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)