Friday, 29 January 2021

horror stories - Betrayal Legacy Chapters 7 to 9

Warning: Major spoilers ahead. If you have not played and intend to play Betrayal Legacy, you may not want to read on. I write about Chapters 7 to 9 in this blog post.

Chapter 7 happened in Year 1876. The story started with a wedding being cancelled at the last minute, due to the unexpected death of the bride. The body was found in this creek above. In this chapter I was a priest. The death of the bride was initially a mystery. Soon we realised that all the players were secretly in love with her and all of us were accomplices in causing her death. When the Haunt happened, all of us turned traitor. However we were not on the same team. It was everyone for himself. There could only be one survivor and winner. 

The Haunt brought policemen to the mansion, a detective leading a team of constables. Incriminating evidence of all players were placed in a specific room, and the room was numbered 10. Some other locations were numbered, and the detective would visit all numbered locations one by one to look for evidence. What we had to do was plant evidence incriminating other players for the detective to discover. Whenever the detective discovered a piece of evidence, the corresponding player would be arrested and would thus be out of the game. Planting evidence was not easy to do though. There were constables around and we could not be caught in the act. If the detective reached the final location, he would discover all evidence incriminating all remaining players. The evidence was in a stack, and he would arrest players in order. Only the last player would be spared, and he would win the game. So one way to win without incriminating others was to manipulate the evidence stack to place your evidence at the bottom.  

The grey round markers in the photo indicate the locations the detective would visit. The detective is the dark red round marker on the upper right. 

If manipulating evidence was too difficult, we also had the option of killing our competitors when the policemen were not watching. This was not easy either, because there were policemen everywhere. When we explored the house, we created many long corridors with excellent line of sight. There were not many corners we could hide and do evil stuff. We soon found that we had no more opportunities to plant evidence, because all the remaining search locations were being watched by constables. Michelle decided to gamble. She attacked one of the lone constables, hoping that after killing him, she would be able to plant incriminating evidence at one of the search locations. Desperate measures! Unfortunately for her, the constable was well-trained and parried her surprise attack. She was immediately arrested and she was first to be out of the game. 

In the photo above, the detective (dark red marker), Shee Yun (yellow) and I (green) were all outdoors (group of tiles on the right side). Michelle (red) and Chen Rui (blue) were inside the house and upstairs (upper left). 

The detective was at the bottom right, and he was approaching search location #2. Next he would go to #3, #5 and #6, which were nearby. He would be progressing swiftly since these locations were close to one another. We did not have search location #4 this game. 

The detective had searched location #2 by now (the token had been removed), and was now heading to location #3. Shee Yun (yellow), the detective and I (green) were all in a straight line, which meant Shee Yun and I were in the detective's line of sight. I was hoping to kill her when nobody was watching, and I had missed my chance. However soon after this she went into the house, i.e. out of sight of the detective. I quickly followed her, while the detective was still busy outside, and killed her.

Now the only remaining players were Chen Rui and I. I could go upstairs to hunt her down. I was better at fighting this time. I could also just make sure the evidence pile at the last location was not disturbed. My evidence was at the bottom, so as long as nobody rocked the boat, the detective would arrest Chen Rui first, and I would be pronounced innocent, and win the game. At this juncture, it was difficult for Chen Rui to manipulate the evidence stack. 

At the time I had an apothecary kit with me, which I could use to boost my stats. Despite being in the leading position, it was never a bad idea to further solidify my lead. I drank a potion to make myself stronger before I hunted Chen Rui down. Unfortunately for me, there was something in the potion I was allergic to, and I died immediately after drinking it. It reduced my Sanity, which was already at the critical point. Game over for me. 

It was due to my greed and over-confidence that I neglected the fact that drinking potions was a risky thing to do. I rolled a 2, and ended up poisoning myself. Chen Rui won without needing to do anything. I felt stupid stupid stupid. Probably served me right - for being a priest and still secretly desiring a lady. 

Chapter 8 happened in Year 1890. My job was a scholar, but I was a lousy one. My Knowledge was poor. 

This time Chen Rui was the traitor again, and she was very happy about it. She worshipped the dark lord, who was almost able to break free from his chains and re-emerge into our world. The heroes' mission was to find the chalice, and to search the underworld for three pieces of corners of hell. These three cards were shuffled into the bottom 11 cards of the deck, which meant we had to do much underworld exploration to get to them. 

In this chapter, some of the standard rules were modified. We could explore the underworld from omen locations (those with the yellow crow icon in the photo above). Each omen location could be used just once for exploring the underworld. It was still best if we could find the chasm, from which we could explore the underworld as many times as we wished. This chapter felt almost impossible for the heroes. Chen Rui as the traitor could use the helm to inflict damage on us every turn. There was still a bit of luck needed, but since she had very few family crests on the helm, the odds were good for her to damage one of us successfully. 

When we explored the underworld, we would usually take some damage too. This was very tough for us. I wonder whether we should have tried to gang up on Chen Rui and kill her first, before searching for the chalice and the corners of hell. Not that this would be easy. She could summon dead inhabitants of the house to do her bidding. 

When she struck a fatal blow, we realised that we would not die from it. We became very weak, with all our traits set to critical. She wasn't actually trying to kill us. She was just branding us to be slaves of her master. This was her objective, and she completed it without breaking a sweat. No wonder she already declared this too easy when she read the Traitor's Tomb explaining the Haunt. 

Chapter 9 occurred in Year 1901. At the end of Chapter 8, the dark lord was supposed to re-emerge after the heroes failed to stop him. However there was a twist in the narrative in the legacy deck. Just before the dark lord returned, one of the weakened heroes managed to destroy the chalice, and this prevented the dark lord from returning. After the events in Chapter 8, all the heroes and the traitor vanished without a trace. The house was abandoned. Many years later the local government claimed the house and repurposed it to become a mental hospital. 

In Chapter 9, I became a proper traitor for the first time. I had played traitor twice before, but in one case I had voluntarily joined the traitor team because it was more likely to win (and it did), and in the other everyone was a traitor and it was a free-for-all game mode. This was the first time I played traitor in a one-vs-many scenario. 

I was a mad scientist and I had discovered a way to reanimate dead bodies. When the Haunt occurred, I transformed two of the inhabitants of the hospital to become zombies under my control - a chimpanzee and an orderly. Both were physically strong, and I wanted to use them to overpower the heroes. My goal was to kill all the heroes. The Traitor's Tomb hinted that the heroes would be working on a concoction which I needed to be cautious of, but it didn't say exactly how this worked. I had to play by ear. 

When the Haunt occurred, Chen Rui (blue) found herself in a dead end (photo above). Two of my zombies were in her way. She was cornered. I (green) was nearby too. If my zombies were able to kill her, I could reanimate her, turning her into another zombie under my control. She would become my teammate. This scenario seemed to be very tough for the heroes too! 

At this point, Michelle who was inside the house had an opportunity to swap places with Chen Rui, to get Chen Rui out of trouble. I didn't know it at the time - they needed Chen Rui's high Knowledge to help them develop an antidote which could be used against me and my zombies. Thus the importance of getting Chen Rui away from danger. Chen Rui had an equipment which could help her escape, so they decided it was not necessary to have Michelle risk herself. Unfortunately for them, Chen Rui's equipment failed to work. She didn't manage to get the required die roll. My zombies swamped her and killed her. 

When Chen Rui (blue) was killed, we added a ghost sticker to the tile. 

I (green) reanimated Chen Rui (blue). She now carried this small monster token, indicating that she was a zombie and she was on the traitor team. Chen Rui dying was a major setback for the heroes because it would be more difficult for them to develop the antidote. Shee Yun decided she had to attempt it anyway before it was too late. She managed to roll the required number. Also, when she used the reroll power, it triggered a helm event, and that helm event happened to give her additional Speed. Her Speed went up to 8, the max. Once the antidote was ready, Speed was an important trait because administering the antidote was done using the Speed trait. Shee Yun was well positioned to kill me and all my zombies with the antidote now available and the max possible Speed. 

When Chen Rui died, she dropped all her equipment. I picked them all up. The equipment which she had previously tried to use to escape was a magic mirror. I looked at how it worked, and found it pretty handy. It could be used to steal equipment from other players. The mirror became more powerful at locations with ghosts. Since I was in the crypt, which had four ghosts, I took the opportunity to use the mirror. I managed to steal a weapon from Shee Yun - the violin. This was a weapon operated using Sanity. I had high Sanity so this was perfect for me. I didn't have any decent weapon prior to that, and I wasn't physically strong either, so being able to steal this weapon helped me greatly. 

Shee Yun came to where I was, and I was rather puzzled. I had just killed Chen Rui, and I had two zombies nearby. This should be the last place she wanted to be. Only afterwards I realised she needed to come to where I was - the warehouse - because it was the only place she could develop the antidote. There were other locations where the antidote could be developed, but they were not yet discovered. Shee Yun successfully developed the antidote, but she had not foreseen that I would steal the violin from her. Before she could attack me or my minions, I played the violin horribly and the noise killed her. Had I attacked her using Might, she probably would have survived to be able to attack me when her turn came. Unfortunately for her, her Sanity level was weak, so my horrible violin-playing was very effective on her. I soon reanimated her too and made her my zombie. 

I (green) attacked Shee Yun (yellow) using my violin. 


The only hero left now was Michelle (red). She did not have much choice other than trying to fight all of us one by one and hoping to survive. The heroes' mission was to kill the traitor and all the zombies, including the hero-turned-zombies. That was a lot of work. Despite the poor odds, Michelle managed to kill both Shee Yun and Chen Rui. I guess that was a consolation for the heroes. At least Shee Yun and Chen Rui were properly put to rest and did not need to continue to "live" as zombies. 


Eventually Michelle (red) succumbed to my horrible violin-playing too, and I won the game as the traitor. The violin was my family heirloom (green sticker), so it increased my Sanity by 1 when I carried it. That contributed to my high Sanity. I had named this the heavy metal violin.  

Having played 10 games so far, if I look at just those one-traitor-vs-many-heroes scenarios, it seems most of the time it is difficult for the heroes to win. There was only one early scenario where the traitor was bullied by the heroes. For all the rest, it was an uphill battle for the heroes. Sometimes it felt downright hopeless. Perhaps that is the whole point. This is a horror game after all. Dread and despair is what the players should feel. Also if the heroes do manage to win, it would be highly satisfying. 

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