Play Report: Dolmenwood Session 4

Run 2026/03/31 with 4 other players in person.

• Goals & Bibliography
• Session 0
• Session 1
• Session 2
• Session 3

Characters present: Bon Go, Edmund Blackudder, Henrick Candleswick, Rowan Malksmilk

In-Game time covered: 6:00 PM of Eggfast, 6th of Symswald - 8:00 AM of Colly, 8th of Symswald

Player-Safe Session Report

If you are a player in this campaign, don’t click on (or scroll to and read) the footnotes!

At the beginning of the session, our surviving two heroes — Henrick and Rowan — met the new characters that will be replacing the ones lost to the Witch Owls in the cave last session:

• Edmund Blackudder
  • Our first Breggle-kindred character and heir to Edmund Blackadder. He wants to become a mighty wizard, meet Lord Malbleat, and eradicate the Drune. ¹
• Bon Go
  • Brother of Bin Go. Has been separated from his sister for quite some time, and has been searching for her ever since.

First, Bon wanted to see the bodies of the dead adventurers, to see if his sister really was dead. Curate Odell showed them a very square coffin and its content, leaving very little doubt that this was indeed the very broad-shouldered Bin.

After that, they sat down in the Hornstoat’s Rest Inn, and a grieving Rowan pulled out the unicorn horn he took from Bin Go, and began to play with it while reminiscing. This immediately led to a lot of trouble, as unicorns are holy creatures in Dolmenwood, and possessing such a thing probably meant that Rowan had killed one of them. The group didn’t do a very good job explaining (and proving!) what had actually happened to Margerie, the Hornstoat’s Rest’s landlady, escalating the situation to the point where she was about to throw them out. Only in the last moment did Rowan save the situation by using his “Forgetting” glamour for the first time, making Margerie forget what had just happened, and then presenting her with a very made-up sounding story about some bandits.

Afterwards, having thus learned that the unicorn carcass the party had hidden just outside of town on their first day was probably not a good look for the party, they decided to spend the night hiding it better.

What followed was a very Coen brothers coded scene of rolling up a large, already heavily decomposing unicorn carcass into an oiled tent, and then moving it 500m outside of town to bury it there under the cover of a mostly moonless night, about 50m from the road. All the while being watched by hundreds of crows who had gathered here at this point to pick the bones of the dead unicorn and devil goat clean. Apropos: the party decided to leave the devil goat’s body where it was, to increase the plausibility of denying that there ever was a unicorn in the first place.

This took them pretty much the whole night, leaving all of them exhausted and dirty. That’s why they decided to spend the early morning washing up in a shallow lake in front of an important looking building. Here, the Berkmeister of Lankshorn — Clewyd Baldricke — found them when he left his estate overlooking the small lake, as he was about to head towards mass at the church.

Baldricke seemed more amused than angry, and the party used the chance to ask him a few things about the owls that had killed their friends. He seemed like he was pretty full of himself, and like he feared Lord Malbleat a lot, but ultimately gave them a few bits of intel on these owls. Namely that these are Witch Owls, and that you probably shouldn’t meet their gaze.

Mass went by without any incidents. It was announced that tomorrow (Colly, 8.4.) there would be three funerals: that of Bin, Edmund, and someone called Dayle Snudgewick.

Grehnd, the breggle boy they got bloody in session 1 sat next to Henrick during the whole thing, still a bit red in the fur from the whole thing. He told Henrick that Dayle was an old man obsessed with the Nuncle-Stones — the large stones on the hill next to the church, and that he insisted that they have magical properties. After mass, his mother came around and told Henrick again that he should keep away from her boy. She went to Father Dobey, telling him about Henrick before storming off, Grehnd in tow.

Dobey told Henrick that he sensed that Henrick was trouble. Henrick defended himself and told Dobey that he wants to create a Pragmaphon Study-Group. Dobey said that he sensed Henrick’s ambition, and that he could see him becoming Vicar of Lankshorn, but only if Henrick helped him become the Archdeacon of High-Ankle. He also allowed him to start his study group.

Then, he quickly excused himself. Bon and Rowan were suspicious and tried to follow him, but the dice weren’t having it, and they made too much noise. Rowan quickly erased his memory of the last 10 seconds though, so that they could simply say that they were just looking for the toilet and about to head back.

So Henrick took the opportunity to step in front of everyone still hanging around the church to tell them that he would be starting a study group the very next day, after the funerals. A few hands went up when he asked who was going to attend.

After mass, the gang headed first to Joremey the Bladesmith, to buy some Bedrolls. He had two on offer, informing them that the next shipment of supplies from High-Ankle will arrive on the 1st of Harchment (so next month). Rowan drank a quick shot with him, and then they quickly checked if Sydewich Maldwort was home, since Margerie had told Edmund II that they could probably hand-in the unicorn horn for safekeeping there. She had also said that he could frequently be found in Dreg these days. So they didn’t find anyone at the Man of Gold Apothecary. Whether it was due to his visits to Dreg, or simply because it was Sunning, wasn’t clear.

As the final act of the day, the party decided to take a look at the other, less well kept tavern in town: Bogway’s. Since they don’t have enough money to look for retainers yet, they simply spent the evening here, talking to one of its two proprietors — Whimsly Bobblefrock, the first Grimalkin they encountered.

Whimsly told them that she fled from Chateau Shantywood, where she was kept due to gambling debts, causing her to ask a curious Edmund II to burn it down. Since Henrick was drunk on Brigwort Tripple at this point, a spirit that “inspires giddy hijinks”, he decided to enable her old gambling addiction, convincing her to play a game of poker, which the party lost. It wasn’t all for naught though, since she allowed them to spend the night in the stables, next to the horses in the straw.

DM Notes

If you are a player in this campaign, you probably want to stop here!

What Worked Well

• We were all very tired going into this session. But by the end, most of us were surprised how late it had already gotten. It was a session almost purely comprised of social encounters, but it still felt like a lot of fun.
• I’m very happy with how the decomposing unicorn problem came into play and was resolved (for now). Using the calendar and repeatedly drawing attention to the escalating situation paid off big time when Rowan took out the horn, allowing me to inform them of the problematic nature of possessing such a thing in Dolmenwood for the first time.

What Could’ve Gone Better

• It’s still hard for me to ensure that each character/player is frequently involved across the whole session, while keeping everything entirely player-driven. I’ll have to keep an eye on this and try out possible solutions.

Footnotes