Session 307 - Astro Moon's Shit-Eating Grin

Date: July 28, 21 p.p.

Moon: Waxing Gibbous
Zenith: The Allfather

New Backstory:

- Astro Moon had a good set of friends when she was young, and was a devoted follower. +X to actions that at least two others have succeeded at this round/turn, +1 per success

- Iskander got the wrong impression of his mentor, Zulu, and kissed her... she threw him into the Burning Bush while it was on fire. +1 HD of health for the rest of the session if you successfully romance someone

Events:

--- The Meatworks
- With Swan the Swift currently down with the novel coronavirus, the rest of the team decide to take on an ancilliary heist - the Meatworks! A horrible factory which creates the Meat Lord's most powerful mutant Meat Men. Take it down and the assault on the Meat Lord's citadel will be much easier.
- There are two obvious entries - the front door (heavily guarded) and the poop chute outflow into the river (disgusting). Luckily surfer bro Tyler Lockheart is here with his radical surfing power! A plan is hatched!
- Tyler is to wear three of the magic meat necklaces containing almost all of his team-mates, while Iskander with his so-so surfing skills will bodyboard in behind. Tyler does so stylishly, surfing up the poop chute, while Iskander nearly messes up by falling into the stinky brown. Luckily it camouflages him enough to remain unseen by any guards!

--- The Flushway
- They paddle in up the outflow and find themselves in a tunnel with a fairly thin ledge, all running with brown sludge. It is strangely familiar to those who experienced a certain chocolate factory on a certain lunar body. Must be their dodgy maps they brought with them...
- For some reason, Astro Moon tastes the faecal river! A rush of magic nearly sends her gobbling up big handfuls of the stuff... but luckily she passes the save! Phew!
- They find some noses that can be pressed to release antiseptic gunk. It's covid safe!
- The doors are big clenched mouths that open with an "ouch!" when you bop their nose.

--- Cauldrons and the Poop Guy

- Hearing voices and splashing behind one door, and not much other than a faint bubbling behind the other door, they opt for the latter. Inside are cauldrons full of bubbling colourful gunk... and at one side of the room a really fat guy in a big press!
- They talk to the guy and it seems he's being mined for his magical poop, which is squeezed out occasionally by the big press. It's very horrible, but the guy refuses to be released because they'll just do this to someone else. At least he knows that while he's here getting tortured it's preventing someone else from the same fate.

- Investigating the gunk cauldrons it soon becomes apparent that, yes, there's a random table. Who can resist drinking random goop in a dungeon when it's got a random table attached?!

- Results range from some big goop guy coming out and attacking you (this happens twice, both times eventually murdered!), some delicious strawberry-flavoured liqueur, and something that is just marmite.
- They check a side room and find some kids imprisoned! They are all references to some well known characters from a certain book about a chocolate factory! Maybe to be released later, who knows.
- Tyler peeps into the next main room through the gritted teeth, seeing little orange guys with buckets in their crab claw hands scooping frothy broth full of mutating flesh and eyeballs from big seething vats!
- Celebus charges up a spell and animates a bucket of guts as a distraction! The horrified target tries to drop the bucket as the guts start slithering over him and... the pub tells us they're closing early tonight!

- It's a cliffhanger ending!

Total: 4000 exp

Loot:
- Strawberry Liqueur x5
- Marmite x7

Murders:
- 2 big goopy blobby guys! (150 exp)

OOC:
Art Attack: Charles
Model Maniac: Ollie
Chronicler: Charles
Expedition Leader & Vanguard: Kitty
Quartermaster & Triage: Ollie
Chef: Izzy

Exp Totals:

- Charles / Celebus Uppytus, Level 6 Necromancer: 38953 (Level up at 72000)

- Kitty / Amanta, Level 6 Mantis Specialist: 36111 (Level up at 56000)

- Ollie / Iskander Fullbeard, Level 6 Fighter: 35874 (Level up at 64000)

- James G / Tyler Lockheart, Level 5 Specialist: 13459 (Level up at 24000)

- Izzy / Astro Moon, Level 4 Muscle Wizard: 13192 (Level up at 18000)

Session 269 - Lucia the Boss

A clash with Lucia leaves many fighting for their lives, but thankfully some classic spell abuse and a good dose of bullshit lets the gang escape with their lives and loot intact! Also a mystery mirror that I need to make up a place for it to lead to, but that Red Moon is a good bet.

Session 269 - Lucia the Boss

New Characters:
- Scarlet Eclipse’s father had a dangerous job - space farming on a death planet in the outer rim of colonised space. All he wanted to do was to help people. +1 to selfless acts.

Loot:
- 5000 space bucks
- Chocolate recipe book (1000 exp)
Total: 6000 exp

Foes:
- A bunch of beanos (200 exp)
Total: 200 exp

Events:

--- Chocolate Chaos
- Lucia stands before the chocolate river, an army of bean-man oompa-loompa guys at her back. She wields a rapier and her syrupy armour has returned! Before her, Beepbox and Jeremy Wizard have just burst through the door, and up near the ceiling besides the pipe that used to spew forth a chocolate waterfall, Red, Vermillion Vest and Ratman the Ratman look down in upon the scene.
- Beepbox boosts up to a pipe near the ceiling, getting into a sniping position, and fires down at the enemy.
- Vermillion Vest fires a microwave gun at Lucia, melting off the syrup armour, while Red runs in to hug Lucia to calm her down and Jeremy lobs oil onto one of the thin bridges crossing the chocolate river. Vermillion lights it up with his microwave gun, burning some beanos! They retreat out of the fire, screaming.
- Jeremy takes blowgun fire from the beanos, getting hit with one and injected with their stun poison. Lucia breaks Red’s hold and kicks her into the river, then follows up with a critical strike on Jeremy Wizard!
- Red bursts from the scalding chocolate and attacks Lucia, taking her attention away from the fallen Jeremy.
- Meanwhile, up on the pipe, Ratman and Vermillion run inside to try to get the turbine moving again. They find themselves in a room of hostile bean-men and retreat again.
- Red kicks Lucia into the river, screaming “see how you like it!” and it becomes clear that the beanos can sing an oompa-loompa song to buff Lucia, regrowing her syrup armour and preventing damage from the boiling chocolate.
- This leaves Red open to spammed with darts, and she takes an alarming number of crits from the little guys. Her jump-armour is destroyed and she passes out. It’s looking dire for Red.
- Another rousing round of Oompa-Loompa buffs, this time from the unharrassed beanos on the right, empowers Lucia with an insane jump! She bursts from the river and goes straight for Beepbox, who is still clinging to a pipe!
- Jeremy shakes off his stun and wild-casts Draw Aggro on his bee! All the enemies, including Lucia, suddenly fixate on this evil bee and chase after it. Thankfully Vermillion Vest arrives on a boat at just the right time for everyone to escape!
- Beepbox heals Red and they bundle her chocolate-covered body onto the boat. Vermillion Vest stays behind to throw off their pursuers... and give a ludonarrative reason for Scarlet Eclipse to conveniently show up.

--- Escape via the Gift Shop
- Scarlet kicks the boat into high gear and they sail down the chocolate tunnel and into the bowels of the building, coming up through the boiler room so they can do a cheeky theft on the way out.
- Red tries a tune on the piano lock and it opens, despite releasing a gas! Thankfully she saves. Inside, Beepbox tinkers the lockbox open, finding some space-bucks and a ruined recipe book.
- Lucia arrives and confronts the thieves! While Beepbox nicks the mirror and Jeremy crams the loot into his bag, Red grabs a potion from Jeremy and smashes it on the ground, turning it ethereal! The others escape as she slathers a salve of immateriality onto herself, letting her walk through Lucia and away.

--- Run Home
- They escape the factory, Red strolling out with no problems as a distraction as the others sprint out from the other side.
- Soon they’ve returned to Shrub-Nigeria’s house with all their stuff in tow, and Jeremy and Scarlet Eclipse spend a couple of weeks researching Mending to cast on the ruined book.
- Two weeks later the gang has bought a bunch of new stuff, and after casting Mending on the recipe book Shrub Nigeria is stoked! The recipe for chocolate so he can make his own edibles! Wonderful! - Notably, Red buys a new suit of heavy armour. It turns out all Shrub Nigeria's items are banana-themed, so Red's bananararmour is here!

- Beepbox speaks to the stolen mirror and discovers it’s a portal to some other place, currently unknown. How very mysterious.

Total: 4000 exp

Exp Totals:

- Tim / Red, Level 7 Duellist Fighter: 107183 (Level up at 128000)

- Izzy / Ratman, Level 7 Ratman: 89054 (Level up at 96000)

- Charles / Jeremy Wizard, Level 6 Magic-User: 57432 (Level up at 72000)

- Ollie / Beepbox Strawberry Stars de Moor, Level 6 Cleric of the New Eden: 40049 (Level up at 56000)

- George / Scarlet Eclipse, Level 4 Muscle Wizard: 13500 (Level up at 18000)
- George / Vermillion Vest, Level 1 Specialist: 1150 (Level up at 1500)
*Missing, presumed dead*

Session 268 - Let’s Split Up, Gang!

A multi-directional split-party competition for who can cause the most shenanigans leads to a standoff!

Session 268 - Let’s Split Up, Gang!

New Characters:
- Vermillion Vest, a Specialist allegedly doomed to die.

Loot:
- Valuable brooch (250 exp)
Total: 250 exp

Foes:
- Just loads of bean people (500 exp)
Total: 500 exp

Events:

--- Dining with Lucia

- The party turns up at Lucia’s factory at the appointed time, and are greeted by Lucia herself! She leads them inside to a well-appointed dinner party, everything served by little cocoa bean-headed guys.
- Beepbox feigns a toilet break as an excuse to sneak around the guest quarters, netting a valuable brooch and some fancy lady’s clothes. Others, making conversation, discover that the mysterious Red Moon behind the real moon is some sort of Red Elf blockade preventing Earthlings from going to space.
- The dessert is in another room, and they are led out and into a proper Willy Wonka chocolate river room! Vermillion gulps from the river and becomes addicted to chocolate! He bites at the head of a bean man and jumps into a boat on the river, Ratman jumps in in an attempt to save him!

--- No Way of Knowing
- The pair wash down with the chocolate river, hearing the dismayed shouts of Lucia behind them.
- They travel all the way along it using Vermillion Vest’s piloting prowess, but when they reach a bend there’s Lucia herself waiting for them, angrily firing her pistols!
- Luckily for them she shoots herself in the foot! Ratman lobs a couple of rats at her on the way past and Vermillion splashes some hot chocolate on her as they surge forward.
- They zip round another bend and soon find themselves about to run into some big paddle wheels! Oh no!

--- Beepbox and Jeremy’s Adventures in Sabotage
- Meanwhile, upstairs, the other three have just seen Lucia run off to deal with the boat thieves. Beepbox and Jeremy deal with the guards, while Red activates her invisibility cloak and scoots off down another hallway.
- Beepbox and Jeremy explore some more rooms, tipping bean-men into vats of boiling chocolate in the creamery, and blowing up some sort of dangerous machine in a room that flows with chocolate.
- After their sabotage they nearly get caught in a bean man ambush, but escape with yet more shenanigans leading to yet more deaths by boiling chocolate!
- They run out into the chocolate river room again… and find out that Lucia is there waiting for them, and she’s angry! Oh no!

--- Red Fucks Around and Finds Out
- Red, dashing off down strange passages, finds herself peeking into a room with a massive cocoa tree and a bean-man village. She checks a different door and sees a bunch of bean-men on a tread-powered wheel.
- She causes confusion with invisible pranks, then goes into the massive chamber with the big tree and starts shooting into the crowds of innocent beanos.
- Blowdart rains around her and some sort of bean shaman tries to ensnare her with Web, so she blasts out of the room and nips down the tread-mill hole to the chocolate river below, conveniently stopping the whirring machine just in time to save Vermillion and Ratman’s boat from certain destruction!
- They slip out onto the top of the chocolate waterfall in time to see the confrontation between Lucia, Beepbox and Jeremy Wizard below.
- Cliffhanger!

Total: 5000 exp

Exp Totals:

- Tim / Red, Level 7 Duellist Fighter: 105043 (Level up at 128000) - Izzy / Ratman, Level 7 Ratman: 87014 (Level up at 96000) - Charles / Jeremy Wizard, Level 6 Magic-User: 55392 (Level up at 72000) - Ollie / Beepbox Strawberry Stars de Moor, Level 6 Cleric of the New Eden: 38009 (Level up at 56000) - George / Vermillion Vest, Level 1 Specialist: 1150 (Level up at 1500)

Session 267 - Short and Sweet

A short session due to various barbeque distractions, but that's not such a bad thing! Now you've got an in with the beautiful Lucia di Castille, space chocolate magnate, and seen the strange effects that these experimental sweets can have on a body. After the game we talked a bit about Gambits and how Red has successfully cheesed the system into a "do whatever I like" button, so here's the prospective Gambit 2.0 upgrade -

Gambits When you want to do some flashy shit that's not just a regular attack, it's a Gambit! - You roll 1d20 + attack bonus - They roll 1d20 + attack bonus

If you beat their roll AND roll over their current HP, it works! If you beat their roll OR roll over their current HP, it's a partial success or success at cost. If you do neither, it's an ironic reversal!

Session 267 - Short and Sweet

New Backstory:
- Scarlet Eclipse was/is married in the future, marrying not for love but for exposure. +1 Intelligence

Loot:
- 2 versions of Book #278 - Herbs and Useful Plants (200 exp)
- 2 versions of Book #279 - Cookbook (200 exp)
- 2 versions of Book #295 - Economics (200 exp)
- Book #395 - “POWERLAD - Saint or Sinner?: An Abhor Global Exposé” (200 exp)
Total: 700 exp

Foes:
- A number of guards (50 exp)
Total: 50 exp

Events:

--- What a Gas!
- Standing before the piano-lock door on the Chocolate Factory’s top floor, Jeremy Wizard peers inside to see the various bedroomy stuff within. Most thrillingly there is a lockbox that presumably contains loot!
- He smashes the small window on the door and a gas pours out! He feels a little light-headed, but the power of the Headtrip 56 strain of astroturf helps him pass a dangerous save.
- He casts Flesh Goop on himself and is poured through the door by the others, immediately schlooping over to the lockbox and trying to unlock it in goo form. He fails, and there’s a hissing sound from inside the safe.
- Outside, the rest of the party is playing random music on the piano key lock. Enough failures and it releases another gas, this one staining Red’s lips with glowing red sugar dust even when invisible!
- Inside, Jeremy Wizard reforms out of the glop and searches the place. He finds a bunch of books on an end table, and discovering that the piano lock is on both sides decides to just break the window and rappel out with a rope.
- Scarlet Eclipse casts his newish Escape Rope spell and the rest of the party reappears at the dungeon entrance. Useful!

--- Escape the Base
- All is not well though, the guard towers are still standing and bristling with sugared-up guards! The friendly guard calls out to the party to run, while other guardsmen come after!
- Red’s rock candy disease has spread to cover her whole body and armour, but luckily it gets broken off temporarily on hit. She makes short work of the guards on the ground, while Ratman and Jeremy Wizard try to get into the last guy’s tower.
- Suddenly the one friendly guard runs past! He yells something about all human guards being ordered killed, just as the guard house blows up! What the hell?
- Ratman scrambles up the guard tower and blows a rat at the final guard, killing him.

--- Dinner Plans
- With all the distractions gone, they decide to poke their heads into the factory again and have a nose around. As luck would have it they run into the factory owner herself, Lucia de Castille, who’s trying to work out what’s causing all this chaos!
- The party feigns ignorance and Red manages to get a dinner date lined up for next week, also discovering that Sir Robyn once hit on Lucia and was turned into a blueberry and juiced to death as a result. Tasty.
- They leave her in peace until then, taking some free samples of the chocolate back to Shrub Nigeria (banned from the factory due to lewd advances) who gives them some edibles in return.
- Next week, a dinner party! And when has one of those ever gone wrong in this game?

Total: 4000 exp

Exp Totals:

- Tim / Red, Level 7 Duellist Fighter: 103893 (Level up at 128000)

- Izzy / Ratman, Level 7 Ratman: 85864 (Level up at 96000)

- Charles / Jeremy Wizard, Level 6 Magic-User: 54242 (Level up at 72000)

- George / Scarlet Eclipse, Level 4 Muscle Wizard: 11460 (Level up at 18000)

Session 266 - Chocolate and Lithium

A session tragically cut short by modern technology!
Still, we saw the gang get the hookah back to Shrub Nigeria and then sneak into a chocolate factory, where they proceeded to blow some shit up.

Good work!... ?


Oh also Ollie supplies this absolutely fucking incredible conspiracy theory meme

Session 266 - Chocolate and Lithium

New Character:
- Scarlet Eclipse Snels, Muscle Wizard from a future timeline.

New Backstory:
- Scarlet Eclipse, inveterate art critic, came back in time after reading a far-future POWERLAD novel and decided it was so bad that he had to destroy the source. +1 Strength

Loot:
- Garrotte wire
- 80 space bucks (80 exp)
- Silvered mirror
Total: 80 exp

Foes:
- A load of bean-heads (250 exp)
Total: 250 exp

Events:

--- Return to Shrub Nigeria
- Hanging around the hookah, still in the Iounians’ weed bunker, the party think up a smart idea to distract these guys for long enough to nick the hookah back - introduce them to e-girls! They tell the insectoid gang that there’s a cool hologram table downstairs with a hot chick on it, and they run down to take a look.
- Scarlet Eclipse closes the hatch behind them. This shall be their grave…
- The party grab the hookah and get Vesh the Vibe-Killer to come with them. When he asks where everyone else went, they say they’ve gone to Dominoes without him. It’s 2 for Tuesdays after all.
- They roll back to Shrub Nigeria’s place and he thanks them for grabbing the hookah! On discovering the Iounians were actually using it to get high he’s all “oh that’s ok then man, they can have it back if they vibin” which leads to some awkward glances.

- Nevertheless, he opens his secret drug stash to the party! Jeremy Wizard loads up, and partakes of the Headtrip 56 which lets him see the loom of fate bro.
- While this is all going on, Scarlet Eclipse yoinks Jeremy’s USB that contains a backup of the mind of the original Snels and uploads it to the crashed Seraphim. It starts loading up, and will finish loading by the time the real-world lockdown ends! How convenient!

--- The Chocolate Factory
- It’s decided that rather than head back down into the megadungeon, they’ll check out this chocolate factory that Shrub Nigeria’s obsessed with. He’ll pay good spacebucks for info that leads to him making his own supply of chocolate for his brownies.
- The factory is huge, surrounded by guard towers, with a large pontoon that acts as a space-port for intergalactic traders and upper class chocoholic visitors. Also there’s a space-Esso.
- They try approaching the factory and get stopped by a guard in the guard tower. He’s new to this, but he’s under instruction not to let anyone unauthorised into the factory. He tells them to watch out for the other guards - they’re really overdoing it on the sugar - and to go talk to the dockmaster if they’re looking for work.

--- The Dockmaster

- In the dockmaster’s cramped office they meet the dockmaster himself - an effusive vaguely nordic sounding man who always needs porters to help bring supplies to and from the factory.
- Under the cover of being a coffee startup trying to directly source some chocolate, the party take up jobs. When a spaceship comes in they are to take crates of chocolate out of one room of the factory and replace them with traded supplies from the spaceship. Nobody knows what happens after that - the supplies disappear by the time the next ship arrives.
- They also meet their fellow porters - a bunch of Iounians with tattoos, strong arms, and a distaste for the Earthlings who are stealing their jobs. There’s high unemployment on the moon, and so very little union power.

--- Stowaways
- The party hatches a plan - they’ll hide in the supply boxes, get delivered into the factory, and bust out when the coast is clear! The Iounians grumble that the lazy good-for-nothing Earthlings have disappeared, but the delivery is made with little fuss.
- Inside the boxes they find themselves amongst supplies of spices and, oddly, lithium. They’re wheeled over to the delivery area and soon the Iounians have finished and go off to collect their space-cheques, grumbling.
- Beepbox, peering out of holes cut in his box, peers out as high-pitched voices approach, take the crates, and wheel them into the factory. He sees rows of benches with tiny cocoa-bean-headed creatures shaping chocolate with moulds as he goes past, and soon the party find themselves in a storage room among other crates.

--- Destrudo
- They sneakily creep out of the crates once the coast is clear, finding themselves in a well-lit storage room with piles of crates in it. A poke around the storage room finds a mummified corpse that fell behind some of the crates. It’s riddled with blowdarts and collapses to dust when messed with, but they loot a garrotte wire, 80 space bucks, and silvered mirror.
- Checking the exits - one way out, one way up, and one way down, they sneak down into some sort of boiler room. Many bean-heads mill around tending to the big boilers.
- Scarlet Eclipse uses Unseen Servant to sneak a bunch of lithium into the central boiler, and the party runs back upstairs to high-pitched screams as the bean-people notice what just happened!
- There is a MASSIVE explosion and the party runs upstairs and upstairs again, alarms blaring out throughout the facility!

--- Mysterious Boudoir
- With manic activity occurring below, they run up three flights of stairs, coming out on a landing that ends with a single mysterious door. The door is locked with piano keys. Through the window they can see a bedroom.
- Unfortunately the DM’s wifi goes down around this point, and we’re forced to stop early. Alas!

Total: 7000 exp

Exp Totals:

- Tim / Red, Level 7 Duellist Fighter: 102705 (Level up at 128000)

- Charles / Jeremy Wizard, Level 6 Magic-User: 53054 (Level up at 72000)

- Ollie / Beepbox Strawberry Stars de Moor, Level 6 Cleric of the New Eden: 36859 (Level up at 56000)

- George / Scarlet Eclipse, Level 4 Muscle Wizard: 10272 (Level up at 18000)

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