Last episode, the party entered the Sun-Spear encampment and met with their chieftain, Juba, to begin the business of learning about the Hillfolk sorcerer who’s been causing trouble for Vahid, for Stonetop, and apparently for this clan of nomads. As the party moved through the camp, it was clear that they were under tremendous strain — threatened by mysterious enemies, and starving.
Juba’s initial mistrust of the party’s intentions stems from the Hillfolk’s general suspicion of outsiders, plus their very specific distrust of magi. Vahid, of course, explained that he is not a wizard, but Juba was having none of it — the nomads have ancient taboos against making common cause with magic-users (though we have not yet explored why). We concluded the session with Juba inviting Padrig out for a hunt on the Flats. Outwardly, it is to a feed a few of his hungry people, but the real purpose is to take Pad’s measure.
We ended with the Forage roll, the results of which gave Padrig a choice: Complete the hunt with moderate success and without incident, or risk a danger in exchange for a much greater reward? Let’s see how things shook out:
I think this is the very first unanimous result in the 8-month run of PTFO:Stonetop. Previously, the closest we’d come was the choice in Session 4.2, when Vahid chose to use his magic to impress a potential ally. These two decision points have a lot in common — they were both about whether a PC should play it safe, or lean into danger and drama. In the comments of Session 4.2, reader Seth shared an old TTRPG aphorism: “Drive your character like a stolen car!” This is good advice, especially for PbtA games like Stonetop, but when I GM these games, I find players often choose to minimize danger with their choices. I know that I personally fall victim to this, choosing to play it safe in treacherous situations when I have affection for my character and want to see them succeed, so in the future, when I’m a player in someone else’s game, I plan to do as Seth suggests, and floor it.
I’m curious what folks think of these play-it-safe vs. go-all-out decision points for PTFO. Is it worth it to include choices like this one, which would be a real choice that a player would make at the gaming table? Or should we always assume that our heroes will embrace danger, and save the reader polls for decisions where both choices lead to drama? Leave your thoughts below.
We’ll jump back in to the action with Padrig and Juba, and see what weal and woe they find them on the Flats:
Scene 3: A rocky hill surrounded by a sea of grass.
The pair ride out from the camp for an hour, through the endless golden grasses of the Flats, following game trails to dry, deserted watering holes with only buzzards above, floating in the southerly winds on still wings beneath a grey, overcast sky.
They pause to water the horses at a small stream — beyond is a slow-rising, rocky hill dotted with worn stone pillars, the remnants of some forgotten Maker artifice. Juba dismounts, slinging the brace of scrawny jackrabbits they’ve caught from around his neck to his saddlebags. His Blackfeather drake eyes them hungrily, but Juba shoos it away, and it leaps off the saddle and skitters into the grass on the far side of the stream. Padrig breathes a sigh of relief and stiffly dismounts, bending down to the water to clean his hands and splash it on his face. A few times now, Padrig has tried to draw Juba into conversation about the threats facing his band, but the cunning old Hillman has demurred each time, turning the topic to which way a hare might break across a certain ground, or the fickleness of Tor’s wind today. But here, as their horses sip from the trickle of water, he regards Pad with open curiosity.
“So, Padrig-of-Stonetop. You speak god’s language, but you cannot ride, so I think you are not some wayward half-son of the tu’d. You are not a trader; else you would have nattered more as we rode. You have Delver’s iron at your hip. You travel with Manmarchers and warriors of the mountain pass. You are an able hunter, true, but I think you’ve hunted more men than coneys. Who are you? Why did Stonetop send you to treat with me?”
Padrig draws himself up from the stream and turns to face Juba. It is silent, save for the blowing of the wind, and the gravel crunching beneath their boots. The pillars of smoke from the village have faded into the distance, and they are quite alone. “They sent me because I am not a stranger to the ways of the tu’d. I grew up as a hunter in Stonetop, and when I became a young man, I went wandering on the Flats, and beyond.”
“Young men can find a great deal of trouble when they go wandering,” Juba says, chuckling dangerously. “Was it in your wanderings that you met this magus1, Vahid?”
Padrig shakes his head. “When I returned home, Vahid was a guest of Garet, one of our elders.”
“Ensconced in a position of trust, was he? He spoke on your behalf to the elders, returning you to the fold and placing you in his debt?”
Padrig pauses for a moment, genuinely considering Vahid’s intentions. “No, though he has given me wise counsel when I spoke to the elders on my own behalf. As for a position of trust — Stonetop honors those who work for the commonweal, which Vahid has, in his way. And he has saved my life in battle more than once, though he is a stranger to the battlefield.” Padrig meets Juba’s eye and shrugs. “If gaining great Juba’s friendship costs me Vahid’s, then I fear we have little to speak of. I should return home and accept no more of your band’s generosity.”
Before Juba can reply, a loud crack echos over the grasses, and both men whirl towards the source. “That wasn’t thunder,” Padrig says. Juba shakes his head in confirmation and draws his spear from its saddle harness, crouching low and heading up the hill at a jog. Padrig unslings his bow and falls in behind.
Halfway up the hill, the silence is broken by a deep, lowing bellow coming from the far slope. Juba stops and looks back to Padrig with eyes wide.
“An aurochs,” Padrig whispers. “I thought the herds had left your riding grounds because of the fires?”
“They have. And by the sound of it, it is no lost calf — that is a bullroar.” With haste, they climb the hill, crouched low to peek over the crest to the plains below.
Ancient aurochs stood 71 inches high and weighed up to 1,500 lbs. Their scientific name, Bos Primogenius, sounds like a bitchin’ metal band.
The aurochs is indeed a bull — a thick, bruiser of an animal, with a horn-span wider than man’s outstretched arms. It lays bent on its side, atop an outcropping of smooth grey stone, its limbs spasming painfully. Two of its legs are badly broken, twisted at a gruesome angle, and bleeding profusely. It lets out another deep, anguished bellow; Padrig can feel the bass of it in his chest.
“Hurt and left behind by the herd?” Padrig ventures in a whisper.
“Did his herd steal past us, trackless and unseen, like the Dead Riders of Arzhur? Come to your senses,” Juba chides.
Padrig scans the horizon for a moment, searching for a sign of the lost bull’s herd.
A weak hit on Seek Insight yields a single question. At the gaming table, Pad’s player would know danger is coming, so they’d want to get ahead of it, asking “What is about to happen?” We’ll answer in the fiction:
He sees a split-second blur of movement in the sky above before he throws himself flat on the earth, hauling Juba with him. A moment later, a dark shadow passes overhead, and a gust of air whips their garments as a huge shape passes overhead, faster than should be possible for a creature of such a size.
“Frythanc!”
The shadow of a Frythanc instills terror in those below. Illustration by Lucie Arnoux // Source: Stonetop by Jeremy Strandberg
It glides over Padrig and Juba, concealed at the crest of the hill, to land on the aurochs, grasping it in its terrible, hooked talons. The bull bellows in protest, lashing its mangled legs at its tormentor to no avail. The Frythanc comes to rest, spreading its wings to balance atop the aurochs’ body. Its span is longer than a wagon train and covered with shaggy, sky-blue feathers, patched with white and grey. It dips its neck — snake-like and naked, like a vulture’s — down, and Padrig hears a sickening crunch as the aurochs’ flailing limbs go limp. It slowly flaps its vast wings — once, twice — before settling to feast.
“It could have carried that thing for twenty miles before dropping it here,” Padrig whispers.
“Heol’s blessings are strange indeed.” Juba smiles.
“Aye, no doubt it’ll leave good meat to be scraped from the bone. We’ll double our catch.”
“That bull was a lord of the herd. His carcass would feed my band for two weeks,” Juba says, hefting his spear. “How many arrows have you, Padrig-of-Stonetop?”
Padrig looks down to his hip; Only a single arrow rests in the quiver. “It is unseemly of me to ask you, a guest in my tent, to risk this endeavor, but I fear I must,” Juba says sadly. “That carrion might deliver my people from slow, honorless death.”
Padrig is incredulous. “Meistr Juba, now you must come to your senses. You cannot feed your people if you are dead, and a Frythanc is death on the wing.”
“That is so, stren. But starvation comes to the pale of my camp. I like my odds against that beast better. We have the high ground, we have its back, and we are desperate men. Greater victories have been won with fewer blessings.”
Padrig falls quiet for a moment, weighing the dire odds, and Juba shakes his head sadly. “Do what you must, stren. I will speak of this day when I stand before my elders at Heol’s throne, whatever its end.” And with that, Juba hops over the crest, racing down the hillside in a crouching run towards the great bird.
Padrig swears under his breath and nocks his last arrow, moving down the hill before drawing the bowstring, pulling until his shoulders burn, holding until Juba strikes. The Hillman, his bow legs still spry for a man of his age, hits the bottom of the hill at a dead sprint, leaping from a rocky outcropping to lance the Frythanc at the base of a mighty wing, sinking his spear into the flesh beneath the feathers and scales.
The Frythanc lets out an ear-splitting shriek and swings its sweeping wingspan around, flinging Juba to the side and wrenching the spear from his hands. Its raptor eyes spy Padrig, and it shrieks again as Padrig looses his arrow, striking the mottled, feathered underbelly of the monster. Juba scrambles to his feet, still in the shadow of the enormous wings, while Padrig sprints down the hill, drawing his sword from its scabbard. The nomad unslings his bow from around his body and runs to put distance between himself and the grasping claws, but it beats its wings and rises from the bull’s carcass, stretching its talons towards him.
Before the grasp closes, Pad is there, pulling Juba to the side and out of danger and lashing out with his blade. The beast’s enormous bulk slams into Padrig, knocking him to the ground and emptying his lungs, but when he hauls himself up to his hands and knees, he sees his sword is wet to near the crossguard with blood. As his eyes come back to focus, he sees the bloodied Frythanc looming before him — it is crouched, ready to lunge, its neck tensed like a coiling serpent, its black eyes fixed on him. Padrig gets his feet under him just in time, throwing himself to the side as it lashes out at him, its hooked beak snapping on empty air. “Juba!” he bellows as he scrambles to his feet. “Strike now!”
Padrig scrambles away from another snap of the thing’s beak as Juba looses a pair of arrows from close range. It lets out a ragged shriek and turns on Juba again, beating its great wings and lunging at the Hillman with its talons outstretched. Juba escapes its grasp, but not its claws, and he falls to the rocky ground, his deel robe stained bright red. The Frythanc sends great gusts of wind beneath it as it ascends, already a hundred feet in the air and climbing by the time Pad reaches Juba’s side.
The old warrior is slumped against a rock and grimaces as he prods at his cut. “Feh,” he spits. “‘Death on the wing’ — at least give me a clean death, O worthless eater-of-carrion, not this feeble scratch.”
“That will need care, and soon,” Padrig replies, looking at the deep, red wound and the grass, stained with blood. His voice is tight and controlled.
“Not unless you fell that thing. It will not leave us alive. It thinks itself king of these plains, and a king cannot abide such a challenge. Look, my friend. It comes.” Juba points a bloody finger to the grey sky, and Pad sees the great wingspan wheeling, turning, and descending again towards them.
Juba draws the last remaining arrow from his quiver, handing it up to Padrig. He surveys the ground for a moment and moves a few paces to the east, carefully marking the gentle bowing of the grasses in the southerly wind. There, he spreads his feet and nocks an arrow, waiting as the Frythanc descends towards them. Its dive is swift, but unsteady — the bronze-tipped spear is still lodged in its wing, and blood flows freely from its many arrow wounds.
Padrig waits, and breathes. The bowstring is drawn now, and Padrig holds. Juba watches intently, whispered prayers of the Heolings on his lips. As the beast rears back, raising its talons to strike, he lets fly, and the arrow strikes true, straight to the center of its feathered underbelly. The great wings shudder and falter, and Padrig rolls to the side, barely avoiding the dead weight of the falling monster.
Pad picks himself off, brushing dust and scree from his leathers. Juba, smiling despite the cloud of pain over his face, nods in hearty approval. “An able-enough hunter, indeed. Indeed!” He laughs, doubles over in pain, and laughs again. “Fetch my hunting horn from my saddle, Padrig-of-Stonetop. Summon my kin to bind my wounds and dress this fine bull of ours, and we will talk of the long friendship between our people.”
Scene Breakdown
This is a short combat with a lot of rolls, a lot of different moves triggered (with no misses!), and a bunch of stuff to discuss. Let’s get into it:
Up at the top of the scene, Padrig learns from his successful Seek Insight roll that a huge bird of prey is about to descend on that aurochs and eat it — and them, if they’re not careful. He then immediately attempts to conceal Juba and himself from the thing by dropping to the ground and hiding near the crest of the hill.
For the cost, we envision that Padrig is already almost out of ammo, after bagging all those jackrabbits. Recall that Stonetop abstracts ammo — this is the entry for Padrig’s Hillfolk composite longbow:
There are two circles to mark — ‘low ammo’ and ‘all out.’ This allows for some dramatic ammo tracking without having to look after each arrow. In this case, Pad is marking “low ammo.” The ‘one arrow left’ description is a bit of narrative sleight-of-hand — after running the combat, I know that Pad only shoots once before marking ‘all out,’ so we can envision it as a single arrow, which is a bit more dramatic.
Juba’s approach, attack, and Padrig’s first shot are all represented by a single move:
Padrig triggers Let Fly: 4+2+1 Dexterity = 7, Weak Hit.
Padrig deals his damage (adding +1 for Juba, plus some fictional positioning that the Frythanc’s wing is wounded and it might not take off immediately), and we roll 7 damage. Frythancs (a neat monster that’s straight from Stonetop’s world almanac) have 16 HP, so it’s got 9 left.
Next, the GM makes a soft move — the Frythanc beats its wings, shrieks, tosses Juba off it, and then goes after him. Padrig is very motivated to keep Juba alive, and he’s out of ammo, so he rushes in with his sword drawn to protect him.
Brief aside about the PbtA metagame — Defend is a move that often gets a bum rap, in Dungeon World and other DW-descended games. Having a warrior-type Defend rather than Clash rarely seems like a good option — the best defense is a good offense, and all that. But when there are conflicts with other considerations than quickly killing your opponent, Defend starts to look a lot better, because of its versatility. Here’s Stonetop’s version of the move:
Padrig got a strong hit, so he holds 3 Readiness. In this case, Padrig spends all three readiness immediately — he takes the Frythanc’s attack instead of Juba, he halves the damage and effect (he’s knocked down, rather than snatched by talons, and takes 5 damage instead of 9), and he deals his own damage, rolling a 4 — the Frythanc now has 5 HP left. That’s a lot of value from a single move! And he gets to protect Juba, which is important for his relationship with the Sun-Spear.
So, Padrig gets the beast’s attention. He’s face to face with it, and because of its size, it has the reach tag when it attacks with its beak. Padrig, with his sword, can’t quite threaten the thing. So he waits, and instead calls for Juba to strike, using Stentorian to give him advantage. For the purposes of this scene, we’ll say Juba has +2 Quality as a follower — we want him to feel pretty badass.
Juba triggers Let Fly: 1+4+2+2 Quality = 8, Weak Hit.
On Juba’s behalf, the GM chooses “You put yourself in danger” as the consequence for the weak hit, and Juba will take some damage from the Frythanc. If it rolls high enough to one-shot him (which it can easily do — it’s rolling 1d10+3 against Juba’s 8HP and 2 armor), Juba will be snatched up and carried aloft, only to be dropped to his death. Awkward. Fortunately, we roll 7 damage — one fewer damage than Juba has HP. We envision that Juba has been badly mauled by the beast, but he’ll live — if Padrig finishes the job. In return, he unfortunately deals only 3 damage to the Frythanc, leaving it with 2 HP.
The ending of this scene is maybe a little over-the-top, but in TTRPGs, it’s fun to have your PCs be big damn heroes, so I took an opportunity to do just that. Padrig gets an arrow from Juba, allowing him to temporarily ignore his ‘all out’ status. He takes a moment to survey the terrain, using Read the Land to gain advantage on his final attack.
Padrig triggers Let Fly: 4+3+3+1 Dexterity = 8, Weak Hit.
He can’t mark off ammo, since he’s already fictionally established to be out of ammo, so he choose to put himself in danger (rather than taking disadvantage on damage). Padrig deals 6 damage — more enough to kill the monster, and we envision that the danger Padrig must avoid is its falling body, still dangerous even in death:
And with that, Pad wins a bit of respect from the Hillfolk chieftain.
Housekeeping & Leveling up Padrig
We’re going to wrap up here for this week. First, my apologies — the readers voted for sidestories that focus on Anwen and Vahid, and so far we have only had a very small amount of time with them this session. Normally, I’d push farther in this episode and check in with them, but I’m trying to keep the episodes a bit shorter so as to balance them against other demands and avoid burnout and all that good stuff. We’ll rejoin them soon!
We’ll close out today’s episode with a reader poll to level up Padrig — he had a big day today, so it seems fitting. Here are the options we’ll consider:
Source: Stonetop // Jeremy Strandberg
We’ve already taken a lot of the most relevant Marshal moves for Pad, so this level we’re exploring multiclass moves:
Call the Shot comes from the Ranger playbook — given the events of today’s episode, it seems reasonable for Padrig to have this ability.
Situational Awareness comes from the Heavy playbook, and fits nicely into Padrig’s overall concept of a battlefield scout who is always observing the situation around him.
Bear Witness comes from the Judge playbook. It’s an odd one — no real mechanics associated with it; It’s all fictional positioning. But Padrig has a habit of stating plain truths, and this move would make that a bit more weighty. This might fit nicely for Anwen, as well, so if we don’t take it for Padrig, it may show up for her.
Hit the button below to make your choice for Padrig. Next week, we will learn a bit more about the Sun-Spear’s woes, now that Padrig has won Juba’s trust, and we’ll see what Anwen and Vahid are up to. As always, thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week!
I’ve been playing fast and loose with magi as a singular, but I also didn’t want to use mage because it feels so game-y. Going to try ‘magus’ as a compromise.
Wrt the polling question: You positioned this here in discussing the results as a vote for drama or none. But it was also (and was explicitly positioned in the end of the previous episode when presenting the poll options as) a vote for more Padrig vs skipping past it as “and they hunted and Padrig shot a scrawny rabbit and they’re cool now” in order to get to more Anwen and Vahid scenes. I think that, even if we grant the bias towards drama, that decision - to keep the focus on Padrig or move the spotlight to one of the others - would remain a useful audience poll. (It’s about pacing rather than drama level, though.)
On that note, you delivered on both the drama and the more Padrig fronts with this episode, and I don’t feel like I missed anything by having to wait a week to hear back from Anwen or Vahid.
I’d also rather this carry on than flame out, so if we get one scene but the story continues, I am all for that option that keeps you excited and engaged with this project. :)
I voted for Situational Awareness - I like developing Padrig along the lines of a highly savvy and increasingly cunning leader of men.
Wrt the polling question: You positioned this here in discussing the results as a vote for drama or none. But it was also (and was explicitly positioned in the end of the previous episode when presenting the poll options as) a vote for more Padrig vs skipping past it as “and they hunted and Padrig shot a scrawny rabbit and they’re cool now” in order to get to more Anwen and Vahid scenes. I think that, even if we grant the bias towards drama, that decision - to keep the focus on Padrig or move the spotlight to one of the others - would remain a useful audience poll. (It’s about pacing rather than drama level, though.)
On that note, you delivered on both the drama and the more Padrig fronts with this episode, and I don’t feel like I missed anything by having to wait a week to hear back from Anwen or Vahid.
I’d also rather this carry on than flame out, so if we get one scene but the story continues, I am all for that option that keeps you excited and engaged with this project. :)