Tuesday 4 July 2023

Session 346 - Demon Blade Backstabs

Date: 27 June, 22 p.p.

Moon: Waxing Gibbous - Clean Face
Zenith: Vorn


New Backstory:
- Food was scarce in a famine-based LARP, and Julian was even-handed in sharing around what little they had. Everyone around you gets +1 HP when eating to heal.


Events:

--- Golem, Bronze
- We reconvene with the party in the Temple of Archaeopteryx, the Elven hero that once fatally took on an Apocalypse Dragon and had a clear love for putting souls into objects to turn them into magic items.
- They are in a room with curtains on each wall, both depicting a cool winged Flitting Gad taking on an army of electric ghosts and placing shackles upon a massive blue dragon.
- Phillipides Goath peeks behind one of the curtains and finds a secret room! A bag of gold is on the floor, and some acrid stench fills his nostrils.
- He lobs something at the bag and reveals that it's a trap - there are only a couple of coins in there and it's mostly filled with squirting acid. Ah.
- He retreats, which is fair enough honestly.
- Heading south, the party sees a statue standing ominously on a pedestal. It's a bronze man, looking more solid than metal lacework of last session's manikin statues, and a heat haze rises from its broad shoulders and big ominous brass sword. It turns, lifts its sword, and advances towards the light.
- A tremulous voice calls out for help from a room behind the golem, to the concern of all.
- Aximander emerges from Julian's body and binds the heat of two torches into a white-hot ball with his Elvish magic, then sends it at the metal man's chest! The chest collapses, molten brass pours from the wound, yet it keeps coming! Jojo avoids the worst of the damage from a strike of its massive sword.
- Sydney notices that it's avoiding damaging the curtains, and so Phillipides nicks the idea and cuts down one of them and throws it onto the metal man. It works! Faced with a choice between harming the curtains and harming the invaders, the brass robot shuts down.

--- Rebel Gad
- Investigating the voice, the party finds a Flitting Gad (being an Elf whose Heartspell is Feather-Fall) trapped behind metal bars, and scarred by the acid from a familiar trap. Sydney has his dancing time-rewinding clock with him, and offers healing and freedom to the Elf in exchange for information.
- It's a deal! She tells them what she knows about the Rebel Gads vs the Traitor Gads, to whit the Traitors are in league with the Red Elves from Mars and the Rebels are against them.
- She is freed, chucked into the clock, and rewound until she is healed. In thanks, she carves a symbol into Sydney's arm which will show them to be a a friend to the Rebels. Lovely! With that, she runs off because she doesn't want to push her luck.
- A quick survey of the route she left through reveals an exit, including a trapped door that shoots petrified centipedes. Duly noted.

--- Polarity
- They turn around and head deeper into the dungeon. It looks like the only way forward is via the hall with time-space anomalies that are, even now, pulling some poor Gad apart in slow motion. Sucks to be them.
- On the way, floating motes of light gather around the casters and grant them temporary mana! Jojo tries to Passwall through the floor, only to discover that it is not called Passfloor actually.
- Aximander, still controlling Julian's body, looks into the room at the end of the pull-apart gravity  corridor and finds a room where gravity is flipped! Fantastic!
- Looks like if you're not prepared for it, the gravity will invert every so often and drop you from ceiling to floor, this accomplished via a slowly spinning mask on one wall. Aximander is prepared though, and lands gracefully.
- He also grabs some coins from a burst acid-trapped bag, which was clearly just chucked in here willy nilly without the trappers knowing about the gravity effect.
- He jams something into the rotating wall-head to stop the gravity nonsense in the corridor, and hey presto! It's passable! Without these gravity whorls moving about you can just sort of walk around them.

--- Dithea
- Fiery motes gather around the party's weapons as they travel down the corridor, finally getting to the door that contains a tortured prisoner whose body is linked to the coins floating through the air elsewhere.
- Inside, they see said prisoner floating in the air. Her skin is a dull red. Three demon masks are arranged on a nearby wall, each of them with a hole for a gem to be placed on their foreheads. They have different personalities.
- After a bit of chat, it turns out that this red-skinned Elf was magically altered by her parents to make her closer to the "real" Elves - the Red Elves from Mars. She was herself the captain of the temple guards here, until she was caught nicking a sword that hates women and put in this torture chamber that punishes the greedy with the greed of others.
- She also tells them about the rest of the dungeon. Main temple is ahead, and they can always turn off to find a big egg full of snakes. Nobody is particularly excited about the egg.
- Tyler Lockheart turns up! Bursting through the door with his surfboard!
- They free Dithea and she walks off to escape this place... right into a gravity whorl. Mulligans are attempted and denied. Sydney tries ripping her out of the gravity whorl but rips off half her stomach and she dies inside the clock... which now has a taste for blood.

--- Sny Snid Snit Snave Sno Snee Sñakes 
- They move swiftly on, looking back apologetically to Sydney who is tearfully cleaning the blood out of the inside of the murder clock.
- There are battlecries and the ring of steel on steel ahead! They peek into the dungeon's largest room to see a winged woman in a circle of dead golems, slashing with a feather sword, reading death from a magical tome that destroys her foes.
- Everybody is smitten.
- Outside the room, down another corridor, there is a robot man with a couple of sick scythes who motions to Sydney after he sees their arm. Sydney goes to investigate and finds... the snake egg room! Snakes with corkscrew tails slither along the floor! Unfortunately, Sydney cannot speak Gad so can't talk to the metal man.
- Unperturbed, Sydney casts Speak With Animals snand snarts sneaking snin sñake snanguage.
- Sney sneak sñake snou sne snetal snan, snand snay snake snan snalliance!
- Back in the main hall, the cool winged woman has cut down all the other golems and entered... the treasure room!

--- Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal
- They bust in and find that the cool Elf lady is wearing some sort of invisible fabric over her nude body, wielding a sword that hates men, and wielding a bow with a sheep's head in the centre!
- Sydney unleashes their backstory - have someone make a romantic advance on you. The Elf lady is smitten and invites Sydney over to her side...
- Sydney stabs her in the back with an atrametal spear barely containing a black-fire fragment of a giant demon's soul! It's immediately fatal, and the Elf lady keels over with inky flames burning in her eyes.
- Just say no to boss battles I guess.
- In the room they find a ton of coinage with Archaeopteryx's face on it and many magic items. The cool Elf was wearing the Emperor's New Robes, holding the woman-hating blade Jackie the Ripper, and wielding the Bow of the Ram. All are duly looted.
- Also here - the Vaunted Prize which can be traded for anything, a filigreed glass jar containing Soul River Water which captures a soul on death (currently contains a confused old man's soul), and a Wing Suit which allows you to glide on real wings (currently a pigeon's). Sick stuff.
- The metal man with the scythes pokes his head around the door and realised that it's already over.

--- Sudden But Unexpected Betrayal
- They have a look around the main room, seeing that there's a fountain on one side and a cool furnace that blatantly attaches souls to items to make them magical. Much discussion is had about what soul they need to grab to make the ultimate magic item, counterposed by the argument that "we never go back to anywhere" so it's pointless to speculate.
- Aximander sits in the cool throne at the side of the room and... can fly! Holy shit! it will wear off in a bit but holy shit!
- They walk out with all the loot and... Sydney gets slashed with a scythe! It's the Robo Dude!
- Turns out he is here to stop people nicking shit, which on balance does make sense.
- Aximander can fucking fly though, and he zips back to bury his black-fire atrametal knife into the robot's back, pumping stored demon soul energy deep into its brassy body. The robot burns... but doesn't die immediately.
- Jojo leaps into the fray with a gambit, critting the robot as the robot crits her back, demolishing each other with a mighty Devastator! Only Jojo survives.
- At the last second Sydney whips the Soul River Jar onto the bot's forehead and captures its soul! A single brass coin spins in the clear water.
- Exhausted, the party stops to grab the robot man's cool scythes. They suck souls, apparently.
- Sydney casts their Safe Space spell and everyone piles into the door that they summoned, arriving in a pocket dimension consisting of a cramped London flat. For now, it's more than enough.

Total: 8000 exp


OOC:
-
Chronicler and Treasurer: Carter
- Expedition Leader: George
- Vanguard: Ollie


Foes:
- A bronze golem (100 exp)
- A cool Elf (500 exp)
- A metal man (100 exp)
Total: 700 exp


Treasure:
-
460gp, 11000sp, 350cp (34035 exp)
- Bow of the Ram
- Emperor's New Cloak
- Wing Suit
- Soul River Jar
- Vaunted Prize
- Woman-Hating Sword
Total: 34035 exp



Exp Totals:

- Carter / Sydney, Level 6 Magic-User: 65759 (Level up at 72000)
- Ollie / Jojo Fullbeard, Level 6 Muscle Wizard: 42775 (Level up at 72000)
Level Up! +1d4 HP! +1 Mana! +Free spell! +1 to Saves! +Backstory!
- James G / Tyler Lockheart, Level 6 Specialist: 35101 (Level up at 48000)
- George / Poison Phil, Level 5 Fighter: 28175 (Level up at 32000)
- Kitty / Julian & Aximander, Level 5 Languid Wastrel: 19844 (Level up at 36000)
Level Up! +1d6 HP! +1 Mana! +Free Spell! +1 to Saves! +Backstory!








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