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Episode 8: Shinty Town - 14 Feb 2020 16:23

Setting

Dark Season in Sartar is a time of snow and gales, and also, I decided ice shinty grudge matches against nearby clans.

What is ice shinty? Well, like ice hockey, but with less armour and more cheating.

Plot devices were provided by other members of my RPG group.

An extra player and a missing player meant Asprag, Ethrava's tenant, was promoted from NPC to PC for the evening.

IC Play

Asprag the Farmer found himself voted in as captain of the Shinty Team for the in-no-way-a-grudge-match against the Varmandings, the clan team from across the river. With so few people living in Apple Land and the clan, and with travel difficult, he appealed to the adventurers for help. Laika, Rastar, and Ethrava were in the village, and agreed to help.

Laika was already a competent skater. The rest were issued with skates and some quick lessons. Rastar turned out to get the hang of it pretty quickly. Ethrava… less so. Asprag sent Laika out to check out the river where it was going to be held, and Laika managed to work out that yes, it was a river, and frozen, and then came back.

Meanwhile, Saronil had been offered a quick bit of escort duty by Graria, the Lay Captain1 of the Temple of Humakt. Escorting a man to Apple Lane was exactly the sort of thing he felt he could do. Graria asked if he knew what Shinty was. When he didn't, he was invited to take a healer along; naturally, he plumped for Varaema.

The journey was not difficult. On the way Saronil worked out that he was with another Humakti, but one he did not recognise. At Apple Lane they met the large group of clan players and hamlet folk on their way out, and quickly followed along.

Asprag went out to help the opposing captain cut the centre line, as tradition dictated. His opposing number asked why there was a White Lady present, complaining that he wanted to get home that day. It was agreed that if someone had been healed of a major injury, they would not go back on the ice.

Rastar, as the person in the brightest clothing, was sent to choose a sapling for a puck. After the tree had been chosen and looked at for a bit, Laika was sent to help him choose a better shaped tree, and it was cut down and the puck made.

Asprag chose to put Ethrava and himself on the ice first, with Rastar and a few others. He got himself in control of the puck pretty quickly, and Ethrava fell over and got stamped on pretty heavily. Apple Lane drew ahead in the game, but the Varmandings were definitely more violent.

While sitting on the sidelines and cheering, having had her ribs put back in place by Varaema, Ethrava noticed blood on the snow, and rather more than she remembered anyone spilling. She called over Laika and they investigated - the ground was bleeding. Varaema's patient noticed and the WHite Lady came over, to say she could not do First Aid on the ground. Ethrava called up an earth spirit to find out what was under there. It was prepared to talk to her and to Laika - Laika even understood from its habits of speech that it was the sort of spirit that wanted blood. It said there was a dead thing under the ground.

Laika, Ethrava, and a couple of farmers began to dig.2 They got to a bit of a body, and a ghost began to form, and this was not the talkative kind - it attacked them instantly, and they had to destroy it, which caused the game of shinty to be paused. Laika got covered in the physical touch of the ghost, a layer of frozen gunk.3

Afterwards, they were able to ascertain that the bit of body they had pulled up was just that - a bit. A quartered corpse had been buried, with pig teeth embedded in the skin here and there. Reluctantly they asked for a longer pause in the game and began searching for the other bits. They found more, and fought another ghost, while the Varmanding team did nothing to help, but did at least agree to the game being paused. This was fortunate, as Asprag was rendered unconscious in the fight, and had to be put somewhere warm for a bit. Laika got gunked again. It was just as unpleasant the second time around.

While Rastar built a snow-corpse to help with the preparation of someone who was missing a lot of himself, one of the Hiordling team turned out to be a hunter who went out to get his alynx. Using her skills, he found two more spots under the snow, and one where he was sure there would be… something. Asprag was just about awake enough to decide to use all of his Rune Points to protect himself in spirit block… and they fought two small ghosts and then a huge angry pig-ghost. Asprag ended up unconscious again, and so Saronil was put in charge.

Then, leaving Varaema to put the spirit of the corpse safely to rest, the others went back to finish the shinty match. The other side were not prepared for the tactical Humakti's instructions to his team, and could not keep up with the skill and ferocity of Laika and the other farmers. With the healer occupied, it was over before dark, and the Hiordlings won, taking the trophy, an arm ring with some history. Asprag came round again in time to take the trophy home.

There was a lot of celebration, and the Humakti who had been escorted to Apple Lane seemed entirely unmoved by it.4

Other Things

A man with a hide and a half of land including some oak trees made an agreement with Laika to have her pigs on his land.

Shinty is hilarious because extra rules keep cropping up. Yes, you DO have to be conscious AND holding the stick, in a hand that IS still connected to your body… and there is precedent for every single ruling.

Tags: 1625 apple_lane arm_ring asprag dark ethrava hiordling humakti laika malani rastar saronil shinty varmanding

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