Wandering Adventure Party

When last we left Eveline Hawking, she had docked the Vigilant with the Rookery and was donning an EVA suit to head outside and activate the Rookery’s docking clamps.Inspecting the ClampsEveline opens the external airlock of the Vigilant and secures her tether. She moves slowly around the locks of the two ships and inspects the clamps. One clamp on the Rookery appears to have suffered a direct hit in the storm and has some charring that prevented the automatic firing when thr Vigilant’s clamps attached. Eveline uses her tools to scrape the scoring away until the springs can snap the clamp into place. It takes so much time, she finds herself spiralling about what she’ll find inside the Rookery.With the clamps Secure she returns to the Vigilant to begin the retraction of the clamps to bring the airlocks into contact.Securing the ShipsThe locks slide together smoothly, and Eveline pressurizes her side and removes her helmet. She checks the controls on Rookery’s lock and sees that the airlock is depressurized. She replaces her helmet and opens the pressure valves on the Vigilant to supply pressure to the Rookery as she opens the external vents on the lock to equalize pressure to open the doors.The Two locks are equalized, but there is an ongoing hiss from a leak somewhere in the airlocks. The clock just started ticking a little faster on the rescue attempt. Eveline opens up both external locks and rushes into the Rookery.Inside the RookeryEveline gets the locks open and wind moves through the tunnel as air from the Vigilant begins to replenish what was lost from the Rookery.Eveline enters the Rookery, thinking about where she can find LT. With danger and power out, she’s likely to be in engineering. As a precaution, Eveline keeps her eva suit and a rebreather on in case of fumes or sudden depressurization as she approaches Engineering. As she rushes into the compartment, she sees LT standing at an engineering station catching her breath.“LT what’s going on?” Eveline removes her helmet.“The storms, there’s some sort of device controlling them. Found it in an Ascendency ruin. Weird it hadn’t been found this close to Luminus. Must have set it off, then the storms knocked out the e-drive and I had to use batteries while I got here on the drift.”“Wait, a control device? Where? Nevermind, thats for later. On battery did you get any diagnostics done?”“No, I focused them all on the beacon and environmental.”Next TimeThe next installment of Voyages of the Vigilant will focus on an escape from the Rookery and the storm that disabled it. If you’ve liked what you’ve read so far, I’m considering whether in these edited recaps whether I should include more info about the rolls that led to this twist or that in the story. Do you have any interest in seeing things like what move was rolled at a given point and whether the result was a weak hit or a strong hit or a miss?I thought about this because there’s a section that felt tense to me playing, because I had a clock going that was filling up with all the weak hits I had going, but it doesn’t translate as well into the story how I chose to “get what I want but it took longer than I wanted” and fill segments.I’ve mostly blogged recaps from D&D and Pathfinder games where I was the GM before, where the conflict is a lot more literal and visible, so just working out what would make this campaign journal a better read.Find the GameIronsworn Starforged was created by Tomkin Press and can be found in hardcover and digital formats on the Tomkin Press website [non-affiliate link] or in PDF format from DriveThruRPG [affiliate link].

When we last left Eveline Hawking, she had received a distress signal from an old mentor. She’d tried to quickly get her ship launched to help but the breakers in the engine impeller had kept her grounded.More Complications with TakeoffAfter her experience with the breaker in engineering, Eveline decides she needs to go fast by going slow and making sure everything is checked and proper. Unfortunately, while checking her work with the first launch attempt, Eveline realizes that her attempts to launch have flooded the fuel lines and she’ll have to vent the system, wasting a lot of propellant.Eveline begins the process of venting the propellant system. There’s a rushing sound and she cringes thinking about how far she could have gone with it and the binds she could find herself in with it gone. She returns to her checklist and engages the main drive. Too late, she thinks about how she’s venting the propellant.There is a roaring sound and the world shakes around her. She is thrown around in her seat and just barely keeps control as impact alarms go off. She pulls up hull integrity and aside from some damage around the cargo hold, integrity is holding. She wasn’t planning to carry cargo right now anyway, so she files that away as a problem for later. She is at least in the air now.Entering the StormEveline fights the controls of the Vigilant to get the flight back under control.“Come on, Viggy, we’re not done yet,” she says with a headache setting in from the force of being spun around.The Vigilant reaches orbit under control and Eveline searches for the Rookery on the scanners. The interference from the storms is huge, though. Out the viewport, she sees a swirling storm surrounding the planet Verdure.Eveline is forced to take evasive maneuvers to navigate through and around the storms while trying to clear the interference from her scanners. She watches the propellant gauge fall as she flies with a cringe over having to vent so much on the ground.If that runs out… But she doesn’t let herself finish the thought.A bolt streaks out and strikes the Vigilant. The lights flicker and the readouts produce gibberish. Thrusters misfire and the stars start to drift out the viewport.“No Viggy, not today, stick with me. We’re not going down to a stupid storm, we’re better than that, we’ve been through way worse.”Eveline begins setting the electrical systems to reroute power around the junctions that were struck by the bolt. She’s stuck in place for several minutes, blind to what is going on out in the storm. If those same bolts are striking the Rookery, then time is precious and she can’t afford to waste it.Eveline checks out the viewport and looks at patterns in the interference the scanners are receiving from the balefire storm. She plots a course and begins firing thrusters to keep herself out of the worst of the storm. The interference begins to clear as the Vigilant crosses through the storm and a ship takes form first on the scanners then out the viewport.Spaceship image courtesy of Willgard, used under Pixabay Content LicenseApproaching the Rookery“Rookery, Vigilant. I have sight of you. Will attempt rendezvous. Do you have control?”Silence.“Rookery, Vigilant. Repeat, do you have control?”Silence.Eveline swears under her breath.“Okay, Viggy. Let’s do this the hard way.”Eveline applies a deft hand to the controls and swiftly brings the Vigilant alongside the Rookery, matching velocities. She applies just a bit of thruster to close the distance with the Rookery, and deploys the automated docking clamps to secure the ships. She winces when she only hears one set of clamps engage. No response from the Rookery’s automated docking systems.“Rookery, please engage docking clamps so we can come over.”Nothing.Eveline runs a more full sensor sweep now that the Rookery is only meters away. Electrical down. No comms, no environmental. That explains the radio silence, and time just got a little more precious.“So, the Rookery is even more dead in the water than I thought Viggy. You hold down the fort, guess I have to take a little walk to finish the job.”Eveline leaves the bridge and goes to the airlock to don an EVA suit to prepare to enter the Rookery.

Last week, I did a general review of stuff from 2025, but seeing Endies posts from the Indie RPG Newsletter and Cannibal Halfling Games inspired me to think some more about which games I managed to get to the table this year.My gaming schedule can get a bit sparse from hectic other things, like the spring and fall softball schedules but I still had a good time with a few different campaigns.Games That Hit the Table in 2025Dungeons and DragonsD&D was the big one of the year running both my Eberron campaign titled Aftershocks of the Last War and a friend’s Oops All Bards campaign titled The Ballad of the B-Team.My Eberron game started off last year as one meant to feature the players taking on the Aurum in this convoluted attempt to war profiteer the way back into a new Last War. Instead the party ran completely away from the original city it was set in when a Player Character’s criminal family tracked them down to ask for a favor.Moving from Passage to Thaliost, the players ended up removing a bigoted, nigh on genocidal Archbishop, but accidentally cracked open the prison of one of the Overlords, primordial demons sealed away in prehistory. To quote The Good Place, “Boom! Right away I had a different problem.”This campaign’s been on a break during B-Team while I plan a new fiend themed arc for the players.The Ballad of the B-Team has featured a team of six, who all have at least one level of bard, working as propaganda for the Mining Union of a mostly Dwarven nation where power is by vote of the unions with the Mining and Logging unions currently holding the most sway.The campaign has involved following behind the team that was sent ahead of us to solve a big problem, discovering the new problems they’ve left behind while fixing original problems, then trying to put a good spin on it to make the Mining Union look good.So far, our Emo dwarf, Dwarven stripper, Tabaxi fixer, ancient gnome, half-giant bard-barian, and the shapeshifter from far away have faced their biggest problem in the A-Team leaving a red dragon corpse in a lake, which caused a whole ecological collapse we had to call in favors to fix. It’s been great. I’ve also been playing with my session notes to write each session into a new verse of a song that I’m setting to Diggy Diggy Hole. I’m putting it together as an in-universe Ballad of the B-Team to do our propaganda job. It uh, kinda does our job of making the Union look good, if you ignore the chorus about how the A-Team are incompetent jerks.I have absolutely loved running my emo dwarf using the College of Tragedy subclass from Tal’Dorei Campign Setting Reborn. Or as we’ve taken to calling it, the College of Sins Not Tragedies.Sketching Hroðvar was so much funMagical Kitties Save the DayThis session came up by most of game night getting canceled and then my daughter asking if she could play. One of the other members of the gaming group decided to play along, and we had a great time.Magical Kitties Save the Day is a game where the players play the titular magical Kitties. Each Kitty has a human, who like all humans, has problems. Their town is also full of problems. Each session revolves around one of the Problems taking center stage and the Kitties trying to fix it.In our game, the Kitties were trying to track down their missing humans and ended up in the town library where the books had come alive and were at war over which genre would take the best placement in the library. It was the intro adventure from the box set.We had a lot of fun, and the rules were simple enough for a seven year old to manage her own sheet and strategize about how she wanted to handle things. I am already writing my own campaign to get this one back to the table for a couple of seven year olds, and maybe a different member of the gaming group.Oh Captain, My CaptainI only played this one once, as a quick thrown together session when we had a lot of cancelations on the day of game night. It is, however, one that is sticking close by my computer for just that sort of situation in the future, because we had a blast with it.Our interpretation of The Captain was our shift lead in a restaurant, who was famous among the staff for never having dropped a single dish, no matter how busy the rush. We had to work with the Captain to navigate our restaurant being bought out by a chain. This all came out just by us riffing off each other and off the prompt cards.Oh Captain My Captain is the first Descended from the Queen game I’ve played, but I like the format for something quick to bring to the table and responsive to whatever weird whims we bring to the table on a given night.Ironsworn StarforgedI picked Ironsworn Starforged up on sale this year and playing it in the Stargazer app has been a fun little side thing when I get little bits of time.I’ve been running a story about a young Indiana Jones type character running around space searching for ancient ruins to learn secrets about these electromagnetic storms that plague the sector. It has been really fun and I really enjoy the exercise of following the threads of the story from place to place. I plan to edit some of the journal entries to get them posted.Games I Planned to Get to the TableSome games I had sessions prepped, everything was ready, but the session just fell through last minute.Call of CthulhuI picked up the collection The Things We Leave Behind from Stygian Fox and had planned to run the scenario Forget Me Not which features a group of TV show paranormal investigators who wake up crashed on the side of the road with amnesia and have to piece together how and why they got there. Things get weirder when they notice one of their original number is missing. The writing on the scenario really pulled me in so I’ll need to keep looking at it. We actually were scheduled to play this right up until a bunch of family stuff hit us all with only a couple hours to game time.Delta GreenDelta Green is a game I get a bit conflicted on sometimes. The everyone’s a government agent and sometimes things need to be kept secret no matter the cost vibe from both the program and the outlaws can grate at me, but like I like the idea that someone knows this stuff is out there and is trying to make sure that your day isn’t wrecked by it.So I had this idea where maybe the federal agencies the players work for aren’t law enforcement. Maybe we’ve got EPA looking into some weird spill or Fisheries handling some weird aquatic life. Honestly, fisheries protecting food sources to uphold a treaty with deep ones sounds like a fun game.The idea came out of playing Last Things Last with a couple members of my gaming group in summer 2024. Both players played jaded law enforcement and when faced with strange voices coming from an enclosed space they just set a fire first, asked questions later. My own job revolves around double checking for mistakes and abuses made by law enforcement, so that sort of cavalier attitude toward possible mythos involvement didn’t get me the same sort of escapism I was looking for.I think I’m going to keep working toward my third path Delta Green campaign in the new year and see how it works. I envision the burn it all attitude of the outlaws to actually make them a decent antagonist faction.Games I Want to Bring to the Table in 2026I read a lot of games in 2025 that I might have made notes on or initial plans about what I would do but never got around to scheduling.TravellerThis is actually the game that has the longest history of me trying to find time to get it to the table this year.I took both the Mongoose Traveller Second Edition book and the Classic Traveller Facsimile Edition (available for free on DriveThruRPG) with me on my trip to Tacoma when my sister had her stroke on New Year’s. I spent a lot of time that week repeatedly rolling 2d6 to create sectors that I imagined what sort of shenanigans my players would get up to.I also spent a bunch of time with Classic Traveller’s famous character creation where you can die in creation.Traveller has a whole binder set aside for it ready to get it to the table when I can. My table would probably prefer the structure of Mongoose Traveller to the chaotic way that skills don’t really apply to rolls except when they do or maybe apply 4x the rank of Classic Traveller.Fabula UltimaThis one I actually picked up the same night as the Mongoose Traveller bundle around last Christmas.The description of Fabula Ultima as a TTJRPG sold me, plus that the title basically translates to Final Fantasy and also that the artwork keeps an originality to it while simultaneously looking like it would be right at home in the manuals for Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics Advance.I’ve got some notes in Obsidian about an isekai game using Fabula Ultima, the drop one die to raise another character creation feels like a nicer way to let my players base characters on themselves than like “WHAT WOULD YOUR PERSONAL CHARISMA SCORE BE?” And yes, this idea did pretty much come from the fact that the art looks straight out of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.The Techno Fantasy premise I have for the isekai is that some billionaire is experimenting with multiversal travel and the players get sucked into the fantasy world and have to find a way home while also helping with the environmental devastation the dimensional portal machine is creating.Mage the AwakeningI ran a Mage The Awakening game as like my third campaign ever and really badly want to run another.So far, I’m imagining the Seers of the Throne causing disunity by throwing support behind extremely xenophobic politicians around Cleveland, Ohio.Am I inspired by real Ohio? Why are you asking?PathfinderI have loved Pathfinder and Golarian since I first bought the first edition core book in the middle of Constitutional Law class in like my first or second week of law school.I then went on to buy basically every hardcover rule book and bestiary as they came out up through 2015.So the current campaign idea I have is that after Anastasia Nikolaevna has been queen of Irrisen for a bit, an invasion by evil fey who helped Baba Yaga take over Irrisen must be faced. That Tsarevna Anastasia was transported from 1917 Russia to Golarian is one of my favorite lore facts.13th AgeLast year, I preordered the new second edition of 13th Age. I have my PDF copies and am excited for my hardcover copies to arrive.I have an idea of a campaign surrounding the Great Gold Wyrm and the Crusader differing in how to deal with demons and the Diabolist laughing all the way home pitting the two against each other.Magical Land of YeldI’ve had the Magical Land of Yeld for a couple years and have had a blast listening to the official podcast that covers the Mermaid Hunters intro adventure.Sort of like I’m planning with Fabula Ultima, Yeld is focused on an isekai game. Totally want to get a sort of Stranger Things crossed with Narnia thing going.

I decided to edit the journal of an Ironsworn Starforged campaign I'm running for posting on my blog.This is Voyages of the VigilantI imagine Eveline Hawking as like a Kaylee Frye or Cally Henderson type character, elbows deep in her ship.https://alexanderkeane.com/2025/12/15/voyages-of-the-vigilant-an-ironsworn-starforged-campaign-pt-1/#TTRPG #Ironsworn #Starforged

Introduction to the ForgeIn the distant future, humanity has fled its homeworld and taken refuge in the Forge, a globular cluster situated 1,700 light-years above the galactic plane.Generations ago, interdimensional beings possessed the dead of Earth and turned them against their friends and their families. When the situation seemed its bleakest, an iron pillar was discovered on Luna pointing humanity to mysterious gates among the stars. Exodus ships left Earth and passed through the gates to find a number of inhabitable worlds. Some of these worlds are sprinkled with ruins of a space-faring empire humanity has named The Ascendency.There are those in the Forge who make their living traveling the stars in search of Ascendency ruins to try and unravel the secrets behind them. The most sought-after answer is how the Ascendency handled the balefires, great electromagnetic storms that course through the Forge wreaking havoc on the ships caught in them.Eveline Hawking is one such Lore Hunter.The Balefires course through the Forge, making travel between worlds a risky propositionEveline HawkingEveline grew up at her father’s spaceport, listening to the tales of spacers who came through. One day, faced with the prospect of staying rooted to the ground while others had adventures, Eveline stole away hidden inside the ship of a scout bound for the Outlands.Not all the scouts took a liking to Eveline, but a retired lieutenant became a mentor and trained her to fly a ship and delve into Ascendency ruins. Among the projects LT helped Eveline with was building the Vigilant.The Vigilant was once a pleasure yacht called Once Upon a Weekend. Its upholstery was moldering when Eveline first came across it in a starship graveyard, but the frame was the most intact she found. She pulled much of the formerly plush and luxurious interior out, leaving a combination of ostentatious gold plating and bare-metal pragmatism. The result is a ship which looks like a slow cozy ride but holds a drive meant to handle double the weight.Eveline dresses mostly in grease stained coveralls and dusty goggles. Life aboard a starship and delving into ruins just makes keeping nice clothes clean too much of a hassle. It is not uncommon to find her elbows deep in the internals of the e-drive or other starship systems keeping her baby going another day, speaking with Vigilant all the while like an old friend.Opening ImageThe Vigilant is planetside on Verdure, refueling. The depot at Luminus is surrounded by lush vegetation out to the horizon in every direction. The people of Luminus have long used the plant cover to hide their settlement from outsiders.The camera zooms in a rush through the forward viewport on Vigilant to the cockpit where Eveline Hawking sits in the skeleton of a pilot’s seat, eating an apple with her feet resting on the console in front of her. Greasy rags lie on the floor next to the seat along side a pair of wrenches.“May–storm–over” the radio crackles.Eveline snaps forward and begins checking the signal information. It takes a moment to get the receiver calibrated to display information from the other ship’s transponder. The triangulation places the ship approaching orbit. That distance, no wonder the transponder codes are weak.It takes a minute but the transponder codes finally come through as Eveline adjusts the narrowbeam comms and gets lucky in pointing the antenna. She blinks as she sees the ship name displayed.The Rookery.Lieutenant Sakir was like a second mother to Eveline when she first left home. And now she’s in trouble. Eveline snaps to her preflight checklist, skipping anything she thinks can wait in her rush.“Rookery, Vigilant. I read your signal and am inbound,” she calls over the comms.She punches the coordinates into her NavCom and punches the button to fire up the e-drive. There is a hum. And then nothing. The drive doesn’t kick in.“Come on, not now, not now. You can do it.”She pushes the button a few more times, lights flicker, a light hum, and more nothing. Then readings stream across the screen, a whole cascade of failures in the fuel and ignition systems. She can’t make any sense of it all. It’s like the ship says the e-drive isn’t getting any fuel, but the whole point of this stop has been to refueling and get some time for maintenance.“Viggy, come on, what’s wrong. I can’t help if you don’t tell me,” she says to the ship.She traces the failures back. Something must be wrong with the primary impeller, that seems to be where the whole sequence starts. It looks like its just not doing anything.She gets up from her seat and runs back to engineering. She goes straight for the impeller and nearly knocks herself out on an open breaker box. Inside, the main breaker for the e-drive is open. Because the the maintenance She was doing around the ship. She closes the breaker, closes the box, and lightly hits her forehead against the box.“Viggy, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have blamed you. Now we need to get out of here.”She places a hand on the iron knife she carries.“I will get to LT to help her.”