Tuesday 18 June 2024

Session 375 - Djinn in a Tin

Date: 28 May

Moon: Waning Gibbous
Zenith: Eris


New Characters:
- Rudolphus Von, a failed Shaman of Light, now an expert archivist.

New Backstory:
- Grog Greedy, everyone's favourite long-foreheaded caveman, was born under an omen of DOOOM! It was a comet that heralded the ice age, freezing Grogg into the ice for millenia. When another character dies, gain +1HD of health for the rest of the session.
- Julian did something reckless and impressive - painting a cursed painting! While it very much impressed his fellow artists, it was ultimately his undoing, bringing Aximander into his body! We haven't seen Julian in a while... +1 to Dex score.
- Hagan received great advice from his mentor Andromeda the Vampire - never dig too greedily or too deep. Alas, he understood too late, since the party is now about as deep as you can get... +1 to Wis score.


Events:

--- Guardian Confusion
- It's the night of the New Moon and even this far down below the Earth, Aximander feels its pull. He's at full power and high level, his skin is a deep dark red and his long tongue twists from his distensible jaws.
- The others find this perfectly normal, it's just how you can tell when it's a full moon. Also perfectly normal - meeting a new character in the depths of a megadungeon and thinking that they're trustworthy! Meet Rudolphus, researcher!
- In front of them is the entrance to the final depth of Dwimmermount - an enormous geode big enough to contain a city! A wide boulevard goes off into the distance, the grand buildings around it all angular and strange in a variety of styles and materials.




- There are also a couple of huge statues of Dwarves guarding the entrance, which (naturally) come alive when approached! The magical among the party can feel them draining Chaos from the air around them.
- Hagan approaches, he can understand Terran. It's an archaic proto-Dwarvish. Rudolphus can too! He's down here to study it after all!
- Hagan reveals his credentials - a Dwarf with a Brooch of the Terrans. But confusingly he has the stamp of Terms Termax on his hand! The statues are confused until he reveals the tattoo of the Old Miner's inverted hammer on his chest! They let him through.
- The others blag their way through too, confusing the statues until they insist on taking a break to confer. In the mean time, the party runs deeper!

--- Lose Your Mind
- Hagan feels a pull towards a flat-topped building ahead, but Sydney can't help but check out a nearby building. Inside the floor is a sort of hydroponic setup for crystals. There's also an ominous thrumming from a spreading crack in the wall... and visible brain matter?




- A tendril-hand emerges from the crack and a giant brain on legs made from twined threads emerges! It looks like it shouldn't fit, yet it does! Sydney backtracks, leaving Rudolphus to get pounced on by the big brain monster!
- Grogg pulls him out of the way just in time, and a big spiraling hole opens in the middle of the brain. A search-beam seeks out a target - zoning in on Aximander's forehead! The Elf leaps out of the firing line, and the disappointed brain beast scuttles back into the building, mewling.
- Sydney asks Razylymvaer, the dragon-father who now lives in their mind, what the hell that was! The dragon answers that he doesn't know its name, but it knows that Halflings evolved from them!
- The party is struck by the DEEP LORE and realises those brain-eating Halflings they faced in the dungeon levels above were probably an evolutionary stage between brain monster and modern Halflings!

--- The Revelation of Hagan
- Hagan feels the tugging of his beard leading them on. The brain monster stalks the party from the windows of the buildings they pass, but doesn't attack again.
- They reach the flat-roofed building. Up close it is clearly fortified, all the windows are on higher floors. Nevertheless, Hagan knocks.
- The door soon opens and lo! It is a Terran who names himself Vidaro! Hagan reveals his confusing clash of marks, the Old Miner tattoo and the Terms Termax stamp, and explains what happened in the upper level.
- Explanations aside, the Terrans refuse to let an impure Dwarf to see their God. Dwarves are a debased version of Terrans who inter-bred with humans, sullying their bloodline forever. The mechanics of how this inter-species lovemaking even occurred results in some debate amongst the party.
- Hagan is nearly stymied... but luckily Aximander is at full Elf ebb and uses his tricks to Fairy Godmother the Dwarf into a thick-limbed double-wide Terran! The priests are taken aback, he was merely hiding his true form!

--- The Old Miner Speaks!
- The Terran priests take the newly thickened Hagan through the hall of the building, and into a circular room at the heart of the place. Within, amongst ticking machinery, is a great cylindrical can containing a God.
- Vidaro directs Hagan to kneel on a metal prayer mat before the God, and to his awe the Old Miner speaks into his mind!
- The Old Miner celebrates Hagan's faith, but insults his debased body. It was the Old Miner who made the Terrans, and they betrayed him by sullying their souls with humans. However, for the faithful alone, he will place their mind into a Terran body. It must be a blank, either dead or new-formed, but He has the power to move minds!
- The Old Miner reveals that He is a composite mind, formed of all the Terrans who ascended in an earlier aeon in a far-flung solar system. Alas, after billions of years the Great Beast gestating in their planet finally cracked their world like an egg, throwing the Old Miner's geode mind into the cosmos until it finally hit a cooling Earth, infecting the newborn planet with Shub-Niggurath yet allowing the Old Miner to survive.
- Millenia later the geode ran out of material, and so He drilled a borehole out to allow his newly crafted Terrans to acquire more. That did not go great, all things considered.
- All He wants is to survive. He is not much bothered by the nonsense on the surface and the skies, having learnt His lesson about meddling outside of his borders.
- Hagan, filled with incredible new knowledge, gives the signal to Sydney.



--- You Wouldn't Steal a God
- Sydney steps out of the room, the other party members step in, and Sydney casts Sydney's Stolen Sanctum! The entire room is vanished and attached to their extradimensional flat!
- Those inside the room see it shiver and warp! Water floods in as the floor drops 10'! The Old Miner yells in confusion!
- Everyone else drops into the water, suddenly wet and heavy!
- Worse, some sort of underwater gremlins have spawned below! They swim out from a cave in the dark water and come in to attack!
- Vidaro, the Terran priest who was also in the room, draws a glyph on the air before him and creates an air bubble! He's now on the actual floor, underwater in a big old bubble.
- The others join the battle, and to everyone's surprise and amazement Rudolpho actually stops everything before it's even begun!
- Rudolpho speaks Scoblin too, it transpires, and he persuades the Scoblins to simmer down until everyone can work out just what happened here. Since they themselves just appeared, the Scoblins agree and swim back to their lair for now.

--- We Cannot Get Out
- Sydney, back in the geode, has missed all this. There are, however, a number of angry Terran priests behind him wondering what just happened to their God!
- They bug out, casting Sydney's Safe Space to warp back to the flat. There's one small issue.. the doorway only goes one way. You can enter the flat, but you cannot leave.
- Over in the Old Miner's newly shifted room, Hagan asks the Old Miner what the deal is here. He also lets the God briefly take his mind so the Old Miner gets filled in on what just happened.
- It transpires that the Geode is a reverse prison - it can be escaped by magical means, but cannot be entered. Long story short, they're stuck in the flat because the front door doesn't work any more.
- There's also the matter of a second Terran priest who came in when Sydney cast the spell to get back into their flat. Hagan smooths that out and leaves her to watch reruns of Friends, sitting next to a very charred corpse that has an explanation but little relevance to the current recap.
- The thing is, the problem remains. The spell ends when everyone's left the flat... but they can't leave. What to do?

--- Oh Hi Aximander
- Meanwhile, Aximander is in Neo-Spacedin. This is interesting because he was just in the extradimensional flat that nobody could leave.
- The new moon is high overhead and he's looking at a woman wearing broken bits of PS4 as jewellery. She's getting a lukewarm Hawaiian pizza out of the replicator inside the broken spaceship at the heart of the town.
- The woman turns and says "ah Aximander! Thank you! Do you have that crystal of infinite possibilities I asked for?"
- Aximander passes the crystal, and the woman hands him a bowl of pineapple chunks that have been picked off replicator pizza.
- Ahah! It was a jape! An Elf jape! The woman whisks off her image and reveals that he is Gifflewim! What a tricker! And naturally, the same sort of Languid Wastrel Elf as Aximander.
- They barter. Aximander wants Gifflewim to take one of these beads to a deep level of Dwimmermount. Gifflewim says he'll do it for a favour in kind. Dubious, but acceptable. They shake hands, stare up at the moon, and head off to do more dark deals in the dead of night.

--- Where Were You Aximander??
- In the morning, Aximander leaps gracefully through a window with lukewarm Hawaiian pizza and some beers, plus a roomba.
- The others are incredibly impressed by Elf bullshit.
- He explains the bead, crush this one in his hand and you teleport to that one that Gifflewim placed last night. Simple!
- Sydney takes the bead and crushes it, vanishing. Minutes later the front door to the flat opens. It worked! They're back on a lower level of Dwimmermount! What's more, they're surprisingly close to the Prison of Terms Termax that they were so worried about!

Total: 9000exp


Treasures:
- The Old Miner, now ensconced in Sydney's flat.
Total: Priceless and thus expereinceless

Enemies Defeated:
- Stone Golems, confuddled (2000 exp)
- A bunch of Scoblins (100 exp)
Total: 2100 exp



Exp Totals:
- Carter / Sydney, Level 8 Magic-User: 195202 (Level up at 288000)
- Kitty / Julian & Aximander, Level 7 Languid Wastrel: 107978 (Level up at 144000)
- George / Hagen the Heretic, Level 7 Dwarf: 83650 (Level up at 128000)
- Charles / Grogg Greedy, Level 6 Inheritor: 39520 (Level up at 72000)
- Tim / Rudolphus Von, Level 2 Specialist: 2320 (Level up at 3500)
Level Up! +1d6 HP! +2 Skill Points! +1 to Saves! +Backstory!

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