previous note:
If you haven't yet, be sure to read my previous note, linked above.
title: Endless Rime
ruleset: modded Awesome Dice Pool System
character-creation: see previous post
character sheets:
setting: Cro-Magnon Earth - Adventures in the 35th Millenium BC
player: Bryan Miller (my other blog)
pcs: Stenn Bearclaws (the main protagonist)
start_date: 12.28.2025 (this post)
tools:
chaosgrenade’s Awesome D.P.S.
LonerRPG’s Twist Counter & Dice
themes: exploration, survival, self-discovery
tone: primal, noble, fatalistic
notes: we build the world as we adventure in it
Influences & Intentions
This solo-play will be known as Endless Rime and is set on Earth in the Upper Paleolithic era, as I wrote in my previous post.
Endless Rime features mature content: there is wanton violence, sex (not explicit), and occasional brutality, but there is no cigarette smoking. No animals will be harmed in the creation of these stories. Some animals are harmed in these stories, but usually they are wild animals targeted by hunters.
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In some portions of this story, the action pivots back and forth from ~35,000 B.C. to some future time that is clearly far in the future. You may wonder why, given the story’s setting. Gradually, some readers will develop insight. Think Clan of the Cave Bear meets Severance (by Netflix). It won’t be heavy-handed, and hopefully won’t break immersion. By far the majority of posts in Endless Rime will focus IGDT in the Old Stone Age.
Different people format their Actual Play reports in different ways. Initially, I had planned on a separation of narrative from mechanics. My thinking was that this would be advantageous should I ever elect to turn the narrative sequences from my Actual Plays into a book. However, in sampling blogs and opinions I came to discover that many people prefer that crunchies be leavened in freely with narries. And doing it thusly will certainly be easier for me.
To prepare for this solo-play, I read three books: Clan of the Cave Bear, The Dog Master, and Cro-Magnon : How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans.
Other influences: Wolf Packs & Winter Snow, Paul Walker’s substack, Rolling Alone, the RPG called Würm, the old AD&D 3rd edition sourcebook Frostburn, and Kate Korsaro’s substack, Kate Plays.
Themes explored:
- Man versus Nature
- Tribal Dynamics
- Interspecies Relations
- Megafauna Interactions
- Migration & Exploration
- Emergent Culture
- Paleolithic Animism & Shamanism
XP Award
I’d awarded 3 XP for character concept development, +0.25 XP upon completing Stenn’s character creation by culminating in a character sheet (downloadable from my Onedrive, Box, or website). Now watch as I use meta-game currency to positively reinforce my documenting, here, of influences and sources: another +0.25 XP — Stenn now is sitting on 4.0 XP.
As is often the case, this Substack post is a refinement of an earlier post in another venue.
Below, I’ll set the stage for Stenn’s adventures with an Opening Scene that is simply narrative. My very next post, however, will be a true Actual Play, interleaving narrative with mechanics.
Opening Scene
Although neither he nor his parents knew it, Stenn had begun life as Stenosian Vey. On his Naming Day at the age of twelve, the boy had unknowingly dredged up a moniker from his subconscious: ‘Stenn’. Moose Rock Clan accepted and celebrated it. They were simply thankful to now have a shortened way of referring to Chief Hrowaka’s son other than the lengthy title that roughly translated as Twig of the Branch of Hrowaka Axe-Arm.
It was 35,386 B.C., a cold night somewhere in what would eventually become the Dordogne region of France. The nineteen year old Cro-Magnon man stood next to his mother’s woven sleeping pallet and looked down upon sunken, closed eyes, her pallid face. It was warm enough in the hide-covered dwelling that Stenn’s heavily muscled body gleamed with a sheen of sweat. He was clothed only in a breech cloth. The woman on the pallet shivered.
Norda was gravely ill, and Stenn was not Mog-Ur, nor a shaman. “How is she?” queried a gravelly voice from the other side of the dwelling, where the firelight cast a shadowy silhouette of a man. Stenn’s father, Chief Hrowaka, was weak and stooped, crippled by severe osteoarthritis and by something much worse. Something that Uta, their medicine woman, could not treat.
Stenn felt helpless. It was impossible to guess which one of his parents Gray Coyote1 would take first. A bujant had been troubling the village of late. If it followed the usual pattern of such things, it would attack again some time tonight.
Ask the Oracle: will the bujant attack tonight? Exceptional Yes.
Stenn was torn between staying near his ill mother and joining his fellow hunters in searching for the possessed creature.
The chief was very old, sixty-two sheddings of the Bear Tree, if the chief’s memory could be trusted. And so Stenn kept watch over his mother while his father lay addled on kuju2 on the other side of the hide-covered dwelling.
Norda, though delirious (perhaps mercifully) and in and out of consciousness, coughed up more blood. Stenn cradled her head and dabbed at the reddish foam on her lips. A minute went by, and only the crackle of the fire spoke into the darkness. Then Norda was wracked by another bout of coughing, just as the brazen bugling of the bujant shattered the relative quiet of Moose Rock.
Shouts erupted throughout the camp, and there were running feet, peppered with curses, oaths, deprecations, and more than one cry to Ursus for strength and protection. A young woman of the clan, Jenkla, ducked into the dwelling. Her furs were frost-rimed and snow powdered her long, dark hair. “Stenn Pah’et, you are needed!”
Stenn looked up at his mate. “Jenkla Su’hed, Drogan and the others can handle a bu—” His words were clipped off abruptly as Jenkla ran a gloved hand through her hair, dispersing red flakes already beginning to melt in the warmer interior of the frost-den. Blood Dust!3
Jenkla took a step toward Stenn. “It is the Tears: the bujant4 was merely a harbinger! Many will die this night!”
Stenn moved and embraced Jenkla, cradling her for a moment to his massively muscled chest, a powerful hand cradling the back of her neck. Then, releasing her, he pulled on fur-lined leggings wrapped his bear pelt around himself, and donned a dried vine bolo and its wicker scabbard for his club. “Not if I can help it!” he vowed. Stay with them both,” he pleaded as much as instructed, and then he was outside the frost-den and shouting orders.
Meta: see three footnotes below.
I spent a fair amount of time on this post, and it in turn spurred the creation of a Cast of Characters and a Terminology post, so I’m going to award 0.5 XP, bringing new total to 4.0 XP. I choose to spend those 4 XP to increase Stenn’s Spirit attribute from 4 to 5.
- XP
- Lifetime earned: 1.0 (started with 3; +0.5 character creation, +0.5 end of current scene)
- Lifetime spend: 4.0 (raised Spirit to 5)
- Stenn’s Attributes
- Body 3 ○○○ stress track: □□□
- Mind 3 ○○○ stress track: □□□
- Spirit 5 ○○○○○ stress track: □□□□□
I invite you to continue to the next post in solo campaign Endless Rime…
1
Gray Coyote is the spirit that carries the souls of the dead to Ursus in the Deepest Cave
2
A root that can be chewed or drank in a tea; eases pain and induces drowsiness
3
Tears of Vodor, a.k.a. Blood Dust, an evil carmine snow that saps strength and heat, often leading to death and this disintegration of the remains (even bones) into a rust-colored particulate
4
A fell spirit prone to taking possession of animals and, infrequently, people