Session 267 - Short and Sweet

A short session due to various barbeque distractions, but that's not such a bad thing! Now you've got an in with the beautiful Lucia di Castille, space chocolate magnate, and seen the strange effects that these experimental sweets can have on a body. After the game we talked a bit about Gambits and how Red has successfully cheesed the system into a "do whatever I like" button, so here's the prospective Gambit 2.0 upgrade -

Gambits When you want to do some flashy shit that's not just a regular attack, it's a Gambit! - You roll 1d20 + attack bonus - They roll 1d20 + attack bonus

If you beat their roll AND roll over their current HP, it works! If you beat their roll OR roll over their current HP, it's a partial success or success at cost. If you do neither, it's an ironic reversal!

Session 267 - Short and Sweet

New Backstory:
- Scarlet Eclipse was/is married in the future, marrying not for love but for exposure. +1 Intelligence

Loot:
- 2 versions of Book #278 - Herbs and Useful Plants (200 exp)
- 2 versions of Book #279 - Cookbook (200 exp)
- 2 versions of Book #295 - Economics (200 exp)
- Book #395 - “POWERLAD - Saint or Sinner?: An Abhor Global Exposé” (200 exp)
Total: 700 exp

Foes:
- A number of guards (50 exp)
Total: 50 exp

Events:

--- What a Gas!
- Standing before the piano-lock door on the Chocolate Factory’s top floor, Jeremy Wizard peers inside to see the various bedroomy stuff within. Most thrillingly there is a lockbox that presumably contains loot!
- He smashes the small window on the door and a gas pours out! He feels a little light-headed, but the power of the Headtrip 56 strain of astroturf helps him pass a dangerous save.
- He casts Flesh Goop on himself and is poured through the door by the others, immediately schlooping over to the lockbox and trying to unlock it in goo form. He fails, and there’s a hissing sound from inside the safe.
- Outside, the rest of the party is playing random music on the piano key lock. Enough failures and it releases another gas, this one staining Red’s lips with glowing red sugar dust even when invisible!
- Inside, Jeremy Wizard reforms out of the glop and searches the place. He finds a bunch of books on an end table, and discovering that the piano lock is on both sides decides to just break the window and rappel out with a rope.
- Scarlet Eclipse casts his newish Escape Rope spell and the rest of the party reappears at the dungeon entrance. Useful!

--- Escape the Base
- All is not well though, the guard towers are still standing and bristling with sugared-up guards! The friendly guard calls out to the party to run, while other guardsmen come after!
- Red’s rock candy disease has spread to cover her whole body and armour, but luckily it gets broken off temporarily on hit. She makes short work of the guards on the ground, while Ratman and Jeremy Wizard try to get into the last guy’s tower.
- Suddenly the one friendly guard runs past! He yells something about all human guards being ordered killed, just as the guard house blows up! What the hell?
- Ratman scrambles up the guard tower and blows a rat at the final guard, killing him.

--- Dinner Plans
- With all the distractions gone, they decide to poke their heads into the factory again and have a nose around. As luck would have it they run into the factory owner herself, Lucia de Castille, who’s trying to work out what’s causing all this chaos!
- The party feigns ignorance and Red manages to get a dinner date lined up for next week, also discovering that Sir Robyn once hit on Lucia and was turned into a blueberry and juiced to death as a result. Tasty.
- They leave her in peace until then, taking some free samples of the chocolate back to Shrub Nigeria (banned from the factory due to lewd advances) who gives them some edibles in return.
- Next week, a dinner party! And when has one of those ever gone wrong in this game?

Total: 4000 exp

Exp Totals:

- Tim / Red, Level 7 Duellist Fighter: 103893 (Level up at 128000)

- Izzy / Ratman, Level 7 Ratman: 85864 (Level up at 96000)

- Charles / Jeremy Wizard, Level 6 Magic-User: 54242 (Level up at 72000)

- George / Scarlet Eclipse, Level 4 Muscle Wizard: 11460 (Level up at 18000)

Session 266 - Chocolate and Lithium

A session tragically cut short by modern technology!
Still, we saw the gang get the hookah back to Shrub Nigeria and then sneak into a chocolate factory, where they proceeded to blow some shit up.

Good work!... ?


Oh also Ollie supplies this absolutely fucking incredible conspiracy theory meme

Session 266 - Chocolate and Lithium

New Character:
- Scarlet Eclipse Snels, Muscle Wizard from a future timeline.

New Backstory:
- Scarlet Eclipse, inveterate art critic, came back in time after reading a far-future POWERLAD novel and decided it was so bad that he had to destroy the source. +1 Strength

Loot:
- Garrotte wire
- 80 space bucks (80 exp)
- Silvered mirror
Total: 80 exp

Foes:
- A load of bean-heads (250 exp)
Total: 250 exp

Events:

--- Return to Shrub Nigeria
- Hanging around the hookah, still in the Iounians’ weed bunker, the party think up a smart idea to distract these guys for long enough to nick the hookah back - introduce them to e-girls! They tell the insectoid gang that there’s a cool hologram table downstairs with a hot chick on it, and they run down to take a look.
- Scarlet Eclipse closes the hatch behind them. This shall be their grave…
- The party grab the hookah and get Vesh the Vibe-Killer to come with them. When he asks where everyone else went, they say they’ve gone to Dominoes without him. It’s 2 for Tuesdays after all.
- They roll back to Shrub Nigeria’s place and he thanks them for grabbing the hookah! On discovering the Iounians were actually using it to get high he’s all “oh that’s ok then man, they can have it back if they vibin” which leads to some awkward glances.

- Nevertheless, he opens his secret drug stash to the party! Jeremy Wizard loads up, and partakes of the Headtrip 56 which lets him see the loom of fate bro.
- While this is all going on, Scarlet Eclipse yoinks Jeremy’s USB that contains a backup of the mind of the original Snels and uploads it to the crashed Seraphim. It starts loading up, and will finish loading by the time the real-world lockdown ends! How convenient!

--- The Chocolate Factory
- It’s decided that rather than head back down into the megadungeon, they’ll check out this chocolate factory that Shrub Nigeria’s obsessed with. He’ll pay good spacebucks for info that leads to him making his own supply of chocolate for his brownies.
- The factory is huge, surrounded by guard towers, with a large pontoon that acts as a space-port for intergalactic traders and upper class chocoholic visitors. Also there’s a space-Esso.
- They try approaching the factory and get stopped by a guard in the guard tower. He’s new to this, but he’s under instruction not to let anyone unauthorised into the factory. He tells them to watch out for the other guards - they’re really overdoing it on the sugar - and to go talk to the dockmaster if they’re looking for work.

--- The Dockmaster

- In the dockmaster’s cramped office they meet the dockmaster himself - an effusive vaguely nordic sounding man who always needs porters to help bring supplies to and from the factory.
- Under the cover of being a coffee startup trying to directly source some chocolate, the party take up jobs. When a spaceship comes in they are to take crates of chocolate out of one room of the factory and replace them with traded supplies from the spaceship. Nobody knows what happens after that - the supplies disappear by the time the next ship arrives.
- They also meet their fellow porters - a bunch of Iounians with tattoos, strong arms, and a distaste for the Earthlings who are stealing their jobs. There’s high unemployment on the moon, and so very little union power.

--- Stowaways
- The party hatches a plan - they’ll hide in the supply boxes, get delivered into the factory, and bust out when the coast is clear! The Iounians grumble that the lazy good-for-nothing Earthlings have disappeared, but the delivery is made with little fuss.
- Inside the boxes they find themselves amongst supplies of spices and, oddly, lithium. They’re wheeled over to the delivery area and soon the Iounians have finished and go off to collect their space-cheques, grumbling.
- Beepbox, peering out of holes cut in his box, peers out as high-pitched voices approach, take the crates, and wheel them into the factory. He sees rows of benches with tiny cocoa-bean-headed creatures shaping chocolate with moulds as he goes past, and soon the party find themselves in a storage room among other crates.

--- Destrudo
- They sneakily creep out of the crates once the coast is clear, finding themselves in a well-lit storage room with piles of crates in it. A poke around the storage room finds a mummified corpse that fell behind some of the crates. It’s riddled with blowdarts and collapses to dust when messed with, but they loot a garrotte wire, 80 space bucks, and silvered mirror.
- Checking the exits - one way out, one way up, and one way down, they sneak down into some sort of boiler room. Many bean-heads mill around tending to the big boilers.
- Scarlet Eclipse uses Unseen Servant to sneak a bunch of lithium into the central boiler, and the party runs back upstairs to high-pitched screams as the bean-people notice what just happened!
- There is a MASSIVE explosion and the party runs upstairs and upstairs again, alarms blaring out throughout the facility!

--- Mysterious Boudoir
- With manic activity occurring below, they run up three flights of stairs, coming out on a landing that ends with a single mysterious door. The door is locked with piano keys. Through the window they can see a bedroom.
- Unfortunately the DM’s wifi goes down around this point, and we’re forced to stop early. Alas!

Total: 7000 exp

Exp Totals:

- Tim / Red, Level 7 Duellist Fighter: 102705 (Level up at 128000)

- Charles / Jeremy Wizard, Level 6 Magic-User: 53054 (Level up at 72000)

- Ollie / Beepbox Strawberry Stars de Moor, Level 6 Cleric of the New Eden: 36859 (Level up at 56000)

- George / Scarlet Eclipse, Level 4 Muscle Wizard: 10272 (Level up at 18000)

Level Up! +1d4 HP! +1 Mana! +free spell! +backstory!
Level Up! +1d4 HP! +1 Mana! +free spell! +backstory!

Session 265 - Memory Eraser

The most horrifying fate - being erased from history by a psychic scream.
I remind you all with the greatest seriousness that speaking that particular name will cause your character to similarly vanish from spacetime with no save.

Wait what am I even talking about? Everyone survived!




Session 265 - Memory Eraser

Loot:
- Holo-crystal (4000 exp)
Total: 4000 exp

Foes:
- A leech-dog (250 exp)
- 2 space ghosts (1000 exp)
Total:  1250 exp

Events:

--- Potions and Panel-Beaters
- Back at Shrub Nigeria’s gaff, the party rests up, buys some potions, and gets Shrub’s mate Steve to fix up some badly damaged armour.

- Shrub is complaining about how some Iounians nicked his favourite hookah and took it back to their cave. If you go get it for him he’ll grant access to his dank weed stash!
- Red’s well up for this, having always fantasised about punching one of the big white mantis-looking bug people in the face, and the whole gang head off to the cave!

--- Dungeons and Dankness
- They arrive at the cave, which is actually more like an abandoned vault, led there by the great gout of dank-smelling smoke pouring out of it.
- Red heads in first, immediately falling down through a trapdoor! The bottom has Dwarf bones and some sort of hotwired access panel that must have opened the vault door.
- The others hear a slavering barking sound from round the corner and one of those split-faced dog monsters comes bounding into forwards! It uses a bullshit sticky tongue jump to attack, but soon falls down the pit and gets stabbed by Red on her way out.
- An actual Iounian shows up next smoking a massive blunt. Ratman drinks a polymorph potion and morphs into one, to the amazement of the Iounian. They leave him be and move on in, past some high Iounians making out on a couch in the chillout room.

--- Hookahs and Headtrips
- They soon find the room with Shrub Nigeria’s big banana-shaped hookah, surrounded by a few more Iounians including one on a sitar. Some initial plans for trickery are averted after the party is compelled to share the hookah by some sort of magic weed effect.

- After some hours chilling, they’ve all got some insight into each other. Red checks the next room and meets Vishnerak the Vibe-Killer who got sent out of the hookah room because he keeps ranting on about conspiracy theories, though it seems in all his madness there are some grains of truth…
- There’s one last corridor out of the hookah room, and the Iounians haven’t explored further in because they’re too high to work out how to do so.
- The party work it out though, some puzzle involving a lever, a magnetic ceiling, and a metal pyramid that conceals a hidden stairway down into a secret control room.

--- Psychic Screams and Vanished Victims
- They head downstairs and find a hologram pad, ancient computer consoles, and a couple of Dwarf-sized spacesuits slumped over said controls.
- Red presses some buttons and the holo-pad shimmers to life. There’s a recording of a Dwarf giving an order to “return home” due to a Goblin rebellion, and informing that lunar lockdown measures may engage for anyone left behind on the moon.
- Someone nudges a Dwarf spacesuit and it suddenly jerks to life! Both spacesuits stand up and start screaming and punching people with their heavy mitts!
- Worse, when Ratman shoots one with his plasma rifle it shreds its spacesuit and reveals its screaming ghostly face, upgrading its attack from a soft punch to a mind-melting psychic scream!
- All is going horribly, and soon gets worse when Red parries the other’s blow and shreds its suit too with a counterattack! Now both of these deadly space ghosts are screaming a hectic AoE scream!
- Red puts in her metal teeth and bites the fuck out of one of the ghosts while Ratman sends all his rats to cover her in rat armour.
- The ghosts are finally defeated when Red eats one and Jeremy Wizard finally blows away the other with a Magic Missile.
- The victorious survivors look around and have a sudden sense that there are fewer people in this room than there were before, despite nobody being missing. Very strange.

--- George Finally Shows Up to the Session
- The battered party return to the hookah room, seizing the valuable hologram crystal on the way out. They meet a mysterious Muscle Wizard chilling at the hookah! His name is Scarlet Eclipse and hails from the future.
- They still need to work out how they can get the hookah back to Shrub Nigeria and don’t really want to be dicks to these cool Iounian guys, so they decide to chill here for now. 

Total: 6000 exp

Exp Totals:

- Tim / Red, Level 7 Duellist Fighter: 95246 (Level up at 128000)

- Izzy / Ratman, Level 7 Ratman: 81863 (Level up at 96000)

- Charles / Jeremy Wizard, Level 6 Magic-User: 45595 (Level up at 72000)

- George / Scarlet Eclipse, Level 2 Muscle Wizard: 2813 (Level up at 4500)

Level Up: +1d4 HP! +1 Mana! +free spell! +backstory!

Session 264 - Grey Ooze and Leech Dogs

Another successful trip into the depths, including a real close encounter of the third kind!

I'm pleased to announce that there is now slightly more sandbox available, stretching to a mighty THREE options for next session.

- Reclaim the Hookah. Shrub Nigeria's favourite hookah has been stolen by insectoid Iounians, and if you get it back you'll unlock access to his dank weed stash.
- Raid the Chocolate Factory. Shrub Nigeria wants to make some edibles, and the chick who runs the chocolate factory won't sell to him any more. Find out how she does it so he can homebrew his own chocolate confections!
- Return to the Anomalous Subsurface Environment. The megadungeon remains open, explorable, and lucrative!

See you tonight!

Session 264 - Grey Ooze

New Backstory:
- Wormwood does not understand the human concept of money. After he crawled out of the river he turned to a life of plucking things from trees (and people) to survive. +1 to Dexterity.
- Beepbox’s mother was dying, so he turned to dark and terrible things to save her… drilling into her brain to try to upload her consciousness! It failed. +1 Arcana.

Loot:
- Silver fangs (1800 exp)
- Silver necklace (300 exp)
- Arcane-Sigiled bath bomb heals 1d6 damage and replenishes Mana.
- 2000sb in trinkets (2000 exp)
Total: 3100 exp

Foes:
- 6 grey aliens (450 exp)
- 5 leech-dogs (1250 exp)
Total:  1700 exp

Events:

--- Potion Seller
- In Shrub Nigeria’s house, Jeremy Wizard acquires some potions from Shrub’s potion stash for a small fee. They seem like good ones!
- Others tool up a bit using the mysterious power of feeding Shrub Nigeria money for items, then the group set off back to the dungeon…

--- Close Encounters
- They walk through the first level unhindered, since the robots are on-side now, and delve down into the depths once more.
- Exploring on, they find a room with some sort of pressure plate trap. Before they can investigate much further, there is a sound from back the way they came! Big-eyed grey-skinned aliens are crawling towards them!
- Beepbox hears them trash-talking the party as they form weapons from their very flesh! It seems that their skin is soft and goopy and can form into multiple things!
- During the course of the battle, one of the aliens up the back with a massive head reforms a puddle of dead alien goop into an alien again. Nasty!
- The aliens eventually break ranks and flee, but not before Red and Wormwood can grab one of them! It laughs as it’s consumed by Wormwood’s demonic form. In its last thoughts, Wormwood hears that it exists to serve the Mother which is everywhere. Wormwood seizes the ability to bleed slimes, or turn slime into a living slime.

--- Dwarf Faces
- The pressure plate room is investigated with Red using the door into the room as a shield. Success!
- They head into another room which has a few mounds of faeces. Lovely.
- Exploring further, they find a room with a bunch of skeletons lying around and pillar with Dwarf faces and a lever on each side. Pulled simultaneously, the levers retract and the faces open to reveal a dwarven corpse with silver teeth! Wormwood takes the teeth and puts them in his mouth.

- Slimy gunk infests the bones and snakes towards Beepbox, who used a drone to pull a lever rather than use his own hand! The fool! He shrieks and runs back into the face room!
- Wormwood spits a jelly being to block the slimy skeletons and the party runs further into the dungeon!

--- Leech Dogs
- Listening at a door, they hear grinding sounds within. When they open the door they see horrible six-legged dog monsters with leech-like skin and flowering demogorgon-esque faces feasting on piles of dead grey alien goop!
- The first couple of dogs are shot in a hail of plasma fire, and Red stands forth at the entrance to the room to hold off the rest! Unfortunately these things are fast, and they bite and grind and disarm her so many times that her trousers fall down!

- Some drastic die rolls later, including lots of damage for poor Red, and the surviving dogs run away.
- They quickly search around and find a silver necklace, an arcane bath-bomb, and pocketfuls of valuable knick-knacks.

- They bug out back to the surface, Jeremy Wizard using his smoke bomb to get past the slime skeletons, and they escape!

Total: 5000 exp

Bonus: - Art Attack bonus (Izzy, George - 100 exp ea.) - Attacco d'Arte bonus (Izzy, George - 100 exp)

Exp Totals:

- Tim / Red, Level 7 Duellist Fighter: 92433 (Level up at 128000)

- Izzy / Ratman, Level 7 Ratman: 79020 (Level up at 96000)

- Charles / Jeremy Wizard, Level 6 Magic-User: 42782 (Level up at 72000)

- Ollie / Beepbox Strawberry Stars de Moor, Level 6 Cleric of the New Eden: 32213 (Level up at 56000)

- George / Wormwood, Level 4 Inheritor: 13553 (Level up at 18000)