Session 339 - The Session Where Shub-Wizardwrath didnt kill anyone!

 Date: 18April, 22 p.p.

Moon: Waxing Gibbous - Clean Face

Zenith: Dispater

Events:

--- Travelling toward damnation

- The party draws towards the final doom, drawn onwards by the will to find a final enemy.

- They move through a room that contains the entrails of Shub-Niggurath, but studded with red orbs.
- Turns out they're explosive!
- Sydney uses a gravity rune to attract an explosive orb towards himself, and it's fine?
- He puts the explosive orb into his slime-familiar, very much trusting the "familiars cannot die" literature.
- Grumblebelch, coming to a fork in the corridors, rolls his space cop friend PC Borbly-Worbly into potential danger. The cop crystal rolls back due to a very slight uphill gradient.
- There is a mysterious ticking noise at the next fork, which our heroes immediately go towards.

--- Clocks be Clocking

- There are so many grandfather clocks in here! There's a a hole where the party's big clock could go, but they refuse to insert it.

- Our party clock their future selves leaving as they enter. Time shenanigans baby.
- They leave as they enter, not bothering with this time nonsense.

--- Ahhh I get it
- The next room has a big backwards G on an altar, several worshipping snake guys, and a huge effigy of Shub-Niggurath with a wizard inside it.
- "Ah fuck, it's Gifflewim" spake Zarathustra.

--- Ratfink Babylon

- Instead of going directly to the boss room, our heroes do the thing where you go down an obvious side road in the hopes of finding a treasure chest or something.

- They find a detective Ratman called Ratfink Babylon who has pigeons who love him instead of rats who love him. He doesn't know the word for pigeons so he calls the "harbingers".

- Grumblebelch bums a cigarrtte.

- The party moves on towards the boss room, to the eventual chagrin of our hosts.

--- The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny

- Our heroes enter the boss battle zone.
- The mechanisms below open up, revealing a long fall into the jungles miles below.
- Across from them is a pulsing mass of Shub-Niggurath, with a wizard's head screaming in the middle of it.
- It's Gifflewim! He says that he tried to cast Purge Cosmic Horror and he got the Purge/Merge wording horribly wrong.

- To get to the enemy you have to scurry across little islands of machinery connected by wiry bridges of shub-stuff. Gifflewim-faced frog monsters hop between the floating islands. It's giving proper boss battle vibes!

-Celebus sends his zombies crawling across the Shub-vines towards Shub-Wizardwrath. They'll get there one day!

--- Attack!
- Swan and Sydney have friendly red dragons. One is in a necklace, the other is a cat. They fling them forth like Ash Ketchum and the dragons happily fly down and away :I

- Grumblebelch notices that the middle island has an amber tomb containing Gimbelwang's body. Interesting?
- Sydney rapidly draws a Take Mass rune and uses it to jump across the area faster!

- Jojo tries to chuck a cursed gold spear at the big bad... and misses. It falls down the hole and, out of sight and mind, hits a squirrel who turns into a pig.

- Gimblewang pulses out a madness attack which only affects Swan, who immediately murders one of Celebus' zombies. Celebus briefly mourns.

- The madness also hits Grumblebelch and his possessor PC Borbly-Worbly. PC Borbly admits that he's a crooked cop, Grumblebelch admits that he preferred being a pig. These facts are apparently equivalent.

- The Gimble-frogs keep attacking, until they cant... because they're dead.

--- Ghost-Dimension

- At this point the party discover that touching Gimblewang's amber coffin sends them to the Ghost Dimension, a whole other realm where magic is more important than their physicality.
- We have some early "oh fucks!" until the wizards realise that each turn they have to burn out a spell OR gain mana. As a result, the "oh fucks" continue but with more knowledge of the consequences.

---A Thousand Cuts

- Little by little, they kill the big bad in the ghost dimension AND in the real world. 

- Jojo is nearly killed when she's forced to flash-cast a spell but she's got a backstory which means she can't die

-Shub-Niguratth dies, eventually,over two realities

Foes devastated:

- A final enemy (1500 exp)

Treasure claimed (none afaik)

Continuing existence (somehow)

Exp:

- George / Swan the Swift, Level 7 Barbarian: 126160 (Level up at 128000)

- Kitty / Dorian "Ditto" DeMone, Level 7 Inheritor: 103894 (Level up at 144000)

- Carter / Sydney, Level 6 Magic-User: 47682 (Level up at 72000)

- Ollie / Jojo Fullbeard, Level 5 Muscle Wizard: 24426 (Level up at 36000)

- Tom / Grumblebelch, Level 5 Dwarf: 18277 (Level up at 32000)

Level up! +1d10 HP! +1 Saves! +Lorebond! +Backstory!

Session 338 - The Session Before Shub-Wizardwrath Killed Everyone (TBD)

Date: 28 February, 22 p.p.

Moon: Clean Gibbous

Zenith: Eris

New Backstory:

- Jojo was born under an omen of hope - namely her father's death! Once ever, save someone from something that would have killed them.

- Sydney learnt the horrible falsity of reality from a dying cultist. +1 Wisdom

Events:

--- Aliens?!

- The party, rather large today, enter the final zone before the big boss they know as Shub-Wizardwrath. The machinery in the walls and floor is stopped and gunked up. A river of the Cruor flows through a channel splitting the room in two.
- There are bodies. Two huge gorilla-like beings with alien faces, and one creature that looks like a childhood pet was melded with Shub-Niggurath and given a load of tentacles and chainsaw limbs. All of them are dead. Footprints lead off from the far side of the channel and down a corridor...

- Celebus tears the chainsaw limbs from the body and reanimates them as biomechanical weapons! Sick!
- Grumblebelch pokes the stepping stones across the channel. It looks like they'll bounce you into the air if you step on them!
- Yea nah, not messing with those things OR the thing that killed all these dead monsters. The party sets off in the other direction, smelling dry ice and hearing some sort of loud electronic music...

--- Chewmeister69

- They come to a room filled with fog and tall mechanical pillars like trees! There's a desk with a spotty teenager behind it, but he's got no arms. He asks the party if they're here to challenge Chewmeister69 - a legendary hunter who got to top rank in a shooter and then was reborn from the Cruor into the real world.

- Attempts are made to appeal to Chewmeister's humanity and/or greed, but to no avail.

- Nobody wants to fight this pro gamer so they abandon the attempt and decide to go hunt some aliens.

- Given that the stepping stones seem sketchy, Jojo instead punches a wall open with a Passwall Punch and the party go through!

--- Bottles and Teeth

- The room beyond is full of bottles, some containing paint. Somebody has painted a big mural of a skull encrusted with gems and many figures praising it. That somebody is still there, but very dead.

- Jojo, to quote, "blacks up" with some vantablack paint. Celebus grabs some more paint of various colours.

- Dorian extendo-arms the body over, and they see that the painter clawed away at their face to paint directly on their skull. Very grim.

- The next area is full of teeth! Like a zen garden raked into spiral patterns, and an altar in the very centre of the space...

- Celebus sends a skeleton to grab the thing on the altar, and brings back a cloak of teeth! Weird.
- Sydney puts it on and all his teeth become molars. He feels that if he eats a tooth, he can gain some short term protection for the price of some tooth decay.

--- Chainsaw Cuddles

- They move on, and see a corridor speckled with autumn leaves and another with the humid air of a jungle. They choose jungle!
- There are real trees here, and lots of thick ground cover.
- Grumblebelch climbs a tree and sees something through the mist... a living one of those chainsaw-limbed monsters!

- He swings towards it from a vine, flailing frantically, and it nearly swipes him with its chainsaw arm! He swings back, tossing his own zombie chainsaw limb at it! It misses the monster, but the living chainsaw does manage to cut down a tree!

- Sydney considers Agent Orange'ing the jungle with Blight, but once again decides against it. Grumblebelch, up the tree again, acts as a spotter for Celebus who fires his crossbow in the general direction of the monster!
- Jojo slips into the shadows and sneaks towards it... and nearly runs into a second monster! It's quietly climbing the tree towards Grumblebelch, waiting to pounce...

- Celebus nearly gets killed by a piston-based alien-style inner mouth while the others rush to defend him! He drags himself back behind his rearguard of zombies.

- Sydney gets the kill on one of them, draining its soul into his atrametal blade and making it crumble to charcoal. Cool!
- The other monster, who is currently on fire and poisoned due to a bunch of flaming swords and a jagermeister-based poison concoction, flees for its life.

--- PC Borbly Worbly

- A post-battle scrounge reveals some bananas, 3000 obols-worth of gems, an effigy of Space Jesus who looks concerningly similar to Galaxy Johnson, and a glowing blue gem that flashes red from within.

- Grumblebelch grabs the glowing gem... and a voice echoes in his mind! It's a space cop who was hunting down Galaxy Johnson, but was defeated and now he's here!
- Grumblebelch puts the soul gem on his head where it fuses to his skull, creating a classic police flasher. They're buddy cops now! Two pigs together at last!

- Everyone's in pretty bad shape, so they rest up in a dead end. They use their chainsaws to create a tree barricade and stay very quiet...
- A huge skull encrusted with gems floats by, but other than that they're ok!

- Celebus cooks "Celebus' Nut Surprise Delight Flambe", containing nuts and berries and banana and salted butter. It's good!

- Dorian puts the leftovers in Tupper's Ware for later.

--- Stained Glass

- They head out after a long sleep, going through the now much less jungley jungle and into the next area, which is a cathedral??? With stained glass windows??? - Sydney rightly points out that it's weird that light is coming in through the windows, seeing as they're inside Fortress-City Fate and all.

- It transpires that the light from the windows stains whatever it touches. PC Borbly Worbly gets a colourful makeover! - Celebus wants to see what's behind the windows, so shatters a pane with a crossbow bolt. Behind, it's space! The air starts rushing out of the room! - They run, but first offer the copper a free ride back into space. He replies that he's going to help them for this one last job... - They choose between the sound of kids playing and a smell like death. Death it is!

- It's a whole ceiling of bodies hanging from nooses, absolutely writhing with rot grubs. The bodies start to lower! - Everybody sprints through, which is the right thing to do because behind them the bodies hit the ground and burst open! Rot grubs everywhere! Yea fuck that, say the party, and keep going. --- Wizard Despair

- They come to a large space with a ziggurat on one side! There's a wizard up there, seemingly half-tentacle! He cackles and begins to cast a spell, while the buglike monsters on either side of him open their pearlescent wings!

- Grumblebelch nuts him with a cursed gold bar.

- The wizard rubs his head, having been cursed into a bout of magical depression. Fellgorp the Worshipper is his name, and you might as well have his spellbook because fuck it.

- The party leave in the direction of Shub-Wizardwrath, leaving Fellgorp to be comforted by his insectoid friends...

Total: 8000 exp

Treasures Liberated:

- A bag of gems (3000 exp) - Tooth Robe

- Bananas, berries, and nuts (20 exp)

- Various paints - Space Jesus effigy (5000 exp) - The Soul Gem of PC Borbly Worbly

Total: 8020 exp

Foes Overcome:

- 2 chainsaw monsters (3000 exp)
- A wizard (1000 exp)
Total: 4000 exp

OOC:

Carter the Chronicler (100 exp)
George the Expedition leader (100 exp)

Charles the Chef & Cartographer (200 exp)
Ollie the Quartermaster (100 exp)

Tom the Vanguard (100 exp)

Exp Totals:

- George / Swan the Swift, Level 7 Barbarian: 125493 (Level up at 128000)

- Kitty / Dorian "Ditto" DeMone, Level 7 Inheritor: 103227 (Level up at 144000)

- Charles / Celebus Uppytus, Level 7 Necromancer: 83471 (Level up at 144000)

- Carter / Sydney, Level 6 Magic-User: 47015 (Level up at 72000)

- Ollie / Jojo Fullbeard, Level 5 Muscle Wizard: 23759 (Level up at 36000)

- Tom / Grumblebelch, Level 5 Dwarf: 17610 (Level up at 32000)

Level up! +1d10 HP! +Lorebond! +Backstory!

Session 337 - A Cat is a Little Dragon

Date: 21 February, 22 p.p.

Moon: Crescent - Dragonwane

Zenith: The Allfather

Events:

--- Sailing the AT-RA-MEN-TAL-CRUOOOOORRRR

- We join the party at the edge of a pitch-black sea, deep in the mechanical brass bowels of Fortress-City Fate, on the lowest level of the dungeon. The edge of the lake is littered with coffins, and the group is fixing some of them together into a makeshift boat.
- Sydney looks out into the darkness, lit by the dripping rain of glowing red from above. The red liquid is juice of the cracked imp-pods somewhere above. Out there are a few islands, big chunks of broken machinery thrust up from under the slick blackness. On one there are bones around a golden glow, on another the hint of smoke and huge wings, and the last is the end of a cylindrical up-thrust piston. Somewhere there is the sound of metal on metal, like a blacksmith.

- Dorian catches a drop of red fluid on his tongue and tastes a memory! His Inheritor body of living demon clay has more in common with the black cruor than the others. He dips a finger into the cruor and it comes back pitch black... and his finger starts moving on its own...

- Swan's background in shipbuilding helps a bit, and soon they're off on their coffin-ship across the dark liquid. They row past the bone island, seeing that the golden glow is coming from a tomb in the centre of the island. The bones twitch and shiver in a non-existent wind, and when Dorian tries to streeetch his stretchable arm across the bones begin to reanimate!
- Maybe not then. Instead they aim for the big piston pillar. There are handholds leading upwards. Maybe later. For now, there's an opposite shore to investigate!

--- Dragons, Real

- On the broken metal of the shore they find some crushed coffins and small red scales rubbed up against the walls. Dorian investigates, skin shimmering translucent, and sees a puff of flame then another! It's not one but two red dragons! These are real dragons too, not the rune-dragons faced on previous occasions, and they seem rather under fed.

- The dragons think they hear something, so investigate the noise. Dorian shimmies around past them towards their pile of treasure, classic style. There's 1800 obolsworth of gems amongst the coins, so Dorian grabs those first! They can always come back for the rest...

- On the metal shoreline, Swan and Sydney are suddenly face to face with the dragons! The dragons are dead hungry, so it looks like this is the end of the line for these brave heroes...
- But do not fear! Sydney's backstory of unwarranted romantic advances activates, and the female dragon suddenly finds him rather fascinating, to the chagrin of the male dragon. They aren't a breeding pair or anything but, you know, they'd been spending so much time together you know, maybe there was something there? You know?
- They have a little argument and we discover that they're actually stuck down here. Like many of the other creatures on the lowest levels, they were in one of Fate's simulations until they suddenly found themselves born back into the real world. Glitch? Disaster? Who knows?
- Sydney offers a solution - since the dragons are too big to leave this chamber, wouldn't it be better if they were a bit smaller? He's got this Cat Ring that turns the wearer into a cat, you see, and the Metameat Necklace will allow one of the dragons to shlorp into it like a pokeball.

- The dragons agree, seeing as how leaving this place is probably better than a meagre meal of tiny people.

- The party have a quick root around in the treasure, finding such magical stuff as a shit book by Ayn Rand which bores people to sleep, Tupper's Ware which keeps food fresh, and a magnet bomb!

- As they're leaving, Cat-Dragon on Sydney's shoulder and Necklace-Dragon around Swan's neck, Swan himself gets hit by some of the swirling magic that's latent in this area! He's hit by Grotesque Healing which will heal at the cost of Charisma... so he carefully does not get hurt for the next little while.
- They pass by a crack or window that looks out over the black lake. Dorian extendo-arms his finger towards the pillar, which is just about within his extendo-reach. There's a pool of greyish liquid at the top, and he dips his blackened possessed finger in there. It comes back wet and tries to flick the liquid into people's mouths. Hmm.

--- Ring-A-Dong-Dillo

- They pass by a chamber containing... a tree! It's growing up through the battered machinery of the ground as if flung up from below, and it looks like it has a face...
- Swan slings a rock at it, and it makes an "oof" face but pretends it didn't. On its branches are acorns, some black some gold.

- We digress into the Bombadil Zone for quite some time.
- Dorian extendo-reaches towards an acorn and plucks it... which the tree does not like at all! It slashes at Dorian, growing rapidly to create a new smaller tree near his feet, which in turn grows more slashing branches!
- Swan and Dorian unsheathe their flaming swords and attack! The tree, despite its enormous attack bonus, keeps missing! It roars when the fire sears its branches, and Sydney suddenly realises that he speaks Tree!
- It doesn't go well at first, but after a big crit from Dorian the tree yields and begs for mercy. It reveals that the black acorns are infected with Cruor, and so will kill when eaten. The gold acorns grow more of his kind, little children.

- Swan is intrigued. Between the dragons and the enchanted forest of living trees and Grumblebelch the Pig-Dwarf, maybe the Wheatlands project can in fact turn this fucked up planet into a generic fantasy world!

- There are also a bunch of dead squirrels that either got killed or died from eating black acorns. The party scoop them into a bag, plus a bag of gold acorns and another bag of black acorns.

--- Troll Bridge

- They continue on, coming to a bridge. There is hushed talk from under the bridge, and a sneaky investigation reveals a little gang of Unravelled dudes living under there.
- Dorian sneaks across the bridge, but there's a weird K-THNK as he crosses the middle. Looks like it's a trapped bridge, and he's lucky he didn't set it off! The trolls heard that though, so come up to investigate.
- Seeing nothing, they decide to play some dice on the bridge. Sydney sends out his slime familiar to steal the dice and hide under the bridge... and it works!
- One of the trolls chases the slime, while the others look around to see if there are any other culprits! Swan starts intoning from the Boring Book while the trolls act aggressive! It's too late for them though, since Dorian has extendo-armed his hand to the lever that arms the bridge. It swings open on its hinges, sending the trolls into the Cruor below... alas.
- The others rope across the river as the Unravelled crawl back out of the cruor and onto land. It looks like they've gained new personalities, to the dismay of the one Unravelled who didn't fall in. He'll have to teach them dice all over again!

- Sydney attempts to trade with the new souls, but they don't really know what they have to trade and they certainly don't want ride tickets from the christmas special. The party moves on.

--- The Auto-Blacksmith

- They come to a big circular area which overlooks the Cruor. There's a big steam hammer thing which is banging away at an anvil. An array of metals are arranged on shelves on the walls, and below them they can see one of the islands - the misty one. From here they can see wyverns, and wyvern eggs!

- They test the anvil and discover that it basically swaps the metal in whatever you put in there. Steel swords to brass, silver bullets to iron, whatever to whatever really. There's also what is soon dubbed Atrametal - a black metal imbued with Cruor that drains the victim's Charisma until the Atrametal has absorbed their whole personality.

- Sydney binds his self-writing memoir in Atrametal and swaps over some of the bullets for his gun for various cold iron, silver and atrametal options. The flame spear is similarly enhanced!

--- Egg Heist!

- They could just leave but... wyvern eggs would also be great for the Wheatlands Generification Project.

- The following occurs:

- 1. Spiderclimb cast on Swan.
- 2. Swan climbs across the ceiling.

- 3. Dorian dangles down, invisible, to the island

- 4. Attach advanced Sydney's-blob-familiar-on-hand technology to Dorian.

- 5. Egg

- 6. Escape!
- 7. If attacked, stink bomb! If not, nice one!

- Dorian absolutely burns Meat Points on his invisibility, attempting to grab every last egg. When all seems lost, he chugs a few vials of Darga blood and refreshes his MP, allowing him to grab all but one egg...

- The last egg is too tempting. Luckily Sydney's got his Supreme Thief spell ready and casts it through the familiar, replacing the last egg with a perfect illusory copy!
- By the time the wyverns realise the theft, the heist crew is gone! Dorian dragged up to the ceiling by Swan's brawny arms! Wyvern eggs acquired!

Total: 7000 exp

Valuables Liberated:

- 10 wyvern eggs (5000 exp)

- Dragon scales
- Dragonscalified Armour

- Various metallurgic transformations to weaponry
- Gold and Silver Bars (25000 exp)

- 10 Squirrel Meat (10 exp)

- Bag of Black Acorns (Save or 1d10 Trauma)

- Bag of Golden Acorns (Grow into sentient acorn trees)

- 1800 obols in loose gems (1800 exp)

- Magnet Bomb (Pulls all metal into blast zone 30')

- Tupper's Ware (Keeps 5 rations fresh forever)
- Codex of Utter Tedium (Puts you to sleep after Wisdom rounds of reading or listening)

Total: 31810 exp

Foes Defeated:

- An angry tree, forced into surrender (1250 exp)

- 6 Unravelled, dunked in cruor (600 exp)

Total: 1850 exp

OOC:

- Chronicler, Cartographer & Paymaster: Carter (300 exp)
- Expedition Leader & Chef: Kitty (200 exp)

- Vanguard & Triage: George (200 exp)

Exp Totals:

- George / Swan the Swift, Level 7 Barbarian: 122156 (Level up at 128000)

- Kitty / Dorian "Ditto" DeMone, Level 7 Inheritor: 99890 (Level up at 144000)

- Carter / Sydney, Level 6 Magic-User: 43678 (Level up at 72000)

Level Up! +1d4 HP! +2 to Saves! +1 Mana! +Free Spell! +Backstory!

Session 336 - Dethorning Gifflewim

Date: 14 February, 22 p.p.

Moon: Waxing Gibbous - Dragon Face

Zenith: The Lady

New Backstory:
- Sydney was kissed by a cultist follower, who really shouldn't have given the power dynamics at play here! Once per session, cause someone to make a romantic advance on you.

Events:

--- The Gifflewim Gambit

- Down in the lowest level of the dungeons beneath Fate, surrounded by the slime-choked machinery that makes up the walls and corridors, Swan the Swift has been thinking deeply about the Grandfather Clock that affects the flow of time.
- He tells Sydney and Dorian his plan... to summon Gifflewim, chuck him in the clock, and reverse time until the Idea of Thorns is gone from his memories!

- It's a long shot, but it just might work! Especially since Swan the Swift has his anti-magic Globus Crucigor which protects you from magical effects as long as you hold it with both hands.
- They chant Gifflewim's name and he appears over the big G symbol they drew on the ground to add to the atmosphere! It's just his head at first, and he remembers them from the Christmas Special from a few weeks back!

- There follow many "quick cover your ears!" moments as Gifflewim tries to persuade them of the Idea of Thorns' ideology, countered by Swan's newly espoused doctrine of the Idea of Wheat!

- The conversation starts to stagnate, so Dorian engages the second phase of the plan - a Stun Cigarette! He blows the smoke into Gifflewim's face, and while the Elf reels Swan grabs at Gifflewim's robes with his teeth and drags him to the clock! They slam the door and immediately start spinning the clockface backwards and backwards as the oilslick blackness of Gifflewim's skin pulses and fades and surges and reforms and his green right hand turns back to red!

- Gifflewim collapses out from the grandfather clock and basically has no idea what just happened! More importantly, the Idea of Thorns has been purged! The last thing he remembers is someone flipping a coin, then suddenly he was inside a clock...

--- Trade?
- He is, however, bang up for a classic magic item trade!
- Sydney trades his Shield of International Day Of for a ring that turns him into a cat when worn!
- Dorian trades an electric toothbrush for a big tube of toothpaste.

- Sydney trades a holographic bridge projector for a flask of Mindflayer Juice that lets you eat brains to learn their information.
- Dorian trades a Hand of Glory for a golden Greed Demon mask that makes those nearby become cowardly.

- Swan wants to learn to Cleave but Gifflewim denies him on metagame grounds... but he could always get a Mentor.

- With that Gifflewim disappears in a puff of fragrance to go find some "memory orbs". Hmmm.

--- Next Stop: Train Derailment

- With a surprisingly huge campaign development finally sorted, it's time to keep going and maybe deal with this Shub-Wizardwrath they've been looking for!
- They follow train noises until they find a derailed London Underground train stuffed with dead commuters.

- They loot the train, finding several Rolexes, a somewhat out of place Holy Symbol of the Dead God which is made of silver set around a cracked bone, some rare inks, and a Spellbook! Very good for Sydney!

- An ill wind blows through the area, and Chaotic beings are forced to Save vs Chaos! Sydney passes, gaining a temporary extra Mana, but poor Dorian fails and has one of his powers activated against his will. Sydney casts Unseen Servant out of his new spellbook to carry their stuff at least.

--- G-G-G-Ghosts!

- They've got a branching choice between spooky ghost noises and a smell of petrol. Ghosts it is!
- The room is decked out like a sort of island colony. Spooky ghosts walk around following their former lives, and there is a big tree in the middle with something written on it...
- Dorian attempts to talk, is met with ghostly hissing, and attempts violence with his flaming sword. It is at this point that the fear hits him... the fear of Level Drain.
- They run in terror, both narratively and metanarratively, from the ghosts. Swan glimpses the words on the tree as they book it out of there - "CROATOAN".

--- Skull Cats

- Petrol smell it is, then. They go by a tar pit that neeeaarly reaches the path. They see pawprints in the tar.
- Dorian engages his Gelatinous Cube Stealth and sneaks past the pit. The big cat skull of a huge skeletal feline pokes up over the tar and watches the rest of the party. Then another... and another.

- Sydney flash-casts Spiderclimb and it goes wrong as a Chaos Burst! Happily it simply copies the spell onto everyone else in the area, that single person being Swan the Swift!
- Convenient indeed! They walk over the ceiling, avoiding the big cats, and slip away after Dorian.

--- Tadpoles and Cats
- Given choices between purple mist, more spooky ghost noises, and a sound like babies drowning, they obviously go for the babies.

- It's shallow pools with baby-headed giant tadpoles squirming around in them! One dies of bravery as it tries to bite the Greed-masked Dorian, the others simply sob.

- The next area has whip-cracking sounds in a sandy area. Giant scorpions crack their tails and burrow through sand! The party go not that way, come to a dead end... and there is a roar as they roll an encounter!
- Dorian's backstory ability activates and the encounter is with... an ordinary housecat?
- Honestly incredible that the Cat Ring was gained this session. Swan and Dorian schlorp inside-out into Metameat Necklaces, Sydney puts them on, then he puts on the ring and shrinks down to a housecat!

- It turns out that this newly met cat used to be a human, but he was playing in a cat-based world in the Styxtrix and something happened that made him get born into the real world as his character. He's got no clue what happened to the instances of his mind that are still in the data core, or even if they survived!
- In any case, he can take the party to the mighty Lord Mousebane that is his ruler. They pass through the scorpion room without incident, past some distorted people, and into the Realm of Lord Mousebane!
- There are like 30 cats in here along with Lord Mousebane himself who is a cat of noble bearing. Unlike the rest of the cats he wasn't once a human playing Cat Simulator, but a real cat awakened by the power of Shub-Wizardwrath! He left, and decided to create a little feline fiefdom down here because these human-cats clearly needed guidance and sympathy.

--- The Atramental Cruor
- Lord Mousebane offers to guide them as far as he can, so they set out on a remarkably safe journey through a turnstile, a potionarium, and to the shores of a black lake.

- They grab some random potions from the Potionarium as they go. They look... variable. But who knows?

- They reach the shores of the black lake and see a soft rain of imp matrix pod innards dribbling into a great pool of inky black. The shore is littered with coffins, because apparently putting a corpse into the blackness grants it new life.
- Dorian is fascinated by the cruor, seeing as its so similar yet different to his own clay body. He feels it drawing him towards it somehow...
- We end the session with the party constructing a crude vessel from bodged-together coffins. Next week perhaps they shall cross the threshold.

Total: 8000 exp

Foes Defeated:

- Gifflewim Himself, kinda! (1500 exp)

Total: 1500 exp

Valuables Liberated:

- Catform Ring

- Toothpaste

- Mindflayer Juice

- Greed Demon Mask (500 exp)
- 3 gold Rolexes (300 exp)
- Silver Holy Symbol of the Dead God

- Rare inks and parchments halve the cost of Spell Research

- Spellbook

Total: 800 exp

OOC:

Expedition Leader - George (100 exp)

Vanguard and Chef - Kitty (200 exp)

Paymaster and Chronicler - Carter (200 exp)

Exp Totals:

- George / Swan the Swift, Level 7 Barbarian: 111736 (Level up at 128000)

- Kitty / Dorian "Ditto" DeMone, Level 7 Inheritor: 89470 (Level up at 144000)

- Carter / Sydney, Level 5 Magic-User: 33158 (Level up at 36000)

Session 335 - The Case of the Greedy Pig

Date: 31 January, 23 p.p.

Moon: Waxing Gibbous - Clean Face
Zenith: The Dead God

New Backstory:

- Grumblebelch was a drummer in a Dwarven band! +1 Music

- Sydney swore never to bring life into the world... but broke that promise when he summoned forth his Familiar! +2 to your first Attack, Save and/or Skill Check each session.

Events:

--- Cancer Defeated
- The party are on the lowest level of the Brasshell deep inside Fortress-City Fate. The machinery here is twisted, pulsing, slimy. Very much broken and unmoving. In the room itself, moving around and through the pulsing slimy pillars, prowls the Cancer Monster that the Unravelled priest pointed out before leaving our intrepid adventurers here.
- Celebus greases up a skeleton with possibly-rancid butter and send it slipping out towards the creature. It attacks!
- With the monster distracted for just a moment, the party runs into the room which Iskander had previously scried into via potion and see the very gold that he saw!
- Grumblebelch sees the slimy altar, piles of gold bars stamped with twisting runes, horrible statue of a bloated tentacular entity with a man's face... and immediately grabs a gold bar.
- His body morphs and wobbles and collapses and reforms until... he has turned into a pig!

- The pig desultorily wanders out of the room, thoughts of suicide playing through his mind.

- Celebus orders a skeleton to grab another... and it's kind of fine! The gold bar is glued to its hands by magical force! Celebus realises that oh yes... he now has a skeleton with a curse attack!

- He sends the skeleton out to attack the cancer beast and it swallows the skeleton whole! Its eyes go black as it hallucinates vividly! They proceed to kill it slowly and carefully while it's too high to move.
- A replacement character turns up, an unnamed Magic-User. He picks up a gold bar, gets very depressed, and shoots himself in the head with a disintegration ray. RIP.

--- Tasty?

- Dorian devours the cancer monster and steals its cancerous regeneration.
- While he digests the horrible monster, the others decide to cook something!
- There is much discussion as Sydney refuses to eat anything containing a human bone, people trying to tell him that it's a skeleton troll bone so that's different plus it will make a good stock, and so on.
- They realise they don't have any water... until someone remembers about runes! Water is here!

- After all that it's bon appetit! Minestrolle Soup! All that careful talk around who's allowed to eat what has granted a boost to Tinkering!

--- Twisting Linearity
- After the fairly tasty meal, they head off. Luckily they've been joined by Roger's Loyal Lads, a band of Extras who found their way down here! Almost out of sight, a pig follows sulkily.
- The Lads delve further in, stealthily moving past a room with big purple shapes slithering around and heading through a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
- It's quiet going. They avoid a door like a cosmic sphincter and a cold room with gems frozen under ice, following a trumpeting noise.
- It's some big woolly mammoths! In a grassy room with entrances way too small for them! The mammoths are scared, protecting a baby mammoth in the corner of the room.
- The Lads scoot through, head round a wiggly corridor that turns and turns until it... secret doors back into the room? Odd. They all leave the mammoths alone.
- The next room has some howling holes that suck you into the void between voids! The extras run through, hundreds, even millions, of them falling into the infinite void until they clog up the holes and let everyone else through!

--- Dinosaurs?
- A loud roar, investigated, reveals a huge mechanical T-Rex! The Extras charge and are immediately consumed.

- The last survivor, the eponymous Roger, is swiftly pulled to safety by Swan the Swift.

- Jojo uses a magic punch to blind the T-Rex! The party rush through as its laser eyes flicker!

- Yeehaw

- They come to a fork. In one direction, the smell of gunpowder. In the other direction, an ominous ticking noise.
- They choose the gunpowder and come to bodies dressed as cowboys, all dead. There is a big gaping hole out the bottom of Fate, looking down at the jungles of the Dino Dome miles below!
- They spend some time talking to the spirits of the dead men and discovering their reasons for the fatal shootout. It's very silly. Then they grab the cowboys' six-shooters and head towards the mysterious ticking noise.

- Tick Tock on the Rewind Clock
- The ticking is revealed to be a big coffin-shaped grandfather clock! There's a human-shaped moulded into the back behind the pendulum.
- With a little experimentation, they discover it can reverse time for whoever's in the clock if someone else turns the hands! Why is this only worth 5000 obols anyway?
- The pig leaps in, hoping to reverse itself into a piglet and die. The hands turn back and...

- Grumblebelch appears! The clock reversed the curse!

- Roger recently of Roger's Lucky Lads runs to the big hole in the floor and plummets to his death. RIP. Tom has Grumblebelch back!

- With more of this menacing deepest level of the Brasshell to explore, the party continues on...

Total: 7000 exp

Foes Defeated:
- A Cancer Monster, killed while it was high. (500 exp)
- A mechanical T-Rex, blinded then avoided. (1500 exp)

Total: 2000 exp

Valuables Liberated:

- Time-Travel Clock (5000 exp)
- Cursed gold bars (20000 exp)

- Gold traces (2000 exp)
- 3 Wild West Pistols

- Blacksmith Tools & Gloves
Total: 27000 exp

Exp Totals:

- George / Swan the Swift, Level 7 Barbarian: 108302 (Level up at 128000)

- Kitty / Dorian "Ditto" DeMone, Level 7 Inheritor: 86036 (Level up at 144000)

- Charles / Celebus Uppytus, Level 7 Necromancer: 80134 (Level up at 144000)

- Carter / Sydney, Level 5 Magic-User: 29724 (Level up at 36000)

- Ollie / Jojo Fullbeard, Level 5 Muscle Wizard: 20422 (Level up at 36000)
Level Up! +1d4 HP! +1 Spell! +1 Mana! +Backstory!

- Tom / Grumblebelch, Level 4 Dwarf: 14273 (Level up at 16000)