On "Swallow", remember that half the time a Trickster's spells backfire on him in embarrassing, uncomfortable and hilarious ways. So he could vomit up the Swallowed item/victim unharmed; could find his bowels in uproar after Swallowing something he thought would do no harm; could even excrete the item/victim...
Remember, Wile E. Coyote had faith in his ACME catalogue -- your Tricksters may put trust in the GoG spell descriptions -- both are wrong to do so!
> In the cradle adventure, I'm sort of unclear what happens story-wise
> with the gold disk.
The gold disk is Pinchining, one of the Gold Wheel Dancers. This was an ancient race, believed to be long-dead, but one of the players in Greg's early HQ games successfully revived them by rolling a critical success while worshipping his hoard of gold Wheels on the hero plane (full story in Tales #6, Alebard's Quest). (The character who did this, Urrrgh the Ugly, is actually present on the Cradle in a different form, nursemaiding the Baby: see if you can spot him!).
Pinchining empowers the Cradle's impressive magical defences, but is a magical being himself, and the massed Lunar battlefield magic (the "crimson chains") deactivate or kill him: this is when the disk wobbles and falls over. The Cradle's more pyrotechnic defences stop working, enabling the Lunars to swarm aboard. The living defenders of the Cradle know that only Pinchining can save them, but he's "dead" as far as the players can tell.
Garrath Sharpsword (Prince Argrath, incognito) knows better: he departs on a HeroQuest to Giant Land. We don't really know what he gets up to there (beyond what he says on his return), but when he returns he either has another Gold Wheel Dancer, or a new body for the spirit of Pinchining, or he took Pinchining's old body with him when he left... the scenario doesn't make this clear.
> If what you say above is true, then I have a couple of options available:
> a) b) c) d) DELETED
"There is always another way" (Ernaldan proverb):
Reaching Moon Megacorp hope shortly to bring out "The Tarsh War" - a freeform scenario book by Chris Gidlow in which a dozen players under one referee lead a Lunar expeditionary force into the Bush Range to crack down on Tarshite brigands. Most player characters command diverse military units, with up to a thousand troops each; others are mages, priestesses, generals and the like. The game can be played in a single session over the course of a whole day (we have also run a "speeded-up" version at tournaments in four hours or so); it also contains lots of useful and interesting background on the officers and men of the Lunar Army, the tribes of Tarsh, handy NPCs for games set in Dragon Pass, etc.
Although all the players are "on the same side" (to a greater or lesser extent) and there's a fair bit of referee direction, this scenario has much the same "feel" as a traditional freeform game. We'll let you know when it's published (should be out this summer): it could be a gentle intro to the wonderful world of freeforms!
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