Soloplay - Castle of the Mad Archmage II - Flies by Night

   Myrphines lay on the pallet and thought about failure, his failure.  His companions had been killed and he had run.  Gontus had been a family retainer since he was a lad and had been sent to Alexandria with him as a servant and bodyguard.  He'd met Trinor in the library there, researching the beliefs of an obscure Coele-Syrian cult, they'd been friend for years.  Altites, of course, troubled him not at all.  Merely a local thief he had hired as a guide and probably a spy to boot.
     At least he could sell the ring they'd found and find better quarters than the 'Old Fish'.  The price had been right for a near penniless exile, one gold stater bought the cramped room for a month; but the smell from Senedj's real business of buying up the last of the day's catch and selling it to farmers as fertilizer - and unsuspecting travelers as fish stew, permeated the neighborhood.
[Chaos factor = 6, rolled a 4.  Interrupt scene.  I had been planning on just going into the dungeon with the new characters, but decided this would be the meet and greet scene.  I rolled story cubes and didn't get any ideas, so I checked the background event table and rolled 59 - Monster Appears.]
     A droning in the background grew in volume until it filled his ears, as a strong breeze began blowing through the myriad cracks in the old door.  He heard cursing and the sound of doors opening in the hallway.  Grabbing his ave, he swung open the door to find the other occupants of the short hall doing the same.

Sarcophaga nodosa Photo by
 Muhammad Mahdi Karim (www.micro2macro.net) Facebook

[Round 1. Party Initiative 6, Flies 4]
The hall itself was filled with giant buzzing flies.  One of the others, a tall blonde man, uttered a barbaric oath and split one of the flies [5pts. Dead. No cleave].  Another fly bit a dwarf and buzzed away, while the dwarf bled [5pts].

[Round 2. Party Initiative 6, Flies 4]
Myrphnes found three flies buzzing towards him,with one deft swing, he sliced through the first [7 pts, Dead. Cleave] and sunk his axe into the second [6 pts. Dead].  The third fly struck him painfully in the shoulder [2pts].  Another fly bit a fellow Greek wielding a sword as large as the barbarian across the hall.

[Round 3. Party Initiative 5, Flies 1]
The dwarf methodically killed the fly which had bitten him [3pts, Dead. No Cleave] The barbarian shouted another oath to his strange gods as a fly left him bleeding badly [6pts].

[Round 4. Party Initiative 2, Flies 2]
Myrphines chopped at the fly between him and the Greek [2pts] as it looped away from him.  He gaped as the Greek turned his back on the attacking fly to save the barbarian, by slicing that fly in two lengthwise [11pts. Dead. Cleave].  The pursuing fly landed on the Greek's hands and he gave great cry as the fly bit him [8 pts,. At -2 HP] as he smashed the last fly against the wall [5pts. Dead].

   Myrphines hurried to the fallen Greek and layed hands on him, watching as the divine energy stopped the bleeding from the stumps of the fingers on the Greek's left hand. [Mortal Wounds table - rolled 11 + 2 for being treated within one round +1 for level of healing spell used.(Lay on Hands proficiency)= 14.  Rolled a 3 for determining Permanent Wounds.  Cross indexing - Loss of a hand]

   The dwarf came over to help, "Thekitor," he introduced himself "that was some good axe work as well,  You don't often see humans who know how to handle one of these beauties." patting his own axe.

   The barbarian picked up the Greek's sword, made a disapproving noise and scowled.  When they looked the question, he explained in halting Greek "He not use zweihander with half hand.  Too bad, good sword, good man in fight."

Confession:  I did what Admiral Ugaki did when the Japanese gamed out the invasion of Midway.  I cheated.  The first time through it was a TPK as the flies never lost initiative and rarely rolled under a 15 to hit.  Since I'm doing this for my own amusement and didn't want to roll up another set of characters - not to mention Mythic encourages 'the story' and having to replace all the characters in the second chapter kind of kills the flow- so I refloated the party like Ugaki did the Akagi and Kaga and re-ran the scene with the above results.

I like the Mortal Wounds table, it provides a lot more flavor than live or dead, wounded or whole than D&D's mechanics.  It does remind me of WFRP's Critical Hit table with its gorey descriptions of ripping through body parts. Perhaps I'll do a Mashup of them at some point.