Tuesday 23 April 2019

Session 220 - Around Elves, Watch Yourselves

The first death of the new era and it's poor little Sophia. Her only crime - asking to be attacked by flying high-level beasties.

With the rest of the party hiding in a cliffside cave, and Damnation Snels showing a monstrous bat a good time, things could be better...


Maps:



Session 220 - Around Elves, Watch Yourselves


Date:
14 years after the End.
May-June.




New Character Origins:
- Siân: A Gypsy with designs on being a “humane” Necromancer. She’s in with the Curators of the Amphitheatre-Museum, so she’s got a solid background in Violin.
- Daisy: A thick-lipped and slow-spoken lady with a background in Cartography. Has a pre-apocalypse map of the local area. Smarter than she looks… possibly.


Character Backstories:
- Damnation Snels: He was insulted by people who disbelieved his warnings of impending apocalypse, but he had the last laugh. +1 Intelligence.
- Sophia: Investigated a fallen star, and heard it speak inside her mind… Once per session, cast a random spell with random target(s).
- Red: During the events of this session, something goes horribly wrong and Red is unable to stop it in time. Survive the consequences of catastrophic failure - a one-time “Get Out of Jail Free” card.

Valuables:
- Chain Armour (100 exp)
- Shield (10 exp)
- Longsword (20 exp)
- Deck of Cards
- Flask of Wine (10 exp)
- 3 coins (1 exp)
Total: 141 exp

Overland Exploration:
- Explored 2 square miles (100 exp)
- First party to discover the Gad Cliffs (200 exp)
Total: 300 exp

Murders:
- 2 Flitting Gads (1000 exp)
Total: 1000 exp


Events:

--- May Downtime: Admin Adventures!
- After the successes of the previous month, it’s time for some cheeky admin! DJ starts a sketchy mining company called “DJ Exploration & Production” - a Wild investment.
- Damnation Snels visits the Snelsmen and finds a really eager teen priest who is absolutely stoked to answer a question from the father of the Snels himself. He asks of the fate of Fate, and discovers that it is “safe and secure”. Great.
- Sophia splits her downtime between spell research and cooking lessons with Japhet & Hirsch. She finishes the month with Magic Missile, a spell that draws the soul of the recently dead into an object of her choice, and a deep culinary grasp of Traveller’s Stew.
- The party is joined by two new members. Siân the Necromancer and Daisy the Habberjock. THey seem nice.
- Others buy equipment in advance of next month’s expedition - the first of the summer!

--- Spring Rebuild Phase - Bone Road
- The Rebuild Phase occurs at the end of the season - New Moondin decides where to focus its resources to rebuild civilisation.
- With an abundance of resources in New Moondin and only a single group of workers, it’s decided to start work on a road to the Saviourbone Mine. The workers set out, they’ll be done with the first stretch of road by the end of summer!


--- June Pre-Expedition: Operation Seagull
- The goal: Kill Seagulls. They are to leave on the morning of the 7th, when Elves are strong, so that Sophia and Daisy will have some extra oomph. Intended route is via the Saviourbone Mine, partially so they can ask for directions.
--- Expedition Day 1: A Beautiful Day
- Despite a bit of rain and storm during the week, by the 7th of June the sky is clear and blue and the air is warm. It’s actually real nice out! Sophia’s not even wearing her wasteland gear, it’s just that nice.
- They head off at a brisk pace, following the beginnings of the stone road along the river before climbing up the hillside into the valley of cairns.
- There’s a newly built cairn up here, and Sophia tries her new Soul Capture spell in case its been built over a recently dead body - no such luck.
- They soon reach the Saviourbone Mine and are greeted by the priest from before - Arnold Nonimus. They ask him the way to the “Seagulls”, and he points them southwest past the Prepper Caves.

--- Damnation Gets Down
- With the weather holding, the party walks off with a spring in their step. Smoke rising from the Prepper’s encampment makes it easy to find them, and they soon see an older woman with wiry hair and a suspicious glare poking her head out of the mouth of a small barricaded cave at the foot of a hill.
- Sophia leads the way, soothing potential tempers with her sweet look and manner. The woman invites them into her cave, and despite witchy misgivings the party follows. She’s not a witch, thankfully, but she’s very suspicious of the group’s guardianship of this young girl - polygamy is against God!
- Damnation Snels’ interest is piqued by this woman of equivalent age, and the rest of the party mysteriously leave the cave to take a breather. While the strains of Siân playing a gypsy love song filter through from outside, Damnation makes his moves…
- From the outside, they hear successive layers of petticoat being pulled back followed by some very loud moaning and grunting. Everyone avoids eye contact.
- A girl with a basket of freshly roasted onions and mushrooms comes skipping up the path towards the cave. The party turns her back, saying that her mother is distracted caring for one of their companions, and persuades her to show them the way to the Seagulls.
- She shows them the way, but when she sees her father foraging in the distances something clicks! She shouts “oh no!” and realises what she’d really heard her mother doing, running back up the path as fast as she can go!


--- The Seagulls Cometh
- Leaving Damnation to deal with that one, the rest continue the short way to the cliffs. This is an area of steep gorges and gullies, with rivulets of water running down from holes in the cliffside until they join the river far below.
- There is an abundance of midges and other insects, and as they watch they see slim man-shapes with gossamer wings stretched between their limbs dart from the cliffside caves and dive down to catch the insects by skimming along the surface of the river. Not seagulls.
- They discuss options. Damnation arrives, looking sketchy and buttoning up his fly. Sophia shouts a greeting which echoes through the gorge, and the strange creatures swiftly dart back into their holes.
- There are a fair number of caves on this side of the cliff, so they decide to abseil down to the closest one. Daisy starts climbing down, and there is a sudden chirping clicking noise from the cliffs. Sophia and Damnation recognise it as the language of the Flitting Gads and understand the repeated “Intruders coming! Attack attack!”
- They relay this to the others as Daisy swings into the cave mouth, engaging her Shield. Sophia begins climbing down after her. Siân used Dig Grave to create a trench at the top of the gorge. The take defensive positions with rifles and crossbows from above in case the bird-men attack.
- Suddenly, they’re here! The beings blast out of their caves, scintillating membranes stretching between their hands and feet like wings. They have long curving ears and baleen mouths below long black eyes that stretch around their heads. Elves!
- The crack of musket fire! Damnation gets one dead-on and it falls from the sky, trailing a ripple through the air. DJ’s crossbow bolt nearly hits one, but a keening wail cleaves it in two around the Elf’s form. Another folds its wings into a tight corkscrew, avoiding Andromeda’s shot.
- Sophia has a plan! She jumps off the rope and waves her arms in the air, clicking out insults in Gad-speech: “Your wings are rotten and your voice belongs in a trash heap!”.
- Sophia’s words have had the desired effect. The Gads alter course, flying straight for Sophia. She grins and reaches for the first syllables of WinterSphere - with the Gads all focused on her, they’ll fly straight into it!
- Daisy misses all this, since charging out of the mouth of the cave is a massive bat monster! It barrels towards her, but Daisy has her Shield up and sword ready! She counters all of its blows and slams it sideways into the wall!
- The Gads are flying in towards Sophia. As one, they spit acid from their baleen mouths. The missiles hang in the air before them, then begin to strike unerringly into Sophia’s tiny frame. They hit her over and over, the acid burning and smoking, her clothing erupting into flame.



- Sophia’s burning corpse falls from the ledge, tumbling down through the air, flailing and screaming.

--- Oh Shit Plan B
- On the top of the cliff, the rest of the party is aghast. These things are powerful. They’re fucked.
- DJ runs forward and calls on the chill power of Galaxy Johnson, pretending to take a deep breath from his thumb then breathing out a great billowing cloud of pale mist. It spreads rapidly, and everything within the field chills out. The Gads stop their bombing run and float in the air, watching each others colourful wings. There is a distant hiss as Sophia’s burning body hits the river below.
- Everyone but Damnation Snels takes the opportunity to abseil down to the cave below while everyone’s chilled out and non-aggressive. Red gives the bat monster a very oily massage. It’s non-aggressive, honest. Andromeda raises a non-aggressive Storm Shell - just to protect against the weather you know.
- The field wears off and suddenly violence is an option again! Red fires a burning “friendship arrow” at the oiled-up bat monster, and the explosion blasts it back out through the Storm Shell! It’s fried and on fire and falls out of sight.
- Out of sight and protected by the Storm Shell they explore the cave by lantern light. It’s only a small cave, mostly a home for the bat monster, but the previous tenant (eaten by the monster) has some bits and pieces on him. Lots of guano at least.
- With enemies outside, the party takes defensive positions within…

--- Damnation Snels Does It Again
- Lying in the grave, drinking wine, Damnation Snels tries to keep quiet and hopes the mean Elves outside will go away.
- He hears quiet clicking and chirping - Gad whispers - and tunes in. They’re debating what to do about the invaders in their gorge, then a sharp intake of breath as one says “Oh no it’s climbing back up!”
- Damnation climbs up out of the grave and crawls over to the edge of the cliff. He peers over and sees the Gads clinging to the side of the gorge like bats. He offers them wine, to their alarm!
- There is consternation and threats until he kisses one on the baleen mouth. It freezes in alarm. Another crawls up to see what’s going on and he kisses it too, it freezes. Apparently this works?!?
- The heavily charred bat-monster is next. He kisses its bleeding torn-open lips. Gypsy love music floats up from below, and the bat-monster… is totally into it?! Apparently it’s very amorous and very female. The old man succumbs to the inevitable.
- Down in the cave mouth, hearing the now-familiar sounds of Papa Snels getting busy, the rest of the party relax a little. Maybe with that distraction, they’ll get out of here alive...
Total: 2100 exp


Team Bonus:
- AAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaa bonus
- Absolutely Disgusting bonus
- Antagonist Antagoniser bonus
- Best of Intentions bonus
- Better Part of Valour bonus
- Brutal Kill bonus
- Coitus boners
- Classic Charles bonus
- Dramatic Escape bonus
- First Against the Wall bonus
- Holy bonus
- I Immediately Regret This Decision bonus
- Leave a Man Behind bonus
- Ludicrous Gore bonus
- Masterchef bonus
- Mountaineer bonus
- Pundemonium bonus
- Rumour Investigator bonus
- Split the Party bonus
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong bonus
- Why Did You Say That bonus
Total: 1050 exp


Individual Bonus:
- Chronicler (Carter / ? - 100 exp)
- Expedition Leader (James / Siân - 100 exp)
- Cartographer (Carter / ? - 100 exp)
- Paymaster (Charles / DJ - 100 exp)
- Quartermaster (Kitty / Andromeda - 100 exp)
- Vanguard (George / Damnation - 100 exp)
- Triage (Kitty / Andromeda - 100 exp)
- Chef (Kitty / Andromeda - 100 exp)
- Art Attack bonus (Carter, George, Charles - 100 exp ea.)
- Artapalooza bonus (Charles - 100 exp)
- Attacco d’Arte bonus (Carter, George - 100 exp)
- Chippo Champion bonus (Carter*2 - 100 exp ea.)
- JÜGBRINGYR bonus (Kitty, Charles - 500 exp ea.)
- An Hero bonus (Carter/ ? - 200 exp)


Death Toll:
- Sophia, blasted apart by magic acid-spit after she taunted a host of flying Elves.

Experience Totals:
- Charles / Dustin “DJ” Johnson, Level 4 Intergalacticist Cleric: 7597 (Level up at 14000)
Level up: +1d6 HP! +1 Healing Pool! +1 Starting Faith! +Backstory!
- Carter / Sophia, Level 3 Brackenfrau Elf
*DECEASED*
- Kitty / Andromeda, Level 3 Laddite Cleric: 6697 (Level up at 7000)
- Timothy / Red, Level 3 Fighter: 5297 (Level up at 8000)
- George / Praise-God-For-He-Gave-His-Only-Son-So-That-We-Might-Be-Saved-From-Damnation Snels, Level 3 Laddite Cleric: 5397 (Level up at 7000)
- James / Siân Niamh Keeva Caiskán, Level 1 Necromancer: 756 (Level up at 2250)
- Suzie / Daisy, Level 1 Habberjock Elf: 656 (Level up at 2250)
- Carter: +1456 to next character
  

No comments:

Post a Comment