dungeon world actual play
small group today, just two players:
bug, hobbit/satyr thief of indeterminate gender raised by centaurs
olive, young lady dwarf fighter, formerly enslaved arena fighter from the smokepoint arena, famous for her towering size of five feet and for escaping
smokepoint is a cityat the base of a volcano where overlord ketandu leads with an iron fist. the majority of the population is near human, but they all have deep gravelly voices and their eyes appear the be glass and filled with smoke.
after a long trek across the obsidian sand desert our heroes finally make it to the grand city of smokepoint with dawn approaching (smokepoint was established to be mostly nocturnal due to how hot a desert of black sand would get during the day) so the gates were being closed. the guards ask them for papers, so without saing any words olive throws bug onto one of the guards. bug smears the guard’s face with golden root and convinces him that bug is a famous chef who has come to open a mushroom croquette restaurant in the smokepoint hobbittown. the guard admits he is a huge fan of hobbit cuisine and lets them in. olive grumpily says nothing the entire time.
they decide they must seek out dandy, the dwarf leader of the revolutionary thespians who helped olive escape from the arena all that time back. they approach the entrance to the dwarf quarter and mushroom farms, bug again convinces the dwarf guard to let them down, but recognizes olive, whose face is on wanted posters.
once in the tunnels, olive goes to a barber and has her head and beard shaved, much to the offence of the dwarf barber. they then find graffiti that leads them to a door in a back alley cul de sac where drunk guards are hassling a poor sensitive dwarf named poppy. olive and bug kill the guards, who, when hurt, smoke pours from the wounds rather than blood, and when killed their bodies rapidly turn to ash.
poppy leads our heroes down the the headquarters of the thespians, who have been rehearsing the theatrical revolution of epic proportions. dandy tells the heroes of the plan to overthrow ketandu, and asks for their help in procuring the hand of a very special guard whose hand can get into ketandu’s penthouse.
bug goes undercover at the oldest hobbit restaurant in town, the halfling inn (halfling is a racial slur for hobbits) whose young owner is sympathetic with the thespian revolutionaries. eventually bug finds the gate guard who had fallen for bug and bug’s stories of croquettes and asks him if he could help find the special guard whose hand is required for dandy’s plan. unfortunately another guard overhears the conversation and pretends to be said special handed guard, but instead he leads them right to ketandu who is very happy to see olive safe and sound, though clean shaven she may be.
and thus ended the session. i was so happy that the olive’s player included the little detail that an uncharacteristically jolly dwarf named dandy had helped her escape and had been trying to form a theater for dwarves, who tend to mostly be grumpy folk. this jist turned into a revolutionary cell of performing troops and theatrical firebrands. dwarf situationists in a fantasy world. what fun! as the whole world is a stage, and act 1 of the revolution has just begun. so fun to play dandy.