Realm of Yolmi Session Report: Beetle Meat for Breakfast

18 Aug, 2026

Players

• ID#80082 Footman Pickle (Soldier)
• ID#717 Assistant Jemel, Johnathan (Scientist)
• ID#1 Fool Long-Smith, Olivia (Fly-catcher)

Summary

Aftermath

Three adventurers awake from cryo-sleep without a memory of how they got there. The walls are made of smooth metallic chrome, with occasional bursts of tangled pipes that have punctured through the walls. The awakened adventurers note their ID numbers and name patches, and introductions are made.

They gather up their belongings and head south, cracking a Quik-lite torch. Its dull yellow glow illuminates five dog-scorpion-like creatures with furry ears who run up to them, grunting.

Olivia gives them some cheese-wiz as the group discovers a hyper-realistic sculpture of an obsidian hand and a hallway east that ends in a heavy red marble door.

The creatures continue to pester, and Olivia pictures the cheese-wiz can to distract the creatures who attempt to open it with their three arms. Jonathan inspects the obsidian hand, finding a green gem embedded in its ring finger nail. The creatures return, as Footman Pickle throws another ration, and the five creatures greedily scarf down.

The group is followed by the creatures, as they open the red marble door. They see a railing. A 90’ drop on either side. Treasure pile seen below; freezing cold air swirls.

Pickle rappels down a rope, but finds it too short, but treasure down below and more cold. They clamber back up and tie more of John’s rope as they used to secure the door. The creatures grunt and pound the door.

The group descends, finding treasure and a few gems. Underneath the treasure pile yields frost-rimed corpses of 6” flies. Olivia doesn’t know these types of flies, but takes one to further research.

The red marble door bursts open, the creatures attempting to find more food. John hears one grunting in barked English, “Where are they?” which unsettles the group.

The group climbs back up, and Olivia elects to take a peek, but cannot see the creatures as their Quik-lite torch doesn’t illuminate that far; however, they do hear slaping. Olivia throws the fly corpse and hears more sounds of eating.

John and Pickle climb up from the latched rope, and John asks the creatures if they are hungry and if they have been in this place long. The creatures slink back, one seemingly able to crudely speak, “Yes. Hungry. Flies south. Eat you (pointing to John) yesterday”.

After some back and forth, Olivia shows the creatures how to climb down the rope for more fly food. The creatures clamber down, and the group takes the rope and ties off the red marble door, escaping the ravenous creatures.

They return the obsidian hand, turning it, and find a passageway opens in the way southward. Another strange, 9-legged bird statue faces them in a western alcove as chewing sounds can be heard down an eastern passage that has an archway of copper and yellow jade.

The group prepares to face whatever lies to the east. Pickle draws their long knife and bulletproof shield while Olivia readies her chain whip. John hides in the back, attempting to find a weapon to no avail.
The group enters the room; its walls are tangles of pipes. Loud chewing sounds emerge from a pitted floor full of large dirt piles. The room smells of yeast. Pickle is the first to inspect, seeing a beetle-like creature with ten eyes and huge pincers clamber up from the hole as it attacks. Pickle’s long knife finds purchase, while Olivia’s chain cannot. John clambers, looking for a weapon amongst the dirt piles.

The huge pincers of the half-man, half-beetle creature find a weak point in Pickle, chomping down on his shoulder, dropping him unconscious. The beetle misses; Olivia dumps a pint of kerosene on the creature as they shout to John to light the creature on fire. John bravely dashes toward the beetle, setting it ablaze as it screams, unable to extinguish the flame¹ dying in a burned wreck.

John dispenses a medicinal Big Roll’em cigarette to Pickle as the group takes stock of what occurred. They are low on food. Olivia and John examine the creature, while Pickle finds treasure amongst the dirt piles. John uses Pickle’s long knife to excise the beetle-meat portions of the creature², with Olivia claiming one of its pincers as a weapon³.

The group heads further southward, encountering two more statues, one of a tree, the other a mushroom. Both hyper-realistic and made of obsidian. At the base of both statues, piles of coins and defensive armor, mecho suits, and bulletproof shields. Thinking this treasure trapped, each inspects the areas, finding none after a turn.

Olivia and Pickle doff their old armor, adorning themselves in the improved defensive technology as John collects the coinage. They continue southward, finding a labyrinth, smelling vaguely of yeast; a faint buzzing is heard deeper within.

The group plunges forward, peaking upon each side and decides east, then south. A buzzing swarm passes by as nine 6” flies struggle behind, seemingly curious. Olivia bars them entry by using her 10’x10’ fly paper, and sees they are the same 6” flies from before. Pickle breaks off from the group, heading east again, triggering a pressure plate that yields a wall that splits the party. Pickle bangs on the wall and finds a hidden pad that opens it.

Olivia and John dash across, and the group continues east, then north as more of these 6” flies appear, first following them, then pestering, then finally attacking. One fly manages to bite Olivia, who feels a poison course through her as her heart explodes. Pickle slices one in twain, while John “kung-fu kicks for science,” splattering the fly across the wall. The two flies cannot penetrate the armor of Footman Pickle, and one fly bites John; their heart similarly explodes with the fly's poison.

Footman Pickle drops to their knees, yelling at the sky demanding answers!

END SESSION

Treasure Found:

• 200 galiks
• 1300 chromniks
• 500 rupniks
• 3 gems (100r, 250r, 1000r)
• 3 jewels (3000r, 4000r, 6000r)
• Mecho Suit (-6)
• Mecho Suit (-4)
• Bulletproof Shield (-5)
• Bulletproof Shield (-3)

Foes Encountered:

• 5 Chimpo
• 1 Valu
• 11 Brogs

Rumors:

• N/A

Deaths:

• Assistant Jemel, Johnathan (Scientist) died via Brog bite
• Fool Long-Smith, Olivia (Fly-catcher) died via Brog bite

XP Awarded:

• 82xp from violence⁴
• 15,064 rupniks in treasure⁵
  • 15,146 xp total

Notes & Questions

• The pregens can be found here
• Ongoing reaction rolls helped further flesh out encounters, as through sheer luck, a lot of encounters escalated over time and forced players to think horizontally about how to deal with the strange creatures. Again, some creature entries indicate that creatures act specific ways during an encounter to begin with, so these “rolling mien tables” every three turns continually evolve over the encounter, which is a nice touch.
• Adventurers constantly looked for secret doors. RoY has no such x-in-6 chance, so I busted out the classic heuristic of Time, Tools, Training.
• The overall vibe of character classes and creatures was much talked about post-session
  • The players (like myself) thought the percentage chances of the class features were punishingly low. I was being generous with the usage of Fly Charm/Research/Identify Tech class abilities⁶. These Yolmi classes should have more IMPACT in my view.
  • The Scientist and Soldier gun class synergy was talked about⁷
  • They viewed the Scientists as essentially the wizards of Yolmi, incredibly squishy and without any offensive capabilities, beyond assisting Soldiers reload their weapon until a Type V Offensive Tech weapon is found.
  • The lore implications for creatures generated much discussion (some flies can seemingly talk, i.e., Skelts beg and attempt to reason for food, Fuules being described as “quite stupid”, the nature of the “undead” creatures, why are Paccols enslaving humans and for what?)
  • Are creatures' hit probabilities affected by any carried weapons? (example: Bandits carry chains, so do their hit probabilities increase to reflect the weapon?)
  • XP leveling values felt generally quite low across the board for the three classes. If the total XP⁸ were split equally amongst the party, thats 5,048xp per player. High enough to get the Soldier to 4HD and the Flycatcher/Scientist to hit 3HD each. For comparison's sake, XP to level 2 in RoY is about 1000xp less than their ODnD counterpart⁹.
• Shy Owl has also noted that H2H combat and where it fits within initiative is an outlier in the breadth of RoY’s combat matrices
  • My thinking is such that H2H initiative would “fit inside” a larger combat encounter, so one group engaged in long-range combat would be handled separately while another group would be engaged in H2H¹⁰.
  • All this said, I am unsure of why then RoY gives hit probabilities and damage to melee weapons in the first place, if within H2H combat holding a weapon grants a +3 modifier to the initiative roll and damage dealt is based on LVL + Strength¹¹. It stands to ask why give hit probabilities and specific damage to melee weapons at all then?
  • Likely the simpler answer, rather than over-complicate it, is to just use H2H for combats with Men-type creatures without weapons like Gamblers, Mafioso, Nomads, Politicians, et al¹². Although I’m sure one could simply use the H2H combat matrix for all close-range melee combat encounters?
• I ended up adding treasure to the Valu (man-beetle) room; I had forgotten that I added treasure beyond that room, so treasure was a bit more liberally given, but since it was a one-shot, being more generous with players is fine in my estimation.
• A player seemed to compare it to AD&D in some fashion. Having not read AD&D, I’m not sure where the comparison lies.

#yolmi