Session 338 - The Session Before Shub-Wizardwrath Killed Everyone (TBD)

Date: 28 February, 22 p.p.

Moon: Clean Gibbous

Zenith: Eris

New Backstory:

- Jojo was born under an omen of hope - namely her father's death! Once ever, save someone from something that would have killed them.

- Sydney learnt the horrible falsity of reality from a dying cultist. +1 Wisdom

Events:

--- Aliens?!

- The party, rather large today, enter the final zone before the big boss they know as Shub-Wizardwrath. The machinery in the walls and floor is stopped and gunked up. A river of the Cruor flows through a channel splitting the room in two.
- There are bodies. Two huge gorilla-like beings with alien faces, and one creature that looks like a childhood pet was melded with Shub-Niggurath and given a load of tentacles and chainsaw limbs. All of them are dead. Footprints lead off from the far side of the channel and down a corridor...

- Celebus tears the chainsaw limbs from the body and reanimates them as biomechanical weapons! Sick!
- Grumblebelch pokes the stepping stones across the channel. It looks like they'll bounce you into the air if you step on them!
- Yea nah, not messing with those things OR the thing that killed all these dead monsters. The party sets off in the other direction, smelling dry ice and hearing some sort of loud electronic music...

--- Chewmeister69

- They come to a room filled with fog and tall mechanical pillars like trees! There's a desk with a spotty teenager behind it, but he's got no arms. He asks the party if they're here to challenge Chewmeister69 - a legendary hunter who got to top rank in a shooter and then was reborn from the Cruor into the real world.

- Attempts are made to appeal to Chewmeister's humanity and/or greed, but to no avail.

- Nobody wants to fight this pro gamer so they abandon the attempt and decide to go hunt some aliens.

- Given that the stepping stones seem sketchy, Jojo instead punches a wall open with a Passwall Punch and the party go through!

--- Bottles and Teeth

- The room beyond is full of bottles, some containing paint. Somebody has painted a big mural of a skull encrusted with gems and many figures praising it. That somebody is still there, but very dead.

- Jojo, to quote, "blacks up" with some vantablack paint. Celebus grabs some more paint of various colours.

- Dorian extendo-arms the body over, and they see that the painter clawed away at their face to paint directly on their skull. Very grim.

- The next area is full of teeth! Like a zen garden raked into spiral patterns, and an altar in the very centre of the space...

- Celebus sends a skeleton to grab the thing on the altar, and brings back a cloak of teeth! Weird.
- Sydney puts it on and all his teeth become molars. He feels that if he eats a tooth, he can gain some short term protection for the price of some tooth decay.

--- Chainsaw Cuddles

- They move on, and see a corridor speckled with autumn leaves and another with the humid air of a jungle. They choose jungle!
- There are real trees here, and lots of thick ground cover.
- Grumblebelch climbs a tree and sees something through the mist... a living one of those chainsaw-limbed monsters!

- He swings towards it from a vine, flailing frantically, and it nearly swipes him with its chainsaw arm! He swings back, tossing his own zombie chainsaw limb at it! It misses the monster, but the living chainsaw does manage to cut down a tree!

- Sydney considers Agent Orange'ing the jungle with Blight, but once again decides against it. Grumblebelch, up the tree again, acts as a spotter for Celebus who fires his crossbow in the general direction of the monster!
- Jojo slips into the shadows and sneaks towards it... and nearly runs into a second monster! It's quietly climbing the tree towards Grumblebelch, waiting to pounce...

- Celebus nearly gets killed by a piston-based alien-style inner mouth while the others rush to defend him! He drags himself back behind his rearguard of zombies.

- Sydney gets the kill on one of them, draining its soul into his atrametal blade and making it crumble to charcoal. Cool!
- The other monster, who is currently on fire and poisoned due to a bunch of flaming swords and a jagermeister-based poison concoction, flees for its life.

--- PC Borbly Worbly

- A post-battle scrounge reveals some bananas, 3000 obols-worth of gems, an effigy of Space Jesus who looks concerningly similar to Galaxy Johnson, and a glowing blue gem that flashes red from within.

- Grumblebelch grabs the glowing gem... and a voice echoes in his mind! It's a space cop who was hunting down Galaxy Johnson, but was defeated and now he's here!
- Grumblebelch puts the soul gem on his head where it fuses to his skull, creating a classic police flasher. They're buddy cops now! Two pigs together at last!

- Everyone's in pretty bad shape, so they rest up in a dead end. They use their chainsaws to create a tree barricade and stay very quiet...
- A huge skull encrusted with gems floats by, but other than that they're ok!

- Celebus cooks "Celebus' Nut Surprise Delight Flambe", containing nuts and berries and banana and salted butter. It's good!

- Dorian puts the leftovers in Tupper's Ware for later.

--- Stained Glass

- They head out after a long sleep, going through the now much less jungley jungle and into the next area, which is a cathedral??? With stained glass windows??? - Sydney rightly points out that it's weird that light is coming in through the windows, seeing as they're inside Fortress-City Fate and all.

- It transpires that the light from the windows stains whatever it touches. PC Borbly Worbly gets a colourful makeover! - Celebus wants to see what's behind the windows, so shatters a pane with a crossbow bolt. Behind, it's space! The air starts rushing out of the room! - They run, but first offer the copper a free ride back into space. He replies that he's going to help them for this one last job... - They choose between the sound of kids playing and a smell like death. Death it is!

- It's a whole ceiling of bodies hanging from nooses, absolutely writhing with rot grubs. The bodies start to lower! - Everybody sprints through, which is the right thing to do because behind them the bodies hit the ground and burst open! Rot grubs everywhere! Yea fuck that, say the party, and keep going. --- Wizard Despair

- They come to a large space with a ziggurat on one side! There's a wizard up there, seemingly half-tentacle! He cackles and begins to cast a spell, while the buglike monsters on either side of him open their pearlescent wings!

- Grumblebelch nuts him with a cursed gold bar.

- The wizard rubs his head, having been cursed into a bout of magical depression. Fellgorp the Worshipper is his name, and you might as well have his spellbook because fuck it.

- The party leave in the direction of Shub-Wizardwrath, leaving Fellgorp to be comforted by his insectoid friends...

Total: 8000 exp

Treasures Liberated:

- A bag of gems (3000 exp) - Tooth Robe

- Bananas, berries, and nuts (20 exp)

- Various paints - Space Jesus effigy (5000 exp) - The Soul Gem of PC Borbly Worbly

Total: 8020 exp

Foes Overcome:

- 2 chainsaw monsters (3000 exp)
- A wizard (1000 exp)
Total: 4000 exp

OOC:

Carter the Chronicler (100 exp)
George the Expedition leader (100 exp)

Charles the Chef & Cartographer (200 exp)
Ollie the Quartermaster (100 exp)

Tom the Vanguard (100 exp)

Exp Totals:

- George / Swan the Swift, Level 7 Barbarian: 125493 (Level up at 128000)

- Kitty / Dorian "Ditto" DeMone, Level 7 Inheritor: 103227 (Level up at 144000)

- Charles / Celebus Uppytus, Level 7 Necromancer: 83471 (Level up at 144000)

- Carter / Sydney, Level 6 Magic-User: 47015 (Level up at 72000)

- Ollie / Jojo Fullbeard, Level 5 Muscle Wizard: 23759 (Level up at 36000)

- Tom / Grumblebelch, Level 5 Dwarf: 17610 (Level up at 32000)

Level up! +1d10 HP! +Lorebond! +Backstory!

Session 335 - The Case of the Greedy Pig

Date: 31 January, 23 p.p.

Moon: Waxing Gibbous - Clean Face
Zenith: The Dead God

New Backstory:

- Grumblebelch was a drummer in a Dwarven band! +1 Music

- Sydney swore never to bring life into the world... but broke that promise when he summoned forth his Familiar! +2 to your first Attack, Save and/or Skill Check each session.

Events:

--- Cancer Defeated
- The party are on the lowest level of the Brasshell deep inside Fortress-City Fate. The machinery here is twisted, pulsing, slimy. Very much broken and unmoving. In the room itself, moving around and through the pulsing slimy pillars, prowls the Cancer Monster that the Unravelled priest pointed out before leaving our intrepid adventurers here.
- Celebus greases up a skeleton with possibly-rancid butter and send it slipping out towards the creature. It attacks!
- With the monster distracted for just a moment, the party runs into the room which Iskander had previously scried into via potion and see the very gold that he saw!
- Grumblebelch sees the slimy altar, piles of gold bars stamped with twisting runes, horrible statue of a bloated tentacular entity with a man's face... and immediately grabs a gold bar.
- His body morphs and wobbles and collapses and reforms until... he has turned into a pig!

- The pig desultorily wanders out of the room, thoughts of suicide playing through his mind.

- Celebus orders a skeleton to grab another... and it's kind of fine! The gold bar is glued to its hands by magical force! Celebus realises that oh yes... he now has a skeleton with a curse attack!

- He sends the skeleton out to attack the cancer beast and it swallows the skeleton whole! Its eyes go black as it hallucinates vividly! They proceed to kill it slowly and carefully while it's too high to move.
- A replacement character turns up, an unnamed Magic-User. He picks up a gold bar, gets very depressed, and shoots himself in the head with a disintegration ray. RIP.

--- Tasty?

- Dorian devours the cancer monster and steals its cancerous regeneration.
- While he digests the horrible monster, the others decide to cook something!
- There is much discussion as Sydney refuses to eat anything containing a human bone, people trying to tell him that it's a skeleton troll bone so that's different plus it will make a good stock, and so on.
- They realise they don't have any water... until someone remembers about runes! Water is here!

- After all that it's bon appetit! Minestrolle Soup! All that careful talk around who's allowed to eat what has granted a boost to Tinkering!

--- Twisting Linearity
- After the fairly tasty meal, they head off. Luckily they've been joined by Roger's Loyal Lads, a band of Extras who found their way down here! Almost out of sight, a pig follows sulkily.
- The Lads delve further in, stealthily moving past a room with big purple shapes slithering around and heading through a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
- It's quiet going. They avoid a door like a cosmic sphincter and a cold room with gems frozen under ice, following a trumpeting noise.
- It's some big woolly mammoths! In a grassy room with entrances way too small for them! The mammoths are scared, protecting a baby mammoth in the corner of the room.
- The Lads scoot through, head round a wiggly corridor that turns and turns until it... secret doors back into the room? Odd. They all leave the mammoths alone.
- The next room has some howling holes that suck you into the void between voids! The extras run through, hundreds, even millions, of them falling into the infinite void until they clog up the holes and let everyone else through!

--- Dinosaurs?
- A loud roar, investigated, reveals a huge mechanical T-Rex! The Extras charge and are immediately consumed.

- The last survivor, the eponymous Roger, is swiftly pulled to safety by Swan the Swift.

- Jojo uses a magic punch to blind the T-Rex! The party rush through as its laser eyes flicker!

- Yeehaw

- They come to a fork. In one direction, the smell of gunpowder. In the other direction, an ominous ticking noise.
- They choose the gunpowder and come to bodies dressed as cowboys, all dead. There is a big gaping hole out the bottom of Fate, looking down at the jungles of the Dino Dome miles below!
- They spend some time talking to the spirits of the dead men and discovering their reasons for the fatal shootout. It's very silly. Then they grab the cowboys' six-shooters and head towards the mysterious ticking noise.

- Tick Tock on the Rewind Clock
- The ticking is revealed to be a big coffin-shaped grandfather clock! There's a human-shaped moulded into the back behind the pendulum.
- With a little experimentation, they discover it can reverse time for whoever's in the clock if someone else turns the hands! Why is this only worth 5000 obols anyway?
- The pig leaps in, hoping to reverse itself into a piglet and die. The hands turn back and...

- Grumblebelch appears! The clock reversed the curse!

- Roger recently of Roger's Lucky Lads runs to the big hole in the floor and plummets to his death. RIP. Tom has Grumblebelch back!

- With more of this menacing deepest level of the Brasshell to explore, the party continues on...

Total: 7000 exp

Foes Defeated:
- A Cancer Monster, killed while it was high. (500 exp)
- A mechanical T-Rex, blinded then avoided. (1500 exp)

Total: 2000 exp

Valuables Liberated:

- Time-Travel Clock (5000 exp)
- Cursed gold bars (20000 exp)

- Gold traces (2000 exp)
- 3 Wild West Pistols

- Blacksmith Tools & Gloves
Total: 27000 exp

Exp Totals:

- George / Swan the Swift, Level 7 Barbarian: 108302 (Level up at 128000)

- Kitty / Dorian "Ditto" DeMone, Level 7 Inheritor: 86036 (Level up at 144000)

- Charles / Celebus Uppytus, Level 7 Necromancer: 80134 (Level up at 144000)

- Carter / Sydney, Level 5 Magic-User: 29724 (Level up at 36000)

- Ollie / Jojo Fullbeard, Level 5 Muscle Wizard: 20422 (Level up at 36000)
Level Up! +1d4 HP! +1 Spell! +1 Mana! +Backstory!

- Tom / Grumblebelch, Level 4 Dwarf: 14273 (Level up at 16000)

Session 334 - The Unravelled

Date: 17 January, 23 p.p.
Moon: Waxing Crescent - Dragonwane
Zenith: The Dead God

New Backstory:

- Celebus was destitute and turned to petty crime - stealing chicken sandwiches from the nastiest chicken shop in New Moondin. Luckily when he was caught they punished him by making him a taste tester, and the rest is history! +1 Dexterity

- Tyler Lockheart has a secret crush on Celebus! If your crush would be damaged in combat, you can jump in the way and take double the damage instead,

Events:

--- War Preparation
- With the door out of the room locked, the party does a bit of prep to hopefully deal with the dangerous Unravelled on the other side. Dorian gets to slurping down one of the dead monks and stealing its stretchy powers, Celebus raises the remainder as zombies, and Tyler resets the big swinging trap that they set up last week.
- Outside the door, the Unravelled monks are not well pleased by the murder of their friends. There is a bit of back and forth through the door, until Iskander gets bored and crossbows the guy on the outside!
- They are even more not well pleased and start setting up barricades on the outside. The party is sad because now they're trapped in here with nothing to eat but skeletons and like 10000 old sausages that Tyler presumably has in a big wet bag. 

--- Take the Fight to Them!
- Iskander jumps on the swinging spike trap and launches himself out the door! He discovers that they're setting up barricades, but too slow! An unfortunate monk is in the way and gets spike trapped!
- The monks have stretchy arms and attack over their barricades, but to be fair Dorian now does too! He uses the arm like a spring, smashing his sword into the enemies' faces!
- The really tall guy who's compressed himself into a long snakey fellow tries to slip past Tyler into the room, but Tyler's surfcraft is too powerful! They wrestle nobly, Tyler getting his surfboard stuck right into the guy's craw.

- The party retreats back into the room, hoping to bait them in. The skeletons quickly close the door and Celebus quickly casts his new Bone Claws spell which does exactly what you'd expect!
- Tyler keeps nailing dudes with thrown rocks, just ludicrous accuracy. You love to see it.
- Iskander kills the big giant snakey guy with his insane Fish Blades which are made of actual fish.
- A chanting sound comes from outside in the corridor. What could it be???

--- The Unravelled Cleric
- The source of the sound is soon discovered - some sort of Unravelled priest. He calls a ceasefire and asks why the ceaseless bloodshed??
- Celebus engages him in a battle of wits... achieved irl by having a glass of water with salty lemon and another one with just lemon. Who will win the battle of wits!?
- It's Celebus, but he doesn't believe it when he actually wins, declaring that there's salt in his drink even though he doesn't.

- In any case, the deed is complete, and the priest grants the party amnesty (for now) and offers to take them to the stairs down to the final level where his god waits in the darkness.

- It seems all these people have different ideas of who the Unraveller is, and everyone has an inconsistent story about what they want from their worshippers. Very strange.
- They also see one of the monks starting to knit the big snaky guy back together, starting with the face.
- After being allowed to rest in the room, heal up, and have a sleep (very kind), the priest shows them to the big grand spiral staircase that leads down to the lair of the Unraveller. He warns that there are cancerous beasts down there, and weird things out of time.

- At the bottom of the stairs, the priest points out the big cancer monster that's roving around, and says it's too powerful for him.
- Iskander drinks a Potion of Clairvoyance and detects in all the adjacent rooms... even finding some gold! Once they've killed the beast, perhaps they can get the treasure....

Total: 5000 exp

Foes Defeated:
- Several unravelled Dwarf guys (500 exp)
- Big giant snakey guy (1000 exp)

Total: 1500 exp

Exp Totals:

- Kitty / Dorian "Ditto" DeMone, Level 7 Inheritor: 80036 (Level up at 144000)

- Charles / Celebus Uppytus, Level 7 Necromancer: 74134 (Level up at 144000)

- Ollie / Iskander Fullbeard, Level 6 Fighter: 59086 (Level up at 64000)

- James G / Tyler Lockheart, Level 6 Specialist: 24859 (Level up at 48000)
Level Up! +1d6 HP +2 Skill Points! +1 to Saves! +Backstory!

Session 333 - Vampire Feast

Date: 10 January, 23 p.p.

Moon: Waxing Gibbous - Dragon Face
Zenith: Vorn

New Backstory:
- Dorian fought with his "father", the Dharga, after first being budded off the great flesh-tree and discovering that he had a mind and will of his own. +1 Strength

- Grumblebelch was forcefully exiled from the Dwarven arcology of Ur-Kalladh for experimenting with forbidden rock art.

- Sydney was adored by a group of cultish street urchins who he did magic tricks for. Henchmen are immune to morale checks.

Events:

--- Carbonite Woman
- Another day, another waking up under the tender ministrations of the clanking, boiling, steaming robot mother.

-The Christmas events are over, and the robo-mum is willing to look after the various treasures from the Christmas adventure. How lovely!

- Looking over the Christmas loot, they remember that they also looted something the session before that! A big slab of stone with an eight-eyed lady frozen in it. Her ears are long and elaborate. There's a keypad on the side, but nobody knows how to use it. The robot TM-RLY is pretty useless.
- But wait! With an unfurled paperclip and a little reset port, the code can be reset! The carbonite fades away, dropping the tall Red Elf lady out of the frame... and into Dorian's claggy hands and charming Ditto-face.

- Jojo, it seems, speaks Red Elf! It's an archaic version of a variety of modern Elvish that Jojo learned in history class in the distant future... or something.
- The Elf, whose name is Kinny, gives Jojo the rundown on how she came to be here. Her planet was about to die, cracked like an egg from within by the birth/death spasms of the creature in the core as it spewed its fragments out across the cosmos. Ark-Ship Fate left without her and the others who lost the lottery, so she stowed away on another ship that was hoping to catch up and rendezvous with an ark. The captain found her and locked her away in carbonite. Also she has multiple vision modes and a penchant for knives.
- Jojo nods sagely.

- With that, and the Red Elf in tow, the party head off to the Church of the Unraveller where they can hopefully find a way down even deeper! Greasy tube, anyone?

--- Wampyre
- They head out of the fire robot zone, past the water robot zone, and into the next area. The floor is sticky with black strands which creep partway up the walls, gumming up the machinery. Kinny says it's too greasy for her grease-vision to see through.
- The corridor opens out into a big hall ahead, and there's a skinny side passage. Above, a vampire hangs from the ceiling and watches. He sees them looking and laughs, "bleh!".
- Celebus huffs a Last Breath and tries to enslave the vampire... but it's too powerful! The feedback gives Celebus the willies! The vampire just chuckles again.

- While the party questions the vampire on why he's here (they're all thralls of an ancient vampire) and what he knows about this part of the dungeon (Unravelled people aren't good eating), Grumblebelch wanders off to kick down some doors.
- He sees a room with an access hatch of some sort, and another with rolling balls with bugs in them like insects in amber.
- He tries the vent, squeezing down a thin crawlspace until he reaches a grille. Through it he sees a room, a bunch of robed cultist looking guys who must be the Unravelled... and a bunch of magic items and treasure!

--- A Feast Then Dessert

- Sydney has negotiated help from the vampire in exchange for creating a feast of blood for them with a spell! Very lovely!

- The vampire flits off and returns with a few of his friends, but soon more are showing up and supping from the various blood bags and blood canapes on offer. They mention that there are demon boars hiding in the hall next door, so watch out for them eh?
- They seem happy at first... but it soon becomes apparent that this feels like real blood but doesn't satisfy at all... their baleful gazes turn upon the party.
- Celebus runs into the next room and sees the demon boars begin to charge! He chucks a vial of blood at the lead one and casts Feast. All the vampires are driven to fury and CHARGE straight in! There are tides of viscera.
- Grumblebelch runs in, sees everything, and tells the party to follow him! Quick!

- Celebus and Dorian go knock on the big temple doors at the end of the hall, hopefully distracting the guards inside, and run back before the vampires stop feeding! The doors have a big inverted G symbol on them.

--- Webby Webby Good

- Grumblebelch is in the vent again, watching the priests mill about grabbing arms and armour. He sees their skin is kind of springy like a slinky. Unravelled, one assumes. Sadly, an obviously magic spear and an obviously magic suit of chain armour are donned by the foe.
- There is a huge giant guy squatting at the end of the guard room, and before Grumblebelly's eyes the guy thins out into a long thin snake and slithers out of the room. The other guards follow...
- Grumblebelch pops out of the vent with a loud *foonk* and lands on the floor, already jogging towards the treasure chest! But he is distracted on the way as he snags some arms and armour.
- While the others grab armour of their own, and Kinny puts away a surprising number of knives, Dorian reaches the chest and opens it up.
- There is a sound like a plunger going SHLOP and a black goop splats out! It grabs at Dorian with multiple hand-like appendages!
- Grumblebelch smashes the pipes leading into the chest from behind, cutting off the glop supply and shucking the gloop from its treasure chest shell! It's clearly got a bunch of treasure embedded in it, so this isn't all bad!
- Dorian pours on some acid and Jojo casts Web on the door, then Sydney follows up by scraping the clinging glorp off of Dorian and chucking it at the webs so it sticks there and can be easily killed!

The Trappees Become the Trappers
- They decide to ambush the baddies, so Jojo and Sydney get a swinging log trap set up with various stuff from around the room.

- A monk returns, suspicious of all the banging around, and is ragdolled back by the swinging log trap! Nice!
- The monks who run in next are stabbed from the side by Celebus and Dorian!
- Jojo casts Web again, limiting the ingress from unravelled monks!
- Basically monks get webbed then stabbed to fuck by whoever's nearby.
- Kinny the Red Elf keeps being weird about knives and pretending she'll betray you then not doing it. Odd vibes.
- One of the monks has the magic spear they saw before, all fancy inlay and a strange dual spear side-by-side design. The unravelled dwarf-monk wielding it gains an extra spear and extra hands with every attack!

- It is well and truly late at this point so it's a classic Combat Cliffhanger!

Total: 6000 exp

Enemies Overcome:

- At least a few demon boars (500 exp)
- Some Unravelled dwarf guys (500 exp)
Total: 1000 exp

Loot:

- A gold blender (5000 exp)
- 2 sparkling gems (2000 exp)
- 2000 coins with the inverted G (2000 exp)
Total: 9000 exp

Exp Totals:

- George / Swan the Swift, Level 7 Barbarian: 102302 (Level up at 128000)

- Kitty / Dorian "Ditto" DeMone, Level 7 Inheritor: 78411 (Level up at 144000)

- Charles / Celebus Uppytus, Level 7 Necromancer: 72509 (Level up at 144000)
Level Up! +1d4 HP! +1 Mana! +Free Spell! +Backstory!

- Carter / Sydney, Level 5 Magic-User: 23724 (Level up at 36000)

- Ollie / Jojo Fullbeard, Level 4 Muscle Wizard: 14422 (Level up at 18000)

- Tom / Grumblebelch, Level 4 Dwarf: 8273 (Level up at 16000)
Level Up! +1d10 HP! +2 to Saves! +Lorebond! +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!