Journeys and Misadventures

The main business of the weekend for me was on Saturday. This was a session of jfs' excellent Ars Magica game, Shadowbrook. I was a little nervous as we've entered a phase where John is running a "spotlight" session for each mage in turn, where everyone else is playing companions or grogs. I was first up. All seemed to go pretty well, with the only spellcasting being to find the gates into and out of Faerie. This was an investigation game on at least three levels, but focussed on what decisions we made once we had the information, rather than on the finding out.

We avoided the "loss condition", achieving what I'd assess in wargames terms as a "fair" rather than "marginal" or "outright" win. My Merinita now has an apprentice with faerie blood, ties between Welsh and "reasonable" English have been improved, but some possibly quite powerful enemies have been made in both Faerie (an unseelie family didn't like the judgment I made on an issue The Puck laid on me to sort out) and the mundane world (an overbearing Norman abbot) which could make life interesting later.

With lots of Robin of Sherwood homage in the backstory, top moments included all of us one by one realising the mythic overtone as Abbot Richard de Reynault glanced behind him to see a huge man with a quarterstaff, two with bows, a woman dressed as a man and a man cloaked and hooded. Kudos to John and his beta ref forbinproject. I much enjoyed.