Session 250 - Gifflewim’s Recursive Betrayal

In which I once again try to ruin everything HA HA HA

Grumpy gets a new lodger.
The wagons neeaarly reach the plains beyond the jungles.
Everyone is attacked by very small pteradactyls.

Also due to recap inflation I have endeavoured to keep this recap actually snappy for once. Tell me what you think!

Finally, Ollie supplies this intriguingly erudite version of Styx...

Session 250 - Gifflewim’s Recursive Betrayal

Date:

15 years after the End.

Character List:

- Andromeda, Laddite Cleric / Kitty

- DJ, Intergalacticist Cleric / Charles
- Granite “Grumpy” Ironjaw, Warden Dwarf / Carter

- Dargo, Inheritor / Russell
- Red, Duellist Fighter / Timothy
- The New Moondin Lost Boys, Extras / George
- Ratman, Ratman / Izzy

New Backstory:

- Grumpy helped run some suspected villains out of his town. +1 Strength
- Andromeda had a POWERLAD time-clone escape her man-farm during the early years of the apocalypse and join another Andromeda. Her revenge was petty in the extreme. Once per round, deal 1 point of damage to a creature that hit you.
- Big Smiles of the New Moondin Lost Boys stopped a lynching back before the Brotherhood took over New Moondin. As an action, block an attack against someone nearby but take half the damage.
- Red has owed her life to Andromeda on many occasions, saved by healing and lightning shields. Once per session while they’re nearby, drop to 0HP to cancel all Death Dice they have accrued.

Overland Exploration:
- 1 Random Encounter (50 exp)
Total: 50 exp

Loot:

- 9 Yi Qi rations (9 exp)
Total: 9 exp

Foes:

- A flock of Yi Qi (100 exp)
Total: 100 exp

Events:

--- Grumpy and Gifflewim
- The rest of the party see Grumpy vanish as he flips a coin into the air. It is the coin Gifflewim gave him in case he ever needed the assistance of the strange merchant Elf.
- Grumpy attempts to trade for a purported future bug fix for Fate, time-travelled to the present day by Sir Robyn. He offers Dwarven vitality for a limited time, amongst other things.
- There is a catch, though. Gifflewim transports himself to the infinite cyber-prison in which Snels is trapped and tries to start a bidding war for the future of Fortress-City Fate, playing the two foes off against each other. Grumpy wants the antivirus, Snels wants to return to the world.
- In the end, after a rain of Styxes forces the Elf’s hand, he gives them both what they want… to a point. Grumpy receives the antivirus for Snels’ cyberattack on Fate, but the reset messes with the rebirth system. Snels returns to the world… but he’s in Grumpy’s head. Between him and Styx’s earpiece-iteration it’s getting crowded in there!
- Gifflewim vanishes, laughing at how wonderfully he’s fucked everything up for them. Never trust an Elf!

--- Welcome to the Jungle
- Meanwhile, elsewhere, the rest of the party have been slowly slowly trying to get their carts full of food through the trackless jungle and out into the plains beyond, and the crashed spaceship full of modern conveniences they know is out there.
- On the way they meet Indomio and Goolliet, a man who wears a female goop creature like armour. Their relationship is... interesting.
- Nevertheless, they continue. In a particularly dense copse of trees Grumpy and Red manage to catch up… just in time for them to be beset by shrieking flying beasts! They are Yi Qi - winged dinosaurs!

--- Jungle Rumble
- The Yi Qi are weak but numerous, swooping from the trees to savage the party with their sharp fangs! Andromeda commands her monstrous proto-elephant thrall to smash them from the skies with its long trunk, which is does at the expense of overturning its cart.
- Grumpy forces the flock to the ground with expert beam rifle use, then gets one of them caught in his beard! Red uses her impressive duelling abilities to slaughter several at once. The Lost Boys blast haphazardly into the skies.
- Andromeda keeps grabbing them and draining their blood to feed herself. An attempt to whip one out of the sky and down to her fails though, and her whip is caught by the dinosaur and carried aloft! She turns into a bat to follow, but the other Yi Qi grab her bat-form! Her whip is lost!
- By the end of the fight, Grumpy has captured a couple of the creatures in his beard and Red has one by the neck. The others are gone, either killed or fled. Andromeda looks full… and somehow more wise than before.
- The corpses are gathered and field-dressed by the hungry party, always on the lookout for new culinary frontiers

Total: 3000 exp

Team Bonus:

- Aggressive Negotiations bonus
- Antagonist Appeaser bonus
- Best of Intentions bonus
- Brutal Kill bonus
- Classic Charles bonus
- Diplomancy bonus
- Dramatic Battle bonus
- Hard Bargain bonus
- I Immediately Regret This Decision bonus
- Infamy bonus
- Internecine Strife bonus
- Leave a Man Behind bonus
- Long Deliberation bonus
- Ludicrous Gore bonus
- Politico bonus
- Pyrrhic Victory bonus
- Split the Party bonus
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong bonus

Total: 900 exp

Individual Bonus:

- Chronicler (Carter / Grumpy - 100 exp)
- Expedition Leader (Kitty / Andromeda - 100 exp)
- Cartographer (Carter / Grumpy - 100 exp)
- Paymaster (Charles / DJ - 100 exp)
- Quartermaster (Carter / Grumpy - 100 exp)

- Vanguard (George / Lost Boys - 100 exp)
- Triage (Kitty / Andromeda - 100 exp)
- Chef (George / Lost Boys - 100 exp) - Art Attack bonus (Ollie - 100 exp) - Attacco d'Arte bonus (Ollie - 100 exp)- Mügmastyr bonus (Charles - 100 exp)

- Homebringyr bonus (Charles - 500 exp)
- Providyr bonus (Charles, Kitty - 500 exp ea.)
- Horrifying Realisation bonus (Grumpy - 100 exp)
- Cursed bonus (Grumpy - 100 exp)

Exp Totals:

- Kitty / Andromeda, Level 7 Andromedan Vampire: 96636 (Level up at 144000)

- Charles / Dustin Johnson, Level 7 Intergalacticist Cleric: 96239 (Level up at 112000)

- Carter / Granite "Grumpy" Ironjaw, Level 7 Warden Dwarf: 84710 (Level up at 140800)

- Tim / Red, Level 7 Duellist Fighter: 66536 (Level up at 128000)
Level Up: +1d8 HP! +1 to hit! +1 to crit/fumble! +Backstory!

- George / The New Moondin Lost Boys, Level 6 Extras: 42288 (Level up at 48000)

Session 249 - Styx Ozymandias

DONE! Gonna cut these down in future if I have the heart! But it's out on time at least.
Expect me to add bits to this as I go, but for now, this is done!

Session 249 - Styx Ozymandias

Date:

15 years after the End.

Character List:

- Andromeda, Laddite Cleric / Kitty

- DJ, Intergalacticist Cleric / Charles
- Granite “Grumpy” Ironjaw, Warden Dwarf / Carter

- Dargo, Inheritor / Russell
- Red, Duellist Fighter / Timothy
- The New Moondin Lost Boys, Extras / George
- Ratman, Ratman / Izzy

New Characters:
- Ratman, a Ratman with a big stick who uses rat/rats pronouns.

New Backstory:

- Dustin Johnson got paranoid about a kindly old lady’s house when he was high on Otherpot, thinking that she was an evil crone out to eat his kidneys. Supernatural threats will not prioritise you.
- Horses of the New Moondin Lost Boys is often noticed for being the group’s stylish token female character. +1 to Reaction Rolls when wearing clean, stylish clothes.

Foes:

- A robot (250 exp)
- Styx (5 exp)
Total: 255 exp

Loot:

- Magic Glove
- 24 barrels of 100 iron rations each (120 000 exp)
- 2000 obols-worth of gems (2000 exp)
- The Iron Rations burnt in Lulu’s funeral (94 053 exp)
- Lulu’s Funeral (96 053 exp split 8 ways)
Total: 216 053 exp + Funeral

Events:

--- Apocalypse Stores in the Doom Fortress
- Following last session’s fight against the vampires and the clay fingers, the party takes a beat to recover in the great marshalling hall of Fortress Death Frost. The exits from this room are labelled in Andromeda’s vampire-vision with different undead creatures. The Zombie chamber, already investigated, holds the decapitated corpse of Lulu Spiderbite.
- There is a sudden movement from the barricaded Skin Kite door! It’s a Ratman, called Ratman! Rats first action is to toss rats rat down one of the corridors, discovering that it leads down to the vampire grave room and thus the ledge on the side of Mt Death Frost.
- They head down the corridor labelled Skeletal Beasts and find a massive pool of cold, fresh water! There is evidence that this place was once filled with said Skeleton Beasts, but no longer.
- They try the Ghoul chamber and find tons of barrels filling the space. Red checks an open barrel and finds iron rations! Tons of iron rations! They’re rich! And better, between the alarming numbers of Extras and Dargo’s sheer size, they can carry a lot of barrels out with them!
- They schlep a bunch of barrels out and stack them near the way out through the vampire graves, then decide to explore to find the gems they heard about elsewhere in the fortress. Luckily those chess guys gave them a map!
- It’s not long before they discover the treasure room. A huge mosaic formed from sparkling gems shows a map of this face of the world, centred on Mt Death Frost itself. The sites of the now-vapourised Prime Tentacles are picked out with red gems.
- Before this gem-mosaic is a pedestal with a jewelled satin glove laying on it. Red puts it on… and disappears! There is a moment of “I told you so!” from the others, but it turns out she’s just invisible.

--- Black Funeral
- Considering the great reputation of the now-deceased Lulu Spiderbite, the party decide to give the famous hero a sendoff worthy of song! And considering the fortress contains its own evil chapel, they want to give her a funeral here!
- It’s not like there’s been a single random encounter in this fortress for the past couple of sessions, so the place is clearly empty. Bertha and a bunch of vampires show up to pay their respects. Even the chess playing Necromancers are here, casting Speak With Dead on Lulu so she can give her own eulogy.
- RJ projects a really amateurish anime AMV on the walls, Andromeda reads passages from the POWERLAD novels, and Grumpy reads from the Book of Duvan’Ku as the gems and a whole lot of the food is poured into Lulu’s grave behind the altar as grave goods.

--- Logistics
- Following the funeral, talk turns to logistics. Loads of valuable iron rations, already packaged up nice! They’re under the relative protection of the vampires for now, so they decide to scratch-build some wagons to help carry as many barrels of food as they can!
- Eight days later, they’ve managed to slap together four wagons. Andromeda heads off into the jungle in the hopes of finding some sort of beast of burden to pull a wagon, and luckily stumbles upon just the thing - a prehistoric elephant-like Ambelodon! Some vampire mind-control later and it comes under her thrall!
- Red and Dargo have conspired to use the time to do some weird shit to the dino-babies, infusing Red’s blood into the eggs via Dargo’s birthing abilities. Screaming and crying like human children are four mutant dino-humans!
- The ninth day heralds a day of dense tropical rain that forces them to take cover in their wagons. Thankfully it breaks overnight, leading into a humid morning.

--- Off-Road Troubles
- It turns out that getting carts through dense, trackless, unmapped jungle is impossible to do at any sort of speed. The proto-elephant is at the front of the convoy in the hopes that it can stamp down the moist earth for the wheels of the carts following. Ox-Dargo, The New Moondin Lost Boys, and a Void Pet-boosted Andromeda pull the others.
- They get off to a bad start, forced to turn around due to bad terrain. The elephant tries to turn, dragging the wagon behind it, and knocks over a tree! There are yells of shock from nearby, the tree is about to fall on a crude hut in the middle of the jungle!
- Andromeda commands the enthralled elephant to catch the falling bough, and it barely manages it! The hut’s occupants - a couple of humans - have just enough time to get out before the elephant loses its grip and the tree crushes their abode.
- Grumpy assists the pair with salvaging their hut and the cart-drivers find a new path. Morale is low, they’ve barely got anywhere and the humidity is already creating a layer of sweat under their hot survival gear, designed as it is to resist colder apocalyptic wastes.
- Andromeda discovers that she can’t get high on the “Marching Powder” any more due to her vampiric nature. But it turns out she can get high on the blood of a druggie.
- Nevertheless they soldier on, eventually reaching the black glass waste around the elevator. Thank goodness! The only downside is the elephant’s wagon has been fucked up by dragging it through the jungle, one of the wheels is cracked!

--- Dark Truths
- While a visibly annoyed Andromeda kicks the wheel in despair and calls for Grumpy, a silvery pepperpot-shape hovers across the glass from the direction of the elevator. It’s dragging something behind it.
- The Lost Boys take some potshots at the mile-distant elevator to Grumpy’s chagrin. It’s the elevator to his literal god! He considers murdering them, but the hovering robot is an unknown that’s closing in.

- The robot is sketching out and being weird, but when Grumpy approaches it the robot scans him and calls for Styx, then falls to the ground. There is a green pulse from above, and a biological pod unfurls to reveal Styx!
- Styx thinks Grumpy called for him in order to be uploaded, and is sad to find that isn’t the case. Apparently the Grumpy version up in the Real World is finding it hard to reconcile being in two places at once, especially when “our” Grumpy isn’t doing what he’d do in the circumstances.
- DJ asks about himself, and finds that his Real World version is basically spiralling down a drug dependency rabbithole, encouraged by Galaxy Johnson. Red’s at war with herself. If you never commit to a world being real it seems to have knock-on effects on your psyche.
- Flowers Penurius accuses Styx of attacking New Moondin… and finds out the truth. He’s right! And there’s nothing anybody can do to stop it. Styx “liberated” New Moondin half a year ago, after hearing Grumpy’s testimony. The party thought they were only in the Matrix for a day… it was more like six months.
- This revelation fills the party with dread, and they fire on Styx with volleys of gunfire! Styx pushes Grumpy out of the way and takes the hits, mown down by lasers!

- Grumpy grumpily stumps off towards the elevator, realising that only he has still got goodwill for Styx, and even then only due to his religion and a strange sense of soul-kinship. Red joins him. The others inspect the broken wagon wheel in the hopes of repairing it.

--- Robot War
- As they inspect the wheel, the robot on the black glass sand lurches to life! It spews fire from a nozzle on its front, but DJ abducts it before it can do much harm! It floats into the air, spewing flame, while the rest of the party try to shoot at it to little effect.
- Thankfully it floats far enough into the air that it forgets what it was doing, and flies away scanning for hostiles. Success! They inspect the corpses the robot had been dragging along, and find fire-blackened bodies of Flowers Penurius and DJ. Very strange.

--- HUD get!
- Grumpy and Red see all this from a distance and just watch, despite Red’s clear antsiness to get into combat. While they’re watching the pepperpot robot get abducted into the air, Grumpy gets a whisper-message from Styx in his ear. He touches his ear and finds that a communicator is growing in his ear, made by a subtle stream of the black glass.
- Styx asks him if he’s willing to be a signal-booster, and Grumpy agrees! A Styx-based HUD comes up in Grumpy’s vision, showing him readouts like HP and giving him a rune interface that allows him to change glyphs on the fly! Very cool.
- With Styx now accessible, Grumpy is a little less grumpy. He returns to the others, Red none the wiser, and immediately fixes the wagon’s wheel with his Dwarven craft-sense.
- Still, it’s late, so the group settles down for a night on the glass plain. The humidity of the day lapses through the evening, and the morning is clear and fresh. So much better!

--- Negotiations
- They set off again, moving much more easily over the black glass. They pass the elevator and Grumpy sees a wireframe Styx, but the party march on. The area around the elevator is much less flat these days, humps of black glass where once was flat ground.
- A mile or so past the elevator they discover a destroyed robot surrounded by bodies. One of them is alive! The party runs over to help and DJ stabilises her with god magic. Her name is Iguedo (not “I, Guido”) and she’s from the village of Bata to the north-east, and just wanted to re-upload. She’s tired of this violent world.
- The robot’s treads are put onto the lead cart to help it over rough terrain and Grumpy helps the barely-alive Iguedo towards the elevator. He calls for Styx in his head, and Styx answers! In the conversation that follows, Grumpy realises that to solve the Snels-virus inside the Styxmind, he’ll have to go into the otherworld himself.
- Unless…
- He reaches for the Gifflewim coin in his pocket. The coin that Gifflewim the strange Elf Merchant gave him if he ever wanted to get in touch in future.
- He flicks the coin into the air... and time freezes.

Total: 2000 exp

Team Bonus:

- Aggressive Negotiations bonus
- Best of Intentions bonus
- Classic Charles bonus
- Diplomancy bonus
- Enmity Inciter bonus
- Hard Bargain bonus
- Holy bonus
- I Immediately Regret This Decision bonus
- Long Deliberation bonus
- Pundemonium bonus
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong bonus

Total: 950 exp

Individual Bonus:

- Chronicler (Carter / Grumpy - 100 exp)
- Expedition Leader (Kitty / Andromeda - 100 exp)
- Cartographer (Carter / Grumpy - 100 exp)
- Quartermaster (Carter / Grumpy - 100 exp)
- Paymaster (Charles / DJ - 100 exp)

- Vanguard (Russell / Dargo - 100 exp)
- Triage (Timothy / Red - 100 exp)
- Chef (George / Lost Boys - 100 exp)

- JÜGBRINGYR bonus (Timothy, Kitty, Charles, Izzy - 500 exp ea.)
- Nut Nut bonus (Timothy - 100 exp)
- Art Attack bonus (Carter - 100 exp)

Exp Totals:

- Kitty / Andromeda, Level 7 Andromedan Vampire: 89124 (Level up at 144000)
Level Up! +1d6 HP! +1d6 Healing Pool! +Minimum Faith 7! + Backstory!

- Charles / Dustin Johnson, Level 7 Intergalacticist Cleric: 88327 (Level up at 112000)

- Carter / Granite "Grumpy" Ironjaw, Level 7 Warden Dwarf: 77398 (Level up at 140800)
Level Up!

- Russell / Dargo, Level 6 Inheritor: 60890 (Level up at 72000)
Level Up!

- Tim / Red, Level 6 Duellist Fighter: 59724 (Level up at 64000)
Level Up!

- George / The New Moondin Lost Boys, Level 6 Extras: 35276 (Level up at 48000)
Level Up!
Level Up!
Level Up!

- Izzy / Ratman, Level 6 Ratman: 31823 (Level up at 48000)
Level Up!
Level Up!
Level Up!
Level Up!
Level Up!