Session 260 - The Gang Evicts Styx

Our first session of the lockdown! Next session we're transitioning to something that might be a bit easier to run over video, so I'm glad we managed to wrap this up!

Next stop - the Moon!

Session 260 - The Gang Evicts Styx

Date:

March. 15 years after the End.

Foes:
- A baseline angel (50 exp)
- A fair number of goblins (200 exp)
- Ascended Styx (1000 exp)
Total: 1250 exp

Events:

--- Direct Action
- It’s time to take the fight to Styx! With Singular Thay marching in from the east, The Lady in orbit overhead to mess with Styx’s angel-control, and the rumbling of revolution from the human workers in New Moondin, there’s never been a better time to assault Styx’s angel-base!
- The party hustles across the city with a cadre of friendly spiders, ignoring the pub (which has gone on fire) and the spider temple (which has begun moving like a giant spider-kaiju). They rush towards the Seraphim which squats over the Creeper Fields even now.
- They see the angels taking glitchy flight to defend the town against the various threats, and when they arrive at the Seraphim there is only a single angel there to defend it!
- The others ignore it and go past, but Red wants to kill it for whatever reason and smashes it up. Poor angel!
- Using jetpacks and spider-priest friends, they ascend one of the great legs of the Seraphim and go inside as soon as the door hisses open.

--- Trapped!
- Inside they find a goblin with a clipboard, asking if they’ve got an appointment! They banter a bit until the goblin goes to ask Styx what to do next at a video screen on the wall. After some invisibility shenanigans and other nonsense, the goblin tells them to follow him to see Styx.
- Styx tricks them and locks them in a small room with a big video screen in it! He appears on the screen, mocking them and showing them a view of the outside - his angels are making short work of all the attackers!
- Jeremy Wizard listens over the crystal comms net to check whether this is true… it is not. Styx is faking the footage!
- They tempt Styx with an offer of a USB that contains information the main Styx wouldn’t want him to have. Very spicy! Secretly this USB actually contains a local copy of the Lady, so they hope that they can get Styx to plug it in and override himself.
- Styx says he’ll allow two people at a time to come see him in the actual seraphim core, so Red and Snels volunteer. The others just have to wait.

--- Styx Prime
- They enter the seraphim core after a bit of ring-spinning, and meet Styx himself! He has a bunch of goblin minions at the consoles in there, and a chained-up hologram of the Lady can be seen on the central dais.
- They chat for a while, mutually suspicious. Snels goes around shaking goblin hands… and sees that the goblins are all armed! The goblins grab their weapons and prepare for battle!
- Red cries “activate teleportation stones!” and activates her invisibility glove, getting ready to jam the USB into the first slot she sees. Jeremy Wizard’s bee familiar buzzes into the room from a vent. Snels gulps and prepares to attack.
- Combat is joined… and Styx reveals that he has a new battle-form! Crafted from various angel-bits and magical hardware and whatever else, it snicker-snacks out to attack!

- Red manages to slot the USB in after a couple of tries and frees the Lady, who releases the rest of the party into the combat and blesses everyone with a luck aura!
- Styx is soon defeated and ejected from the local system, the Lady is back in control of the Seraphim! She immediately gets to work giving the angels new orders, supporting Singular Thay’s assault on the walking Spider-Temple!

---Aftermath
- New Moondin is liberated! As the dust settles, Red asks the Lady one question - “do you think you could take us to the Moon??”

Total: 5000 exp

Exp Totals:

- Kitty / Andromeda, Level 7 Andromedan Vampire: 142473 (Level up at 144000)

- Tim / Red, Level 7 Duellist Fighter: 79080 (Level up at 128000)

- Izzy / Ratman, Level 7 Ratman: 69379 (Level up at 96000)

- George / Damnation Snels, Level 6 Born Again Barbarian: 37311 (Level up at 64000)

- Charles / Jeremy Wizard, Level 5 Magic-User: 28929 (Level up at 36000)

- Ollie / Beepbox Strawberry Stars de Moor, Level 5 Cleric of the New Eden: 21779 (Level up at 28000)

Session 259 - Assault on New Moondin

It's been a while! Between the trip to Venice and the self-isolation after Venice and the subsequent global lockdown, it's looking like face-to-face D&D is over for the foreseeable!

Fear not, we're going to try to get something working tonight over Hangouts. You should have my email or some means of contacting me if you're not on zuckbook, so if you're in let me know!

As for this recap... despite having had literal weeks to write it I've only finished it off today so it is likely to be rife with errors. If you spot any, send them my way!

Stay safe, wash your hands, all that good stuff.

Izzy draws Jeremy Wizard and his bee familiar

Close up of the bee? Or horrifyingly biological angel? You be the judge!
Also by Izzy.

Timothy supplies Red's family portrait, they all seem so happy!

Session 259 - Assault on New Moondin

Date:

March. 15 years after the End.

New Backstory:
- Some of Drake Blackthorn’s experiments didn’t go well back in the day, losing him a great deal of money and personal pride. Can improve your next d20 roll by 1d4, but if you fail you take that in damage.
- Damnation Snels has become good friends with Jeremy Wizard over the past few adventures, to their mutual benefit. +1 to rolls when next to each other.
- Jeremy Wizard ordered the counterattack when the other gold farmers were being forcibly ejected from the Styxtrix, although he himself ran the other way without getting involved. When you’re at the back of the marching order, the party gains +2 to first round initiative.

Foes:
- A small squad of angels, routed (100 exp)

Events:

--- Assault Plan Bravo

- With the direct assault stymied by Styx’s incredible defences, plans are drawn up for a slightly more subtle plan. Trust in Singular Thay is low, so any plans have to deal with the possibility of a sudden and anticipated betrayal.
- It’s going to be a couple of weeks until the Lady is in the sky and Styx’s angels go a bit haywire, so there’s a couple of weeks to kill setting up operation “Door Knock Dickhead!”
- Drake converts the live angel into wearable armour. Jeremy Wizard preps some more radio gems. Andromeda tests out her Storm Shell theory - it’s possible to dig under the dome! The only risk is letting the poisonous weather in.

- The dig team of Andromeda, Ratman the Ratman, and a Necromancer commanding the undead diggers themselves get to work. Jeremy Wizard goes into the Shell, pretending to be a refugee from Fate.

--- Saviourbone Miners Saved!

- Jeremy strolls over to the Saviourbone Mine safely and flags down an angel. It scans his kara and, not knowing what to do, kicks it all the way up to Styx! Styx wants the kara since it’s a Fate original and asks Jeremy to come to New Moondin - he’ll even get the angel to carry him there!
- Jeremy acquiesces, but sneakily drops one of his charmed comm-gems for the Saviourbone miners to communicate with.
- An Arnold Nonimus retrieves the gem and chats over the crystalnet. Andromeda takes the call, and finds out that the miners have all been put out of a job by angel automation and are on basic food income! They’re just chilling in their dugout otherwise.
- The dig team use the gem connection to help aim their digging, and after some days they finally break through into the miners’ underground home!
- Inside they meet a new party member who demures the traditional name of Arnold Nonimus, instead simply calling himself Spade. He has a spade. A spade that is also a rifle.
- The miners are ready and willing to attack the angels, since they’ve got supplies of guns and powder. Time to crack some angel shells!

- Andromeda is first into the field, shattering an angel with a powerful blow from her newly obtained hammer! Spade smashes another one with his spade!

- The angels flee this unprecedented assault, potshots from the miners following them as they roll away at great speed.
- With the angels in retreat, Snels calls up Singular Thay and tells them to press the attack towards New Moondin! He also calls up Come-Forth-If-Thou-Consider-Thyself-Hard-Enough Roper in Prepperton and tells him to go seduce the local elves for some reason.

--- Jeremy and Red Hit the Town
- Jeremy watches the Styx-based ads inside the angel taxi and follows Drake’s instructions to disable his own kara. When he arrives in New Moondin the angel opens up to reveal that Red is in town too! She must have walked separately.
- They head to the spider temple as quickly as possible, giving Styx some bad excuse about how they’re totally heading to the Seraphim. Inside the spider temple they discover that the spider Sir Robyn within has forbidden the spiders from leaving the temple.
- Red demands that her spider-father let her people go, while Jeremy Wizard casts magic missile on the darkness, miraculously hitting something! A sexy version of Jeremy emerges from the blackness… it’s demon shenanigans alright!

- Red yells at her spider-brethren to flee - she has a plan! She grabs Jeremy and engages the jetpack on her cancer-armour, blasting the two of them out through the roof! The jets burn up the demon-web as they escape!

- Outside, on the roof of the temple, they hear word that Roper succeeded at his seduction task and survived! Everyone else is shitposting over the crystal-net. The word comes in eventually amongst the memes - it’s time to march on New Moondin!

--- Into the Underhive

- The team at the Saviourbone Mine use their last teleport gem to warp into the Underhive beneath New Moondin, there to rally the troops and lead an insurrection against Styx that will tie up his forces and prevent him from reacting to Singular Thay’s assault.
- They emerge from a fire into… a massive subterranean complex, massive and strange. Some weird blend of tech and magic and plants and gardens, brimming with plants and animals of various kinds. Styx has been busy!
- Andromeda sees a strange mushroom-animal hybrid scuttling along and tries to eat it, but receives no sustenance from it. What’s been going on down here?!
- They head in what they hope is the direction of the exit, heading through a garden arch in a hedge. They find a man doing some work, who explains what the deal is now. Goblins and humans have to do equal work now! And a Goblin’s minion’s work counts as the labour of their parent, so humans have to do comparatively more work!
- He knows the way out though and indicates the way they need to go. They follow a path to the exit and find a large frog who insists they punch out to finish the workday.
- Just then, Red and Jeremy arrive amid a swarm of spiders! The spiders are saved! The frog, overwhelmed, hops to a safe distance as the party plans their next move in their assault against Styx!

Total: 4000 exp

Team Bonus:

- Aggressive Negotiations bonus
- Balls to the Wall bonus
- Best of Intentions bonus
- Better Part of Valour bonus
- Classic Charles bonus
- Diplomancy bonus
- Dramatic Rescue bonus
- Enmity Inciter bonus
- I Immediately Regret This Decision bonus
- Long Deliberation bonus
- Noblebright bonus
- Pundemonium bonus
- Social Justice Warrior bonus
- Split the Party bonus
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong bonus

Total: 750 exp

Individual Bonus:

- (Most TBD since I can’t find the job sheet!)
- JÜGBRINGYR bonus (Tom, Charles - 500 exp)
- Mezze Master bonus (Timothy - 400 exp)
- Art Attack bonus (Timothy, Izzy - 100 exp)
- Artapalooza bonus (Timothy - 100 exp)
- Attacco d’Arte bonus (Timothy, Izzy - 100 exp)

Exp Totals:

- Kitty / Andromeda, Level 7 Andromedan Vampire: 141431 (Level up at 144000)

- Tim / Red, Level 7 Duellist Fighter: 78038 (Level up at 128000)

- Izzy / Ratman, Level 7 Ratman: 68337 (Level up at 96000)

- George / Damnation Snels, Level 6 Born Again Barbarian: 36269 (Level up at 64000)

- Charles / Jeremy Wizard, Level 5 Magic-User: 27887 (Level up at 36000)

- Russell / Drake Blackthorn, Level 4 Specialist: 6287 (Level up at 12000)
Level Up! +1d6 HP! +2 Skill Points! +Backstory!

- Tom / Spade, Level 1 Fighter: 1193 (Level up at 2000)

Session 258 - Best Laid Plans

The war against Styx begins!
Or at least, an attempted first assault begins, stymied by a massive laser cannon.

Nevertheless, alliances are forged and old wounds potentially healed, with Snels even trying to heal the rift between the Denialist Brotherhood and everybody they absolutely despise.
What a world!

Meanwhile Drake Blackthorn plots dark experiments, necessitating a need for me to create some sort of bullshit mad science system. Watch this space!

Session 258 - Best Laid Plans

Date:

February. 15 years after the End.

New Backstory:
- Jeremy Wizard watched the freemium game whales get kicked out of the Styxtrix with hatred and disdain, thinking it would never happen to a humble gem miner like him. Deal double damage to creatures that killed a friend.
- Damnation Snels’ life changed after his wife’s death. If he could, he’d go back and change everything. Get a take-back once per session - you must do something different.
- Drake Blackthorn learned mind-shattering secrets from a lump of the great Dargo-Tree’s flesh, opening his mind to insights beyond the mortal ken. +1 Wisdom.

Loot:
- A live angel, captured! (50 exp)
Total: 50 exp

Events:

--- Prepperton
- The flames of the bonfire in the centre of Prepperton swirl and shift. A pale beam of the dragon-faced moon above shines down through a gap in the clouds. Black shapes appear - cloaked figures! They stride from the flames, unharmed, and the hood of one falls back. It’s Damnation Snels!
- He kicks those who fall to their knees in prayer, he’s not the one they worship after all. The rest of the party throw back their hoods. They’re in Prepperton! Gifflewim’s teleport stones worked!
- A man on a log introduces himself as the leader of the surviving Brotherhood. His name is Come-Forth-If-Thou-Consider-Thyself-Hard-Enough Roper, last Cleric of the Snelsmen in New Moondin.
- He tells them about how they had to flee New Moondin when Styx arrived - nothing could face down the angels. Those who fled came here, or fled to Singular Thay’s evil Necromancers out in the Fallow somewhere. Those who stayed and obeyed have been given karas to wear and are forced to work equal shifts with the Goblins in the Underhive. Dehumanising stuff.

- Separately, the Preppers have taken to leaving out offerings for the nearby Elves every New Moon. They’ve also got iron bars above their doors, just in case. The next New Moon is in four days, surprisingly.
- Styx’s Seraphim tends to stay where it is, squatting over the abandoned Prepper fields, but does tend to go a little bit schitzo when the Lady is overhead. The Spider-Priests haven’t been seen since Styx arrived, and the Preppertonians have no established way of communicating with the people in New Moondin. Also the Angels are systematically destroying the POWERLAD skeleton! This might be why the storm-shell overhead is getting less effective at keeping out the weather.
- Drake spends time healing the sick and injured in Prepperton, although some of his fixes are somewhat… interesting. Nevertheless he generates a fair amount of goodwill, and when Jeremy asks around for some gems so he can make some interconnected gem-phone network the populace comes together to donate some! Getting this comms network up will be crucial for organising a resistance movement!

Bad back? I'LL REPLACE THE SPINE!!!

--- Cranium Camp
- After some brief shopping in Prepperton the team flip their hoods up and smash their next teleport stone. In a swirl of blackness they disappear and emerge from a fire inside a giant skull! Singular Thay sits on a bone throne near the back of the skull, and stone bookshelves line the insides of the skull containing a fair number of books.

- Andromeda states that they come in peace and approaches Singular Thay, while Drake and others go straight for the books! A librarian, Samantha Pedantic, helps them and explains that these books were all they saved from the New Moondin library.
- Singular Thay tells Andromeda their plan - march into the Storm-Shell, animate the massive POWERDRAGON skeleton with a multi-day ritual, then march it into New Moondin and destroy the Seraphim. They’re currently at an impasse - Styx controls a Seraphim’s-worth of angels and the Necromancer’s undead forces don’t stand a chance against them.
- Andromeda agrees to help as long as they put the dragon skeleton back where they found it. Singular Thay agrees! Their plan was always to do so, in exchange for saving the town they and their Necromancers will hopefully be allowed to live in peace in New Moondin.
- Drake tells them that he’ll assist in upgrading the skeletons to resist the angels’ attacks. He’s got plans for a sort of damage-distributing network of connected armour that will ablate against angel attacks. What he doesn’t say is that it’ll have a backup that will destroy the skeletons if Thay betrays them. A deal is made! Singular Thay is on-side!
- Japhet & Hirsch, the double-demon couple, walk in! They fled New Moondin with the Necromancers, since obviously the Denialists in Prepperton are violently anti-demon. They’re pissed off at Julgoor who managed to persuade Styx that he’s a crucial part of the capitalist system in New Moondin, and now he gets to stay and eat up all the greed.

- They give Jeremy, Andromeda and Ratman third eyes that will allow the demons to see through them, and which can be deployed to give them vision over an area. They’ve been using these to spy on the goings-on in New Moondin. Now with the crystal walkie-talkies as well, they’ll have sound!
- Finally, after much negotiation and planning, the party suddenly decides to change tack - Blitzkrieg! Fuck planning, let’s go now before Styx knows we’re coming! Surprised but bought in, Singular Thay marshalls their troops - it’s go time!

--- March to the POWERSKELETON!
- The skull begins to move, carried forth on hundreds of skeleton legs! Ghostly apparitions whirl, and the lesser Necromancers march forth across the Fallow in their survival-gear robes, commanding their undead minions!

- Sitting safely in the eye socket, the party waits as the great skull breaches through the Shell, heading towards the POWERDRAGON skeleton! A low klaxon-like singing immediately greets them, and distantly they can see the Seraphim begin to turn! The bronze dome shifts and grinds as it forms an enormous cannon, aiming directly at the skull!
- Singular Thay asks what they should do - keep going? Or cut losses? They make the call to retreat and the skull reverses course, scuttling backwards as angels boost into the air and follow. They make it out of the Shell just in time - a beam of scinitillating energy bursts against the inside of the Shell from the Seraphim’s cannon, creating shimmering aurorae. At least they know the cannon can’t pierce out of the Shell!
- Several angels fly from within the dome, staying high up and far away to watch the retreat. Jeremy Wizard sends his bee familiar - now wasp-shaped due to a slotted Draw Aggro spell - up to draw the ire of the angels and hopefully bait one down for Drake to mess with. Alas, it doesn’t work, and the bee reappears next to Jeremy after getting zapped by an angry angel.

--- Red Meets Styx

- Red decides to go alone to New Moondin to talk to Styx directly. He’s still her friend, after all. She wanders back through the Fallow, and soon after walking through the Storm-Shell she comes to a troop of angels! They scan her, return a null result due to her lack of soul, and kick a request to sort out the glitch up through the command chain.

- After bugging out for a bit, the angel Red was facing projects a hologram of Styx from its eye! When he sees it’s Red he’s very happy to chat! He tells her he hasn’t heard from the Styxmind in months which is lovely and assumes it’s this Storm-Shell interfering somehow. He’s mining the POWERDRAGON skeleton for Saviourbone due to its very useful rune properties, and doesn’t care that its fucking with the Storm-Shell because everyone can just live underground in the much-improved Underhive. He’s got it covered! Also don’t worry about the Lady, she’s under control.
- Red also finds out that her spiderpriest “siblings” are trapped in their temple - Styx argues that there’s no need for them any more since his angels are better for communication. Also the Red Letter is a state newspaper now, rightfully honouring Styx.
- Styx offers Red a kara - the healing bracelets he strongly encourages everyone to wear - and she refuses! She triggers her earpiece that connects to the Lady and gets her to hijack one of the angels! It folds down into a crap chair on legs and Red hoons out of there!

- The Lady appears for a few moments, wrapped in chains. She says she’s trapped in the Seraphim by Styx, and she needs to be freed! She gives Red the instructions to free her then disappears with a scream.

- The angel deactivates when the Lady disappears, so Red carries it back to the skull-base. There they talk to it and discover that it knows that there is some sort of deep issue - the Gods aren’t controlling it any more. Drake plans his angelic experiments… convenient that they’ve got a fully working one right here.

--- Bat Recce
- Realising that they’ll probably have to do a multi-pronged attack after all, Andromeda shifts into bat-form and flies out in the evening to reconnoitre.
- She sees that the Saviourbone Mine has angels rolling to and from it along the road to New Moondin. It still has miners staying in their dugout but the angels are doing all the work. The angels scan her as she comes in, so she has to fly away.
- New Moondin seems to be as the Preppertonians said - most of those walking around town are Goblins and Angels. The spiders are trapped in the spider-temple as promised. The Seraphim squats massively over the untilled Prepper fields, great windmills turning listlessly in the light wind.
- She returns to the Cranium Camp before morning to tell them what she saw. Looks like they’ve got their work cut out for them if they want to liberate New Moondin from yet another oppressor!

Total: 5000 exp

Team Bonus:

- Antagonist Appeaser bonus
- Balls to the Wall bonus
- Best of Intentions bonus
- Better Part of Valour bonus
- Bookworm bonus
- Classic Charles bonus
- Diplomancy bonus
- Dramatic Escape bonus

- Fame bonus
- Heresy bonus
- Holy bonus
- I Immediately Regret This Decision bonus
- Long Deliberation bonus
- Noblebright bonus
- Pundemonium bonus
- SpoOoOoky bonus
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong bonus

Total: 850 exp

Individual Bonus:

- Chronicler (Kitty / Andromeda - 100 exp)
- Expedition Leader (George / Damnation Snels - 100 exp)
- Cartographer (Kitty / Andromeda - 100 exp)
- Paymaster (Charles / Jeremy Wizard - 100 exp)
- Quartermaster (Charles / Jeremy Wizard - 100 exp)

- Vanguard (Russell / Drake Blackthorn - 100 exp)
- Triage (Izzy / Ratman - 100 exp)
- Chef (George / Damnation Snels - 100 exp)
- JÜGBRINGYR bonus (Izzy, Charles - 500 exp)
- Art Attack bonus (Charles, Izzy, Timothy - 100 exp ea.)
- Artapalooza bonus (Charles - 100 exp) - Attacco d'Arte bonus (Izzy - 100 exp)

Exp Totals:

- Kitty / Andromeda, Level 7 Andromedan Vampire: 140738 (Level up at 144000) - Tim / Red, Level 7 Duellist Fighter: 77045 (Level up at 128000) - Izzy / Ratman, Level 7 Ratman: 67444 (Level up at 96000) - George / Damnation Snels, Level 6 Born Again Barbarian: 35576 (Level up at 64000) - Charles / Jeremy Wizard, Level 5 Magic-User: 26694 (Level up at 36000) - Russell / Drake Blackthorn, Level 3 Specialist: 5594 (Level up at 6000)