Session 13.6: Lambs to the Slaughter (Part 2)

Padrig defies Odo. Anwen leads the charge. Vahid holds nothing back.

In the first part of this episode, we set the stage for the final confrontation with Odo: Pad and his crew of prisoners (and Jens!) are heading into the arena, where Pad might have a shot or two at Odo. Meanwhile, Anwen, Vahid, and their followers have hidden themselves among Odo’s cult, placed within striking distance of Odo’s high seat above the arena.

We’ll rejoin the action with Padrig, as his handful of unlikely fighters go forth to meet their fate:

Scene 13: The Fighting Pit

Padrig hears the pits before he sees them — eager murmurs punctuated by shouts of anger and anticipation. A chant begins: Bring forth the prey! Bring forth the prey! The dark corridor opens up into the once-great Forge Lords’ meeting hall, now turned to a bloody use under Odo’s rein. The path they are on is hemmed in on both sides by snarling cultists who jeer at them and shout exhortations to violence. A few younger members of Odo’s cult wait by their path, spattering the prisoners with dark red blood flung from rough-carved wooden bowls, and imitating the shouted curses of their elders.

Dawa leads them past the howling congregation and down to a gate in the makeshift fence of scrap iron that encircles the stage. There, they are herded through at spearpoint by dead-eyed bravos in Odo's white robes. Down on the sand and gravel, the pit seems bigger, a wide killing field, stained here and there with blood, and scattered with chipped and notched shortswords and daggers, with cruder weapons among them -- knapped stone hand-blades and simple sharpened stakes.

The prisoners scatter into the arena, picking up weapons and standing uncertainly, alone and in pairs. Axel walks stiffly alongside Padrig with the bow held at his side, feigning a wound as best he can, and Jens follows closely behind, looking up at the crowd with a harried expression. Pad spots an old longsword, its blade broken in half, and picks it up, wiping the grit from the hilt and testing it against his thumb. Still sharp.

Pad spots Dawa in the stands, making her way towards Odo's place of honor. The crowd watches her, growing quiet as she takes her place for the service. The last cries fall silent when she raises her dagger over the fighting floor. 

"At sunrise, the wolves feast!" she cries.

The white-robed killers respond as one with a great howl, raising their hands and weapons in the air in praise. 

“We give praise to Odo Thriceborn! The voice of the Howling Wind, that fills us with strength and sates our hunger!”

“Praise the Thriceborn!” the crowd calls in unison. “The wolves feast!”

Dawa’s voice cracks and falters for a moment. There is a pregnant silence as the crowd waits for her next words. “Odo, great Lord of Wolves! Come forth and see what prey we have brought, and what wolves might hide among them!”

The crowd's cries reach a fever pitch. The Most Blessed, watching the proceedings from their cell above, howl and rattle the bars, their yellow eyes glowing brightly in the dark. 

Then, Odo arrives, and the din grows still louder.

Though he is clad in the same plain white robes, he towers over the rest of his cursed family and exudes an aura of malice and cruelty. His eyes glow with a hungry yellow light, and with him comes a cold wind blowing through the cavern, guttering the torches and braziers that light the hall, and sending a shiver down Pad's spine. In one hand, he holds a lead of thick rope: On the other end is half-man, half-beast, hunched on all fours with patches of yellow-black mottled fur, and rows of iron hooks barbed into his bare flesh. It lopes obediently by Odo's side -- one of the Most-Blessed, those who have been utterly corrupted by the Howling Curse.

All falls silent when Odo raises a massive hand — his fingers strangely long and spindly, and tipped with foul black claws. He gestures with an open palm to the prisoners below, and his congregation raises their hands and weapons in praise. “My wolf-sons and wolf-daughters. See before you this bounty that Dawa has brought. Soon, we will find the wolves among them, and feast upon the rest. Feast, and grow strong! For soon a red day will dawn when we turn our hunger upon those who have scorned us and deprived us of our due! All they have will be ours — their dens, their lovers, their sons and daughters, their coin, their lives, their very flesh. We are wolves, and we will never again be prey!”

“Odo! Blessed Thriceborn!” One of the cultists calls out. “That one is Padrig, Bastard Brennan’s hound! My brother was killed by him and his — let us into the fighting pits, Odo!”

Odo chuckles deeply. “We will see, my wolf-son. If Padrig accepts my blessings, he will be spared. If not, you will have the first and finest cut from him.”

“You’re all fucking mad,” Padrig calls out, his battlefield shout echoing in the underground hall. “Odo will lead you to ruin!”

Odo laughs mockingly. “Look around you, Padrig. Look at the Delve. Look at this fallen world. We live among the ruins already, and only the wolves among us shall rule them. Brennan taught me that lesson, and I learned it well.” With a self-satisfied smirk, he begins to sink down into his throne to watch the proceedings.

Padrig, quickly scanning the crowd for signs of his allies, spots a shock of red hair hidden beneath a white hood, near Odo’s place of honor. "Now, lad," Pad hisses, and Axel hurriedly hands him the bow and two arrows. Grinding his teeth through the burning pain in his shoulders, Pad plants his foot and presses all his weight on the recurve, looping the string and raising it in one smooth motion. 

Time seems to slow in the old bandit’s eyes. Odo is rising up from his throne, bellowing an alarm, and in the corner of his eye, he sees Anwen beginning to move, with Baraz and Ollem beside her. In the stands around him, the crowd is rising to its feet, howling madly for blood. His vision narrows until he sees only his mark: Odo's black heart. The arrow leaps from the bowstring, and Padrig is already nocking another. He barely feels the burning wound in his shoulder.

Scene Breakdown: Padrig’s Shot

Pad triggered a flurry of moves. First, Read the Land gives him a single question from the list, and he chooses What is the best spot for a trap or an ambush? Scanning the crowd, he spots Anwen, and learns that here and now is the right time to strike. This serves to grant him advantage when he fires his weapon, but first he has to get his bow from Axel and prepare to fire. We’ll cover getting and stringing the bow with a single Defy Danger, with disadvantage from the Weakened condition he took from Odo, and then finally Pad will be able to take his shot with Let Fly (with advantage to cancel out his disadvantage, thanks to Read the Land):

Pad triggers Defy Danger with Dexterity: 5+5+4+1 Dexterity = 10, Strong Hit
Pad triggers Let Fly: 4+2+1 Dexterity = 7, Weak Hit

Pad chooses to loose both arrows as the consequence for his weak hit. He deals 8 damage - 4 armor = 4. Odo has 16 HP remaining.

With preternatural quickness, Odo bats the first arrow aside with his clawed hand, but the second strikes true, sinking deep into the meat of his chest. His eyes grow wild, and he snaps the shaft off and barks a mocking laugh, but before he can speak, Anwen is upon him.

Stonetop's champion charges forth with Ollem and Baraz, two of the Delve's strongest, by her side. Ollem tackles the big bravo at Odo's side, while Baraz drives back the cackling, snarling Kyakaara¹ with a lash of his barbed chain. Anwen heads straight for their master.

She leaps, and Bearkiller rises high, its white glass blade shimmering in the firelight, before descending on Odo, still reeling from the impact of Padrig's shot. The axe bites deep into his shoulder, and he roars -- not in pain, but in anger -- and seizes her with one massive hand, flinging her down to the stone ground. Bearkiller wrenches from her hands as she falls, remaining fast in Odo's bleeding wound.

Scene Breakdown: Anwen’s Attack

Two moves fired here -- first, Anwen's squad moves in -- Mutra and Cerdic are fighting a rearguard, while Baraz engages Odo's pet monster. Then, Anwen stikes at Odo:

Anwen triggered Order Followers: 6+3+1 Quality = Strong Hit
Anwen triggered Clash: 4+2+2 Strength = 8, Weak Hit

Anwen deals 9 damage - 2 Armor (Bearkiller has 2 piercing) = 7 , Odo has 9 HP remaining

Odo deals 10 damage, Anwen has 2 HP remaining. She opts to halve the damage using I Get Knocked Down, and chooses you lose something as the consequence. Instead of taking 10, she takes 5, and so has 7 HP remaining.

We won’t track the specific HP of the other folks in the fight until we want to put the spotlight back onto them.

Rising up to his full height, Odo pulls the axe free and casts it down into the arena. In the gash in his bloodstained robes, Anwen can see the wound already knitting back together.²

"My wolf-children!" he roars. "There are traitors and assassins among us! Slay them all! Kill the prisoners! Kill Brennan's hound! Rip and tear! Gnash and bite! Feast! Until only bones remain!"

The great hall erupts with bloody howls. Odo's followers surge to their feet, stampeding towards the gate or rushing the scrap iron fence encircling the arena and beginning to climb. 

In the tiers above, Vahid surveys the chaos. He summons the Azure Hand to him, and as it appears with a crackle and the smell of ozone, he attunes himself to the unseen world. Here, the whispers of Odo's patron are deafening howls, driving the cult to savage bloodlust. He can feel it pressing against his own mind as well. "Such a slaughter you have brought me, Seeker. So much blood to be spilled in my name, and yours! Are you not proud of your plots and schemes?"³ He shakes his head violently, straining to shut out the thing's sibilant voice.

Padrig's prisoners, having armed themselves with whatever was close to hand, are crowding towards the center of the pit, around Padrig, who has cast his bow aside and now holds a broken sword aloft and shouts above the din. "To me, prisoners, to me! Shoulder to shoulder against the wolves!"

Courage, he has in abundance, Vahid muses. But against Odo's hungry pack, they stand little chance.

"Laughter-of-Thunder, I have need of you," he whispers in the spirit tongue. He sheds his borrowed robes, and his sky-blue cloak comes to life, floating on a phantom breeze. "Show these lowly mortals your power. Unleash your storm, O lord of the sky."

Vahid lays it on thick -- storm spirits in Stonetop are arrogant and don't mind a bit of flattery. 

Vahid triggers Order Followers: 5+5+1 Quality = 11, Strong Hit

Vahid is going to have the spirit really cut loose here -- two of its moves are wreak havoc on its surroundings and manifest a storm as it flies, so the Seeker is going to have it bring him down to Padrig while raising up a storm to slow down Odo's cult from surrounding Padrig and his prisoners. That will give them a bit of breathing room, and do a bit of damage (the spirit deals 1d6 with flung debris) as they come, perhaps giving Pad's people a fighting chance. 

A wind begins to grow around the seeker, a growing whirlwind that lifts him up and bears him aloft, and as his bound storm spirit carries him down to the arena, it raises a whirlwind behind it, raising the sand and grit of the killing floor into a swirling storm of dust and rock.

The cloak alights him alongside Padrig, to the shocked stares of the prisoners who gather with him. Around them, the cloak's storm rages -- Odo's cultists have thrown open the gates to the pit, but the winds beat them back.

"Good to see you, Seeker." 

"And you, Padrig. Anwen had faith you would come through."

"We're not through yet," Jens shouts, pointing a broken speartip at Odo's warriors as they begin to press through the swirling wall of wind and dust.

With this situation under control -- for the moment, we turn the perspective back to Anwen, and her fight with Odo. I decided to use Order Followers here to represent the rest of her squad -- on a Strong Hit, everyone's doing OK, on a Weak Hit, someone's going to be in a spot.

Anwen triggers Order Followers: 5+4+1 = 10, Strong Hit

Very strong rolls to close out this episode, but if Anwen misses against Odo, that'll spell trouble. Back to the action:

Up above, in Odo's box, Mutra and Cerdic hold a press of cultists at bay with their blades, batting away halting spear thrusts and slashing at grasping, clawed hands. Ollem has dispatched his man with quick knife work, inside spear-reach before his opponent could react. Baraz wrestles with the beastly Most-Blessed, his chain wrapped around the thing's neck, holding its snapping teeth at bay as it slashes at his muscled shoulders with its clawed hands.

Odo looms over Anwen. His massive hand reaches down to seize her -- each of his long fingers is tipped by a sharp nail, black and jagged like flint arrowheads. Still down on one knee, she waits for only a beat, until he is fully committed, and then Kirs' bronze dagger flashes from her belt, and she rises up to strike at the villain's heart.

Anwen strikes! Source: Midjourney

Anwen triggers Clash: 6+3+2 Strength = 11, Strong Hit

Anwen has no chill, and so will be opting to deal extra damage while still suffering Odo's attack. We'll also assume that, thanks to his threat to Anwen's loved ones (Padrig, down in the pit), she triggers Anger is a Gift, and can spend one Resolve for another 1d6 damage, putting her total at 2d6+2d4. 

Anwen deals 8 damage, and her bronze dagger ignores Odo's 4 armor⁴, leaving him with only 1 HP remaining. He strikes back, dealing 9 damage. Anwen again opts to halve the damage using I Get Knocked Down, and for her consequence, she chooses You're out of it for a moment, because she knows if she chooses either of the other two (you lose something, or something on your person breaks) she risks losing her dagger. This gives us a great opportunity to use the GM move Put someone in a spot -- Anwen is briefly out-of-action, and she can be put in danger so that Pad and Vahid must react. Back to the fiction:

The blade bites deep, and Odo roars again -- this time, his voice touched with pain and fear -- but he does not falter, and his grasping claws seize her up, lifting her off her feet. His grip around her throat is impossibly tight, and her vision darkens and narrows as the strength begins to fade from her limbs.

With contempt, Odo flings Anwen down into the arena, through Vahid's swirling storm of dust and rock. She lands hard, falling between Padrig's band and the oncoming rush of Odo's warriors.

"With me!" Pad's stentorian bellow cuts over the howls and the rushing wind, as he leads Vahid and the prisoners forward towards Anwen.

Pad's triggering all his Marshal moves today -- he's using Stentorian to ensure that he's heard over Odo's howls, the storm's rage, and the Thing Below's whispers. He's also using Front Line Leader, which gives him two Presence hold to spend in lieu of crew loyalty. He spends one to get the prisoners to follow him (and Aid him on his next move), and then races to Anwen's side to protect her til she's ready to fight again.

Padrig triggers Defend: 4+2+1+1 Constitution = 7, Weak Hit

Good thing he had the aid. He's got a single hold to spend to intercept the oncoming attackers. Odo, however, has something to do before his bravos attack -- first, he's going to use one of the moves we defined last installment -- manifest a monstrous form, and mechanically, we'll add a few HP back onto Odo's total, healing him to 10. We're also going to generally escalate the situation -- this is the final confrontation with Odo's cult, so we owe it to the players (and you, of course!) to raise the stakes a bit. A few GM moves fit here -- the Villain move Do the Unthinkable, or the general GM move Advance towards impending doom -- Odo's ultimate plan is to use the Howling Curse to empower his cult, and then unleash his them on the Delve, killing or corrupting every living soul. Our heroes have just forced his hand.

Above them, Odo rages still. First, he takes up the iron chain at his throne's base and heaves, releasing the iron gates that hold the Most-Blessed in their cage above. Next, he tilts back his head and howls -- a wailing, animalistic sound that echoes in the unseen world. 

With his storm-marked eye, Vahid can see the power of Odo's foul master swirling around his favored puppet as it twists his body into a bestial hybrid -- a man wearing the skin of a jackal.  The Thriceborn is beckoning to Y'kaaw'raa and pleading with the Thing Below to fill him with corrupted vis.

Odo’s final form. Source: Midjourney

Vahid staggers backward at the psychic force of Odo's will, joined with his patron's. He holds the Azure Hand aloft, summoning all the protection he can muster, and it only barely stems the tide from washing over him and his allies⁵. 

Odo's cult is not so lucky. A wave rushes through them as the Howling Curse takes hold of them, twisting their bodies and minds: eyes flash yellow, backs twist and hunch and claws burst forth from lengthening fingers. Above, unleashed, the Most-Blessed cackle with savage glee, throwing themselves down twenty feet to the arena floor below to surround Padrig's terrified prisoners. A half-dozen of the jeering creatures circle them, drawing closer and closer, snapping fanged maws and maniacally tearing at their own flesh.

"Vahid!" Padrig shouts. "Hold nothing back! Without your magic, we are lost!"

Scene Breakdown: Vahid’s Choice

Pad's not kidding. Mechanically, the situation is dire -- we've established that Odo has about twenty combatants, give or take, and they are closing in on the fighting pit. We also just added six of the Most-Blessed into the mix. The Most-Blessed are immediately dangerous, and the rest of the cult will soon bring its numbers to bear — they’ve been a bit battered by Vahid’s storm, but they’re also empowered by the Howling Curse, so it’s a bit of a wash. Odo is temporarily out of reach, and will likely start making short work of Mutra and her contingent, if he hasn't already. 

Vahid's storm spirit can do a big AoE attack, and it can also throw lightning bolts, so a reasonable plan is to hold off the horde while Vahid works his magic -- either AoEing down the horde or putting Odo down with a few well-placed lightning bolts, so that the horde turns on itself without his leadership. 

To get that plan started, Vahid has to command the storm spirit to intensify the storm -- the cloak's move list stipulates that lightning strikes can only come from a "raging" storm so it's reasonable for Vahid to create that fictional positioning before really cutting loose. If successful, he can continue to hold the cult at bay, leaving Pad, Anwen, and the prison break crew to fight the Most-Blessed. It all starts with a single roll -- and thanks to Pad's Stentorian move, Vahid has advantage: 

Vahid triggers Order Followers: 1+1+1+1 Quality = 3, Miss

That is a pretty big miss, at a pretty high stakes moment -- maybe our highest stakes to date. Thus, it's fair that we now make a very hard GM move indeed. We could, of course, have the cult close in, and start to move this situation from a standoff to a bloody melee. But I think this is also an opportunity to give the Seeker some big, meaty character choices, using the GM move Offer an opportunity (with or without a cost). Needless to say, these opportunities will come with a cost -- let's go through them:

1. Refuse, and settle this with blades and blood: Decline the below opportunities. Vahid exhorts the storm spirit, but it does not have the strength to save them on its own. The cult closes in, and it's largely up to Pad and Anwen now. 

2. Unleash the storm spirit: The spirit is bound and diminished by the cloak. Were it to be free, Odo's cult would fall before it like wheat before the scythe. But the cost will be heavy: The cloak would lose its magic, and the spirit's wrath would not spare Vahid, his friends, nor the innocent's among Odo's cult -- many will certainly die.

3. Bind the storm spirt: Vahid was present in Cirl-of-the-Storm's mind when he first used the forbidden arts of the hdour and bound the Thousand-Year Storm into his flesh⁶. He knows the trick of it, as though he did it himself. It would be so easy to do it now, and gain all the power of the storm spirit, for just a few moments. Long enough to turn the tide. If Vahid takes route, there will be a few costs: He'll add Hubris⁷ as one of his Instincts, and we'll replace one of his moves with the Blessed move Borrow Power (you can see it here). He will not need Stock⁸ to use this move, instead it deals damage to him and/or the spirit, and is generally considered icky to use. Make no mistake: This is Vahid using the power of a hdour. He will not instantly become evil, but there will be broad implications.

This seems like a good dilemma for you fine folks, and therefore a good stopping point for this episode. Thanks as always for reading, and I’ll see you in your inboxes next week!

Choose wisely, Seekers!

1. This is the local term for the Most-Blessed, which both Dawa Eyegouger and Mutra have used.

2. I am not adding any HP back onto Odo here, only establishing the fictional source of his huge HP pool, and establishing fictional positioning to heal him later if it seems reasonable to do so.

3. Recall that Vahid promised Odo’s patron a slaughter if the patron would reveal the location of Odo’s hidden lair. Looks like Vahid held up his end of the bargain.

4. Bronze is the bane of the Things Below, as Vahid has mentioned on a few occasions.

5. This represents Vahid spending the last of his Safety First hold to protect their allies against the influence of the Howling Curse.

6. This happened during the vision quest/flashback scene way back in Session 7.6.

7. The specific wording of the instinct is To assume you know best, that you can’t fail — coupled with his current instinct, Vision: To think big and pursue grandiose goals, it could get him into a heap of trouble!

8. Stock is a resource related to the Blessed’s sacred medicine pouch.