Thanks for the kind words, noofy! :D
So we–Tablesaw, Judson, and myself–sat down to play our third session of Dark Ages. Things progressed much better when we took our time, treated rights as sacrosanct, and used fronts.
We kicked off play with Abregaz and Idus heading down into the catacombs to chase the Magdolna intruders there. Since Idus' player wasn't able to make it, we had Tablesaw play him for this scene part of the conversation. Abregaz and Idus used a number of the more actiony moves and a couple assists, and these cascaded and led into each other very well. Abregaz attempted a Take Stock and got a 6; Idus assisted that by sneaking around behind, Leaping into Action, and seizing the interlopers. (Quick clarification question: could Idus spend one to "seize hold of" both intruders, or did he need to spend two to seize hold of both of them? We did the latter.) Seeing that Idus was about to get knifed in the gut, Abregaz then Leapt Forward and disarmed the restrained Magdolna. There was evidence that the Magdolna had been tampering with the old graves, but since they were under Irat's hospitality, Abregaz refrained from searching them like criminals. They kept tight-lipped, themselves. So Abgregaz and Idus escorted them upstairs to the Magdolna caravan that was just leaving.
At supper, Tinitran carefully introduced Vanora the White Cap priestess (and bandit leader) to her father the Keep Liege. This was mostly Win Someone Over, carefully and elegantly done. Tinitran got to the point where she could press her father into agreeing to extend the White Caps hospitality, though he wouldn't like it, or not pressuring him for an immediate answer. She chose the latter, confident that he'd convince himself to agree with her in his own time. Throughout this, Judson and I were tag-team MCing, with me as Irat and him adding color as Vanora. Then Gorka, a clansman from the hostile and unconquered Ixone Clan, arrived at the stronghold under a white flag. This was Judson taking the lead on MCing, and I played Tatbirt in the following exchange. Gorka had come demanding ransom for one of our carpenters that the Ixone had captured, but a Size Someone Up revealed that he was here to make ridiculous demands that we wouldn't agree to, thus gaining the high ground. Tatbirt grew tired of this quickly and told him to return to the Ixone and prepare for war.
Finally Agrezam came up out of the catacombs to join the rest of the family for dinner. He showed up white-faced, though, claiming to have been confronted by our (quite dead) grandmother. This felt off immediately, and we paused for a moment to untangle it. Judson was effectively trying to push an MC agenda using his PC as a pawn. It felt flat, awkward, and like Judson was denying the other players the opportunity to actually play out the scary encounter. We resolved not to do that anymore, and keep "MCing" and "PCing" strictly separate.
After dinner concluded, Tatbirt went down into the catacombs to talk with the stronghold. The stronghold was upset because something had been taken from it, and by Virag the Magdolna. This was an interesting bit here. Tatbirt was following the lead of the catacomb's restless dead, a threat on Judson's front. However, when I looked for a culprit, Judson picked Virag off of my front sheet. This worked out, mostly because I think everyone at the table assumed that Virag had taken something from the catacombs, even if that hadn't been established in the fiction.
While Tatbirt went down into the catacombs, Abregaz and Tinitran went up to the family shrine. Abregaz planned to supplicate the gods of war, as is his right, while Tinitran was going to leave her earthly life, as was hers. We stumbled across an interesting rules wrinkle, here. We wondered if, in the morning when Abregaz made his battle moves, he could Call on Aid from Tinitran, and we could jump back in time to her scouting via astral projection, thus providing him Aid. This seemed awkward, but without the +1 forward mechanic, doing a thing now to benefit a roll later seemed murky. We then pieced together that, if Tinitran went scouting now, in the morning she would have the proper fictional positioning to give Abregaz aid. She could tell him, for instance, about a deadfall across a path he intended to march, or where the Ixone had stockpiled their weapons or somesuch. That would fall under the Aid that doesn't require a roll, but in this case she could do that only because she'd already made the roll. This seems like it would work very well, but teasing it out of the rules as they stand took some doing.
However, all that went flying out the door when Tinitran stepped out of earthly life (rolling 10+) and landed in the Ixone camp, then immediately flubbed her roll trying to find our carpenter. A guard was advancing on her, and Tablesaw decided that she couldn't take anything with her that wasn't natural materials like leather, cloth, or wood–so she had no sword or spear. So instead she grabbed a brazier, set some tents on fire, and spooked the Ixone horses out into the moonless night. Then when she was surrounded, she poofed back to the stronghold.
Abregaz then supplicated the Iron Triune, our gods of war Find, Fix, and Flank. Except he rolled a 6, and so instead of our gods, he ended up contacting the god of the White Caps, who was not very happy with him. When he remained defiant, the White Flame overwhelmed him with light and struck him blind.
And that's what we did. Questions and observations to follow.