Lair of the Lamb session one: What's eating George?
It's this guy!
(source)
I ran Lair of the Lamb this week! We have a big table - seven players (one was absent, so six for this session). LotL usually calls for 12 peasants, but I wanted everyone to have at least one spare, so I had everyone roll up/make up two peasants for 14 in total.
We used a hodge-podge of Block Dodge Parry, the peasant generator in LotL, the LotL conversion guide for Cairn, and I Cast Light's excellent "Reasons your characters share this unfortunate fate" table.
Many of the spare peasants are as of yet unaccounted for. But so far, we've met:
| Battie, a Herbalist who rejected a noble's advances and was accused of being a witch for her trouble. |
| Gwyn, a deserter whose tongue was cut out years ago. (hilariously, the player decided this before we started play, without knowledge of the starting situation!) |
| George & Lenny, two half-orc half-urchin half-brothers, both beggars in Lon Barago, snatched off of the streets. |
| Alec, imprisoned for impersonating a priest of the Authority for the tithe money. Continues to loudly insist that he's a priest of the Authority. |
| Kurt Hammer, blacksmith of Villageton (a newish consolidation of villages in the hills a day's walk from the city), big fan of the heavy temple, who offended a petty passing magistrate. |
| Kes, chicken farmer and chicken weirdo out of Villageton. Disciple of Shendormu. Drug addict. (Synonyms). "Too many drugs, too few friends". Was high, saw a questionable cart with lumpy tarp-covered cargo get let through the city gates without inspection, decided to have a little nap. |
KURT HAMMER wakes up to pain. His head is pounding, his throat papery, limbs weak and aching, thirstier than he's ever felt before. Pitch blackness, wrists and ankles bound tight, scratchy burlap against his face - a sack over his head. He's wearing what feels like a loincloth and nothing more.
He knows, with a deep certainty, that if he does not drink water, he'll be dead within 24 hours. His side is pressed up against cold, hard stone. It curves around him at his head and feet, and upwards underneath him. More distressingly, he's lying on something warm, soft in parts, hard - boney - in others. Something cold and pointy is pressed up against his leg.
Quickly he realizes it's a dagger and, with some fiddling, cuts his hands free. Ripping the sack off of his head, he sees nothing. He tries to get away from the wall, crawling. The floor yelps. He's on top of a pile of people, trussed and sacked as he'd been. One by one, his knees and elbows rouse them.
Those newly-roused flounder:
George and Lenny start using their tusks to try and free each other.
Kes might still be high. Alec starts trying to stand up (while still bound). Kurt, forging onwards, crawls up against another wall. Like the first, it curves inwards to his left and right; but on feeling up its height, he realizes that there's a ledge about a foot up. He returns to his original position, and starts trying to count how many people there are, going by voices. (This is somewhat hampered by Gwyn not being able to speak).
It's at this point that they all hear the sounds. Wracked, rattling breath, too many hoofsteps, a faint skittering, the sound of a great bulk being dragged across a floor. Like a sack of wet meat.
It sounds like it's coming towards them, crawling down a corridor towards the room our heroes find themselves in.
("Does it sound like chicken meat?", Kes asks. (It had been instantly, tacitly agreed on by all parties that Kes had expertise in Chickens). No, not like chicken meat.)
Kurt cuts Gwyn's hands free, hurriedly but trying to stay quiet, while George and Lenny work theirs against their tusks with much less care for Noise. Alec tries to stand up, still bound, and fails to keep his balance. A luck roll decides which way he falls; He falls backwards, and tumbles over the wall's top, landing heavily on the ground below. The rest of the party feels the ground beneath them rock.
Just as they deduce they're in some sort of giant bowl, the smell hits them. Blood and ammonia, pungent. The Thing growing closer, pushing its way into the room, dulling the texture of every echo with its presence.
Alec recovers from his fall and crawls westwards away from the Thing. He quickly hits a wall; he turns right, and keeps crawling. Gwyn, for lack of sign language with which to communicate her lack of a tongue, avails herself of the oldest language of all, and sticks Kurt's hand in her mouth. In this moment, Kurt was enlightened. He decides to play dead. Kes flings themselves southwards out of the bowl (no need for a roll), as Battie tumbles out east, towards the coming beast. George & Lenny get to work freeing their feet.
And the Thing comes nearer, the sounds of its hoofsteps now joined by a thousand tinier skitterings, brimming up to the rim of the bowl, the stench growing unbearable, wracking breath, wet sliding flesh, clacking teeth, everyone knowing this is their last chance to take action before It does what it came here to do-
Kurt decides stealth is a lost cause and bolts westward, trying to run out of the bowl, with Gwyn behind! Battie, with the Thing standing over her, stays stock-still and silent, her back pressed against the bowl! Alec reaches the room's northwest corner and crawls east! Kes hits the west wall and crawls south! And George and Lenny get their feet free, and - It Strikes. Everyone feels the lunging of a great weight, hears the deafening dissonant screech and rush of displaced air. Somehow, George feels it coming for him, and twists. Jaws tear a chunk out of him, but he's still standing. He's holding a foot of rope, newly torn from his ankles. He thrusts out a hand, and touches the jaws that bit him. Clammy, sallow skin, stretched tight over bone. He knows where it is. He tries to wrap the rope around the thing's snout, to buy everyone some time.
It doesn't work. The beast tears its way free, and jaws engulf George's outstretched hand, his arm, his shoulder, most of his torso. They crush and bite and tear. George's final screams are for Lenny to run, to save himself.
As the lamb starts crunching on George, everyone scrambles. Lenny tries to run past the Thing and gets bodychecked for his trouble, but gets back on his feet; Kurt and Gwyn run north and stumble over Alec, whose bonds Kurt cuts; Kes crawls along the south wall; and Battie crawls past the Beast's hooves. After several blind collisions near the doorway, the party tumbles out into the corridor beyond. As soon as (what he thinks is) the last person is through, Alec shuts the door.
The initial scenario is one of my favourite things about Lair of the Lamb. It forces the players to engage with the fictional space in very concrete sensory ways, touching things while trying to figure out what sort of environment they're even in. It's meant to hammer in a desire for light, and I think it does that wonderfully.
At this point we shifted to Dungeon Turns, using the Underclock.
Alec walks straight forwards and so runs into the door of the Barnyard-smelling room, which the party promptly enters, feeling their way around. Gwyn searches for a weapon, and finds a wooden bowl; Kes rummages through the pile of hay and finds a lot of hay. Kurt has the idea of trying to strike a spark by hitting the door's hinges with his dagger; this is ruled to cause Noise (provoking an underclock roll) and have a 1-in-6 chance of working.
Alec finds the dead goats and takes one of their bells as his own.
After ten minutes, the Beast, done with its meal (RIP George), breaks down the door to the Bowl room. This spooks everyone, and they hide/prepare in case it comes for them; but it just drags itself away down the corridor.
The party gets very unlucky with their underclock rolls, rolling a 5 (when entering the room) then a 6 and a 2 (after searching it), bringing them all the way to 13! This makes them loath to head out; instead, they prepare. They try milking the live goat for a drink; unfortunately, the dice decide it's a boy. Instead, it ends up de-belled and leashed, ready to start its new life as a distraction/snack. Alec and Kurt peek their heads out the door.
The party rolls a 6 again, and go over 20. It's coming. Alec tries to distract it, send it into the Bowl room by throwing his bell in there, but it's dark and he misses and in any case It knows exactly where he is. Everyone ducks back into the room and slam the door shut. The beast gets to work at smashing it down. Battie holds the goat, ready to toss it.
Meanwhile, Kurt Hammer is trying desperately to light a fistfull of straw from a hinge-spark, uncaring of the noise. At first, he's unlucky.
But then arrives Gwyn bearing her wooden bowl, now filled with straw, and on next swing sparks fly and one catches the very tip of a straw and then for the first time there is Light, light from a flaming bowl, and for the first time Gwyn sees Kurt and Kurt sees her and they see Battie and Alec and Lenny and Battie and Alec and Lenny see Kurt and Gwyn and nobody sees Kes because Kes has burrowed into the straw, but Kes' eyes are peeking out and Kes sees Everything, and everyone sees the goat and the goat sees everyone and it lets out a friendly little dehydrated bleat and then everyone sees the door splinter and collapse inwards and everyone sees the Lamb.
It's like a huge obese hairless cow. It has legs with hooves (though not the hooves of a cow), but also has innumberable legs more, insectile ones that crawl at the ground and at the doorframe with minds of their own. Strange nodules grow off of its skin.
At first, it has no visible head. Its neck just ends in a drooping cowl of wrinkled flesh. But then, as it rights itself after having slammed down the door, it shudders, and something emerges. Thin bloody skin stretched over a skull like a horse's. Beady eyes glinting in the light.
...The flickering firelight, at which the beast screeches and rears back, terrified. It retreats down the corridor, giving the party the chance to run out and past it. They all do, bringing the goat along (still held in Battie's arms). They retreat backwards in a rough formation, those furthest from the beast guiding those nearest back. Most importantly, Gwyn is holding up the warding fire. The hay burns quickly, and must be replenished constantly, but enough was stuffed into sacks that they won't run out in the next minute. They retreat north, the lamb eventually following - staying far away from the fire, but gradually growing braver - and are dismayed when they reach the vinegar room and find it's a dead end.
Gwyn charges the beast like the olympic torch runner, and it retreats again, but less quickly this time. This amount of fire will not be enough to deter it a third time.
But it works for now, and that's enough, and they escape west and find themselves at the Landing.
