventually upshot was that we killed them, the last stroke being using their poisoned knife and growing a tree in one of them. We then got to explore the rest of the room - it was full of statues of kings and queens and stranger things. We also found a door leading to a tomb. However, we were unable to shift the tombstone. At this point we realised we (Rat) could no longer hear the river and we might be becoming trapped. So - using the river - we left.
• We stayed by Gods Passage during the day and then had another attempt at getting into the prison at nightfall. This was successful and this time we were able to bring Carlos (shadowjon). We got back to the tomb and opened it. Inside was a skeleton in strange armour which was not quite human (it had claws). Despite the picture on the top, it did not have a sword. We also found the door into the actual well area. Eventually we left.
• Travelling south again there was one incident that I remember. We had our stores pilfered by a lone child on the road. We're not sure why the child was alone (we have a number of bad ideas).
• Finally we reached just north of Gobal Palace. There we met a merchant caravan with a VIP. After a miscommunication and some fighting we lost them but discovered at the camping place that it was a travelling priest. By this point we sort of had a plan - we needed more of the Dashi charms and we needed to see what happened to supplicants. Aeryn managed the latter - they were taken at sunset for a ritual and fed worms when the pause moment occurred. The priests were not frozen and we theorised that they had charms. Also Rat made contact with the rebels and we started passing messages. Apparently there were two dozen priests. Finally, Rat explored underground. The Dashi area seemed to be west.
• Our plan to catch priests? A tiger, a portal and some back-up. It worked twice, but was hairy for the third time around. However, we finally got three more charms and then ran away.
• For the next session - we need to wipe out all the worms in the city. This may be a tall order.

I'm glad it's a bank holiday weekend - I'm very sleepy after my trip this week.

Comments

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ooh, Mr Bartimeus had written another book? That is good news. Thanks for the tip!

Sending someone home with a birthday invitation for the following day!? Hope Ryan enjoyed the party, anyway!

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Ooh, Mr Bartimeus had written another book? That is good news. Thanks for the tip!

It's the start of a series. There are three out, a fourth expected later this year and a slightly weird one that's only on ebook which was some sort of "Guardian readers can choose what happens next" Halloween thing. I've only read the first one but I'm planning on looking at the others after I've run my one-off (mostly so that I don't get distracted).

Sending someone home with a birthday invitation for the following day!? Hope Ryan enjoyed the party, anyway!

Yes, we eye-rolled. We could only do it because our Saturday plans had been cancelled. That said, Ryan had a good party.

[huggyrei.livejournal.com]

I like the Lockwood books :) Yes, the setting does sort of demand to be a roleplaying game!