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!

Session 282 - Red, Robots and Sir Robyn

Sir Robyn's tower complete! Robot bull and robot manservant acquired, and of course more importantly a robot doppelganger of Red for Jeremy to have for a girlfriend...

 Session 282 - Red, Robots and Sir Robyn

New Backstory:
- Poison Phil was shanghai’d by his own gang then left out in the wastes - there’s no honour among thieves. He found his way back days later to find them gone. +1 Bushcraft.
- Kandy was spoilt by his loving parents in his youth, and was in fact a plump and well-preened young lad. +1 to reaction rolls when you're wearing clean, stylish clothes.

Valuables:
- Painting of Sir Robyn being born (1000 exp)
- Book #199: The Troll (100 exp)
- Book #188: Shamash, Bolide Dragon (100 exp)
- Book #125: POWERLAD and the Busty Barbarian (100 exp)
- Book #212: On Duvan’Ku (100 exp)
- Book #157: The Dam (100 exp)
Total: 1500 exp

Foes Defeated:

- A clockwork bull, fixed extra good (100 exp)
- Some illusory Reds (200 exp)
- Red, Robot Waifu (1500 exp)
Total: 1800 exp

Expedition:
- Cleared Sir Robyn’s Tower! (600 exp)
Total: 600 exp

Events:

--- Sir Robyn’s Tower Continues
- Having just learnt the story of Kandy’s fancy lad past, the party watch as he roots through Sir Robyn’s costume drawer to find some fancy clothes. Equipped now with a fancy costume pirate outfit, everyone can agree that he deserves that +1 to Reaction Rolls! He also grabs some suspicious dancing clogs of a sort that everyone agrees probably make you dance yourself to death.
- They head upstairs into a place with moving portraits depicting pivotal moments from Sir Robyn’s life. Dispiritingly for Red, her birth and time-fuckery childhood and eventual murder are only seen in the background of one of the images.
- On a pedestal in the middle of the room there is a crystal skull with big prominent Elf ears carved on. It talks! Calling itself Theron, it says it’s very interested in Necromancy and it also speaks Gremling - an Elvish dialect. He also knows Gifflewim, having been traded to Sir Robyn some time ago.
- Handily he informs the party that there’s a poison gas trap under his head if they jostle him. Jeremy Wizard draws a Take-Air rune to suck the gas inwards once the head is taken. Trap disabled!
- Poison Phil grabs one of the moving portraits - this depicting Sir Robyn being born, complete with full beard and wig.

--- My Finest Potions
- They go into the next area and find a lab stocked with potion ingredients! No-cost potion making is now possible! More importantly - potion instructions to actually make some potions!
- Specifically they get recipes for these potions:
-- #11: Animal Control
-- #237: Sticky Syrup
-- #141: Goblin Control
-- #249: Asthma
-- #166: Levitation

--- The Clockwork People
- The next room is a clockwork workshop with a bunch of cogs and gears and mysterious machines. In the middle of the room is a big clockwork bull, its large key being turned by a pillar. Its horns are on a nearby surface, so Kandy puts them on the bull. It starts walking around clumsily so Kandy also mashes his sword into the gears, to the bull’s confusion!
- Jeremy casts Mending but is, again, interrupted by the bees! Luckily the distracting bees serve to amplify his spell, double-Mending the bull and making it much improved!
- The bull follows them around much less clumsily, and they peek into the last room on this floor and find a clockwork stick-man by the name of Reginald. Using the parrot clue from downstairs, Red says the command words and Reginald is now her butler!
- He says he was attacked by a different-looking Red earlier, and that this mystery Red fled into an extradimensional doorway built into the wall of the tower. Also there’s a small library here which everyone obviously nicks.

--- The Other Reds
- The party steps through the extradimensional doorway, guided by Reginald, and appear in a vast misty space. Red is face to face with herself, and also several other Reds wearing paper masks with the rest of the party’s faces drawn on!
- Red questions the very premise of this whole puzzle and… the illusion disappears! The paper-masked Reds vanish and the misty space becomes a tower interior.
- The main copy of Red, standing before our real Red, raises a rapier and challenges her to a duel.
- Red challenges this premise too - telling the clearly robotic Red before her that they all have free will and fighting won’t solve anything. The robot Red yields!

--- Sir Robyn’s Dumb Gift
- Sir Robyn shimmers into existence at one side of the room, clapping his hands joyfully, congratulating Red for solving his puzzles with the power of friendship!
- He grants her full inheritance of the tower, and grants her a clockwork soul! Red takes it and looks at it in distaste when she realises it’s a machine that uses a bunch of other souls constantly whirling round and round inside it. Also she doesn’t really need it. She tries to give it back and Sir Robyn explodes - he was a robot too.
- Jeremy Wizard decides to retire here in the tower. It’s got everything he needs - magic stuff, food, bees to be friends with his bee, and most importantly - a waifu in the form of Robot Red.

--- Safehouse Tower
- They stay a few nights so that Poison Phil can brew up some potions from the recipes. He gets 4 Goblin Control potions and a rando.
- Jeremy Wizard discovers that Archibald’s heart has been broken by Robot Red choosing Jeremy over him. Jeremy casts Mending, now unmolested by bees, and fixes Archibald’s broken heart. That was easy!
- Kandy cooks on the last night - a new and “special” dish called Friendship Fondon'te w/ Ferret. It contains Frazzlejack, Ferret, Canned Bread, Rolos and Whale Caviar. It is… not good.

--- To the Mysterious Pub
- With a surprising amount of time left in the session after all that short-circuiting of puzzles and such, it’s decided to head out to investigate that weird pub they saw on the way down. It’s a lovely clear day!
- They set off on their wagon, this time pulled by Ferdinand the robot bull. They come across some Ferfect Chicken past Despond, and roll on towards the pub at the crossroads outside Pindle.

--- Crossroads Pub
- Through the clear air, they can see the pub they only glimpsed through the rain on the way to the tower. They park up and go in, finding it to be full of square-jawed Dwarves! It smells of swamp but it’s ok, and the Dwarves themselves have a sort of brick texture. Inclusions rather than true Dwarves, then.
- It’s quiz night at the pub, damp paper being passed around for the picture round. Red chats with the dwarfs during a marking break and ascertains that these guys would be very willing to help build a town around Sir Robyn’s tower in exchange for pay! Lovely!
- Meanwhile, shenanigans ensue when Andromeda sneaks down into the basement after one of the little guys… only to discover humans chained up in the cellar below! She reforms when the dwarf is gone and tries to free them… but they think it’s a vampire trick!
- It transpires that they think that they’re safer here than out there (which is more or less true, to be fair) and they’re fairly happy to be safe down in the cellar, occasionally giving blood in exchange for food and shelter.
- Poison Phil tries to persuade them that it’s ok out there, but they think this is a trick too! Poison Phil tries to set the place on fire even though it is made of brick, then jumps out a window as the damp curtains gutter with oil-fire.
- Red steals a slave and runs and the party follow after at great speed, fleeing from the angry dwarves who are yelling about the party ruining their quiz night!
- Poison Phil’s pistol is smoking from where he shot the quiz-master in the face. Andromeda is wiping blood from her chin where she fucking ate a guy. This really went to shit!
- Ahead, ash-blackened skeletons rise up from the verge! At least this scares the Dwarves from chasing further. Red smashes her clockwork soul and throws it towards the skeletons, diverting them away! The wagon rolls on at speed back to Sir Robyn’s tower. What a caper!

Total: 9000 exp

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

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

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

Retired:
- Jeremy Wizard has retired to live in Red’s Tower with his new robot girlfriend.

Exp Totals:

- Kitty / Andromeda, Level 8 Andromedan Vampire: 168584 (Level MAX)

- Tim / Red, Level 8 Duellist Fighter: 156077 (Level MAX)

- Charles / Jeremy Wizard, Level 7 Magic-User: 101746 (Level up at 144000)
*Retired to laifu with waifu* 🎉🎉🎉🎉

- Ollie / Kandy Toffee-Apple Moon D'Moor, Level 7 Intergalacticist Cleric: 83627 (Level up at 112000)

- George / Poison Phil, Level 4 Fighter: 8749 (Level up at 16000)
Level Up! +1d8HP! +1 to hit! +1 to crit/fumble! +backstory!

- Charles / Charles' Next Character, Level 1 ???: 2880 (Level up at ???)