Episode 1 "The Sword & the Satyr" - Scene 1 "Getting Ready"

With everyone gathered around Tanvi, it felt almost as though he'd not even left high school. Of course, his sister and her friends literally were still senior students. His eyes drifted over the chalkboard, where Tanvi was writing out some list of objectives, to the platform above it, where the library stood. It was a collection of ancient lore and one could feel the magic radiating from it just by being in the same building with it. When his attention finally returned to the blackboard, it had been divided into thirds, one section dedicated to what was already known, another to what their research might turn up and the last to the eventual plan of action.

'Right,' Tanvi said, seemingly a little apprehensive about addressing a crowd, even one as small as this, 'I think we're all quite new to this but we can't afford to delay. Our first objective is to retrieve the Sword of Kings. It's a potent magical artefact, it's rightly Valentine's property and there are plenty of leads we can follow up on.'

'Excuse me, uh, Missus Patel,' came the voice of Joshua Hill, as he stepped forward from the back of the room, 'surely, our first objective should be to find and kill the thing that offed our last Chosen One.' The young man, about Valentine's age, had not made a good impression on him the first time they'd met, just this morning. His physique was impressive, though not a match for his own, and one could tell from just a glance that he was tough, but he seemed overly sure of himself. His outfit, tight-fitting black cloth with an intricately patterned golden breastplate, was not well-worn.

'The Lionheart will need the sword, and a lot more besides, before we can even think about confronting the monster that killed Mister Boucher.'

'I'm his guard, aren't I? I could be sent on this mission and eliminate a great threat, to the Chosen One and the world at large. I have been trained all my life for this, and I've got fourteen monster kills under my belt. My charge doesn't even have one.'

Valentine had been inclined to let him rant but the inaccuracy irritated him enough to intervene. 'I killed a monster two days ago.'

Joshua turned to face him, a look of indignation on his face, 'a blood-starved vampire hardly counts. Sad to say,' he continued, in a tone that implied he really wasn't sad to say it, 'but you're in over your head. You should let me take the lead for now. I can train you, alongside Judah.' He motioned briefly to his brother, the youngest person in the room at just fifteen.

Veiled insults didn't really bother him but he, nevertheless, felt an urge to take Josh down a peg or two. 'How about this? Let's spar. If you can beat me, with all your years of training, I'll let you be in charge of my training for a whole year. If I win, you have to drop this superiority complex.'

His guard's face flashed, ever so briefly, with a look of resentment. 'Deal.'

'Boys, please,' Tanvi said, **** to get them back on track, 'that is really not a productive use of our time.'

'Isn't it?' Priyanshi piped up, drawing interested glances from her mother and the rest of the room, who were unused to hearing her speak at all, 'they're the fighters in this group, surely a practice fight is a good use of their time, and the rest of us can focus on the investigation.'

That settled it, at least in his mind and Josh's too, and they moved into the training room, such as it was, a simple unfurnished beige room with a hardwood floor. Judah, apparently his brother's caddy as much as his apprentice, followed them in and handed them each a wooden sword. It was clear that one of them was being overconfident but Valentine genuinely didn't know whether it was his opponent or himself. In one sense, he'd never so much as swung a sword before and Josh had potentially ten years or more of experience over him. In another sense, however, Valentine had at least fifty years of practice. Josh removed his breastplate and the duel began.

If his guard's confidence was shattered when Valentine displayed an immediate proficiency, he didn't let it show, and they spent the first five minutes trading blows somewhat evenly. Then, an idea struck him. He remembered that he'd killed that vampire because, somehow, his reflexes had gone into overdrive. From what he'd read in the book, and from the memories that came flooding into his mind once the notion had come to him, he knew that it was possible to call on this power, and even to ensure that it never left. All that was needed was to invite the Beast into his conscious mind.

Once he'd done this, the difference was dramatic. The two young men continued to fight at more or less the same pace but Joshua soon found that none of his blows made contact. Valentine evaded him at every turn. He wasn't content with merely outlasting Josh, however, or whittling him down by attrition. Instead, he put all of his strength into a thrust, aimed at the centre of his chest. The effect was dramatic and he was knocked down, hard. The sight of Valentine's victory was soon taken in by the rest of the gang, crowded around the entrance as soon as they heard the sound of someone falling to the floor.

Notes:

For my first actual session, I really enjoyed myself but I did manage to cock the rolls up quite majorly. I framed the scene as "the meeting" and set my expectation as "the team gels together", but then I rolled against it as though it were a Fate Question and, if that weren't bad enough, I forgot how a d100 system works and interpreted rolling under (I got a 35) as a negative outcome, rather positive, but I decided not to redo the scene (once I'd noticed my error) because I thought that Valentine and Joshua having a pretty violent start to their rivalry was quite fun.

Addendum: To get some inspiration for the journaling side, I recently watched a few recordings of solo RPGs sessions on YouTube and the woman who ran a Shadowdark campaign also screwed this up in her first session, interpreting a yes as a no and an exceptional no as an exceptional yes (in both cases, her rolls were eerily similar to mine), so that made me feel a little less stupid.

As for the combat, itself, I'm pretty sure I screwed up again here. I rolled the "Kick Some Ass" move for both of them (they have identical modifiers), over and over until one of them started to get a head. In the end, I liked the narrative that emerged: first they were even (8 vs 8), then Valentine pulled ahead (11 vs 7) and avoided harm, then Valentine got a roll that let him end the fight (another 11) by taking Josh to four wounds. I have no idea if that's a reasonable way to run the combat, however. If Valentine's rolls hadn't come out so well, I would've burned luck to net him 12s, because I much preferred a victory for him, since this is supposed to be a Buffy style narrative where the Chosen One is a cut above the rest of the team.