Эрин Хантер - Fading Echoes

Burr plans to stay in the general area. He will, however, agree to stay out of the Clan territories.

What Happens Next:The players’ cats head back to their camp and regale the Clan leader and the other members of their Clan with the exciting tale of their adventure. Certainly, many of the other cats will have a hard time believing some of the details, particularly that the cats were able to survive being so close to two Twoleg monsters. In the end, the success of the mission will be self-evident, and no one will be able to argue that the players’ cats did an excellent job.

23. In the Belly of the Beast

Read Aloud:“The den you’re in gives you room to move around—a little. There’s water here, but it isn’t fresh. Food, too, though it’s the same bitter stuff you smelled when you first discovered this awful place. There are other cats nearby. You can smell them—and their fear.”

Narrator Tips:If you’ve ended up here, then the adventure has gone badly. Some or all of the players’ cats have been captured and are about to be driven off in the animal shelter’s van.

You can let them engage in a bit of storytelling by having the various captive cats talk to one another from their cages. This at least would give you a chance to help explain some of what happened and give the players a sense that their cats will not be harmed. These humans will not hurt the cats, just try to find them homes to be adopted into. Perhaps, eventually, the cats might be able to escape and rejoin their Clan.

What Happens Next:The adventure ends as the Transport Van starts up and drives off into a very different world than these cats have ever known before.

After the last scene of the adventure has been played, the game itself is not necessarily over. There still are a few things you can do if the players want to keep at it.

Lost Cats

One of the saddest parts of any tale is when a character we care about leaves. As fans of the Warriors series, we’re all keenly aware of the mixed emotions that come along when that loss is part of a great story, but it’s different when the character is your own.

If “The Plaintive Howls” ended badly, some or all of the character cats were left to an unexpected and uncertain fate. They are still alive, but no cat is quite sure where they are, where they’re going, or if they’ll ever return. This can be quite frustrating to the cat’s player, who put in a good deal of time, effort, and emotion to create and develop that character.

So what can you do?

Make a New Cat

For some players, having a character meet an unexpected fate is just a good excuse to go back to the rules and make a new character from scratch.

You no doubt learned a lot while playing your cat character; maybe you even saw some things in the rules that you’d like to try out but that didn’t mesh with the character concept of your previous cat. Now you can dive right in and explore those possibilities by making a new cat.

You can build a beginning warrior, just like you did the first time around. Or, if you and the other players agree, you can build a character and improve him or her quickly until your new character is just as many moons old as the others—that way you’ll still be at about the same experience level as the others.

Either way, the next time you and your friends sit down to play the Warriors Adventure Game , there will be a new character for everyone to meet.

Write the Next Chapter

Perhaps you want to continue exploring the character of your old cat. That’s certainly still possible, too, and the clues for how to do it are right there at the end of the adventure.

In the final scene, as the van pulls away carrying your captured cat, the text suggests that in time your character may yet escape from wherever the Twolegs are taking him or her. Then it would just be a matter of finding the way back to the Lake and your Clan territory.

Try making up a story about what happens to your cat—maybe about where the van takes him or her, or what other cats he or she meets along the way. There is a lot of adventure in the world, and a lost cat is sure to find plenty of it. And the best part is that when the story is over, your cat will be back home where he or she belongs and ready to take part in the next adventure.

Play It Again

Maybe you just want to try the whole thing a second time, starting back at the beginning or perhaps picking up somewhere in the middle where it feels like things went wrong. In either case, your cat would be right back where he or she was and have another chance to try to find a more favorable outcome.

One of the great things about storytelling games is that you can always tell the story again. And, since so many of the events depend on timing and Skill Checks, it won’t always go exactly the same way.

Plus, there may be parts of the adventure that the cats never got around to exploring (especially if the Twolegs kept noticing them as they moved around). Playing again will let everyone see all the parts of the story and give other players the chance to try their hands at being the Narrator.

Experience

If the cats completed the adventure successfully, then they all get Experience rewards. It is important to note, though, that each cat can only get experience from this adventure once! If you play through and successfully finish the adventure several times, your cat only gains the rewards listed below after the first time he or she completes the adventure.

If you use different cats each time, though, each one can get the Experience rewards. The rule is not that a player can only get experience once; it’s that a cat can.

Age:Although the action in this adventure clearly all happens over the course of a handful of days, the presumption is that this is the most interesting and exciting thing that happens to your cat during the whole of that moon. Increase your cat’s age by 1 moon and make any appropriate improvements described in Chapter Four of the game rules.

Skill:On top of the improvements your cat gets from aging, he or she also can gain 1 level in one of the following Skills: Focus, Ponder, See, Smell, Swim.

Knack:For surviving such close and prolonged interaction with Twolegs, your cat also gains one level of the Twoleg Lore Knack.

More adventures can be found at the back of each novel in the Omen of the Stars series, and you can find extra information at the warriorcats.com website.