Session 384 - The Ascension of Deusix!

Date: 27 August

Moon: Waning Crescent

Zenith: The Lady

New Backstory:

- Hagen fell in love, of a sort, with the Old Miner from a young age. His heart has yearned for the Old Miner since then, and thus has never taken a lover. +1 AC when protecting someone older than you.

- Rudolphus saw a starving fellow student drop a loaf of bread, and returned it because students have to look out for each other. +1 to reactions with the destitute

Events:

--- On the Substance of a New God

- It's finally happened. Every single God part has been collected, gathered, and taken up to the launch facility at the top of Dwimmermount.
- As the God is put together by whirring brass machinery and connected by whirling ratchets, the party look at each other warily. The room is tense. Just who, or what, are they going to load into the heavenly machine?
- They decide to ask a currently existing God about the process. Handily they are in the God's very own mountain, and Minerva is easily contacted.
- The first core issue is that a new God requires the Old Miner to willingly give a copy of His mind as a template.
- The second core issue is that the person uploading themselves as a Core Mind gets their brain drilled out, which is not good for one's health. Uploading as a subsidiary Branch Mind is possible (and non-lethal) but it needs at least one core personality.
- They also discover that the current Gods contain branch copies of the minds of believers. While originally a combination of entire Dwarf arcologies, over time they have become more human as the relatively quick-breeding and short-lived human worshippers died and copies of their minds were integrated into the Gods.

--- The Options Mooted

- The broad options put forward are thus:
1) Upload the Old Miner. His stated goal is to flee into space and survive.

2) Fill it with pure chaos and see what happens.
3) Upload the party and become a new God

- The option of uploading Jonathon Toast is mooted but not really considered, for good reason.

--- Some Debate Missing

- This whole session was basically a long discussion of which option to go with, what to name the new God, and other such stuff.
- At some point, Red shows up! Tim doesn't want to upload Rudolphus because he likes Red more. This is accepted.
- Eventually they reach a decision - they will all upload as Core Minds and create a NEW GOD!
- The name of this new God will be Deusix. Six characters in one God, plus it can be read as DEUS IX as in "God 9", plus naturally it's a mechanical God so it's a "Deus Ex Machina". It's a great play on words!
- They phone up the Old Miner on Sydney's jellyphone and he agrees to be their God template, albeit "this is the last time!" and he largely does it so he can live a quiet life in Sydney's soon-to-be-inaccessible extradimensional apartment.

--- Ascension

- Decision made, they all line up to get their brains cored out. There is brief pain, then a surge of consciousness. They can feel each other, deeper than any teamchat. They are connected, yet separate. The first God to be made of more than one Core Mind!

- They declare themselves to be a six-sided God and the god-shell forms into a huge six-sided die. Each Lord gets a face. That's right! The pun is even better! Deusix is a giant d6!

- The cube God is conveyed through the mountain to the launch chamber. There is a long countdown, the peak of the mountain spirals open, and Deusix is launched!
- Looking up in shock with his single cyclopean octopoid eye, Jonathon Toast the horrible blimp whale and/or normal man sees a bright beam of light fire out of the rising God! It gets him straight in the brain and widens to obliterate him utterly. Deusix breathes a sigh of relief - that's an issue solved!

--- Abstract Battle

- The boosters detach as Deusix reaches orbital velocity and altitude. It's dark up here, and they can perceive the glimmer of the stars glistening from their brass die-faces.
- A connection opens up and the six core minds of Deusix are suddenly floating in white space.

- The eight other Gods are here, and one by one they test this new God until their thoughts are finally working in unison.

- With this final integration there are now Nine High Gods once more! Deusix takes the place of fallen Eris, and the Wheel is finally reformed! The Red Elves on their Red Moon have been foiled and no longer have access to the world, and thus can no longer slowly mine out the world's supply of magic.

--- Distant Echoes

- Meanwhile, down on Earth, Sydney's many backup plans trigger simultaneously. A rebirth via cocaine heart, a rebirth via the Lunar Womb, a cascading event that has the potential to resurrect many Sydneys! What grim horrors will these chaos-obsessed beings get up to? Only time will tell...
- Inside the remarkably packed interdimensional apartment, Sydney's slime familiar is once more unbound. Free of its master, the demon called Tal Vik Nam Kir Sor Bet plots with the Old Miner...

Exp Totals:

- Kitty / Julian & Aximander, both Ascended to Godhood.

- Carter / Sydney, Ascended to Godhood.

- George / Hagen, Ascended to Godhood.

- Tim / Red, Ascended to Godhood.

- Charles / Grogg Greedy, Ascended to Godhood.

Session 381 - Between a Frog and a Dark Place

Date: 6 August

Moon: New Moon

Zenith: Minerva

New Backstory:

- Grog Greedy caused his whole caveman commune to flee when they saw the changes that demonic mutations had wrought - his humungous forehead. Once per session, cause someone you've met to flee from you for a round.

Events:

--- The Mushroom Demon Cometh

- The party is within Dwimmermount, still hunting for the God Parts they previously manufactured and sent up to the Teleport Maze. The built-in terrariums in the walls flicker with a low light.
- Aximander is currently filled with the dark of the New Moon and looks like the Devil, red skin and goat legs and all - maximum mana, maximum power! Grog Greedy has returned, his skin was replaced by a demon recently so it's red too! They've got a cart with a bunch of God Parts on it, but there's a bit of an issue...
- Before them, for reasons as yet unknown, the Teleport Maze flickers with the shadow of an enormous mushroom! Sometimes it's just a man-sized mushroom surrounded by spores, sometimes it's huge and shrouded in darkness!

- They sprint past anyway, trusting their silver suits to protect them from spores. The suits work, but as they run past the smaller mushroom is replaced by the big one and its dark aura!
- They make it past regardless, taking the direct line, and reach the door! They careen in, finding themselves face to face with a very shocked skeleton!

--- Back to the Future

- A long time ago, somewhere relatively close, Sydney is looking out from the top of Dwimmermount across beautiful golden fields. It's the past! Sydney got transported here after accidentally being indirectly involved in the summoning of a giant mushroom demon.

- Nevertheless he gets a call from the Old Miner on his slime familiar phone. The slime familiar, oddly, has a pupil now like it's a big eye. The Old Miner chats a bit, and informs Sydney that according to the call records they are indeed in the past!

- Sydney suddenly warps back to the present day, now pupil-less slime slopping on one shoulder. Of course, they're back where they left, in the Teleport Maze... so they instantly warp away!
- Unbelievably Sydney appears in the teleport maze node closest to the other two, which is on balance much more convenient for me!

--- Prison Guard

- Aximander and Grog are face to face with a skeleton in a prison warden hat! He's actually quite polite, and he's guarding the prison cell in this room.

- They persuade him to let them stash the God Parts in the cell, and he lends them the cursed keys he protects.
- Aximander tries them out and opens the cell door... but an olive slime drops on his head! Luckily his Elf senses let him see it coming and he sidesteps, then blasts it with fire! The slime collapses into olive oil, which they duly collect.
- They lock away the god pieces in the now-empty cell, and discover that the other keys can be used to shift the cell between three different spaces! It's three cells in one! They shift it to a new visible one (with no god parts) and hand back the keys. Simple!

--- Title Drop

- They leave the prison guard and return to the corridor to find... Sydney! Hurrah!

- Unfortunately there is an issue.  The gigantic mushroom demon has returned... and with it the frog demoness Melissia! She's been taken over by the spores and has broken a wall terrarium to let the demonic mycellium spread! There are also a bunch of mushroom-infected frog men!

- Aximander lambasts her for breaching their deal... then blasts her with a fireball.
- The mushroom demon exudes its darkness aura and Melissia turns into her seductive form. Sydney and Aximander briefly consider themselves rivals for her love... but not so much.

- To make things worse, non-infected frog men appear from behind the party! It's a two-front battle! They're trapped between a frog and a dark place!

- Grog uses the powers he stole from a dragon to create a projector out of his massive forehead. He transforms the area around the frogs into a fly-filled swamp, distracting them!

- Aximander is at full Elf power, so spreads his hands and dims the magic around him. The darkness is now not quite so dark, the seductive Lust Demon powers not quite so compelling.

- Sydney follows up with Sudden Siege Engine, spearing the huge mushroom with a ballista bolt. It doesn't quite reach Melissia on the other side though.

- Aximander is going ham, flinging fireball after fireball at Melissia, frying her completely!
- The giant Mushroom Demon isn't looking so hot either, harr harr.
- With that, the Mushroom Demon warps away, leaving behind its man-sized spore version without the darkness aura. It does however begin infesting the fried corpse of Melissia with mycelium-filled mud... and she begins to arise...

--- Roy Mustang Mode

- Sydney doesn't want this demon to spread. Good thing they have Blight! It will kill all the plants within a mile, but that feels like a fair price for wiping out the mushroom demon!

- The blight bursts out. The glowing spores of the Mushroom Demon turn to ash. The flowing mycelium dies. There is a sound like a thousand Goblins crying out in pain and being suddenly silenced.

- The earth homunculus doesn't stop... but it also doesn't attack. It's trying to stop the fighting. Sydney and Grog team up to kill the smaller mushroom but trigger the Teleport Maze! Sydney is briefly blurred as he warps back to where he is, but Grog appears in a room filled with darkness.

- With Grog's illusion gone, there's nothing to stop the frogs from attacking. Aximander strolls forward, lighting his flaming sword, and blasts them with fire again and again! Soon there is nothing left but frog-shaped piles of ash.

--- Roy Mustang Mode 2: The Mustanening

- Grog is face to face with big floating pregnant seahorses, their eyes filled with the sparkling lights of the demon mushroom infection!

- He flees! Good thing Grog is good at fleeing via a backstory bonus! He gets a massive headstart, but runs randomly through the level in his attempt to escape!
- To my utter shock, he chooses the exact right left-right-left sequence that gets him back to the party!
- Sydney summons up the extradimensional apartment while Grog falls onto the Lust Demon's body and digests her. Yum. He steals the power to form a Love Triangle!
- Alas, that took some time. Trailing him are a bunch of infected floating psychic seahorses and infected croaking frog monsters! Grog bundles into the front door of the flat, while Sydney holds it open. Aximander stands in the doorway and snaps his fingers over and over as he turns the pursuing monsters to dust!

- Any survivors hop, crawl, or drag their burned bodies away from the scene of the massacre. Aximander smiles and goes back into the flat.

--- A Lively Post-Massacre Meal

- Sydney uses their last scraps of Mana to cast a cleaning spell on everyone. It goes slightly awry and swaps their ambiguous sex somehow, but everyone is otherwise clean!
- They cook up a nice meal, "Frog's Famous", with the frog legs and the olive oil and some of the seemingly endless millet and stale beer. You know what? It's pretty good!

Total: 8000 exp

Enemies Defeated:
- An Olive Slime (50 exp)
- Melissia the Succubus (750 exp)

- Mushroom Spore (250 exp)

- Loads of frog monsters (850 exp)

- A bunch of seahorses (900 exp)

Total: 2800 exp

Exp Totals:

- Carter / Sydney, Level 8 Magic-User: 211815 (Level up at 288000)

- Kitty / Julian & Aximander, Level 7 Languid Wastrel: 126191 (Level up at 144000)

- Charles / Grog Greedy, Level 6 Inheritor: 46500 (Level up at 72000)

Session 377 - "But Before All That, We Need to Stop the Moon!"

Date: 25 June

Moon: Waning Gibbous
Zenith: The Scorned

New Backstory:

Rudolphus von Blitzenstrick broke it off with his first love. She was part of a cool group of friends but had to return to Denmark. +1 HD for the rest of the session when you break a lover's heart.

Events:

--- Rudolphus Gone
- In the dark depths of Dwimmermount, on a level defined by its circuit-board patterns and dim lighting, Sydney and Grog Greedy are gulping down snacks. Aximander is here too, cursing the moon. Finally Roland McDoland, the ill-fated wizard they picked up recently by telling him they'd guard him on their way to the Great Machine, is sort of just keeping out of the way.
- Hagan borrows the Mountaintop Gauntlet from Sydney and uses it to grab Rudolphus von Blitzenstrick, recently retainer-ised by the insistence of his absent player. Both are warped right to the peak of Dwimmermount!
- They blink against the sudden sunlight and see for miles! Wheat fields shine in the distance over the rotting meat of the Wheatlands. Jonathon Toast the flesh-blimp feasts upon apparently petrified foods - his central cephalopodic eye blissful. In the skies above a lumpen Red Moon flashes under the attack of some distant celestial object.
- Hagan lets go of Rudolphus and warps back down. To his surprise, Rudolphus doesn't come with him! Turns out the Mountaintop Gauntlet is a one-way trip!

- Hagan grimaces, says "welp that's interesting", and hands back the gauntlet. Sydney is aghast. By sheer accident, Rudolphus is now stuck on a mountain peak with no food, water, or equipment!

--- Battledworgs

- With the knowledge that they've been down here way too long and the very dungeon itself is warping to expel them, they hurry onwards.
- There is the sound of fighting! They approach, finding a scroll-filled library with few of those emaciated Termaxians fighting against Dwarf-borgs! It's the same Dworgs who chased after their "friend", actually the mind of a dragon patriarch switched into the Dworg body by Sydney, and it's all very confusing for all involved.
- The party charge in and aid the Termaxians while the dragon-brained dworg runs off. He doesn't yet know that Mind Switch is temporary!
- Aximander casts Magic Aura on his sword to give it more power, while Sydney GRABS a scroll off the stack and casts it without even reading it first. PHWOOM! A big cloud of darkness obscures a sword-wielding Termaxian and the Dworg he's fighting. Clanging and shouting comes from within the swirling shadow.
- During the combat the confusion mounts! The Termaxians insist that the Dworgs should be on their side, while the Dworgs themselves are just kind of erroring out!
- Meanwhile another Termaxian, this a woman in white Termaxian robes, casts spells from behind a turned-over table. She casts Shackle to the Earth on the Dworgs, magical chains wrap around their legs.

- Also meanwhile, Roland has finally buffed himself with a spell! He casts Deathless on himself to ensure that he cannot be killed! By the time he reaches combat, it's too late.
- One of the Dworgs is finally killed with a slice from Aximander's magicalised sword, and the other shrieks that "failure does not compute!" and detonates in an electical explosion!

--- Aftermath

- In the aftermath, the Termaxian warriors warily come back to guard their Wizard from the mysterious new gaggle of heroes who just helped them against the Dworgs.
- The wizard's name is Grizzibelle and she asks for introductions.

- Conversation ensues. Sydney leads, explaining that there are Red Elves invading who want to mine the Earth for its magic, which will eventually lead to no more magic for anyone!
- Aximander loots the room, grabbing some cool-looking scrolls from the library nooks.

- Grisibelle explains her position - the Termaxians up here are rebels who want to alter Terms Termax's plans. Terms wants to upload himself to the god-shell of Eris, shot down centuries prior. Unfortunately for the egotistical Terms Termax, Gods are aggregate minds made up of many individual minds. He wishes to be a God alone, which has thus far proved impossible.
- Grisibelle and her faction want to persuade him to upload with those who, like her, are loyal subjects who simply recognise the limitations of his plan. That's why they've taken over this level - it contains the Foundry that can create more god-shells (and other powerful objects) if they can only get their hands on Eris' shell.

- Asked if more god-shells can be created, she demurs. That requires Angel Metal, and they don't have any of that.
- Luckily, Sydney's spell shenanigans previously glitched out to create a whole roomful of Angel Metal! it can be done!

--- The Forge

- She guides the group to the Foundry, and oh crap on the way a massive smoke-breathing stone bull tramples towards the party! It is intercepted by a bunch of Dworgs, and the party dive through the door into the Foundry. Lucky!

- Inside, two more Termaxians are overseeing the Forge. It's a huge pillar, molten orange liquid running through it like veins. One Termaxian, at a control board, moves levers to cause huge moulds to self-form into a Dwarf-shape before their eyes. They fill with liquid, STAMP, and out comes a newly forged Dworg! The other Termaxian welcomes them to the world.

- Hagan asks for Sydney to make their slime familiar form a phone so he can ring God.

- There is a brief moment where the slime pretends to be the Old Miner and tells Hagan to kill Sydney... but then the real Old Miner comes over the phone.
- After some bargaining, the Old Miner agrees to go up to space (all he wants is to survive, he says, and Hagan persuades him by saying that he'll live forever up there). If they create a god-shell for him, he'll upload to it and enter the heavens.

--- Consequences of Previous Actions, Heretofore Unrecognised

- It's time to let the Dworgs into Sydney's house to help mine out the Angel Metal they need to create a new god-shell! Sydney does so, and to his surprise a man-shape formed entirely of black ooze tips his ooze-hat to him at the entrance. Seems that the Old Miner has given sentience to ooze-men?
- It's going to take nearly 3 weeks to print out the God-Shell components in the Foundry, so they decide to just spend that time researching spells and staying out of trouble.
- They also discover some other standard template constructs that the Foundry can print. There's the God-Shell aka Seraphim, the famous ISBM that was once used to blow a God out of the sky, some sort of interstellar Transport Vessel, a Type A Slaughtergrid Automaton, and of course a Fate-style Ark City.
- Sydney gets their essence Reknit a few times by Aximander until their intelligence is a bit better, and they learn them some spells while the others relax and watch Friends reruns. It seems the ooze man's body was the charcoalified corpse of Qing Po. Hmmm.

- At any rate, after some weeks Sydney will have researched Escape Rope and Aximander will have learned Shackle to the Earth and Deathless. Not a bad run!

Total: 6000 exp

Loot:

- Access to the Foundry!

- Scroll #6304 - Deathless

- Scroll #6240 - Shackle to the Earth

- Scroll #6383 - Blinding Beams

- Scroll # 6265 - Ulrich's Forceful Sigil

Foes:

- A couple of Dworgs (150 exp)

Total: 150 exp

Exp Totals:

- Carter / Sydney, Level 8 Magic-User: 198890 (Level up at 288000)

- Kitty / Julian & Aximander, Level 7 Languid Wastrel: 111466 (Level up at 144000)

- George / Hagen the Heretic, Level 7 Dwarf: 87138 (Level up at 128000)

- Charles / Grog Greedy, Level 6 Inheritor: 43008 (Level up at 72000)

Session 376 - Prime Rump

Date: 18 June

Moon: Waxing Gibbous
Zenith: Minerva

New Backstory:

- Rudolphus von Blitzenstrick fought a bully at university by the name of Heinrich von Poopenheimer. To everyone's surprise, Rudolphus won! +2 to hit vs higher level enemies

Events:

--- The Importance of Maps

- Our heroes are once more in the depths of Dwimmermount, after a near-miss last week where they were nearly locked forever in Sydney's extradimensional apartment.

- It's a familiar area, and thankfully Sydney has been keeping very good maps! It's the Azoth Cave level, and they've luckily dropped back in (courtesy of some shenanigans with Gifflewim and a teleport bead) right near the way down to the prison level.

- Sydney is on it! They guide the team round the corner, through the cavern with the sobbing cavewomen (and one very tired caveman) and to the heretofore unexplored stairs up to the Manufactory.

--- Gimik the Mimic

- The ascend the stairs and come to an entry chamber. The floor has a circuitboard pattern carved into it, running with silver.
- There are two statues flanking the door on the other side - one a human woman, one a double-wide Terran woman. Also, in the middle of the chamber, a treasure chest full of gold!

- Everyone is immediately suspicious, and that suspicion is immediately justified when the chest talks back! It is indeed a Mimic, calling itself Gimik. Grog approaches and when the Mimic tries to attack, he simply sits on it with his callipygian rump!

- Gimic surrenders and agrees to work for gold and "debt tattoos on the blockchain", joining the rearguard of the party under Grog's employ. 

- Rudolphus, meanwhile, attempts to talk to the statues. While clearly animate, they are tight-lipped. Razylymvaer, the dragon-mind that's also encamped within Sydney's head, reckons that they are statues of Babylon Snels before and after being given a Terran body. They probably guard the way down, so entering is fine.

--- Alcoves

- They pass the statues and continue down a long corridor. Regular alcoves contain black plinths with nothing on them, except for a pair that show a before-and-after of Terms Termax as first a cool wizard, and then a head in a jar on a roboskeleton body.

- They listen at doors, but eventually decide to follow the lines of circuitry towards the north.

--- Dust Dwarf!

- They open the door to find a circular room with a sagging muddy Dwarf-shaped creature turning towards them. Rudolphus approaches to talk to it, and gets punched in the mouth! It tries to reach down his throat!
- Sydney surmises that this is a Dwarf without the gems that give it shape, and lobs a gem towards it. The soil-dwarf snatches it out of the air and is granted a rudimentary voice! It declares that it NEEDS MORE GEMS!
- Aximander cracks the air with a Beam Fire rune overhead, and it punches Rudolphus straight in the groin! He doubles over, and just then Grog feels a sticky tentacle at his back! It's Gimik the Mimic, apologising for its nature while also trying to devour Grog from behind! "He's eating my aaasss!" shrieks Grog!

- It's a two-front fight now, dusty Dwarf monster from the front, Mimic from the back, the party trapped between!
- The Mimic overwhelms Grog and he's down too! He shrieks, flailing at the sticky mimic tentacles, and is badly burned by the acid!

- Sydney tries to lure away the Dwarf monster with gems, and when that fails they try a Magic Missile... which goes awry! Instead of killing the earth Dwarf it sucks a whole bunch of its earthy body towards Sydney, making Sydney grow far taller and making the Dwarf far smaller!
- Divinity's magic weapon is dealing big hits to the earth Dwarf, while others' attacks do little.

- Grog's skin begins to melt. He has deep tissue burns across his whole body, the mimic is digesting him alive!
- Hagan drinks a potion, hoping for something cool. He is filled with hope! Seeing Grog in trouble he does the most obvious thing... try to tempt it over to him with his dumptruck ass! Divinity assists, using her Unbuckling Sceptre to make Hagan's trousers fall down!

- It's too much for the buttock-obsessed mimic, who immediately leaves the (burned, bleeding, near-death) Grog and pounces towards Hagan's prime rump!

- Sydney tries another Magic Missile but this chaos bursts too... to great effect! The power of the Missile is doubled! The ensmallified Earth Dwarf is annihilated in a storm of dirt-enhanced shards formed from its former clay-flesh!

- Rudolphus staggers to his feet, looks Gimik the Mimic dead in the gem-eye, and says "I'm going to make a withdrawal". He strikes hard, and the Mimic collapses into melty looking treasure chest.

--- Grog Feasts

- Grog himself has collapsed into the pile of fleshy muddy ooze that makes up the true form of an Inheritor. Only his massive forehead protrudes from the mire. 
- They dump the Mimic's body onto Grog, who immediately begins to consume it. He heals, of course, but also absorbs a new ability - the Mimic's stickiness! He can now Wrestle like a Mimic, and has a constant sticky film all over his whole body.

- While they wait for the demonic digestion to finish, they poke around the room a bit. Lo and behold, a hidden hatch! They peer beneath and hear voices. One is wheedling, the other is laughing.

--- Dark Bargain

- They follow the voices and come to another room, this containing a big circular summoning circle containing a huge red demon! Before the demon is a wizard in circuitboard-design robes. Even his skin seems to have a circuitboard pattern beginning to form...
- The party approach civilly, with Rudolpho as the face. The wizard is called Roland McDoland and he seeks the demon's help to get to the Great Machine on this dungeon level. The demon, Draunanon, is driving a hard bargain for this. He himself wants to stay on this plane rather than getting dragged back into the Chaos realm.
- Deals are made. The party will help Roland get to the Great Machine (since they're going anyway). He tells them that he's met these Red Elves and seeks the Great Machine to find a way to shoot down their Red Moon. He also tells them that he's been fleeing crazy metal robo-Dwarfs who protect the Great Machine!
- In a separate deal Draunanon will become new skin for Grog...? In exchange, the demon only asks for a favour to be exacted in the future. At least Grog has skin for now! He's completely red, similar to when Aximander is at full power. Red skin buddies!

--- We Are the Dworg

- With all that under control, they try the only other exit and find a similar hatch upwards. Peeking through, they hear robo-Dwarfs talking in regular English, not a Dwarf language. It transpires that they're doing this in case their bosses are listening.
- As it happens, they're also all facing the other way.

- Too bad, bots! Sydney is here! He Mind Switches with one of the robots! Except Sydney's mind doesn't switch? Oh no, the dragon-mind of Razylymvaer has been swapped in! The robo-mind is in with Sydney now, and extremely confused! It tries to use his body to no avail.

- Dragon-Robot runs away down the corridor, cackling because he is FREEE! The other robots give chase, leaving our heroes alone for now...

Total: 8000 exp

Treasure:

- 50gp (2500 exp)

- 200sp (200 exp)

- Demon skin

Total: 2700 exp

Foes:

- A dusty half-formed Earth-Dwarf (1000 exp)

- Gimik the Mimic (750 exp)

- Several robo-dwarfs. (300 exp)

Total: 2050 exp

Exp Calc:

- Carter / Sydney, Level 8 Magic-User: 197352 (Level up at 288000)

- Kitty / Julian & Aximander, Level 7 Languid Wastrel: 109928 (Level up at 144000)

- George / Hagen the Heretic, Level 7 Dwarf: 85600 (Level up at 128000)

- Ollie / Divinity, Level 6 Battle-Cleric (Fighter 3/ Cleric 3): 57288 (Level up at 72000)

- Charles / Grog Greedy, Level 6 Inheritor: 41470 (Level up at 72000)

- Tim / Rudolphus Von, Level 3 Specialist: 4270 (Level up at 7000)
Level Up! +1d6 HP! +2 Skill Points! +1 to Saves! +Backstory!

Session 375 - Djinn in a Tin

Date: 28 May

Moon: Waning Gibbous
Zenith: Eris

New Characters:

- Rudolphus Von, a failed Shaman of Light, now an expert archivist.

New Backstory:

- Grog Greedy, everyone's favourite long-foreheaded caveman, was born under an omen of DOOOM! It was a comet that heralded the ice age, freezing Grogg into the ice for millenia. When another character dies, gain +1HD of health for the rest of the session.
- Julian did something reckless and impressive - painting a cursed painting! While it very much impressed his fellow artists, it was ultimately his undoing, bringing Aximander into his body! We haven't seen Julian in a while... +1 to Dex score.

- Hagan received great advice from his mentor Andromeda the Vampire - never dig too greedily or too deep. Alas, he understood too late, since the party is now about as deep as you can get... +1 to Wis score.

Events:

--- Guardian Confusion

- It's the night of the New Moon and even this far down below the Earth, Aximander feels its pull. He's at full power and high level, his skin is a deep dark red and his long tongue twists from his distensible jaws.

- The others find this perfectly normal, it's just how you can tell when it's a full moon. Also perfectly normal - meeting a new character in the depths of a megadungeon and thinking that they're trustworthy! Meet Rudolphus, researcher!

- In front of them is the entrance to the final depth of Dwimmermount - an enormous geode big enough to contain a city! A wide boulevard goes off into the distance, the grand buildings around it all angular and strange in a variety of styles and materials.

- There are also a couple of huge statues of Dwarves guarding the entrance, which (naturally) come alive when approached! The magical among the party can feel them draining Chaos from the air around them.
- Hagan approaches, he can understand Terran. It's an archaic proto-Dwarvish. Rudolphus can too! He's down here to study it after all!
- Hagan reveals his credentials - a Dwarf with a Brooch of the Terrans. But confusingly he has the stamp of Terms Termax on his hand! The statues are confused until he reveals the tattoo of the Old Miner's inverted hammer on his chest! They let him through.
- The others blag their way through too, confusing the statues until they insist on taking a break to confer. In the mean time, the party runs deeper!

--- Lose Your Mind

- Hagan feels a pull towards a flat-topped building ahead, but Sydney can't help but check out a nearby building. Inside the floor is a sort of hydroponic setup for crystals. There's also an ominous thrumming from a spreading crack in the wall... and visible brain matter?

- A tendril-hand emerges from the crack and a giant brain on legs made from twined threads emerges! It looks like it shouldn't fit, yet it does! Sydney backtracks, leaving Rudolphus to get pounced on by the big brain monster!
- Grogg pulls him out of the way just in time, and a big spiraling hole opens in the middle of the brain. A search-beam seeks out a target - zoning in on Aximander's forehead! The Elf leaps out of the firing line, and the disappointed brain beast scuttles back into the building, mewling.
- Sydney asks Razylymvaer, the dragon-father who now lives in their mind, what the hell that was! The dragon answers that he doesn't know its name, but it knows that Halflings evolved from them!
- The party is struck by the DEEP LORE and realises those brain-eating Halflings they faced in the dungeon levels above were probably an evolutionary stage between brain monster and modern Halflings!

--- The Revelation of Hagan

- Hagan feels the tugging of his beard leading them on. The brain monster stalks the party from the windows of the buildings they pass, but doesn't attack again.
- They reach the flat-roofed building. Up close it is clearly fortified, all the windows are on higher floors. Nevertheless, Hagan knocks.
- The door soon opens and lo! It is a Terran who names himself Vidaro! Hagan reveals his confusing clash of marks, the Old Miner tattoo and the Terms Termax stamp, and explains what happened in the upper level.
- Explanations aside, the Terrans refuse to let an impure Dwarf to see their God. Dwarves are a debased version of Terrans who inter-bred with humans, sullying their bloodline forever. The mechanics of how this inter-species lovemaking even occurred results in some debate amongst the party.
- Hagan is nearly stymied... but luckily Aximander is at full Elf ebb and uses his tricks to Fairy Godmother the Dwarf into a thick-limbed double-wide Terran! The priests are taken aback, he was merely hiding his true form!

--- The Old Miner Speaks!

- The Terran priests take the newly thickened Hagan through the hall of the building, and into a circular room at the heart of the place. Within, amongst ticking machinery, is a great cylindrical can containing a God.
- Vidaro directs Hagan to kneel on a metal prayer mat before the God, and to his awe the Old Miner speaks into his mind!

- The Old Miner celebrates Hagan's faith, but insults his debased body. It was the Old Miner who made the Terrans, and they betrayed him by sullying their souls with humans. However, for the faithful alone, he will place their mind into a Terran body. It must be a blank, either dead or new-formed, but He has the power to move minds!
- The Old Miner reveals that He is a composite mind, formed of all the Terrans who ascended in an earlier aeon in a far-flung solar system. Alas, after billions of years the Great Beast gestating in their planet finally cracked their world like an egg, throwing the Old Miner's geode mind into the cosmos until it finally hit a cooling Earth, infecting the newborn planet with Shub-Niggurath yet allowing the Old Miner to survive.
- Millenia later the geode ran out of material, and so He drilled a borehole out to allow his newly crafted Terrans to acquire more. That did not go great, all things considered.
- All He wants is to survive. He is not much bothered by the nonsense on the surface and the skies, having learnt His lesson about meddling outside of his borders.
- Hagan, filled with incredible new knowledge, gives the signal to Sydney.

--- You Wouldn't Steal a God

- Sydney steps out of the room, the other party members step in, and Sydney casts Sydney's Stolen Sanctum! The entire room is vanished and attached to their extradimensional flat!
- Those inside the room see it shiver and warp! Water floods in as the floor drops 10'! The Old Miner yells in confusion!
- Everyone else drops into the water, suddenly wet and heavy!
- Worse, some sort of underwater gremlins have spawned below! They swim out from a cave in the dark water and come in to attack!
- Vidaro, the Terran priest who was also in the room, draws a glyph on the air before him and creates an air bubble! He's now on the actual floor, underwater in a big old bubble.
- The others join the battle, and to everyone's surprise and amazement Rudolpho actually stops everything before it's even begun!
- Rudolpho speaks Scoblin too, it transpires, and he persuades the Scoblins to simmer down until everyone can work out just what happened here. Since they themselves just appeared, the Scoblins agree and swim back to their lair for now.

--- We Cannot Get Out

- Sydney, back in the geode, has missed all this. There are, however, a number of angry Terran priests behind him wondering what just happened to their God!
- They bug out, casting Sydney's Safe Space to warp back to the flat. There's one small issue.. the doorway only goes one way. You can enter the flat, but you cannot leave.

- Over in the Old Miner's newly shifted room, Hagan asks the Old Miner what the deal is here. He also lets the God briefly take his mind so the Old Miner gets filled in on what just happened.

- It transpires that the Geode is a reverse prison - it can be escaped by magical means, but cannot be entered. Long story short, they're stuck in the flat because the front door doesn't work any more.

- There's also the matter of a second Terran priest who came in when Sydney cast the spell to get back into their flat. Hagan smooths that out and leaves her to watch reruns of Friends, sitting next to a very charred corpse that has an explanation but little relevance to the current recap.

- The thing is, the problem remains. The spell ends when everyone's left the flat... but they can't leave. What to do?

--- Oh Hi Aximander

- Meanwhile, Aximander is in Neo-Spacedin. This is interesting because he was just in the extradimensional flat that nobody could leave.
- The new moon is high overhead and he's looking at a woman wearing broken bits of PS4 as jewellery. She's getting a lukewarm Hawaiian pizza out of the replicator inside the broken spaceship at the heart of the town.
- The woman turns and says "ah Aximander! Thank you! Do you have that crystal of infinite possibilities I asked for?"
- Aximander passes the crystal, and the woman hands him a bowl of pineapple chunks that have been picked off replicator pizza.
- Ahah! It was a jape! An Elf jape! The woman whisks off her image and reveals that he is Gifflewim! What a tricker! And naturally, the same sort of Languid Wastrel Elf as Aximander.

- They barter. Aximander wants Gifflewim to take one of these beads to a deep level of Dwimmermount. Gifflewim says he'll do it for a favour in kind. Dubious, but acceptable. They shake hands, stare up at the moon, and head off to do more dark deals in the dead of night.

--- Where Were You Aximander??

- In the morning, Aximander leaps gracefully through a window with lukewarm Hawaiian pizza and some beers, plus a roomba.
- The others are incredibly impressed by Elf bullshit.

- He explains the bead, crush this one in his hand and you teleport to that one that Gifflewim placed last night. Simple!
- Sydney takes the bead and crushes it, vanishing. Minutes later the front door to the flat opens. It worked! They're back on a lower level of Dwimmermount! What's more, they're surprisingly close to the Prison of Terms Termax that they were so worried about!

Total: 9000exp

Treasures:

- The Old Miner, now ensconced in Sydney's flat.
Total: Priceless and thus expereinceless

Enemies Defeated:

- Stone Golems, confuddled (2000 exp)

- A bunch of Scoblins (100 exp)

Total: 2100 exp

Exp Totals:

- Carter / Sydney, Level 8 Magic-User: 195202 (Level up at 288000)

- Kitty / Julian & Aximander, Level 7 Languid Wastrel: 107978 (Level up at 144000)

- George / Hagen the Heretic, Level 7 Dwarf: 83650 (Level up at 128000)

- Charles / Grogg Greedy, Level 6 Inheritor: 39520 (Level up at 72000)

- Tim / Rudolphus Von, Level 2 Specialist: 2320 (Level up at 3500)
Level Up! +1d6 HP! +2 Skill Points! +1 to Saves! +Backstory!

Session 374 - Dragon Hoards!

 Date: 28 May

Moon: Waning Gibbous
Zenith: Eris

Events:

--- Lore Feast

- The party emerge refreshed from the extradimensional apartment into the caveman caverns below Dwimmermount. Those double-wide Dwarfs are still about, under the command of the Cosmog the emaciated ex-priest of the man-become-god Terms Termax.
- To their surprise, one of the Dwarves declares that he's originally from Salisburgh and was granted this long-lived Dwarf body as a reward from Terms Termax himself!

- The party have a classic decision - go up and find this Great Machine that's supposed to let Terms escape his prison, or go down in pursuit of LORE and the promise of meeting Terms' estranged lover Babylon Snels. They decide that down it is!

--- More Dragons Than You Can Shake a Dungeon At

- Unfortunately there's a whole family of wingless stone-skinned dwimmerdragons to get through if they want to reach the Deep City, and what's worse is they can smell the taint of Terms Termax on anyone who got stamped by a magical mouth on the prison level.
- Yes, they all got that stamp.
- Cosmog gives a rundown on the dragons. There's Dresseldrack (previously met) who smells like garlic. Handily this does cover up the smell of the stamp. Then there's Jarnabal, who due to complications with a Ravenous Zombie he ate one time is COMPLETELY mad until he's eaten a brain. Beyond him is Aryzmyr who is the youngest and vulnerable to flattery. Finally the big man patriarch himself Razylymvaerr who commands a whole volcanic zone and guards the stairs down.

- Oh hey and Cosmog's got a plan to deal with Terms Termax. See, if Eris ascends to the heavens it will lock Chaos out of the world and allow the Gods to control everything in perfect harmony. Terms Termax is planning to go up there instead and take control himself, granting limited magics to his followers. Cosmog's (admittedly half-baked) plan vis-à-vis Terms Termax is to install some kind of dead man's switch in Terms' angel metal body so that he can be controlled and prevented from reneging on his stated goals. Good right? Right...

--- Flattery Will Get You Anywhere

- The party set off, somewhat perturbed and fearful of the thing where consecutive nights in a dungeon make encounters more likely. They have spent a LOT of consecutive nights down here. It's fine for now though at least.
- Everyone puts on various potions and powders to get rid of the stink. Good thing Aximander's here and can change the perceptions of things. Instead of a dress into a ballgown, he turns tattoos into less stinky skin. Should work right?
- They follow the instructions and get to go straight to Aryzmyr's lair. The dwimmerdragon himself is stone-skinned and gem-encrusted, lying on a ledge and is indeed as vulnerable to blandishment as Cosmog said! Hagan and Grogg lay it on thick.
- He warns that his father will likely summon Jarnabal if he's even slightly suspicious of your motives, and Jarnabal can swim through stone.

- Aximander instead challenges Aryzmyr to a friendly duel. As it happens, Aryzmyr loves duels! He's even got a dojo at the back of the ledge! Let's do it!
- Alas for Aryzmyr, Aximander is a trickster. No sooner have they shaken hands (or at least grasped forelimbs), Aximander casts Reknit Essence and vanishes the dragon from this world! The dragon vanishes in a swirl of spaghettification to be made anew.
- Teehee, they gather up the loot! 100 gold pieces of Dwarven make, the Mountaintop Gauntlet that makes you ascend to the highest point of wherever you are so long as you're gripping something, the Moon Glaive which is more powerful under moonlight (and Hagan insists is not a glaive because it's a throwing disk not a polearm) and a long ladder woven from Dwarven beard hair. Not bad!
- They scarper before Arzymyr reappears.

--- Razylymvaerr's Bane

- They continue and come out into... what? A whole open-air area? This far down? Surely not!
- The sky burns with red stars that drip streams of magma across the scorched volcanic rock.
- The dragon himself peers down and laughs, his body covered in rich red rubies. He's huge, and has wings! The undersides shimmer with silver. He's beautiful.

- Hagan steps forth, declaring that he wishes to learn the ways of his ancestors. The Dragon laughs, but says that maybe Hagan still has a few drops of Terran blood in his veins after the years of interbreeding.
- Sydney basically calls bollocks on this whole open world area, it's defo an illusion. They cast Hallucinatory Terrain, the world shimmers... and something seems to snap! The illusion collapses, revealing Razylymvaerr to be somewhat less handsome, without working wings, at the end of a wide corridor, and set with lower quality rubies.

- Sydney summons a Sudden Siege Engine ballista and Grogg climbs aboard! As he's fired into battle, they hear a sound like spaghetti being unwound from somewhere behind them, and then Aryzmyr bellow "treachery!".

--- Get in the Dragon, Sydney!

- Grogg hits the Dragon and basically bounces off, albeit he manages to apply a bunch of Pain Poison to the dragon. Hagan follows up, misses, gets cold feet, and tries to escape into the nearby room. It's not just a room, it's a treasure room! 
- Taken aback by the riches, it's the only opening Razylymvaerr needs to follow and nearly bite him in half!

- It's suddenly a bit more dire than anyone expected. They need to do something drastic.
- Sydney nods to Aximander and charges in, spinning a fast-cast Mind Switch into creation! It nearly fails... then succeeds! Sydney IS the dragon! The dragon IS Sydney!
- Before Razylymvaerr can recover from this bizarre sequence of events, Aximander has slipped a ring onto Sydney's finger. There is a flash and Razylymvaerr-in-Sydney is a cat now. He struggles in vain.

--- I am Your Father
- Aryzmyr comes in at that moment, eyes flashing. Everyone else hides in the treasure room just in time! Aryzmyr looks good actually. He looks shrewd and moves with poise. Sydney is yet more shrewd, though, and tricks him into thinking it's still his dad in control of the dragon body! Aryzmyr leaves in a bit of a huff.

- The others cheer (quietly...) and loot the treasure room! There's a hoard of coins and gems, three sets of teleport beads, a pocketwatch that drops a corpse and turns you invisible when you're attacked, some potions, a scroll, and best of all a baby dwimmerdragon statue carved from jet black rock that acts like it's alive!

- Grogg is over the moon, there's never usually treasure when he's around!

--- Complications Arising From a Mind Switch

- Now there's just the question of what to do with this big dragon body Sydney's inside! They decide to scrape off those jewels for a start.
- This kills the dragon.

- Sydney is back in their body again. The only issue... so is Razylymvaerr! There was nowhere for his mind to go so it's in Sydney now. Brain roommates??
- Grogg devours the dragon corpse and steals its powers of illusion. I'm sure this will go well!
- Hagan checks out the long spiral borehole downwards. It's smooth, a long long ramp, like a huge screw. Good thing he's got that armour with wheels on it! He kneels and goes wheeeeeee!

- The others follow. When he reaches the bottom he sees glimmering lights over a crazy city built inside an enormous geode. The way is guarded by huge stone Dwarf statues. They have not moved yet though...

- The party collects themselves and has a quick meal break. There is a thrumming, deep singing, and a misty pearlescent haze of Azoth. They've finally reached it - the deepest point of Dwimmermount!

Total: 8000 exp

Enemies Defeated:

- Aryzmyr, spaghettified and tricked (1250 exp)
- Razylymvaerr, mind-switched and murdered (1500 exp)
Total: 2750 exp

Treasures Looted:

- 1100gp (55 000 exp)

- 20000sp (20 000 exp)
- Bag o' Gems (5000 exp)

- Three sets of Teleport Beads

- Mountaintop Gauntlet
- Moon Glaive

- Dwarf Beard Rope Ladder

- Dead Ringer

- Jet Pet Dwimmerdragon (10 000 exp)

- Potion #147 - Growth
- Potion #285 - Bottle Imp

- Potion #27 - Overdose

- Scroll #6317 - Illusory Double

Total: 90 000 exp

Exp Totals:

- Carter / Sydney, Level 8 Magic-User: 192782 (Level up at 288000)

- Kitty / Julian & Aximander, Level 7 Languid Wastrel: 105658 (Level up at 144000)

- George / Hagen the Heretic, Level 7 Dwarf: 81330 (Level up at 128000)
Level Up! +1d10 HP! +1 to Saves! +Lorebond! +Backstory!

- Charles / Grogg Greedy, Level 6 Inheritor: 37200 (Level up at 72000)
Level Up! +1d6 HP! +1 to Saves! +1 Meat Point! +1 Mutation Cap! +Backstory!

Level Up! +1d6 HP! +1 to Saves! +1 Meat Point! +1 Mutation Cap! +Backstory!

Session 373 - Terms Termax in a Trap!

Date: 30 April

Moon: Waxing Gibbous
Zenith: Alaunus

Events:

--- Emaciated Priests

- We rejoin our heroes deep in Dwimmermount. The walls and floor are classic dungeon, carved from the very stone of the mountain. They are gathered around a stone mouth carved in the wall which has stamped everyone (and their caveman minions) with the symbol of Terms Termax and given each person a chunky physical key.
- Aximander returns! The Elven wine he's been guzzling down for the past several weeks has, miraculously, healed his broken leg! He, too, puts his hand in the stone mouth and receives his stamp and key.

- They all continue down the corridor, hoping to find the fallen god Eris who was legendarily shot out of the sky by Terms Termax and secreted within Dwimmermount.

- But lo! Shapes emerge from the darkness! It's a set of emaciated priests in priestly robes marked with the cross-in-circle symbol of Terms Termax! When the party reveal their hand-stamps and keys, the priests brighten up and motion them to follow.

- They lead the party through a bunk room with more emaciated people and into a larger room with a desk. Behind the desk is another priest named Viator. It transpires that he (and the priests in general) will only talk to the Honoured Ones at the front of the party, not the Useless Ones in the second rank. They will, however, listen skeptically to those Useful Ones in the back ranks.

- They inform the party that Terms Termax is beyond the elaborate angel metal door, but imprisoned within a prison barrier that lets anyone enter but only lets Lawful creatures leave.
- They open the door and see the barrier, and also see that the whole area beyond is made of angel metal like the inside of the Seraphim they entered in the apocalypse. All shining brass and whirring gears, and of course a shimmering pearlescent barrier as promised.

- To test the barrier they send through a caveman. Indeed he cannot leave! He cries.

--- Terms Termax

- A huge clanking robot stomps into view, at its very centre is a head in a jar. It sees the stamp on the caveman's hand and greets it in every language at once, saying that its name is...
- Terms Termax!

- The other cavemen, enraptured, follow through the barrier. The true god!
- Sydney throws a bunch of huge frog legs through the barrier so they'll at least have something to eat. Terms Termax calls for a woman, Pericleia, similarly imprisoned, to gather the frog legs for him.
- Terms Termax rambles on about how he was trapped in here by his lover the "Whore of Babylon" who betrayed him, and he will reward anyone who frees him with mighty abilities.

--- Portal Experiments

- Grog slops a bunch of Portal Milk (from Christmas, long curdled) onto the barrier, and it opens a portal to the Milk Dimension! Alas, no way through, and they cannot even enter the milk dimension. It seems that no dimension-shifting, portal-making or other such magical nonsense will work in this area.
- They try to get a caveman to come back out, but despite charging with all its strength it ponks off the barrier and falls backwards, definitely a concussion.
- Aximander sticks the tip of his finger through the barrier and casts Reknit Essence on the fallen caveman. It works, but unfortunately reforms within the barrier. No way out that way.

- Aximander's finger is, however, stuck in the barrier and turning black since the blood can't come back out. He beseeches Terms Termax, who slices off the fingertip with a cigar chopper that he forms from his metal body. Aximander is free! But sans a fingertip.

- Sydney tries his Stolen Sanctum spell, hoping to steal the room despite the anti-extradimensional nature of the prison. It goes off... strangely. Using his slime familiar as a makeshift viewing portal, Sydney sees that a room has been added, but it's just a room in the shape of the room he tried to steal completely filled with angel metal!

- The others ask Terms Termax the full name of his betrayer, and he spits the name at them... God-Shall-Smite-Asunder-The-Whore-Of-Babylon Snels!

- The party is in shock. Isn't she meant to be a Dwarf? Is there a Dwarf in the Snels family line? She was certainly a Denialist!

- There is debate over whether they go up to the Great Machine which will turn off the barrier, or down to meet the Snels matriarch and find out more lore. Eventually they reach consensus - down it is!

- Backtrack to Go Forward

- They invite Viator into the party (he agrees as long as he can be in the honoured front rank) and head back up to find the way down. The prison is the lowest level, you see, but there's an even lower level if you find the right way down.

- They all head up, past the big stone dwarf golem which allows the Termax-branded party through, and back to the cavemen den. They inform the wives and children that the men are trapped in a magic prison due to following a false idol. They wail!

- Party don't care. They keep going. At the south end of the massive caveman cave they run into another group - this a host of eight double-wide Dwarves and their wizened leader Cosmog! Cosmog is a fellow wizened Termaxian priest, but he's extremely anti-Terms Termax and considers him a false idol. He and Viator have WORDS! They want to FIGHT!
- Sydney casts Reknit Essence on Viator to make him vanish for a few hours. They step forward to take Viator's place in the honoured front rank, and parleys with Cosmog.
- It turns out that a great rumbling about 24 years ago allowed him to escape, and he's been plotting to defeat Terms Termax ever since! These double-wide Dwarves were to help him with that!
- They allow the party to camp out with them and the cavemen, who donate some big chunky cave crickets for dinner.

- Grog uses them to cook up "Grogg's 'Famous' Drunk Cricket Porridge" by combining them with stale beer and giant millet. It's tasty!

- Everyone rests up and gets ready for the next descent...

Total: 5000 exp

Foes Defeated:
- Viator, technically. (1000 exp)

Total: 1000 exp

Exp Totals:

- Carter / Sydney, Level 8 Magic-User: 167594 (Level up at 288000)

- Kitty / Julian & Aximander, Level 7 Languid Wastrel: 80470 (Level up at 144000)

- George / Hagen the Heretic, Level 6 Dwarf: 56142 (Level up at 64000)

- Ollie / Divinity, Level 6 Battle-Cleric (Fighter 3/ Cleric 3): 55338 (Level up at 72000)

- Charles / Grogg Greedy, Level 4 Inheritor: 12012 (Level up at 18000)

Session 362 - KILL THE POPE Christmas Special

Date: 25 December

Moon: Somehow always full, with a silhouette of Santa in a flying sleigh

Zenith: Jesus Christ, the Saviour, the Lamb of God, the Almighty, Light of the World, Elohim

New Backstory:

- Grogg Greedy was starving, and in an apparent act of generosity offered bread to a beggar. Alas, it was to tempt the beggar into an alley where Grogg devoured him. Gain max healing when you eat to heal.
- Deletion Snels figuratively burnt Styx's house down when he released a virus into the Fate mainframe. Enemies you light on fire start off at 2d4 damage.

Events:

--- The Milky Magic of Christmas

- Deep beneath Dwimmermount, holding loot, in the midst of a dungeon delve, our heroes are preparing to go deeper into the dungeon.
- But it's Christmas Eve!
- Before them a portal full of milk opens up and starts dripping all over the floor! A familiar face pokes its head out from the portal - Gifflewim! He tells them - "Come on guys, no time to explain! We've got to kill the pope!"
- This is a dream come true for fantasy-protestant Deletion Snels.
- They enter the portal and Gifflewim explains the problem - the Pope is enacting a ritual wherein he will use papal magic to replace the Idea of Thorns with the Ninefold Idea. This will make the Nine High Gods aspects of him. The Pope will be the ultimate god above all gods!
- Kill the Pope and this can be stopped. Kidnap the Pope, however, and you will be able to replace the Thorns with something else...
- Why can't he do this himself? Unfortunately the Vatican is designed to contain a vast multitude of intelligent artifacts, captured godlike and/or god-adjacent entities, entities mistaken for gods etc etc. Gifflewim is such an entity, and... also many of those entities have their own issues with him.
- The portal opens up on the outskirts of the Vatican, portal-milk already attracted a bunch of stray cats. Gifflewim passes out a few florins to the party and tells them they have two days! The ritual finishes at the Urbi et Orbi on Christmas Day, so kill or kidnap him before then!

--- Vatican Christmas Village
- There's snow everywhere and a whole Christmas village set up on the outskirts of Vatican City. Red birds flit through the christmas trees, and people are making merry! They approach and notice huge guards with great-hammers in sealed red armour patrolling, the crowds going silent as they draw near.
- Strangely enough, despite speaking a multitude of different languages, everyone can understand each other!
- Sydney goes off off to a civil admin building to start working on the heist. Odo runs off to the Vatican art gallery, while the others head towards the classic christmas market bar selling overpriced mulled wines
- They overhear various conversations, including that the Swiss Guard are dangerous and cannot be bought, the priests are venal and corrupt, and the Vatican is built over and inside a vast Ophanim angel fallen to Earth.

- Also the calendars are reset from noon on Christmas Eve to sunrise the next day. During this time the Gods cannot see one's sins, and thus all is permitted. Less "Purge" and more general debauchery vibes.

--- Shenanigans Ensue

- Odo is in the art gallery discovering paintings of Aspects of the Nine High Gods. Nonanism claims all deities as its own, rendering any foreign gods as Aspects. This is borne out in the paintings, where there have been careful alterations made to show this.
- He tells a bored-looking museum guard that he saw someone casting Photograph on a painting! The guard says that it's impossible, spellcasting attracts the red birds.
- He goes to the gift shop and meets the busty salesperson, whose description summons Grogg Greedy from afar.
- He perturbs her enough to make her call a manager. Grogg goes round the corner, waylays the manager, and throws him back into the staff room. He eats the manager and becomes him.
- Odo buys a very anachronistic statuette of the Old Grump and quietly leaves.
- Later, Grogg in his manager guise returns and tries to seduce the salesperson to little effect.

--- Meanwhile, Shenanigans Ensue
- Over at the bar, a tangled web of relationships starts to unspool. The barman and his wife own the bar, and it's manned by their children. The wife is cheating on the husband, but reveals to Jojo (half-naked, allegedly mugged) that she wants a divorce. To save her own reputation she wants Jojo to seduce her husband, get "caught", and do a divorce reversal.

- Jojo duly attempts this, but dude isn't interested.
- However, at this point Odo shows up! Turns out that the barman is an aficionado of Dwarven gender and spots the subtle signs that she's a woman. She walks up, slaps him on the arse, and asks for a shag. He's painfully aroused, and suggests Cardinal Gomstead's house because he knows that the cardinal's busy today.
- They scurry off, leaving the bartending to the children. His wife follows gleefully.

--- The Heist Begins
- Alone, Sydney has left the civil admin building with a variety of information about the parade route, exit points, blind spots, and guard schedules. They head for the stables where the parade will begin.
- Amid the festivities, it's easy to slip into the stables. The Popemobile is open and unlocked, and clearly intended to be pulled by two huge Swiss Guards. Conveniently the bench in there opens up! It's even got spare papal robes! Sydney slides in, ready to replace the Pope when he arrives...

--- Elsewhere, Further Shenanigans
- In Cardinal Gomstead's empty house, Odo and the barman are attempting to get it on. Unfortunately for both, the barman admits that he's never actually cheated and wants to make his wife jealous because he knows she's been cheating on him! After some persuasion, he's ready to actually give it a go.
- She ties him up and blindfolds him while seductively putting various valuable items into her beard.
- Suddenly, here's the wife! How unexpected! She cries false tears and Odo, knowing the truth about who's cheating on who... kills her!
- A crimson bird flutters to the window and looks in.
- Jojo busts in and performatively begins CPR - totally an accident mister bird! Totally!
- More birds arrive, they jostle for space on the windowsill.
- Jojo heads out the front door and is confronted by one of the Swiss Guards. The birds flutter around him, landing on shoulders and helmet.
- Inside, Odo dives out the window. The birds follow. She's heading for St Peter's Basilica, straight for a confession booth. Behind... the red-armoured Swiss Guard implacably turns to follow.

--- Sir Ratigan
- Grogg, Jojo and Deletion have met up at the art gallery. There is a covered bridge that goes across to the fallen angel that makes up the Vatican.
- There are guards, and Jojo has already discovered that the head guard is a Ratman called Sir Ratigan who guards the Vatican. Grogg, in his manager guise, brings him a coffee and introduces Deletion Snels as a new guard. Just hired, you see.
- Sir Ratigan says that there's a hazing ritual - new recruits must enter the Vatican naked. Deletion does so, to snickers, but the door is opened anyway! Inside, a ritual is indeed being prepared.
- Sir Ratigan gets suspicious of Grogg's disguise when he can't remember some recent events.
- Luckily Jojo is here! She attempts to seduce Sir Ratigan... and is again rejected. She's getting quite self-conscious now. She's a beautiful woman! Why can't she seduce anyone!?

- Forgive me Father
- Odo busts into a confessional booth and hurriedly begins recounting her sins. She just killed a woman in someone's house and stole all the valuables. Please, father, forgive me.
-He says that all sins are forgiven during Christmastide, but out of interest, which house was it?
- She replies that it was Cardinal Gomstead's house... and the priest bellows with rage! HE is Father Gomstead and those were HIS valuables and HIS nice carpet!

- A huge muscular arm bursts through the screen, red feather quills emerging haphazardly! It grasps Odo around the throat and throws her from the confessional!
- She flees, the Cardinal growing more monstrous behind her, and runs into the Swiss Guard who was lurking outside!
- But what's this? That symbol...
- Due to backstory nonsense, the Swiss Guard is actually part of the Yawning Eye secret society that Odo is also part of! Convenient! The guard's armour peels back, red birds fly out, and it closes around her. Through the cracks in the armour she sees Cardinal Gomstead, enraged, searching for her. The armour waits for him to leave, then strides towards the art gallery and the rest of the party.

--- The Pope's Bedroom

- Back at the covered bridge to the Vatican, Jojo is trying to fight Sir Ratigan for rejecting her! Odo shows up inside the armour and is disgorged. Odo says that she's here to take Jojo in!
- Sir Ratigan isn't having it, and after a series of further shenanigans tries to get them thrown into the jail cells just inside the Vatican. Instead, they knock Sir Ratigan out and throw him in there! Manager-Grogg takes the armour.
- The explore the Vatican, itself built inside and over the quiescent mechanical angel. They come across a Cardinal inside an inner chapel. He questions why the manager is here, and in armour at that.
- He tells them that the catacombs filled with Low Gods and demons are below, completely unguarded. This is because they will tear you to shreds. They are trapped down there, unable to escape above a certain point.
- Jojo says she wants to sleep with the Cardinal in the Pope's bed. Finally, the seduction works! This venal Cardinal will take them all up there because he's a freak!
- They reach the bedroom and find a grand four-poster in an opulent room. The red cardinal birds are flying in and out of the open windows, partaking of the bird feeders hanging around the room. The Cardinal himself looks at Jojo lasciviously.

--- Final Positions:

- Jojo throws the Cardinal onto the bed. She straddles him... but her invisible armour prevents him from getting any further.
- Grogg, anticipating the Pope's eventual return, slides under the bed. The sounds above make his forehead turgid.
- Deletion feeds some alleged "magic mushrooms" he found to the birds, they begin acting very strangely.
- Odo, wearing her carefully braided Storage Beard, loots the fuck out of papal suite!

--- Wasn't This Meant to Be a Heist?
- And under a pile of spare Pope garb, inside the seat in the Popemobile, Sydney waits for their chance to strike. Surely the rest of the party is in position... right?

Total: 1200 exp

Enemies Defeated:

- The barman's wife (0 exp)

- The art gallery manager (0 exp)

- Sir Ratigan (10 exp)
Total: 10 exp

Treasures Looted:

- 1130 florins-worth of assorted valuables (1130 exp)

- The Stole of Shouting

Total: 1130 exp

Exp Totals:

- Carter / Sydney, Level 7 Magic-User: 105372 (Level up at 144000)

- Ollie / Jojo Fullbeard, Level 6 Muscle Wizard: 69192 (Level up at 72000)

- George / Deletion Snels, Level 5 Cyber-Inheritor: 20863 (Level up at 36000)

- Tom / Odo Grumblebelch, Level 5 Dwarven Barbarian: 16282 (Level up at 32000)
Level Up! +1d10 HP! +1 to Saves! +Lorebond +Backstory

- Charles / Grogg Greedy, Level 4 Inheritor: 10812 (Level up at 18000)