Monday 14 August 2017

Session 148 - Devour the Flesh

A new journey embarked upon! With a number of new characters and a number of new deaths!

Since we basically teleported to a dungeon in order to give the newbie a taste of classic dungeoncrawling, I didn't get a chance to dump a bunch of lore garbage and general info. Something I shall now rectify by dumping lore garbage upon your doorstep.

Behold some things.
(This may also involve some minor retcons)

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Finally, check out this glorious map of the Barrows.
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The dungeon entrance is at Barrow 12. The other barrows are in various states, but you'll have to walk closer to check them out.
Each hex is 50 metres across, so that should give you some idea of the sheer scale of the dungeon beneath!


Alright, that's enough back-of-house admin for now. On with the things!
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- Ollie shows us what Lulu looks like after 50 years of slaughtering demons - a badass grandma.
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- I doodle Jack's skinless suicide

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- Charles draws "
Zena and Nyx keep guard while the others loot an undisturbed mound in the Barrowmaze"

Oh yea, one last thing. The florid description of James' new Elf.
Canny Childe: Diminutive starry-eyed archaics of cherubic seeming. Like unto a child of ten or eleven years in aspect but with a wry glance and a knowingness beyond their apparent youth, the Canny parasitise human dwellings where they can creep about seeking the glyphs and sigils of arcane witchery and abuse the trust they elicit in their hosts to worm their way into vaults of secret gramarye.
It's coming up on the full moon soon where Elvish powers start to wane, so be prepared for diminished power in the coming days.


Session 148 - Devour the Flesh

Campaign Date:
Friday, 20 August, 1660
Moon Phase: First Quarter
Zodiac: Leo

New Characters:- Dr Maybe, a self-proclaimed Chaosmancer who can't not chaos burst his spells
- Jack, Rake's long-lost daughter with a similar predilection towards touching stuff
- Mugg, a peat cutter turned Fighter who turned up just in time to eat a dude
- Gimlass the Brave, a Dwarven huntress who left just in time to not eat a dude
- Chiffon, artistic Canny Childe Elf obsessed with avante-garde fashion
New Backstory:
- Jack Hacker once had to use her shirt to hold a door closed and trap something inside. (Once per session, something you've plausibly trapped won't escape this session)
- Nix Neckbiter scared strangers away from her tribe's camp by being SUPER FIERCE (+1 Strength)

Enemies Defeated:- 4 tree-ghouls (100 exp)
- 4 skeletons (40 exp)
Total: 140 exp

Treasure and Equipment:
- 4 ghoul skins (200 exp)
- Envenomed ghoul claws
- A vial of deadly poison
- 1066sp, 300cp (1096 exp)
Total: 1296 exp

Exploration:- Many miles of travel (300 exp)
- 2 random encounters (100 exp)
- First party to enter Necropolis (500 exp)
- First party to enter the Bone Spire of Corpulus Thrall (100 exp)
- First party to enter the Barrowmaze (100 exp)
- Explored 4 dungeon rooms (80 exp)
Total: 1180 exp

Events:
- Things are getting weird in Moondin. Booming roars from the woods, flying man-shapes seen against the full moon, wood-masked Elves darting through the trees in great numbers, and magic is getting unreliable across the board. (50 exp)
- A good time to leave, then! The party have a last chat with the much improved Castigate Pox, who seems to have taken on a little of Rake's personality during his time as his armour. (50 exp)
- The party head out, meeting new arrivals Dr Maybe and Chiffon on the road out of town. (50 exp)
- Also in tow, POWERLAD's wife Bertha who has spent a lot of time in Moondin's library. She's brought a couple of books with her, with a view to becoming a professional medical illustrator. (50 exp)
- Elsewhere, Rake's successor Jack Hacker makes her way towards Necropolis by way of Fortress-City Fate. She doesn't go into Fate, but does get a look at the new transit line into the city on her way past. (50 exp)
- On the road between Moondin and Necropolis, the see a merchant and his guards under attack by whooping tree-ghouls aka stinky monkeys aka "Stunkies". (50 exp)
- Zena, who happened to be marching ahead at the time, is the first to notice the situation! She sprints forward to help the beleaguered guards as their boss crawls into his own cart. (50 exp)
- She cries out that she's here to help, the guards are relieved and emboldened! (50 exp)
- The ghouls jump around raking the air with their yellowed fluid-dripping claws, but despite being in their home forest terrain they do fuck all (50 exp)
- Zena catches one mid-air as it leaps and cleaves through into another which screams in anger and pain! (50 exp)
- It rakes the air with its claws in retaliation and manages to hit Zena! It's just a scratch, but numbness begins to set in around the wound. (50 exp)
- By this point, the rest of the party has caught up! Most stack up at a distance with crossbows and rune-beams, but POWERLAD rushes in! (50 exp)
- One of the guards is in trouble so POWERLAD goes into overdrive, smashing his fist through a tree and sending the stake-like splinters smashing into two of the ghouls! (50 exp)
- They die instantly, earning Bertha's love and admiration all over again. (50 exp)
-  Dr Maybe casts Reduce... but intentionally fucks up the casting. Chaos Burst! The ghoul he was casting at is reduced to a speck of dust... but only in Dr Maybe's mind. (50 exp)
- Zena pushes through the pain and drives her polearm through the last ghoul's chest, embedding it into the wagon. She passes out from the toxin as yellow bile sprays out around her. (50 exp)
- POWERLAD, realising that his trunk-punch has left a massive semicircular breach in the tree, holds it up "casually". (50 exp)
- Chiffon skins the ghouls in order to make some trendy clothing at some point down the line. It's gross, and difficult due to the goopy yellow paralysis blood. (50 exp)
- Reality shifts and it turns out the merchant and guards are new party members who just showed up! (50 exp)
- Mugg the Fighter and Gimlass the barely-clothed Dwarf are here now. Mugg has never played before, Gimlass is played by a player long thought lost. They join the party! How convenient! (50 exp)
- The party reach Necropolis, which was called Drist fifty years ago. It's Necromancer central, complete with a spire of skeletons reaching towards the sky in the centre. (50 exp)
- Jack Hacker is here! She flogs some Necromantic grimoires to a passer-by who buys them gladly but suspiciously. (50 exp)
- Rumours are sought, but not much new is learnt. There's a lot of stuff going down, basically. (50 exp)
- Corpulus Thrall, the Necromancer-General in charge of this town, is sought out also. As friends of Castigate Pox and saviours of Moondin, it's easy to get an audience! (50 exp)
- The party enter the skeletal spire and are led by shadowy figures to the inner sanctum. As they enter, they see a flock of crows swirling to create the impression of a man. (50 exp)
- The crows fly away, leaving a throne of bone which has the skin of an obese man draped over it. (50 exp)
- The skin-man's mouth opens... and he burbles out some words of welcome before slithering along the floor and slopping into an empty chair. (50 exp)
- He tells the party about Cardinal Scream, the series of birds who the party just saw leave, whose mission is to obtain more dead from the Barrowmaze for the war against the demons and mouldmen. (50 exp)
- Chiffon finds her way into a trendy post-goth party and expresses her solid and deeply-held opinions about hipster music she's only just found out about. (50 exp)
- Jack decides she needs a letter of recommendation from Corpulus Thrall, but he burbles and laughs because he has no bones and can't hold a pen. (50 exp)
- Jack thinks of a solution. As the rest of the party leaves, she sticks her entire arm into Corpulus Thrall's skin-sack body, filling out his arm like a glove. It slides in easily and Corpulus moans in ecstasy. (50 exp)
- Without pen or paper to hand, and considering anything she wrote would be in her handwriting anyway, she quickly withdraws her arm. Her skin slides easily off her muscles, leaving her whole arm skinned! She screams in rage and horror! (50 exp)
- In despair she throws herself upon her own sword, leaving Corpulus to harvest the rest of her skin. Jack dies like her father, killed by touching something everyone said was dangerous for no obvious reason (50 exp)
- In the interests of letting the new arrival experience a dungeon, we fast-travel to the Barrow Moor. A place of bog and mist and the unquiet Dead. There's a big dungeon here! (50 exp)
- After some minor confusion from yours truly, the party find themselves at a circle of standing stones surrounding a hole into the depths of the Barrowmaze. A rusty metal tripod and sodden rope allow an easy descent into the vaulted room below. (50 exp)
- Ignatius Darke, infected with Tom's rage and ennui, suddenly appears and sprints naked into the dungeon! Some passing tomb robbers are scared by this apparition and attack, but Ignatius is not slowed and keeps going until his presumed death at the hands of some undead creature or other. (50 exp)
- Nonplussed, the rest of the party approach the tomb robbers and ask them to give them the lowdown on this place. They do! (See stuff at the top of the email for stuff you should have known going in). (50 exp)
- The tomb robbers leave on good terms, heading to the entrance, while the party sets to trying to find something unlooted down here. (50 exp)
- Among several options is a bricked-up doorway. Smashing it is left to Mugg, who loudly bangs up her shovel while she breaks it down. (50 exp)
- Inside, a big squat toad statue... and many unlooted hexagonal burial alcoves! Score! (50 exp)
- Suspecting magic, Dr Maybe spell-swaps to Detect Magic in order to scan the room. He fucks up the swap intentionally... and That Which Should Not Be occurs. (50 exp)
- To quote, "
Everything goes dark, you lose sight of the walls, your companions are around you with shining white eyes, they rend and tear at your flesh, stuffing their mouths, not even chewing in their haste to fill their bellies, your attempts to fight back pass through them like a shadow.
Your companions find themselves sitting in a circle around the place where you last stood with distended bellies and blood soaked hands and mouths. The only remaining trace of the caster is a wax-sealed skull sitting in their midst." (50 exp)
- Holy shit. We ceremoniously tear his character sheet apart with our mouths. (50 exp)
- On the plus side, the toad statue vomits forth a bunch of treasure. Hooray! (50 exp)
- Time is spent searching the burial alcoves and the riches are taken. Double hooray! (50 exp)
- They head back in the direction of the entrance and check out one of the first doors. Nix heads in... and is trapped by a falling stone wall! (50 exp)
- The pile of bones in the corner harryhausen's into a skeleton, while three more burst out of the other door. Nix is trapped! (50 exp)
- It's a classic "I'm not locked in here with you, you're locked in here with me!" situation. She smashes a skeleton with bare fists, before a crit from a second sends her into her very first Barbarian Rage! (50 exp)
- It's a massacre. On the other side of the wall, the party manages to bash a small hole. Mugg chucks a torch in to help the Barbarian see, but at the sight of the carnage the party pragmatically decide to chill on the non-Barbarian side of the wall. (50 exp)
- It sounds like someone's destroying a xylophone in there, but eventually the noises and growling stop. The party knock down the remaining wall to find Nix surrounded by bone dust. (50 exp)
- Loot in hand, and Barbarian saved, the group head up and out of the Barrowmaze. A successful foray! (50 exp)
Total: 2500 exp

Misc:
- Absolutely Disgusting bonus (50 exp)
- Balls to the Wall 
bonus (50 exp)
- Brutal Kill bonus (50 exp)
- Classic Charles bonus (50 exp)
- Diplomancy bonus (50 exp)
- Fame bonus (50 exp)
- I Immediately Regret This Decision bonus (50 exp)
- Internecine Strife bonus (50 exp)
- Leave a Man Behind bonus (50 exp)
- Ludicrous Gore bonus (50 exp)
- Noblebright bonus (50 exp)
- Pundemonium bonus (50 exp)
- Split the Party bonus (50 exp)
- Spoopy bonus (50 exp)
- Tomb Raider bonus (50 exp)
- Vore bonus (50 exp)
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong bonus (50 exp)
- What the Fuck Guys bonus (50 exp)
- Why Did You Touch That bonus (50 exp)
Total: 1950 exp

Party Roles and Individual Exp:
- Remembrancer 
(Kitty / POWERLAD - 100 exp)
- Caller (James / Chiffon - 100 exp)
- Mapper (Fraser / Nix - 100 exp)
- Treasurer (Charles / Zena - 100 exp)- Quartermaster (Henry / Dr Maybe - 100 exp)
- Guard (Tom / Ignatius - 100 exp)
- Tracker (Henry / Dr Maybe - 100 exp)- Art Attack bonus (Ollie, Charles - 100 exp)
- An Hero bonus (Tom - 200 exp)
- Amusing Death bonus (Henry - 500 exp)
- Lonely Death bonus (Tom - 500 exp)
- Teamkilled bonus (Henry - 500 exp)
- Death's Witness bonus (All but Ignatius - 100 exp)
- Death's Witness??? bonus (All who ate Dr Maybe - 100 exp)

Active Businesses:
- Bone Alone. Wild. 300sp. (Zena's Stake: 200sp, Carrie's Stake: 100sp)

Death Toll and Injuries:
- Jack Hacker, stuck her whole arm into the mouth of a man who was a boneless sack of skin. Lost all her skin.- Ignatius Darke, ran screaming into the dead-haunted halls of the Barrowmaze never to be seen again.
- Dr Maybe, devoured by his colleagues after a spell went horribly awry.
Exp Totals:
- Fraser / Nix Neckbiter, Level 6 Barbarian: 34236 (Level up at 64000)
- Kitty / POWERLAD!, Level 5 Muscle Wizard: 32171 (Level up at 36000)
- Charles / Zena, Level 5 Fighter: 27006 (Level up at 32000)
- Tom / Jack Hacker, Level 5 Specialist: 14907 (Level up at 24000)
*DECEASED*
- Tom / Ignatius Darke, Level 3 Necromancer: 4552 (Level up at 9000)*DECEASED*
- Henry / Dr Maybe, Level 2 Magic-User: 2303 (Level up at 4500)
*DECEASED*
- James / Chiffon, Level 1 Elf (Canny Childe): 1184 (Level up at 3000)
- Eleanor / Mugg, Level 1 Fighter: 1084 (Level up at 2000)
- Kyle / Gimlass the Brave, Level 1 Dwarf: 884 (Level up at 2200)
- Tom / Tom's Next Character: +1684 exp
- Henry / Henry's Next Character: +2084 exp

Absent or Retired:- Ollie / Tremendo Picante, Level 2 Ratman: 2654 (Level up at 3000)
- Andy / Carrie Meleste, 
Level 5 Cleric: 14651 (Level up at 28000)
- James / Raaf van Held, Level 4 Fighter: 14838 (Level up at 16000)

- Henry / Henry's Next Character: +2303 exp

- Eglė / Bob, Level 1 Dwarf: 434 (Level up at 2200)

- Ollie / Andromeda Spiderbite, 
Level 5 Muscle Wizard: 19872 (Level up at 36000)
Will / Cecil Fulbright, Level 5 Cleric (Termaxian): 15063 (Level up at 28000)
- Tom / Insanity Mammoth, Level 3 Barbarian: 5192 (Level up at 8000)
- James / William Fox-Shitt, Level 3 Cleric (Zeanist): 4571 (Level up at 7000)

2 comments:

  1. Wow. The second hacker didn't live up to the first, or for very long.

    ReplyDelete