I've played a few Vaesen games and I'm sort of on the fence about the game. So, I decided to immerse myself in the game to see if I really liked the game. The verdict is thumbs up!
After the lottery, I got into 4 games, and soon, I got into 2 more games via waitlist. I turned one game down, so someone else would get a chance to play. I played in 5 games over 3 days. All the games were fairly good and I had a good time.
I hide spoiler sections with JavaScript. If you have JavaScript turned off, you can skip the spoiler sections I have marked.
The silk road city of Samarkand. A man that disappeared from a locked room. A mystery that will risk the lives of the
investigators and delve into the mysteries of the Djinn.
I enjoyed this game because there was lots of information to put together through investigation. Lots of history and Arabian Nights lore. The GM did have to speed up the game in some parts to get us to finish on time, so the ending was rushed. I'd say this game has a high level of complexity.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The scenario is pretty complex. There's various things you need to find out from various sources to figure out what's going on.
There are various factions: Moon cultists, the Emir, Reactionaries. There are lots of locations and lots of NPCs.
Moon cultists were infultrating and taking over Samarkand. Their goal? The revival of Tamerlane's spirit and a new world empire. After visiting numerous locations and speaking to NPCs, we learned that djinns were wary of beads, teeth of an ass, and bones. So, we loaded up on these things. There was also a warning of Beware of the Tune, so we got wax ear plugs. Cultists were also everywhere watching us, following us, and finally trying to capture or kill us.
A person possessed by Tamerlane's spirit can turn into Riders of the Red Sand. They can turn into a pile of blood red sand in order to escape or avoid capture.
There were clues that the cultist HQ was the Stone Bridge and a fort complex underneath it. A ritual was going to happen in 4 days, at the full moon.
We got there early, faced the cult leader and cultists. He played a musical instrument that called up a djinn. We smashed the musical instrument and freed the djinn which turned on him. We entered the fort and freed the simurgh and all the other captured djinn inside. (This was a bit rushed because we were in the last 1/2 hr of the game.)
What was neat was all the history we got about Tamerlane, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan. We also got great lore about djinn and simurgh. The complexity of the scenario was also a big plus, but due to its complexity, it probably takes more than 4 hours to complete in a proper version of the game. GM admitted that some of the obstacles and combats were either removed or shortened so that we could finish the game on time.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
May 5 (Fri) 5 - 9pm (4 hrs)
Hope is a Sad Thing
GM: Diesel (Diesel#9263)
4 Players: Morgan Hua (Aleksander of Ingrid Backlund - Occultist), WishMoon (Rek Jaeger - Hunter), Puddy_R (Captain Magnusson - ex-sailor), Calijah (Erik Forsmark - Priest)
Tags: Ages 21+, Suicide, PvP, grief, Possession, Blood and gore.
Pre-generated characters will be provided.
The Society is called upon to investigate a mysterious cabin, one where older members of the Society traveled to and
never returned.
Overall, I liked this scenario. It's designed to be deadly, so the GM warned us and told us not to use long running PCs as it could lead to PC death. That said, Captain Magnusson came out of retirement to join the adventure. What a brave soul.
A fairly simple scenario. But very scary.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
I took a pre-gen who was an Occultist with a crystal ball. So in the introduction, I let everyone else introduce their characters first, then I showed that I was spying on everyone with my crystal ball and taking notes.
When Linnea Elfeklint visited us, she asked if we knew why she was there and I, being a smart ass, looked at the scenario description and blurted out that I had a vision of a mysterious cabin. 😊
Linnea told us that 40 years ago, four of her companions went to the cabin and disappeared (with the cabin). She asked us to look into it and find out what happened to her friends. We looked up records in the society and found out that the cabin appears and vanishes randomly in time and space. Society members who investigated it never returned.
Captain Magnusson wanted to have a connection with someone in the same forest as where the mysterious cabin had shown up, but he failed his roll, so there was going to be some toll associated with it. When we went there to speak to his connection, he warned us not to mention the scar across her face as she's sensitive about it. We found her chopping wood outside of her cabin and her back toward us. He spoke to her and when she turned around both her eyes were freshly cut out with bloody Xs. That was a great moment. Somehow she could still see without her eyes and she seemed enthralled by the cabin and told us she couldn't explain it, but we had to see it for ourselves. It was all so creepy and unsettling. I immediately asked if we could buy some firewood from her. I wanted to burn that mysterious cabin down from the outside.
When we got to the mysterious cabin, just at nightfall, it seemed innocuous enough. It was just a single room windowless cabin. Well shit, nothing to be scared of at all. So, I opened the door and it was bigger on the inside than the outside. Inside was a grand manor. Once inside, we found 4 envelopes with invitations to visit with each of the 4 missing Society members in various rooms of the house.
We went to the smoking room first. The Society member who hadn't aged at all, wanted to give us a gift, bugs that wanted to crawl into our ears. After a fight, Aleksander deflated her skin balloon which held multitudes of bugs, the swarm of bugs flooded us and got us infected.
The entrance was now sealed and there was no exit.
Then we went to the dining room and found a dead Society member stabbed to death. In the kitchen was another dead Society member, but he animated and spoke to us, telling us bits of information and that we needed to talk to the big boss before we could leave. These 2 scenes lacked the creepiness and fright level of the smoking room. Maybe one lull scene was ok, but two in a row defused the tension too much.
The ballroom was the grand finale. We met the last Society member who offerred us a deal. He would rewind time and undo our greatest regret, cure us of the ear bugs, and let us go. We only had to accept. The ballroom was full of mannequin-like Society members from various decades. They were dancing before we arrived. The big boss said that these were people who turned down his offer. Yeah, when a deal is too good to be true, it's not a good deal. We turned down the deal. I also stated that without my trauma, I would not be a Society member and all the good I did after my trauma would be wiped out also. With our rejection of the offer, Angel wings came out of the last Society member and he shed his human skin. I had an oh-shit moment: Did I just turn down an offer from God? Then his horrible visage was revealed and the Devil proceeded to attack us. Rek (shot the Devil to no effect) and Eric (sacrificed himself to buy us time to escape) died. Magnussen and Aleksander (gained a permanent frozen facial injury and was just short of being physically broken) were able to escape through the entrance that had reappeared.
Aleksander decided to join the priesthood with the devil whispering in his ear (the ear bug) forever.
The beginning was very scary and creepy. A number of us didn't want to enter, but Rek (this is sort of annoying) pushed Aleksander and Captain Magnussen into the cabin against their wishes. So, kudos to the GM for making it terrifying. The grand finale was also very satisfying.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
May 6 (Sat), 11am - 3:30pm (4.5 hrs, went over by 0.5 hrs)
Thursday's Children; Friday Morning
GM: Chance Boon (Chance#1736)
4 Players: Morgan Hua (Moses Westmark - Entertainer), Michael C (Baxter Faire - Hunter), ComteDeGuido (Sterling Masters - Servant), myrtheus (Elias Dulmoore - Occultist).
Tags: Ages 21+, strong content, Death, Course Language
Pre-generated characters will be provided.
It sounded easy enough...something had been luring the children of Immel into the woods at night...in the morning,
they would be found in the same clearing. Scrapes, bruises, no memory of the night, but mostly unharmed.
This happened every 10th day, for the last 11 weeks.
It was decided that a group would be sent out to investigate, but 10 days later the people of Immel found the group in
the very same clearing...in far worse shape than the children...
I enjoyed this scenario. The complexity of the mystery is moderate.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The scenario was of moderate complexity and fit in the four hour timeframe.
The obvious thought is some sort of Pied Piper or Fae influence.
After lots of investigating, we figured out that the children were actually being protected every 10 days. The Society members who had died were outside of the fairy circle. The children were inside, dreaming sweet dreams, safe and sound. One of the NPCs was called a babysitter, so at first we thought she was babysitting the birthed thing of evil. After more information, we realized she was babysitting the town's children.
We finally figured out that the creature was a Weird that was insubstantial and only was killable when wet. To banish it, we had to cleanse the pool of water where it was created with oak ash. Of course, in the final showdown, we had to fend it off while cleansing the pool. We thought the Hunter would be best against the creature, but the Servant punched the hell out of it, dealing more damage to the creature with his fists than the Hunter with his gun.
As an afterthought, I'm not sure why there's a 10 day cycle for the Weird since the children are only protected once every 10 nights.
Various NPCs had the tendency to jump out of nowhere (screaming plot point), but other than that, I enjoyed the scenario. The pacing was pretty solid.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
May 6 (Sat), 5 - 9pm (3.5 hrs, we finished 0.5 hrs early)
God of the Gaps
GM: Diesel (Diesel#9263)
4 Players: Morgan Hua (Johann Ludwig - Doctor), Puddy_R (Dr Mysterio - Entertainer), Śraddhāpa (Geir Hansen - Doctor), Rain of Terra (Ingen - Entertainer)
Tags: Ages 21+, strong content, Harm to children, grief.
Pre-generated characters will be provided.
The Society is called upon by Upsala officials to investigate something that should never be lost: Upsala's new train
system has lost a train on its maiden voyage.
A fairly simple premise, but we floundered trying to figure out a solution.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The premise is pretty simple, a train with 50 people disappeared during the grand opening. Various prominent people were on the train.
So we followed the tracks, when we entered the train tunnel underneath a bridge, we were asked the question, "Trade?" When offered minor things, the Vaesen got angry and punished us. After giving the Vaesen a suitcase of gold, it released one train passenger. A goat, one train passenger. But it was not interested in a second goat.
After some research, we confirmed it was a Bridge Troll.
We were at a loss as to what to do. We argued about Troll relocation. Troll extermination. Troll appeasement. Tricking the Troll. We spent too much time discussing what to do.
We discovered a prominent person had made a Trade of the train and all its passengers just as the train entered the tunnel. The passengers and train were now all in a fae pocket universe. The Troll was slowly consuming their life force.
Eventually, we found a ritual that would open a gateway back to our space, but the cost was human sacrifice. So, we found a willing victim at a hospice and traded him, Johann, and Geir to the Troll. While in fae, the PCs opened an escape portal. Geir sacrificed himself, distracting the Troll as the passengers escaped. Geir tried to be as humane as possible, letting the victim have final words with his granddaughter -- one of the missing passengers, doping him up so he'll feel no pain, and Johann made the final cut needed for the ritual.
After the passengers were saved, Johann made sure they knew which prominent person was responsible for their plight. As an epilogue, thugs hired by one of the surviving passengers kidnapped that prominent person and had him thrown into the tunnel. "Trade!"
Geir's statue was also errected at the tunnel exit.
The pacing of this game was incredibly slow because we spent most of our time arguing about what to do.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
May 7 (Sun), 11am - 3pm (4.25 hrs, went over by 0.25 hrs)
Viktor Wikström, a promising young violinist, has been found dead under mysterious circumstances in his affluent flat
in Copenhagen. His name is known throughout the upper class and the music world of the city. A dear friend of Viktor
has enlisted the Society’s help in hope that they will get to the bottom of this.
I enjoyed this scenario. The complexity of the mystery is moderate.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
In the beginning we got information about three violinists. One to perform to sold out audiences, one who disappeared, and one who died. Our mission is about the one who died. In the end, we find that all three are connected.
This scenario had just the right complexity for a 4 hour game.
We find that Rolf and Finn (and their friends) take picnics in the cemetary and had inadvertantly attracted the interest of a Valravn. In exchange for music, it would aid the person it has attached itself to. Rolf and Viktor were rivals in the orchestra and the Valravn's power over a murder of ravens killed Viktor. Rolf, transformed into Bertram Black, is giving concerts.
In the end, we got the Valravn to loosen its control over Rolf by invoking memories of Rolf's sister Ida (Moonlight Sonata duets and her choker). And we cut a new deal with the Valravn. The Valravn can move on if given the heart of a living child. Dr Ludwig agreed to do so within 3 years. Dr Ludwig will be specializing in pediatrics.
May 5 (Fri), 11am - 3pm (4 hrs)
May 5 (Fri) 5 - 9pm (4 hrs)
May 6 (Sat), 11am - 3:30pm (4.5 hrs, went over by 0.5 hrs)
May 6 (Sat), 5 - 9pm (3.5 hrs, we finished 0.5 hrs early)
May 7 (Sun), 11am - 3pm (4.25 hrs, went over by 0.25 hrs)
