Actual Play – Jaws of the Six Serpents
Black Heart of the Petrified God, Part 1
In this post, I present an actual solo play report using Jaws of the Six Serpents. This comes on the heels of my full Jaws review. If you missed it, you can find that review here.
Even though this was a short, self-contained one-shot adventure, the report itself turned out longer than expected. So I’ll be posting it in two parts.
A Few Notes Before We Begin
While I use a handful of solo RPG tools, I won’t be spotlighting them too much here. The main reason for this post is to shine a bit more light on this indie gem. I’ve posted a few PDQ-related actual plays before, but rarely do they dig into the mechanics the way I’d like.
For this adventure, I’m using The Random Location Crafter from the Mythic toolkit, specifically the version featured in Mythic Magazine issues #2 and #3. I won’t go into the mechanical weeds on that tool, other than to say this was a dungeon crawl with zero prep—everything was rolled randomly using the theme and descriptive tables. It worked beautifully. I’ve had great experiences with Location Crafter-style games, and in this session, it served as my sole oracle and adventure driver. I may occasionally roll yes/no questions with a basic d6, but that’s the extent of my GM emulation tools.
As for style, I adopted a structure I once saw on The Big Purple (RPG.net), though I doubt I could find the original post now. Credit to the excellent mind behind it. The format is simple:
One paragraph of setting fluff
Three paragraphs of action (inspired by pulp fiction or high-octane comic strips)
Then stop.
Bonus points if you end on a cliffhanger. The idea is to emulate a 3–4-panel comic strip per "page." That’s the reason for the structure and tone.
Off to the side in my own notes are mechanical summaries for each "page" of panels.
Meet Our Heroine: Red Thordis
Stat Block (Jaws of the Six Serpents)
Strengths
Good [+2] Faculty: A Cold Heart and a Burning Temper
Good [+2] Peoples: Bloody Reaver
Good [+2] Driver: Take What Can Be Taken
Good [+2] Peak-Level Athleticism
Good [+2] A Sell-Sword Once Upon a Time
Good [+2] A Thousand Leagues in These Boots
Good [+2] Swordplay
Good [+2] Primitive Instincts, Feral and Quick
Weaknesses
Poor [-2] Uncivilized
Learning Points: 0
Fortune Points: 1
Props: Average [0] Pair of Curved Scimitars
Average [0] Skins and Furs
Expert [+4] Torches (supply prop)
Background: Red Thordis
Born beneath the howling winds of the frozen north, Red Thordis was the daughter of a fearsome chieftain and heir to a legacy of war. From childhood, she was forged in blood and battle—her swordplay swift, her instincts feral. But when she slew the man chosen to be her husband in the heat of a raid, rejecting the ancient customs of her clan, she was cast out as a pariah. Alone but unbowed, she turned her exile into legend.
Thordis now roams a savage world of ruins, jungles, and empires, her name whispered in awe and fear. Where others seek shelter, she walks into the storm—trusting only her blades and her brutal code. Every step of her journey is driven by a defiant hunger to prove she needs no master, no tribe, no destiny. Her battle cries echo from the mountains of her youth to the cursed temples of forgotten gods.
Tall and sinewed like a huntress carved from ice and fire, Thordis bears the scars of a hundred battles and tattoos that sing of her Aesir bloodline. Her crimson hair and piercing blue eyes strike fear and fascination in equal measure. With her twin scimitars at her side and a soul like sharpened steel, she is a force of nature—a blazing fury against a world of monsters, tyrants, and fate itself.
Black Heart of the Petrified God
Preface: The Heart of Ar-Saren
“Tell your pale sorcerer if the girl dies, I’ll split his skull like a melon and piss in the halves.”
So spoke Red Thordis—scarred, towering, and fire-haired—clad in furs that stank of blood and jungle sweat. Her eyes, twin shards of glacial blue, cut through cowards and false gods alike. She was a she-wolf of the north, outcast and reaver, whose blades sang only for coin… or vengeance.
They came to her on the edge of the world—Zoryn the Pale, whose eyes gleamed like twin moons over a grave, and Videric, the once-brother-in-arms turned jackal. Together, they brought chains of flesh and duty: a girl named Ana, bound and wide-eyed, whom Thordis had once saved from slavers in the high passes. A debt paid in blood now held her heart hostage.
Zoryn’s voice slithered like rotwater through stone. He spoke of a relic lost to the gods—a pulsing crystal called the Heart of Ar-Saren, said to throb still in the ribcage of a petrified sky-titan above the jungle of Zal. A corpse-temple suspended in air, hidden for eons in the mists above the canopy, shunned by tribes who whisper of cursed dreams and sleepers who stir in stillness. Ar-Saren, they say, was no mere king, but a sorcerer who bent time and death itself to his will.
The bargain was struck before the breath of refusal could leave her throat. In exchange for Ana’s life, Thordis must climb into the dead god’s body—alone—and steal its black and beating heart. No map. No promise. Just her blades, her will, and the curse-laced winds that howl around the floating tomb. For Red Thordis, exile of the north and slayer of ten thousand dead, it is not the danger that stirs fear—but the question: what if the god is not dead at all?
Page 1: Panels 1–4
Above the steaming canopy of the Zal jungle floats a nightmare fossil: a god’s corpse, locked in mid-air by forgotten sorcery, swaddled in mist and strangled with parasitic vines. The temple, built into its stone-fleshed spine, stretches across its massive form—now more ruin than monument. Wind howls across the open surface, where jungle creepers dangle like ropes from heaven. Moss, orchids, and damp lichen coat its bones, but atop its cranium sits a yawning skull-gate—the mouth of the dead god—and a clan of beasts that guards it.
Page 2: Panels 5–7
Thordis spun on the balls of her feet, torch flaring in one hand, her scimitar hissing from its sheath in the other. She bared her teeth and shrieked like a beast possessed, the fire casting wild shadows across her face and the surrounding stones in the misty gloom. The towering ape-man reared back, uncertain now, and the flame's hiss made even its muscled chest flinch.
The brute stalked toward her, but each step met a counterstep—Thordis circling, snarling, the blade tip dancing. She matched its menace with a feral confidence that unnerved even this inhuman beast. The torch spat sparks as she feinted forward with a scream, and the male flinched, gave a great, grudging howl—and backed away into the vines.
The spell broke. The rest of the apemen scattered with hoots and cries, leaping into the jungle mist below. Thordis remained alone, breathing hard, watching their shadows vanish. But their cries still echoed far below—mocking, waiting—and before her yawned the god’s skull, dark and open like a mouth waiting to swallow her whole.
Page 3: Panels 8–11
The god's skull opened into a domed chamber of dust and echoes, where the breath of time clung like mold. Cracks in the petrified bone let in shafts of gray light, revealing broken pottery strewn across the floor—once offerings to Ar-Saren the sorcerer-king entombed within the cadaverous titan, now forgotten shards of some ancient devotion. Crumbling stairs climbed the curved walls to alcoves heavy with dust and urns, where brittle silence reigned. The air here was thick and dry, unnaturally so, and the sweat of the jungle evaporated from Thordis’s skin like a fever lifting.
She advanced slowly, the torch crackling in her fist, its light dancing over cracked stone and tarnished relics. A figure knelt in the gloom ahead—robed, motionless, bowed before an urn. For a moment, Thordis believed it a mummy left in reverence, some priest entombed mid-prayer. But then the figure moved.
It turned, revealing leathery skin stretched tight across a sunken face, its lips split with age and madness. A rasping voice oozed from the thing as it rose on all fours and lunged—chanting in a dead tongue that clawed at the mind. Thordis hissed a curse and stepped back fast, blade raised, torch flaring between them.
The creature did not halt. It skittered toward her, gaunt and relentless, its voice climbing in tone until the phrase became a shriek—one repeated over and over like a demand from a forgotten god. Thordis braced herself as the undead priest’s face loomed into hers, inches from the flame, whispering words she could not understand… but which chilled her to the bone.
Page 4: Panels 12–15
The priest’s rasping voice climbed into an unearthly crescendo, demanding something—an offering, a prayer, perhaps a sacred name Thordis would never speak. She gave none. With a snarl, she raised her blade and struck hard, the torch’s flare casting the thing’s face in molten orange just before her edge cracked against brittle flesh.
The blow should have split a mortal skull. It staggered instead, still chanting. Thordis howled and drove into it with a fury, hacking again and again, sword flashing, limbs flying, until the creature collapsed in a dry storm of bone-dust and shredded robes. Her breath tore ragged from her throat—her arms ached, and pain throbbed in her side where the thing’s claws had grazed her.
She spat and kicked the fragments into a corner before turning back to the urns. She pried a few open with the edge of her scimitar, revealing only the blackened crumbs of what might once have been food. Then her gaze froze—etched into the wall were crude carvings: small, hunched figures bowing before towering warriors in strange armor. The scene dragged at something buried deep—memories of her own people in the north, when dark-sailed invaders came with fire and oaths of dominion. They hadn’t bowed. The clans had answered steel with steel, howling into the blizzard, and sent the southern dogs fleeing back to their ships.
“Looks like these poor bastards bent the knee,” she muttered, spitting. “Should’ve learned to bite before they learned to bow.”
The floor dipped, descending into the petrified throat of the god. The torch guttered as foul air drifted up from below—wet, cloying, and wrong. Thordis paused, nostrils flared, as the reek of rot and something older than corpses curled up to meet her.
Page 5: Panels 16–19
Torch in hand, Thordis moved warily, nostrils twitching at the sour reek that curled up from the depths. She heard it now: chanting, low and rhythmic, a cadence spoken by many mouths in perfect unison far below. Her eyes narrowed. Whatever lived in the god’s belly was not praying to anything sane.
She tried to slow her pace, placing her feet toe-to-heel, stalking like a panther across ancient flagstones. But the grit betrayed her—each step rasped like steel across bone, and the tunnel seemed to drink in and echo every sound louder than the last. She froze, heart hammering, half-expecting the chant to pause or shift—but it continued undisturbed, steady as a heartbeat.
The air grew wet. Something viscous dripped from the ceiling and ran in greasy rivulets along the curved walls, burning slightly where it touched bare skin. The acidic stench thickened into something unmistakable. Thordis looked ahead and clenched her teeth. Was she walking into the beast’s stomach?
Page 6: Panels 20–24
The steps ended at a great landing where the air thickened to syrup and the walls fell away. Thordis stood in the belly of the god—its sanctum—a vast, vaulted space shaped like a ribcage of black stone and ivory bone. Light pierced down through unseen vents high above, casting skeletal beams upon the floor, which was marked by shallow pools of hissing green acid arranged in haunting geometric patterns. The heat pressed down like a furnace, and every breath stung her lungs.
At the center of the chamber rose a crystal sarcophagus, tall and gleaming, cradling a perfectly preserved corpse clad in gold-stitched robes: Ar-Saren himself, hands crossed in ceremonial repose. Six mummified priests stood around it, murmuring their eternal chant in perfect rhythm, blind to Thordis's presence. But something else had noticed.
A titanic figure detached itself from the shadows near the far wall. Clad in overlapping armor plates like the scales of a giant insect, it bore a mace the size of a tree trunk and a faceplate of solid bronze, expressionless and ancient. It moved with thunderous steps, each one shaking the sanctum floor. Beneath its cuirass, clockwork gears hissed and clicked with mechanical fury.
Thordis dropped her torch, letting it roll and gutter near a pool, and drew her second scimitar with a hiss of steel. “Come on, then,” she growled, backing into the narrow path between two acid pools, boots crunching on salt-slick stone. “Let’s get this over with!” The giant closed in with relentless pace, mace raised.
She lunged, blades flashing in a storm of motion, one swing after the other. But the curved edges clanged off its plated chest with the sound of steel striking an anvil. Pain surged up her arms. The guardian swung—and Thordis, too quick to think, brought her blade up to block. A terrible crash echoed as the mace connected, sending her scimitar flying, end over end, into the nearest pool of acid where it sizzled and vanished. Thordis staggered back, breath heaving, one blade left, a wall at her back. The automaton loomed above her, gears grinding, mace raised for the killing blow.
[Continued in Part 2 →]
