Beetle Knight

Taking a pause from our usual game as Josh was off on vacation, Lanse offered to run Beetle Knight, an RPG based kinda on the setting of the Hollow Knight video game (of which I know very little) but basically you play bug knights on quests to solve mysteries. The report below covers all sessions from May through June. 

https://brookletgames.itch.io/beetle-knight-quickstart

We rolled up our characters randomly and ended up with:
Milax the Slug
Harvey the Fire Ant
Charlotte the Spider

In the town of New Elm, we meet up with some refugees from Old Elm, and then find and talk to the mayor. Old Elm has been beset by wasps behaving somewhat out of character, and a weird glittery atmospheric effect everyone is calling “The Glimmer” Those who linger in The Glimmer become trapped, mentally, repeating actions over and over.The mayor wants us to find his daughter, and help deal with the Glimmer and/or the wasps. 

Heading south out of New Elm, the party encounters Lauphy the snail, who is waving around a bit of lilac root that is coated with a shimmery substance. Explains that the lilac root helps ward off the effects of the glimmer, and makes it extra tasty. 

Further down the road, a blowfly is speeding north toward the party followed closely by a dragonfly! The blowfly screams for help, and the party prepares to do what it can when the dragonfly sprays everyone with a brown mist… making everyone desperate to mate with it! Fortunately for the party the only one able to fly up to the dragonfly was the blowfly, and he was quickly dispatched, and his body carried off as a snack. 

Later the party encountered a pair of wasps that warn of white ants and the golden curse. Naturally the party ignores this. Further down the road there’s a first real taste of the glimmer, a gingery spicy glow, and a wasp repeating a series of actions that probably made sense at one point. Using a big of scavenged lilac root, the slug whacks the wasp a few times before enough was knocked from her that she could regain her senses. Unfortunately not much was gotten out of her as she then flew away. The Slug decided to try the glowing root, licking the glimmer from the root and getting high as a kite! 

“I’m perfectly fine… “

Dear reader, he was NOT.

Closer to Old Elm a flee was being chased by wasps. The slug hugged the flee while the party talked to the wasps. The wasps weren’t interested in talking, and make things literally hot for the party before the fire ant slaughtered them. The flee thanked the party and then fled. 

Arriving in Old Elm, the party scouts around the stump before heading in. The concentration of Glimmer was much stronger, and Milax the slug needed to keep whacking the others in the party. Within the stump, they encounter some guard wasps, fight and kill them, followed by a mother in law millipede. She was anxious to find her granddaughter. She’s so obnoxious, but the party agrees to keep an eye out. 

Splitting away from her, the party finds a trail of chalk like powder.. They follow it finding numerous crumbly corpses of ants.

The party encounters wasps fighting and losing to the powdery white ants. Harvey talks to them as best he can (they speak a very old dialect) and we’re brought before the Queen. Her throne reeks of the Glimmer, and seems to be the source. Milax and the Queen both use their Lust powers, Milax on the Queen, the Queen on the party. Milax the slug and the Queen make out in front of EVERYONE sloppy style. 

While everyone watches, both horrified and disgusted, as Milax gets the queen extra slimy, the party smashes the throne, and the ants begin to crumble. Milax tries to hold the queen together, but even as powerful as she is, the ancient magic holding her together fails, and she crumbles in his… arms? 

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There were a few other things that happened over the weeks we played this, but my notes for these sessions were frankly terrible, and I’m lucky I’m able to put this all together in anything that resembles a coherent narrative. Mind you, that’s a failure on my part, not on Beetle Knight, and I would absolutely play this again!