Session 286 - Succ’d by the Bus

 

Session 286 - Succ’d by the Bus

New Backstory:
- Kandy Toffee-Apple Moon D'Moor doesn’t regret coming to this world through the mirror. If he could choose, he’d still do it all again.

Foes Defeated:

- A massive Leech-Drake (1000 exp)
- 2 dreams of different natures (2000 exp)
Total: 3000 exp

Events:

--- Ratman Returns!
- Still deep into the gardens, the party are still hanging around the mask display. Suddenly, parachuting from above on a parachute made of clangers, Ratman the Ratman returns! In the dream-state that is the Gardens, he looks rather more cartoonish than normal.
- He lands and takes an unclaimed mask - that of the Crow Doctor. It fits snugly around his snout, grants a bonus to Saves vs Doom, allows him to heal others by harming himself, and erodes his Charisma and Strength. Fair trade!
- They go deeper into the gardens, finding themselves in some smouldering woods that look like a fire went through some days ago. They even meet a huge talking tree-man who is very conscious of copyright law. They get on well, so the big eucalypt-man gives Red a singed koala called Gladys and directions through the woods. Helpful!

--- Leech-Drake
- The woods lead through to a salamander settlement covered with ivy and with great bonfires between the houses. The big axlotl-esque fire lizards are on their rooftops cheering for a great battle to commence!
- The great battle is… a huge rolling leech creature! Its scaly skin is sea-green with blue bands, and it wants to suck their blood! Andromeda realises that this must be the dream-form of one of the party’s most storied foes… the Bus! That huge grub from long years back has returned from their memories!
- Everything gets very video-gamey and meta when a health bar appears and all the combatants do an opening flourish. It goes for Red but she swings up on top of it, while nearby Ratman’s laser rifle detonates as he tries to shoot it! Ferdinand the Bull returns from god knows where and joins the fray too!
- Andromeda summons her god-hammer and dives into its throat, smashing it from the inside,while Ratman sends his swarms to attack it from without. While all this goes on, Kandy stands in a salamander bonfire heating his weapons - he’s immune to the fire due to his magic mask after all.
- After the death of many rats, Andromeda finally bursts out from within the leech-drake’s guts! The salamanders cheer - it was a good show!
- She slurps down some of its gore and has a strange vision of being in a glass room that fills with champagne. When the vision fades she looks down to see that the Bus contained some loot! An airline-size bottle of absinthe, a metal war-fan, and a smoking pipe filled with tobacco!
- Red downs the absinthe, feels a warm glow, and hears the sound of a glass ceiling shattering as the potions’ effects take hold - she’s level 10 for the next couple of hours!

--- Ruins and Dreams
- They move onwards since the way back behind them has faded away. They walk through a mist and find themselves on a floating island above a misty chasm, other islands float a dreamlike distance away covered with ruins. It takes a mere thought to go to another island as they float like leaves on a pond, drifting through these ruins in the depths of the Gardens.
- Moving across an unreal bridge between islands they look down into a pit containing a dream. Kandy reaches out and it reaches back into his head, altering his self and memories to make him remember that he won that mirror through luck and gambling.
- Past the dream they see what it was feeding on at the bottom of the pit - a huddled goblin whose memories are spread out around him in fractal patterns.
- To fight the dream one must make use of memories. Ferdinand the bull reminds Kandy of where they first met, restoring his sense of self somewhat. Red reminds him of what a nice guy he was when he first left the mirror.
- The dream spreads to Red, and they remember the time they gambled the night away. Andromeda is next to receive the dream-memory, the three of them sitting around a gambling table the night the Burning Bush burnt down.
- They’re all losing their grasp of who they are, and so Kandy offers up the crystal elf skull to the dream. Hundreds of years of memory right here! The dream cradles the skull and takes it into the pit to feed, the skull’s screams echoing from the dirt walls.
- They back away and turn to see they’ve reached another island. The pool in the centre hisses and spits, and corrodes to death one of Ratman’s clangers. A sneaking slithering tongue emerges to pierce the dying rat, then slithers forward towards Ratman singing of blood and sacrifice.
- Andromeda loves that shit, so she dives in front of the dream-tongue to take the hit! She remembers how she stabbed Bertha over and over again while kissing her, whispering “blood to blood” into her mouth. She begins to forget who she is again.
- Kandy unleashes a Miracle - the Chill Zone! Everyone chills out, and the dream retreats to the pool to make trippy shapes. Andromeda emerges from the dream and feels Red’s hand on her shoulder. She looks up into Red’s eyes and remembers - they’re the Bunker Buddies!

Total: 6000 exp

Roles:
Remembrancer: Kitty (100 exp)
Expedition Leader: Ollie (100 exp)
Cartographer: Kitty (100 exp)
Paymaster: Izzy (100 exp)

Quartermaster: Ollie (100 exp)
Vanguard: Timothy (100 exp)
Triage: Timothy (100 exp)
Chef: Izzy (100 exp)

OOC:
- JÜGBRINGYR bonus: Tim, Izzy (500 exp ea.)

Exp Totals:

- Kitty / Andromeda, Level 8 Andromedan Vampire: 179262 (Level MAX)

- Tim / Red, Level 8 Duellist Fighter: 164561 (Level MAX)

- Izzy / Ratman, Level 8 Ratman: 130083 (Level MAX)

- Ollie / Kandy Toffee-Apple Moon D'Moor, Level 7 Intergalacticist Cleric: 88527 (Level up at 112000)

Session 285 - Wear a Mask

 The gardens continue on, with many strange happenings and unearthly secrets, until the gang find some artefacts which may well bring about their doom - strange masks that grant fickle powers to those who wear them...

Session 285 - Wear a Mask

New Backstory:
- Kandy Toffee-Apple Moon D'Moor had a girlfriend who was really into his rotund body. When he eventually lost the weight she left him… so he got his petty revenge by eating all her chocolate. It was the last chocolate in the world. Once per round, deal 1 damage to a creature that just hit you.

Valuables:
- A golden 48 hour pocket watch (2500 exp)
- Ten masks of uncertain nature
Total: 2500 exp

Foes Defeated:

- A big topiary-bird (500 exp)
Total: 500 exp

Events:

--- Oh hi, Kandy!
- Kandy Toffee-Apple Moon D'Moor, the alt-universe version of dearly mirror-defenestrated Beepbox, stumbles through the strange and wondrous underground gardens that lie perpendicular to the apocalyptic reality above. He passes through a garden arch and sees a dreamlike nightmare sight before him - his friends butchering an enormous praying mantis amongst greenhouses. What does this dream-portent mean?!
- Oh wait it’s actually real and they’re actually gutting a big praying mantis because they want to eat it. Unconvinced by their protestations of deliciousness, he goes to pick some fruit from a nearby tree but finds only human teeth. How did he get here again?
- He turns back to the group to discover that Poison Phil has started cooking a meal. He calls it a “Praying Manwich” - mantis brain pâté between lightly toasted slices of goblin flesh, topped with edible orchids and flaked whale caviar. It’s palatable… but after eating it Poison Phil gets a horrible grumling feeling in his stomach.

--- Onwards through the Steam
- Despite Plod’s mysterious disappearance (did he lure them here? Where did he go?) the gang decide to continue on, perhaps if they go deep enough they’ll find where the goblins went!
- They walk through a burnt garden where great brass pipes jut from the ground and spew boiling steam and come to a chasm with floating mushroom gardens. The way behind them closes up. No way out but through! A dropped rock never hits the bottom of the misty chasm.
- Good thing Kandy has a jetpack, honestly. Andromeda turns into a bat, flies over, then turns back into a human over a giant mushroom to bounce on it. She’s bounced into the corrugated iron shade over the mushrooms, and also releases wisdom-draining spores!
- Kandy has begun jetpacking people over to the other side… and as he does so a stone statue of a proper traditional angel with feathery wings and a flaming sword ascends from the chasm below! It intones “I am the angel of your doom!” as it rises, and Kandy counters by… putting on the cursed dancing shoes he got from Sir Robyn’s tower!
- Kandy is forced to dance! Thankfully the angel becomes somewhat confused and curious. After a bit of discussion they persuade the angel to help them get across to the other side. In all honesty even the angel is confused about how they pulled that one off!

--- Versus the Topiary
- They crawl through ahole in the hedge and come out onto a small field where the ground churns like the sea and a shooting gallery has been set up in the centre. More importantly, a singing choir of rose-headed plant-people is fighting a giant bird-topiary!
- Kandy acts fast, calling upon his god Galaxy Johnson to abduct the great bird! A pale light shines from above and the topiary starts to rise into the air!
- On seeing this, the rose-people turn to talk. In their fluted voices they explain that they grew the topiary, but it has begun to disrespect them and tried to walk off. Nevertheless, they grew it and they love it, so they would not see it destroyed.
- The topiary-bird plummets to the ground behind them, and Red falls out of a nearby hedge and rushes in to hold it down! She does so with great skill, even giving it a bit of a cheeky prune as she wrestles it to the ground.
- The rose choir use the opportunity to sing the topiary into peacefulness. Meanwhile the party who didn’t just turn up out of a hedge check out the shooting range. Individual boxes aim at posts with long skeletons chained to them. They shoot all the targets and reveal a treasure! A 48-hour pocketwatch that tells the time in fairy-land.
- Ferdinand the mechanical bull blunders into a tree nearby and knocks over a couple of fences on his way to join the party. He followed Red here!

--- Salamanderstron
- They continue, taking their leave of the rose-maidens. Along the way they find a treasure in a flowerbed - an enchanted fishhook. It tells them, somehow, that anyone who swallows the hook will be unable to act against the one holding the other end of the fisking-line.
- They hop a garden gate and come into a burning garden with burning houses and burning lizards amongst them. Huge salamanders - like axlotls with fire in the place of their gill-mane - scuttling about their burning town. The salamanders offer candied treats and, on hearing that they met Axel in a mausoleum somewhere towards the entrance, ask the party to tell him not to go much further away lest he revert to a dumb lizard.
- Reflecting on this consequence of the fairy realm, the gang suddenly examine themselves and realise that they’ve been becoming more archetypical! Pirate, vampire, princess, Robin Hood. Their clothes and demeanours have subtly changed!
- They ask about the goblins and are told that they have gone deeper and deeper into the realm of the evil dream-elves. They bring out the crystal elf skull Theron and ask him about it - he tells them that these Dream Elves are of the same stock as the Red Elves of Mars. Where those Elves left Earth for the physical heavens, these Elves took another path into these metaphysical gardens. He knows not of their ultimate fate.

--- The Masks
- They continue on through a garden made of flesh. Eyes peer from minced-meat garden beds and fingers wriggle from the skin-earth, fingertips peeking up over the thick hair-grass. Some of these fingers hold down a huge clanking smoking lawnmower, and when Andromeda kneels down to suck blood from the sweating ground the fingers spasm and let the lawnmower go! It sprays blood, chopping fingers, roaring towards the party! They run!
- They emerge into a nice normal garden again, not a hairy horrible meat garden. This one has something very interesting in it though... a wall of masks of various kinds. They definitely look cursed, and yet…
- Kandy takes a Harlequin mask - delicate white and black porcelain with gold inlay. He gets a 6-in-6 Stealth, Backstab and Sleight of Hand, but doubles the chance of getting hit by randomly targeted attacks. His life takes on an air of ineffable tragedy. He also tries putting on a second mask on the back of his head. It works! It is the mask of the Flame painted red and orange fire on silk. He becomes immune to fire, but takes double damage from other non-physical sources and he wants to commit grand and exotic acts of arson. - Andromeda also takes two masks - the mask of the Reaper made from a stylised human skull, and the mask of the Black Goat made of horn and velvet. The first makes her give, and receive, 3 more damage and causes small animals to lay down and die around her. The second makes her gain +3 Cha and +3 Con, but will fail any saves against mind- and emotion-control. She finds civilisation tiresome, and wishes to run into the woods and spill blood beneath the moon.
- Red takes the mask of the Refined Lady - delicate china with black inlaid script. She gains a sophisticated taste in art, food and company. Quite the upgrade! She also gains double exp from treasure, no exp from non-treasure, and minimum HP at level-up. Not quite so useful at max level, but there we are.
- Poison Phil takes the mask of the Prisoner - a bolted steel faceplate with grilles over the eyes. He gets +2 AC, but causes the party to lose Initiative ties and takes -1 Awareness. Just looking at him you can tell that he must look grotesque under that mask.
- Most importantly every mask-wearer now gets a Sense of Self rating made up of the sum of their Charisma and Constitution scores. Each day they are affected by the masks’ power, their Sense of Self is eroded, until one day they may become NPCs...

Total: 6000 exp

Roles:
Remembrancer: George (100 exp)
Expedition Leader: Kitty (100 exp)
Cartographer: George (100 exp)
Paymaster: -

Quartermaster: Ollie (100 exp)
Vanguard: Kitty (100 exp)
Triage: Timothy (100 exp)
Chef: Ollie (100 exp)

Exp Totals:

- Kitty / Andromeda, Level 8 Andromedan Vampire: 176812 (Level MAX)

- Tim / Red, Level 8 Duellist Fighter: 161611 (Level MAX)

- Ollie / Kandy Toffee-Apple Moon D'Moor, Level 7 Intergalacticist Cleric: 86077 (Level up at 112000)

- George / Poison Phil, Level 4 Fighter: 13993 (Level up at 16000)

Session 284 - The Unreal Underhive

 Into the Underhive, which has become a strange faerie realm since the Goblins locked themselves away.
I feel sorry for that poor mantis guy who just wanted to live his life!

Session 284 - The Unreal Underhive

New Backstory:
- Plod was laughed at by other goblins when they found out he was indentured to Sir Robyn. Once per session, cause someone you’ve met before not to act for a round.
- Poison Phil talked a wasteland warlord down from a tense situation. Once per session, de-escalate a verbal confrontation

Valuables:
- 42 shrinking iron rations (2100 exp)
- 26 mantis rations (26 exp)
Total: 2126 exp

Foes Defeated:

- Glass hummingbirds (50 exp)
- Rapacious silkworms (50 exp)
- A big praying mantis (250 exp)
Total: 350 exp

Expedition:
- First party to enter the Underhive (500 exp)
Total: 500 exp

Events:

--- Julgoor’s Bank
- Back in New Moondin after a week or so out in the wastes, the party rests up and heads over to the Goblin Bank to see what’s going on with the place after the fall of Styx. Turns out Julgoor’s in charge now, and the goblins have mostly retreated into the Underhive and locked themselves away. Also it’s getting real crazy down there.
- After a bit of banter and an art sale to Julgoor, who of course is willing to buy any valuables the party has, they decide to go investigate the mysterious Underhive themselves. Julgoor lets them through the intricate wrought iron gate and into this strange new dungeon…

--- Bloodsuckers
- Inside the place is… vast! And sunny! And full of greenery! Space itself is warped. Clockwork weather winds and shifts on the ceiling a vast distance overhead, paths wind through dense gardens ahead, and songbirds sing somewhere in the trees.

- They first come to a semicircular amphitheatre with shadow puppets rusting on a stage. Soon they notice something very strange - their own shadows are moving weirdly! Messing about with the shadow puppets causes one’s shadow to try try to tear away!
- They move along, following the garden path to a fragrant herb garden. They gather some herbs which Niamh identifies as paralysis herbs… and as she does so she sees a little glass hummingbird flutter down from a nearby tree and hover near her hand. She lets it close… and it sips on her blood!
- Loads more birds flutter down and swarm her, soon draining her of enough blood to make her pass out! The rest of the party run to her aid!
- Poison Phil accidentally gets hit by a load of birds and Plod’s goblins when he fumbles a Gambit, but despite this and other setbacks the glass birds are soon crushed! Phew!

- Some of these herbs are psychedelic. Phil takes some and sees this place in the past… it used to be densely packed earth and rock, naturally! Niamh trips out on some other herb.

--- Choo choo!
- They continue on into a garden with ponds full of lilypads and fish. Plod makes Goblina try all the fish, which shrink down into little objects when taken from the water. Each has a different effect, giving her drunkenness, spiderclimb and… poison! Thankfully she survives, but when a weird icy train track complete with little child-sized fish-train arrives from one of the ponds she’s bundled into it and sent off down the tracks!
- They follow on through a hole in the hedge and find Goblina dead, her train crashed into a hole! This area has more shadow puppets, but this time there are willowy skeletons on chairs watching the stage. They’re not animated skeletons though, thankfully.
- In the hole the little train crashed into they find some food! Lovely! Mini iron rations that expand into a larger meal when you hold them in your hand. Very good.

--- Silk

- They travel onwards, careful not to annoy their animate shadows, and come to a grove of trees draped with interwoven strands of silk. It’s dead cold, but thankfully Plod’s rune-workings help them warm up.
- Plod and Niamh go to gather the silk and find that it’s really sticky! They’re stuck fast! Silkworms descend from the sticky silk above to attack them! Plod’s surviving goblins help him out but get stuck themselves, while Andromeda bites Niamh to heal her with her vampire bite!
- Plod chucks oil on the tree which poor Niamh is stuck to and Poison Phil lights it with a flintlock spark. The whole thing goes up in flames! Niamh jumps away, lightly scorched, and the silkworms are cooked alive!

--- Axel the Axlotl
- They continue deeper and come to a cemetery. The ground warps and waves like an ocean. Atop a mausoleum is a great pale amphibian who introduces himself as Axel and seems pretty chill. Par for the course here really.
- Since everyone’s a little the worse for wear, they decide to camp here under Axel’s watchful eye. Time itself seems to slow as they settle down to camp. Poison Phil cooks up a meal from canned bread, goblin flesh, devil-carp, and some of those silkworms from before. He calls it - wait for it - a Diet of Worms. Very good.

- Andromeda talks to Axel during the night. Apparently there are tall goblins here who come out at night, play drums and harps, always going deeper into this strange place and always trying to get taller. She asks if he’d like to join them going deeper but he demures - if he leaves the cemetery he’ll turn back into a little lizard and he doesn’t want that!

--- Mantis Man
- In the morning they encroach further into the gardens, coming to a garden blooming with rare orchids in greenhouses. One of the greenhouses has been painted over on the inside, so naturally they go to check the place out!
- They smash their way in and find a small house with an odd long bed and a kitchenette. They check the fridge and find it’s got some weird chilled bug things in there. Suddenly Poison Phil feels something grab him from behind and drag him out of the broken window of the door!
- It’s a massive mantis! Poison Phil garnishes himself with paralysis herb as the great insect loudly asks who these people are who’ve broken into his home!
- Andromeda wrestles it off Poison Phil with a crit and pins it while Plod’s goblins smash at its thorax! I say! After lots of wrestling Goblina finally finishes it off. That poor mantis.
- During the fight he mentioned that he’d gone out to bury his wife, so naturally our heroes butcher the dead mantis for meat and then dig up his dead wife to butcher her too.
- Poison Phil drinks a mystery potion he had on him and discovers he can see into people’s pasts. He looks into the mantis’ past and sees that it was just a normal mantis that came into the hive from the normal world, then became a big smart mantis. Now it is a big dead mantis.
- With far more to explore, we finish for the night. Next time, more weird underhive!

Total: 7000 exp

Roles:
Remembrancer: Charles (100 exp)
Expedition Leader: Kitty (100 exp)
Cartographer: George (100 exp)
Paymaster: Charles (100 exp)

Quartermaster: -
Vanguard: George (100 exp)
Triage: -
Chef: George (100 exp)

OOC:
- Art Attack bonus (Charles - 100 exp)
- Artapalooza bonus (Charles - 100 exp)

Exp Totals:

- Kitty / Andromeda, Level 8 Andromedan Vampire: 174362 (Level MAX)

- George / Poison Phil, Level 4 Fighter: 11543 (Level up at 16000)

- Charles / Plod, Level 4 Goblin: 8958 (Level up at 16000)
Level Up! +1d6 HP! +1 Goblin Buddy! +Backstory!

- James G / Niamh, Level 2 Enlightened Cleric: 4210 (Level up at 4500)
Level Up! +1d6 HP! +1d6 Healing Pool! +1 Faith! +Backstory!

Session 283 - Come Home to Jesus

 

Session 283 - Come Home to Jesus

New Characters:
- Plod, a Goblin with a massive disregard for the lives of his minion and a taste for manflesh.

Valuables:
- Book #219: The Dead God
- Book #193: Exploration of the New World
- Book #321: A Knight with POWERLAD
- Book #198: The Formation of the Deeprush
Total: 400 exp

Foes Defeated:

- Several swarms of imps (50 exp)
Total: 50 exp

Expedition:
- Expedition Complete! (500 exp)
Total: 500 exp

Events:

--- New Friends and Old
- At Sir Robyn’s tower, the party prepares to set off back home to New Moondin. Those Dwarf weirdos are probably going to turn up soon, and it’s probably best if Jeremy Wizard is there to cover for the party’s shenanigans when they eventually arrive.
- A new guy shows up - a Goblin named Plod and his poor misbegotten minion “Goblin A” aka Goblina. Surprisingly, as they’re about to set off, someone else shows up! It’s Gifflewim! He’s not got much useful on him unfortunately, or at least nothing that piques the party’s interest, but they chat for a bit about how Jeremy Wizard has retired to become lord of the tower and all the rest.
- Taking their leave, the party rolls off in their wagon. They’ll be taking a different route back - following the old tracks round the south of the Lone Sea in order to give Japhet & Hirsch back home some more mapmaking information.

--- Demon Forest
- It’s a normal summer Heat Haze so they make good time in their air-conditioned wagon, skirting the Lone Sea. They can even see a flotilla of boats lashed together out across the great lake. After a while they see a glow from a small forest of dead trees! Red and Andromeda decide to investigate, while Plod stays with the wagon to “defend” it.
- Small winged figures flit through the branches above, chattering strangely. The gang approach the red glow and find a pond ringed with glowing demonic runes. In the middle, a couple of mud-covered figures are having an argument. They’re demons, of course! Though these are the recently born mud-person type. It transpires that this pond acts like the River Lethe, rebirthing the demons who die near here, and they keep dying whenever the poison comes through. Of course when they die they spawn little imps, which is why the damn things are everywhere.
- Red invites them to go to Sir Robyn’s tower - they’re going to be building a settlement there and could use more people. The demons accept! But they need the imps to be distracted if they’re to escape without bringing the whole flock with them.
- Red and Andromeda try an increasingly effective combination of sinful thoughts and dancing to distract the imps… until Plod just shoots at a cloud of the creatures! They fly off to swarm Plod, forcing Red and Andromeda to run to help!
- Andromeda’s Storm Shell is the most successful destroyer of imps, but those that get through the barrier manage to swarm over Goblina and devour her stomach before Plod’s relatively horrified eyes! Despite this tragic death, the imps are soon killed by hammer, dagger and gun.

- The party grab a jar of the pond water - if it’s Lethe water it’ll be useful - and tearfully harvest Goblina’s innards for rations. Plod’s past career was as a cannibal after all…

--- Boat Town
- They continue on until they reach the town of Pond around midday. There’s a vague plan to build some sort of pontoon for the cart and head to New Moondin via the river, but even the shipbuilder’s dock doesn’t have something big enough. Instead there are several small boats with greasy tarpaulins tied over them, and everything else seaworthy has been looted.
- Out in the middle of the Lone Sea, they can see people moving about on the flotilla! Actual people! With boats!
- While Andromeda fills a coffin with grave dirt (to protect her from the perils of running water, of course), Plod and Red take a dinghy to the flotilla. When they arrive they are welcomed in with open arms, despite an initial worry about Plod the Goblin! This is, imaginatively, called Boat Town. Originally a floating haven against the Undead, after the End they managed to survive by sealing themselves into their boats.
- Red tells them about the soon-to-be town being built around the Tower and they’re very excited to be able to finally return to land! They also agree to build a floating barge, but it’ll take quite some time.
- With that all sorted, and dreams of using the Lone Sea as a hub for trade, Red and Plod row back to Pond where Andromeda awaits them.

--- Ice Bridge
- They set off again into the late afternoon, but after only a short while they come to a river with no crossing! The remnants of a ferryman’s hut and some rotten wooden posts are all that remain of the ferry that was once here.
- After significant effort and rune-shenanigans, they make a bridge! A tall tree now bridges the river, and freezing runes carved along the trunk can be powered to create an ice bridge that a cart can traverse! Better living through rune magic!

- This took a fair while though, so they hunker down in the ferryman’s hut for the night.
- During the night Andromeda spots something strange off in the woods with her heat and heart vision - figures shuffling through the trees. She becomes a bat to investigate and follows them. They emerged from an ominous lesion in the ground and they look strange under heartbeat vision - some have blood twisted into bulging boils in their flesh, others have had their intestines tied in a complicated knots. Knotsmen!
- She leaves them well enough alone and watches them as they take water from the river then go back down into their crack in the ground. Creepy.

--- The Fisherman
- Morning rolls round and the Heat Haze continues. They set off once more after a quick breakfast of leftovers that grant reduced crash chance. Convenient!
- After an hour or so they’re going along the tracks that approach the edge of the lake and see something very strange - a tall stork-man with a fishing rod held in its feathery hands, casting a line out across the hazy waves.
- Red calls out to it and it looks round with a beady birdy eye, then tries to catch her! She parries, grabs the line, and wrenches it forward to knock the bird off balance! It stumbles and falls into the water with an angry squawk, and the party speed off before it can recover!

--- Meeting with Jesus
- They roll up to the outskirts of Chilky, passing by some papier-mache looking igloos that are now long-abandoned, and enter the town. Old pre-End religious pamphlets litter the streets, are pasted to walls, or nailed to the church door. This was once where every man and his god had their religious stuff printed.
- There’s a printing press, naturally. Amongst the clutter they find a few books. Red is excited about making this a town too, perhaps a home for an independent Red Letter newspaper!
- Weather improves as they move on to Stockle, the heat breaking into a nice clear day. They see that the Church has a faded STAY AWAY written on the side of it and go to investigate.
- Inside they find an old priest who speaks to Jesus. He seems nice enough… except that Jesus is a physical force that helps him move furniture and find food and tells him of things he cannot see. Very strange!
- After chatting to the priest for a while, and a long private discussion about whether Jesus is to be trusted, they decide to head onwards again. In thanks, the priest sends Jesus with the cart to help the party home safely! There is some private concern in the party that this might not, in fact, be Our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus.

--- Return to New Moondin
- With daylight waning they book it to New Moondin as swiftly as possible, rolling past angel-beams firing into the sky and yet more stoneshell crab spoor. The damn crabs must be breeding like crazy!
- They finally reach the Storm Shell and go through! Jesus is not stopped by the Shell and shimmers out of the corner of everyone’s eye. There goes that plan.
- It’s getting dark but they’re so close to home, so they press on into the early evening. They cross the bridge and arrive, finally, back at New Moondin!
- Japhet & Hirsch come out of their eye tower to greet the party - they saw everything from the eyes on the front of the wagon of course. Red goes off to tell the Red Letter and the Librarians that there’s a mostly-working printing press out in Stockle that would make it a perfect town for book-lovers and newspaper makers!
- Expedition complete!

Total: 8000 exp

Roles:
Remembrancer: Charles (100 exp)
Expedition Leader: Kitty (100 exp)
Cartographer: Charles (100 exp)
Paymaster: Charles (100 exp)

Quartermaster: -
Vanguard: Tim (100 exp)
Triage: Tim (100 exp)
Chef: Kitty (100 exp)

OOC:
- Art Attack bonus (Charles - 100 exp)
- Artapalooza bonus (Charles - 100 exp)

Exp Totals:

- Kitty / Andromeda, Level 8 Andromedan Vampire: 171768 (Level MAX)

- Tim / Red, Level 8 Duellist Fighter: 159261 (Level MAX)

- Charles / Plod, Level 3 Goblin: 6064 (Level up at 8000)
Level Up! +1d6 HP! +1 Goblin Minion! +Backstory!
Level Up! +1d6 HP! +1 Goblin Minion! +Backstory!