Session 385 - Covered in Spread, A New Era Begins!

Date: 15 October 1624

Moon Phase: Waxing Gibbous, 

Moon Face: Dragon

Zenith Deity: Dispater

New Characters:

- Brie van der Hells, a Necromancer who used to animate rats as dolls when she was young.
- Bulgur, Son of Borgar. A dairy farmed turned mighty Barbarian having grown strong on the rich milk of the Wheatlands, now from 30% real cows!
- Gaivs Jvlius Drvsvs, an allegedly reformed psychopath Halfling.

- Manrat Snels, a throwback to a former era when the line between Rat and Man was blurred.

- Nines, an assassin Inheritor who used to run in a gang after devouring one of their number.

- Nostradama, a Cleric of Nonanism who has embedded trauma from surviving the Apocalypse beneath a big tarp.

Events:

--- You Wake Up in a Dungeon

- It is the first session of a new arc and everybody is covered in slime.
- The slime is thick, blocking their vision. Somehow they can feel each other though. A faint sense of connection between six different people. They are sitting on chairs, bound at the wrists, and their thoughts echo between each other. Nobody knows where they are.

- Nines feels something crusty brush his lips and BITES! His teeth chew through... delicious bread and butter?
- The bread-giver startles, but finishes wiping the butter from Nines' eyes. He sees a priest before him, wondering if the "training" has worked!
- One by one the priest wiped the slime from each persons' mouth and eyes, offering them the bread sacrement which is variously accepted or rejected. Each slime is in fact a spread, and he gives each person a codename as he goes, from Butter the Basic through Marmite the Divisive, to Strawberry the Overrated and so on.

- The priest introduces himself as Priest Nutella (pronounced New-tella, apparently) and declares the party before him to be Infiltration Team Jam-Before-Cream, intended to infiltrate cities and gather more minions to the cause. Alas, their training had to be aborted early because the facility is under attack by electric ghosts!

- Another figure appears at the door, a huge muscular man called Lurpak the Inflated. He comments that waking these guys was a bad idea, but tells Priest Nutella to join him heading for the front lines. The priest leaves with him, shouting back to the group that they should grab weapons and help defend the complex!

--- Electric Ghost?

- Left to their own devices, the team look around and gather their things. The wrist bonds are not strong, designed more to stop them falling off the chairs rather than actually shackle them, so they are soon broken open.

- Wiping the spreads off their faces they take stock. Six chairs in a circle surrounding a big lump of flesh covered in thin hairs. Yuck! The walls are big flagstones with etchings of various creepy-crawlies on them, mostly insects but there are worms and grubs and stuff too.

- Gaius stabs the flesh lump and it bleeds! Within is a horrible insect thing. Nines collapses into mud-flesh and devours it, but can't name the ability it carries so merely digests it.
- More importantly there the delicious smell of fresh bread from nearby! They follow the smell into the next room, finding themselves in a kitchen and bakery. Powered butter churns, a big oven, and loads of barrels of spreads and jams and chutneys.
- The very middle of the room has a cage with a blue-skinned and dragon-winged Goblin in it! He zaps the bars, which is what's powering the butter churns and stand mixers and such.

- Man-Rat Snels tries to get his lone rat buddy to chew through the wires. This kills the rat. Nines instead uses oven mitts to disconnect the wires, thus allowing the blue Goblin to stop powering everything. Alas, they can't let him out without some sort of wrench because he's bolted in there.

- Bulgur examines the butter and extracts a pat of it, sparking a looting frenzy as people lift various ingredients and expensive cast iron dutch ovens. What a treat!

--- Multi-Faith Sermon

- Something has come back to the amnesiac Nostradama. She's a Nonanist Cleric! One of the most common religions out here in the Drudge Wastes, she believes in the Nine High Gods as equals in heaven. This despite the recent schism that resulted from a new God joining the pantheon.
- Nevertheless, she finds it in her heart to include others in her sermon, and her oratory even manages to convert Brie to the Nonanist faith! She's going to have to be very careful given that she's going to lose her Faith Bonus as soon as she benefits from a chaotic spell, but we'll see how that goes.

- Even Zibiddy the blue goblin appreciates the sermon, he's even more committed to the dragon Marduk than he was before!

--- Buttery Goblin Discovers Butterfaced Zombies

- Rather than piss about trying to find a wrench, Bulgur decides to bend the bars! It's a classic manoeuvre, helped very much by lubing up Zibiddy with delicious butter. With a pop the goblin flies out and sliiiiiiiides straight out the door on the other side!

- They hurry after him and find that he's slid all the way through the next room and bashed through the door at the other end! He's found himself in a room bisected by bars like a jail. Behind the bars are numerous bodies with their faces covered in jams and spreads.
- Gaius butters himself up and slips his thin body through the bars. But then the bodies MOVE! They move like zombies and can't get the butter off their faces, and worse, they have no tongues! Stabbing does little, but at least they're trapped.

- There's a smaller annex which is zombie-free and has piles of mystery stuff. Gaius slips through and checks it out, finding a book about beer and a vial of acid. Not too bad!
- Also in this annex is a collapsed bit of wall, behind which are a bunch of surprisingly large ant corpses. He rubs some into his hair.

--- The Indoctrination of Lurpak

- Bulgur meanwhile is listening at the door. He hears loud whispers. It's clearly Lurpak and Nutella arguing, with Lurpak saying that they should have used drones rather than messing about with Nutella's precious infiltrator project!
- They mention that they've only managed to kill one Electric Ghost so far, and Zibiddy yells out in shock and grief! Lurpak opens the door and finds himself face to face with Infiltration Team Jam-Before-Cream who are doing their best to hide the goblin behind their robes.
- Nines leaps into action but his surprise attack is thwarted by the priest's iron baguette cudgel! Manrat Snels bites Lurpak, and while he's distracted Gaius leaps up and touches the Barbarian, taming him and forcing him to attack Priest Nutella!
- Brie steps forth and kills the priest before the confused Lurpak can really understand what's happening to him, knifing him in the heart and snatching the priests' Last Breath into a glass vial. She takes the priest's iron baguette too, for good measure. She then checks the priest's neck and finds a big fleshy lump with a long thin thread coming out of it...

- A memory suddenly surges through Nines! He remembers something like this before! He remembers... Jonathon Toast! The spreads, the threads, it all makes sense! He knows not where the memory came from, but he remembers it clear as day!
- Finally Brie sucks in the Last Breath she just captured from the dying priest and casts Animate Dead, raising his corpse as a zombie! It's still fresh, so it looks almost like he's still alive. Lurpak can't think straight through the fog, but this seems ok, right?

--- Loo Break

- Nines inspects the walls and finds that they are covered with the fine threads, forming some sort of larger network. Attempts to burn, cut or tear them don't work because they are fine, flexible, and strong.

- They ask Lurpak to lead them out and he declares he needs the toilet first. They acquiesce and find that the toilets are a sort of group drop toilet over blackness and are treated to a spectacular performance from Lurpak.

- Manrat Snels drops a rat down to scout, and it returns in a few minutes to say that yes it's a big cave full of poo. Big insects too, actually. The cavern keeps going if you're interested.
- Nines drops a torch in point-first to investigate further. It's not a pretty sight, but the fumes are keeping that flame very much alight.

--- The Escape

- Since they're an official infiltration team of the Toasted Ones, have a tamed Lurpak under Gaius' mental aegis and the still fresh-looking zombie Priest Nutella under Brie's control, it's actually pretty easy to leave. Zibiddy is naturally trying very very hard to stay on their good side, and they hide him by having Gaius ride on his shoulders in a long coat with his wings forming a, to quote, "dumptruck ass".

- They pass by some myrmidon types wearing ant carapace armour and wielding ant shields, go through some rooms with murderholes in the ceiling, and out to the front entrance. There are trenches and fortifications built out towards the Wastes, all manned by small groups of fighters taking aim with guns and bows.
- Zibiddy sees fellow blue goblins sitting outside of firing range and surges with energy! He practically teleports out from under Gaius, zig-zagging like a bolt of lightning!

- They talk and soon spread their dragon wings and fly away, off towards a distant spire on the horizon that glimmers as with blue fireflies.
- The soldiers in the trenches are confused and turn to Lurpak for guidance. They are extremely tractable, it turns out, and accept the explanation that this was all part of the plan.

--- Night Under a Tarp

- Taking their leave, the party head up the hill. It's rocky and covered in mud, but an easy climb nonetheless. The sun is setting over a clear crisp autumn day.

- From the top they take their bearings.
- Below they see a wide swathe of flat land - the bruise-coloured mud and slime of the Drudge Wastes. Black rivers of sludge or tar cut through the landscape. On the horizon in that direction they can see smoke rising - very likely a town!

- In the other direction the hills continue, rising from the wastes in smooth hummocks. Distantly in that direction is a huge stone structure, a pyramid amongst the hills.

- They can see the firefly-wreathed spire on the horizon towards the setting sun, buzzing with what must be more of these electro-goblins.
- Nearly as distant they can also see a strange spike like a huge sewing needle, reflecting the sunset.
- Darkness is coming, though, and under the light of the gibbous moon they forage for food. Gaius and Nines find something tasty! It's mudfish! A sort of grainy and bony strong-scaled fish that lives in the moist mud of the hills.
- Gaius cooks, since he's got the Halfling's natural knack for food. He cooks up what he calls Butter-Basted Fish of the Waste! It's got butter, bread, mudfish, and for some reason rat! It's actually really good, since they made sure to grab a bunch of salt and spices and fancy ironware from that kitchen before they left.
- Nostradama unfurls her tarp. She hates it, but it's the best they've got. They huddle under the tarp on the top of the hill and try to sleep while rainclouds gather in the skies above.

Total: 8000 exp

Treasure Gained:

- Salt

- Spices

- Book #281 - On Beers and Ales

- Vial of acid

- Various fancy cast iron pots and pans (200 exp)

Total: 200 exp

Enemies Defeated:

- Priest Nutella (50 exp)
- Lurpak the Inflated, controlled (50 exp)
Total: 100 exp

Roles:

- Carter the Chronicler and Cartographer (200 exp/level)
- George the Expedition Leader (100 exp/level)
- Kitty the Vanguard (100 exp/level)
- Tim the Triage and Chef (200 exp/level)

Art Attack:

- George (100 exp/level)

Exp Totals:

- Timothy / Gaius Julius Drusus, Level 1 Halfling: 1584 (Level up at 2000)

- Carter / Nines, Level 1 Inheritor: 1584 (Level up at 2250)
- George / Manrat Snels, Level 1 Ratman: 1584 (Level up at 1750)

- Kitty / Bulgur, Son of Borgar, Level 1 Barbarian: 1484 (Level up at 2000)

- Ollie / Brie van der Hells, Level 1 Necromancer: 1384 (Level up at 2250)

- Zoe / Nostradama, Level 1 Cleric of Nonanism: 1384 (Level up at 2250)