The players: Caspian as Berrick, Dani as Elouise, Castor as Sir Hayden, Isaac as Brother Armand, Shimon as “Sir” Thorn, Davis as Ham

The journey to Lindisfarne was full of magic and peril. Hangman’s Wood was full of strange whispers and voices and the party- I mean group- was accosted by the undead, the forms of the men who gave the wood its name. Elouise was able to drive them off… with magic. She somehow managed to get out of the cage and her bonds on the way too. Everyone was very suspicious of her and why she was being so helpful and allowing herself to remain imprisoned. Brother Armand and Ham were especially interested in the source of her power.

They were ambushed on the beach at Lindisfarne by men bearing the insignia of a known heretic group that dabbled in the dark arts. Berrick expressed doubts about the situation and Elouise’s motives for being there when he was filling in one of the monks. Ham, after some deliberation, had promised to aid Elouise. At the end, Sir Thorn freed Elouise, who escaped with most of the others. Brother Armand stayed on the island. Elouise was innocent of withcraft; the source of her power was more divine than infernal in origin. (In a final shot, we saw Elouise not having aged a day with an older Ham praying as the two are surrounded by a glow of white light.)

While we had a fun time, we all agreed that some more time to get to know the characters and more ways to make them our own would have served us well. Conflict would be resolved through conversation between the players involved. There wasn’t much guidance for introducing complications or new elements into the story. Caspian said it might have been nice to have some way to make things more random.

Each character comes with suggestions for scenes and things they might do. We did a pretty job of bringing things introduced in previous scenes back in later. All of us contributed in fun ways. This game reminds me a bit of Montsegur 1244 in how play is structured, with Acts where everyone gets to frame a scene before moving on and the pregenerated characters with questions that are up to the player to answer. Ties between characters aren’t initially well-established; it would have been nice to have them connected to each other a bit better.

Some of the questions provided with the characters did hint that there was some form of connection. I found the premise interesting, so did the others. Overall it was a fun time. I'd like to play again to see how another group finds the play experience.

Thanks to all the players for being willing to give this a try!

- Dani, aka Elouise