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This game is set in the world of Awoudan, an island with Anglo-Saxon and Norse influence home to Paladins, pagan knights sworn to defend the world against the forces of shadow. The game text can be found online: Paladins of Awoudan

There are three player characters:

• Aurora (she/they), a frost elementalist with a cold heart.
• Evrild (she/her), a heavily-armored arbiter with cursed scribe skin.
• Guedwyn (he/him), a fleet-footed ranger who is most at home in the woods.

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The session began with the players reading orders from Marshal Ealbryst. A note had been found on a sorceress’s corpse that indicated sorcerers were gathering in the seaside town of Ealtun. Determined to figure out what was going on and put a stop to it, the party left with one of the Paladin commanders and several men-at-arms.

They planned to stop at Fiellscielf, a somewhat decrepit tower where an eccentric Paladin nicknamed the “Mad Mage” lived. He had sent word of foreign ships sailing to Ealtun and he was considered a powerful ally to confront the sorcerers.

The Mad Mage’s Tower

When they arrived at the tower, a Hallow Knight appeared from the tower door. In this setting, the Christian God has been killed. The Hallow Order are Catholics who believe this is a lie and blame the Paladins for his disappearance. This foolhardy Hallow Knight challenged Evrild to a duel. It was over in moments as Evrild burned through her stamina and willpower to smite the knight and kill him in one round.

The Knight’s zealot archers and spearmen, who were waiting in the tower, appeared and attacked the party. It was at this point that I hit my first referee problem.

The original plan for this skirmish was to have Hallow Knight spearmen and archers, two Luccian assassins, and two giant umbral corvids attack all at the same time. The point was twofold, introduce key factions and explain enemy types:

• The Hallow Knight characters were minions who are slain with ease
• The Luccians were lurkers who used stealth to disappear from the map
• The Umbral corvids were brutes with low armor, high health, and high damage
• The mere presence of Umbral creatures sap a Paladin’s luster and corrupt nearby creatures, turning them Umbral as well.

Scrapping the Second Skirmish

While this was a lot of enemies, they were not allied and so I expected them to fight each other in addition to the players. I decided that this was too complicated for the players to experience all at once and that each faction was necessary to setup future skirmishes. I postponed the second skirmish for another session and decided to have the enemies appear over several rounds, instead of all in one round.

When the Hallow Knights were mostly wiped out two rounds into fighting, the Luccian assassins appeared and focused on eliminating the NPC Commander with poison crossbow bolts. The Umbral corvids didn’t appear until the Hallow Knights were gone, and they attacked the grouped up men-at-arms instead of the PCs. They eliminated several of them, but those they didn’t eliminate turned Umbral and attacked the player characters. Evrild, separated from the party, was surrounded by the umbral enemies and took several wounds, but survived.

By the end of the skirmish, the players were comfortable with the base mechanics, knew what they wanted to do on their turns, and deployed great strategies to foil the assassins.

Finding the Mad Mage

After the battle, Aurora ascended the tower and found a grisly scene. The Hallow Knight had destroyed a four corner bedpost and used it for an improvised crucifixion of the Mad Mage. He was weak, but still alive. Aurora’s clever frost spellwork saved the mage’s life, while Evrild studied the bodies of the dead, and Guedwyn patrolled the surrounding area for a fell fire, a source of divine energy that helps Paladins heal faster.

Next session the party will converse with the Mad Mage and come up with a plan to get to Ealtun without their men-at-arms or horses. What the sorcerers have planned is still unclear…

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