Session 242 - Day of the Triffids
Date:
15 years after the End.
15 years after the End.
June
Character List:
Overland Exploration:
- 1 Random Encounter (50 exp)
- 3 hexes travelled within the dome (150 exp)
Total: 200 exp
- 1 Random Encounter (50 exp)
- 3 hexes travelled within the dome (150 exp)
Total: 200 exp
Slaughter:
- Three giant ambulatory sundews (4500 exp)
- Three giant ambulatory sundews (4500 exp)
Total: 4500 exp
Events:
--- May Recovery: Enoch, Town of Fools
- After last session’s brief foray into the Dinosaur Dome, the explorers return to Enoch to prepare a swift return inside. They hope to get to Fortress-City Fate before the Lady gets there in her Seraphim. This frantic preparation is stopped short when Red gets an update from the Lady in orbit - the Seraphim has stopped cold!
- With the pressure off, and a mighty need to justify the party back reuniting, the metanarrative hand of the DM enforces a month-end on our heroes because of course they must be exhausted after all the excitement of the last week of expedition. Plus it means that exposition and rumours can be delivered!
- And so - the town of Enoch. Maybe a year old and populated by a fairly clueless bunch of people from Fate, who elected to leave the paradise of the city and have adventures in the desolate world outside the dome. Each of them wear a kara - sort of metal bracelet - which keeps them healthy and unaging in the face of poison. If they do die they usually return a few days later, respawned from the dome somehow.
- Unfortunately, few of them have any real skills and any who did have long left town, so everything’s pretty badly made. But while their practical skills are meagre, they’ve got a strong aesthetic - a sort of frontier victoriana. Gas lamps light the streets and ten gallon hats clash with puffed sleeves and frills. It’s a weird place.
- Andromeda goes to find Pearl who left for Enoch months ago. She’s here! Now called Pearl Five and wearing a feathered dinosaur skull headdress, her arm jangles with broken karas and everyone here thinks she’s really cool! She’s stoked to see Andromeda, and asks her not to give the demonic Envy-farming game away.
- After last session’s brief foray into the Dinosaur Dome, the explorers return to Enoch to prepare a swift return inside. They hope to get to Fortress-City Fate before the Lady gets there in her Seraphim. This frantic preparation is stopped short when Red gets an update from the Lady in orbit - the Seraphim has stopped cold!
- With the pressure off, and a mighty need to justify the party back reuniting, the metanarrative hand of the DM enforces a month-end on our heroes because of course they must be exhausted after all the excitement of the last week of expedition. Plus it means that exposition and rumours can be delivered!
- And so - the town of Enoch. Maybe a year old and populated by a fairly clueless bunch of people from Fate, who elected to leave the paradise of the city and have adventures in the desolate world outside the dome. Each of them wear a kara - sort of metal bracelet - which keeps them healthy and unaging in the face of poison. If they do die they usually return a few days later, respawned from the dome somehow.
- Unfortunately, few of them have any real skills and any who did have long left town, so everything’s pretty badly made. But while their practical skills are meagre, they’ve got a strong aesthetic - a sort of frontier victoriana. Gas lamps light the streets and ten gallon hats clash with puffed sleeves and frills. It’s a weird place.
- Andromeda goes to find Pearl who left for Enoch months ago. She’s here! Now called Pearl Five and wearing a feathered dinosaur skull headdress, her arm jangles with broken karas and everyone here thinks she’s really cool! She’s stoked to see Andromeda, and asks her not to give the demonic Envy-farming game away.
- Grumpy, Luna and Snels arrive separately over the course of a few days. Grumpy rides in on a cool skeleton motorbike, discovering that the people here consider magic to be cheating and ask that he take his magic stuff to the town of Ai to the north. This is strictly survival mode town.
- Snels is looked upon with awe as he walks in at dawn one day, silhouetted on a hilltop. Luna is similarly told that no magic is allowed, but she says she’s going into the dome so no worries. She’s pleased to discover the mass grave to the north of town - people die all the time here and they poorly bury the remains.
- Andromeda spends four weeks consecrating a church in town, after some headaches around how much value things have here. While the people here trend to a sort of bland atheism since they’ve all found out the truth of the artificial Gods, they’re always down to let somone build something. Snels finds the populace’s beliefs fairly acceptable - at least they reject all the false gods!
- While organising the church build, she asks around about Mt Death Frost inside the dome. While most haven’t been there, she does find out that the vampires are led by Bertha, and that those who become vampires remember none of the time they spent undead if they’re ever respawned.
- They discover that Flourette “Flan” One, the woman who was rescued with her wagon full of food, basically cleared out Enoch’s stores of protein bar rations when she left town. She thought it was free for anyone to take, and now everyone’s mad at her.
- During the downtime they hear some rumours from the locals. Exposition acquired, the party stock up on the only food in town - miscellaneous berries - and head off for the super long conveyor belt tunnel that goes into the Dino Dome.
- While organising the church build, she asks around about Mt Death Frost inside the dome. While most haven’t been there, she does find out that the vampires are led by Bertha, and that those who become vampires remember none of the time they spent undead if they’re ever respawned.
- They discover that Flourette “Flan” One, the woman who was rescued with her wagon full of food, basically cleared out Enoch’s stores of protein bar rations when she left town. She thought it was free for anyone to take, and now everyone’s mad at her.
- During the downtime they hear some rumours from the locals. Exposition acquired, the party stock up on the only food in town - miscellaneous berries - and head off for the super long conveyor belt tunnel that goes into the Dino Dome.
--- Fifteenth of June, Expedition Day 1: Dome of the Dinosaurs
- Emerging from the conveyor belt tunnel, the party emerges into the scrubland they saw before. Used to the horrible poisonous environment outside, the fresh, clean, hyperoxygenated air within the dome fortifies them significantly!
- Tank tread tracks have churned up the area around the conveyor tunnel, and there is a sort of small dumbwaiter built into the flat rock beside the entrance. Investigation shows mouldy berry residue. Dargo considers shlooping into the thing and riding it wherever it goes, but decides against it.
- The dome is truly massive. Even with her hour of flight time, Andromeda wouldn’t be able to make it to Fortress-City Fate far above. She flies up anyway to get a lay of the land, and sees many landmarks. A pulsing glow to the north-west, Mt Death Frost to the north, the Fate Elevator stretching skywards to the north-east, and a glowing crackling crater in the plains to the east.
- Most interestingly, in the direction of the elevator there is some sort of red pillar that occasionally warps into a shorter, wider massive tree or a long black spindle that pierces the roof of the dome. Andromeda’s void pet seems excited by this, and it’s on the way to the elevator anyway…
- Andromeda glides back down to the waiting party and tells them what she saw. After Snels uses his sin-sense in that direction and detects some strong sin-signals, they decide to head for the red pillar. Andromeda discovers she can use her Void Pet like a compass, so they can’t get lost!
- They scare off a dinosaur as they set off, a bipedal thick-skulled creature which startles from the brush and runs off towards the rainforest at their approach.
--- The Ziggurat
- Heading off towards the edge of the rainforest, they see a square-stepped ziggurat towering over the scrubland. A structure of wood and leaves has been built atop it, and some figures can be seen sitting underneath around a fire. Strangely, there’s a figure standing upside-down on the leafy ceiling.
- They approach and the upside-down figure spots them! He drops and lands awkwardly in the fire, rolls out, then bounds down the side of the ziggurat sideways, as if gravity pulls him in a different direction.
- Emerging from the conveyor belt tunnel, the party emerges into the scrubland they saw before. Used to the horrible poisonous environment outside, the fresh, clean, hyperoxygenated air within the dome fortifies them significantly!
- Tank tread tracks have churned up the area around the conveyor tunnel, and there is a sort of small dumbwaiter built into the flat rock beside the entrance. Investigation shows mouldy berry residue. Dargo considers shlooping into the thing and riding it wherever it goes, but decides against it.
- The dome is truly massive. Even with her hour of flight time, Andromeda wouldn’t be able to make it to Fortress-City Fate far above. She flies up anyway to get a lay of the land, and sees many landmarks. A pulsing glow to the north-west, Mt Death Frost to the north, the Fate Elevator stretching skywards to the north-east, and a glowing crackling crater in the plains to the east.
- Most interestingly, in the direction of the elevator there is some sort of red pillar that occasionally warps into a shorter, wider massive tree or a long black spindle that pierces the roof of the dome. Andromeda’s void pet seems excited by this, and it’s on the way to the elevator anyway…
- Andromeda glides back down to the waiting party and tells them what she saw. After Snels uses his sin-sense in that direction and detects some strong sin-signals, they decide to head for the red pillar. Andromeda discovers she can use her Void Pet like a compass, so they can’t get lost!
- They scare off a dinosaur as they set off, a bipedal thick-skulled creature which startles from the brush and runs off towards the rainforest at their approach.
--- The Ziggurat
- Heading off towards the edge of the rainforest, they see a square-stepped ziggurat towering over the scrubland. A structure of wood and leaves has been built atop it, and some figures can be seen sitting underneath around a fire. Strangely, there’s a figure standing upside-down on the leafy ceiling.
- They approach and the upside-down figure spots them! He drops and lands awkwardly in the fire, rolls out, then bounds down the side of the ziggurat sideways, as if gravity pulls him in a different direction.
- His name is Dave, and he is a “Wampyr” complete with exaggerated vampire accent. He’s also the leader of the Ziggurat Gang. When he sees the party aren’t wearing karas, he suggests that they join the ranks of the vampires under the vampire queen Bertha!
- They ask about the accent, and apparently Bertha enforces a proper vampire accent. It’s the rules. They also find out that vampires can’t wear kara, so if they’re reborn they never remember their time as a vampire. Also important - the artificial daylight put out by Fate doesn’t hurt vampires.
- Snels holds his crucifix close to himself and refuses to interact with the vampire, but when he brandishes it the vampire falls back shrieking! He jumps back up the side of the ziggurat, and his friend climbs down to tell the party to stop bothering his vampire friend.
- He tells them that Dave was forcibly turned into a vampire by Steve “Stevo” Donnelly. Technically Dave is still a thrall to Stevo, so he’d have to obey any orders he was given. If the party can kill Stevo, Dave will become a free-willed vampire! He also offers the party shelter any time they like.
- Grumpy nearly breaks the guy’s mind after they discuss Dave’s assertion that there are deeper levels of the simulation, but the party stops him from killing himself to see if he gets kicked down into a deeper level of the dream. They move on before they cause any more issues!
--- The Sundew Glade
- Silver objects leave contrails overhead as the party approaches the edge of the rainforest and plunge in, hacking away at the dense foliage and sending tropical birds squawking into the skies.
- The Void Pet leads them on. They cross the path of many animals and small dinosaurs who flee the march of all-devouring army ants, but continue onwards out of the ants’ path.
- After a few hours they hear muffled screaming from a wide glade ahead. In the half-light under the canopy overhead, they see some sort of massive plant walking silently on many trunk-legs. In its curled-over limbs, two muscle-bound men scream fitfully in its clutches. It is a giant sundew and its limbs are covered in poisonous nodes.
- They ask about the accent, and apparently Bertha enforces a proper vampire accent. It’s the rules. They also find out that vampires can’t wear kara, so if they’re reborn they never remember their time as a vampire. Also important - the artificial daylight put out by Fate doesn’t hurt vampires.
- Snels holds his crucifix close to himself and refuses to interact with the vampire, but when he brandishes it the vampire falls back shrieking! He jumps back up the side of the ziggurat, and his friend climbs down to tell the party to stop bothering his vampire friend.
- He tells them that Dave was forcibly turned into a vampire by Steve “Stevo” Donnelly. Technically Dave is still a thrall to Stevo, so he’d have to obey any orders he was given. If the party can kill Stevo, Dave will become a free-willed vampire! He also offers the party shelter any time they like.
- Grumpy nearly breaks the guy’s mind after they discuss Dave’s assertion that there are deeper levels of the simulation, but the party stops him from killing himself to see if he gets kicked down into a deeper level of the dream. They move on before they cause any more issues!
--- The Sundew Glade
- Silver objects leave contrails overhead as the party approaches the edge of the rainforest and plunge in, hacking away at the dense foliage and sending tropical birds squawking into the skies.
- The Void Pet leads them on. They cross the path of many animals and small dinosaurs who flee the march of all-devouring army ants, but continue onwards out of the ants’ path.
- After a few hours they hear muffled screaming from a wide glade ahead. In the half-light under the canopy overhead, they see some sort of massive plant walking silently on many trunk-legs. In its curled-over limbs, two muscle-bound men scream fitfully in its clutches. It is a giant sundew and its limbs are covered in poisonous nodes.
- Andromeda wants to save the men, but Dargo stops her short. There are two more of the ambulatory plant-creatures lurking to the sides of the path they’ve cut through the brush!
- Luna peels off to deal with one of the lurkers, well aware that without Last Breath her minions will only obey their last orders. Dargo goes for the other lurker, staggering it. Grumpy and Red charge forwards to free the men from the last sundew as Andromeda scorches the air with lightning, healing one of the men and sizzling off the carnivorous plant’s vegetable hide!
- The healed man wrenches his way out of its clutches and Red’s Lonely Blade carves off a limb to free the other! It snatches one back up and kills him, but Red gets under it and suplexes it into the dirt! While it’s weak, she tears off all of its grasping limbs. Plant monster de-fanged! The remaining man flees before it can snatch him up too.
- Dargo struggles against his sundew which wraps him up in one of its sticky limbs, hurting him. He’s dragged further into it, allowing it to bring more of its venomous nodules to bear. Getting grappled for any length of time is a recipe for disaster.
- Luna is similarly ensnared, but breaks free when her minions are compelled to protect their master! The skeletons and zombies strike the plant with sticks and bones and claws, a battle of attrition.
- With Luna’s sundew working its way through the Dead, Snels and Andromeda run in to assist Dargo who’s in some real trouble. Andromeda’s lightning hammer smashes it in the central stalk, but it’s made of strong stuff. Snels gets grabbed by a flailing limb as it spins.
- Red takes aim with her combination gun and fires! She shoots Snels and Dargo free of the sundew… but the apparently safe one behind her rears up with a grasping limb and drags her into its clutches! The poisonous nodes wrap around her and she tries to break free to no avail!
- Dargo falls back, heavily damaged, and Grumpy comes in with his super-scorcher glaive to take his place. Alas, Andromeda and Grumpy are both pulled in by its insane grapple bonus and begin to be crushed. A grim dance unfolds. Snels frees them both, but Grumpy sears himself on his own glaive in the escape and heavily damages his armour!
- Dargo tries to free Red from her sundew zone hazard, but is helpless as the toxic nodes sear her flesh. She’s stuck! From afar, in deadly combat with her own triffid, Andromeda blasts across an arc of POWERLAD’s energy. Red is healed, but soon the sundew’s grip tightens once more. Red’s breather helm is torn off and crushed!
- Luna’s dead finally tear the plant to pieces, several of their number crushed in its vegetable grip. When it falls, they return to Luna and take up guard position again. They’ll only attack if something hurts her. She runs to Red and manages to break her free with some sort of plant-based nerve pinch. Red’s alive!
- The fight against the last sundew continues. Snels heals Andromeda up again, saving her from being brought down by the sundew after Sacrificing to heal Red. It grabs people, they’re poisoned, someone frees them, and so it goes.
- It takes sustained effort, and an almost-calamitous shot from Red to free Andromeda, before the party finally manage to bring the plant low. Grumpy’s searing blade pierces it in the middle, frying it up nicely and making the whole thing slump to the ground. Finally!
- Luna’s dead finally tear the plant to pieces, several of their number crushed in its vegetable grip. When it falls, they return to Luna and take up guard position again. They’ll only attack if something hurts her. She runs to Red and manages to break her free with some sort of plant-based nerve pinch. Red’s alive!
- The fight against the last sundew continues. Snels heals Andromeda up again, saving her from being brought down by the sundew after Sacrificing to heal Red. It grabs people, they’re poisoned, someone frees them, and so it goes.
- It takes sustained effort, and an almost-calamitous shot from Red to free Andromeda, before the party finally manage to bring the plant low. Grumpy’s searing blade pierces it in the middle, frying it up nicely and making the whole thing slump to the ground. Finally!
- Red sits down and slowly falls backwards, passing out in the aftermath. Dargo stumbles over and collapses into bubbling demonflesh over the one that almost killed him, absorbing its poisonous abilities. The others lick their wounds and count their blessings. What a horrible dome this is!
- They’re too fucked up to head on with confidence, so they backtrack along their path and back towards the ziggurat where those friendly people told them they could rest up if they wanted. On the way back, they see the telltale tracks of cheap sandals leading off nearby, but they ignore it for the safety of the ziggurat. Everyone survived!
- They’re too fucked up to head on with confidence, so they backtrack along their path and back towards the ziggurat where those friendly people told them they could rest up if they wanted. On the way back, they see the telltale tracks of cheap sandals leading off nearby, but they ignore it for the safety of the ziggurat. Everyone survived!
Total: 2050 exp
Team Bonus:
- Brutal Kill bonus
- Diplomancy bonus
- Dramatic Battle bonus
- Dramatic Rescue bonus
- I Immediately Regret This Decision bonus
- Pundemonium bonus
- Ridiculously Bad Rolling bonus
- Vore bonus
- WWE bonus
Total: 450 exp
- Brutal Kill bonus
- Diplomancy bonus
- Dramatic Battle bonus
- Dramatic Rescue bonus
- I Immediately Regret This Decision bonus
- Pundemonium bonus
- Ridiculously Bad Rolling bonus
- Vore bonus
- WWE bonus
Total: 450 exp
Individual Bonus:
- Chronicler (Carter / Grumpy - 100 exp)
- Expedition Leader (George / Snels - 100 exp)
- Cartographer (Carter / Grumpy - 100 exp)
- Vanguard (Russell / Dargo - 100 exp)
- Triage (Kitty / Andromeda - 100 exp)
- Chef (Johnathon / Luna - 100 exp)
- JÜGBRINGYR bonus (Kitty, Timothy - 500 exp ea.)
- Art Attack bonus (Carter, George - 100 exp ea.)
- Near Death Experience bonus (Timothy - 100 exp)
- Chronicler (Carter / Grumpy - 100 exp)
- Expedition Leader (George / Snels - 100 exp)
- Cartographer (Carter / Grumpy - 100 exp)
- Vanguard (Russell / Dargo - 100 exp)
- Triage (Kitty / Andromeda - 100 exp)
- Chef (Johnathon / Luna - 100 exp)
- JÜGBRINGYR bonus (Kitty, Timothy - 500 exp ea.)
- Art Attack bonus (Carter, George - 100 exp ea.)
- Near Death Experience bonus (Timothy - 100 exp)
Rumours:
- One of the Fated Kings’ concubines is a spy from Ai.
- In the elevator to Fate, time is a weapon and memory is an illusion.
- The Fated King is not potent, none of his children are his.
- A high-ranking vampire is plotting a coup against the Fated King
- The leader of one of the Indome tribes is being blackmailed by a dark cult.
- One of the Fated Kings’ concubines is a spy from Ai.
- In the elevator to Fate, time is a weapon and memory is an illusion.
- The Fated King is not potent, none of his children are his.
- A high-ranking vampire is plotting a coup against the Fated King
- The leader of one of the Indome tribes is being blackmailed by a dark cult.
Exp Totals:
- Kitty / Andromeda, Level 7 Laddite Cleric: 61100 (Level up at 112000)
- Kitty / Andromeda, Level 7 Laddite Cleric: 61100 (Level up at 112000)
- Tim / Red, Level 6 Fighter: 43713 (Level up at 64000)
- Carter / Granite "Grumpy" Ironjaw, Level 6 Warden Dwarf: 40157 (Level up at 70400)
- George / Praise-God-For-He-Gave-His-Only-Son-So-That-We-Might-Be-Saved-From-Damnation Snels, Level 6 Snelsman Cleric: 38040 (Level up at 56000)
- Russell / Dargo, Level 4 Inheritor: 14265 (Level up at 18000)
- Johnathon / Luna, Level 3 Necromancer: 5892 (Level up at 9000)
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