Session 59: “I Am Your Mommy Now” | Summer
Ruinous Palace of the Metagorgos | Played on April 3, 2021
As mentioned at the end of the previous session, the Indormic Islanders came to petition the party to solve a crisis for them, and the party agreed to try. Before heading out Elrica purchased a suit of black plate metal, and equiped herself with the +1 Shield taken from the Cult of Evil Chaos, which is itself almost certainly black and red. They also deposited their troll head with the wizard Fon. Erlica suggested the Troll’s body might be pruned into wild shapes like a bonsai tree. It is unclear whether or not Fon is sufficiently good to be able to resist the temptations of such a wizardly form of artistic expression.
The party followed the delegation of Indormic Islanders through the portal, onto the icy sides of the great mountain at the center of their island. Fortunately, since the last time the party visited, a great deal of effort has been made to make traveling between the portal and the village easier. There were big colorful posts to mark the way, and sheltered buildings to warm up and rest along the way. It took a couple days for the party to make it down to the village, where they were directed to a few people most familiar with the situation.
As the story goes, a great fat knight arrived on a boat clad in full armor. The Indormic Islanders presumed they were paladin to some strange fertility goddess. They threw a great carouse, never removing their armor, and asked a lot of questions about some old myths. About Foulmother, parent to all the ills and monsters of the world. A creature who offended the gods at a time when the earth was young and soft, and the gods not so far away, and not yet mature enough to keep their tempers in check. She became a cursed immortal, ever creating new ills for the world, denied all comfort. She was thought to be a sort of origin myth, not dissimilar to the stories of Pandora they’ve heard from cultured to the North, so they told the stories freely.
It was shortly after the knight left that the new island faded into existence just at the horizon. Just where it was in the myths of foulmother, and the Indoric Islanders realized their errors. This knight they had taken for a servant of a fertility goddess may have instead been an adherent of The Foulmother, and somehow used what they learned to summon this island. Already the Indoric Islanders had seen the Foulmother’s most feared child–the great feathered serpent–soaring through the sky. Several boats had gone missing. They wished to investigate, but if one of them were to set foot on Foulmother’s island they would be religiously fouled for all time. Cursed never to return home. They hoped an outsiders would be willing to investigate on their behalf, and if possible, end the threat of apocalypse (if there even is one).
They already had a boat prepared. A small island-hopping schooner, which they trained the party to use. Glint proved particularly adept at this, rolling a 5 under his Wisdom score. He is able to sail small distances on this boat without any need to make checks in calm water.
The party made their way to the mysterious new island, found the easiest landing (there were many) and ran their boat up on the cost. They hid their boat beneath some branches against a nearby outcrop of rock, and set up camp just off the beach near the treeline. The whole island appeared to be covered in a dense foligage of coniferous trees, with a plateu rising towards the rear with a crumbling european-style stone castle atop it.
The party moved into the woods to do a little initial scouting of their surroundings. Zeehaw attempted to get some good stories out of Hibub, but Hibub was acting taciturn/shy. Then a group of 3 Myrmidons fell upon the party with spears, shouting that perhaps mother would love them if they killed these strangers. A fierce battle followed, in which both Hibub and Ecco were seriously wounded, before two of the Myrmidons were slain. Bluepie tried to bully Zeehaw into participating as she’d done to other non-combat hirelings, but this failed. Zeehaw is too self assured. She just played her accordion, and Bluepie kinda sulked about how these guys were weenies for being so sad about their moms. Bluepie doesn’t have moms and she’s fine. (She’s not fine).
During the battle the party noticed that the Myrmidons were unnaturally courageous, had a pallid grey tint to their skin, were cold to touch, and bled a deep black ichor. They kept whining about their mother, so Elrica pinned the last one to the ground and insisted that SHE was his mommy now. With a 12 on her reaction roll, she succeded in rewiring the simpleminded creature’s mind, transfering its adoration of its mother onto herself. She named it “First Son,” and warned it that the title was transferible. She asked about what else was in the woods. Apparently just a bunch of other kids wandering around, whining about mother. The party speculated that it might be nice to clear out all of these children before moving in deeper. They also learned about the solitary singing child, who is the only one who never visits false-mother to beg for her acceptance.
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LOOT:
None
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INJURIES:
Hibub: -6
Ecco: -7
Session 60: “Make a Social Roll to Shame the Dwarf” | Summer
Ruinous Palace of the Metagorgos | Played on May 1, 2021
The party opted to press on without rest, to take advantage of the Great Feathered Wyrm’s absence. Before moving on to the castle, though, they asked First Son to lead them to the singing child who never visits mother, mentioned during last session. As it turns out, the sad child was a Dwarf nailed to a tree, who had sung his songs to beg for mother’s lvoe 72,406 times. He hoped she might perhaps take pity on him and love him after 100,000? The party learned a good bit from talking to the dwarf:
-Foulmother has the ability to turn people to stone by hugging them, after which she gives birth to simulacra whom she hates.
-The Great Feathered Wyrm is Foulmother’s favorite child.
-Foulmother hates the gods.
The party considered moving the dwarf to a location closer to the castle, so Foulmother might more readily hear his songs, but opted against it. Who cares about this sadsack dwarf? His music wasn’t even that good (according to Zeehaw, anyway, who seems to have something against accapella).
The crumbling castle of foulmother sits atop a steep plateu, with a narrow switchback staircase leading directly to the door, without anywhere to stop and rest between the ground and the entrychamber. As the party approached they saw a strange light, and smelled a foul smell, and decided they very much did not want to enter through the front door. Ecco used his boots of stair-stepping-levitation to make his way around the outer edge of the castle, and came upon a ledge with a great big bramble growing just outside the wall. Wob used his powers to animate the bramble, which created a cavity within itself where the party could shelter for the night.
In the morning the Great Feathered Wyrm was asleep down around the base of the plateau, and Ecco set out around the edges of the castle to search for another way in. At last he found a section of the keep that had collapsed enough to allow for entry. After using his eye to scout around he saw a being of luminous energy (the strange light), and a pit filled with slimy tentacles (the foul smell). Both were safely on the other side of a heap of rubble, which would allow the party to enter the room and head immediately down the stairs to deeper places within the dungeon.
It took some time to get everyone off the ledge, over the wall, moving across the heaps of rubble where the castle had collapsed completely, then over another wall to get into the hole. It took even longer for the Bramble to extract itself from the ledge without tumbling a bunch of rock and soil down onto the sleeping Great Feathered Wyrm, but the party accomplished both these tasks within 3 hours.
First to get feet on the ground in the castle, Glint immediately encounters three diminutive folk with stony skin playing dice with one another in slow motion. He announces his presence courteously, and the gnomes ask if there have been any new developments in the game of Phrigoli? Perhaps new strategums are in vogue, or some particularly exciting match has occurred? When Glint admitted ignorance of the game, they launched into an absurdly complicated explanation of the rules which lasted until the whole rest of the party had arrived. Wob cut into the conversation to befuddle them by pretending to know all about their game, and that their use of bone dice instead of stone dice was a profound deviation from the game’s traditions. The gnomes were sufficiently consternated by this that the party was mostly able to slip by without further bother.
The party attempted to light torches so they could descend down a pitch-black staircase, only to discover an unexpected difficulty: their torches are magically snuffed out the moment they cross the threshold of the castle’s wall.
The session ended with the party pondering how to proceed while standing near the top of the stairs. It is currently 10:30am
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Animated Bramble:
-Wob used 100% of his daily power in the animation.
-The Bramble is significantly weakened when it is uprooted.
-The Bramble can re-root itself if it finds arable soil and spends some times working its roots into place.
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LOOT:
Sad Dwaf Ichor for Wob
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INJURIES:
Hibub: -6
Ecco: -7
Session 61: “Alcoholic Warframe” | Summer
Ruinous Palace of the Metagorgos | Played on May 15, 2021
As the party prepared to descend down the dark staircase, Bulgurd chose to stay behind on the rubble outside. After all, he is a torchbearer, and if there’s no torch to bear he may as well stay out. The party also opted to leave Zeehaw behind with Bulgurd. Fortunately for the party, Elrica was able to join this session for the first time in awhile, and fortunately for Elrica, this dungeon where light is impossible is a great place for her to use all those class abilities that are fueled by darkness. Also the Bramble was there, and continued to follow them.
She led the party down the stairs, and chose not to tell them that it was littered with shattered fragments of lifesize ceramic statues. The party saw the great fat knight at the bottom of the stairs, facing away from them, vigorously polishing a golden statue. The party coordinated their steps to correspond with the squeaking of the polish, and made it down to the southern corridor. Elrica peeked into the next room, and spotted the sleeping Foulmother on her nest.
The party successfully creeped up on the sleeping creature, and landed a devestating first round of attacks as she slept. Foulmother awoke with angry howls and birthed a sphere of dehydration which severely inhibited the whole party, but not sufficiently enough to prevent them from killing her on the next round. First Son delivered the final blow, plunging his spear into his false-mommy, hands guided by his benevolent new-mommy.
The combat was over quickly enough that the clang-clang of the fat knight’s footsteps gave the party time to prepare a quick ambush. They tackled the knight the moment it entered the room. It cried out to foulmother, and Glint recognized the voice: this was Mx. Goblin! Their armor was not armor at all, but the husk of long-dead Khaotica, which Mx. Goblin was operating from inside the torso, using a system of levers and pullies. Moreover, Khaotica’s head was filled with booze, which Mx. Goblin was consuming through a straw. Glint took charge of Mx. Goblin, and the whole sad story came tumbling out over the following days: they’d adventured with Khaotica for awhile, but inevitably the nihilistic robot had given up the ghost. She’d helped Mx. Goblin plan out the armor suit beforehand, and Mx. Goblin had then promptly set about trying to find a way to bring Khaotica back to life. They thought summoning Foulmother might be a good idea. Perhaps Foulmother could birth a new Khaotica! Foulmother had set them to polishing and cleaning. Mx. Goblin remains convinced that this was the price for bringing Khaotica back–but it is clear even from their own telling of the story that being allowed to clean Foulmother’s home was Mx. Goblin’s reward. They would have been killed when they were done.
While therapy went on out in the sunshine, Elrica and Ecco did a little looting, then fled. The party didn’t linger overmuch, content with the treasures they found, then fled back to the Indormic Island to relate their story. Never in the islander’s wildest dreams did they expect Foulmother to be destroyed. It was determined by the wisewomen that the death of foulmother had cleansed the island, and it would no longer be religiously befouling to visit that place. Instead, young folk could go there to earn heroic tattoos by putting the dead to rest.
The party were feted in grand style before returning home, Mx. Goblin and the Bramblebeast still in tow.
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LOOT:
Golden Idol: 1000gp
12 Combs: 600gp
Total: 1600gp (400 xp/gp each for Wob, Elrica, Glint, and Ecco)
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RULINGS:
Darkvision / Infravision / Low Light vision was super relevant in this session.
Elrica’s ability is not vision, and is not tied to her eyes. If she is in darkness, she is able to “see” the details of any objects that are within “line of sight” of any part of her body. She can stick her hand around corners to check around them.
Hibub has Infravision. Is able to see heat differentials up to 30′, but they lack a lot of detail.
Ecco has similar Infravision when using his Goblin eye.
Bluepie also has Infravision, but it’s particularly weak. She’s only able to see about 15′
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Carousal:
Glint: 1000 Bonus XP. Saw a vision of a mechanical bear who gave him an idea for a great bear invention, which he has forgotten.
Ecco: 1000 Bonus XP. Wrapped his finger in Metagorgos flesh, and became convinced it no longer existed. He could see it right before his eyes, but could not conceive in his mind that his hand had more than 4 fingers on it.
Elrica: 2500 Bonus XP. Came up with a cool idea to use her ability to generate darkness to convince people she’s holding a sword even when she isn’t.
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HOOKS:
What with the Indormic Islanders do with this new island nearby, now that it is no longer taboo to go there?
Where did the Great Feathered Wyrm go in its sorrow, and what will it do now that it has no mother to stand guardian over?