Bear Witness Play Reports 1-4
I've had the incredible pleasure of playing in an open table game ran by the inestimable Chaoclypse over on the big purple OSR server and figured I'd collate all the play reports from our games into one mega blogpost for easy reference!
Table of Contents:
11-7-2025
Date: 11-7-2025 Session Number: 1 Campaign Name: Bear Witness! Players, Characters:
- Swanky McJay, Leoric Honis Bensim (Cleric 1)
- Conspite, Luther (Fighter 1)
- Aggie, Shako Eleganz (Thief 1)
- Alex, Gatsby (Fighter 1)
- Mr. Mann, Cordon Withrope (Magic User 1)
Contents
1 Month Ago, a red star crashed into this region. The Zone, as it came to be called, is now full of the star-shards, which are highly valuable in the rest of the world.
We set out from the front of Fort Ashrock, knowing that there is a ruin to the Northwest of the fort entrance and the following rumors:
- Old Man Oman from Arrendale lives in the Zone and studies the power of the star shards
- Once you see the river, stick to it. Don't follow the road for too long.
- A long time ago, Fort Ashrock was owned by a manticore. It fell into disrepair before the star fell. After the star fell, people moved back in and repopulated the fort. Recently, someone's seen the manticore moving in the zone...
We start at the entrance to the fort and make our way inside. A notary takes our names (Aggie gives a fake name, Grilled Cheese Long) and tells us to talk to Joey. Joey gives us an anomaly box and tells us not to touch the shards with our bare hands. "Or else you'll turn into one of those pig fuckers!" After greasing his lips with 30gp, he tells us a rumor:
- Joey thinks there's a race war in the zone between two groups of bandits, the Grey Badgers. Cyril is a human and Ezek is a dwarf and they are having some conflict. Maybe we could play them off each other?
He also throws in another:
- The Pig Fuckers tend to have star shards with them, but you can only damage them with silver weapons.
We ask Joey about the Manticore and he starts sweating. "that's not true!" then he hits a tasteful stage whisper: "Don't talk about the manticore around here, it's a bit of a sore spot." Alright Joey, we'll listen to you! We decide to turn around and investigate Arrendale before we head out into THE ZONE.
On our trip to Arrendale, we met with Gifu from Gifu's Ironworks. We learn about the following things:
- Grell, a man with rings and brown hair, and Priest of Atile (Local Goddess of Nature) came and bought maces to Blacksmith. Left 2-3 Days Ago to the barrow with the goal of wiping out the undead that live there.
- Nadias has a personal vendetta against the Werebears (A.K.A. Pig Fuckers?) and is often found hunting them in the forest. He is a member of the Dornwall family, which is "Known for causing trouble."
- There were some strange monks who rolled through town recently, wearing big orange gis and carrying their own weapons. The only companion they had with them was a black cat.
Finishing up that conversation, Gifu asks us if we're gonna buy anything. We nope the fuck out before she gets too upset; Cordon Withrope promised her that he'd buy something when he returned.
We end the session after passing through the fort. Next time we're going hexcrawling, baby!
11-14-2025
Date: 11-14-2025 Session Number: 2 Campaign Name: BEAR WITNESS Players:
- Luther (Conspite) Lvl. 1 Fighter
- Shako Eleganz, AKA Grilled Cheese Long (Aggie) Lvl. 1 Thief
- Cordon Withrope (Mr. Mann) Lvl 1 Magic User
- Syr Nobody (Syr Nobody) Lvl 1 Fighter
Contents
I joined late so I didn't get to see what happened in the beginning of the session. Whoops! I join at the entrance to the barrow. There's a chapel with a big hammer on it. As we descend into the barrow, the elves spit on it as they pass.
Cordon Withrope speaks Ancient Elvish, the language that these elves were using to speak (quantum language point)1. The elves say they're looking for Khuaja (who could that be...thinking emoji) in Ancient Elvish as we form ranks and descend into the dungeon.
At the bottom of the steps rattle 7 skeletons skeletonly. Luther aggros 1 with a well-tossed stone and the others Dragon Ball fuse into a big skeletal mass. It looks pretty hairy until Cordon Withrope casts Color Spray and takes out all the skeletons!
After cleaning up the skeletons, we descend further into the dungeon and immediately encounter some waist-high-sized rats. They see the elves and book it. Luther jumps on one and catches it. The elves catch the rest of the rats and begin to interrogate them, asking for "their master."
Suddenly, from the darkness of a dungeon corner, a snorting sounds out. Syr Nobody peaks around the corner and makes direct, steamy eye contact with... furbomination!!! It tries to nip at Syr Nobody, who retreats back into the light. The furbomination chases the elfbros and us back out of the dungeon; the elves decide to head deeper into the dungeon, we head out, carrying Luther's rat quarry.
The rat gives us a rundown on what's happening:
- The rats in this dungeon are super well educated! One of them has ascended to personhood and taken a name: Ghastrat!
- Ghastrat worships Khuaja. (We know from earlier that the elves are looking for Khuaja)
- Dwarven Ghouls
- They awoke recently, saying they "need to uphold their pact!"
- The Dwarves are using a red shard as bait?
- The Elves (we know them to be Dark Elves now because of the language they spoke) led a failed expedition beneath the waterfall. They died to a host of skeletons.
- The Rats are pretty neutral wrt all the factions in the dungeon. They go where they please and aren't bothered by much.
Takeaways/Threads to Look Into
New Factions:
- The Dark Elves
- The Dwarven Ghouls
- Ghastrat/Khuaja/The Furbominations?
- The Rats New Questions:
- What are the elves looking for?
- Who is Khuaja?
- What pact are the Dwarves sworn to uphold?
11-21-2025
Date: 11-21-2025 Session Number: 3 Campaign Name: BEAR WITNESS Players:
- Leoric, Level 1 Cleric Played By Swanky
- Crust Fizzlestink, Level 1 Magic User Played By Hawkeyes
- Shako Eleganz, Level 1 Thief Played By Aggie
- Luther, Level 1 Fighter Played By Conspite
- Cordon Withrope, Level 1 Magic User Mr. Mann
- Lettie Lutz, Level 1 Magic User Played by Himetokki
Contents
We begin this session outside the dungeon. Knowing that we were born to delve and delving's what we do, we go inside. We heard last session from the rats that the shards we're looking for were somewhere to the east, so we set out to adventure!
We head inside and check a door, finding a raised platform with a dais. In the dais there are four slots for gems, presumably, and two of them were filled. Leoric snags those gems like they owe us money we and move on to the southern half of the area we were in (following again the directions we had from the last).
We descend down into a wooden-planked hallway and break into a deserted kitchen. While examining some bloodstains, Luther finds a key which belongs to "Sitgruck Flintflayer". Shako Eleganz spends a turn dismantling a door in the kitchen while everyone else explored another room. Shako Eleganz eventually breaks into a large church area, with sloping pews that rise up to the ground level outside. The rest of the group enters into a dliapidated dining hall, with a smashed table and a bunch of ratty mattresses. Of particular note is a tall iron vault door with a hammer symbol on it, and a wooden door which we know via expert mapping to link back up to the big pew area that Shako Eleganz was currently in.
We regroup and Luther uses the key he found to open the iron door. Inside are 3 Furbominations (I'm calling them Furbys from this point on) carrying meteor shards in their hands! We retreat from the door and the inestimable drowsy wizard Crust Fizzlestink casts Sleep centered on the creatures in the room. Fizzlestink's spell is exceptionally powerful; we all fall asleep2!
Out of character, we all roll saving throws to see if we wake up. only Leoric succeeds, along with one of the Furbies, so we roll a pair of dice to see which turn Leoric and the Furby wake up. Thankfully, the poorly-rested Leoric wakes up after only 20 minutes and we're able to get woken up and MURDER the furbies and carefully scoop those shards into our anomaly box (a special container we use to keep the shards so we don't get sick from exposure to them).
With this collected, we decide to call it quits and head on out! Before we go, a few members of the party decide to skin the Furbys and take their hide back to town. As we skin them, we learn that they're actually weird fucked up humanoids! While we're finishing the job, we run into the elves we encountered (see the last session report). One of them is missing and the rest of them are covered in blood. They stammer a thank you and, in their archaic elven tongue, wonder aloud if we're allies of the dwarves and if they're better off killing us instead of thanking. Thankfully, Cordon Withrope is an elven scholar (not in a fetish way, he just thinks they're pretty cool) and so can understand the conversation. He uses this knowledge to assuage the doubts among the elves in the common tongue and commiserate with them about their fallen companion. "Oh, don't worry about him, he's not gone." Is what they say to Withrope in response. The elves say they have "completed their mission" and are ready to leave the dungeon, so we follow them out with plans to head back to town.
Takeaways/Threads to Look Into
- Sitgruck Flintflayer
- The leader of the Ghoul Dwarves? We found this name inside their church, and it sounds dwarfy.
- The Dwarven Shard Bait
- The Dwarves were using the red shards as bait, but the shards we found were in a locked door? Did we steal from their reserve stash?
- The Dark Elves
- They've "Completed their mission" and seem to have done something to Khuaja? What could their elf brother have done? Why exactly were they all covered in blood?
- The Gems on the Altar
- What happens when all four gems are collected and returned to the altar? maybe it would be good to try and translate or transcribe the ruins on the altar to see what they did.
- Furbys
- Where are the humanoid bodies coming from for the Furbies? Are they able to be controlled or just herded?
- Crust Fizzlestink
- What's that guy's deal?
11-28-2025
Date: 11-28-2025 Session Number : 4 Campaign Name: Bear Witness! Players:
- Cordon Withrope, 1st Level MU played by Me
- Luther, 1st Level Fighter played by Conspite
- Black-Eyed Helmwin, 1st Level Thief played by Mistuh
Contents
We make a quick retreat back to the fort from the barrow and sell the shards (they sell for a nice 2500gp). We show Joey the hides from the Furbominations and he comments that typically undead creatures wouldn't be susceptible to sleep and that the hide is still alive despite being skinned off of the bodies of the creatures. He takes half of the furs we harvested and promises us that he'll investigate the origin of the furs over the next week. Content with this, we decide to take the rest to Arrendale and sell them off. The furs sell for a little less than they should've (700gp for half of what we harvested, reduced to 350gp) because they lost their golden sheen in transit.
We get accosted by a wheezy vagabond named Black-Eyed Helmwin, the scourge of Arrendale, who demands we hand over our newly gotten gains. Immediately, a patrol of 11 guardsmen round the corner and intervene in the situation (thanks encounter roll!). Helmwin attempts to climb the building but is tackled to the ground by Luther. Helmwin breaks the impromptu grapple with a kick to Luther's face and resumes his ascent. 3 Guards stab him during his ascent and he falls and dies on the spears. RIP Black-Eyed Helmwin, short-lived but long-remembered as Arrendale's worst petty criminal.
With a little XP from the scoundrel underneath our belts, we settle into downtime in the safe zone outside of THE ZONE. See you next week!
Takeaways/Threads to Look Into
- The guards who saved us from the bandits were headed to the mayor's house; one of them was a pretty important looking guy, I wonder what they're getting into?
- The pelts from the Furbies are alive! I wonder how those get about?
- Could the rat wizard be putting them on old corpses?
Quantum Languages are the best and probably the only way I run languages now; any other way tends to be boring.↩
Sleep is a very strong spell, but it's also dangerous when you don't have enough distance from it. We got lucky this time, but there's another universe where we were eaten alive by the furbies!↩