Session 329 - Right to Repair

Date: 21 August, 23 p.p.

Moon: New - Dragonwane
Zenith: Minerva

New Characters:

Sydney, a Magic-User and former (?) vagrant with an ooze familiar.

New Backstory:
Ian Brown lost an argument with Swan the Swift about the finer points of Barbarism.

Events:

--- Slime!
- We open where we closed - the party stuck inside the ooze room with a big ol' gelatinous cube gumming away at an unharmed huge mutant dwarf. He's enjoying it!

- The Dwarf escapes, his lavender skin condition healed up by contact with the goo. Fair enough!

- The gang debate what floor they're on. Ian insists ten, citing no evidence. Swan thinks it's more like 6, and furthermore that the server room is on level 5 so they need to go up the slime tube. And they do!

--- More Slime!
- Up the tube they do a bit of classic dungeon exploration. There's an ominous glopping noise, which they follow to a bridge that goes over a pit of ominously glopping black ooze. Thankfully they realise the bridge is an illusion (or at least a projection) before walking on it!

- Ian traverses the gap by the use of one of them necklaces that you swallow and get turned inside out then sucked into the necklace. It's still a surprisingly safe means of travel!

- A bit of handy ropework later and the crew have crossed the ooze unglopped, then come out into another room with MORE goop just glopping there. This time a tempting piece of cheese is in the middle of pivoting bridge that will dump anyone walking to get it into the slime!
- Ian simply ties a rope to his narwhal tusk and spear-fishes the cheese over. It's... cheese! Ham is also found. If they find some crackers we're in Lunchable territory.

--- Roboda Roboda
- They hear whimpering sounds and investigate, finding a wheely robot that's been trapped by waist-high walls! It wants to go fix the data stacks. Data stacks?! Where?! To the south!
- They release the robot from its confinement and are careful to tie a rope to him in case he slips on the slime with his wobbly wheels.
- He starts to lead the party towards the stacks! On the way they pass a room containing a person the robot calls the Mucus Mage. Unfortunately that draws the Mage's attention!
- They're polite to him, so he's fine albeit snotty. He's down here hunting the beautiful ruby that teleports around the place and eludes his capture, and he's become obsessed.
- Dorian sees the ruby floating in the Mucus Mage's room and goes to catch it with a lunchbox! Sadly it teleports away... but Dorian still tries to convince the Mage that he caught it in the lunchbox. It does not work for long, and makes the Mage sad.
- It reappears and Sydney whips a Magic Missile at it! The missile blips back and forth as the gem vanishes and reappears split-seconds before being hit by the unerring missile. Alas.

--- Server Issues
- Maybe they'll come back for the gem some day. For now, the servers! These must be fairly easy to fix, right?

- It is, in fact, worse than they'd hoped. A massive hole has been blown in the central mass of Fate, the walls lined with glowing blue computer lights and the tiny red pods with imps inside that are used to backup the citizens minds.

- The robot says that it'll take a lot of robots to fix. Or they could just turn the system off and on again, but that would mean erasing the saved mindstates of Fate's citizens and tantamount to genocide, which we can all agree is generally bad.
- More robots are down on the lower levels of Fate, and this convenient giant gaping hole will make getting down a few levels fairly easy!
- Swan breaks a demon pod open and extracts a eggshell beige imp of the 8th Sin - landlordism. It dies when it's unplugged and splurts into thick, hastily applied beige paint and drips all over a plug socket.

--- The Debate of Our Times

- It's a few levels down - they reckon down to level 8 - and come to a sort of blown up valley floor that's been colonised by big huge verdant mushrooms.
- Sydney tries to plug an imp pod into himself but only succeeds in waking up the little guy, who frets because he was LARPing as one of the maintenance crew on the first level of the dungeon and wants to go back in.

- Ian lobs him across the room and a tentacled robo-angel swarms down to catch it! The light fades, and another tentacle-pod-angel reconnects a fresh pod to the empty socket.

- They ask the little robot what Fate even is. What is this technology? It lore-dumps with relish!

- Fortress-City Fate was originally an ark that escaped from a Shub-Niggurath infested planet before it cracked like an egg. The Red Elves were those original inhabitants, though obviously they live on Mars now. Many questions are raised by this new info!

- Arguments once more erupt over turning Fate off and on again vs fixing the place, and continue until the pub closes...

Total: 6000 exp

Loot:
- Cheese (1 exp)
- Ham (1 exp)
- A robot friend! (2000 exp)
Total: 2002 exp

Kills:
- Some imps
Total: 0 exp

Exp totals:

- George / Swan the Swift, Level 7 Barbarian: 77911 (Level up at 128000)

- Kitty / Dorian "Ditto" DeMone, Level 6 Inheritor: 54020 (Level up at 72000)

- Tom / Ian Brown, Level 3 Mancunian Barbarian: 4501 (Level up at 8000)
Level Up! +1d8 HP! +2 Barbarian Rolls! +Backstory!

- Carter / Sydney, Level 1 Magic-User: 2001 (Level up at 2250)

Session 328 - Increasingly Incoherent Dwarves

Date: 21 August, 22 p.p.

Moon: New - Dragonwane
Zenith: Minerva

New Characters:
- Oktar the Rat-Eater, Dragon-Hun and Alleged Mutant.
- Ian Brown, Tamer of Horses and "awright luv?" enthusiast.

Events:

--- The Sewers
- It has been a long time since last we met, and to everyone's delight they are in a nasty sewer. Slime drips from the brass walls, pooling in slick slippery puddles of foulness across the tarnished floors Fortress-City Fate's innards.

- There is, however, a massive glowing red ruby ahead.
- Newcomer Oktar runs DIRECTLY AT IT despite the Admiral Ackbar-esque protestations of Dorian Demone, Swan the Swift, and Tyler Lockheart.
- It merely vanishes, sending Oktar slipping into green slime (but not Green Slime).

- Tyler attempts to help him up, which ends up with both of them slipping around on slimy slop.

--- Behold a Tube

- They decide to follow the runnels of slippery goop, following a sort of churning honking schlorping sound. They come across a capital-T Tube, worryingly organic, with man-sized holes leaking various colours of goop. It's made of tarnished brass.
- Tyler tickles the rim of the grey hole with his board. It starts leaking grey gunk and extends a little tendril towards his face...

- Oktar fists the purple hole and is rewarded with a faceful of aggressive jelly foetuses which begin to crawl down his throat!
- Tyler tries to catch the grey ooze in a jam jar, finds it's too big for one jam jar, and shoves the whole jar into the hole! It crunches and munches and spits out a floor hazard mad of jam jar shards! All metal objects on his person begin to shiver and hiss acrid fumes.

- Oktar is having a bad time because the jelly babies are trying to kill him. Swan lobs his battleaxe into the melee and hits Oktar.  Dorian smashes at the jelly babies with his mace and hits Oktar. Oktar chomps down onto a jelly baby, gets punched in the belly from the inside, and goes into a RAGE!
- The raging Barbarian destroys a swathe of jelly babies with his Death Trance multi-attack, but heedlessly snaps his own leg and has several fingers devoured by ravenous jellies!

- Swan smacks the remaining jelly babies towards Oktar who yearns for Valhalla, this will be a hard one to explain to the valkyries.
- Oktar is torn nearly to shreds by the jelly babies as he slaughters them! Swan the Swift grants him not-so-swift mercy. It takes some time to finally kill the man. Tom grabs another character sheet.

- Dorian demolishes the grey goosh that is minding its own business in its little hole honestly. Enemies slain!

--- The Damp Descent

- Ian Brown, Mancunian Barbarian, appears fairly rapidly. He comes upon the party while they are looking upon the grey hole. It is much less active currently.

- Using a variety of ropes and rope-like objects, he is lowered down the hole.

- It's quite a long way down, but eventually he slips out the bottom of the grey tube and finds himself in an oozy altar room! The ground is slick, various colourful gunks slorp towards their assigned coloured orifices... and on an altar is a small scale model of the ooze tube!
- He picks up the slime idol and feels the very specific feeling that oozes shall not attack him and will, in fact, convey him up the tubes if he so wishes!
- He feigns death by screaming and yanking down the rope, so it's a miracle that his prank doesn't get him killed by his fellows when he returns up the tube!

- They descend by the orange tube, and the resulting gorp attacks the party! It's the sort of ooze that splits into two when attacked!

- After various amounts of ooze-slaying, the ooze is slain!

- Time is taken to think of 90's Manchester music scene puns that also relate to oozes. I shall not convey the results.

--- Urgh? Argh! Uhhhhh!

- Using the slime totem to urge some grey ooze onto the metal barricade, followed by some spirited crowbarring, the way is unblocked!
- Beyond are painfully bright electric strip lights and the sound of grinding rails. Less like skateboarding, more like trains.

- Let's split up gang!

- Tyler and Ian go left, finding an area with loads of rails hung up vertically like wind chimes. They jangle unsweetly, and will be hard to move through without making them ring.
- Dorian goes straight ahead, coming across a big mutant Dwarf with his back to him, spinning a rail turntable which is covered with various symbols and muttering. The Dwarf doesn't see him.
- Swan heads right towards some sort of rough music. He peeks round a corner to see a troupe of three huge double-size Dwarf drummers banging away while a small crowd of other huge Dwarves dance to the beat.

- Of note, several of the huge Dwarves have colourful faces and beards, possibly slime related?

--- Mahgahloooof
- Tyler tries to slip through the wind chime rails and fails, making them smash against each other and ring discordantly! Swan sees the Big Dwarf crowd start to turn and look, so uses his noisemaker slingshot to cause a distraction. Success!

-Tyler doubles down and rushes in. Inside, more huge Dwarves! They are mollified by his air-horn but don't speak his language, so grunt and gesture instead.

- Is the head Dwarf called Magaluf? It's unclear.

- He follows one of them through a room containing ooze-coloured (and dead) Dwarves and to a room with a big ol' pool of glistening ooze. It shimmers like sunrise over water.
- The Dwarf he followed mimes washing, then goes to wait behind the door.
- He pretends to bathe and feeds the Dwarf some jam as if it's come out of him. The big Dwarf goes to tell his friends, and they all come to taste the man jam... but that's all we know. Maybe next session?

--- Ooze Bath

- The big Dwarves in the music room keep miming to Ian that they want the "Idosh" he's holding. He feigns not knowing what they mean despite his only possession of note is the slime idol.
- He leads them back towards the ooze room, baiting them with the idol. Once they enter he squeezes the purple side of the idol and a whole load of jelly babies squirt out of the purple hole! They hit the lead dwarf dead on and... are absorbed into his skin. He seems quite happy actually!

- Ian tries again with the white side and unleashes a classic Gelatinous Cube! It glorps over the Dwarf and... he seems happy enough in there! He swims out and it looks like that lavender rosacea he had has cleared up! 

- We leave it here because the Dwarves are fairly happy and nothing has gone wrong... possibly?

Total:7000 exp


Treasure:
- Slime Idol makes slimes not attack you (8000 ob)

Total: 8000 exp

Foes:

- A horde of jelly babies (100 exp)
- A grey glorp (250 exp)
Total: 350 exp

OOC:

- Chronicler & Paymaster: Kitty
- Vanguard & Chef - George
- Expedition Leader - Tom

- Death's Witness: Dorian, Swan, Tyler

Exp Totals:

- George / Swan the Swift, Level 7 Barbarian: 75910 (Level up at 128000)

- Kitty / Dorian "Ditto" DeMone, Level 6 Inheritor: 52019 (Level up at 72000)

- James G / Tyler Lockheart, Level 5 Specialist: 23234 (Level up at 24000)

- Tom / Ian Brown, Level 2 Mancunian Barbarian: 2500 (Level up at 4000)
Level Up! +1d8 HP! +2 Barbarian Rolls! +Saves! +Backstory!

 

Session 327 - A Time Jump In Reality Only

Date: 21 August, 22 p.p.

Moon: New - Dragonwane
Zenith: Minerva

New Characters:
- Supply Teacher Mark who is a Spider-Kid, failed chalk-cutter, and apprentice teacher.

New Backstory:

- Peter Parabolus had a wounded wasteland dog, which he took home and cared for. +1 to Beast morale.
- Iskander resisted the hottest summer his homeland had ever seen. +1 to Con.

- Iskander had the best moment of his life when he went back to see his father who loved him so much. Once per session, cause someone who trusts you to become immune to fear and morale checks for ten minutes.

Events:

--- Celebus: Reanimator

- Down in the whirring depths of Fortress-City Fate, the party are standing around debating what to do about the dark Dwarfs talking in the guttural tongue of the Dwarven Arcology of Ur-Darghab.

- Swan the Swift and Supply Teacher Mark show up, having somehow evaded the perils of this mechanical maze! They join Celebus, Dorian Demone and Jojo Fullbeard. Also joining them, a whole theatrical troupe who are trying their best to stay at the back.

- Celebus has collected a few Last Breaths by now and wants to reanimate a Dwarf skeleton for shenanigans. They decide to walk back to the room with all the Dwarf corpses because obviously. On the way they nearly run into a mechanical angel with contra-rotating plates... but something shifts and it's simply the shadow of a Dward scuttling past.

- They reach the room of dead Dwarves and Celebus achieves his achievable dream by animating a Dwarf corpse as a skeleton. There is one weird thing though... a gem drops out of the skeleton's belly.

- To their surprise it seems all these Dwarves have gems in their bellies! They must have swallowed them! The Dwarf corpses are all gutted and the gems taken.

--- Are These Dwarves Tough or Just Lucky?

- They remember the lift they saw before, and decide to find whatever shadowy key might unlock it and let them skip some levels. They do remember that there is that one room with the shadowy dwarf behind a shadowy desk with a shadowy key around his shadowy neck... but it's full of cosmic horrors beyond their comprehension so maybe they keep that as a backup.

- Alas, on the way back to where they began some other shadowy Dwarves happen upon the party and move in to attack! The Dwarves extrude tendrils of shadow that attack the shadows of our heroes. Worse, it saps their strength!
- Swan is berated by Jojo who invented the "obvious" fact that the solid Dwarf is the true shadow, and to damage these guys they need to mime attacking the shadows on the ground with their shadow weapons. We say the word shadow a hell of a lot.
- Supply Teacher Mark shows off his spider prowess by fighting from the ceiling in this narrow corridor. Dorian uses the hell out of his Axe of Ridiculous Wounding despite knowing that it will the later damage his joie de vivre. Celebus makes his giant snake skeleton chuck that very same snakes' animated skin at the foes, then scurries around grabbing the black odium of the dying Dwarfs' Last Breaths.
- The Dwarves are slowly slowly worn down, not helped by some absolutely appalling rolls by combatants on all sides. But at last, finally, they are dead and lootable for their stomach gems and also an interesting-looking book about some sort of War of the Roses. Hmmm.

--- Eldritch Fear of a Plump Helmet
- Exploring further, they find a pair of doors with what look like short toilet door signs. Trying the bearded female side they discover... a dorm! The true toilet lies within. There are also, to the surprise of all, female Dwarfs in there?!
- Jojo casts Summon and it goes about as well as one might expect.
- Later, after having run across half the map, being chased by a whole theatrical troupe who were possessed by the smoke spores of a Plump Helmet Demon, we wonder once more about why Summon is such a fun spell to use.

- During their flight from the Demon they happen to absorb a couple of living shadows into shields their bearing Take-Light glyphs. Pretty good move!
- Finally they hide in an abandoned Smithy, hiding behind the door as the possessed theatre troupe prowl past along with a similarly possessed dog. Dorian expands, clutching the whole party in her goopy skin, and turns invisible just in time to evade the sight of the possessed.

--- Reasonable Chance of Ooze

- Having basically turned this part of the level into a possessed mushroom versus shadow dwarf battle royale, they move away from the deliciously yeasty smell of Plump Helmet smoke and towards a place which they haven't yet explored.
- Signs, such as the smell of poop and the loud gurgling from the walls, point to this being the inevitable Ooze Zone. However... to suspicion and delight... at the end of the hallway, glimmering in the dark, is an enormous floating ruby.

Total: 5000 exp

Loot:

- 28 Dwarven Belly-Gems of Various Types (2800 exp)

- Book #116: Ur-Darghab, City of the Deeps (100 exp)

- Book #234: The Wars of the Roses (100 exp)

Total: 3000 exp

Monsters Defeated:
- A hefty serving of Dwarf-Shaped Shadows (400 exp)
- A large smattering of Shadow-Shaped Dwarves (1000 exp)

- A gaggle of mushroom-possessed theatrical types (200 exp)
Total: 1600 exp

Exp Totals:

- George / Swan the Swift, Level 7 Barbarian: 73210 (Level up at 128000)

- Charles / Celebus Uppytus, Level 6 Necromancer: 64236 (Level up at 72000)

- Kitty / Dorian "Ditto" DeMone, Level 6 Inheritor: 49319 (Level up at 72000)

- Ollie / Jojo Fullbeard, Level 4 Muscle Wizard: 11755 (Level up at 18000)

- Tim / Supply Teacher Mark, Level 2 Spider-Kid: 2020 (Level up at 4000)

Level Up! +1d6 HP! +Mysterious Spider-Powers! +Backstory! +Saves!