What is this?
This is a recap of the session I had last wednesday with my troupe. Following some comments in the Anno Magica thread I figured I would lead by example. I am not sure I will be able to do this forever, but I'll try to write up what my prep was, what happened in the session, and what's to come. Big shoutout to @Antomonio, my Bonisagus sodale, who helped me a ton. Also thanks to @Jank for giving me a nice historical fact about Antioch.
Saga Context
The saga is happening in the Iberian Tribunal, current year 1235 (started on 1220). It is called Legacy, Faeries and Demons ('Legado, Hadas y Demonios' in the original spanish) and the players have a complex mission in front of them laid out from session #3 of the saga: One of the grogs in the Covenant lost his Gift when very young, while his Seeker mater disappeared in an accident some years later.
The spirit of his mater lies in a regio below the Covenant, and he did not give up in trying to recover his Gift. He's been still in contact with the Order, sending letters to whoever he remembers and interrogating the (conveniently amnesiac) spirit of his mater, and it has taken him 23 years to work up a lead: There was a sahir that once lived in Baghdad by the name of X (still haven't figured it out) and now his descendant (niece, daughter, still don't know) still lives there. The grog, an educated man, asked the PC magi to accompany him there, and whatever it costs, try to figure out what happened more than two decades ago, and see if they can somehow recover his Gift.
Why do the PCs care?
Well, for starters, this grog has done a lot for them. Managed the Covenant the first few years, as well as setting up their labs before they came to it after their respective gauntlets. But another big reason is that getting closure for this story (a big trauma for him and his mater) will most definitely make it so the spirit is able to be 'free' and depart, "freeing" the space there and uncovering more of the secrets of the mystery that brought the covenant to ruin.
The Prep
My objectives for this adventure were:
- At the least two sessions, at most four (we're settling on three)
- To showcase the Mythic Middle East and a bit of its culture and differences (and similarities) with Mythic Europe
- To show to my players what a djinn is, and giving them a chance to interact with them
- To follow the themes and principles of this saga
So, since I wanted to focus on the Levant Tribunal and Beyond, and being that they've traveled to the Theban Tribunal before, I decided to start the session with an exposition letter. A Redcap NPC in the Levant Tribunal (Blood & Sand 115, Venti Rosa Covenant) would contact the unGifted NPC with all the context that was needed for the session: Where they will start, which clothes do they wear, who is their guide, and so on. I would just have to give that letter to the players and let them start playing.
I of course needed a guide, since only two of them (the unGifted NPC and a maga) speak Arabic, and an improvised Thoughts within Babel can only get you so far 
, so Antomonio pointed out the faerie djinn in page 64 of The Cradle & The Crescent, and so I was sold on the idea.
The next thing would be descriptions. Looking at this very useful link I made a route that was basically Antioch --> Aleppo --> North to Mosul --> Baghdad. I guesstimated it would take a couple of weeks, and prepared some evocative descriptions of the cities and the landscape between. What helped a lot was a copy of Blood and Sand that more or less describes these cities. I wanted to make every city a bit different, and so I took some licenses.
The last thing needed were the encounters: the meat of the session. I knew I wanted to have at least one combat, so between intro, outro, and some roleplaying outside of plan, I settled with three encounters. They could be out of order, since I made it so they were agnostic and en route. I looked at the chapter The Hazards of the Desert, in tCatC p. 103, to inspire me. In short, they were:
- A Zawba'a (tCatC p. 103) attacks them at night, it created a sandstorm (I invented this power) and tries to kill the animals first. Will they be able to locate and deal with this problem in time?
- A caravan of bedouin are going to X (whatever city I need) and have had the unfortunate circumstance of a big cargo of spices, jewelry and fruit (I know bedouin are not merchants) into a pit of quicksand. They are looking for help to whoever can give it and promise to give anything inside the cargo in return. What will they find?
- A 'caravan' going in the opposite direction of the PCs, in its vast majority pilgrims going to Mecca, doing the hajj. When this 'caravan' encounters an armed 'toll' (which in reality is in cahoots with the pilgrims and are both part of a large brigand) the majority of the 'pilgrims' try to make the wealthy jewish merchant that accompanies them pay for the exorbitant price. How will the PCs react?
So, in summary, I needed:
- A letter from an NPC that gave context to the session
- A route to travel on and an NPC guide
- Descriptions for places in the route
- Three bespoke encounters, with their stats
The Session
The session went, overall, pretty well. It had five scenes after they read the letter I prepared (for the curious, here it is in spanish). The abridged summary of the session is:
They arrived in Antioch, got acquainted with Jumayl (the djinni guide) and the caravan he would guide with them. I describe the NPC, make some chitchat, talk about the route and buy the guy some alcohol, as the Redcap advised them.
I make them roll to see which encounter I prepared goes first, and the Bedouin Caravan comes first. This was honestly a bit rough, as I believe my players are not the best at solving puzzles, with or without magic involved. Some solutions were suggested, but to me it seemed like it was a bit of a struggle, as they didn't have or couldn't figure out the tools for the encounter. I wish I could have helped them more, since as I say it was a bit rough. But at the end they managed to save the cart, and the grateful bedouin bestowed them with sweet, preserved dates and a silver bottle they were going to sell anyway.
Through the rest of this treck of the route, I described as the guide drank too much alcohol and told them stories about someone called Alladino, Symbad and some princess called Sheherazad. And the night after saving the bedouin cart, the magi who had the silver bottle experienced something: inside the bottle there was a djinn called Hesaan ('Horse' from 'Djinni Names' tCatC p. 103) and after knowing the troupe was headed to Baghdad, thanked Allah for this chance.
He stroke a bargain with the PC magi and in exchange for taking the djinni to Baghdad, Hesaan will help the magi whenever he can. The Magi went to sleep and told the others the next morning.
Next treck, another encounter roll, this time the Zawba'a. I decided to frame this encounter at night because nights in the desert are harsh, and a sandstorm gives the perfect context in which a group of magi can fight while the mundanes are taking refuge from the elements.
The fight went well, as the NPC guide went first and got completely womped by the powers of the Zawba'a. One of the magi had an iron sword, and after causing a couple of Medium Wounds and wearing it down, the djinni died, leaving behind its vis.
The guide ended up with a Light and Heavy wound, but luckily the magi are in good terms with a Folk Witch that lives near the Covenant, and one of the companions asked for some potions to cure wounds (yeah, they are lazy and don't want to invent rituals 
). After curing the Heavy wound and having the rest of the caravan claiming a miracle, they went to sleep.
At this point they've already covered Aleppo and Mosul, and thus in the last trek I present the encounter of the fake caravan. They come pretty close to ignoring it right away, which was fine by me because we already had some combat and we were approaching the limit of our normal session time. But, just in case, I had a bookmark in Lands of the Nile with stats from some bandits (again thanks to Antomonio for pointing them out).
The kicker to this encounter is that one of the magi is jewish, born in Toledo, and thus when he spoke in Hebrew to the merchant, who was in the verge of tears, he could not stop himself from intervening. Opting for an intimidation tactic, he lit his sword on fire. At the same time, one of the other magi cast a quick spell to rust the blade of the bandit that looked like the boss. Both things worked, and so I did a Personality roll for the bandits with a high EF, accounting for the intimidation of both effects. They failed, and so I described how they scrammed in terror, even leaving behind the money!
The jewish magi tried to speak again with the merchant, but I was firm and thought that, even if they saved his life, the Gift plus the shock of seeing someone light a sword on fire would make the old guy almost non-verbal. They said their goodbyes as well as they could, and marched on.
In the end, I made sure to run an evocative but fair vision of Baghdad. My description I based more or less in what's in tCatC p. 124, so I believe they ended up pretty satisfied and excited for the adventure that awaits in the heart of Islam in the known world.
The total runtime for the session was three and a half hours. Could have been longer, but they spent some time before the session clarifying who was going to go to the adventure, the vis they would take with them, etcetera.
What's next
Spoilers from here. If you are a player in my troupe, stop reading
My plans are a two-session adventure in Baghdad. The first one will be getting to know the descendant of the antagonist sahir and obtaining the key to it all: the writings of the (missing?) sahir are inside Golden Baghdad, the immense faerie regio that is hidden within Baghdad itself.
The twist is that the sahir's descendant, a sahira herself, will serve as a rival, as she also wants to get the writings of her ancestor, but secretly doesn't want anyone else to obtain them. She accepted telling them the location of the papers because she isn't able herself to find an entrance (or at least a reliable one) to the regio, and maybe can't even defeat the guardian of the papers (a powerful but binded Djinn, maybe?).
As I said, i will run it as a two-session adventure, and since the first one will be exploring mundane Baghdad, the second one will be Golden Baghdad, and hopefully getting to a resolution. I'm unsure on what will exactly happen.
Closing thoughts
Overall, I think the core premise is solid, but I'm not very confident in my knowledge of Baghdad. I will have to prepare an (admittedly short) urbancrawl to locate Golden Baghdad, and then an adventure exploring it. It is very possible that the second half takes more than one session, but oh well, so be it.
Thanks for a third time to @Antomonio for helping me out with this, it's been a blast getting to brainstorm with a fellow sodale and these sessions would be way worse without your help.
Do you guys have any questions? Any suggestions, things I could have done better? Anything I should keep in mind for next sessions?
And most importantly: Do you appreciate this kind of recap/report? Is it useful?
I'm reading!
