In A Wicked Age is a tabletop role-playing game designed by Vincent Baker and released by Lumpley Games. It is designed to create a series of one-shots in a loosely-connected anthology, with various characters looping in and out over the course of the chronology.
The setting is implied through the Oracles, which are four tables of story elements from which each session is generated. Each Oracle provides a rough genre of tale, from violence and war, to ghosts and ruins, to political intrigue or drama.
The Oracle used for this session was God-Kings of War.
Previous, in a wicked age...
...a chest containing the tax monies of a rural province, and the soldiers carrying it...
...a bitter and unseasonable cold, caused by warring elementals...
...the site of a pitched battle, ground churned and stinking, and the widows mourning there...
...a soldier's plain shortsword, gradually developing a taste for the blood of women...
We see the village of Jaduqar, a village on the border of the Empire, far-flung in the northern hinterlands. The town is gripped in an unseasonable cold caused by the local elementals, who are engaged in a vicious and violent conflict with each other. The frenzy of their fury has spilled over and gripped the townsfolk in a bloodlust - more than thirty of them wandered into the nearby fields and violently murdered each other. The sudden deaths have left the rest of the villagers adrift.
Due to the unnatural cold, the harvest has suffered, and without laborers to work the fields, the village is ill-equipped to pay its tithe when the Imperial tax collector, Barrold Sap-Rissen arrives with his retinue. The tax collector sets up in the tavern, unsure of how to proceed after collecting a pittance from the grieving villagers.
One such villager is Ibari, a young roustabout who seeks an easier path through life. One of the first to respond to the sudden violence, Ibari stumbled across a seemingly-normal short-sword...unbeknownst to him, the sword is a prison for Frost Sliver, an ancient spirit which can freeze and shatter memories. Emboldened by the spirit in the sword, Ibari goes to the local tavern and attempts to take the taxes from Barrold but he is ill-equipped to deal with the man's guards and is driven away. The spirit in the sword directs him to hide in one of the now-abandoned homes.
We see a woman at the killing field, Excelias, who lost her husband in the induced frenzy. Outwardly average, Excelias is actually the sole surviving member of an ancient imperial bloodline which grants her eyes dominion over the forces of Winter. She wanders into the killing field to search for his corpse, which draws the attention of Fridela, one of the winter spirits lurking on the outskirts of the village. Excelias attempts to compel the spirit to leave, but Fridela is empowered by the field of death, and the elemental summons a sudden blizzard which drives the woman back towards the village.
Fridela feels the draw of Frost Sliver's power emanating from the village and moves in its direction. She appears to Ibari in the form of an old woman and attempts to take the blade. Frost Sliver warns Ibari and the boy uses the blade to dispatch her hag-form. Fridela disperses herself across a flurry of blood-red snowflakes and buries Ibari beneath its weight. Frost Sliver uses its power to subdue Ibari's life-force and places the boy in a torpor beneath the snow.
Excelias is in the tavern, where a visiting bard is playing. Known as Valentine, the bard immediately ingratiates himself with the woman, and the two share an intimate moment. During the afterglow, the pair hatch a plan to steal the collected taxes and flee south to escape the winter.
Valentine distracts the guards while Excelias attempts to seduce Barrold. It seems the captain is falling for the act when Fridela manifests outside the captain's window and shatters the glass. The captain's body protects Excelias from the worst of it, but the shards slice deep into Sap-Rissen and splatter his vital fluids across her. She grabs the taxes and tells the spirit that it can have the sword - all Excelias wants is the coin. This assuages the spirit, and Fridela leaves to seek the sword...
Elsewhere, Frost Sliver has completely dominated Ibari - the young man's body heat has been completed subsumed by the spirit in the sword and Ibari is now an ice-animated corpse. Then, unbeknownst to Fridela, the sword-bearer arrives at the tavern just as the spirit is leaving. It breaks down the door and confronts Valentine. The bard attempts to fight the zombie, the Frost Sliver murders the tax collector's guards, and then shatters Valentine's recent memories.
Frost Sliver is advancing on Valentine when Excelias comes down the stairs with the tax chest. She is initially confused about the bard's sudden aloofness, but then confronts the frost zombie. She uses her magical sight to discern the magics animating the boy's corpse and unravels them with a single word. The zombie crumbles to the floor and Excelias picks up the sword, with plans to flee south and sell it. Then she and Valentine can start a new life with the tax coin and sword sale.
Valentine, now with no memory of this woman who is clearly familiar with him, schemes to play along. Once they're outside the village, he'll kill the woman, take the sword and money, and continue south to an easier life. The two leave Jaduqar behind as night falls and another snow storm approaches.
When they stop at a cave for the night, Fridela arrives, a harbinger of the oncoming snow. She confronts Excelias and attempts to weaponize the woman's guilt about leaving with another man so soon after the death of her husband, but Excelias maintains her mental fortitude and throws off the spirit's mental assault.
Valentine attempts to take part in the conflict, but he's woefully prepared for a magical conflict. The strings on the bard's lute are snapped when Fridela sharpyl reduces the temperature, and it begins to snow blood.
Excelias brandishes Frost Sliver and calls on her magical bloodline. In a moment of magical clarity, she realizes she has the ability to access all of Frost Sliver's stolen and shattered memories - it turns out the spirit in the sword was the one responsible for the death of the Empire in the Ice, leader of a major faction of Winter Spirits. She uses the sword to plant the memory into Fridela, which convinces the spirit that it has actually been defeated.
Fridela flees, and the snow returns to normal. The temperature rises slightly, and the pair are able to start a fire for the night. In the relative comfort of the cave, the two reconvene for an intimate moment before they start on south again, for warmer climate and easier times...
Facilitator Notes:
With about half a dozen sessions of In a Wicked Age under my belt, I've really started to see what kind of emergent stories are possible with this engine. Though I have yet to have a group run for long enough to really get the anthology going, the sessions themselves always turn into something special.
