Sessio 465 - Bait and Switch

 Date: 29 September 1626

Zenith: The Lady

Moon Phase: Waning Gibbous

Moon Face: Dragon Face (Tidelocked)

New Backstory:

- Everything changed for Mother Swan when she got on the boat to Loegria. She raided and pillaged for years, started a dynasty, and now she's here! Once per session, undo and retake an action, including all associated rolls.

Events:

--- Save the Children

- We've got a small party today. Mother Swan, Mother Flotsam, and Masvani-i-Manavi have decided to go down the spooky hole and see if they can save the children who were sent down there and allegedly mutated into horrors beyond mortal ken.

- They're in single file, lit only by Mother Flotsam's lantern, and every last one is a squishy wizard of some description (other than mother Flotsam who is of course not a witch and just old).
- The passages are tight. They reach a four-way intersection and head left, soon hearing voices from behind a barricade of broken furniture to the left.

--- She's Turned the Weans Against Us

- Upon realising that the party are real people and "not children", they are allowed through the shoulder-high barricade and into a group made up of two guys in guard uniforms. Apparently there were four of them originally, but one was taken by the children and the other was sadly sacrificed for the greater good and/or greater food.

- They say that the children "ate the pearls" and become "dark emotionally". There's a grub somewhere. They've been down here for 34 days.

- Mother Swan says she'll get them to the surface for the measly price of all their stuff - 32 iron rations, 2 casks of ale, and a spell that creates a magic Dwarf for the also measly price of sacrificing a friend.

--- The Promised Weans

- They head back out into the corridor, heading for the very close exit... and are assaulted immediately by children! They are imbued with dark magicks, able to smooth stone like wet clay, and awfish to behold.

- Masvani's lead zombie-centipede is attacked and shoved backwards, sinking partway into the wall behind. It's now blocking the way, stuck fast.
- A cavalcade of attacks ensue. Mother Flotsam throws her cat into the fray to create a Blade Storm, Masvani fires his crossbow, Mother Swan casts Paranoia on a chile and makes it distrust every friend around it.

- The kids retreat, splitting up, and vanishing into the tight passages of the complex.

--- I'm Here for the Trap

- They recover, take a breath, talk about how the retreating children might easily ambush them at the exit, and continue on.

- Good lord, it's an ambush!

- This time there are two extra kids who swim through stone. Given that the passages are so tight, this is the one thing we didn't want to happen.

- Mother Flotsam is pulled through the wall by a swimmer kid. He's trying to close the wall over her, drawing her into a stone cyst. She yells, "close your ears!" and casts Babbling Curse on the kid!

- It's enough of a distraction to give them the chance they need! Everyone escapes, other than the poor Zombie-Centipede who has to be abandoned and presumably devoured by awful shadow children.

--- Things Have Progressed Considerably

- They reach the surface and finally get to ask the rescued guards what the hell these Pearls even are.
- Turns out that eating a pearl or two gives you immunity to the mermaid pheremones that are endemic on the islands. Eat too many and you become grub-like, but a measured dose means the frog monster Deep Ones can't get you while you're out fishing in the lonely mists.

- Sounds like getting these pearls is valuable! They skip around the town, only to discover that Gump is all but abandoned. The oil merchant's shop has been a recent victim of fire (although Mother Swan does claim an untouched jar of pig grease from the wreckage) and the Blacksmith is locked up tight.

- They head to the Town Hall again, site of the cultists from recently, and see that they've ascended to a new level of consciousness...

- Spiderweb-threads dangle from their necks, they all speak as one... they are cultists of Jonathon Toast now!

- The party back out, smash the pig grease at the entrance, set it alight, flee.

--- They Went Thataway

- After the first couple of cultists are consumed by fire, another jumps out and looks around in consternation. A quick "let's get back to the ship, fellas!" echoing between the houses sends the hive mind running in completely the wrong direction down towards the beach. Safe!

- The party have decided to go down to the big pearl-laying grub, capture it, and sell its pearls for sweet sweet obols. This requires going back into the depths, so the guards they rescued decide that they'll just stay in their office thank you very much.

--- Do You Know What Grub Is

- Back down to the depths, being veeewwy veeewwy quiet...

- They take the right branch and reach a steel door that's been eaten away by acid, leaving a small crawlspace. The grubs which ate the door are still crawling around there, so Masvani stuffs one into a vial.
- This angers the grubs.

- What follows results is a combat where the grubs roll REALLY well and the players roll not so well. Every burst of grub-vomit degrades armour. Masvani ends up in the tattered remains of his skeleton armour, covered in bug juice, slip-sliding through the hole under the steel door. The others quietly make mocking comments which Masvani pretends not to hear.

--- Mother Grubber

- They follow after Masvani who has opened the steel door from the inside, down a stone passage, and into a chamber where a HUGE grub is suspended from the ceiling by great chains. Great pincers rhythmically squeeze the grub into peristaltic motion. Behind it's caudal end, a bucket collects the big gobstopper-sized pearls which are constantly extruded.

- Masvani grabs the bucket of slurm-pearls and is delighted! 4000 obols of the things!

- Mother Flotsam casts Fairytale Polymoprh and turns the queen into a little earthworm. The great bulk of the Mother Grub shlorps down into a tiny form... but she Saves vs Chaos to define her own terms... and because she is a Royal she can emerge back into her true form as soon as she plops to the stone floor!

- The Mother Grub is nevertheless grateful to be free from her restraints. As her grub minions form up around her, Mother Flotsam gets a mental concept of "thank you, you may leave now" from the grub's primitive mind.

--- Burn

- They swiftly leave, and when they're back to the surface of the village Mother Swan uses her years of experience in looting and/or pillaging to burn the place to the ground!
- The village is alight, the buildings crumbling under the flame. Satisfied, they head for the shore.

--- Bait and Switch

- Standing atop the cliffs, they look down towards Masvani's skeleton-powered ship which is anchored just off the shore.
- There are a bunch of cultists on it, several more swimming around and climbing up the ladder to get on.

- Turns out saying "hey they went thataway!" and sending a whole contingent of hive-mind fishermen towards an unattended ship has unexpected consequences.

Live Masvani Reaction

Total: 11000 exp

Treasures Claimed:

- 4000 obols in Grub Pearls (4000 exp)

- 32 Iron Rations (320 exp)

- 2 casks of ale (1000 exp)

- Dwarf Sacrifice Ritual spell

Total: 5320 exp

Enemies Defeated:

- Several horrible children (100 exp)

- A couple of stone-swimming children (200 exp)

- A pile of grubs (100 exp)

- The Grub Mother (100 exp)

Total: 500 exp

OOC:

- Carter the Ship's Logamancer and Quartermaster (200 exp/lvl)
- Kitty the Captain (100 exp/lvl)

- George the Marine (100 exp/lvl)

Exp Totals:

- Carter / Masvani-I-Manavi, Level 6 Necromancer: 61836 (Level up at 72000)

- Kitty / Mother Flotsam, Level 6 Not a Witch: 47916 (Level up at 72000)

- George / Mother Swan, Level 4 Magic-User: 17157 (Level up at 18000)