CAST
-------
Biff the Fighter (6)
Assorted Henchpersons / Temporary PCs: JoJo the Healer (5), Phil the Healer (5), Misty the Siren
Phil walked over to the sarcophagus - it had been smashed open at one end, revealing bones, a broken staff, and a shattered skull. He then checked out the chests - they had three locks apiece securing them.
Biff examined the urn - the large stopper was sealed in place with gold fill. He ignored Phil's suggestion to "push it over and smash it!" and pried the fill out with a dagger. He then lifted the stopper off the urn - and a genie burst forth in a puff of smoke, and totally wasn't a giant blue Will Smith. Not even remotely.
Genie: "I've been trapped in there forEVER! In thanks, I grant you three wishes!"
Phil: "Like anything we want? Treasure?"
Genie: "Not exactly. Think of it more as favors I can do for you."
Phil: "So not magic at all? Lame."
Genie: "Quiet. I wasn't even giving you any. They're for Biff."
Biff: "OK, can you open that treasure chest?"
Genie: "You bet!"
The genie walked over to the treasure chest, and using his incredible strength, pulled the lid up and open - shouting "OUCH! what was that! oh poison", before toppling over, turning even bluer than he was. As Phil said "Seriously? The genie DIED?", JoJo ran over and used Neutralize Poison on the genie. The genie bounced back to his feet, shouting "Wish number one, granted!" Peering into the chest, Biff saw that it had 10,000 gems worth at least 50gp each.
Biff then asked the genie to open the second chest, being careful of poison traps this time - the genie did so, and inside that chest was 10,000 platinum pieces.
The party then stared at the walls for a bit, confused as to what to do next. Phil put the Monocle of True Seeing to his eye, allowing him to see both a secret door next to the northwest statue, but also that there was a cavity BENEATH the northwest statue.
Biff, Phil, JoJo, and Misty all gathered around the statue and tried pushing it aside - but they were not strong enough. Biff was forced to use his third wish to get the genie to help - with all of them together, they were able to slide the statue, revealing a ring attached to a chain, disappearing into the stone floor. Biff gave the chain a yank, and the secret door slid open.
Genie: "That's it for wishes! Gonna stick around and watch though, should be entertaining!"
Phil: "What? You won't help? Just a little magic?"
Genie: "Fine!" (shuffling through list of djinni magic powers) "Oh! Right! Create Food and Water! Here, a HAM SANDWICH! WITH DIJON!"
Phil at the sandwich, and the party proceeded through the secret door. The corridor beyond wound its way to a pair of one-way secret doors that led back to already-explored parts of the dungeon, albeit with brand new pit traps (that Biff fell into, only taking minor damage). They spent a good deal of time trying to figure out where the actual Tomb of Acererak COULD be, not believing that the last room they were in was the actual tomb. Eventually the genie got bored and disappeared ("I've got drying paint that needs watching!")
Finally, the party re-read the riddle - the last sentence was "You've left and left and found my Tomb and now your soul will die." Phil grumbled that the corridor took a RIGHT after the secret door, not a left, but JoJo led them back anyways. Looking left as soon as he passed through the secret door, he saw a keyhole in the wall.
Phil inserted the gold key into the keyhole, and the wall slid down, revealing a small chamber. In the floor of this room was another keyhole - Phil walked up and put the gold key into this keyhole, and the key EXPLODED, blowing Phil into the ceiling. JoJo rushed over and used his healing magic to restore Phil to life.
Biff inserted the bronze key and turned it - nothing happened. Confused, he tried again - still nothing. After some discussion, Biff gave it one last try - and the floor began to rise beneath his feet. The party rushed out of the room, as a mithril vault rose up, filling the empty space. The vault door had a ring set into it, and Biff pulled it, revealing what was surely the true Tomb of Acererak.
Inside, there was:
a. A giant pile of jumpsuits and wallets, much like the people of Under-Miami wore
b. 97 base 10 gp gems and 3 huge gems (a 10000 gp peridot (so Gygax), a 50000 gp emerald, and a 100000 gp black opal)
c. 12 potions and 6 scrolls
d. A ring, a rod, a staff, a net, a robe, and a pair of boots
e. Three swords and a spear
f. A pile of bone dust, near which sat a skull with gems in its eye-sockets and tooth-sockets
Biff walked in to gather up the loot (with the exception of the jumpsuits and wallets) - but as he did so, the bone-dust rose up, forming itself into a human shape, making mystical gestures. He froze in fear, waiting for the apparation's next move, but it just waved its hands around for a bit and collapsed back into a pile of dust. He shrugged, gathered up the loot, and walked back out into the corridor, ignoring the skull. Phil held the monocle up one last time, and looked around the room - he saw screaming souls trapped in the evil skull's jewels, being slowly devoured - and then the monocle then shattered - its power had been exhausted.
The two healers, JoJo and Phil, were also capable of using teleport spells, due to the incredible poor design skills of the class's author. Biff divvied up the loot, and held onto the emerald, opal, net, robe, boots, 3 swords, crown and scepter. They split the other coins and the cheap gems up among themselves, and JoJo and Phil grabbed the potions, scrolls, ring, and rod. Misty, too, held many coins and potions.
JoJo first teleported Biff back to the Blessed Expeditionary Company Headquarters in Under-Miami. He arrived in the middle of a crime scene, with yellow tape all over the place, outlines of bodies in tape on the floor, and CSI Miami technicians examining the room.
Misty was not so lucky. Phil teleported her, and she appeared in the air 500' above the building. She instantly turned herself into a bird using her siren powers, dropping all the coins and other loot she was holding. The CSI techs were about to question Biff when they heard the clattering of coins and gems bouncing off the roof and the shattering of potion bottles. Passers-by began shouting "Free money!" and began pouring into the building, tearing through the crime tape to get to the stairs leading up to the roof. The CSI techs joined them as the citizenry looted Misty's lost share of the treasure, and Biff was able to sneak away.
JoJo and Phil needed a day to rest before they could re-use their teleport spells - but oddly, they didn't appear in the BCE HQ the next day. At a loss for what could have happened, Biff and Misty told Gutboy and Rolf of their adventures, Biff sold his gems and various bits of treasure, and had his magic items identified as two worthless cursed swords (the Under-Miami sage placed an orange sticker labelled CURSED on both of them), a sword of defending +4, a net of snaring, a robe of eyes, and boots of levitation. The platinum and gems from the two chests turned out to be worthless illusions, sadly.
Gains: 10,000 cp, 10,000 worthless gems, 50k gp emerald, 100k gp black opal, sword of defending +4, net of snaring, robe of eyes, boots of levitation
Kills: almost a genie, but not quite
Losses: JoJo and Phil ? WHAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED ?
Showing posts with label session recap. Show all posts
Showing posts with label session recap. Show all posts
2020-03-12
PDF
2020-01-20
session recap, 1/5/2020
CAST
-------
Pai Mei the Wu-Jen (7)
Biff the Fighter (6)
Clint the Duelist (4)
Assorted Henchpersons / Temporary PCs: JoJo the Healer (5), Phil the Healer (5), Mary Lou the Entertainer (Acrobat) (5)
Pai Mei, Biff, Jojo, and Phil opened the secret door. Beyond, a corridor headed east then south, opened a door, and entered an ancient laboratory. The walls were lined with shelves of dusty jars, and tables were covered with perfumes and bones, and there were many small coffers scattered over the floor. Three large vats sat in the middle of the room, each 7' across and 3' tall. The first had filthy water, the second had clear water with half of a golden key at the bottom, and the third was filled with a gray pudding-like substance. JoJo pulled Mary Lou's head out of his sack and resurrected her, as someone was needed to test the vats. Her body reformed and Pai Mei gave her his cloak and a 10' pole. "Thanks guys! You're the best! You'll never let me die in here!"
Mary Lou prodded the filthy water with the pole - it was just what it looked like, dirty water. She then stuck the pole into the second vat of clear water, and it dissolved before her eyes - the second vat was filled with acid! Pai Mei used his Ring of Stranger Things to levitate the key-half out of the vat and wiped it dry.
Mary Lou then poked the third vat with the remains of the pole - and the gray matter lurched out of the vat, reaching pseudopods towards her. The party unleashed bows, laser rifles, and spells at the gray blob, and decimated it in short order. In the bottom of the now-vacated vat was a second gold half-key. Pai Mei levitated it out, connected the halves together, and they fused into a single key.
The party turned their attention to the various coffers. They opened a few, getting small change and some cheap gems, and upon opening the third discovered it was full of poisonous snakes! The snakes tried to bite Biff but missed, and JoJo and Phil's arrows soon took care of the thread. They shook the rest of the coffers before opening, ignoring the ones that sounded snake-y, and gathered the remaining coins and cubic zirconiums within.
The party followed another corridor out of the room and down a set of stairs. Mary Lou used a different 10' pole to probe ahead and discovered a 20' long pit trap, the pit bottom lined with spikes. Pai Mei used the monocle of true seeing, and saw that the far end of the pit trap had a pressure plate. He used the Ring of Stranger Things to pressure the plate downwards, and the spikes began shooting up at the ceiling, bouncing back down into the pit. As each spike was fired, another took its place. He continued to exert pressure until the pit began filling with spikes - eventually the weight of the spikes collecting on the floor was enough to keep the pressure plate held down. The spikes slowly rose, filling the pit to near-floor-level before motion mostly stopped. The party then walked across the spent spikes to the other side.
The corridor dead-ended. Pai Mei once again used the monocle of true seeing, and found a secret door in the wall. They opened it, and entered a room with a door on the wall and two large tapestries hanging from the ceiling. Mary Lou used the pole to lift the tapestries, and saw nothing behind them. She then opened the door, revealing a stone wall and a small hole - from which shot a spear, skewering her! It was just a flesh wound, but as she pulled herself off the spear, the entire room began to vibrate, and the party fell to the floor.
Worried that the room was going to collapse, the party ran back outside. Pai Mei paused to grab one of the tapestries and yank it down as he was running - and as soon as he gave it a firm yank, it liquefied into green slime, collapsing on top of him. He was entirely dissolved in an instant, with not so much as a hair left behind to use for resurrection. The only item that didn't dissolve was the crystal monocle of true seeing - JoJo carefully prodded it out of the mass of slime without getting on himself.
Mary Lou used the pole to lift the remaining tapestry as JoJo used the monocle to scan the room - there was a secret door behind it. They quickly ran through, into a hallway, and down a flight of stairs. At the end of the stairs the corridor made a crossroads, with corridors heading north, south, and east. They explored east - it ended at a door, beyond which was a cavern filled with gold and silver mists. They could only see a few feet in, due to the thickness of the mists.
They re-read the riddle, and couldn't find any reference to mists, so they returned to the crossroads and headed south. It ended at another false door with a spear trap, which they handily avoided. They then headed north, and the door there was real. A corridor beyond headed north until it reached a door set in the east wall, and a stairway heading up. They decided to investigate the door - behind, a corridor headed east, and ended at a set of double doors.
JoJo opened the double doors, and gas flooded into the corridor - the entire party fell unconscious in an instant. They awoke a few minutes later, and stared in horror at the corridor beyond - a giant stone elephant on wheels had stopped only 10' from their location. With a little more momentum, they would all have been squashed flat. At a loss for where to go next, the party clambered over the elephant (nothing beyond but an empty room), and up the stairs (ended abruptly at a blank wall).
Unsure of what to do, the party reviewed the riddle, and as they did so a man rounded the corner - a duelist by the name of Clint, wearing a poncho and cowboy hat. Mary Lou shouted "He should be one of my bosses!". With no further discussion, Clint was a full party member.
The party went back to the misty room, and Clint walked into the mists. In the center of the room was a crystalline grotto, and a woman stood in its center, with two sacks of stuff laying at her feet.
Clint: "Hey... do you live here?"
Woman: "Maybe. It's possible."
Clint: "So you work for Acererak?"
Woman: "Oh, I don't think so."
Clint: "What's in the sacks?"
Woman: "I couldn't say."
From outside the room, JoJo shouted "Why don't you come with us?" The woman said, "Oh thank goodness, an invitation. Let's blow this place." As she headed out of the room, the sacks dissolved into nothingness, disappointing Clint greatly.
Clint: "So what's your name? Misty?"
Misty: "It is now! I'm a siren. I got tricked into sitting in that room for two thousand years. I was on a blind date with Acererak, and blammo, stuck in a tomb."
JoJo: "Do you want to come with us? We're exploring this place."
Misty: "Oh hell yeah, you guys are my besties now."
They then returned to the door in the northward corridor, and Biff used the monocle to see what he could - there was a secret trap door in the floor right after the doorway. He opened it, and they dropped down into a rough-hewn tunnel that led over one hundred feet to an iron door with three slots cut into it.
JoJo shone light through one of the slots, and peered through another, and saw a room full of stone pillars beyond. Biff tried putting a dagger in one of the slots - the slot was a little bigger than the dagger's blade, and rattled around. He then stuck his sword in - it was a perfect fit. JoJo and Phil put their swords through as well, and the door slid open. They retrieved their swords and walked into the room.
The room was enormous, and the ceiling was held up by dozens of pillars. There were three doors in the north wall, the two on the sides glowing with blue light, and the one in the center glowing with violet light. In the northwest corner of the room was a green devil face with a black opening for a mouth. In the northeast was another devil face, this one with a bluish tinge. Against the south wall was a silver throne on an ebony dais with a crown and scepter sitting on the seat.
The party opened the northwest door - inside was a table with a wooden sarcophagus atop it. They opened the coffin, and a mummy lay inside, with a large amethyst jammed into its skull-wrappings. JoJo grabbed the amethyst, and the mummy arose! Once again, lasers and magic lay waste to the foe.
They then headed to the central violet door - beyond was a 10' by 10' room with a door opposite. The walls were lined with paired swords and shields. Mary Lou walked in, and a pair of swords and a shield flew off the wall, slicing her head off again. Both head and body fell forward into the room, out of reach, and the weapons returned to their wall hangers. With no way to retrieve her, the party bid farewell to her corpse, and turned their attention to the throne.
The crown was made of gold, the scepter of electrum with a large gold sphere on one end and a small silver sphere on the other, and the throne was covered with skull-pictures, with the exception of a silver crown carving on the lower front panel.
Clint put the crown on his head, and the room was lit up like the middle of the day for him. He tried removing the crown, but it was stuck. As he fiddled with the crown, Biff picked up the scepter and touched the silver end to the silver crown carving on the throne - the floor began sinking down, revealing a passage heading south as it did so.
The party headed south down the passage - as soon as Clint did so, he went blind - he could only see in the throne room itself! He took the scepter, and touched the silver end to the crown, believing it was the key to safely removing the crown, just as silver-end-on-throne lowered the floor. He was mistaken, and instantly crumbled into fetid powder. The crown and scepter clattered to the floor, and Biff retrieved them.
The corridor headed south and up a set of stairs, ending at large mithril double doors. A cylindrical bronze key sat on the stairs, and JoJo picked it up. The mithril doors had a hemispherical depression with a keyhole in the center - JoJo put the golden key from the vat room in the keyhole, and was electrocuted for his efforts, falling back down the stairs. He then put the bronze key in the keyhole, and was once again electrocuted. Biff then looked at the gold sphere on the scepter, and saw that it was the same size as the hemispherical depression - he placed the sphere in the depression, and the doors swung open.
Beyond the mithril doors was a room with a silver ceiling and ivory walls inlaid with gold. In the center of the room was a large gold filigreed bronze urn, against the south wall was a granite sarcophagus with the name ACERERAK inscribed on it in platinum, and two massive iron chests sat on either side of the sarcophagus.
In each corner was a 9' tall statue of black iron:
Northeast - holding a saw-toothed two-handed sword raised to strike
Northwest - holding a huge, spike-ended mace
Southeast - holding a wickedly spiked morning star
Southwest - holding a voulge (please consult your Pocket Guide to Medieval Pole-Arms)
The three survivors, Biff and the henchmen JoJo and Phil, consulted the riddle's last stanza - "The iron men of visage grim do more than meets the viewers eye. You've left and left and found my Tomb and now your soul will die." and decided to wait until the next session to figure out this new puzzle.
Gains: gold key, 440 pp, 2 snake-filled coffers, 90 gp in cheap gems, amethyst worth 5000 gp, scepter worth 12,500 gp, crown worth 25,000 gp, bronze key
Kills: gray-colored ochre jelly, small poisonous snake
Losses: Pai Mei, Mary Lou, Clint
-------
Pai Mei the Wu-Jen (7)
Biff the Fighter (6)
Clint the Duelist (4)
Assorted Henchpersons / Temporary PCs: JoJo the Healer (5), Phil the Healer (5), Mary Lou the Entertainer (Acrobat) (5)
Pai Mei, Biff, Jojo, and Phil opened the secret door. Beyond, a corridor headed east then south, opened a door, and entered an ancient laboratory. The walls were lined with shelves of dusty jars, and tables were covered with perfumes and bones, and there were many small coffers scattered over the floor. Three large vats sat in the middle of the room, each 7' across and 3' tall. The first had filthy water, the second had clear water with half of a golden key at the bottom, and the third was filled with a gray pudding-like substance. JoJo pulled Mary Lou's head out of his sack and resurrected her, as someone was needed to test the vats. Her body reformed and Pai Mei gave her his cloak and a 10' pole. "Thanks guys! You're the best! You'll never let me die in here!"
Mary Lou prodded the filthy water with the pole - it was just what it looked like, dirty water. She then stuck the pole into the second vat of clear water, and it dissolved before her eyes - the second vat was filled with acid! Pai Mei used his Ring of Stranger Things to levitate the key-half out of the vat and wiped it dry.
Mary Lou then poked the third vat with the remains of the pole - and the gray matter lurched out of the vat, reaching pseudopods towards her. The party unleashed bows, laser rifles, and spells at the gray blob, and decimated it in short order. In the bottom of the now-vacated vat was a second gold half-key. Pai Mei levitated it out, connected the halves together, and they fused into a single key.
The party turned their attention to the various coffers. They opened a few, getting small change and some cheap gems, and upon opening the third discovered it was full of poisonous snakes! The snakes tried to bite Biff but missed, and JoJo and Phil's arrows soon took care of the thread. They shook the rest of the coffers before opening, ignoring the ones that sounded snake-y, and gathered the remaining coins and cubic zirconiums within.
The party followed another corridor out of the room and down a set of stairs. Mary Lou used a different 10' pole to probe ahead and discovered a 20' long pit trap, the pit bottom lined with spikes. Pai Mei used the monocle of true seeing, and saw that the far end of the pit trap had a pressure plate. He used the Ring of Stranger Things to pressure the plate downwards, and the spikes began shooting up at the ceiling, bouncing back down into the pit. As each spike was fired, another took its place. He continued to exert pressure until the pit began filling with spikes - eventually the weight of the spikes collecting on the floor was enough to keep the pressure plate held down. The spikes slowly rose, filling the pit to near-floor-level before motion mostly stopped. The party then walked across the spent spikes to the other side.
The corridor dead-ended. Pai Mei once again used the monocle of true seeing, and found a secret door in the wall. They opened it, and entered a room with a door on the wall and two large tapestries hanging from the ceiling. Mary Lou used the pole to lift the tapestries, and saw nothing behind them. She then opened the door, revealing a stone wall and a small hole - from which shot a spear, skewering her! It was just a flesh wound, but as she pulled herself off the spear, the entire room began to vibrate, and the party fell to the floor.
Worried that the room was going to collapse, the party ran back outside. Pai Mei paused to grab one of the tapestries and yank it down as he was running - and as soon as he gave it a firm yank, it liquefied into green slime, collapsing on top of him. He was entirely dissolved in an instant, with not so much as a hair left behind to use for resurrection. The only item that didn't dissolve was the crystal monocle of true seeing - JoJo carefully prodded it out of the mass of slime without getting on himself.
Mary Lou used the pole to lift the remaining tapestry as JoJo used the monocle to scan the room - there was a secret door behind it. They quickly ran through, into a hallway, and down a flight of stairs. At the end of the stairs the corridor made a crossroads, with corridors heading north, south, and east. They explored east - it ended at a door, beyond which was a cavern filled with gold and silver mists. They could only see a few feet in, due to the thickness of the mists.
They re-read the riddle, and couldn't find any reference to mists, so they returned to the crossroads and headed south. It ended at another false door with a spear trap, which they handily avoided. They then headed north, and the door there was real. A corridor beyond headed north until it reached a door set in the east wall, and a stairway heading up. They decided to investigate the door - behind, a corridor headed east, and ended at a set of double doors.
JoJo opened the double doors, and gas flooded into the corridor - the entire party fell unconscious in an instant. They awoke a few minutes later, and stared in horror at the corridor beyond - a giant stone elephant on wheels had stopped only 10' from their location. With a little more momentum, they would all have been squashed flat. At a loss for where to go next, the party clambered over the elephant (nothing beyond but an empty room), and up the stairs (ended abruptly at a blank wall).
Unsure of what to do, the party reviewed the riddle, and as they did so a man rounded the corner - a duelist by the name of Clint, wearing a poncho and cowboy hat. Mary Lou shouted "He should be one of my bosses!". With no further discussion, Clint was a full party member.
The party went back to the misty room, and Clint walked into the mists. In the center of the room was a crystalline grotto, and a woman stood in its center, with two sacks of stuff laying at her feet.
Clint: "Hey... do you live here?"
Woman: "Maybe. It's possible."
Clint: "So you work for Acererak?"
Woman: "Oh, I don't think so."
Clint: "What's in the sacks?"
Woman: "I couldn't say."
From outside the room, JoJo shouted "Why don't you come with us?" The woman said, "Oh thank goodness, an invitation. Let's blow this place." As she headed out of the room, the sacks dissolved into nothingness, disappointing Clint greatly.
Clint: "So what's your name? Misty?"
Misty: "It is now! I'm a siren. I got tricked into sitting in that room for two thousand years. I was on a blind date with Acererak, and blammo, stuck in a tomb."
JoJo: "Do you want to come with us? We're exploring this place."
Misty: "Oh hell yeah, you guys are my besties now."
They then returned to the door in the northward corridor, and Biff used the monocle to see what he could - there was a secret trap door in the floor right after the doorway. He opened it, and they dropped down into a rough-hewn tunnel that led over one hundred feet to an iron door with three slots cut into it.
JoJo shone light through one of the slots, and peered through another, and saw a room full of stone pillars beyond. Biff tried putting a dagger in one of the slots - the slot was a little bigger than the dagger's blade, and rattled around. He then stuck his sword in - it was a perfect fit. JoJo and Phil put their swords through as well, and the door slid open. They retrieved their swords and walked into the room.
The room was enormous, and the ceiling was held up by dozens of pillars. There were three doors in the north wall, the two on the sides glowing with blue light, and the one in the center glowing with violet light. In the northwest corner of the room was a green devil face with a black opening for a mouth. In the northeast was another devil face, this one with a bluish tinge. Against the south wall was a silver throne on an ebony dais with a crown and scepter sitting on the seat.
The party opened the northwest door - inside was a table with a wooden sarcophagus atop it. They opened the coffin, and a mummy lay inside, with a large amethyst jammed into its skull-wrappings. JoJo grabbed the amethyst, and the mummy arose! Once again, lasers and magic lay waste to the foe.
They then headed to the central violet door - beyond was a 10' by 10' room with a door opposite. The walls were lined with paired swords and shields. Mary Lou walked in, and a pair of swords and a shield flew off the wall, slicing her head off again. Both head and body fell forward into the room, out of reach, and the weapons returned to their wall hangers. With no way to retrieve her, the party bid farewell to her corpse, and turned their attention to the throne.
The crown was made of gold, the scepter of electrum with a large gold sphere on one end and a small silver sphere on the other, and the throne was covered with skull-pictures, with the exception of a silver crown carving on the lower front panel.
Clint put the crown on his head, and the room was lit up like the middle of the day for him. He tried removing the crown, but it was stuck. As he fiddled with the crown, Biff picked up the scepter and touched the silver end to the silver crown carving on the throne - the floor began sinking down, revealing a passage heading south as it did so.
The party headed south down the passage - as soon as Clint did so, he went blind - he could only see in the throne room itself! He took the scepter, and touched the silver end to the crown, believing it was the key to safely removing the crown, just as silver-end-on-throne lowered the floor. He was mistaken, and instantly crumbled into fetid powder. The crown and scepter clattered to the floor, and Biff retrieved them.
The corridor headed south and up a set of stairs, ending at large mithril double doors. A cylindrical bronze key sat on the stairs, and JoJo picked it up. The mithril doors had a hemispherical depression with a keyhole in the center - JoJo put the golden key from the vat room in the keyhole, and was electrocuted for his efforts, falling back down the stairs. He then put the bronze key in the keyhole, and was once again electrocuted. Biff then looked at the gold sphere on the scepter, and saw that it was the same size as the hemispherical depression - he placed the sphere in the depression, and the doors swung open.
Beyond the mithril doors was a room with a silver ceiling and ivory walls inlaid with gold. In the center of the room was a large gold filigreed bronze urn, against the south wall was a granite sarcophagus with the name ACERERAK inscribed on it in platinum, and two massive iron chests sat on either side of the sarcophagus.
In each corner was a 9' tall statue of black iron:
Northeast - holding a saw-toothed two-handed sword raised to strike
Northwest - holding a huge, spike-ended mace
Southeast - holding a wickedly spiked morning star
Southwest - holding a voulge (please consult your Pocket Guide to Medieval Pole-Arms)
The three survivors, Biff and the henchmen JoJo and Phil, consulted the riddle's last stanza - "The iron men of visage grim do more than meets the viewers eye. You've left and left and found my Tomb and now your soul will die." and decided to wait until the next session to figure out this new puzzle.
Gains: gold key, 440 pp, 2 snake-filled coffers, 90 gp in cheap gems, amethyst worth 5000 gp, scepter worth 12,500 gp, crown worth 25,000 gp, bronze key
Kills: gray-colored ochre jelly, small poisonous snake
Losses: Pai Mei, Mary Lou, Clint
2019-12-03
session recap, 10/20/2019
CAST
-------
Pai Mei the Wu-Jen (7)
Biff the Fighter (6)
Assorted Henchpersons / Temporary PCs: JoJo the Healer (5), Phil the Healer (5), Mary Lou the Entertainer (Acrobat) (5)
The party returned to the Spooktacular Tomb of Horrors, seeking glory and family entertainment. In the entrance hall, they saw that the pit traps were clogged with the bodies of Under-Miami thrill seekers. At the pit trap before the door to the gargoyle room, the bodies had piled high enough that visitors were using them to walk across safely. They returned to the misty archway, inspecting the glowing stones - yellow, blue, and orange - and pressed them in order from left to right. The mist disappeared, and the party walked through, staying on the red tile path, finding themselves teleported to a room with four-armed gargoyle statue, one arm broken of and lying on the floor.
The statue had faceted depressions in its three still-connected arms (no depression in the detached arm). Biff began pulling blue gems out of the collar they had taken from the animated four-armed gargoyle in the last session - after placing three, the hands of the statue clenched, crushing the gems to powder, and then dumped the powder on the floor. The gargoyle was otherwise motionless.
Biff did it again, and again, hoping for different results. With only one gem left, the party was puzzled - and Biff just stuck it in one of the palms, presumably for completeness' sake. The 10th gem did the trick however, and after crushing it, the statue spoke:
YOUR SACRIFICE WAS NOT IN VAIN. LOOK TO THE FOURTH TO FIND YOUR GAIN.
JoJo picked up the fourth arm, and heard something invisible fall from the palm and roll across the floor. He scrambled around for a while, eventually finding the item - a monocle, which became visible after some buffing and polishing.
The party followed a rough-hewn tunnel out of the room, and found themselves crawling through a hole into a much larger chamber. The walls were painted with human and animals, and many spheres in different colors. At the south end of the room was another misty arch. Looking back, the hole they crawled out of wasn't visible - it was behind an illusory gold sphere.
As they pondered their next move, a man in a jumpsuit crawled out of the gold sphere illusion behind them.
JoJo: "Who are you?"
Earl: "I'm Earl! You find the treasure yet? Wanna go splitsies?"
JoJo: "No..."
Earl: "Your loss! I'm gonna be RICH! RICH!"
Earl ran full speed through the misty arch, hollering about his soon-to-be-gained-riches, and disappeared.
They thought about Acererak's riddle ("night's good color is for those of great valor") and went to the black sphere - it, too, was an illusion! As they poked at it, Earl came back through the gold sphere, completely naked.
Earl: "Whatcha doin with that black circle? Whoa, you can put things through them?"
JoJo: "Where are your clothes?"
Earl: "Disappeared! That arch brought me back to the tomb entrance, buck naked! Everyone laughed at me, but who'll be laughing when I'm RICH?"
Earl began poking the other colored circles at random, and discovered that the red circle was illusory. He yelled some more about the treasure being "all mine" and dived through the circle. After a few minutes, there was a shout of triumph, a scream, and then silence.
The party ignored Earl's presumed demise, and crawled through the illusory black circle. A narrow rough-hewn tunnel twisted along for over a hundred feet, ending in a blank wall - obviously there was going to be a secret door - and there was - and it opened into a chapel.
The chapel had walls painted with zombies and corpses, many wooden pews with hinged seats, an altar of glowing opalescent blue stone, a dais with a wooden chair, brass candelabra, and two large urns. A human skeleton near the altar lay on the floor, its outstretched bony arm pointing to a glowing orange misty archway.
Pai Mei held the monocle to his eye - it was a powerful monocle, seeing into the interdimensional ether connecting all things - the altar was magical (not suprising), the archway was magical (again, no shock), the chapel was faintly radiating an aura of good (very surprising), and two of the front pews were trapped. Biff inspect the trap, and snipped some exposed wires. Pai Mei then used his Ring of Stranger Things (telekinesis) to open the pew seats one by one, ending with the trapped seats - the wires had been connected to vials filled with a mysterious gas - and they gathered 8000 sp, 6000 ep (electrum? really?), and 4000 gp all told.
Biff walked up to the glowing altar, stood behind it, and touched it - a lightning bolt sprang forth from the altar up the aisle between the pews. No one was in the way of the bolt - but the altar was now glowing a fiery blue-red.
As they pondered their next move, a naked man walked into the chapel.
Larry: "Yo, I'm Larry. Find the treasure?"
JoJo: "Not yet. It's probably behind that orange misty archway. You should check it out."
Larry: "You bet I will! Treasure, here I come!"
Naked Larry ran through the arch, into the glowing orange mist, and quickly returned - as a naked woman. Larry was now Larina.
Larina: "There wasn't any treasure! And I've got boobs now! What the hell?"
JoJo: "Well you can just go through it again to change back to a man."
Eyes narrowing in distrust, Larina was nevertheless convinced to recover her lost manhood by going through the arch a second time. She did - and returned once again as a woman.
Larina: "Well that didn't work. Guess it's boobs for me now! Wonder if I'll still be a woman after I die?"
JoJo: "You know what, you should sit on that glowing altar. That's probably what'll reveal the treasure."
Larina: "Well, OK. I'm going to need some money for a new wardrobe. Let's do it!"
The party retreated hastily and not at all suspiciously to the far corners of the chapel, and Larina hopped onto the glowing altar. It exploded instantly, sending bits of Larina, altar, pews, candelabras, skeleton, and stonework all over the chapel. The party was far enough away to be essentially unharmed as a mist of stone dust and blood settled over them.
Clearly, the altar wasn't a part of Acererak's puzzle. The party now carefully searched the room for secret doors, and found a small slot in the southeast corner - a little wider than a coin, 1/4" by 1". They dropped a gold coin in, but nothing happened.
Befuddled, the party headed back to the room of painted circles, and climbed through the red circle that Earl had used. A small tunnel ended at a sharp slope down into a room with three chests, the opening ten feet above the floor. Earl's body lay on the floor of the room, his neck twisted at an odd angle - the tunnel was a trap that had suddenly dropped down and Earl had broken his neck when he fell into the room.
The three chests were made of gold, silver, and wood, respectively. Pai Mei used his Ring of Stranger Things to open the gold chest - a dozen poisonous snakes leaped out, but the party easily killed them with crossbows from a safe distance. He then opened the silver chest using the ring, and revealed a clear crystal box with a ring inside. He levitated the box out of the chest (triggering a dart trap, which ineffectively hit the ceiling) towards the party. Finally, he opened the wood chest, and a giant skeleton leaped out like a malevolent Jack-in-the-Box, wielding two scimitars. It charged up to the opening in the wall and used its scimitars as scissors to cut Mary Lou's head off - the body and head tumbled forward into the room.
The party blasted away at the skeleton with magic missiles and crossbow bolts, reducing it to bone fragments, and pondered what to do with Mary Lou - was it worth wasting a Raise Dead on a henchperson again? JoJo decided that since Raise Dead did not require a complete corpse, the best course of action would be to just take her head, and if they needed her, they could raise her from that. Head in hand, the party headed back towards the chapel.
At the chapel, Pai Mei took the ring out of the crystal box and placed it in the slot in the wall ("the wise will not need sacrifice aught but a loop of magical metal"). The wall moved down slowly, crushing the ring flat as it did so, but a tunnel was revealed. They followed the tunnel down some stairs and reached a door, Biff poking at the floor with a ten foot pole the entire way. Immediately past the door, Biff found a pit trap, and then another door - the party recalled more of the riddle - "Two pits along the way will be found to lead to a fortuitous fall, so check the wall." They opened the next door, found another pit trap and door after that, and then opened the third door - with a third pit trap - and the tunnel continued on into darkness after it. Reasoning that two pits had passed, the fortuitous fall must be into the third pit, and Biff lowered himself down into the pit. He searched and quickly found a wooden door painted to look like stone.
They opened the painted door, revealing another tunnel - after following it for a bit, stairs descended down into a misty corridor. Biff walked down into the mist, but quickly ran back - the mist stung his eyes, blinding him, irritated his skin, and provoked a massive fear response. He ran past the party screaming about the tomb being a death trap, and they found him at the bottom of the painted-door pit desperately trying to jump ten feet up to the corridor above. After a few minutes he relaxed as the fear gas worked its way out of his system. While waiting, yet another naked Under-Miami citizen arrived.
Derek: "Hey man, I'm Derek. Find that treasure yet?"
JoJo: "No, but we're close - we can feel it! Just past this misty corridor - think you can scout ahead?"
Derek: "Sure, want to split the treasure?"
JoJo: "Yes, of course! You'll get a share!"
Derek headed into the mist - they heard him complaining about getting a rash, and then shout that he found a door. The mist began to flow through this door as Derek opened it - he returned to the party, and they waited for the mist to clear. The party and Derek headed through the door, discovering a stairway leading down into a room filled with webs.
Pai Mei used his ancient Oriental magics to send a burst of flame into the room, instantly clearing the webs. They revealed a crypt - a burning lich with a crown reclined motionless on a solid gold couch, and a fancy silver-inlaid glowing mace lay on the floor at the bottom of the stairs. JoJo picked up the mace, and a booming disembodied voice shouted: "WHO DARES TO DISTURB THE REST OF ACERERAK? IT IS YOUR DEATH WHICH YOU HAVE FOUND."
The lich stood and began waving its hands around in mystical patterns. The party unloaded their full arsenal, and instantaneously decimated the lich. Derek ran down and grabbed the crown ("ow! hot!") from the lich's head.
Derek: "K, this is my share! You take the couch! See you guys later!"
JoJo: "Yeah, no."
JoJo used the glowing mace to crack Derek's skull open, and retrieved the crown. Derek had clearly overestimated the size of his share.
Searching the room, the party found the burnt remnants of several scrolls, 278 pp, 29 cheap gems, and a jade coffer. Biff picked the coffer up and shook it violently to hear what was inside - what he heard was glass shattering. He opened the coffer and found six broken potion bottles and some sticky liquid sloshing around.
The party was unconvinced that this was actually Acererak - the lich had been defeated far too easily, and half the riddle was left to solve. They returned to the painted-door-pit, wizard locked the door to prevent any Under-Miami tourists from walking off with the solid gold couch, and followed the unexplored corridor after the third pit into the darkness. As they climbed out of the pit, another stranger showed up, this time fully clothed - a woman named Milly. She followed the party to the end of the corridor, asking about the treasure and whether they had seen Derek ("No, never heard of him").
At the end of the corridor was an oaken door bound with iron bands and secured with several locks. Pai Mei listened at the door and heard far-off music and happy singing behind it. The door was solidly secured, so the party quickly gave up on trying to open up and turned their attention back to the riddle. Milly got bored and wandered off ("I'm going to go look at those other painted circles!").
After some time, the party decided to head back to the pit trap with the stone-painted door and see if they had missed something. They went through, and Pai Mei pulled out the monocle to help search for more secret doors - and there it was, right after the painted door - a secret door. They had thought that "will be found to a fortuitous fall, so check the wall" referred to the wall of the pit and the painted door, but it was actually the wall immediately after the painted door that the riddle referenced (WTF Gygax?)
Gains: Monocle of True Seeing, 8000 sp, 6000 ep, 4000 gp, glowing mace, clear crystal box worth 10000 gp, jade coffer worth 5000 gp, crown worth 25000 gp, 278 pp, 290 gp in cheap gems
Kills: 12 poisonous snakes, giant skeleton, presumably fake Acererak, Derek
Losses: Earl, Mary Lou, Larina, blue gemstone collar
-------
Pai Mei the Wu-Jen (7)
Biff the Fighter (6)
Assorted Henchpersons / Temporary PCs: JoJo the Healer (5), Phil the Healer (5), Mary Lou the Entertainer (Acrobat) (5)
The party returned to the Spooktacular Tomb of Horrors, seeking glory and family entertainment. In the entrance hall, they saw that the pit traps were clogged with the bodies of Under-Miami thrill seekers. At the pit trap before the door to the gargoyle room, the bodies had piled high enough that visitors were using them to walk across safely. They returned to the misty archway, inspecting the glowing stones - yellow, blue, and orange - and pressed them in order from left to right. The mist disappeared, and the party walked through, staying on the red tile path, finding themselves teleported to a room with four-armed gargoyle statue, one arm broken of and lying on the floor.
The statue had faceted depressions in its three still-connected arms (no depression in the detached arm). Biff began pulling blue gems out of the collar they had taken from the animated four-armed gargoyle in the last session - after placing three, the hands of the statue clenched, crushing the gems to powder, and then dumped the powder on the floor. The gargoyle was otherwise motionless.
Biff did it again, and again, hoping for different results. With only one gem left, the party was puzzled - and Biff just stuck it in one of the palms, presumably for completeness' sake. The 10th gem did the trick however, and after crushing it, the statue spoke:
YOUR SACRIFICE WAS NOT IN VAIN. LOOK TO THE FOURTH TO FIND YOUR GAIN.
JoJo picked up the fourth arm, and heard something invisible fall from the palm and roll across the floor. He scrambled around for a while, eventually finding the item - a monocle, which became visible after some buffing and polishing.
The party followed a rough-hewn tunnel out of the room, and found themselves crawling through a hole into a much larger chamber. The walls were painted with human and animals, and many spheres in different colors. At the south end of the room was another misty arch. Looking back, the hole they crawled out of wasn't visible - it was behind an illusory gold sphere.
As they pondered their next move, a man in a jumpsuit crawled out of the gold sphere illusion behind them.
JoJo: "Who are you?"
Earl: "I'm Earl! You find the treasure yet? Wanna go splitsies?"
JoJo: "No..."
Earl: "Your loss! I'm gonna be RICH! RICH!"
Earl ran full speed through the misty arch, hollering about his soon-to-be-gained-riches, and disappeared.
They thought about Acererak's riddle ("night's good color is for those of great valor") and went to the black sphere - it, too, was an illusion! As they poked at it, Earl came back through the gold sphere, completely naked.
Earl: "Whatcha doin with that black circle? Whoa, you can put things through them?"
JoJo: "Where are your clothes?"
Earl: "Disappeared! That arch brought me back to the tomb entrance, buck naked! Everyone laughed at me, but who'll be laughing when I'm RICH?"
Earl began poking the other colored circles at random, and discovered that the red circle was illusory. He yelled some more about the treasure being "all mine" and dived through the circle. After a few minutes, there was a shout of triumph, a scream, and then silence.
The party ignored Earl's presumed demise, and crawled through the illusory black circle. A narrow rough-hewn tunnel twisted along for over a hundred feet, ending in a blank wall - obviously there was going to be a secret door - and there was - and it opened into a chapel.
The chapel had walls painted with zombies and corpses, many wooden pews with hinged seats, an altar of glowing opalescent blue stone, a dais with a wooden chair, brass candelabra, and two large urns. A human skeleton near the altar lay on the floor, its outstretched bony arm pointing to a glowing orange misty archway.
Pai Mei held the monocle to his eye - it was a powerful monocle, seeing into the interdimensional ether connecting all things - the altar was magical (not suprising), the archway was magical (again, no shock), the chapel was faintly radiating an aura of good (very surprising), and two of the front pews were trapped. Biff inspect the trap, and snipped some exposed wires. Pai Mei then used his Ring of Stranger Things (telekinesis) to open the pew seats one by one, ending with the trapped seats - the wires had been connected to vials filled with a mysterious gas - and they gathered 8000 sp, 6000 ep (electrum? really?), and 4000 gp all told.
Biff walked up to the glowing altar, stood behind it, and touched it - a lightning bolt sprang forth from the altar up the aisle between the pews. No one was in the way of the bolt - but the altar was now glowing a fiery blue-red.
As they pondered their next move, a naked man walked into the chapel.
Larry: "Yo, I'm Larry. Find the treasure?"
JoJo: "Not yet. It's probably behind that orange misty archway. You should check it out."
Larry: "You bet I will! Treasure, here I come!"
Naked Larry ran through the arch, into the glowing orange mist, and quickly returned - as a naked woman. Larry was now Larina.
Larina: "There wasn't any treasure! And I've got boobs now! What the hell?"
JoJo: "Well you can just go through it again to change back to a man."
Eyes narrowing in distrust, Larina was nevertheless convinced to recover her lost manhood by going through the arch a second time. She did - and returned once again as a woman.
Larina: "Well that didn't work. Guess it's boobs for me now! Wonder if I'll still be a woman after I die?"
JoJo: "You know what, you should sit on that glowing altar. That's probably what'll reveal the treasure."
Larina: "Well, OK. I'm going to need some money for a new wardrobe. Let's do it!"
The party retreated hastily and not at all suspiciously to the far corners of the chapel, and Larina hopped onto the glowing altar. It exploded instantly, sending bits of Larina, altar, pews, candelabras, skeleton, and stonework all over the chapel. The party was far enough away to be essentially unharmed as a mist of stone dust and blood settled over them.
Clearly, the altar wasn't a part of Acererak's puzzle. The party now carefully searched the room for secret doors, and found a small slot in the southeast corner - a little wider than a coin, 1/4" by 1". They dropped a gold coin in, but nothing happened.
Befuddled, the party headed back to the room of painted circles, and climbed through the red circle that Earl had used. A small tunnel ended at a sharp slope down into a room with three chests, the opening ten feet above the floor. Earl's body lay on the floor of the room, his neck twisted at an odd angle - the tunnel was a trap that had suddenly dropped down and Earl had broken his neck when he fell into the room.
The three chests were made of gold, silver, and wood, respectively. Pai Mei used his Ring of Stranger Things to open the gold chest - a dozen poisonous snakes leaped out, but the party easily killed them with crossbows from a safe distance. He then opened the silver chest using the ring, and revealed a clear crystal box with a ring inside. He levitated the box out of the chest (triggering a dart trap, which ineffectively hit the ceiling) towards the party. Finally, he opened the wood chest, and a giant skeleton leaped out like a malevolent Jack-in-the-Box, wielding two scimitars. It charged up to the opening in the wall and used its scimitars as scissors to cut Mary Lou's head off - the body and head tumbled forward into the room.
The party blasted away at the skeleton with magic missiles and crossbow bolts, reducing it to bone fragments, and pondered what to do with Mary Lou - was it worth wasting a Raise Dead on a henchperson again? JoJo decided that since Raise Dead did not require a complete corpse, the best course of action would be to just take her head, and if they needed her, they could raise her from that. Head in hand, the party headed back towards the chapel.
At the chapel, Pai Mei took the ring out of the crystal box and placed it in the slot in the wall ("the wise will not need sacrifice aught but a loop of magical metal"). The wall moved down slowly, crushing the ring flat as it did so, but a tunnel was revealed. They followed the tunnel down some stairs and reached a door, Biff poking at the floor with a ten foot pole the entire way. Immediately past the door, Biff found a pit trap, and then another door - the party recalled more of the riddle - "Two pits along the way will be found to lead to a fortuitous fall, so check the wall." They opened the next door, found another pit trap and door after that, and then opened the third door - with a third pit trap - and the tunnel continued on into darkness after it. Reasoning that two pits had passed, the fortuitous fall must be into the third pit, and Biff lowered himself down into the pit. He searched and quickly found a wooden door painted to look like stone.
They opened the painted door, revealing another tunnel - after following it for a bit, stairs descended down into a misty corridor. Biff walked down into the mist, but quickly ran back - the mist stung his eyes, blinding him, irritated his skin, and provoked a massive fear response. He ran past the party screaming about the tomb being a death trap, and they found him at the bottom of the painted-door pit desperately trying to jump ten feet up to the corridor above. After a few minutes he relaxed as the fear gas worked its way out of his system. While waiting, yet another naked Under-Miami citizen arrived.
Derek: "Hey man, I'm Derek. Find that treasure yet?"
JoJo: "No, but we're close - we can feel it! Just past this misty corridor - think you can scout ahead?"
Derek: "Sure, want to split the treasure?"
JoJo: "Yes, of course! You'll get a share!"
Derek headed into the mist - they heard him complaining about getting a rash, and then shout that he found a door. The mist began to flow through this door as Derek opened it - he returned to the party, and they waited for the mist to clear. The party and Derek headed through the door, discovering a stairway leading down into a room filled with webs.
Pai Mei used his ancient Oriental magics to send a burst of flame into the room, instantly clearing the webs. They revealed a crypt - a burning lich with a crown reclined motionless on a solid gold couch, and a fancy silver-inlaid glowing mace lay on the floor at the bottom of the stairs. JoJo picked up the mace, and a booming disembodied voice shouted: "WHO DARES TO DISTURB THE REST OF ACERERAK? IT IS YOUR DEATH WHICH YOU HAVE FOUND."
The lich stood and began waving its hands around in mystical patterns. The party unloaded their full arsenal, and instantaneously decimated the lich. Derek ran down and grabbed the crown ("ow! hot!") from the lich's head.
Derek: "K, this is my share! You take the couch! See you guys later!"
JoJo: "Yeah, no."
JoJo used the glowing mace to crack Derek's skull open, and retrieved the crown. Derek had clearly overestimated the size of his share.
Searching the room, the party found the burnt remnants of several scrolls, 278 pp, 29 cheap gems, and a jade coffer. Biff picked the coffer up and shook it violently to hear what was inside - what he heard was glass shattering. He opened the coffer and found six broken potion bottles and some sticky liquid sloshing around.
The party was unconvinced that this was actually Acererak - the lich had been defeated far too easily, and half the riddle was left to solve. They returned to the painted-door-pit, wizard locked the door to prevent any Under-Miami tourists from walking off with the solid gold couch, and followed the unexplored corridor after the third pit into the darkness. As they climbed out of the pit, another stranger showed up, this time fully clothed - a woman named Milly. She followed the party to the end of the corridor, asking about the treasure and whether they had seen Derek ("No, never heard of him").
At the end of the corridor was an oaken door bound with iron bands and secured with several locks. Pai Mei listened at the door and heard far-off music and happy singing behind it. The door was solidly secured, so the party quickly gave up on trying to open up and turned their attention back to the riddle. Milly got bored and wandered off ("I'm going to go look at those other painted circles!").
After some time, the party decided to head back to the pit trap with the stone-painted door and see if they had missed something. They went through, and Pai Mei pulled out the monocle to help search for more secret doors - and there it was, right after the painted door - a secret door. They had thought that "will be found to a fortuitous fall, so check the wall" referred to the wall of the pit and the painted door, but it was actually the wall immediately after the painted door that the riddle referenced (WTF Gygax?)
Gains: Monocle of True Seeing, 8000 sp, 6000 ep, 4000 gp, glowing mace, clear crystal box worth 10000 gp, jade coffer worth 5000 gp, crown worth 25000 gp, 278 pp, 290 gp in cheap gems
Kills: 12 poisonous snakes, giant skeleton, presumably fake Acererak, Derek
Losses: Earl, Mary Lou, Larina, blue gemstone collar
2019-09-11
session recap, 9/8/2019
CAST
-------
Pai Mei the Wu-Jen (7)
Gutboy the Cleric (7)
Biff the Fighter (6)
Assorted Henchpersons: JoJo the Healer (5), Phil the Healer (5), Mary Lou the Entertainer (Acrobat) (5), Grog the Neanderthal (5), Rosy the Geisha (5)
After an uneventful journey back to Under-Miami with the glorious black pearl, the party divvied up the loot - but rather than retiring to a lifestyle of ease and luxury, they decided to once again risk all in a life-threatening pursuit of gold and thrills. Surface-worlders were a common sight on Ocean Drive - the Blessed Expeditionary Company had set up an auxiliary office in one of the art deco hotels, and "BEC" t-shirts adorned the adventurers milling about on the nearby beaches.
Chatter among the locals revealed two recent adventuring opportunities. The first was nearby - with the coming Halloween season, the city was sponsoring their annual "Spooktacular Tomb" event - a three-entrance tomb, from which no one ever returned - surrounded by booths offering fried dough, cotton candy, and balloons - the perfect diversion for the seemingly immortal populace of Under-Miami. The second was on the surface - the BEC was sponsoring a "Loincloth Challenge", where incorporated adventuring parties who dropped into a gaping Hole of Adventure with no equipment other than loincloths, and made it out the "other end", wherever that may be, would be granted a full year exemption from the BEC's 10% tax on proceeds from dungeon exploration.
Adventuring unequipped was unseemly, so Pai Mei proposed that the party visit the Tomb. Gutboy was further outraged that the BEC was establishing a presence in Under-Miami - their refuge from political skullduggery. Gutboy took his outrage to his good friend, the mayor - equally outraged, the mayor proclaimed that a lavish fundraising party with sufficient blow for the guests would sway him towards ignoring any "accidents" that occurred at the BEC auxiliary headquarters.
Gutboy spent his portion of the proceeds from the sale of the Black Pearl (purchased by an anonymous investor, either the mayor or an acquaintance, as it was on a pedestal in the mayor's office) on illicit pharmaceuticals, and reached out to one of the party's growing list of archnemeses, the cannibal wizard Ashkasar, with an invitation. At the party, he struck a deal:
Gutboy: "Ashkasar! I think we have a lot in common!"
Ashkasar: "I think I'm going to eat you. And everyone you know."
Gutboy: "Don't be like that! Look, there's some people who need to go - the BEC. Clear them out, and your cannibal society will get there hotel back!"
Ashkasar: "I have my own quarters, thank you. Although the society will certainly be pleased to get their headquarters back. And I could go for someone different to eat, it's the same person over and over and over here. Such a lack of variety! I'll assist, but understand this partnership is temporary. You took my spellbook, and my best silverware! You're going to be my lunch."
Gutboy: "We'll be friends for life! Give it a chance! We have a wonderful future together!"
[Pai Mei and Biff spent their proceeds in a more practical fashion, purchasing a variety of laser rifles, machine guns, and ammunition.]
After the festivities ended, the party headed to the BEC headquarters. Various functionaries were inside, along with five would-be henchmen, waiting for a party to hire them. Gutboy incorporated the party, naming them "Ashkasar's Minions" in an attempt to frame the wizard for the mayhem to come - Ashkasar was to slaughter everyone in the BEC headquarters, while Gutboy was to hire all the henchmen and get them killed during in an adventure (a task the party had a remarkably successful history with).
The five henchpeople were a motley crew: two rival healers, JoJo and Phil, who were busy cutting their forearms to show who could better apply a bandage, Mary Lou the spunky acrobat, looking to entertain adventuring parties with her tumbling while earning her fortune, Grog the Neanderthal, who may be just a caveman, but even he knew the profits to be found as a henchman, and Rosy the Geisha, who had somehow fallen into the belief that artistic dancing with a hand-fan was best practiced in trap-filled dungeons.
The henchmen demanded a standard half-share to join the party ("Them's the BEC United Henchman Local 411 rules! This is a union dungeon, buddy!") - Gutboy stopped by the Cannibal Society temporary HQ to let Ashkasar know that it was open season on the BEC auxiliary headquarters staff - and the party was off to the SPOOKTACULAR TOMB for Halloween adventure.
At the tomb entrances, the party decided to enquire after a guide.
Pai Mei: "Hey, does anyone know what's inside?"
Future guide: "Oh no mister, that's why it's so spooktacular! Nobody ever returns! Great Halloween mystery, right?"
Pai Mei: "Yeah. Think of all the wallets that must be stacked up in there by now. You mind being our guide?"
Guide: "Awesome! This is going to be the most fun ever! Let me light this torch!"
The "guide" spent several minutes trying to light his cotton candy on fire as a makeshift torch, and happily led the crew into the tomb. They selected the central entrance from the three available. Inside, the walls were covered with plaster, which was in turn painted with murals of people performing various mundane chores. One mural stood out, showing a picture of a jackal-headed Anubis holding a metal box - which protruded from the wall - an actual box - very tricky, tomb architect! The mural next to it depicted a torture chamber with an iron door, in stark contrast to the more mundane scenes painted on the rest of the tunnel. A path of red stone was set into the floor of the tunnel, meandering its way south. Pai Mei instructed the guide to "check out" the box - he happily followed the path, waving his flaming cotton candy around merrily, and the floor opened up underneath him, dropping him into a pit.
The party rushed over and looked in - the pit was filled with spikes, coated with purple goop, and filled with the dead bodies of Halloween tomb explorers, the guide being the latest addition. Unphased, they had Mary Lou open the box (hinged underneath instead of the top) - she felt inside, found an invisible lever, and yanked it at Pai Mei's behest - dropping her into yet another spiked pit. The party rushed to this second pit, and saw her face turning black as she choked on her tongue, the purple poison on the spikes rotting her from the inside out. They quickly lowered Grog on a rope to drag her back up, and the healers fought over the opportunity to neutralize her poison ("You guys are so compassionate! I heard you adventurers left henchmen to die!"). They headed 10' south, Mary Lou leading the way, and she fell into yet another pit - clearly the tomb architect was a pit fan. She died messily on a spike - the healers suggested using their Raise Dead Fully to bring her back, but were vetoed by Gutboy - such powers were for employers, not coworkers.
The party handed a 10' pole to Grog, and had him and Rosy lead them down the tunnel - the tapping pole found several more spiked pit traps. At the end of the tunnel was a giant green devil face carved in the south wall, its open mouth a gaping black maw which no light penetrated. To the east was an archway, filled with swirling mist. As Rosie approached it, blocks in the archway lit up - a block to the left glowing yellow, a block at the top of the arch glowing blue, and a block on the right glowing orange. Grog the Neanderthal suddenly piped up - "Hey, checking out the hall all this way, I can tell there's a message written on the floor! So easy a caveman can read it!" He recited the following:
ACERERAK CONGRATULATES YOU ON YOUR POWERS OF OBSERVATION. SO MAKE OF THIS WHATEVER YOU WISH, FOR YOU WILL BE MINE IN THE END NO MATTER WHAT!
Go back to the tormentor or through the arch,
and the second great hall you'll discover.
Shun green if you can, but night's good color
is for those of great valor.
If shades of red stand for blood the wise
will not need sacrifice aught but a loop of
magical metal - you're well along your march.
Two pits along the way will be found to lead
to a fortuitous fall, so check the wall.
These keys and those are most important of all,
and beware of trembling hands and what will maul.
If you find the false you find the true
and into the columned hall you'll come,
and there the throne that's key and keyed.
The iron men of visage grim do more than
meets the viewers eye.
You've left and left and found my Tomb
and now your soul will die.
The party thought about it for a second, went "meh", and headed through the misty arch - with the exception of Gutboy, who was overcome with abject terror, memories of past lives dying in similar tombs overwhelming him. He ran back to the hotel, vowing never to return - leaving henchmen to act in his stead. As each person passed through, they were teleported into a cramped 10' by 10' room with three levers on the north wall. The levers (joysticks, really) could be moved up, down, left, and right. Biff immediately grabbed one of the levers and held tight, fearful that the floor might suddenly drop out, given the sheer number of pit traps they had just found.
The party decided that all three levers should be moved down simultaneously - so Biff, Grog, and Rosie all pulled levers down. The floor, of course, instantly opened, and the party began to fall - except for the insightful Biff, who clung to his lever with all his might. Pai Mei used his Stranger Things Ring (telekinesis) to hold himself in place, and the two healers used their Fly spells as they fell, allowing them to safely float back to the rest of the party. Grog and Rosie screamed for a long time before a splat was heard - and Gutboy's plan had now claimed three of the five henchmen. After a few minutes, the floor rose back up.
Nervous, but with no other options, the party tried moving the levers left simultaneously, then right, then up - which was the correct answer. As they moved the levers up, a trapdoor opened in the ceiling, revealing a crawlspace that led back to the tomb entrance. They pushed open a cramped door, covered by plaster murals, and lowered themselves back into the main tunnel.
Revisiting the clues left by Acererak, they went to the torturer mural and tapped it with a 10' pole - the iron door echoed metallically - there was an iron door beneath the plaster painting. One of the healers knocked the plaster off and opened the door, and the party advanced into the tomb.
The next room was occupied by a massive, alarmingly mobile 4-armed gargoyle, wearing a collar studded with blue gemstones. One healer slowed the gargoyle, while another hasted the party - this four-to-one ratio of party to gargoyle actions ensured the monster's demise. Lasers, swords of salesmanship, fiery magic shurikens (with clouds of concealing smoke, a detail Pai Mei elaborated on in great detail) lacerated the beast, but not before it was able to knock one of the healers (JoJo) unconscious. Disdainfully, his colleague Biff brought him back from the brink of death, a shame he will never let JoJo live down.
Pai Mei examined the collar - a compartment contained a piece of paper with another of Acererak's clues:
Look low and high for gold, to hear a tale untold. The archway at the end, and on your way you'll wend.
Resources expended, the party decided they should leave the tomb and recover before proceeding further. On the way out the door, JoJo raised Mary Lou from the dead (bringing the losses from three back down to two) - "You are the best employers EVER!" - and the party let the crowd of funseekers outside know that they had made progress in the tomb. Crowds of victims/sightseers rushed into the tomb - distant screams were heard - and then nothing.
Gains: Blue gemstone collar (1000 gp value)
Kills: Four-armed gargoyle
Losses: Rosy, Grog, Gutboy's courage
2019-08-08
session recap, 8/4/2019
CAST
-------
Mongo the Fighter (4)
Mongo the Fighter (4)
Mongo the Fighter (4)
Mongo the Fighter (4)
The Mongos spent some time in confusion, trying to remember where they were and why. They appeared to be two fewer than a moment before, but no one took notice. As they recalled the events of a year ago / a moment ago, they realized that three sharks were waiting for them on the other side of the door in this flooded dungeon.
Mongo opened the door a crack, thrusting his sword at one of the sharks. The blade connected, and the sharks fled - they did not favor food that fought back. The Mongos waited a bit, opened the door, and headed back towards the large room the sharks had originally come from. They saw the fins circling at the edge of their torchlight, and quicly closed the door to the room, trapping the sharks in the room once again.
Never ones to flinch from danger - at least not when they occupied disposable Mongo bodies - the party headed west, into an unvisited part of the dungeon. The corridor curved north, then up, above water level, then back down into the water. They graciously allowed the grieving cannibal chief to lead the way, which led to his almost instant demise at the hands of several megapiranha lurking in the watery depths of the corridor. While an unarmed cannibal was easy prey, the Mongos had swords, crossbows, and low tolerance for seafood - a recipe for victory! The fish were driven off, pursued to the end of the corridor, and murdered where they swam.
The corridor ended in a door with rubber gasket around it. Incautiously, the Mongos pushed the door open, causing the water, and themselves, to be swept into a dry room, against a nondenominational altar. The chief's fish-gnawed corpse was washed on top of the altar in a grisly display. The Mongos were unmoved (except by water pressure of course). They confiscated a well-balanced bone-handled mace hanging from a hook on the wall, searched the altar under the water level, and discovered a secret compartment containing 500 gold coins and a pair of coral fish statuettes.
None of this was the great black pearl mentioned in the brochures in Under-Miami - disgruntled, the party headed back to the shark room. One Mongo opened the door a crack and swung his sword at the sharks that charged towards it, while another ducked under the water and failed miserably to fire a crossbow at the sharks between the first Mongo's legs. Above-air sword-Mongo scored hit after hit, while below-water crossbow-Mongo continued to fire crossbow quarrels into the deep, missing the crowd of sharks every time. Sharks died one after another, and the room was safe for Mongokind.
A Mongo performed a survey of the edge of the room, swimming the perimeter. At the northwest corner, he (literally) stumbled upon a giant oyster, eight feet wide. He dove down and saw that the brochure was correct - a giant black pearl the size of a basketball sat inside the oyster. He swam in to grab it, kicking oyster organs with his Mongo boots, causing the bivalve to slam its shell shut on the helpless Mongo.
Mongos descended on the oyster, using their swords to shuck it. They pried it open before their bosom friend Mongo drowned, and brought their prize to the surface - the pearl was theirs!
"Can this be all there is?" they collectively wondered. "Is this the end of the dungeon?" Not ones to safely leave with a vast quantity of treasure, they searched for secret doors instead - and found one, behind the oyster. Pressing a catch, a section of the wall slid away, revealing a corridor heading north. They waded down the hall, fighting giant rats that poured from holes above the waterline - they were no threat whatsoever. At the end of the hall, another door - opening it revealed an empty 30' by 30' room with a door on the opposite side.
Mongo prodded the room with a 10' pole, triggering a flaming oil trap. Mongo, Mongo, Mongo, and Mongo retreated down the hall until the oil burned out and the smoke cleared, then returned. Mongo then opened the door on the opposite side, revealing a dry corridor beyond, and a lowered portcullis. The water swept the Mongos through and -
Mongo: "Hey, did that door have a gasket?"
Mongo: "Shouldn't we have noticed that?"
- and Mongo closed the door just in time, defying all physical laws with an act of impossible strength. Instead, they knifed through the gasket until the door showed signs of giving way, then retreated to the deep-water oyster room. They waited until the water drained to dungeon-corridor-floor-level, and then returned to the 30' by 30' room and the portcullis beyond.
Mongo pulled a lever, lifting the portcullis - beyond that was a stairway heading down, and a door heading west. They opened the non-gasketed door, revealing a steaming pit and a corridor beyond. Following this new corridor, they came to another portcullis, beyond which was a room full of adorable Norman Rockwell-esque statuary, carved in nauseating green-streaked red stone. Wrapped around several of the statues of women holding infants and prancing unicorns were four snakes.
The portcullis lifted easily - clearly there was a counterweight. Mongo boldly stepped in to confront the snakes, who reared up and spit poison in his eyes as he stepped on a pressure plate, causing the portcullis to crash down behind him. Blinded, he ran headlong into a unicorn statue, and the snakes converged on him, biting and spitting.
Mongo, Mongo, and Mongo were not going to abandon Mongo, so they fired crossbows through the portcullis until the snakes were slain. They then pressed the pressure plate again to release tension on the portcullis and lifted it. Mongo's body had gone bloated and black with snake venom, and began to dissolve into green gas. Mongo and Mongo backed off, but Mongo caught a deep lungful of the gas. He staggered from the room complaining of severe gas pains, as his abdomen began to distend and bubble.
Horrifyingly, a lump of flesh detached from Mongo's side and fell to the floor. The bubbling meat formed into a tiny hand, followed by a tiny arm, and quickly took the form of a mini-Mongo. The "parent" Mongo was left with a deep gap in his body.
Unphased, Mongo, Mongo, Deformed Mongo and mini-Mongo decided to head down the stairs near the first portcullis in search of further treasure. At the bottom was a volcanic chamber full of boiling mud. Occasional mud-bubble bursts revealed the ruddy light of magma below. In the glow, they saw mineral terraces on the northwestern edge of the cavern which ascended into darkness, and a lava tube heading into the darkness at the southwestern edge. They traversed a series of narrow mineral bridges across the boiling mud, heading towards the lava tube.
At the halfway point, a tentacles head emerged from a nearby mud pool.
Kopru: "Obey the will of the Kopru!"
Mongo: "OK."
Kopru: "What? You mean, without mind control? This isn't usually how this goes"
Mongo: "What are the benefits?"
Kopru: "Oh.. well... there's lots of bowing to the Kopru. Hanging out in this mud cave..."
Mongo: "No thanks."
Mongo: "Never mind."
Disappointed at lost opportunity and its own poor salesmanship, the Kopru probed Mongo's mind, and then Mongo's mind, and then Mongo's mind, as the Mongos fired crossbows at it. One of the Mongos shouted "Oh! Hey! There ARE a lot of benefits to obeying the will of the Kopru!" and rushed at mini-Mongo, attempting to fling him to his Kopru master. He missed - but the Mongos did not, and the kopru was skewered between the eyes by a quarrel. Mongo reconsidered his kopru allegiance, and the party continued to the lava tunnel.
The tunnel ended at a ledge overlooking a deep pit, 100' across and 200' down, full of boiling lava. Floating in the lava was a massive egg, 50' across. A shadowy form moved inside the egg, pressing at the edges. After some discussion, the Mongos wisely decided that shooting holes in the eggshell with their crossbows probably wouldn't end well, and headed back to the mud cave, and from there to the mineral terraces.
They saw a kopru pop its head out of another mud pool, right next to the path to the terraces - and made a run for it. The kopru shouted "Obey the will of..." as they ran by at top speed. Confined to its pool as it was, they were quickly out of the range of its sales pitch.
It was a short climb to the top of the mineral terraces - at the top was a skeleton sitting atop a throne, both encrusted under a layer of minerals, deposited by water dripping from a stalactite above. Mongo hammered away at the mineral, revealing the shape of the throne - forged impractically and uncomfortably from hundreds of swords - and the presence of a ring (inscribed with the number 11) on the skeleton's hand, and a beautiful sword with a kopru-head pommel in its lap. Clearing the minerals away entirely, Mongo then sat on the throne, becoming ruler of the seven kingdoms. It's a better ending than HBO came up with.
Mongo put on the ring, expecting that it would give him the salesmanship of the kopru, perhaps allowing him to bend the kopru to HIS will. The party approached the kopru they had earlier fled, and Mongo concentrated all his will on the ring and the kopru. As it shouted "Really, the will of the kopru isn't that bad!", the tentacle-faced monster was hurled 60' up into the air - the ring wasn't a ring of salesmanship, it was a ring of telekinesis. Mongo released the kopru - it plummeted to the mineral path in front of them - and Mongo and Mongo finished it up with their swords.
The Mongos were convinced that they had fully and thoroughly looted the dungeon, and headed back to the vat-room from which they were born. They hopped one after another into the vat of bubbling flesh, dissolving back into meat-goo.
In a cave on the other side of the volcanic slope, Gutboy, Pai Mei, Rolf, and Biff awoke as the plastic hemispheres attached to their heads retracted into the ceiling. On a pedestal in front of them was all the loot the Mongos had acquired - including the black pearl.
Gains: 2 coral statues 1000 gp each, ring of telekinesis inscribed with "11", mace with fish-carved bone handle, sword with kopru pommel, and the BLACK PEARL OF MONSTER ISLAND
Kills: 3 mako sharks, 3 giant piranhas, giant oyster, 6 giant rats, 4 spitting cobras, 2 kopru
Losses: Mongo. Temporarily. Half of a Mongo when you do the math
-------
Mongo the Fighter (4)
Mongo the Fighter (4)
Mongo the Fighter (4)
Mongo the Fighter (4)
The Mongos spent some time in confusion, trying to remember where they were and why. They appeared to be two fewer than a moment before, but no one took notice. As they recalled the events of a year ago / a moment ago, they realized that three sharks were waiting for them on the other side of the door in this flooded dungeon.
Mongo opened the door a crack, thrusting his sword at one of the sharks. The blade connected, and the sharks fled - they did not favor food that fought back. The Mongos waited a bit, opened the door, and headed back towards the large room the sharks had originally come from. They saw the fins circling at the edge of their torchlight, and quicly closed the door to the room, trapping the sharks in the room once again.
Never ones to flinch from danger - at least not when they occupied disposable Mongo bodies - the party headed west, into an unvisited part of the dungeon. The corridor curved north, then up, above water level, then back down into the water. They graciously allowed the grieving cannibal chief to lead the way, which led to his almost instant demise at the hands of several megapiranha lurking in the watery depths of the corridor. While an unarmed cannibal was easy prey, the Mongos had swords, crossbows, and low tolerance for seafood - a recipe for victory! The fish were driven off, pursued to the end of the corridor, and murdered where they swam.
The corridor ended in a door with rubber gasket around it. Incautiously, the Mongos pushed the door open, causing the water, and themselves, to be swept into a dry room, against a nondenominational altar. The chief's fish-gnawed corpse was washed on top of the altar in a grisly display. The Mongos were unmoved (except by water pressure of course). They confiscated a well-balanced bone-handled mace hanging from a hook on the wall, searched the altar under the water level, and discovered a secret compartment containing 500 gold coins and a pair of coral fish statuettes.
None of this was the great black pearl mentioned in the brochures in Under-Miami - disgruntled, the party headed back to the shark room. One Mongo opened the door a crack and swung his sword at the sharks that charged towards it, while another ducked under the water and failed miserably to fire a crossbow at the sharks between the first Mongo's legs. Above-air sword-Mongo scored hit after hit, while below-water crossbow-Mongo continued to fire crossbow quarrels into the deep, missing the crowd of sharks every time. Sharks died one after another, and the room was safe for Mongokind.
A Mongo performed a survey of the edge of the room, swimming the perimeter. At the northwest corner, he (literally) stumbled upon a giant oyster, eight feet wide. He dove down and saw that the brochure was correct - a giant black pearl the size of a basketball sat inside the oyster. He swam in to grab it, kicking oyster organs with his Mongo boots, causing the bivalve to slam its shell shut on the helpless Mongo.
Mongos descended on the oyster, using their swords to shuck it. They pried it open before their bosom friend Mongo drowned, and brought their prize to the surface - the pearl was theirs!
"Can this be all there is?" they collectively wondered. "Is this the end of the dungeon?" Not ones to safely leave with a vast quantity of treasure, they searched for secret doors instead - and found one, behind the oyster. Pressing a catch, a section of the wall slid away, revealing a corridor heading north. They waded down the hall, fighting giant rats that poured from holes above the waterline - they were no threat whatsoever. At the end of the hall, another door - opening it revealed an empty 30' by 30' room with a door on the opposite side.
Mongo prodded the room with a 10' pole, triggering a flaming oil trap. Mongo, Mongo, Mongo, and Mongo retreated down the hall until the oil burned out and the smoke cleared, then returned. Mongo then opened the door on the opposite side, revealing a dry corridor beyond, and a lowered portcullis. The water swept the Mongos through and -
Mongo: "Hey, did that door have a gasket?"
Mongo: "Shouldn't we have noticed that?"
- and Mongo closed the door just in time, defying all physical laws with an act of impossible strength. Instead, they knifed through the gasket until the door showed signs of giving way, then retreated to the deep-water oyster room. They waited until the water drained to dungeon-corridor-floor-level, and then returned to the 30' by 30' room and the portcullis beyond.
Mongo pulled a lever, lifting the portcullis - beyond that was a stairway heading down, and a door heading west. They opened the non-gasketed door, revealing a steaming pit and a corridor beyond. Following this new corridor, they came to another portcullis, beyond which was a room full of adorable Norman Rockwell-esque statuary, carved in nauseating green-streaked red stone. Wrapped around several of the statues of women holding infants and prancing unicorns were four snakes.
The portcullis lifted easily - clearly there was a counterweight. Mongo boldly stepped in to confront the snakes, who reared up and spit poison in his eyes as he stepped on a pressure plate, causing the portcullis to crash down behind him. Blinded, he ran headlong into a unicorn statue, and the snakes converged on him, biting and spitting.
Mongo, Mongo, and Mongo were not going to abandon Mongo, so they fired crossbows through the portcullis until the snakes were slain. They then pressed the pressure plate again to release tension on the portcullis and lifted it. Mongo's body had gone bloated and black with snake venom, and began to dissolve into green gas. Mongo and Mongo backed off, but Mongo caught a deep lungful of the gas. He staggered from the room complaining of severe gas pains, as his abdomen began to distend and bubble.
Horrifyingly, a lump of flesh detached from Mongo's side and fell to the floor. The bubbling meat formed into a tiny hand, followed by a tiny arm, and quickly took the form of a mini-Mongo. The "parent" Mongo was left with a deep gap in his body.
Unphased, Mongo, Mongo, Deformed Mongo and mini-Mongo decided to head down the stairs near the first portcullis in search of further treasure. At the bottom was a volcanic chamber full of boiling mud. Occasional mud-bubble bursts revealed the ruddy light of magma below. In the glow, they saw mineral terraces on the northwestern edge of the cavern which ascended into darkness, and a lava tube heading into the darkness at the southwestern edge. They traversed a series of narrow mineral bridges across the boiling mud, heading towards the lava tube.
At the halfway point, a tentacles head emerged from a nearby mud pool.
Kopru: "Obey the will of the Kopru!"
Mongo: "OK."
Kopru: "What? You mean, without mind control? This isn't usually how this goes"
Mongo: "What are the benefits?"
Kopru: "Oh.. well... there's lots of bowing to the Kopru. Hanging out in this mud cave..."
Mongo: "No thanks."
Mongo: "Never mind."
Disappointed at lost opportunity and its own poor salesmanship, the Kopru probed Mongo's mind, and then Mongo's mind, and then Mongo's mind, as the Mongos fired crossbows at it. One of the Mongos shouted "Oh! Hey! There ARE a lot of benefits to obeying the will of the Kopru!" and rushed at mini-Mongo, attempting to fling him to his Kopru master. He missed - but the Mongos did not, and the kopru was skewered between the eyes by a quarrel. Mongo reconsidered his kopru allegiance, and the party continued to the lava tunnel.
The tunnel ended at a ledge overlooking a deep pit, 100' across and 200' down, full of boiling lava. Floating in the lava was a massive egg, 50' across. A shadowy form moved inside the egg, pressing at the edges. After some discussion, the Mongos wisely decided that shooting holes in the eggshell with their crossbows probably wouldn't end well, and headed back to the mud cave, and from there to the mineral terraces.
They saw a kopru pop its head out of another mud pool, right next to the path to the terraces - and made a run for it. The kopru shouted "Obey the will of..." as they ran by at top speed. Confined to its pool as it was, they were quickly out of the range of its sales pitch.
It was a short climb to the top of the mineral terraces - at the top was a skeleton sitting atop a throne, both encrusted under a layer of minerals, deposited by water dripping from a stalactite above. Mongo hammered away at the mineral, revealing the shape of the throne - forged impractically and uncomfortably from hundreds of swords - and the presence of a ring (inscribed with the number 11) on the skeleton's hand, and a beautiful sword with a kopru-head pommel in its lap. Clearing the minerals away entirely, Mongo then sat on the throne, becoming ruler of the seven kingdoms. It's a better ending than HBO came up with.
Mongo put on the ring, expecting that it would give him the salesmanship of the kopru, perhaps allowing him to bend the kopru to HIS will. The party approached the kopru they had earlier fled, and Mongo concentrated all his will on the ring and the kopru. As it shouted "Really, the will of the kopru isn't that bad!", the tentacle-faced monster was hurled 60' up into the air - the ring wasn't a ring of salesmanship, it was a ring of telekinesis. Mongo released the kopru - it plummeted to the mineral path in front of them - and Mongo and Mongo finished it up with their swords.
The Mongos were convinced that they had fully and thoroughly looted the dungeon, and headed back to the vat-room from which they were born. They hopped one after another into the vat of bubbling flesh, dissolving back into meat-goo.
In a cave on the other side of the volcanic slope, Gutboy, Pai Mei, Rolf, and Biff awoke as the plastic hemispheres attached to their heads retracted into the ceiling. On a pedestal in front of them was all the loot the Mongos had acquired - including the black pearl.
Gains: 2 coral statues 1000 gp each, ring of telekinesis inscribed with "11", mace with fish-carved bone handle, sword with kopru pommel, and the BLACK PEARL OF MONSTER ISLAND
Kills: 3 mako sharks, 3 giant piranhas, giant oyster, 6 giant rats, 4 spitting cobras, 2 kopru
Losses: Mongo. Temporarily. Half of a Mongo when you do the math
2018-09-23
session recap, 9/23/2018
CAST
-------
Mongo the Fighter (4)
Mongo the Fighter (4)
Mongo the Fighter (4)
Mongo the Fighter (4)
Mongo the Fighter (4)
Mongo the Fighter (4)
After slaying the pumpkin-headed monsters in the last session, the party proudly inspected the corpses. As they did so, transparent plastic hemispheres suspended by wires dropped from the ceiling over each of their heads, and their consciousnesses were absorbed from their bodies.
Gutboy, Pai Mei, and Rolf found their minds being deposited into a giant vat of roiling flesh-matter. Gutboy's mind drifted to thoughts of beloved Mongo, who became a wight in the swamps so long ago - but was still sorely missed. The machines transferring his mind took note, and buds of meat formed themselves into simulacra of Mongo - six in total. Each of the three found his mind split across two Mongos. The Mongos were expelled from the vat, and found themselves in a room hewn from volcanic stone. In the center of the room was the flesh vat, and arranged around it, against the walls of the circular chamber, were banks of machines with blinking lights and unlabelled switches. Sunlight streamed in from an opening in the north wall.
The Mongos inspected themselves - they looked human, and were dressed in shabby smoking jackets over plate mail, and were each equipped with the Sword of Unlife, a flamethrower, and a ten foot pole. Their packs were loaded with iron rations and flasks of oil. They seemed to be human, if all identical, but occasionally their flesh would ripple like water. This pleased Pai Mei, who otherwise disapproved of his sudden lack of deformity.
They approached the northern exit, and found themselves on a ledge overlooking the interior of the crater of the volcano in the center of Monster Island. The crater was four miles across, and a large lake spanned most of it. Around the edges of the lake was verdant jungle, and a few miles to the west, a human village. In the center of the lake, the ancient ash cone formed an island, and a ruined temple was built into the side of the cone.
To their collective horror, the Mongos discovered they had no rope - Mongo clearly had been fond of letting someone else haul the rope around. They tore their smoking jackets into strips - which bled briefly, much to their disgust - and used those to tie the 10' poles together. The smoking jacket strips scabbed firmly onto the poles, and they were able to lower themselves safely to the crater floor.
The Mongos headed towards the village, sending one of their number to investigate. It stood on the side of the lake, five houses surrounded by a stockade fence, with two larger huts built on stilts in the lake itself. An open gate led into the village, and an islander in a grass skirt was busy working on the gate's hinges as Mongo approached. When he saw Mongo, he began shouting - "Get the hell out of here! You! Go! You're not wanted!" The villager's shouts attracted more men, wielding spears, and Mongo retreated back into the jungle.
The Mongos were not particularly interested in the village, and just wanted a canoe to get across to the ash cone and the ruined temple, clearly the location of the black pearl the tourist brochures described. They waited until the middle of the night, and two Mongos stripped off their armor and swam over to an outrigger canoe tied off to one of the lake-huts. On the shore, a watchman stood by a bonfire, and spotted the Mongos as they climbed into the canoe. "Everyone! Quick! The cannibals are attacking!" Villagers poured out onto the shoreline as the Mongos paddled away - shouts of "Yeah! Get out of here! We drove them off! Go team!" were heard as they made their escape with the precious outrigger canoe.
The Mongos picked up the other Mongos, and headed towards the ruined temple. It was a broad patio cut into the side of the ash cone, with stairs leading up to a pair of gigantic stone feet, the rest of the statue having long since fallen to ruin and its remnants dragged off to who-knows-where. Behind the statue, faces were carved into the walls, with lit braziers in front of them, and a tunnel led into the interior of the temple.
The Mongos ventured into the tunnel - it was choked with rubble to a height of three feet, and behind the pile of rubble stood islanders with spears. One threw his spear at a Mongo, missing - and the Mongos retaliated by running over the rubble, charging the savage islanders with their Swords of Unlife, skewering three of them. The fourth ran down the tunnel screaming "Intruders!" - a Mongo sent a crossbow bolt into his rump - but he was not slowed down, and escaped into the next room.
Cautiously the Mongos stuck their heads into the next room, and saw a wide stone chamber with a bonfire in its center, and balconies arranged around the edges, with stairs leading down near the room's entrance. Across the room was a large stone face, vandalized almost beyond recognition. Dozens of islanders, men, women, and children, were pouring out of doors along the balconies and rushing down the stairs.
The Mongos quickly devised a plan, and ran back into the tunnel, splashing it with flasks of oil as they retreated. Once past the rubble, they opened fire on the pursuing hoard with their flamethrowers, and the stench of cooked meat filled the air. At least a half dozen warriors were killed in the inferno. More savages stuck their heads into the tunnel to see what the Mongos were up to, and on each occasion were riddled with crossbow bolts, killing another handful. Their numbers drastically reduced, cries of "Run away! Women and children first!" were heard from the chamber.
The sounds of retreat and panic attracted the Mongos, who rushed into the room, swords swinging and crossbows firing. As more men fell, the remaining warriors panicked, and began pushing the women and children out of the way to get to a rope in the corner of the room, leading to a hole in the ceiling and sweet, sweet freedom.
The Mongos were not inclined to let hostiles escape, and targeted a man who was obviously the chief, due to his sweet bone-and-obsidian sword, and a man who was obviously a witch-doctor, on account of his witch-doctor-mask. Two Mongos cut the witch doctor down from behind, and another two stabbed repeatedly at the chief. As they did so, the fourth warrior from the hallway turned around, grabbed a toddler, and threw it at one of the Mongos, hitting him hard in the head.
Mongo: "Seriously?"
Mongo: "That guys doesn't get to leave!"
Mongo: "Kill him!"
Mongo (slashing away repeatedly at the chief): "Surrender! We won't hurt you!"
Mongo: "I said surrender! We're not going to hurt you!"
Mongo: "This is what happens when you don't surrender!"
The Mongos slashed down more villagers from behind, and shot several crossbow bolts into the butt of the child-tossing-warrior - but his strategy of spear-everyone-on-the-rope-ahead-of-me was successful, and he escaped in a rain of skewered women and children, although he certainly wouldn't be sitting comfortably for some time. The chief finally dropped his awesome-looking sword and screamed "Mercy! We surrender to you, demons!"
The Mongos surveyed the situation - the islanders were down to five men in addition to the chief, a few dozen women, unarmed although ferocious looking with their facial tattoos and filed teeth, and another few dozen children. Next to the bonfire in the center of the room were gnawed human remains, and slashed-up t-shirts with the Blessed Expeditionary Company logo still visible ("Oh, YOU'RE the cannibals those other villagers were talking about. Well, good job. We approve of this.")
They interrogated the chief about the black pearl ("Where is it?" "Probably beyond the bricked-up wall that leads to Hell! Stick your hand up that carved face's nose, and a secret door will open! Then please go and leave us!"), forced the chief to jam his hand up the nose, and a secret door did open.
The cadre of Mongos ordered the remaining men to gather rocks to smash down the brick wall, and then marched them forward into the next room. The wall behind the carved face sported peep-holes and a brass speaking-cone to intimidate worshippers in the main chamber, and Mongo shouted "I am the great and powerful Oz! Ignore the Mongos behind the secret door!" at the women and children huddled within. The women agreed that Oz was great and powerful, and the Mongos moved on to more serious business.
Another tunnel led further into the ash cone, and to the promised brick wall. The cannibals smashed the brick wall down, and tried to return to their lair - but the Mongos weren't about to let henchmen walk off the job. They and their chief were forced down the corridor beyond, where the floor, weakened by centuries of neglect, collapsed under the first two, dropping them into a room filled with water. ("Augh! There are things in the water! They're not biting us, but eww! Gross! Help!"). Cannibals were forced to help cannibals, and the group carefully filed single file past the hole and the weakened section of the floor.
They came to a door, opened it, and saw another room - this with an altar, covered with rotting debris, a few bejewelled copper bowls, and a stone box. A Mongo forced a cannibal to open the box - inside was a coral-and-gold statue of a tentacle-faced monster with clawed tail-fins.
Cannibal: "Whoa! This statue looks valuable, but it just tried to get inside my mind!"
Mongo: "How?"
Cannibal (jamming the statue in Mongo's face): "Just by looking at it! Like this! See??"
Another Mongo: "Put that back in the box!"
Mongo felt the influence of the statue in his mind, and determined that he would worship this wonderful tentacle creature, serving it forever and ever. Fortunately, he shared a mind with Mongo, who told the Mongos that half of him had become a secret servant of a vile god. Mongo then grabbed the box from the cannibal, held it above his head, and threw it at the ground. The fragile statue within shattered, and Mongo's mind was freed.
Cannibal: "You broke the tentacle-faced statue! Good! It looked horrible!"
Mongo: "Racist!"
The Mongos gathered up the bowls and the gold bits of the statue, and moved into the next corridor, rounded a corner, and were faced with a collapsed tunnel. They spent a few hours ordering the cannibals to clear the collapse, but it was clearly making little progress. They returned to the broken floor, and ordered the cannibals into the flooded room below, dropping down to join them afterwards. "I don't like this! There are too many fish touching me!" "Well, why don't you just eat the fish instead..." "Are you crazy? That's what food eats!"
The room was flooded to a depth of 5', and had a door in the north wall. As the cannibals moved about, they kept accidentally stepping on rusted torture equipment, and blood was beginning to cloud the water. One suffered a foot injury serious enough to kill the man. The Mongos are merciless employers, and forced the reduced cannibal horde northwards through the door.
They came to an intersection, headed east, and opened another door. "Hey, this room is too big to see the other side!" "Get in there! Now!" "Oh crap stairs" (SPLASH). The lead cannibals tripped down the unseen stairs, and flailed about in the dark water. Suddenly, fins appeared and headed towards them, attracted by the blood - sharks ripped into the cannibals. The entire party fled, the sharks picking off the trailing cannibals one by one. They reached the first room, and tried to jam the door shut as the chief ran through it, two other surviving cannibals trailing behind, screaming as the sharks bit at their legs. The chief tried to stop Mongo from shutting the door, shouting "No! My sons!" ("Oh right, they do look like you" "Wouldn't you just eat them anyways?"), but the Mongos overpowered him. The screams and splashing on the other side of the door quickly ended.
Gains: 100 gp worth of busted hypno-statue, two bejewelled coppers bowls worth 500 gp each
Kills: Dozens of cannibals
Losses: None
-------
Mongo the Fighter (4)
Mongo the Fighter (4)
Mongo the Fighter (4)
Mongo the Fighter (4)
Mongo the Fighter (4)
Mongo the Fighter (4)
After slaying the pumpkin-headed monsters in the last session, the party proudly inspected the corpses. As they did so, transparent plastic hemispheres suspended by wires dropped from the ceiling over each of their heads, and their consciousnesses were absorbed from their bodies.
Gutboy, Pai Mei, and Rolf found their minds being deposited into a giant vat of roiling flesh-matter. Gutboy's mind drifted to thoughts of beloved Mongo, who became a wight in the swamps so long ago - but was still sorely missed. The machines transferring his mind took note, and buds of meat formed themselves into simulacra of Mongo - six in total. Each of the three found his mind split across two Mongos. The Mongos were expelled from the vat, and found themselves in a room hewn from volcanic stone. In the center of the room was the flesh vat, and arranged around it, against the walls of the circular chamber, were banks of machines with blinking lights and unlabelled switches. Sunlight streamed in from an opening in the north wall.
The Mongos inspected themselves - they looked human, and were dressed in shabby smoking jackets over plate mail, and were each equipped with the Sword of Unlife, a flamethrower, and a ten foot pole. Their packs were loaded with iron rations and flasks of oil. They seemed to be human, if all identical, but occasionally their flesh would ripple like water. This pleased Pai Mei, who otherwise disapproved of his sudden lack of deformity.
They approached the northern exit, and found themselves on a ledge overlooking the interior of the crater of the volcano in the center of Monster Island. The crater was four miles across, and a large lake spanned most of it. Around the edges of the lake was verdant jungle, and a few miles to the west, a human village. In the center of the lake, the ancient ash cone formed an island, and a ruined temple was built into the side of the cone.
To their collective horror, the Mongos discovered they had no rope - Mongo clearly had been fond of letting someone else haul the rope around. They tore their smoking jackets into strips - which bled briefly, much to their disgust - and used those to tie the 10' poles together. The smoking jacket strips scabbed firmly onto the poles, and they were able to lower themselves safely to the crater floor.
The Mongos headed towards the village, sending one of their number to investigate. It stood on the side of the lake, five houses surrounded by a stockade fence, with two larger huts built on stilts in the lake itself. An open gate led into the village, and an islander in a grass skirt was busy working on the gate's hinges as Mongo approached. When he saw Mongo, he began shouting - "Get the hell out of here! You! Go! You're not wanted!" The villager's shouts attracted more men, wielding spears, and Mongo retreated back into the jungle.
The Mongos were not particularly interested in the village, and just wanted a canoe to get across to the ash cone and the ruined temple, clearly the location of the black pearl the tourist brochures described. They waited until the middle of the night, and two Mongos stripped off their armor and swam over to an outrigger canoe tied off to one of the lake-huts. On the shore, a watchman stood by a bonfire, and spotted the Mongos as they climbed into the canoe. "Everyone! Quick! The cannibals are attacking!" Villagers poured out onto the shoreline as the Mongos paddled away - shouts of "Yeah! Get out of here! We drove them off! Go team!" were heard as they made their escape with the precious outrigger canoe.
The Mongos picked up the other Mongos, and headed towards the ruined temple. It was a broad patio cut into the side of the ash cone, with stairs leading up to a pair of gigantic stone feet, the rest of the statue having long since fallen to ruin and its remnants dragged off to who-knows-where. Behind the statue, faces were carved into the walls, with lit braziers in front of them, and a tunnel led into the interior of the temple.
The Mongos ventured into the tunnel - it was choked with rubble to a height of three feet, and behind the pile of rubble stood islanders with spears. One threw his spear at a Mongo, missing - and the Mongos retaliated by running over the rubble, charging the savage islanders with their Swords of Unlife, skewering three of them. The fourth ran down the tunnel screaming "Intruders!" - a Mongo sent a crossbow bolt into his rump - but he was not slowed down, and escaped into the next room.
Cautiously the Mongos stuck their heads into the next room, and saw a wide stone chamber with a bonfire in its center, and balconies arranged around the edges, with stairs leading down near the room's entrance. Across the room was a large stone face, vandalized almost beyond recognition. Dozens of islanders, men, women, and children, were pouring out of doors along the balconies and rushing down the stairs.
The Mongos quickly devised a plan, and ran back into the tunnel, splashing it with flasks of oil as they retreated. Once past the rubble, they opened fire on the pursuing hoard with their flamethrowers, and the stench of cooked meat filled the air. At least a half dozen warriors were killed in the inferno. More savages stuck their heads into the tunnel to see what the Mongos were up to, and on each occasion were riddled with crossbow bolts, killing another handful. Their numbers drastically reduced, cries of "Run away! Women and children first!" were heard from the chamber.
The sounds of retreat and panic attracted the Mongos, who rushed into the room, swords swinging and crossbows firing. As more men fell, the remaining warriors panicked, and began pushing the women and children out of the way to get to a rope in the corner of the room, leading to a hole in the ceiling and sweet, sweet freedom.
The Mongos were not inclined to let hostiles escape, and targeted a man who was obviously the chief, due to his sweet bone-and-obsidian sword, and a man who was obviously a witch-doctor, on account of his witch-doctor-mask. Two Mongos cut the witch doctor down from behind, and another two stabbed repeatedly at the chief. As they did so, the fourth warrior from the hallway turned around, grabbed a toddler, and threw it at one of the Mongos, hitting him hard in the head.
Mongo: "Seriously?"
Mongo: "That guys doesn't get to leave!"
Mongo: "Kill him!"
Mongo (slashing away repeatedly at the chief): "Surrender! We won't hurt you!"
Mongo: "I said surrender! We're not going to hurt you!"
Mongo: "This is what happens when you don't surrender!"
The Mongos slashed down more villagers from behind, and shot several crossbow bolts into the butt of the child-tossing-warrior - but his strategy of spear-everyone-on-the-rope-ahead-of-me was successful, and he escaped in a rain of skewered women and children, although he certainly wouldn't be sitting comfortably for some time. The chief finally dropped his awesome-looking sword and screamed "Mercy! We surrender to you, demons!"
The Mongos surveyed the situation - the islanders were down to five men in addition to the chief, a few dozen women, unarmed although ferocious looking with their facial tattoos and filed teeth, and another few dozen children. Next to the bonfire in the center of the room were gnawed human remains, and slashed-up t-shirts with the Blessed Expeditionary Company logo still visible ("Oh, YOU'RE the cannibals those other villagers were talking about. Well, good job. We approve of this.")
They interrogated the chief about the black pearl ("Where is it?" "Probably beyond the bricked-up wall that leads to Hell! Stick your hand up that carved face's nose, and a secret door will open! Then please go and leave us!"), forced the chief to jam his hand up the nose, and a secret door did open.
The cadre of Mongos ordered the remaining men to gather rocks to smash down the brick wall, and then marched them forward into the next room. The wall behind the carved face sported peep-holes and a brass speaking-cone to intimidate worshippers in the main chamber, and Mongo shouted "I am the great and powerful Oz! Ignore the Mongos behind the secret door!" at the women and children huddled within. The women agreed that Oz was great and powerful, and the Mongos moved on to more serious business.
Another tunnel led further into the ash cone, and to the promised brick wall. The cannibals smashed the brick wall down, and tried to return to their lair - but the Mongos weren't about to let henchmen walk off the job. They and their chief were forced down the corridor beyond, where the floor, weakened by centuries of neglect, collapsed under the first two, dropping them into a room filled with water. ("Augh! There are things in the water! They're not biting us, but eww! Gross! Help!"). Cannibals were forced to help cannibals, and the group carefully filed single file past the hole and the weakened section of the floor.
They came to a door, opened it, and saw another room - this with an altar, covered with rotting debris, a few bejewelled copper bowls, and a stone box. A Mongo forced a cannibal to open the box - inside was a coral-and-gold statue of a tentacle-faced monster with clawed tail-fins.
Cannibal: "Whoa! This statue looks valuable, but it just tried to get inside my mind!"
Mongo: "How?"
Cannibal (jamming the statue in Mongo's face): "Just by looking at it! Like this! See??"
Another Mongo: "Put that back in the box!"
Mongo felt the influence of the statue in his mind, and determined that he would worship this wonderful tentacle creature, serving it forever and ever. Fortunately, he shared a mind with Mongo, who told the Mongos that half of him had become a secret servant of a vile god. Mongo then grabbed the box from the cannibal, held it above his head, and threw it at the ground. The fragile statue within shattered, and Mongo's mind was freed.
Cannibal: "You broke the tentacle-faced statue! Good! It looked horrible!"
Mongo: "Racist!"
The Mongos gathered up the bowls and the gold bits of the statue, and moved into the next corridor, rounded a corner, and were faced with a collapsed tunnel. They spent a few hours ordering the cannibals to clear the collapse, but it was clearly making little progress. They returned to the broken floor, and ordered the cannibals into the flooded room below, dropping down to join them afterwards. "I don't like this! There are too many fish touching me!" "Well, why don't you just eat the fish instead..." "Are you crazy? That's what food eats!"
The room was flooded to a depth of 5', and had a door in the north wall. As the cannibals moved about, they kept accidentally stepping on rusted torture equipment, and blood was beginning to cloud the water. One suffered a foot injury serious enough to kill the man. The Mongos are merciless employers, and forced the reduced cannibal horde northwards through the door.
They came to an intersection, headed east, and opened another door. "Hey, this room is too big to see the other side!" "Get in there! Now!" "Oh crap stairs" (SPLASH). The lead cannibals tripped down the unseen stairs, and flailed about in the dark water. Suddenly, fins appeared and headed towards them, attracted by the blood - sharks ripped into the cannibals. The entire party fled, the sharks picking off the trailing cannibals one by one. They reached the first room, and tried to jam the door shut as the chief ran through it, two other surviving cannibals trailing behind, screaming as the sharks bit at their legs. The chief tried to stop Mongo from shutting the door, shouting "No! My sons!" ("Oh right, they do look like you" "Wouldn't you just eat them anyways?"), but the Mongos overpowered him. The screams and splashing on the other side of the door quickly ended.
Gains: 100 gp worth of busted hypno-statue, two bejewelled coppers bowls worth 500 gp each
Kills: Dozens of cannibals
Losses: None
2017-08-08
session recap, 7/23/2017
CAST
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Pai Mei the Wu-Jen (6)
Rolf the Dwarf (5)
Gutboy the Cleric (7) and his henchdog Rufus II
S.P.A.R.K.I. the Robot (3)
[in a prior adventure, White Plume Mountain was raided for a third time, and Whelm acquired. The dwarven hammer was too big a temptation for Rolf, and the party returned to Under-Miami claiming they failed to retrieve it. The illicitly acquired weapon was host to an artificial intelligence determined to exterminate all space aliens - the only weakness being the crippling fear of the vulnerable, alien-infested skies it instilled in its bearer. Mindy the Gynosphinx committed suicide, finally ridding herself of her hated lion body, and returned brandishing her diary and demanding her share of the loot. She then stormed off in a huff, refusing to adventure further with the band of murder-hobos]
The party sat around their apartment in Under-Miami, desperate for something to do. Discussions were had, and out of nowhere the crew (including long-absent robot S.P.A.R.K.I.) determined to head to Monster Island out in Biscayne Bay and seek the famed black pearl that all the tourist brochures went on and on about. While Kalimar was absent, his "friends" remembered he had purchased a 30' Boston Whaler, and decided to "borrow" it for the trip out to the Godzilla-infested island.
The trip took several hours, and was uneventful. The island itself was surrounded by cliffs and dangerous reefs, the only approachable section being a cluster of native villages on a peninsula at the southern end, cut off from the main island by 200' tall wooden wall. The party motored towards the village docks - as they did so, Rolf tossed a grenade overboard, trying to impress the local fishermen with his weapon of mass fishing. The tactic worked - vast quantities of tuna and yellowtail floated to the surface, dead, along with a now-deceased mermaid. The fisherman excitedly brought out their nets and rowed out to bring in the harvest.
They tied off at the dock, next to a modern-looking pontoon boat with a shattered aluminum pontoon. As they examined this second boat suspiciously, the chief of the Elk tribe ran out to meet them. He explained that just yesterday, a group wearing "Blessed Expeditionary Company" had arrived on the damaged boat and headed inland to claim the fabled black pearl for their own. Disgruntled by the appearance of rivals, the party followed the chief towards the village, with S.P.A.R.K.I. taking a moment to peel scrap metal from the pontoon boat for future repairs to his battle-worn chassis.
Elk Chief: "Welcome! Such a bounty you have brought! We shall have a feast in your honor tonight! Look at all the fish! And a mermaid! It's so nice to not have to resort to cannibalism!"
Gutboy: "So, we're looking for the black pearl. Do you know where we can find it?"
Elk Chief: "Well, we've never really seen or heard of it, but all the brochures you mainlanders keep bringing over say it's in the crater of the volcano at the center of our island. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me, what kind of clam lives in a volcano?"
Pai Mei: "Do you come back when you die?"
Elk Chief: "Sure, but not like you mainlanders. When we die, we come back as waiters."
Gutboy: "So are there really monsters on the island?"
Elk Chief: "You bet! Godzillas, rodans, ghidoras, we've got them all! Oh and don't forget the mothras!"
There was a certain amount of confusion and fear, but the party put in their dinner orders (the "surf" end of the "surf'n'turf" - "You heard our guests - a plate of mermaid ass!") and prepared for the feast.
When the time came, the party sat at one of the dozens of tables set around the firepit where the mermaid and fishes roasted. The villagers were wearing the headdresses of their respective tribes - Elk wearing elk heads, Sea Turtles wearing loggerhead skulls, Tigers wearing ferocious preserved tiger heads, and the Hawk tribe with tiny bird heads worn like little fezzes. Their identities were all hidden by their masks (with the exception of the Hawk tribe). Also present were a dozen or so men wearing human skull masks, and the waitstaff were rotting, animated corpses. The zombies brought plates of mermaid butt to the party, leaving greasy diseased corpse-prints all over the sizzling chunks of fish.
Gutboy: "So who are all these people?"
Elk Chief: "All of our tribes - the Elk, the Sea Turtle, the Tiger, and the Hawk tribe."
Gutboy (mishearing): "The hot tribe?"
Elk Chief: "Oh you mean the men in the skull masks? They are our hottest men, but they are not a tribe! They are the zombie masters! Ugh!"
Gutboy: "You don't like them?"
Elk Chief: "Oh no, all that mucking around with corpses, it's horrible! And they are secretive - who knows who could be behind those skull masks? But if we complain, we end up becoming waiters!"
Gutboy had an idea - murder the zombie masters to ingratiate the party with the islanders - and so chugged a potion of ESP and approached one of the zombie masters. The man was ridiculously buff, with oiled muscles and a well-defined six pack.
Gutboy: "So, you guys make zombies?"
Zombie Master: "Oh yeah, somebody's got to be a waiter" [thinking: "Hmm, this guy seems hot! I wonder if he'd come to the zombie master party with me tonight?"
Gutboy: "Wow, how do you become a zombie master?"
Zombie Master: "Only the hottest of men may become masters of undeath! It is a role extended by invitation only"
Gutboy: "I wish I could be a zombie master"
Zombie Master: "You know what? Come to our party tonight! Bring your friends! Look for the torches to the north of the village, they will light the way!" [thinking: "Oh I am going to SCORE" followed by unfamily-friendly mental images, as his grass skirt began to part of their own volition]
Gutboy: "Ummm... right... yes, we'll be there... later..."
After the feast ended, the heroes waited for the torches to be lit beyond the village - and they were, accompanied by the distant sound of pounding bass music. They followed a path cutting through the jungle towards a wide flat plateau, where dozens of well-toned men with skull masks danced feverishly to the beat, singing "EVERYBODY DANCE NOW!", surrounded by a motionless circle of the undead.
Pai Mei, longing for mayhem, instantly began incanting his fireball spell - a bright light flung from his finger towards the dance party - a voice shouted out "Hey look, firewo--" - and then an earth-shattering KABOOM followed by an incandescent mushroom cloud engulfed the plateau. The party-goers and zombies alike were reduced to ash in an instant.
A few minutes later, the Elk chief and a horde of warriors approached, horror in their eyes.
Elk chief: "What have you done? Those were our hottest men!"
Gutboy: "I thought you hated them"
Elk chief: "Look how homely we are now! You will pay for this!"
Pai Mei: "But you can eat them now! Just look at all that sizzling fat!"
Elk chief: "Fat? Seriously? Do you know how good their BMIs were?"
Thinking fast, Pai Mei lowered his hood, revealing the glorious pompadour he had stolen from the corpse of Elvis. The Elk chief fell to his knees, thoroughly dominated by the puissant hairdo.
Elk chief: "It is he! The one who was prophesied to release us from the rule of the Zombie masters, and then wander out of the village to die in the jungle! All hail he of the glorious hair!"
Warriors: "Uhh???? Chief? What prophecy?"
Elk chief: "Silence! Obey our master!"
The warriors, muttering, angry, and confused, obeyed their chief.
Gutboy: "You must come with us to retrieve the black pearl!"
Elk chief: "Shut up, you. We serve the one with the hair! Our prophesied master!"
Pai Mei: "What he said. Come with us."
Elk chief: "I am old and would slow you down. Take my warriors!"
Pai Mei: "Yeah sure, why not."
Four warriors were "volunteered" to join the heroes on their voyage inland. As soon as dawn broke, the crew headed into the jungle, passing through the 200' high palisade. They hiked all day, passing a lake of bubbling tar, with a post used for tying sacrifices to the "Kongs", and camped in the foothills of the volcano.
After dark, the party saw torches in the distance to the north - they were not alone. Gutboy ordered Rufus to investigate, while S.P.A.R.K.I. joked "Wait, what if they're cat people? Wouldn't that be funny?" Alas, they WERE a wandering band of cat people, and only tragedy, not comedy, ensued.
There was furious barking from the direction of the torches, and the torches began moving erratically. Then canine yipping, followed by feline yowling, coming closer - Rufus blinked into view, and three sabre-tooth tigers ridden by humanoid cat-men burst into the party's camp. One of the tigers bit into Rufus's neck and shook him like a rag doll, while another slew one of the village warriors, and the third leaped at Gutboy. Magic missiles flew, the mighty hammer Whelm was thrown, and drowsy insects nibbled at the warriors, putting them into a deep sleep. It was for naught - Rufus was dead, slain by his natural enemy, a cat.
No time for mourning - the party was then rushed by the remaining cat people, running on foot. Pai Mei sent a fireball into them, killing all but one, and then he used the power of Elvis' hair on the last. Gutboy wanted to kill the cat-man to avenge his dog's death, but Pai Mei intervened, saving Mr. Whiskers (for that was his name).
Mr. Whiskers circled around his beloved Pai Mei, rubbing his head on Pai Mei's legs and purring, and then led the party to the cat camp. Several luxurious tents had been set up, and there were thousands of dollars worth of expensive furnishings present. Not being ones to pass up a buck, the party decided they would have the village warriors function as porters, carrying the hundreds of pounds of loot on their backs. Tragically for the villagers, the rising sun saw several pit vipers stir from their nest (the cat-men had chosen a terrible campsite) and poison Mr. Whiskers and one of the warriors. Another bit S.P.A.R.K.I., but his hydraulics were unaffected by the venom.
After the snakes were slain, the remaining two villagers were forced to carry double-loads of furniture - no sense in leaving anything behind, and two men could surely carry what they had planned for three men and a cat. They hiked up towards the volcano, passing a tribe of cave-dwelling Neanderthals (who waved in friendship, but were ignored), and climbed the slope of the volcano to within a few hundred feet of the summit.
The party there found an obstacle - a deep cut through the side of the volcano with a swift-running stream at the bottom. A rickety rope bridge led over the cut to a ledge on the other side, but above it circled a swarm of 7 small rodans with 10' wingspans. Worried about the danger, the party ordered the villagers to carefully put down the hundreds of pounds of furnishing and try crossing the bridge. One of the warriors balked, but Elvis' hair showed him the ineffable wisdom of obedience to cruel tentacle-faced wizard-monsters.
The rodans swooped down at the villagers, who cowered in fear - but then Gutboy pulled out an Uzi and sprayed bullets into the air. The sound of gunfire inspired the rest of the party to spray lead at the hopelessly outmatched rodans - three plummeted into the ravine in an instant. The remaining flock flew away as fast as possible.
On the other side of the bridge, the party found evidence of a campsite, only a day old - their rivals were already at the volcano! They contemplated scaling the rim of the crater (another few hundred feet of steep climbing) or entering a cave adjoining the ledge. Rolf noticed movement a few hundred feet away - there was another cave along a narrow path running from the ledge, and a pumpkin-headed hairy humanoid pulled back into it from where it was spying on the party. The heroes did what heroes do, and decided the pumpkinoid must DIE.
They ran the narrow path, and found four pumpkin-headed furry humanoids waiting for them, guarding a lava tube running into the side of the volcano. The slaughter was brief, the pumpkins smashed, and glowing robotic nodules found sticking up from the stumps of Bigfoot necks underneath the gourds. What were these things? Something to discover at the next session!
Gains: 10,000 gp worth of expensive cat furniture and rugs
Kills: 20 super-hot zombie masters, 40 zombies, 19 cat-men, 3 sabre-tooth tigers, 4 pit vipers, 3 rodans
Losses: Rufus, 2 village warriors, Mr. Whiskers
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Pai Mei the Wu-Jen (6)
Rolf the Dwarf (5)
Gutboy the Cleric (7) and his henchdog Rufus II
S.P.A.R.K.I. the Robot (3)
[in a prior adventure, White Plume Mountain was raided for a third time, and Whelm acquired. The dwarven hammer was too big a temptation for Rolf, and the party returned to Under-Miami claiming they failed to retrieve it. The illicitly acquired weapon was host to an artificial intelligence determined to exterminate all space aliens - the only weakness being the crippling fear of the vulnerable, alien-infested skies it instilled in its bearer. Mindy the Gynosphinx committed suicide, finally ridding herself of her hated lion body, and returned brandishing her diary and demanding her share of the loot. She then stormed off in a huff, refusing to adventure further with the band of murder-hobos]
The party sat around their apartment in Under-Miami, desperate for something to do. Discussions were had, and out of nowhere the crew (including long-absent robot S.P.A.R.K.I.) determined to head to Monster Island out in Biscayne Bay and seek the famed black pearl that all the tourist brochures went on and on about. While Kalimar was absent, his "friends" remembered he had purchased a 30' Boston Whaler, and decided to "borrow" it for the trip out to the Godzilla-infested island.
The trip took several hours, and was uneventful. The island itself was surrounded by cliffs and dangerous reefs, the only approachable section being a cluster of native villages on a peninsula at the southern end, cut off from the main island by 200' tall wooden wall. The party motored towards the village docks - as they did so, Rolf tossed a grenade overboard, trying to impress the local fishermen with his weapon of mass fishing. The tactic worked - vast quantities of tuna and yellowtail floated to the surface, dead, along with a now-deceased mermaid. The fisherman excitedly brought out their nets and rowed out to bring in the harvest.
They tied off at the dock, next to a modern-looking pontoon boat with a shattered aluminum pontoon. As they examined this second boat suspiciously, the chief of the Elk tribe ran out to meet them. He explained that just yesterday, a group wearing "Blessed Expeditionary Company" had arrived on the damaged boat and headed inland to claim the fabled black pearl for their own. Disgruntled by the appearance of rivals, the party followed the chief towards the village, with S.P.A.R.K.I. taking a moment to peel scrap metal from the pontoon boat for future repairs to his battle-worn chassis.
Elk Chief: "Welcome! Such a bounty you have brought! We shall have a feast in your honor tonight! Look at all the fish! And a mermaid! It's so nice to not have to resort to cannibalism!"
Gutboy: "So, we're looking for the black pearl. Do you know where we can find it?"
Elk Chief: "Well, we've never really seen or heard of it, but all the brochures you mainlanders keep bringing over say it's in the crater of the volcano at the center of our island. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me, what kind of clam lives in a volcano?"
Pai Mei: "Do you come back when you die?"
Elk Chief: "Sure, but not like you mainlanders. When we die, we come back as waiters."
Gutboy: "So are there really monsters on the island?"
Elk Chief: "You bet! Godzillas, rodans, ghidoras, we've got them all! Oh and don't forget the mothras!"
There was a certain amount of confusion and fear, but the party put in their dinner orders (the "surf" end of the "surf'n'turf" - "You heard our guests - a plate of mermaid ass!") and prepared for the feast.
When the time came, the party sat at one of the dozens of tables set around the firepit where the mermaid and fishes roasted. The villagers were wearing the headdresses of their respective tribes - Elk wearing elk heads, Sea Turtles wearing loggerhead skulls, Tigers wearing ferocious preserved tiger heads, and the Hawk tribe with tiny bird heads worn like little fezzes. Their identities were all hidden by their masks (with the exception of the Hawk tribe). Also present were a dozen or so men wearing human skull masks, and the waitstaff were rotting, animated corpses. The zombies brought plates of mermaid butt to the party, leaving greasy diseased corpse-prints all over the sizzling chunks of fish.
Gutboy: "So who are all these people?"
Elk Chief: "All of our tribes - the Elk, the Sea Turtle, the Tiger, and the Hawk tribe."
Gutboy (mishearing): "The hot tribe?"
Elk Chief: "Oh you mean the men in the skull masks? They are our hottest men, but they are not a tribe! They are the zombie masters! Ugh!"
Gutboy: "You don't like them?"
Elk Chief: "Oh no, all that mucking around with corpses, it's horrible! And they are secretive - who knows who could be behind those skull masks? But if we complain, we end up becoming waiters!"
Gutboy had an idea - murder the zombie masters to ingratiate the party with the islanders - and so chugged a potion of ESP and approached one of the zombie masters. The man was ridiculously buff, with oiled muscles and a well-defined six pack.
Gutboy: "So, you guys make zombies?"
Zombie Master: "Oh yeah, somebody's got to be a waiter" [thinking: "Hmm, this guy seems hot! I wonder if he'd come to the zombie master party with me tonight?"
Gutboy: "Wow, how do you become a zombie master?"
Zombie Master: "Only the hottest of men may become masters of undeath! It is a role extended by invitation only"
Gutboy: "I wish I could be a zombie master"
Zombie Master: "You know what? Come to our party tonight! Bring your friends! Look for the torches to the north of the village, they will light the way!" [thinking: "Oh I am going to SCORE" followed by unfamily-friendly mental images, as his grass skirt began to part of their own volition]
Gutboy: "Ummm... right... yes, we'll be there... later..."
After the feast ended, the heroes waited for the torches to be lit beyond the village - and they were, accompanied by the distant sound of pounding bass music. They followed a path cutting through the jungle towards a wide flat plateau, where dozens of well-toned men with skull masks danced feverishly to the beat, singing "EVERYBODY DANCE NOW!", surrounded by a motionless circle of the undead.
Pai Mei, longing for mayhem, instantly began incanting his fireball spell - a bright light flung from his finger towards the dance party - a voice shouted out "Hey look, firewo--" - and then an earth-shattering KABOOM followed by an incandescent mushroom cloud engulfed the plateau. The party-goers and zombies alike were reduced to ash in an instant.
A few minutes later, the Elk chief and a horde of warriors approached, horror in their eyes.
Elk chief: "What have you done? Those were our hottest men!"
Gutboy: "I thought you hated them"
Elk chief: "Look how homely we are now! You will pay for this!"
Pai Mei: "But you can eat them now! Just look at all that sizzling fat!"
Elk chief: "Fat? Seriously? Do you know how good their BMIs were?"
Thinking fast, Pai Mei lowered his hood, revealing the glorious pompadour he had stolen from the corpse of Elvis. The Elk chief fell to his knees, thoroughly dominated by the puissant hairdo.
Elk chief: "It is he! The one who was prophesied to release us from the rule of the Zombie masters, and then wander out of the village to die in the jungle! All hail he of the glorious hair!"
Warriors: "Uhh???? Chief? What prophecy?"
Elk chief: "Silence! Obey our master!"
The warriors, muttering, angry, and confused, obeyed their chief.
Gutboy: "You must come with us to retrieve the black pearl!"
Elk chief: "Shut up, you. We serve the one with the hair! Our prophesied master!"
Pai Mei: "What he said. Come with us."
Elk chief: "I am old and would slow you down. Take my warriors!"
Pai Mei: "Yeah sure, why not."
Four warriors were "volunteered" to join the heroes on their voyage inland. As soon as dawn broke, the crew headed into the jungle, passing through the 200' high palisade. They hiked all day, passing a lake of bubbling tar, with a post used for tying sacrifices to the "Kongs", and camped in the foothills of the volcano.
After dark, the party saw torches in the distance to the north - they were not alone. Gutboy ordered Rufus to investigate, while S.P.A.R.K.I. joked "Wait, what if they're cat people? Wouldn't that be funny?" Alas, they WERE a wandering band of cat people, and only tragedy, not comedy, ensued.
There was furious barking from the direction of the torches, and the torches began moving erratically. Then canine yipping, followed by feline yowling, coming closer - Rufus blinked into view, and three sabre-tooth tigers ridden by humanoid cat-men burst into the party's camp. One of the tigers bit into Rufus's neck and shook him like a rag doll, while another slew one of the village warriors, and the third leaped at Gutboy. Magic missiles flew, the mighty hammer Whelm was thrown, and drowsy insects nibbled at the warriors, putting them into a deep sleep. It was for naught - Rufus was dead, slain by his natural enemy, a cat.
No time for mourning - the party was then rushed by the remaining cat people, running on foot. Pai Mei sent a fireball into them, killing all but one, and then he used the power of Elvis' hair on the last. Gutboy wanted to kill the cat-man to avenge his dog's death, but Pai Mei intervened, saving Mr. Whiskers (for that was his name).
Mr. Whiskers circled around his beloved Pai Mei, rubbing his head on Pai Mei's legs and purring, and then led the party to the cat camp. Several luxurious tents had been set up, and there were thousands of dollars worth of expensive furnishings present. Not being ones to pass up a buck, the party decided they would have the village warriors function as porters, carrying the hundreds of pounds of loot on their backs. Tragically for the villagers, the rising sun saw several pit vipers stir from their nest (the cat-men had chosen a terrible campsite) and poison Mr. Whiskers and one of the warriors. Another bit S.P.A.R.K.I., but his hydraulics were unaffected by the venom.
After the snakes were slain, the remaining two villagers were forced to carry double-loads of furniture - no sense in leaving anything behind, and two men could surely carry what they had planned for three men and a cat. They hiked up towards the volcano, passing a tribe of cave-dwelling Neanderthals (who waved in friendship, but were ignored), and climbed the slope of the volcano to within a few hundred feet of the summit.
The party there found an obstacle - a deep cut through the side of the volcano with a swift-running stream at the bottom. A rickety rope bridge led over the cut to a ledge on the other side, but above it circled a swarm of 7 small rodans with 10' wingspans. Worried about the danger, the party ordered the villagers to carefully put down the hundreds of pounds of furnishing and try crossing the bridge. One of the warriors balked, but Elvis' hair showed him the ineffable wisdom of obedience to cruel tentacle-faced wizard-monsters.
The rodans swooped down at the villagers, who cowered in fear - but then Gutboy pulled out an Uzi and sprayed bullets into the air. The sound of gunfire inspired the rest of the party to spray lead at the hopelessly outmatched rodans - three plummeted into the ravine in an instant. The remaining flock flew away as fast as possible.
On the other side of the bridge, the party found evidence of a campsite, only a day old - their rivals were already at the volcano! They contemplated scaling the rim of the crater (another few hundred feet of steep climbing) or entering a cave adjoining the ledge. Rolf noticed movement a few hundred feet away - there was another cave along a narrow path running from the ledge, and a pumpkin-headed hairy humanoid pulled back into it from where it was spying on the party. The heroes did what heroes do, and decided the pumpkinoid must DIE.
They ran the narrow path, and found four pumpkin-headed furry humanoids waiting for them, guarding a lava tube running into the side of the volcano. The slaughter was brief, the pumpkins smashed, and glowing robotic nodules found sticking up from the stumps of Bigfoot necks underneath the gourds. What were these things? Something to discover at the next session!
Gains: 10,000 gp worth of expensive cat furniture and rugs
Kills: 20 super-hot zombie masters, 40 zombies, 19 cat-men, 3 sabre-tooth tigers, 4 pit vipers, 3 rodans
Losses: Rufus, 2 village warriors, Mr. Whiskers
2016-08-31
session recap, 7/10/2016
CAST
--------
Pai Mei the Wu-Jen (5)
Rolf the Dwarf (5)
Gutboy the Cleric (6) and his henchdog Rufus II
Kalimar the Ranger (5)
It's been a while since the actual game, so this update is lighter on the details.
The party decided to haul ass to White Plume Mountain and find the artifacts stolen from the Under-Miami Museum of Natural History.
- Bikers encountered on the way - captured, threatened to no avail ("Kill me! What do I care!" "Oh right, they come back to life"), and killed
- In the tunnels under White Plume Mountain, encountered Mindy the Gynosphinx. Keraptis hired her as security, she blacked out, and woke up cut in half and sewn to a lion's body. For no good reason, wings have also been sewn to the lion's shoulders. She's been forced to ask stupid riddles ever since, and has had nothing to eat except some bikers who tried to force their way in ("Don't judge me!"). Stupid riddle answered, and then she is convinced to join the party
- Tunnel full of inductive plates that heat metal. Rolf strips naked, goes to other end, and is pursued by horde of zombified Under-Miami policemen (who had been sent the day of the theft to recover the artifacts). Mindy wades in, and in conjunction with gunfire and Gutboy's atheistic faith, they are destroyed. Their diaries are recovered and eventually returned to the Under-Miami Police Dept
- Room with frictionless surfaces and pits full of spikes. Mindy flies them over.
- Room with a mid-air stream and kayaks. "Ehh, let's do something else". Room ignored.
- Inverted ziggurat - each level a glassed-in enclosure, with alternating levels full of water. Giant crayfish, giant scorpions, lion-halves sewn to seal-halves, and finally lions with human heads sewn to them and machine guns sewn to their tails. Keraptis the Wizard has serious issues with sewing things on to lions. Heavy gunfire shatters glass enclosures, creature mayhem ensues, water eventually drains, everything is dead. Safe at bottom, looted!
- Room with tiny man, Qesnef, who claims to be a poor captured soul hired on as security and abandoned. Party believes none of it. Turns into giant monster, but Pai Mei's drowsy insects quickly send the fiend to sleep. Throat slit, it's nature's way. Hey, what's that under a sofa - the lost artifact Blackrazor, a sword so black it appears to be a rift in space. Rolf grabs it, his eyes roll back, and he charges his comrades, shouting "BLOOD AND SOULS!" Gutboy paralyzes him with atheistic miracles, Pai Mei and Kalimar break his hands and wrists until he lets go of Blackrazor, and they roll the evil sword into a rug for transport. They also find a suit of lightweight green plastic armor - Rolf claims this as his own.
- Blackrazor returned! Levels gained! Mindy talked out of suicide and remains as henchwoman!
--------
Pai Mei the Wu-Jen (5)
Rolf the Dwarf (5)
Gutboy the Cleric (6) and his henchdog Rufus II
Kalimar the Ranger (5)
It's been a while since the actual game, so this update is lighter on the details.
The party decided to haul ass to White Plume Mountain and find the artifacts stolen from the Under-Miami Museum of Natural History.
- Bikers encountered on the way - captured, threatened to no avail ("Kill me! What do I care!" "Oh right, they come back to life"), and killed
- In the tunnels under White Plume Mountain, encountered Mindy the Gynosphinx. Keraptis hired her as security, she blacked out, and woke up cut in half and sewn to a lion's body. For no good reason, wings have also been sewn to the lion's shoulders. She's been forced to ask stupid riddles ever since, and has had nothing to eat except some bikers who tried to force their way in ("Don't judge me!"). Stupid riddle answered, and then she is convinced to join the party
- Tunnel full of inductive plates that heat metal. Rolf strips naked, goes to other end, and is pursued by horde of zombified Under-Miami policemen (who had been sent the day of the theft to recover the artifacts). Mindy wades in, and in conjunction with gunfire and Gutboy's atheistic faith, they are destroyed. Their diaries are recovered and eventually returned to the Under-Miami Police Dept
- Room with frictionless surfaces and pits full of spikes. Mindy flies them over.
- Room with a mid-air stream and kayaks. "Ehh, let's do something else". Room ignored.
- Inverted ziggurat - each level a glassed-in enclosure, with alternating levels full of water. Giant crayfish, giant scorpions, lion-halves sewn to seal-halves, and finally lions with human heads sewn to them and machine guns sewn to their tails. Keraptis the Wizard has serious issues with sewing things on to lions. Heavy gunfire shatters glass enclosures, creature mayhem ensues, water eventually drains, everything is dead. Safe at bottom, looted!
- Room with tiny man, Qesnef, who claims to be a poor captured soul hired on as security and abandoned. Party believes none of it. Turns into giant monster, but Pai Mei's drowsy insects quickly send the fiend to sleep. Throat slit, it's nature's way. Hey, what's that under a sofa - the lost artifact Blackrazor, a sword so black it appears to be a rift in space. Rolf grabs it, his eyes roll back, and he charges his comrades, shouting "BLOOD AND SOULS!" Gutboy paralyzes him with atheistic miracles, Pai Mei and Kalimar break his hands and wrists until he lets go of Blackrazor, and they roll the evil sword into a rug for transport. They also find a suit of lightweight green plastic armor - Rolf claims this as his own.
- Blackrazor returned! Levels gained! Mindy talked out of suicide and remains as henchwoman!
2016-05-24
session recap, 5/22/2016
CAST
--------
Pai Mei the Wu-Jen (4)
Rolf the Dwarf (3)
Biff the Fighter (4)
It seemed like a year since the party escaped Ashkasor's clutches - but of course, only moments had passed. They looked around, and Gutboy had wandered off into the swamp to take a leak - but lo! a stranger named Biff walked up in his stead. He was wordlessly accepted into the party, like a long-lost brother, such was their bond.
They reviewed their options, and decided it was time to complete the long-delayed drug deal with Sanibel. Their briefcase full of ball bearings in hand, they headed north through the swamp to Lago. They traveled along the coast til swamp turned to jungle, and then followed U.S. 1 north where it crossed the Biscayne from Under-Miami back onto the mainland. For over a day they trekked over the deteriorating asphalt, until the jungle opened up, revealing a dozen or so buildings lining the highway. A road sign read "LAGO" - but the town's name was crossed out and crudely replaced with the word "HELL" in red paint.
They headed for the bar - an establishment bearing the name "Plain Dealer", with bikers wandering in and out. Their choppers were lined up outside the door. Inside, the bikers, their jackets labeled "The Cavers", were busy getting drunk and eyeing the trio. One of the few non-bikers made his way over - "You. I'm Cosmo. Cosmo the Bullet." The three stared at him in confusion. "El Blanco sent me. The drugs? Let's have 'em."
Rolf: "Wait, we're supposed to give them to Sanibel."
Cosmo: "Really? Fine. Don't say I didn't warn you. I don't want these bikers seeing us leave town together. I'll go first, meet me an hour up the road."
Pai Mei: "No, I think we'll go first."
Cosmo: "Whatever. Just go."
Cosmo left first, conspicuously walking south on U.S. 1, while the party decided to do some shopping. Across the street from the bar, a tiny figure watched them from the porch of the town sheriff's office - this "little person" was presumably the sheriff himself. They made no move to introduce themselves, instead browing the goods in a store imaginatively labeled "Food". Biff ventured across the street to the establishment labeled "Girls", but found only regret.
After stocking up on canned beans and canned beer, the party marched north up the road. After a time, they hid in the bushes, and waited for Cosmo. Four bikers rode slowly by, but didn't see them - and soon after Cosmo appeared, escorted by two heavies in silk suits. Together, they marched north for a bit, and then headed off into the jungle towards Sanibel's compound.
The journey took over a day, but eventually the filthy group of travelers came upon the spectacular mansion of Sanibel. The guards in front of the house stepped aside to let them into the foyer, and Cosmo excused himself to let Sanibel know they had arrived. He returned shortly, and let them into a wide solarium. As they entered, a pair of guards closed the doors behind them.
The solarium was filled with potted palms and aloe vera plants. A half dozen guards stood on the floor with them, while Sanibel, El Blanco, and two guards with super-soakers stood on a balcony at the other end of the room. Incongruously, a rough wooden barrel was sitting on the balcony as well. Hanging from the ceiling were four brass cages, each containing a spherical horror 4' wide, with wide gnashing mouths and ten long tentacles.
Sanibel: "Welcome to my home! You have brought the lanthanides?"
Pai Mei: (removing the briefcase from his pack and opening it) "Right here"
Sanibel: "Juan! Try a sample!"
One of the guards walked over, and Pai Mei handed him the one genuine lanthanide sphere from the briefcase. The guard pulled out a tin of greenish jelly and smeared it over his teeth, and then popped the lanthanide sphere into his mouth. Sparks flew from his teeth as he rolled it around with his tongue, and his eyes rolled back in his head. "Good stuff boss!" A strange look came over the guard's face - "I want MORE!" and he yanked the briefcase from Pai Mei's hands, spilling the stainless steel ball bearings all over the floor.
Sanibel shouted in rage, "I don't think so, Juan! Get him!" The guards standing next to Sanibel unloaded their super-soakers on Juan, dousing him in cinnamon-scented water. El Blanco pulled a lever, and the bottoms of the four cages fell open, releasing the tentacled nightmares. The four decapuses reached down and tore Juan limb from limb.
Sanibel then laughed heartily, and shouted "Time for your cut, Cosmo!" The guards soaked him as well, with similar results. The party realized that they were next, and Pai Mei intoned one of his deep magics, summoning a swarm of cavern insects to crawl from the walls, biting most of the guards - and they fell into a deep sleep. Sanibel and El Blanco swatted the insects away, El Blanco fleeing through a door, and Sanibel pulling out a pistol, taking pot shots at the crew.
Pai Mei responded with a barrage of bolts of arcane energy, gutting Sanibel. Rolf finished the drug kingpin off with a shot from his plasma rifle, leaving a flaming stump where his head used to be. The body toppled over the railing cinematically. The sleeping guards awoke, took one look at the carnage, and fled for their lives.
The party took their time exploring Sanibel's mansion. In the backyard, they found a pool and two women sunning themselves next to it. Pai Mei began asking one of the girls questions - she just sighed and said "Ugh, beat it, weirdo" and leapt into the pool, sitting herself underwater on the bottom. She refused to come up for air, preferring drowning to Pai Mei's conversation. Rather than witness another suicidal rejection, they returned to the mansion, looted gold chains, a "Polex" wristwatch, and a key from Sanibel's corpse, which in turn unlocked a secret closet containing a briefcase with $100,000, Sanibel's diaries, and a heavy machine gun. Further searching revealed a pen set and some petty cash, and then the party began the trek back to Under-Miami.
Once they reached U.S. 1, they were met by four bikers, riding three bikes (one of which had a side car). One of the bikers bore down on them, whirling a chain, but was shot down by Pai Mei's magic missiles. Pistol shots from Biff and Rolf took out the other bikers, and the contents of their chained wallets were looted. The party decided to skirt through the jungle rather than walk through Lago - clearly there would be trouble there.
After making their way to Under-Miami, the party headed to the police station and turned the diaries over to Bennett and Lt. Castellan - "Under-Miami owes you a great debt. Just a metaphorical debt though, this department is under-funded" - and then to the visitor's center to find a place for the night. To their great horror, there was a line of adventurers from Denethix, several wearing "Blessed Expeditionary Company" t-shirts. They turned tail, and interrogated passersby until they were directed to the bloodstained rooms of the "Embassy Hotel" - formerly the "Miami Cannibal Society", until the club's unceremonious eviction three days earlier. The accommodations were found lacking, so they sold their goods ("Nice heavy machine gun! Haven't seen one since that one I sold to Sanibel!") and invested in a three bedroom apartment only a block from South Beach. This expenditure was enough to push all three to fifth level.
Gains: 3 gold chains, "Polex" wristwatch, $106,400, pen set, heavy machine gun, 2 uzi's
Kills: 3 guards, Sanibel, 4 bikers
Losses: none
--------
Pai Mei the Wu-Jen (4)
Rolf the Dwarf (3)
Biff the Fighter (4)
It seemed like a year since the party escaped Ashkasor's clutches - but of course, only moments had passed. They looked around, and Gutboy had wandered off into the swamp to take a leak - but lo! a stranger named Biff walked up in his stead. He was wordlessly accepted into the party, like a long-lost brother, such was their bond.
They reviewed their options, and decided it was time to complete the long-delayed drug deal with Sanibel. Their briefcase full of ball bearings in hand, they headed north through the swamp to Lago. They traveled along the coast til swamp turned to jungle, and then followed U.S. 1 north where it crossed the Biscayne from Under-Miami back onto the mainland. For over a day they trekked over the deteriorating asphalt, until the jungle opened up, revealing a dozen or so buildings lining the highway. A road sign read "LAGO" - but the town's name was crossed out and crudely replaced with the word "HELL" in red paint.
They headed for the bar - an establishment bearing the name "Plain Dealer", with bikers wandering in and out. Their choppers were lined up outside the door. Inside, the bikers, their jackets labeled "The Cavers", were busy getting drunk and eyeing the trio. One of the few non-bikers made his way over - "You. I'm Cosmo. Cosmo the Bullet." The three stared at him in confusion. "El Blanco sent me. The drugs? Let's have 'em."
Rolf: "Wait, we're supposed to give them to Sanibel."
Cosmo: "Really? Fine. Don't say I didn't warn you. I don't want these bikers seeing us leave town together. I'll go first, meet me an hour up the road."
Pai Mei: "No, I think we'll go first."
Cosmo: "Whatever. Just go."
Cosmo left first, conspicuously walking south on U.S. 1, while the party decided to do some shopping. Across the street from the bar, a tiny figure watched them from the porch of the town sheriff's office - this "little person" was presumably the sheriff himself. They made no move to introduce themselves, instead browing the goods in a store imaginatively labeled "Food". Biff ventured across the street to the establishment labeled "Girls", but found only regret.
After stocking up on canned beans and canned beer, the party marched north up the road. After a time, they hid in the bushes, and waited for Cosmo. Four bikers rode slowly by, but didn't see them - and soon after Cosmo appeared, escorted by two heavies in silk suits. Together, they marched north for a bit, and then headed off into the jungle towards Sanibel's compound.
The journey took over a day, but eventually the filthy group of travelers came upon the spectacular mansion of Sanibel. The guards in front of the house stepped aside to let them into the foyer, and Cosmo excused himself to let Sanibel know they had arrived. He returned shortly, and let them into a wide solarium. As they entered, a pair of guards closed the doors behind them.
The solarium was filled with potted palms and aloe vera plants. A half dozen guards stood on the floor with them, while Sanibel, El Blanco, and two guards with super-soakers stood on a balcony at the other end of the room. Incongruously, a rough wooden barrel was sitting on the balcony as well. Hanging from the ceiling were four brass cages, each containing a spherical horror 4' wide, with wide gnashing mouths and ten long tentacles.
Sanibel: "Welcome to my home! You have brought the lanthanides?"
Pai Mei: (removing the briefcase from his pack and opening it) "Right here"
Sanibel: "Juan! Try a sample!"
One of the guards walked over, and Pai Mei handed him the one genuine lanthanide sphere from the briefcase. The guard pulled out a tin of greenish jelly and smeared it over his teeth, and then popped the lanthanide sphere into his mouth. Sparks flew from his teeth as he rolled it around with his tongue, and his eyes rolled back in his head. "Good stuff boss!" A strange look came over the guard's face - "I want MORE!" and he yanked the briefcase from Pai Mei's hands, spilling the stainless steel ball bearings all over the floor.
Sanibel shouted in rage, "I don't think so, Juan! Get him!" The guards standing next to Sanibel unloaded their super-soakers on Juan, dousing him in cinnamon-scented water. El Blanco pulled a lever, and the bottoms of the four cages fell open, releasing the tentacled nightmares. The four decapuses reached down and tore Juan limb from limb.
Sanibel then laughed heartily, and shouted "Time for your cut, Cosmo!" The guards soaked him as well, with similar results. The party realized that they were next, and Pai Mei intoned one of his deep magics, summoning a swarm of cavern insects to crawl from the walls, biting most of the guards - and they fell into a deep sleep. Sanibel and El Blanco swatted the insects away, El Blanco fleeing through a door, and Sanibel pulling out a pistol, taking pot shots at the crew.
Pai Mei responded with a barrage of bolts of arcane energy, gutting Sanibel. Rolf finished the drug kingpin off with a shot from his plasma rifle, leaving a flaming stump where his head used to be. The body toppled over the railing cinematically. The sleeping guards awoke, took one look at the carnage, and fled for their lives.
The party took their time exploring Sanibel's mansion. In the backyard, they found a pool and two women sunning themselves next to it. Pai Mei began asking one of the girls questions - she just sighed and said "Ugh, beat it, weirdo" and leapt into the pool, sitting herself underwater on the bottom. She refused to come up for air, preferring drowning to Pai Mei's conversation. Rather than witness another suicidal rejection, they returned to the mansion, looted gold chains, a "Polex" wristwatch, and a key from Sanibel's corpse, which in turn unlocked a secret closet containing a briefcase with $100,000, Sanibel's diaries, and a heavy machine gun. Further searching revealed a pen set and some petty cash, and then the party began the trek back to Under-Miami.
Once they reached U.S. 1, they were met by four bikers, riding three bikes (one of which had a side car). One of the bikers bore down on them, whirling a chain, but was shot down by Pai Mei's magic missiles. Pistol shots from Biff and Rolf took out the other bikers, and the contents of their chained wallets were looted. The party decided to skirt through the jungle rather than walk through Lago - clearly there would be trouble there.
After making their way to Under-Miami, the party headed to the police station and turned the diaries over to Bennett and Lt. Castellan - "Under-Miami owes you a great debt. Just a metaphorical debt though, this department is under-funded" - and then to the visitor's center to find a place for the night. To their great horror, there was a line of adventurers from Denethix, several wearing "Blessed Expeditionary Company" t-shirts. They turned tail, and interrogated passersby until they were directed to the bloodstained rooms of the "Embassy Hotel" - formerly the "Miami Cannibal Society", until the club's unceremonious eviction three days earlier. The accommodations were found lacking, so they sold their goods ("Nice heavy machine gun! Haven't seen one since that one I sold to Sanibel!") and invested in a three bedroom apartment only a block from South Beach. This expenditure was enough to push all three to fifth level.
Gains: 3 gold chains, "Polex" wristwatch, $106,400, pen set, heavy machine gun, 2 uzi's
Kills: 3 guards, Sanibel, 4 bikers
Losses: none
2015-07-14
session recap, 6/28/2015
CAST
--------
Gutboy the Cleric (6) and his blink dog Rufus II
Pai Mei the Wu-Jen (4)
Rolf the Dwarf (3)
Simon the Halfling (3)
The party began exploring the prison in which Ashkasar had trapped them. They found various statues in niches along the walls, of varying species - they provided no clue on how to escape. Finally, at the far end of the chamber, they stumbled across another pair of portcullises. Expecting them to open, they poked a 10' pole through the bars of the near one and pressed the pressure plate that triggered the trap - but nothing happened. Apparently, Ashkasar had been opening and closing the portcullises himself - a depressing realization for the intrepid crew. Fortunately, brute strength was at hand, and with all the cannibals of the prison slain or turned to dust through Gutboy's faith, they had no problem using their combined strength to push the portcullis upwards.
Beyond, they negotiated a series of tunnels through the underground, discovering stuffed ape heads on pedestals, and the pit traps that disturbing said heads triggered. The use of 10' poles prevented serious injury, and eventually they made their way to a large room with two skunk ape statues, one holding a quill, and the other a book.
The first ape statue uttered strange phrases when touched - "Never odd or even", "Flee to me, remote elf!" and other nonsense. The second statue spoke even stranger things - "Knock knock", "Quack", and "Sizzle". Pai Mei identified the second ape's utterings as onomatopeias, but the first ape statue's babbling was indecipherable.
Ignoring this mystery, they headed through a southern tunnel, finding a strange room filled with bean vines growing from pots. Rolf was able to see the room clearly - a pair of ape statues were glowing with ultraviolet light - and in a corner, he saw a giant snake. Rolf tossed a torch in that direction so the rest of the party could see the giant beast, and to their surprise, the snake used its tail to open a door, rushed in, and slammed the door closed.
A cursory inspection revealed ancient runes carved into the stone walls behind the bean vines, mentioning obsidian seeds and a being called the Gann, who was apparently supposed to return to the dungeon at some point.
The party approached the door and opened it, revealing a snake's bedroom - one wall lined with great pillows. The snake sat coiled at the far end of the room, its head straight up in the air, with the upper half of a goblin sticking out. The goblin spoke:
Esvet: "Do not be alarmed, travelers! I am a simple bean farmer! This goblin is my method of communication!"
Gutboy: "Wait, what?"
Esvet: "My people can only speak through these lesser ones held in our mouths. We are a peaceful race, and desire only commerce, and to harvest beans. I am Esvet, of the Zerpanax"
Gutboy: "Commerce? What are you looking for?"
Esvet: "Why, women, of course!"
Gutboy: "Snake women?"
Esvet: "No, don't be ridiculous. We need human wombs to incubate our young. Subterranean humanoids such as this goblin are inferior incubators, and the children produced are mentally incompetent. Human women are necessary for proper childbearing!"
Gutboy: "And what would we get for bringing you human women?"
Esvet: "I see from your equipment that you are lovers of weapons and technology. We can provide these in great numbers! Have you heard of lasers? Such devices are held in our citadels beneath!"
Gutboy: "So you're not from here? You're not the Gann?"
Esvet: "The Gann? No, we traveled through subterranean fissures to this dungeon. Whoever the Gann was, he is long departed. We worry not about him or his ridiculous apes."
Gutboy: "So you eat beans?"
Esvet: "No, our mouthpieces eat beans! We eat the skunk apes, and sometimes the morlocks, when they are disobedient."
Gutboy: "Well, we'll get those women for you right away. Which way out of here?"
Esvet: "To return to the surface, you'll want to head north. You'll find some caverns, travel through them and a natural chimney will lead up to the swamps above."
The party (with the notable exception of Pai Mei) found the human-womb-seeking, goblin-devouring snake to be entirely trustworthy, and followed its advice, heading north. They did indeed find a large natural cavern, with a gong at the far end. Rolf spied a stony humanoid crouched behind the gong. They suspected a trap, but pressed forwards regardless - Rufus blinking forward to bite at the stone-man, and the party unleashing a volley of arrows. The arrows plinked off its stony hide, doing no damage, and the party realized they were in serious trouble, as two more stone men peeled off from the cavern walls.
Rufus managed to down one with his savage blink-dog-jaws, crunching through its rock hide, but the others hammered on the bell and rushed the party, crushing Simon the Halfling into paste. The party fled for their lives, rushing back to the bean room, and Pai Mei used the ancient powers of the wu jen to secure the door against all intrusion. Inhuman fists crashed on the other side of the door, and angry hisses were heard, but the mighty doors to the bean room held.
Incensed at Esvet's betrayal, they kicked down the door to his room and unleashed their fury on the slithering liar. "Please, there must be some misunderstanding!" were the last words of the beast as Rolf severed the snake's head (and the goblin's feet). The goblin fell from the monster's mouth, moaning in pain. There was a brief and unsuccessful attempt to interrogate the mostly-unconscious goblin before the party decided that heading south would be a more profitable direction.
The southern tunnels brought them to a room full of morlocks and a giant lizard, who were quickly dispatched - and beyond that, a series of rooms that led back to recognizable staircase. Despite horrendous mapping errors, the party had found their way out of the dungeon of the Gann. They followed the more accurate upper level of their map, and made their way back out to the swamp, avoiding the laser stare of the stone ape heads outside.
Gains: none
Kills: margoyle, zerpanax, 2 morlocks, subterranean lizard
Losses: Simon the Halfling
--------
Gutboy the Cleric (6) and his blink dog Rufus II
Pai Mei the Wu-Jen (4)
Rolf the Dwarf (3)
Simon the Halfling (3)
The party began exploring the prison in which Ashkasar had trapped them. They found various statues in niches along the walls, of varying species - they provided no clue on how to escape. Finally, at the far end of the chamber, they stumbled across another pair of portcullises. Expecting them to open, they poked a 10' pole through the bars of the near one and pressed the pressure plate that triggered the trap - but nothing happened. Apparently, Ashkasar had been opening and closing the portcullises himself - a depressing realization for the intrepid crew. Fortunately, brute strength was at hand, and with all the cannibals of the prison slain or turned to dust through Gutboy's faith, they had no problem using their combined strength to push the portcullis upwards.
Beyond, they negotiated a series of tunnels through the underground, discovering stuffed ape heads on pedestals, and the pit traps that disturbing said heads triggered. The use of 10' poles prevented serious injury, and eventually they made their way to a large room with two skunk ape statues, one holding a quill, and the other a book.
The first ape statue uttered strange phrases when touched - "Never odd or even", "Flee to me, remote elf!" and other nonsense. The second statue spoke even stranger things - "Knock knock", "Quack", and "Sizzle". Pai Mei identified the second ape's utterings as onomatopeias, but the first ape statue's babbling was indecipherable.
Ignoring this mystery, they headed through a southern tunnel, finding a strange room filled with bean vines growing from pots. Rolf was able to see the room clearly - a pair of ape statues were glowing with ultraviolet light - and in a corner, he saw a giant snake. Rolf tossed a torch in that direction so the rest of the party could see the giant beast, and to their surprise, the snake used its tail to open a door, rushed in, and slammed the door closed.
A cursory inspection revealed ancient runes carved into the stone walls behind the bean vines, mentioning obsidian seeds and a being called the Gann, who was apparently supposed to return to the dungeon at some point.
The party approached the door and opened it, revealing a snake's bedroom - one wall lined with great pillows. The snake sat coiled at the far end of the room, its head straight up in the air, with the upper half of a goblin sticking out. The goblin spoke:
Esvet: "Do not be alarmed, travelers! I am a simple bean farmer! This goblin is my method of communication!"
Gutboy: "Wait, what?"
Esvet: "My people can only speak through these lesser ones held in our mouths. We are a peaceful race, and desire only commerce, and to harvest beans. I am Esvet, of the Zerpanax"
Gutboy: "Commerce? What are you looking for?"
Esvet: "Why, women, of course!"
Gutboy: "Snake women?"
Esvet: "No, don't be ridiculous. We need human wombs to incubate our young. Subterranean humanoids such as this goblin are inferior incubators, and the children produced are mentally incompetent. Human women are necessary for proper childbearing!"
Gutboy: "And what would we get for bringing you human women?"
Esvet: "I see from your equipment that you are lovers of weapons and technology. We can provide these in great numbers! Have you heard of lasers? Such devices are held in our citadels beneath!"
Gutboy: "So you're not from here? You're not the Gann?"
Esvet: "The Gann? No, we traveled through subterranean fissures to this dungeon. Whoever the Gann was, he is long departed. We worry not about him or his ridiculous apes."
Gutboy: "So you eat beans?"
Esvet: "No, our mouthpieces eat beans! We eat the skunk apes, and sometimes the morlocks, when they are disobedient."
Gutboy: "Well, we'll get those women for you right away. Which way out of here?"
Esvet: "To return to the surface, you'll want to head north. You'll find some caverns, travel through them and a natural chimney will lead up to the swamps above."
The party (with the notable exception of Pai Mei) found the human-womb-seeking, goblin-devouring snake to be entirely trustworthy, and followed its advice, heading north. They did indeed find a large natural cavern, with a gong at the far end. Rolf spied a stony humanoid crouched behind the gong. They suspected a trap, but pressed forwards regardless - Rufus blinking forward to bite at the stone-man, and the party unleashing a volley of arrows. The arrows plinked off its stony hide, doing no damage, and the party realized they were in serious trouble, as two more stone men peeled off from the cavern walls.
Rufus managed to down one with his savage blink-dog-jaws, crunching through its rock hide, but the others hammered on the bell and rushed the party, crushing Simon the Halfling into paste. The party fled for their lives, rushing back to the bean room, and Pai Mei used the ancient powers of the wu jen to secure the door against all intrusion. Inhuman fists crashed on the other side of the door, and angry hisses were heard, but the mighty doors to the bean room held.
Incensed at Esvet's betrayal, they kicked down the door to his room and unleashed their fury on the slithering liar. "Please, there must be some misunderstanding!" were the last words of the beast as Rolf severed the snake's head (and the goblin's feet). The goblin fell from the monster's mouth, moaning in pain. There was a brief and unsuccessful attempt to interrogate the mostly-unconscious goblin before the party decided that heading south would be a more profitable direction.
The southern tunnels brought them to a room full of morlocks and a giant lizard, who were quickly dispatched - and beyond that, a series of rooms that led back to recognizable staircase. Despite horrendous mapping errors, the party had found their way out of the dungeon of the Gann. They followed the more accurate upper level of their map, and made their way back out to the swamp, avoiding the laser stare of the stone ape heads outside.
Gains: none
Kills: margoyle, zerpanax, 2 morlocks, subterranean lizard
Losses: Simon the Halfling
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