GM: Shaun Hayworth
Players: Sean Nittner, Kristin Hayworth, Justin Dhiel
System: Burning Wheel
Setting: Burning Theorsa
The title sums it up pretty well. In the midst of a giant fight between the Al-Amesh and the Ophidians, Moya and Baldric stood at the center of the dueling ring, screaming at each other at the top of their lungs.
Baldric’s Belief: Moya has betrayed everything I hold dear. I’ll cut the lying tongue from her mouth.
Moya’s Belief: Baldric is taking the family name for granted and throwing it away, I will make him embrace who he is and reclaim his name!
The duel of wits was brutal. Moya swept Baldric. How’d she do it? By dropping the 16-ton “I’m your sister” bomb on him. After that it was just a matter of picking up the pieces of his shattered psyche. Baldric did get a minor concession that if he was going to take back his name, she would as well. The would both be know by their family name Auley.
Elsewhere Afon chased down the run away boy king all the way to the mouth of the cave where he pinned him down and put a sword to his throat, threatening to kill him if he tried to escape. Unfortunately for Afon, the boy was twice blessed. Once by Eogin who put a powerful blessing of sanctuary on the child and once by the dragon who swept down the the skies when his most fervant follower Aziz called for him. Afon intimidating Aziz? No problem. Intimidating a dragon? No question.
Down below, united again – by blood this time – Baldric and Moya fought their way to Eogin’s tent and tried to rescue him from the chaos. Inside the tent Moya tried to call upon a mighty spell to rain fire upon the battlefield but in the heat of the moment (no pun intended) she lost control of the spell. Instead of incinerating our enemies, she brought them down upon us. Two ophidians broke into the tent and captured baldric but were quickly cut down by shard of earth and stone sent flying from Moya’s fingertips. Thought they didn’t have a clear path, it was clear, fighting their way back out was the best option they had.
The heroes made it out side to the mouth of the cave to find Afon by himself. The boy king had been flown away by a dragon!
Thoughts on this game
I rigged my beliefs in this game to go for moldbreaker. I took both the belief above (about cutting out Moya’s tongue) and:
Belief: Her low birth be damned, my heart burns for Moya. I’ll die before I let others do her harm.
I wanted to play up the conflict between being so hurt by Moya and at the same time being so drawn to her. It worked out pretty well in fact. I wasn’t able to cut out her tongue (not for lack of trying mind you) but I did protect her from the Ophidians. That she also then saved my ass only slightly diminished that honor.
I was leery of having such and extreme goal (cutting out another PCs tongue) but Kristin was really game for it. She was already talking about going on a quest to get her tongue back. Heck, maybe a dragon tongue. By the time we got around to the DoW, both of us were kind of excited about the idea.
I’ve been trying out some of the strategies for DoW that was developed on the BW Forums. I’ve scripted several Obfuscates, Incites and Feints. My experience though is that I’s still usually beat by a stead roll of Points and Rebuttals. I’ve yet to see the payoff of scripting Incite -> Dismiss, but I’m going to keep trying.
There was a certain Irony that Eogin was the one who blessed the boy king and Afon was thwarted by that blessing, when Eogin and Afon are both played by Justin. Fun times.
