Session 326 - The End of Suspiria

Date: 21 August, 22 p.p.

Moon: New - Dragonwane
Zenith: Minerva

Events:

--- Evade the Shadow Dogs

- Suspiria, Jojo and Dorian leave the quiet kitchen many levels down into the dungeon below Fate, accompanied by a giant lizard and a moaning clone of Suspiria. The machinery in the walls here is fairly well maintained, shining brass pistons and whirring cogs spinning and hissing in clanking rhythm.

- They hear faint distorted animal noises and follow them down the shadowed hallway, lit by the soft red-tinted light that glows from within Dorian.

- They peek round a door and see a few shadowy pitch-black hounds with blue flames licking around their jaws. They're eating the shadows of corpses. The party sneak past, leaving well enough alone.

--- The Surface of the Sun

- They enter a large room with stone tables and big shields mounted on the walls. They have Repel Light glyphs embossed on them. Jojo takes one... and from under the tables some flat Dwarf shadows crawl out and attack the party's shadows!
- Suspiria gets the worst of it, her Strength being drained as the shadows rip and tear into her own shadow.

- She tries to snap-cast Magic Missile, but the magic winds out of control! Hallucinatory Terrain forms, the room is suddenly bathed in light like the surface of the sun!

- The shadows scream silent screams and flee as fast as they are able! 

- The half-blinded party wrestle a couple more shields off the walls and stumble out of the room, the sun-terrain refuses to fade.

--- Shadow Food

- The party continue, entering a strange little annex with an obvious secret door - a false wall painted Wile E Coyote style to look like this underworld machinery.
- The annex itself contains a bunch of dead Dwarfs in black hooded Klan-like robes who cast no shadow, and some long-smashed kegs of ale.

- They try the secret door and lo! It opens!

- Inside there are humans and goblins dressed in rags, caged by broken pistons. They say they are LARPers from above, captured by demons and traded to the shadow Dwarfs who are slowly eating their shadows. The weakest have the tattiest shadows, scraps of shadow-stuff bleeding in the light.

- Suspiria tosses them some mushrooms and they fall upon them gratefully. In exchange they tell the party all they know about the shadow Dwarfs and their leader To'coatl Cthon who wears a crown of twisted metal, and of the shadow-hounds that breathe cold flames.

- Jojo picks the lock, releasing the captives. They are given directions to the dragon cultists upstairs, hard to follow because the Passwall spell has long vanished, and a few of the captives decide to help out the party because hopefully they're a safe bet. Splink the Goblin and Gregory the Human carry stuff for Suspiria, and Alan the Human - becomes a porter for Jojo. Warm bodies! - Belatedly it becomes apparent that the whole lot of them are some sort of theatre troupe, including a mime.

- Some hooded robes are grabbed for the three who will be tagging along with the party, and also some boots. The plan is to have the ex-slaves kneel on the shoes and pretend to be Dwarfs who've captured some people. Classic!

- They also say that Plump Helmet beer helps to heal damage from shadows. Luckily they brewed some last session! Suspiria and Gregory share a cup and they can feel that it's helping... although they will need a full serve.

--- The Sins of Dwarves

- They travel on, eyes peeled for shadows. A wave of darkness washes past impersonally, tying Suspiria's shadow to the clone of her she accidentally generated last session. They can't be apart now, but it's... fine? They come to a long pillared hall, skeletons in manacles tied to the ceiling, each pillar carved with one of the five Dwarf Sins - sloth, whimsy, inattentiveness, deceit, and cowardice. - Suspiria gives it a go, throwing off her deceitful stealth roll, removing her whimsical turban, and walking with brave attentive gumption towards the other end of the room! The pillars which glowed briefly let her past, and she gains some Dwarven constitution!

- They hear some distorted dog-growls and a language nobody can place. They don't go that way! - The other direction links back up with the hallway to the kitchen, but there's some metallic grinding sounds from behind another painted secret door...

--- Dwarfs and Angels - Might as well check out this secret door. They fling it open... and see a full three-dimensional Dwarf wreathed in shadow behind a desk... and two robotic creations that are each made from three repurposed angels, layered on top of each other, grinding around each others' spherical bodies!

- The angels go straight for King Gizzard the Wizard's Lizard! Gregory jumps in the way to save the cute beast, shattering a shield against an angel's drill then getting the other one's drill straight to the brainpan.

- Suspiria goes for a "Snold Snerson",the snake version of Hold Person. Snakes blast out of her fingertips and go straight through the shadow Dwarf... but his shadow is held by the snakes' shadows! - Something is wrong with Suspiria though. She sees herself in a darkened room, painting the scene. She paints more and more legs coming out from her torso. So many legs. Her friends scream, running, as the creature crawls out of her skin. She laughs, crying, as the monster emerges and the shadow of its chitinous claw guts the shadow of the Dwarf. - The rest of the party slam the door. The shadow-bound husk of Suspiria is trapped on this side, pinned to the secret wall. The party step backwards as the clone writhes and shrieks.

--- Lift Denied

- They back slowly away... then turn and run. Screams follow them down the hall. - They come to a room with... a lift! It looks like it will go straight down. The trouble is that it's locked up tight with shadowy locks, which clearly need some sort of shadowy key. A pity that they've got a cosmic horror problem in the room with that Dwarf...

- They explore more... and come across a friendly Dwarf called Gurny! He's from Ur-Kalladh, near Dwimmermount, and while he doesn't speak the language of these shadow Dwarfs he knows they're speaking the dialect from Ur-Darghab. He's a philosopher.

- They hear kettle drums from behind another hidden door and investigate. They lift up some portcullises, quietly sneak down the hall, and peek round to see some more shadow Dwarfs playing kettle drums. Or at least, the shadows of the shadow dwarfs are playing the shadows of kettle drums. They're singing in Ur-Darghab, which I voiced very well I thought!

- Considering this might become a fight, we pack up for the night for now...

Total: 7000 exp

Enemies Defeated:

- Some Dwarf shadows (225 exp)

- Two repurposed angels (500 exp) - A shadow Dwarf (250 exp)

Total: 975 exp

OOC:

- Kitty the Cartographer & Paymaster (200 exp)

- Ollie the Expedition Leader & Quartermaster (200 exp)

- Tom the Vanguard & Chef (200 exp) - Death's Witness bonus (200 exp ea.)

Exp Totals:

- Kitty / Dorian "Ditto" DeMone, Level 6 Inheritor: 47299 (Level up at 72000)

- Tom / Suspiria, Level 4 Magic-User *DECEASED - BECAME LIVING PORTAL TO A CHITINOUS REALM*

- Ollie / Jojo Fullbeard, Level 4 Muscle Wizard: 9735 (Level up at 18000)

Level Up! +1d4 HP! +1 Mana! +Free Spell! +2 to Saves! +Backstory! - Tom / Gurny, Level 2 Dwarf: 2734 (Level up at 4000)

Level Up! +1d10 HP! +1 Lorebond! +2 to Saves! +Backstory!

Session 325 - Worship the Dragon

Date: 21 August, 22 p.p.

Moon: New - Dragonwane
Zenith: Minerva

Events:

--- My Friend the Lizard

- The party wake up on the straw beds in the blocked-off dungeon annex and they are HONGRY.
- The walls continue to ripple with strange gravitational anomalies.
- Everybody wants to eat the giant iguana they locked in the throne room nearby. 
- Suspiria slightly opens the door to the throne room, and a big lizardy tongue comes flicking and licking out! She Charms it and feeds it some butter, which it seems to love! Lizard friend! Her familiar is jealous once again, and the lizard seems averse to Celebus' snake skeleton with its captive skin kite.
- They check out the throne and find a book of spells laying on it. When Dorian sits on it he experiences snakey visions and gets more WIS!
- Summising that this is a Chaotic-only effect, the rest of the Chaotic characters sit on the throne and get some extra Wisdom. Nice one!

--- Dragon!
- They keep exploring, gingerly pushing over some double doors to find a large room with a well. Celebus collects a few samples in his Necromancer vials.
- There's some priestly chanting coming from one direction, so they go the other.
- Parabolus pushes open a side door and finds a room with cool snakeskin robes and fanged-mouth masks. One of them is extra fancy and shimmery, so Parabolus grabs it before Suspiria gets a hand on it! The fanged-mouth masks, however, glue onto your face and give you a poisonous bite... Parabolus is stuck! His eyes look slitted like a snake's behind the mask...

- Suspiria opens the next door and... it's the DRAGON! It warps space, head and teeth rippling through non-euclidean angles to bite her! She's down in one hit, organs crushed, bleeding heavily and...
- No she wasn't! She uses a backstory ability to avoid catastrophe! She leaps out of the way just in time, shimmering dragonteeth smashing into the just-closed door!

--- Cult Life
- They swiftly back away, walls shimmering with gravity whorls, and back through the well room towards the chanting. The rippling distortions on the walls are following them now, humming and thrumming.
- They tumble through a door into a room containing snake cultists in their snake robes! A draconic claw ripples through the wall, hunting for the party, and nearly gets the head cultist! The party save his life, and while he's grateful he's still unsure about them.
- No matter, Suspiria attempts to chaos-cast Nut and the spell goes horribly awry, nesting in her chest, tearing her own way out of her own body, shedding herself like skin. There are now two Suspirias.
- The cultists fall to their knees at the miraculous sight of shedding skin!
- Suspiria (the new, nude one) is given a robe and sits on the throne as the cultists praise her. She hears a voice in her head...

- "I require a new scion!" says the voice in a dragony tone, and Suspiria immediately accepts. She eats a nut and butter and the dragon tastes it through her mouth. It is pleased!
- She is now indoctrinated into the Drakencult, and Celebus joins too as a new cult disciple! Their connection to the Mass rune is strengthened, and Suspiria's black eyes now see the entropy of all things!

--- Down

- They poke around a few other rooms now that they're on friendly terms with the cult and, more importantly, the dragon. They find a book called Beyond the Aether in the priests' bedroom, and some wine in another. Suspiria drinks some wine and loses HP, but she can speak with snakes now!

- Using some gravity nonsense and a Passwall spell, Suspiria creates a portal in the floor (a wall to her, since she's standing on one) and creates a shimmering hole down into the next floor of the dungeon...

--- It's Brew Time

- They come down via rope and rune into a kitchen-slash-brewery, stocked with casks, brewing supplies, and bags of mushrooms marked Plump Helmets! They nab them.
- Hearing running water, they head out along a corridor to find a well! Suspiria jumps in, finding a small pipe and a handful of obols.

- She then offers to cook, and this one's a doozy. Parabolus insists that their meal should be a beer, brewed swiftly via handwavey timeywimey nonsense! They call it Save vs Poison Beer, and it contains a heady mix of Holy Water, Demon Water, Plump Helmet, Salted Butter, Dragon Claw and Snake Meat. Quite the beer!
- It goes fine, great even! The tasty brew that results even grants a bonus to Doom saves! Must be something about the way the Holy and Demon water create some kind of Neutral Water.

Total: 6000 exp

Loot:
- A snake-themed spellbook
- Boa skin (500 exp)
- Fancy snake cult robe (1100 exp)
- Book #174 - Beyond the Aether (100 exp)
- 100 Plump Helmets (100 exp)

Total: 1800 exp

OOC:

- Charles the Chronicler and Art Attacker (200 exp)
- Kitty the Expedition Leader (100 exp)
- George the Vanguard (100 exp)
- Tom the Chef (100 exp)

Exp Totals:

- Charles / Celebus Uppytus, Level 6 Necromancer: 62216 (Level up at 72000)

- Kitty / Dorian "Ditto" DeMone, Level 6 Inheritor: 44565 (Level up at 72000)

- George / Parabolus, Level 5 Specialist Ventriloquist: 15122 (Level up at 28000)
Level Up! +1d6 HP! +2 Skill Points! +Backstory!

- Tom / Suspiria, Level 3 Magic-User: 8334 (Level up at 9000)

Session 324 - Snakes Alive!

Date: 21 August, 22 p.p.

Moon: New - Dragonwane
Zenith: Minerva

New Backstory:
- Jojo's twin, Apollo, got punished for tipping over Swan's family heirloom... but it was Jojo who did the deed. Eventually Jojo admitted that it was her fault! (At will, cause a randomly targeted attack to hit you instead).

- Dorian let a wampire lady in through a fleshy "window" of the Dharga, leading to much hijinx. (Once per session, replace a random encounter with the least threatening thing on the local encounter table).

Events:

--- Snakes!

- After last session's ominous snakey foreshadowing, it's time for snakes! Big ones!
- The party enters a room with snake theming, a massive snake slithering around the machinery on the ceiling, and multiple smaller (but still very big comparatively) snakes writhing through the cogs and pistons of the walls.
- An old joke about snake snanguage returns! All snake words snart with a sness and a snenn!
- The snakes snattack! Dorian attempts a blow dart to very little effect! Celebus tries something insnane and snanimates a shed snake skin.

- The skin kite snake skin will go on to absorb the skin of every last motherfucking snake in the motherfucking room as they are chucked straight into its skin-maw.
- The larger snake has a great time biting at one person while trying to squeeze another in its coils, then chucking them at other people. 

- Celebus gets squeezed by one of the smaller snakes and simply ejects from his flesh! The snake is left to curl around a blob of skin and organs while the True Celebus, the bony skeleton version, runs around punching other snakes.
- Jojo who gets thrown to the ground then murders the big snake with a crossbow bolt! Pour one out for the XXXL danger noodle.
- Celebus, knowing that skin kites can be complete aresholes, climbs back into his itchy skin prison and reanimates the big snake as a snake zombie! It picks up the now very big skin kite snake in its mouth and carries it around to stop it from eating people unsanctioned.

--- Loot!
- Dorian searches around for anything interesting and finds a thing of interest! It's a Morning Star of Ridiculous Wounding and does extremely silly damage at the cost of your Constitution.
- Celebus finds some snobols in the snake snoo.
- Jojo sees a very limited map of the level which is at least somewhat useful. She photographs it with her magic photography spell which she hadn't prepared this morning... and it Chaos Bursts! Other than some spectacular vomiting it has no other effect, thank goodness.
- They spend some time eating.

--- Books!

- They move on and find a looted library containing a few leftover books. They are titled The World Behind the Mirror, the Nature of Dwarfs, and the Nature of Demons.
- They have a little read and find out some minor lore.

- Some gravitational distortion warps them back to the start of the room as they try to leave. Jojo surmises that there's a dragon of a gravitational nature around these here parts.

--- A god damn iguana

- They poke around the dungeon some more, finding a snake-themed room with a massive iguanadon in it. Some shenanigans and Meat Points from Dorian later, they lock it in a snake-themed throne room. It piques their interest, but nobody is game to face down the big iguana just for the sake of a cool throne room.

- Thankfully the iguanadon room has a few beds in it, so they decide to block off the door with various furniture and have a nice nap. What could go wrong??

Total: 5000 exp

Loot:

- The Morningstar of Ridiculous Wounding
- Some loose obols (18 exp)
- 2 holy snake medallions (1000 exp)
- Some loose snake-themed trinkets (18 exp)

Total: 1036 exp

Enemies Defeated:
- A very big snake (250 exp)
- Some smaller snakes (200 exp)

- A rather large iguana (100 exp)
Total: 550 exp

Exp Totals:

- Charles / Celebus Uppytus, Level 6 Necromancer: 60066 (Level up at 72000)

- Kitty / Dorian "Ditto" DeMone, Level 6 Inheritor: 42415 (Level up at 72000)

- Ollie / Jojo Fullbeard, Level 3 Muscle Wizard: 7001 (Level up at 9000)

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

Session 323 - Desperately Resting

Date: 21 August, 22 p.p.

Moon: New - Dragonwane
Zenith: Minerva

New Backstory:

- Peter Parabolus nearly died during an Indiana Jones-esque escapade. Luckily he saw the rolling boulder just in time, and leapt out of the way! +1 Awareness.

Events:

--- Crying Faces

- In the clanking darkness in the dungeon depths beneath within Fortress-City Fate, Peter Parabolus and Dorian "Ditto" de Mone pant as quietly as they can after their run-in with the tiger men and the demons. The sound of that battle can still be heard through the brass door.
- As silence falls once more, they take stock of their situation. Four, maybe five levels down into the Brass Hell. A corridor softly lit by Dorian's demonic glow. They hear the sound of sobbing from behind another door on the opposite side of the corridor. Maybe they should check it out?

- Dorian knocks. No answer, just more sobbing.
- They open the door and see two huge metal faces crying at each other from opposite sides of the room! Parabolus inspects one and finds multiple holes within the mouth.
- Alas! A trap! Crossbow bolts shoot from both faces, and the crying turns into a laugh!
- Parabolus, enraged, jams a rock into the laughing mouth of the face that shot him. It starts to weep... and having one laughing and one weeping opens the door out of the room! Lovely!

--- Surprisingly Chill Tiger People
- The next room is a guard room. Tiger people are lounging around. The leader of this little pack tells the pair that they must return to the demon chambers. It transpires that the tigers have a deal with the demons - they prevent anyone with emotions from leaving, and in return the demons get them cloned human carcasses to eat. A feast for a feast!
- Nevertheless, on discovering that the party is here to repair Fate, the tigers let them go onwards. It also turns out that these tiger-people are human minds who chose to be sleeved into humanoid tiger clones. They're furries, basically.

- Dorian and Parabolus take their leave, heading towards the roars which the tiger guys warned them about. Apparently the way down is over that way somewhere.
- They pass through the tiger-people's toilet room (smells bad) and go up another corridor. The walls shimmer with a rippling heat haze effect, though the temperature is still the same hissing warmth as ever down here in the bowels of the machine.

--- Cubic Sloth
- They continue onwards, almost walking straight into a few blue-masked demons! They are demons of sloth and take umbrage to the pair's blithe wanderings!
- A chase ensues, the Sloth field of the demons making their legs stiff and tired. The demons hunt them down and trap them in a dead end. The middle of the room has a big stone cube, rippled like jelly.
- A battle ensues with horrifying effect. The demons are strong! Attacks slap against their oozing sides with little effect, while their claws exact a heavy toll.
- Dorian rips the mask off of one of them and slaps it onto his own face. He is filled with strange demonic energies! It's not enough to protect him as a demon smacks him to the ground, and his return attack leads to his sword shattering into a thousand pieces as the energy courses through him.

- Nevertheless, the battle has hurt both enemy demons. Parabolus finishes them off, then crouches to help Dorian. He's an oozing wreck, legs failing to form and rich red ichor dripping from punctures in his clammy clay skin.
- Dorian scarfs down some fried snake and iron rations to rebuild his body, while Parabolus guards the entrance. They're both heavily damaged, even with Dorian managing to stand up again.

--- Night on the Cube
- They're exhausted and there's no easy way back up to the surface. They realise the cube might be their salvation, and assist each other in climbing up its rippled stone surface. In the claustrophobic gap between the cube and the ceiling, they finally get some rest.
- During their rest in the infinite hissing darkness of Fate, Parabolus briefly stirs in the artificial night. There's a slurping schlorping sound... and he peeks over the edge of the cube to see a slime digesting the demons' corpses.
- Later, there are some tiger people sniffing around, wondering where the Sloth demons are. Apparently they were meant to be patrolling this area, and they missed a couple of check-ins.

--- Beyond Human Burger
- Somewhat healed up by their rest on top of the cube, but out of food, Dorian decides on an excursion to the tiger-people to see if he can rustle up some food. He's got the Sloth demon mask, after all.
- After a fair amount of negotiation where Dorian persuades the tiger-boss that he needs to feed his slothful minion some food so he can continue to be sinfully slothful, he bags one of the clone corpses that the tigers feed on.
- He hurries back to the cube and they swiftly cook up some "Beyond Human Burgers" using clone-human meat, loads of marmite, and some mysterious embyros they found somewhere in the Meatlands. They use a bunch of Nullifier Spice though, so there won't be any downsides from eating man-flesh.
- They gobble the passable meal down, but the smell attracts a tiger-man!
- They buy him off with a burger... but then the fire sets off a fire alarm and water starts gushing from the sprinklers above! This wets the rest of the tiger-man's tiger party and, yowling, they run off to where it's dry. Safe for now!

--- Mushroom Muushroom
- They keep going and hear a sound like chickens clucking somewhere. Two and two are put together - that stone cube must have been a gelatinous cube that ate a cockatrice! Best to avoid those things.
- They head into a room that's a bit like an abandoned school cafeteria. Huge purple mushrooms glow with a faint light, countless suppurating holes peppering the caps that look unsettlingly like they're breathing.

- The mushrooms SCREM!

- Growls and yowling of a bunch of tiger-people come towards the pair. The mushrooms attracted them!
- The pair flee up a corridor, finding a barricade, and swiftly shimmy up and over before the tiger-people can get them.
- The roar of some great beast, closer now, roars out, sending ripples through the strange heat-haze distortion along all the walls. The tiger-people leave, assuming that whatever that is will eat our heroes.

--- Snake Stuff

- They look around the little room they've ended up in. The machinery of the walls has been smashed up and battered so it resembles a whole room made up of snakes. The door, covered in snake pictograms, has been smashed in.

- The next room once had mighty pistons between floor and ceiling, and these too have been battered until they look like snakes. There's snake poo on the floor.
- Since there's probably a snake in there, we wrap up for the night...

Total: 8000 exp

Enemies Defeated:
- Two Sloth demons (200 exp)
Total: 200 exp

OOC:
- Chronicler and Treasurer: Kitty
- Vanguard and Expedition Leader: George

Exp Totals:

- Kitty / Dorian "Ditto" DeMone, Level 6 Inheritor: 39481 (Level up at 72000)
Level Up! +1d6 HP! +1 Meat Point! +1 Mutation Limit! +2 to Save! +Backstory!

- George / Parabolus, Level 4 Specialist Ventriloquist: 12972 (Level up at 14000)