Covenant of Salt - GM Log
Portrait of Marina Tsvetaeva by Magda Nachman
The episode Covenant of Salt is where I make my players go crazy a little. That’s where they learn just how big and how deep the mystery goes. To be honest, I thought the players would go talk to the people first, but they went straight for Chamber 3, for an encounter with the Salt of the Earth. They then make their way backward to Chamber 2, and then to the information located in the elevator room. Looking back, I think it made for a much better story than if they had done it in the opposite order.
Setting
The Poem at the Centre of It All
You are now familiar with my use of poetry to tell part of my stories. I’ve used it so far as the mouthpieces of the eldritch entities encountered by the adventurers. But their words have always been “meta”, outside of Genesis. Now, the poem is heard, and the words, the frame upon which the action revolves around. Outside the podcast, it was also the first time a poem was used in Uncreated.
The poem that inspired the whole story arc is the poem Some made of stone, some made of clay (Кто создан из камня, кто создан из глины) by Marina Tsvetaeva. Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva is a Russian poet of the twentieth century who lived through the Russian Revolution (which she opposed), the Moscow famine, and many years of poverty in exile in Paris, Berlin, and Prague. When she returned to the USSR, her husband was arrested and shot under suspicion of being a spy and she died in abject poverty by suicide in 1941. In her lifetime her poetry was admired by her contemporaries and her lyrical voice remains known as one of the greatest in twentieth-century Russian literature.
Russian is a difficult language to translate. My old Russian literature professor would often remind us that a lot of meaning would get left behind as either the translator tries to stay true to meaning or rhythm. It is an even harder task when the work is poetry.
To arrive at the poem I used, I read various translated versions, both in English and in French as well as more direct translations using dictionaries. I felt like, as is often the case with women’s poetry, the translated versions were a bit subdued. Whereas in the original text, I sensed something more powerful. (I suggest you read the available translations and compare them with mine to see what I mean. Most translators also removed Tsvetaeva's use of dashes, which I think is distinctive in her writing.) My aim was also to write a poem I could use for my story and not necessarily an exact translation of Tsvetaeva’s work.
My version has three stanzas compared to the original four. The reason for this is because the third stanza of Tsvetaeva’s poem is centered around the sea and I wanted to keep the poem concise and make it about the Salt of the Earth whom I had decided would be the protagonist. In Tsvetaeva’s work, the protagonist is the ephemeral sea foam.
Here is my own faithful translation of Marina Tsvetaeva’s poem
Кто создан из камня, кто создан из глины:
Some made of stone, others of clay, -
And I am of radiance and of shimmer
I enact treason – I am Marina
I am the ephemeral foam of the sea.
Some made of mud, others of flesh, -
For those: coffins and tombstones…
- I am baptized at sea – Flying
Unceasingly broken!
Every heart, every net,
My resolve shall evade them all.
I am - see these unfettered curls? -
You can’t make me salt of the earth.
Crushed on your granite knees,
With each wave – Resurrected!
All hail the foam – lively foam -
The high foam of the sea!
And here is my modified version used for the game:
Some made of stone
Others of clay
And I am of radiance
And of shimmer
Some made of mud
Others of flesh
For those: coffins and tombstones!
I am baptized at sea!
Crushed under your bended knee
With each wave I resurrect
All hail, the Salt of the Earth!
While the poem is quite different than the original, I kept the original intent I got from reading the poem all through the story. I hope you found the two versions interesting.
Mechanics
Actionable
When I edit the podcast, there is a lot of “blah-blah” that I remove to keep the action going. Around a game table, the players can sometimes talk for a long while before acting. There are many different reasons this can happen, but today I want to talk about the player’s perception of actionable and/or lack thereof.
It wasn’t heard on the podcast because I cut that part out, but shortly before Cameron said, “Let’s make a call to action”, he was a bit annoyed because the group did not know what “actionable” I offered. He was correct in a sense…I had not offered any. The only task that was given was: if something is manipulating the mind of the miners down in the mine, get rid of it. There were no specific actions to be taken, no specific NPC to talk to, no timetable, no clear goal even. Open investigation. And all of it was intentional. The idea with this scenario was to promote their own agency in asking for skill checks depending on their interaction with the environment, triggering events, and fostering collaborative storytelling since the area was contained and the events were in no danger of suddenly going out of control,
In the past couple of years, it’s a style of DMing that I have promoted a lot. I provide the situation; I describe an environment and I let the players interact with it. They must “feed me” as much as I feed them. If you’ve noticed, it is only after a certain threshold of descriptive interaction/questioning that I will ask for a certain check (if at all). I’d rather anything that relates to a character comes from the player than from me; after all, it’s their role to fill. For certain, it’s a style of playing that is a bit harder and that needs frequent prompting at first.
Therefore, I had no qualms in letting them stew in their brain juice for a couple of minutes. I highly invite you to do the same. It’s a reflex to want to push the players to move along, to have them interact right away, to “have something happen”. It’s OK to let them think about a meaningful interaction even if they break immersion to do so than to have you, break their train of thought with a slapdash idea to just take some action. I’m not saying you should NEVER help them along; DMs clearly must judge when and how to steer the boat.
As for the annoyance the group felt after talking to the Salt of the Earth in Chamber 3, you can hear it was short-lived when actionable are listed after Cam says, “Let’s make a call to action”. They all came up with those by themselves with no push from me.
Playing Crazy
Having NPCs afflicted by madness in a fun card to play as a DM and is a trope often seen in games. It’s a great way to drop clues while amping up the tension. However, I’d say that “playing crazy”, while fun and having a dramatic flair can be a double-edged sword. Should you decide to add a touch of madness to one of your scenarios, here are some recommendations I have for you.
Make it make sense, somewhat. People with delusions, while they don’t make sense to the outside world, have their own inner logic. If you are going to play a person afflicted by some type of madness, put a little thought into what drives their condition. When interacted with, make it possible for your players to get a glimpse of their inner world. While you are not obliged to divulge everything, give just enough that the basics can be ascertained.
Crazy is frustrating. While playing crazy is fun for the DM (hilarious even), I would say that the player’s fun is almost always inversely proportional if not done properly. It’s easy to get lost in your fun at seeing the player’s confusion. Remember this – even if this is a game and we are playing make-believe, no one likes to be made fun of. If the confusion lasts for too long, it turns into trolling, and then no one is having fun but you. Keep it short and remember point number 1.
Make the interaction pertinent. Why is it necessary for your players to be in contact with a mad person? What’s the end goal? Our reason for creating NPCs is almost always information. If that’s the case, make sure your players can get the information through the madness. More than that, the craziness should ADD to the story and not just be a whim, because reasons. Don’t make it so cryptic that it’s useless.
MYRIAM