Session 419 - Sic Semper Colonis

Date: 30th September 1625

Zenith Deity: The Lady

Moon Phase: First Quarter

Moon Face: Pocked Face

New Backstory:

- Nieval the Good was told an ancient truth by his father on his deathbed - they are of a long lineage of many Nievals the Good. The name and daredevil profession passed down from father to son on the moment of the father's death. +2 Wisdom

Events:

--- Elfpox Blankets

- Manrat sweatily awakens in the bubble-tent to the sound of Nieval the Good regaling Gryphon with his backstory. Manrat has a cough and a deep red rash. What's going on? Is it the tent? Why is he sick? Is this the curse of using Red Elf technology without being an actual Quislist? (Yes)

- There's more castle to clear so they head back into the castle. Hopefully the Quislist priest has a cure.

- Nieval is still weak from last session's shadow-sucking encounter, so they drape his floppy body over Ezekiel (Sulphur's huge zombie minion) and help Manrat in.

- They reach the weighing-scale floor before the temple and Gryphon asks his father's head on his waist what the point of this is. His father says that it's to stop a pile of goblins from invading the chapel. If 20 goblins (or, in fairness, 10 humans) are in the antechamber at the same time it sets off the poison gas trap. Good to know!

--- Standard Coloniser Behaviour

- Nieval and Gryphon cross the weighing room and enter the chapel, not trusting Sulphur's various minions to be lighter than the trap.

- The head priest of Quislism is here! They ask him for a cure to Manrat's rash, and possibly to buy some Red Cream, and are informed that the cream will cure the rash! Or rather, since the Red Cream resurrects the dead, if they kill him and resurrect him he will be free of the rash!
- What is the rash? Why, Noctis Flux! The disease that afflicts non-believers who use the Red Elves' pillows. Believers are unaffected of course, due to religious antibodies or something. The priest and his minions have one dose of Red Cream left, 500 obols, available for today only because it's the end of the month and it will soon lose its curative properties.
- Manrat, hearing this, looks up Noctis Flux in his Martian Bible and finds nothing but bad news.

--- Thus Always to Colonisers

- Manrat marches in, surrounded by his horde of rats, and raises his rash-bearing arms to the priest. The priest begins to proselytise about the foolishness of false belief while Manrat throws his arms forwards and sends his hordes into battle!

- The Cleric stamps his foot and declares that this land is his land! Rats and bullets are deflected from his righteous territorial claim!

- The Cleric's battle-sisters move to defend, but are also beset by rats! They wield longswords and red-stained chain. They attempt to defend the (relatively) devout Nieval before he attempts to stab them (apologetically) in the back!

- Gryphon is quietly pleased about this development. They are after all clearing his castle. He swings his grappling hook to help the rats get into the priests' armour.

- Sulphur arrives with his minions. Skeletons are of course lighter than a whole person, which means it's Fine for the lumbering zombie hulk to follow along too. He sucks down a Last Breath and orders them into battle.

- Sulphur and his gang miss over and over against a nun who is clearly practicing Nun-Fu, so he blows off her leg with a Humorous Amputation Punch! Confetti flies and the nun dies under an onslaught of undead claws and teeth.

- The priest and the surviving nuns, seeing this, decide to withdraw into the ablution chamber with all due haste and bar the door.

--- Body Blow

- The retreat leaves the party the opportunity to plan. They can hear things being piled up against the door. Sulphur grins and hefts the zombie-torn carcass of the battle-nun.
- He chucks the corpse at the door and at the opportune moment detonates it with a Corpse Explosion punch! The door is blown inwards, and before they can recover Gryphon swings in on his grapple-rope and straight into the priest!

- His first blow takes off the priest's head, the second drains the last of his life-force through Gryphon's shadow powers! Turns out eating that shadow was a pretty cool thing to do!

- The sisters hold and attempt a fighting retreat towards the secret exit and Sulphur sees something strange happening to the body of the priests. Souls whirl around it, but these souls are unlike the souls she sees normally.
- Sulphur knocks one of the nuns into one of his skeletons, who rips out her throat and exposes it so he can collect her Last Breath. It's a good day for breath-collecting! If you love a wetty.

- There's one nun left, and Gryphon takes the opportunity to rip out the priest's spine and fling it at the nun. Destroying the body usually stops resurrection nonsense, right?

- The nun shrieks, "you have no idea what you've done!" and bravely fights back against Nieval the betrayer. 

- Sulfur slurps down the wetty Last Breath and tries to command the red priest to stop reviving, but it feels... discordant. His heart rings like a cracked bell. It doesn't work. His body reforms as a flesh bubble thing with the priests' face sliding over the skin.

- Gryphon punts the flesh-blob into the secret room with the stoneshell crabs and hopes for the best. Sulphur brutally murders the remaining nun as she tries to follow.

--- Cockatrice Finisher

- They slam the door and hear panicked crab noises as the priest-blob blossoms. Luckily Nieval's backstory makes him perennially unlucky and the worse thing on the encounter table shows up all at once...
- Luckily for him, they appear in the room with the crabs and blob-priest!

- Our heroes crack the door and witness the stone-billed cockerels descend upon the stoneshells, their eggs, the blob priest. All turns to stone under their deluge. The collapsed entrance is soon blocked by the swelling mass of the stone blob, the crabs who don't escape are soon turned to rock and rubble.
- The cockatrices start to nibble at the rocks as the party quietly closes the door and moves a safe distance away...

--- The Taste of Safety

- With a bunch of dead colonisers on their hands and a relatively clear and safe area, they decide to make the ablution chamber their new basecamp. After all it has an actual toilet!

- They loot the bodies of the dead, retrieving a suit of heavy red armour from the priests and a few suits of red-stained mail from the nuns. Plus the nuns' swords and the priest's cudgel.

- They find loot amongst the Quislists' belongings. A shard of dragon-core which pulses with barely-constrained energies. A magical regenerating canister of squirty plastic cheese. Some specialty switcheroo crossbow bolts. Detailed instructions on how to brew an Invisibility potion.

- Given that they've now got infinite cheese and (for now) a ready supply of rats, they decide to make what is possibly the first reliably repeatable recipe - Gryphon's "Delicious" Moussaka! In the sink! It's Cheese and rats, layered like a lasagne! It's also incredibly tasty somehow. So good that you sleep like a baby!

Total: 7000 exp

Loot:

- 3 Longswords

- A cudgel with a Nonanist symbol on it
- Heavy Armour (Red Elf plate)
- 3x Medium Armour (Red-stained chain)

- Shard of Explosion Dragon Core (100 exp)
- Squirty Can of Plastic Cheese counts as 1 ration but never goes off or runs out

- 2 Switcheroo Bolts swap location of you and target

- Potion Instructions: Invisibility

Total: 100 exp

Foes:

- Quislist Priest (250 exp)

- A few Quislist Battle-Nuns (225 exp)
Total: 475 exp

OOC:

- Carter the Chronicler, Cortopgrapher and Paymaster (300 exp/level)
- George the Expedition Leader (100 exp/level)
- Kitty the Vanguard (100 exp/level)
- Charles the Chef and Artist (300 exp/level)

Exp Totals:

- George / Manrat Snels, Level 8 Ratman: 122728 (Level up at 224000)

- Kitty / Sulphur, Level 5 Boo-gilist: 24705 (Level up at 36000)

- Carter / Gryphon, Level 4 Fighter: 8805 (Level up at 16000)

*LEVEL UP!* +1d8 HP! +1 to Saves! +1 to Hit! +1 to Crit/Fumble! +Backstory!

- Charles / Nieval the Good, Level 4 Specialist: 7082 (Level up at 14000)

*LEVEL UP!* +1d6 HP! +1 to Saves! +2 Skill Points! +Backstory!