Fria Ligans forum

Yes, I agree. The illustrations for the archetypes are also great. The illustrator did some illustrations for DiLorenzos (rpg-podcaster from the Starfinder-podcast Glasscannon) actual play podcast (Lost Mountain Saga) that will be starting soon.

So, since I stooped right as they saw its soul head for its mummy on the fire...

I had it cause a big burning boom... Pastor Ingvar and Bodi chanting from the exorcism ritual, having passed the check to stay in a burning building...everyone else comes to guard them from the advancing cultists... Märta and 6 cultists... They plan to capture and sacrifice the PCs...Ida levels her shotgun and, thanks to pushing, gets 5 extra successes with her shotgun. Märta and 4 others drop right at the front of the church... And the cat rises again from its body... They kept taking it down for another die of minutes, as Bodi and the pastor continue to chant...

Best bit... Ida had both dogs (Abraham was player less, and guarded the room with 6 conditions), and so the grimm enchanted her... With a fear 2 effect... Which broke Stig and Carin... She had a chat with Odin in a burning Lutheran church... Bodi snapped Carin out, and Carin aided Stig...

Stig wound up broken 6 times. 2physical and 4 mental. Ida was broken twice, and has a hole from a tracheotomy needed Due to a roll of 63 from smoke. I subbed in 2nd degree throat burns for the torn abdomen. Stig made the roll with +3 from an insight ...

They assemble the rest of the Fārna Thing, but 13 more, and the hired coachman , are missing. Bodi convinces them that there is an evil cult... they found the documents Märta was going to plant to frame Ingvar... On her corpse. They get down to the ritual just in time to save the coachman.
Ida takes out 10 of 13 in an Ash-like manner... Bodi breaks two with fists, and manages to capture a third... Doc Carin cuts the coachman loose, and they return to the Färna Thing... Convincing the remainder of the cult's evil, Loki's horse-worshiping, cult and its sacrifices... He's to be dropped off with the civil authorities in town. They also convince them to sign for the mine...half the village is dead, they all have a stash of 1 capital each, and are outlawed from Färna.

Bodi had searched the house of Märta, finding passports and wallets of enough to cover a decade of sacrifices... And a book in Märta's library... In Old Norse... The Norse creation and Dismissal of a goði's grimm. Stashed away, and taken with. Ida kept one oftheir ritual daggers...

They get home, meet Algot for the first time, and open their occult library and infirmary... And Algot mentions a young girl running around the castle.

Stig has a permanent disability and a permanent inspiration. Carin lost her insight. Ida kept hers. And, like in C. Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, the servant is the unbroken badass... Despite cultists gaming up, Bodi never broke.

We also had dozens of bad puns, 4 breaking out in singing bits, and a both tense and yet humorous session. They also managed to hit all 8 dev points, and all but new Vaesen XP ... And now have another town off limits...

Want to thank Daïna and Oathbloom ... You versions helped me figure how to extricate the story dead end by sending me back to the book. Its not often that I get to see the same adventure run by two others in a similar timeframe and compare outcomes, and itbjogged ”hey, is that in there?” which lead to checking, and seeing things I missed on reads one and two...

They kept fighting it for that d6 minutes of peace between ressurections knowing that it is a telepathic attacker... They knew it would keep coming... Bodi had, at one point grabbed some wine to be able to cushion a mental attack... And it kept Bodi from breaking...

Mechanics which drive PCs to drink.... And not ham fisted about it, either.

Note that I treated the burning as a slow poison... And described the smells of pine sap and varnish as incense–like.

Well, you're welcome, and thank you for sharing too! It's wonderful when you can see how different groups handle a same scenario.

We just played session 2 of this mystery yesterday. I only have a single PC - a very wealthy young Occultist - so we tend to rip through adventures quickly as there's fewer rolls and no arguments or discussions between players.

I was very amused by how completely the player swallowed the false lead about the priest being responsible for the Grim, until she found the body in the woods and deduced that he'd probably been set up by someone. When she found her things had been gone through, and her pistol taken, she immediately suspected the Skytts, and ended up breaking and entering and sneaking around the house whilst they were at home! (Occultists are also ninjas, who knew)

Eventually she confronted them, but realised she'd made a mistake in suspecting them, and together they broke into the sawmill and found the missing gun, as well as the pentagram and carvings. She headed up to meet the priest to warn him, only to find his dismembered body, and that's where we left it.

I think I'll skip the bit where Dorotea gets killed by the grim - she's a useful aide. Instead I'll have it abduct Willemena, and knock out Dorotea in the process. Then she can can accompany the PC under cover to the ritual. She has already worked out what she needs to do to destroy the Grim - she just needs to find it's corpse.

Thanks for sharing Rennarda, I'd love to hear what happened next!

I'm just about to run this mystery. How long did others find the game went for? Sounds like a couple of sessions, but how many hours? I just came from Vaesen con 2024, where one mystery is finished in 4 hours. I know this might be pushing it but I think it is a good idea. This is a new group and a one-shot, so I want to quickly get one finished and get them interested in the game to hopefully launch into a campaign next.

A Wicked Secret is one the best mysteries because of the interplay between the various NPC's. I'd be wary of running this as a one-shot as that aspect of the mystery would be lost. It took my group almost 4 sessions, 10-11 hours of play. The Nigh Sow from the same book would be a better mystery for a one-shot, or of you have access, a A Winters Tale from Seasons of Mystery. The Dance of Dreams from the rule-book is also a good primer.

I played this mystery as a one-shot and got the whole thing finished in 3 1/2 hours.

Players were made before we began.
I let my players in this game give me a quick sentence of story before they use their advantage to save time rather than roleplaying a scene.
The invitation was given and players could take an extra item from their starting items list as a gimme without worrying about purchasing more equipment.
The journey was played in a kind of flash back including the conversation with Meijer and the visit to Lindeskold.
I let them think it might be a werewolf, a church grim, or a hellhound.
I got clues from Wikipedia on these creatures for the academic to find before the party left on the adventure.

Players went straight to Marta but initially did not suspect her.
On the first night before going to bed, they went to the church and scouted around, found the body, and talked to Ingvar.
They had found 3 clues including one of the medieval manuscripts, so I decided to move things forward and the PCs discovered someone had searched their bags.
I rang the church bells during the night.
The next day Marta blamed Vilhelmina for searching the bags.
The players found the dead priest and more clues, including meeting Vilhelmina whom they initially were very suspicious about.
They then found the cave but it was during the day, so they left after sneaking around a bit.

IMO opinion the tunnels don't make sense, there is a picture of a dolmen in the book but the text says it is only 3 boulders.
To move the boulder and find the cave seems strange; wouldn't there be a trail from repeated use? Do the Free Ones move the boulder back each time? This could have been better described.

There was no clear description of exactly where the bones were buried either. I know, under the foundation and behind a different coloured stone but where? Some YouTube have the bones in the caves. A GM need to piece together clues that were in different parts of the book, which slowed the game down a bit while I looked for it.

The party never went to the sawmill, the village hall or the general store. All the clues there can be found elsewhere so it did not impact the game.

A lot of folklore says Church Grim bones are buried in the North, so I went with this.
The party stole some tools from the Church's garden shed (not in the book, but they must have shovels somewhere to dig those graves).

The party were invited to the Skytt house but never arrived, and Vilhelmina gave them enough information for them to start suspecting Marta.

I did not do the ritual as the party never went back to the caves.
They dug up the grim's bones, which summoned it and led to a tense finale in which I got to really play up the horror of the creature.
The bones were burnt and the grim ran through the church also burning it down.

The villagers were not too happy though and there were groups with pitchforks coming for the players.
So, the players stole some horses and rode out of town. Only one even stopped to get their bags. It was epic.

Obviously, this was a streamlined version that finished in under four hours, but I am doing this adventure again at a convention, so this was good practice for that.
I'll be playing this again tomorrow in a mini-campaign, so I think I'll slow the pace down a bit and encourage the players to explore more.

It is interesting that another adventure in this book is the Night Sow because the Gloson or Grave Sow is another form of the Church Grim.

I wish to share my experiences too. I run the mystery twice, each lasted 10 hours (from starting preparetion and roleplay to epilogue and post-story roleplay).

Both groups ignored the sawmill and I can understand that since it would have been discorteous to nose into the property of one of the very few villagers that was friendly to the PCs (even if that was a facade). Before playing it I watched two other runs on YouTube and even there, noone entered the sawmill and it is unfortunate because that on paper is the only way to understand that there is not only the Church Grim, but an active secret cult too.

First time with 2 investigators. They talked with the priest and have a small quarrel with him, found the body of Hammarstrom, chat with Dorothea and discover the existence of an ancient tunnel with iron veins. Thanks to the misleading influence of Marta they (very nature-friendly characters) agreed with her that the industrialism would not bring so much good to Farnsta (only conflicts and troubles with outsiders) and turned to go home to mediate with Von Mejer. Before leaving, Dorothea dressed as a cultist told them about the Free Ones and beg them to take Wilhelmina with them, away from Farnsta. She would not escape with them to atone for her silent complicity with the cult. PCs went home to take Wilhelmina and are attacked by the Grim who kidnap the girl. Searching the home, they found the final clue about the location of the tunnels and other cultist robes (I stated that maybe there were more then one for different seasons or maybe robes of her deceased husband too). They dressed and did a great surprise attack during the ritual, killing Marta while the other took the cat body and burned it.

After this experience, I enriched the story for the next group of 4 investigators. I put more clues about the previous missing priest and another villager, both disappeared around 25 years ago. PCs arrived and had strong suspects against the priest. They also had a strong faith quarrel with him since one of them was not baptised. They spoke to Dorothea. The next day then found the body of Hammarstrom and looked in the woods for huge beast footprints, only to find Wilhelmina hunting. She lead them to the abandoned house of the missing villager where they discovered a hidden message where the missing man was about to expose the cult to the previous priest after discovering that his parents were part of blood sacrifices to obtain prosperity. They also found a damaged cultist robe and Wilhelmina said "my mother has this fashion robe too. But I never saw her wearing it". They went to have dinner with Dorothea, and after the dinner they were attacked by the Grim who killed Dorothea but was defeated by very lucky rolls. PCs investigated the house finding the final clues but without taking the robes. In the meanwhile someone (or the revenant Grim that quickly regenerated in the Church) kidnapped Wilhelmina. PCs went to the tunnels with a great uncare that lead to a long and difficult battle with cultists. They took the cat body and instead of burning it they did a christian extreme unction/baptise ritual while other PCs kept enemies and the Grim at bay sacrifing themselves. The Grim turned to a normal cat, earning the chance for a common life that was taken from it: PCs were horrified by the ritual murder of the cat and sympathized with it.

I really enjoied the plot but I admit it has problems and it requires a skilled GM:
1) first of all, in one of the run I watched and according to other posts here, some PCs discovered early the locations of the tunnels leading to a very unti-climatic flat ending where they enter during the day and simply burn the cat body. That one should really be discovered at the end and not during daytime.
2) the starting Von Mejer letter states that Nilstrom escaped in his night dress. That lead to difficult questions to manage and explain since the agents where supposed to meet the priest by night after receiving the forged letter
3) No absolute clue in the manual about what could happen if the PCs want to investigate (as mine did) the Church Bell or the Woods. It felt it wasn't much playtested. The advise to just tell the players that some locations are not relevant to the mystery is unacceptable.
4) this issue is minor: since the PCs arrived with a stagecoach in Farnsta I assumed the agents did the same. I guessed the coachman went away then. So my PCs where looking for the owner of the horse that Nilstrome stole in his escape.
5) there are too few named/detailed characters in the official mysteries. I added the shop owner (a pregnant woman very loyal to Marta and the Free Ones), a couple of carpenters and a stableboy.

What is extremely good are the consequences of actions and the fact that probably main NPCs (Dorothea and the Priest) are murdered only if the PCs convince them and ally with them leading to roleplay regrets and the burden of Players' choices.

Cheers!
Roberto