Gonna fight the battle of Malkonwal . . . Malkonwal . . . Malkonwal . . .

From: Chris Lemens <chrislemens_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 12:28:08 -0800 (PST)


If you dislike reading about other peoples' campaigns, skip this message.

A bunch of us played Runequest at Sandy's Saturday night.

The backstory is that most of our party is comprised of Trondlings, who are ancestor-worshipping Yggs Islanders. An eeevil sorcerer called down a SunBurn on Trond, which had the effect of a nuke, all while the party was off somewhere else. As far as we kjnow, all other Trondlings were killed. The party hunted him for a while, but has lost track of him.

The party is presently comprised of a male Trondling shaman, a male Trondling warrior, Jim the formerly male Trondling warrior who is now known as Jimima, a male Loslamli, an awakened herd man who was previously skinned alive by the bear people (Guy Hoyle), a white elf who was formerly a green elf (me), and a ferret hsunchen (Sandy's son).

We were in Sog City a few sessions back
(Halloween)when the Trondling ancestors showed up in a ghost ship because Trond was being attacked by forces of goodness and light. It turns out the awfully good duke was putting up obelisks that had the effect of suppressing the angry ghosts that our ancestors had turned into. We promptly took up the mission of protecting the shambling undead monstrosities from the forces of goodness and light.

We had three early successes -- we managed to destroy one of the obelisks (and found out that the supposedly virtuous Loslami had to sacrifice perfect women to make them work); we ambushed a work party of 20 knights and 3 sorcerers (who had a horrific spirit vaccuum cleaner that sucked up some of our ancestors); and freed two of the perfect girls before they were sacrificed.

So, Satuday night, we found out that the forces of good were out to re-erect the plinth we had destroyed.  We determined by querying our hideous undead friends that the forces of good always sacrificed the girl at sunset, then were beset on the hero plane by our ancestors throughout the night; if even one of them suvived to the dawn, the plinth went up. Out ancestors had never managed to defeat them, so we knew they were re-enacting the I Fought, We Won Battle.

We spent a lot of time thinking about how to beat this. My character had an item called the Key to the Gates of the Dawn, so we thought that might help, but we were too chicken to try out any of the ideas we had.

Finally, Rich (the Shaman) suggested that we needed the Alamo myth, in which everyone gets slaughtered. This made me think of the Fall of Malkonwal. I didn't remember it all, but Sandy agreed with my vague recollections (which was good enough for the game). What I remembered was that Malkion died at the Fall of Malkonwal in the darkness, and that he was beset by hordes of barbarians, mosters, etc., who were kinda all the same as far as the Malkioni cared.

So we made a special roll on our Wolrd Lore skill (RQ, remember), and "remembered" that the villanous hordes had chanted hymns of dooooom and had given Malkion the five cuts to kill him (each limb, then the head).

So we pulled up to shore in our ship, with a ragtag byunc of zombies and wraiths and such. We were singing a ditty that Guy made up (literally -- Sandy made us sing it); I don't remember it, but it was about blood and such, so it was good. As we did so, a bridge appeared in the air, but just for us. Our undead comrades fought the shiny knights on the beach below us.

As we ascended the bridge towards the mountaintop where the ceremony was being held, we passed a gate hanging in mid-air. We had the option of opening it upwards, opening it downwards, or locking it tight. We locked it up, so presumably it was a very long Saturday night in Glorantha.

We arrived to find the Duke's son running the show. There was one of him, two wizards, three knights, and the requisite peasant. We had him outnumbered, which fit both his myth and ours. So we started singing about Malkonwal and shouting about killing Malkion.
"Gonna fight the battle of Malkonwal, Malkonwal,
Malkonwal." etc.

The dice consistently went our way. Our damage rolls were good; his wizard rolled three ones in a row on a 6-sider, proving that our heroquest was winning out. When we fumbled, the results were inconsequential. Finally, as we killed off hs henchmen (including a giant Ninja, since we were using whatever lead figures came quickly to hand), the Duke's son fully identified with Malkion and submitted to having his head chopped off.

After that, we got to participate in the looting of Malkonwal. I got four white elf seeds, which is a darn good thing, because Sandy says there are five genders to white elves (in his Glorantha, which he made up on the spot) and I don't know how to use whatever equipment I have. Again the dice were with me -- Sandy said "Roll two 6-siders." I said, "So long as I get four, I'm happy." As I roll, he says
"Yeah, but what if they're all the same kind?" I
rolled a four. Sandy says "Well, obviously, you must have gotten one of each!"

I am a bit afraid of whatever the unintended consequences of identifying the Duke's son with Malkion will be, but hopefully he'll be unreachable.

Altogether a marvelous night.



Chris Lemens

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