Session 15 Recap: Albert, May the Dice Be Ever in His Favor
Dramatis Personae
+David Carli-Arnold as Snap Quill the Action Hero
+Jess Newman as Don Harper, the Specialist
+Ronnie Whelan as Ronnina the Magic User
+Dion Williams as Zonagus, the Specialist
Albert as ALBERT
Loot:
Ronnina snatched Zessler Vox’s Robe of Many T-Shirts, which has no particular effect.
The party collected two light crossbows and a dagger from Zessler’s body. These are of no particular value, but could be sold later if the party so desires.
The party also gathered 115 credits from Zessler’s body. That’s 29 Credits / XP each
A small haul this session. Most of the value from your accomplishments this session will probably come from looting Zessler’s sanctum.
NPC Relationships
Zessler Vox – Zessler is dead now. I mention him only because during this session it was decided that he wore a wizard robe stitched together out of the goriest metal band T-shirts he could find, and I’m so in love with that idea that I may just make one for real for myself. Also Ronnina has it now.
Alfred – Alfred is a Fallen Lord whose skills are oddly exceptional. Until the battle with Zessler Vox he was a marginal member of his tribe. A guard on the Southern door. After becoming the hero of that battle, he has been somewhat overwhelmed by the adulation both of the party, and of his own tribe. He is willing to hire on with the party as a hireling, if they will have him.
Tisdale Bruce – A former slave trader in the lands of the Redstone lords, contorted into the shape of a chair. Is miserable with his lot in life, but holds out some hope he might be restored. He likes the party (with the exception of Snap), though he values his life so little at the moment that his capacity for appreciation is limited.
Lung-Eye – A frail man with massive pulsating eyes who speaks in humming chirps. He seems friendly enough, but disturbingly passionless. He’s quite content to sit staring at a wall for days on end. He seems to have no purpose.
Worldbuilding:
There is a disease which has become common in the dome, referred to as Fade. At unexpected times, anyone might become suddenly disinterested and wander off. It is considered exceedingly rude to harm someone suffering from a fit of the fade. This is the in-game explanation for what happens when a player doesn’t show up for a session.
Highlights Recap
As neither Umquat, nor Virgil were able to make it to this session, both suffered a bout of Fade. This unfortunately left Ronnina standing alone as a giant monstrous head approached her, with the menacing Zessler Vox standing behind it. Prudently, she ran, and promptly escaped from the slow head creature. As she stood pressed against a wall, trying to keep her heavy breathing quiet, she noticed two men standing beside her doing the same thing. They introduced themselves as Don Harper and Snap Quill.
Ronnina explains her current situation to the pair, and Snap agrees (without being asked) to take charge of the party, and lead it to victory.
onnina does not object, and the party heads north into unexplored territory. After several unsuccessful attempts by Snap to kick in a door, the party moves into Zessler Vox’s laboratory. A place filled with goos, goops, and fluids of various bright colors, arranged throughout all manner of glass containers and tubes. Several work tables hang from the ceiling, with a complex series of pullies allowing individual tables to be raised up to the ceiling and slid out of the way, so that another table can be brought down. There are about 8-12 worktables in the room, and space enough for 3 to be down at any given time. After a brief examination of the tables that are currently down, Ronnina raises all of them, then tangles the pullies, and tosses them over a peg high on the wall. Thus she hopes to prevent Zessler from using them to drop any nasty surprisees on the party.
Ronnina searches the room, and asks Snap to watch the door. Confused by this request, Snap removes a (non-functional) watch from his wrist, and places it over the door handle. With a roll of the eyes, Don moves to handle guard duty while Ronnina digs through the Wizard’s possessions. She finds a large book written in code, which she cannot decipher. Meanwhile, Snap finds a jar filled with goo, which he smashes on the ground, revealing a goo fetus inside of it, which he steps on. Nothing of note comes of this.
Unsatisfied by their exploration of the lab, but unwilling to linger on it any longer, the party begin to explore the many doors which branch off from the lab. As a matter of course, Snap kicks in the doors (often requiring several attempts), and the party them moves in with crossbows ready.
In the first room the party managed to get into, they discover an elderly naked woman with 8’ long breasts. She huddles quietly in the corner while her breasts move independently, like serpents. Much to the surprise of the party, Snap fires a crossbow bolt into her head, killing her without warning or provocation.
In the second room, the party finds a man who has been contorted into the shape of a chair. The man is still living, and is able to speak, and to waddle awkwardly. Snap sits on the man, which the man does not like. Snap seems to think better of his rude posture, and steps back. Ronnina asks the chair man, who introduces himself as Tisdale Bruce, if there’s any information he can offer to assist them against Zessler Vox. Tisdale, regrettably, has nothing to offer. The last thing he remembers before waking up on Zessler’s examination table was being at home with his family after a long day of slave trading. He has no idea how he got here, or anything about the complex beyond the few rooms he has been kept in. With his blessing, the party shut up the room behind them, and promise to return for him when they escape.
In the third room, the party encountered a demure gentleman sitting quietly in a chair, looking at the doorway as they entered. He had massive eyes, which pulsed in time with his breathing. He spoke in strange moaning chirps, but did not seem aggressive. If anything he seemed almost entirely dispassionate, with only a slight preference to be allowed to leave this place. When the party asked if this creature could help them in any way, the creature demonstrated his frailty by attempting to stand up from his chair, and letting the party see how much his unsteady limbs shook. He then began to gesture with his eyes, which Don took to mean that there was something behind them.
And indeed, behind the party was a terrible little creature. It had the torso of an infant child, with hairy, muscular man’s arms in place of proportional arms and legs. On the stump of its neck was a mouth lined with gnashing flat teeth. The whole thing was black and flaky, as though charred in a fire. It stood like an insect, poised to surprise the party.
The players engaged in an extended combat with the creature, during which it brutalized them near the point of death. Ronnina was struck by a strange penetrating attack which allowed the creature to heal one of its most recent wounds, and other members of the party were sprayed with acidic feces from the creature’s tiny infant bum.
It was during this combat that Zonagus arrived. What he was doing before this is unknown, but apparently upon encountering this scene he determined that the world would be better with fewer man armed baby creatures in it. With the added help, the party successfully sent the creature to flight, then quickly chased it down and put an end to it.
From here the party continued their exploration of the doors. In the next room, they found a young boy in formal wear staring intently at a crucifix. He did not respond at all when the players entered the room, and so they opted to leave without disturbing him further. They moved on to a fifth room, the door of which Snap kicked several times without success. While considering what to do next, crying was heard from the adjacent room. Moving to investigate, the party found this room unlocked.
On the walls hung faces–just the skin of dozens of faces, pinned with two nails each to the walls. The faces described how they suffered constantly because they could feel themselves rotting away. Many had been dead for some 70+ years before being cruelly reanimated as faces, only to live a brief existence of weeks being pinned to a wall before the rot made them useless. They begged for nothing more than a swift death, and Ronnina took pity on them, gathering them up into a pile. Meanwhile, Zonagus got into an argument with one of the faces which culminated in him forcibly wearing that face as an undergarment before agreeing to hand it over to Ronnina.
At this point the party felt it would be prudent to seek rest and shelter so that they could resume their hunt refreshed. They returned to the territory of the Fallen Lords without incident, taking the faces, the chair man, and the large eyed man with them. The walls were raised behind them, and they were provided with food and a good place to rest. At this point the faces were burned in a bonfire, and as their flesh sizzled, they cried out in thanks for the player’s mercy.
When they went to reembark on their hunt the next morning, they didn’t have far to look. When the Fallen Lords lowered their walls to allow the players to pass, Zessler VoX was waiting on the other side with 30 headless, shambling undead, ready to charge at the players. The wizard surrounded himself with the zombies as meat shields, and used several of them to lift him up above the crowd so he could cast spells, then lower him again for his own protection.
The situation looked dire for the party. However, a strange turn of luck occurred when one of the two Fallen Lords who guarded the wall hurled his spear at Zessler Vox. This humble guard rolled a natural 20. To honor this feat, the referee called for a roll on an unfinished critical hit table he’d been preparing for eventual implementation in the game. The party rolled a 39: for the rest of this combat, all attacks made against this target will automatically hit. For this feat it was decided that this nameless NPC deserved a name. He was dubbed ALBERT.
With this remarkable turn of luck, the party hammered Vox, hurling any object they could get their hands on at him. The wizard tried to turn the tide of battle against the party by casting “Imbue Hatred” on Albert. In a second feat of impressive luck, this level 0 fighter rolled an 18 on his save versus magic, negating the effects of Vox’s spell!
The party looted the body of Zessler Vox, and joined the Fallen Lords in proclaiming Albert to be a hero!