First session report of this A Thousand Thousand Islands campaign, part of Campaign 26.
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| Ornamental prowhead figures from Borneo via https://www.artoftheancestors.com/ |
Players & characters
Six players + one GM met on discord at 8pm UTC to begin. Each player had previously generated one youth (in this case adolescent children on the cusp of adulthood, 2 hp each) and an elder (an adult impeded by the ravages of time, 1 hp each). Everyone has three
The band looks like this:
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| A google sheet of the band, updated 17th January |
Starting Out
I randomly determined their starting hex. Knowing in advance there would be a strong chance of them beginning in the sea, it was decided they would get two dugout canoes if they started in open water. If the beginning hex is inland, they would begin with one dugout canoe stashed at the nearest coastal hex.
Sure enough the band begins in the sea, with 4 pariahs in one canoe and eight in the other. The players' elder-youth pair remained together, so there was a mix of youths and elders one ach vessel.
In addition to the boats, four paddle/oars per vessel and a few randomly generated items, each pariah carried their own waterskin. They have no food.
Hexes are six miles in size: the pariahs' canoes are about from land, so while they can see the tops of the mountains pointing over the horizon, they can't yet make out the shoreline. It seems that they will eventually make landfall on a bearing to the southwest, south or southeast. A storm brewing to the southwest encourages them to ead away from that.
Though the players' joked about leaky boats I wasn't going to contrive that ("which one is sinking?" was said by at least two of them), though it may have occurred as an unfortunate mishap, pending the will of the Sea Goddess. The poor 2d6 reaction from said deity is what invited the storm, and the band elected to paddle south, knowing that their vessels were not really designed for being at sea for long distances or times.
Ashore in an Arid Plain
With the storm catching them an hour or so into rowing south they hit a beach littered with large, flat boulders. On the way they bypassed an extensive an potentially dangerous reef, but are able to navigate it once ashore they brace the dugouts against the storm and sit it out for an hour.
Once passed they decide to tie the canoes together and venture further inland for food. Before they've left the beach they find an abandoned bamboo squid-drying rack, falling between two boulders. There's only the equivalent of 4 meals to be had, but they divide that amongst the band.
dead ahead the beach fades into aan arid, scrubby plain. Despite the storm it's actually the dry season so there's some speculation this could be a seasonal river bed. The ground rising sharply either side (and much further south) are green with thick vegetation, however, so the band decide to follow the coast around to the north and east until they can find a way up to the forests.
Heading along the coast the land rises again,quite sharply, forming large limestone cliffs that are evidently the feet of a significant mountain range. The party wander along the coast for a time before they can find a good place to ascend.
In the Jungle
They noise and humidity of the upland forest is at once a comfort and a source of fear: it is much like the forests the pariahs have known from their past, but it is also not the forests of their past(s). They are yet to know of its ways, so their explorations are cautious. Monsoon Swallows Pride tkes a group foraging for food, Weary Until the Cock Crows leads the mission to find healing herbs and Kind Told a Tale looks out for signs of animal tracks, finding these:
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| Rhino (!) tracks |
The foraging mission yields sufficient fruits and nuts to fee the whole tribe, but Weary Until the Cock Crows is initially unable to track down any medicinal herbs. The elder is able to identify the tracks as belonging to a solitary rhino: the pariahs decide to leave it be, returning to their meal.
They place the remaining food at a makeshift shrine beside the wooden pangolin. During the meal a refreshing breeze blows through their camp. Accompanying the breeze is the apparition of an enormous tortoise beside the shrine. It fades into the surrounding vegetation. This is taken to be a positive sign
Late Afternoon Foraging
Cautious End and Brooding Mountain look for a water source. Weary Until the Cock Crows is rewarded for their perseverance with a clutch of yellow medicinal flowers, possessing both antiseptic and mild analgesic qualities. After dismissing some mouse-deer tracks, the hunters are able to locate what looks to be a boar run, featuring some recent tracks by a much larger herd of deer (both in terms of size and numbers). It is getting late.
Brooding Mountain comes face-to-face with the rhino, on the opposite bank of a pool of water from which the rhino drinks. The noise of the cascade is not sufficient to mask his approach, but the rhino is nonchalant: Brooding Mountain gingerly fills his waterskin and returns to camp.
The rest of the band have assembled a fire and laid soft brush down for bedrolls about it: sun will fall quickly, perhaps it would be better to pursue the tracks tomorrow. Though they have only had one decent meal today, they would prefer to face the forest fresh from a night's sleep and by the light of day.
Strangers in the Night
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| Moth page 36 of ATTI 3: Upper Heleng, by Munkao |
GM's Session Notes
Session ran just over two hours. I had audio issues at the beginning. The other notable bottleneck was trying to resolve the nature of the night encounter, as I have my encounters and sandbox info spread over multiple documents, and adobe kicked me out of acrobat for some reason. It's encouraging me to print everything off, as I would if this was a face-to-face session.
I've mentioned named characters as I recalled their specific actions, though I wasn't precise with noting this down at the time. Additionally this is not necessarily reflective of player engagement, and I'm pleased with the level of OoC conversation to discuss situations and everyone's mutual contribution to it.
That said, players may come forward to remind me of other events and the contribution specific pariahs made to it. They are very welcome to produce play reports of their own, both in and out of character!
I realised the value of a comprehensive player facing doc: I have a tendency to be a bit of a GM black box (you tell me what you want your character to do, I roll some dice and tell you how it goes), I think it might be make some of those procedures more transparent.
Links
Pariah with a Thousand Thousand Islands:
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2026/01/campaign-26-exiles-of-thousand-islands.html
Campaign '26
https://pressthebeast.bearblog.dev/campaign-2026/
Munkao’s instagram
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