Session 290 - Crab People

 Session 290 - Crab People

New Characters:
- Liber Quint, a Bibliognost Elf who was a charcoal burner before the End War.

New Backstory:
- Swan the Swift nursed a wounded hund back to health and found it a loving home. +1 to Henchman morale.

Events:

--- Liber Quint
- Somehow bereft of his previous party, Swan the Swift rides by skeleton horse down the dusty road towards Kink. It is absolutely stinking hot. Through the shivering mirage ahead he sees a figure loitering by the roadside - an Elf with curling ears and a bagful of charcoal!
- Her name is Liber Quint and she's heard some explosions coming from over the nearby cliff that slopes sharply down to the river below.
- Swan joins her in investigating - inspection shows that it's flights of drakencult ghosts jumping off the cliffs and exploding on the river below, before reforming and doing it all again! One of the Insanity Mammoth ghosts comes to investigate the pair. He seems to think it's still the End War, and explodes when it's pointed out that the tentacle has been replaced by a plume of thorns.
- Quint gathers the ectoplasm in her scoop - it's nice and cool on this hot day. Swan gets another Insanity Mammoth to grab him a bone from the riverbed - it pulses with explosive energies.

--- Knotsmen
- They continue on towards Kink. Swan insists there are crabs living there. On the way they hear some pained voices and see some Knotsmen - 2 upright men with pulsing knot-veins in their skin and a manservant types whose intestines are knotted in front of him.
- The manservant is moaning about how hungry he is and getting slapped by one of the Knotsmen. Quint and Swan sneak away and carry on towards Kink, leaving well enough alone.

--- Crabs!
- On the outskirts of Kink, in a scrubby thorny woodland, the pair decide to rest. It has been an excessively hot day, and Swan for one is exhausted. He spends the night on the ground while Quint disappears to dance in the moonlight. The night is charged with fizzing energy and crawling bugs, but the morning dawns and it looks like it'll be another scorcher.
- They get into Kink before the day really heats up. The town is full, as Swan insisted, of massive crabs wearing massive stone shells. The crabs have paint on their claws and shells, and some of the stone shells have been carved and mounted with twinned muskets so a human can ride on the back and shoot people.
- A man with big fake pincers and deely-bopper crab antennae emerges from a house and introduces himself as Crabspeaker Johnny Snips. Quint's identifying touch shows the truth - he is indeed a man dressed as a crab.
- He tells them that the humans here obey the crabs, and he is one who has learnt some of the crab language. Obviously they communicate with antennae-waves and pincer-snaps, hence his equipment. He asks about the Storm Shell that they came from - there are terrible rumours that crabs are taken in there and (horror!) eaten! They must be saved!
- Quint suggests a crab-goblin exchange programme. Crabs get sent in to be eaten, goblins get sent out to be eaten. Trade! The Crabspeaker is horrified - the crabs are intelligent creatures! More intelligent than humans! And furthermore they must be honoured, since it was crabs who defeated the tentacle! Or so he says at least.

--- Crabmother
- Since the two of them seem fairly sane, the Crabspeaker lets them come into the town. There is the stonecarver where they carve new shells, the old Barber where crabs are now de-loused, the mansion at the end of the lane that contains shell-less crab perverts, and so on.
- Swan asks to be taken to the wisest crab and is taken to the bridge. Nets are rigged up to ensure the eggs spawning there aren't washed downstream. There is also a truly enormous crab down in the river - the Crabmother!
- Swan asks about her life, and she says she was born six years ago when the world was barren. She was touched by a mysterious biped who made her big and covered the world with thorns! She protects a Gifflewim coin which she has sworn to protect - the biped is cruel and capricious and must never be summoned.
- However she is open to a deal. If the crystal dragon to the north can be defeated she will release the coin into their hands for safe keeping, since that will prove that they will be mightier defenders of the thing. The dragon perilously close to a field of good stone for shells, and has eaten several good crabs in the past.
- That seems like a big ask for a couple of low level PCs, so she also asks for help freeing her brethren from the Storm Shell. There are nightmare tales of a terrifying factory turning innocent crabs into meat.

--- Haunted Bisque
- Swan and Quint decide to do a bit of fishing upriver. Instead they find Topsy-Turvy Lilies, now evolved to be larger and with thorny edges. It doesn't stop the pair from flipping them over and harvesting artichoke-like bulbs on their undersides.
- They swap half of the bulbs for some preserved crab meat that Crabspeaker Johnny Snips keeps in reserve. It's fine though, this is ethically sourced crab meat from crabs who died of natural causes.
- They cook the remaining bulbs, the crab meat, and a glop of ectoplasm to create a Haunted Bisque. It's merely palatable. The smell does, however, start to attract some crabs, so the pair make a swift exit.

--- Knotsmen Again
- They return to where they saw the Knotsmen and surprisingly they're still there! The two boss Knotsmen are climbing out of a crack in the ground, helped by their manservant Eegor.
- Offered some Haunted Bisque, they speak! They live beneath the ground, so their eyes are weak. They sold their sons (one of them bends over in pain at these words) and their veins knot when they tell the truth of their existence...
- Eegor is not one of them, but bound to their service because they've tied his external intestines in a complicated knot. He can't digest food without it being untied, and so will die if his master dies. Quint touches his master and sees the memory of how to undo Eegor's belly knot.
- The masters, who refer to themselves as Fathers, eat some soup. Swan the Swift gives one of them the exploding bone from earlier. Quint grabs Eegor and they run! Behind them is a massive explosion. Gobbets of meat rain down from above.
- Once safe Quint un-knots Eegor's belly and gives him some soup. He thanks her greatly, and once he's finished she knots his stomach back up. He seems to think this is normal. Eegor the Henchman acquired!

Total: 7000 exp

Valuables:
- An exploding bone, already utilised.
- A man, hench.

Defeated Foes:
- Knotsmen, exploded (50 exp)

Exp Totals:
- George / Swan the Swift, Level 4 Barbarian: 9522 (Level up at 16000)
DING! +1d8 HP! +2 Barbarian Table rolls!
- Kitty / Liber Quint, Level 2 Bibliognost: 3525 (Level up at 4500)
DING! +1d6 HP! +1 Mana! +Free spell!