Lantern Year 1 does not offer us a lot of choices in regards of what to hunt, so another Frogdog is on the menu. But, of course, there are still a few things that need to be taken care of before that.

First: What monsters am I planning on using for this campaign?
I had held off from laying them out in the first post just in case I failed to complete the prologue and had to redo stuff, so, with no further delay, the grand plan.

There you go. This is almost ‘maximum-new’ for me personally, so here we go, just trying stuff out. A part of me is wondering if its too much to tackle all these at once, but again, worst case, we’ll see a restart. For now let’s just live in the moment – let’s just see how the settlement will develop.

Speaking of which, the rest of the settlement phase needed to be completed. So far we had only rolled on First Day and got 8 more survivors to work with. And as the whole of Bogstop gathered around the glowing Lantern Hoard, Lucille was the one to utter the first words – this gave her 1 courage and 1 understanding, but she had to skip the next hunt.

The prologue gave us a bunch of resources to work with, 12 in total, including even a Love Juice. So, we would be unlocking at least 1 milestone and principle right off the bat. For this settlement I resolved myself to just take my 4 favorite principles, no matter how good or bad they may be considered in a meta-sense.

With the first 3 endeavors we quickly built the 3 basic locations for our settlement – the Bone Smith, Organ Grinder and Skinnery before thinking about an early innovate for a moment or two. This would be an especially hard sell though, as we had enough hide to make a full set of rawhide armor and a monster grease even. Together with a few bone weapons (blade, dagger and dart) we should be ready to fillet the next Frogdog hopping our way. I save the Ironclad Spine we got for a buckler, hopefully to be built next lantern year. We finish the gear creation by gathering some Stone Noses.

Afterwards I used the Love Juice on Beni and the newly named Lana and rolled a 4. It’s a close call but a child – Milton – was born.
I picked Survival of the Fittest for our New Life principle as I prefer the extra stats (+1 STR/+1EVA) and theme, and Milton also gained 2 courage, the Tough FA and the new disorder Delirium. That’s a fun one – drawing 2 random stat tokens on random sides – it’ll be swingy for sure.

With that it was finally time to go out and hunt. The chosen ones for this lantern year were:
Ragnar (bone dagger, monster grease)
Milton (bone dart, founding stone)
Calys (founding stone)
Jerryn (bone blade, rawhide set)

The hunt phase promised to be a short one, but not without its ups and downs.
Jerryn immediately fell down a hill and broke his leg (Basic HE 34: Crippling Misery). A harsh debuff for the guy with the most promising gear.
The Frogdog event caused Fits of Laughter which has us roll another basic HE(86): Putrid Tunnels – Ragnar and Calys contract leprosy (-1 dmg from all sources/-2 to severe injuries). That’s potentially great – until its not.
And finally, we stumbled upon a Tomb (of Excellence) which instilled Milton with courage (+1) and made him bold. He promptly gained some more understanding (+1) of whatever was going on in this world.

We had managed to arrive. Milton then drew his tokens for Delirium and I quickly concluded that it could have been much worse (-1 STR/+1 EVA) – and just to mention it – I rolled for the type of token (assigned them all a number) and afterwards what side they would be on (odds vs even).

With that the fight could begin. The normal Frogdog only has the Mammoth Leaves as terrain and no random draws, so we set up and went for it.
Its first draw: Twitching Kick targeted Ragnar, which would only hit him on 7+. Yeah, still it hit twice. Ragnar wanted to retaliate, but clearly was too stunned to do anything. It’s Jerryn who came in swinging twice and wounding twice. He’s also into butt-stuff now. Sure. Frogdogs have strange side-effects. Milton’s darts and Calys’ fists failed to wound.

All this ruckus startled a swarm of insects – Disturbed Buzzing – that quickly descended upon Calys. Loads of attacks and upon hit you gain a -1 EVA token. Luckily only 1 would hit and we dodged that.
Milton threw another dart, but did not wound, again, as Jerryn jumped in, swinging and wounding twice, again. This had the monster leap away and load up a fart. It did not land on anybody but was too far away for Ragnar and Calys.

With nothing we could do about the fart, an Oily Emission hit Jerryn in the hands before the Frogdog turned to Ragnar once more to Gnash(ing) and Bark(ing) at him. It nibbled on him just lightly, but in a way that disturbed him greatly.

In other news, Milton missed his third dart. And Ragnar, still on the Mammoth Leaf, used it to jump over the Frogdog and hit it from behind. And whilst all 3 connected and 2 of them even wounded, a reflex on the second hit kicked Ragnar in the chest, knocking him down as Leprosy has just prevented him from rolling a severe injury. Of course Jerryn, jumped back in and wounded the monster on a matter of principle.

The monster already had to reshuffle its deck, down to 3 cards. So far, so good. More angry insects appeared. This time they targeted Jerryn, who despite being only hit on 8+, got tagged twice.

Jerryn countered, but the Carbuncle was impervious. Ragnar clipped the Frogdog’s heel and we were ever-so-slowly churning along. With the other two failing to do anything again, this fight was a two-man show.

2 cards left. This time the Frogdog went for Jerryn – Gnashing and Barking – two negligible hits. Ragnar wounded – on the death blow again. We are wounding that location consistently, just not at the right time. Finally, Calys’ big moment had arrived! She hit the trap. All adjacent suffer brain damage – that’s three people, thankfully the basic attack missed completely.

What’s that? Milton!? A dart hit? And it wounded? The reshuffled Death Blow? Again, just 1 wound too soon. I couldn’t help but laugh at that.

With only the basic action left for the Frogdog, we were just about done at this point. One more fart hits Jerryn, but with a decent amount of armor left that wasn’t an issue. One activation later, the Frogdog was slain!

As we gained our Hunt XP Calys aged (+1 STR) and so did Ragnar (Timeless Eye FA). We also gleefully received the Froskrafter settlement location, its just… those resources. Damn.

That’s a whole load of hide and bones. Not having gained any additional resources was incredibly detrimental and having to suss out what I actually want to do with these will be difficult. This is already looking like another Frogdog next hunt.
The Feline Entity clearly did not bless this fight. She was absent throughout all of it after all.

It does seem like the additional EVA and STR from SotF helped a ton against the Frogdog so far, so that’s at least something.

Thank you very much for your time and may your lantern shine brightly,
Amathul