The Kugelberg Flood - One-Shot
Last night I ran an online one-shot of Gus L.'s Kugelberg Flood via Discord. I've been running an in-person open table for several months, but this is the first online session I've run for a while. The adventure revolves around the palace of Kugelberg, which disappeared with all its treasures beneath a great onrushing of the tide. The characters are present on a rare occasion when the waters recede and the palace can be accessed safe(ish)ly before the tide rushes back in. I've run this adventure several times to great success - this time I did so using Into the Odd, with a few tweaks to the adventure as-written.
Players & Characters
laumry: Joseph “Skunk” Featherstone, an illiterate cook armed with a sword, shield, and cooking pot.
bue: Leonard "Nightcrawler" Carmichael, a claymore- and musket-wielding gang member wearing a terrifying mask.
Scroll: Richarde "Heretic" Almonde, a voice-hearing musket-wielder, also equipped with a fishing rod.
OddCore: Edmund "Dimwit" Wade, a halberd-wielding member of Nightcrawler's gang with an artificial lung and a fake pistol.
Tor: Samuel "Salty" Mansforth, wearing a fancy hat and toting a musket and an urn of human ashes.
Events
Scribbled down from memory after the face, apologies for ommissions and inconsistencies.
Venturing from their camp in the dunes, the party approached the domed structure of Graf von Kugelberg's palace in search for the old eccentrics valuables and writings. The building was square with towers on the northern and western sides, and a great pair of bronze doors leading in as well as a sheet of flaccid kelp hanging over a breach in the south-west wall.
Skunk and Almonde spied through windows in the eastern wall, seeing mostly sea muck, barnacles, and ruined old furniture. Several silver buttons were visible scattered about in the room to the north-east. The south-eastern room was dark, with a metal shape looming at the edge of their sight and a strange red coral spreading across the northern wall of the room. Skunk threw a dead fish at the coral and ducked out of the way of a violent, acidic spray.
Dimwit and Nightcrawler hacked through the kelp to the south-west and looked inside the main room, seeing a door to the western tower, a wide, dark pool in the centre of the room, doors to the eastern rooms where Skunk and Scroll were looking through the windows, an unruined sylvan mosaic mural on the northern wall, and an opening in the ceiling with a balcony on the floor above the pool. Salty joined them as Dimwit investigated the pool and Nightcrawler the mural.
The mural depicted a weeping woman in a forest setting, mother-of-pearl tears falling from equally pearlescent eyes. Dimwit found the water in the pool very cold and oddly dark, though not inky, and it was ~3ft deep. Within lay gold, silver, and lapis tiles, and a carpet of bones. Almonde and Skunk entered through the main door as Dimwit stripped off and dove into the chill water. Skunk began stripping off the tiles he could reach while Dimwit dove down, finding a fine golden ring with a large amethyst set in it. Resurfacing, he brandished his prize as the water behind him bubbled and he was pulled back by his ankles.
A frantic battle broke out with the strange bone agglomeration which had seized Dimwit - it resembled a serpentine arrangement of bones with a human torso and pincer-like hands, animated by a current of dark water. Dimwit was able to push it away and the others opened fire, their attacks impaired by the murky water. Skunk joined Dimwit in the pool, battering the creature with his sword and Nightcrawler threw Dimwit his halberd - the latter hoisted the bone-thing up into the air, whereupon the others blasted it to pieces. More bubbles appeared, then subsided as the party members left the pool.
After a quick break, the party returned to the mosaic. Skunk poked the female figure in the eyes, unlocking a door into a dark chamber. Below a star map within floated a strange, faintly glowing being with elongated limbs, chained in place. Skunk hurled his lantern and the thing and it broke its rusted bonds. It surged towards Skunk, sinking its glowing fingers into his chest with a cold burning sensation and driving him backwards. The others counterattacked, finding their attacks had little effect against their target's alien corpus, and Dimwit sent it spinning away over the pool after it downed Nightcrawler. Strange fractal patterns on the creature's 'skin' mesmerised Skunk until a final barrage of acid vials despatched the entity. Nightcrawler was roused while the party investigated the strange prison, finding nothing of value.
Heading into the western tower, the party entered a room filled with glowing sponges and built a scrap wood boardwalk over to a rickety staircase before ascending into a strange trophy room. A pair of polyp-encrusted suits of armour flanked the exit, one with a slight glint behind the visor, and the party debated various stratagems until the suits collapsed into rusty heaps. The glinting thing was a strange, horned obsidian skull.
Dimwit took the skull and returned to the star map, finding both some points on the ceiling and the skull itself glowing slightly. Searching the north-east room on the ground floor turned up a delicate vulpine mask with two half moon indents at the top - it fit the skull perfectly and more points lit up on the star map. The south-east room was investigated - Skunk built a scrap bunker in the room and hurled a bag of baking soda at the weird coral, avoiding a toxic response thanks to his shield and cover. The metal item seen earlier was a large bronze bell, underneath which lay a long gossamer cape of impossibly white fabric. This easily attached to the mask and almost all of the star-map points illuminated.
Heading back upstairs, the party investigated the tower to the north, finding a ruined pleasure house where three brass automata lay ensconced in anemone-filled alcoves. One of them wore a delicate silver tiara. Skunk tied a rope around his waist and trailed a grappling hook with him. He hooked it onto the tiara, avoiding the automaton as it whirred into furious life, and sprinted back as the party pulled the tiara out. The door was barred with a stone couch and sodden animal heads from the trophy room.
The party felt a sense of electric anticipation as they returned to the prison room. The tiara snapped into a hovering position above the masked skull and the arrangement floated to the centre, pulsing with an inner light. A glowing being, not dissimilar to the thing the party had earlier fought, emerged from within the folds of the cape and extended a glowing hand to Nightcrawler and Skunk. They took the offered hands and winked out of existence with the thing. The skull, cape, mask and tiara fell to the floor as floodwaters began to lap around the bootsoles of Almonde, Dimwit and Salty, who headed back to their camp and prepared to return to Bastion.
Thoughts
This was a joy to run. The group were great, constantly coming up with clever tricks and strategies and developing an impressive amount of characterisation for a 2.5hr session with a couple sentences of priming. I may upset the New Simulationists with this, but the stellar ascension - I told the party to watch the last ten minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey for an idea of what happened to Nightcrawler and Skunk - was a total ad-lib. Dimwit's player was so excited about the possibility of the skull interfacing with the prison that I ran with it. The mask was an established treasure item but I added the cape and tiara on the fly. I'm really pleased with how it worked out, everyone got super into solving the puzzle and they were happy with the ending. In a full campaign I'd refer back to my notes, but for a one-shot why not fly by the seat of your pants on occasion?
I flubbed a few rules here and there, particularly with risky stunts - I was having the players make saves when I should have had the targets do that, but it worked out well so no harm done. I haven't run Into the Odd for a while but I'd definitely do so again, it's quick and flexible and actively encourages players to try interesting things.
Running from a laptop is fucking hard. I need to get more flooring done in the house so I can set up my desktop and have a bigger screen, actual peripherals, and more desk space. I managed with an HDMI cable and a spare monitor crammed into the available space in my bedroom, but it was sub-optimal and I wouldn't want to run anything more intensive than the occasional one-shot - certainly not a megadungeon game where I'd need to consult keys and maps regularly. 5 players worked ok, I think with a better setup I'd have been able to bring some players into the game more and could definitely run up to 6. Still, I was able to do what I needed to do, if not always comfortably.
Summary: a very fun game and some lovely people to play with!