Theatre Masks, by emeraldfury

The last few sessions of Savage Legend have been quite dark; a demon plague wiping out a village the PCs saved months ago (and them being framed for it), the son of the PCs’ benefactor dying before their eyes, the end of a long quest to bring back a bride for the (now deceased) Baron’s son. And this with two eleven-year olds among the players (my kids).

Saturday’s set pieces were a single combat (trial by combat) to establish their innocence, a library visit (works well with Savage Worlds, but I’ll relate that another time elsewhere) and then a trip to an island monastery to obtain information from a deceased saint.

Once they’d solved the (rather neat, even if I do say so myself) puzzle to determine the saint’s long-lost resting place, it was time to pour the necromatic oil onto the bones and quizz him regarding the location of an ancient relic. Unfortunately (ha-ha), the saint is missing a few pieces, notably a scapula, femur, patella and several carpals. Before he tells the party where the relic lies, he wants to be completely reassembled. And the skull is turning out to be quite talkative.

Smuggling a talking skull out of a respectable monastery under the nose of the monks who were delighted that the bones of their patron saint had been located once more has been fun. And now we have the task of finding the bones ahead of us. The next session should be quite a laugh.

So we’ve moved from my wife having shivers down her back at the description of the death of the Baron’s son to the hilarity of a loquacious skull in a monastery. Either mood setting would be oppressive or annoying if it was permanent, but I enjoy having the feeling that I can play with these registers a little to entertain.