Princess Clodagh sailed again, last weekend. I ended the last session with Clodagh being informed (while celebrating the end of the Siege of Limerick with her crew) that Queen Gormlaith wanted her to kill someone.

(If you don’t know what I’m talking about, and if you are interested, you need to see my previous Princess Clodagh posts.)

The next day she was taken to see the Queen, who was hiding in a village close to her estranged son’s seat of Limerick. Clodagh had a shocking hangover. She was told that Dungal Ua Donnchada – who like her son, claims the kingship of Munster – has sent an envoy to ask Jarl Bergthor the Hungry, the Jarl of Swansea, to invade Munster with a Viking host to help Dungal kill the Queen’s son and become undisputed King of Munster.Queen Gormlaith wanted Clodagh to intercept the envoy and kill him on his return to Ireland from Wales. She clearly had an agent, or agents, in Swansea, as she knew when the envoy was planning to sail home, and that his Viking merchant ship would be flying a particular red banner. Clodagh was told that there would be no more than 6 Norsemen of Waterford crewing the ship, and the envoy and a couple of attendants – it would be easy, she was told.

It was. Mainly because this set up – although introducing Dungal Ua Donnchadda as a rival for future games – was merely a device by me to get Clodagh to set sail in the depths of winter when storms are frequent. This was so I could use a scenario for the Renaissance D100 game (adapted by me for BoL) which was a sequel to the very first Princess Clodagh game – Wolves of the Coast.

Isle of the Stone by Adrian Gawain Jones is, like Wolves of the Coast, set in Robert E Howard’s 11th Century Irish world of Turlogh Dubh O’Brian. I loved these Howard stories when I read them, and these two Renaissance system scenarios prompted me to start running the Princess Clodagh games for my wife. Each Clodagh game has had a little bit of magic/supernatural in them; and the game about the raising of Lyonnese from the depths featured sorcerers, undead, magic books and Deep Ones. Isle of the Stone features more Deep Ones and a Mythos dangerous entity, and I thought it was about time weirdness took centre stage again.

I won’t go into details of the scenario, as it is commercially available and costs the princely sum of $1, if anyone is interested further.

Suffice to say, after intercepting Dungal’s envoy and slaughtering everyone on the ship, a storm blew up and eventually wrecked the Fierce Raven on the shore of a small island two and a half miles off the coast of Munster. The island community was under siege by Deep Ones who had come to worship an entity raised by the islanders digging into burial mounds for treasure – they had uncovered an ancient ‘Black Stone’ just like the monument in REH’s Mythos story of that name. Clodagh and her boys had to destroy the Mythos creature while fighting off the hordes of Deep Ones who came to protect it.

I used the Deep One BoL stats from G-Man’s ‘Bell of Bokrug’ scenario, plus Rabble Deep One’s to keep the rank and file of her crew occupied. It was an exciting fight, although the 7 foot tall Deep One champion fell to just a few strikes of Clodagh’s axe (he rolled total rubbish!)

It just goes to show that size isn’t everything.

The community was saved and Clodagh has now an island where she is always assured of a warm welcome and refuge if needed. It was a cramped voyage back to Limerick in small fishing boats and a new Fierce Raven needs to be built. Who knows what 1118 will bring?

Last edited by Gruntfuttock (3/28/2019 7:54 am)