Only had 5 players but fortunately my arrangement with the Viking reenactors providing the backdrop for the scenario gave me four costumed vikings to assign roles to.
Daxo, Thorvald, Ring, Ran and Ansgar had paid money to be there.
Tyr, Auvandil, Fulla and Gefjon volunteered at short notice.
Bloody hell this game was fast compared to last time!
Immediately Auvandil arrived shouting and threatening the whole family much to Daxo’s shock. It really shocked everyone how brazen he was with the demands of land and treasure.
The shouting continued from all sides until Thorvald took charge.
The first act was over after 6 of the staves were handed out and prayers said their words. Gefjon kept the last unspoken after deeming no others worthy. Daxo, Auvandil and Ansgar went without. And Fulla was quick to announce the feast.
In the second act I remembered to remove a couple of benches so the characters tried to seat themselves and others bought the benches from where I had left them.
Crucially Gefjon sat near Daxo and took this as an opportunity to poison him. Daxo started confessing christ to be his saviour.
A weird thing happened next. Gefjon had given Ansgar a drink too but Ansgar was suspicious. The player asked me if they could pretend to drink to get a reaction from Gefjon. So I said that was fine.
Ansgar pretended to drink and Gefjon took out her envelope insisting that now Ansgar was poisoned but I stepped in and clarified that Ansgar pretended and now knows that it was definitely Gefjon doing the poisoning. But I don’t think Ansgar’s player got it because she didn’t warn others or accuse her.
Next thing Auvandil came to me saying he’d been told he’d been poisoned by Gefjon but they’d both drunk the same drink. I stepped in to clarify and Gefjon explained to me that she’d simply pretended to drink to trick Auvandil into drinking it.
So Auvandil was then violently ill too.
So Fulla declared the feast over.
Everyone was after Gefjon for the night scene. I forgot about Auvandil being vulnerable to violence since being poisoned. So he fought Gefjon and maimed her while she was meditating alone.
Ran attended to Gefjon and Daxo tried to take credit for healing her. But Gefjon didn’t buy that Daxo had saved her so she prepared a poisoned drink for him and asked him to drink it and for some reason he did.
In the absence of a second poison card for Daxo/Gefjon I said that the maimed rule applied and Daxo died.
Then Thorval killed Gefjon and Tyr attacked Auvandil (again I’d forgotten Auvandil being poisoned should make maimed) so Tyr died. Thorvald banished Auvandil and he agreed to leave.
It was brutal and chaotic and probably took about and hour to play out from the start of the first scene.
Left were Ring, Ran, Thorvald, Fulla and Ansgar.
Ran was trying to marry Ring “right now” so that she could send him after Auvandil hoping that Ring would die. But Thovald and Ring objected to having Ansgar do it.
Ansgar opened the will for the first time. And tried to say everything was going to go to the church (It didn’t help that English was not her first language so I couldn’t tell if she was reading it wrong but it didn’t really matter). But Ran stepped in and tried to explain that it all went to Ring except for the cattle. Fulla forgot she could read the latin and so did I. (It didn’t help that Fulla’s player was the biggest beardiest guy in the game in full viking warrior garb.)
In the end they decided that Ring would marry Ran but in the future and her plan to have Ring hunt Auvandil wouldn’t happen. Ansgar would build his church and Thorvald would have the cattle and titles.
I’d say Ring won by doing nothing while everyone else self destructed.