Bear Witness Play Reports  7-10

28 Feb, 2026

Another cluster of Bear Witness session reports (some are missing because I was either missing or forgot to take notes.

One thing I really appreciate in regards to Chao's games is how information-heavy they are; every faction has things they know and don't know and just the subtle spreading of information has had wild effects on the game world. It's a fun quirk I'd like to bring to my own games!

Metadata

Date: 1-9-2025 Session Number: 7 Campaign Name: Bear Witness! Players:

• Leoric, played by Swanky
• Cordon Withrope, played by Mr. Mann

Contents

We resume play and head into the chapel, where we discover a bloody fight scene and a badly wounded Cleric. We attempt to heal him but despite our incredible medical efforts (2 critical failures from Cordon) he succumbs to his wounds. Continuing through the chapel, we discover 5 more corpses alongside a wounded cleric which is pinned against the wall with the fragment of a table. We also discover the lead cleric Grell, unconscious and wounded, who was saved from death by his now-broken holy amulet.

We get both of the survivors out and in the process of this get attacked by 9 Furbys! This combat takes the rest of the session. At the end, we retreat back outside to take stock of our situation and tend to the wounded clerics whilst also contemplating heading home with the wounded men and regrouping for another expedition into the Zone.

Threads to Look Into

• While it wasn't in this session, we learned that the clerics were wounded so badly by the monks we noticed traveling through the safe area a few sessions prior.
  • Apparently, they get into a rage and don't know who they're fighting.
    • Are they telling the truth? Or lying to hide some ulterior motive.
• How many Furbys are in this place? This fight with them means there were at least like, 15 Furbys in the dungeon.
  • Who is making them?
  • NOTE: They can be turned, but it's a little harder because they're alive. They can also be hit by Color Spray, Sleep, etc.

Metadata

Date: 1-16-2026 Session Number: 8 Campaign Name: Bear Witness! Players:

• Black-Eyed Belmwin, played by Mistuh
• Luther, played by Conspite
• Cordon Withrope, played by MrMann
• Pignose the Barber, played by Oldhawkeyes

Contents

We start the session trying to get back to the fort, moving at walking speed despite the fact that we have horses. Along the way we encounter a group of 9 Dwarves and 12 Humans, who are arguing amongst themselves about tracking down some people. We remain hidden (thankfully we come across the scene from on high atop a hill) and discover that the dwarves and humans are about to come to blows over the tracking endeavor.

The humans give a secret signal to strike down the dwarves and Cordon leaps into action, Sleeping a large chunk of the humans and warning the dwarves of the incoming attack.

The dwarves, numerically superior to the humans, say they're going to report this event to Ezzek (we learned in an earlier session that there's a racial schism among the bandits, Ezzek is one side of this conflict). We give them our names and faces so they know not to ambush us in the future and we head out, encounter safely avoided.

The rest of the return trip to Fort Arrendale is uneventful.

Hadrian's cloaks (cloaks that protect from non-humanoids, -2 AC in fact!) take 4 Furby pelts and cost 1000gp. We had one made for us last time we were in town, so we collect that and have a new cloak! We give him some furs and one of the Furby eyes to examine for magical properties and sell off the extra for 1200gp.

Esmerelda (a high-ranking cleric in the Church) pays us a visit to ask what happened to the clerics. We explain the situation with the massacred clerics and get Esmerelda up to speed. Cordon cautions her against attacking the monks out of retribution and she decides to petition her god for help on what to do.

At this point, we enter into downtime and do stuff of that nature until the end of the session.

Takeaways/Threads to Look Into

• Those damn monks
  • What the flip is up with these guys!
• Esmerelda and the Church
  • She is pretty powerful and seems p committed to stopping the demon outbreak, she's a good ally to have while we're exploring the barrows I reckon.

Metadata

Date: 1-30-2026 Session Number: 9 Campaign Name: Bear Witness! Players:

• Kaspar the Magic User (played by Nobody)
• Shako Eleganz AKA Grillcheese Long the Thief (played by Aggie)
• Leoric Honis Bensim the Cleric (played by Swanky)
• Luther the Fighter (played by Conspite)
• Varni the MU (played by Zero)
• Cordon Withrope (played by Mr. Mann)
• Black-Eyed Belmwin (played by Mistuh)

Downtime Actions

• Black-eyed Belmwyn: goes carousing with 200 gp, and nothing unusual really happens. You do hear, while drinking, that the wereboar attacks have died down for a few days then started again. Something seems to have happened near the forest recently.
• Luther: You sell the 2 extra furs on the marketplace. You get 100 gp per, 200 gp total. (Note that this is less than they initially sold for (About 200gp) - on the first sale, since it's exotic, it's worth a bit more initially!)
• Cordon Withrope: You go buy scrolls from Hadrian. He's still working away at that weird looking helmet that he was working on in his workshop for a while now, but he's made significant progress on it.
• Oldhawkeyes You look for hirelings, and can't find any initially - you are about to give up when you are approached by a near-blinded man. He has a massive diagonal scar across his face, from forehead to cheek, and as a result one eye's gone and the other's red. He introduces himself as Kenril, a cleric who works at the church. He was hurt while on duty a while ago and the Church isn't officially sending him out on the front line anymore on any missions, but he still wants to do work in Atiel's name. If you accept, he cannot fight, but he can hold a torch and items and turn undead, and overall seems fairly eager. (Hawkeyes accepted this offer)

Contents

The weather for today is some light rain. The church has put out a bounty on the monks, who have not returned from the Zone since we reported their crimes.

We talk to Joey and after greasing his lips with a bit of gold get some hot info on the location of the monk camp. Looking to crack down on those murderers, we travel to the monk camp and stage an ambush. Skeleton crew at the camp, Raul the leader is gone on "Special Training." He's been "acting a bit strange" according to the monks.

Raul returns alone after a while and we try to persuade the monks to rage into the barrows via a secret entrance we discovered. In return for this, Raul wants us to get him into contact with the Dark Elves we encountered a few delves ago. We agree, knowing that the monks won't see the light of tomorrow's sun, and spend the rest of the afternoon travelling to the barrow.

At nightfall the monks dive into the lake. The cat stays outside, waiting on its monk masters to resurface. After a few turns of non-response from the monks, the cat dives into the lake after them and is just as quickly chased out by an army of skeletons, three elongated skeletons and several more normal ones. Cordon casts color spray on the big cat and it falls unconscious, dragged to the bottom of the small lake and torn apart by most of the skeletons. One, however, ignores the paltry soggy meal its comrades have settled for and clambers ashore to accost the party. In the ensuing combat the magic user Varni is slain and we barely escape!

Takeaways/Threads to Look Into

• Raul has a scroll case on his person that had a fairly detailed map on it. I hope it survived the combat with the skeletons!
• I wonder how we'll get the bounty for the monks without a corpse...

Metadata

Date: 2-9-2026 Session Number: 10 Campaign Name: Bear Witness Players:

• Cordon Withrope, Magic User 2 played by me
• Kaspar, Magic User 1 played by Nobody
• Luther, Fighter 2 played by Conspite
• Pig Nose the Barker, Fighter 1 played by Oldhawkeyes
• Roland LaGrande, Fighter 1 played by Cellar Gelatin

Contents

We pick back up camped near the waterfall, safely outside the range of the ire of the elongated skeletons. Sometime during the night, Luther, who was on watch at the time, encountered the dark elves, who were apparently watching our camp while we were asleep.

He invites them to our camp and they waste no time asking about the monks who we slew by proxy last session. We explain the "truth" and they seem largely unconcerned with the details, so our skullduggery goes unchecked.

Pretty quickly, they ask us for a favor; they'll show us to the second level if we remove a ward that keeps them from entering into a specific area. Having no reason to distrust them beyond their names, we agree and set out into the Barrow together, our party of 8 supplemented by their party of 8.

We travel into the barrow and enter a large sloped room which heads east/west; a few elves post up on either side guarding the entrances while 1 elf searches for a hidden door on the northern side. We follow suit, a few milling about the secret door while the rest guard the other passages into the room.

Finally, the elf slides open the secret door. Unfortunately, behind the secret door are 3 Dwarven Ghouls! Before anyone can blink, Pig Nose the Barber rushes forward and hucks a battleaxe at one, killing it instantly. The 2 remaining ghouls turn and flee from the party as we pursue.

As they flee, they draw a sigil on the ground that Cordon can read (thanks Quantum Languages!) that basically serves to ward off Dark Elves. Pig Nose is no dark elf, though, and trudges over the sigil, muddying it and dismantling it enough that it's rendered broken.

While the pursuit rages on, the economically minded Kaspar searches the corpse of the dead dwarves and recovers a wand of peculiar make; it has strange glyphs all along its length and is oddly shaped. Kaspar also collects a crossbow from the corpse of this ghoul, who looks to be one of the leaders of the Dwarven Ghouls.

The Ghouls themselves are a pale blue and seem to glow like a phosphorescent tshirt in the dim light of the dungeon. (they are probably radioactive).

The Dark Elf entourage notices that Kaspar has taken the wand but seem content to let him have it. One of their number does remark, upon seeing a large ornate door, that the door wasn't there when they were here 50 years ago. They seem cagey about this fact when Cordon presses them on it.

We use a key that Luther had (all the way from the first couple sessions!) to enter into the room. Like that first session, we immediately run into 3 furbys past the door! They're surprised, so Cordon leaps into the room and uses a scroll of Color Spray to mitigate the threat.

The room is ornate, with statues of Dwarves and elaborate chalk sigils along the walls and floors that ward away dark elves. An overturned flagstone reveals a set of steps that lead to floor 2. In a fit of anti-racist praxis, Pig Nose wipes away the sigils and a deep laughter rings out from beneath.

It is at this point that we realize the dark elves have left us.

The second floor leads us to a room that is secret-door coded, so we search and discover one, but it's stuck! In our failed efforts to get it open, we draw the attention of a horde of rats which speak common! We flee back up the stairs to floor 1. Yikes!!

Takeaways/Threads to Look Into

• The Ghoul Dwarves
  • Man, we're not the good guys, huh? These guys really don't want the Dark Elves in there.
  • What kind of magic does their sigil power work on? Can it be taught?
    • What happens if they figure out how to make sigils for human intruders?
• The Dark Elves
  • These guys are evil, huh?
  • They've also got scouts everywhere (that's how they saw us lead the monks to their death) so it would be unwise to try and obscure too much from them.
  • Their motivations are still pretty unknown, but they're loooking for Khuaja, a demon that is supposed to be on the lower level of the dungeon.
    • How will we reconcile the Dark Elves with our allies in the Church of Ethiel?