Dramatis Personae
+Moreven Brushwood as the Four Gobbos
+Frotz Self as Varouj
+Ronnie Whelan as Ronnina
NPC Interactions
Sheniqua – Got creeped the fuck out in there. (No loyalty change).
Robot Monster – DID NOT LIKE SQUISHES BETWEEN HIS TOES. (No loyalty change)
Dividia Gaym – Holy shit, these guys went into FNJ, and came out alive like it was no big deal. They’re fuggin BADASS. (Loyalty improved to 2)
Nrrk – The party paid him to stick around, which he is happy to do.
Helen – A Dukes of the Dome citizen, and former captive of the Friends of Needletooth Jack who claims to have escaped. Is grateful to the party for sanctuary. Has a particularly good bond with Varouj, who spent time with her over the Haven Turn.
The peeping woman – Thin and severe looking. Was spying on something in Fighting Mongoose territory. It’s unclear what, though. Chased off by gobbos throwing severed penises.
BDSM Sub man & sadist lady – the party disturbed their session, but sadist lady was able to work it into her routine.
Dayvo – Varouj sent him a letter.
Buttankle – A mutant the players met. He has butts for ankles.
Tentacle Hair Girl – A mutant the players met. Her tentacles attack her face. Rita is her friend.
Brzdrz Curios Attendant – A vendor the party made purchase from.
Loot
Ronnina purchased a Bright Rose Rectangle IOUN stone from a curio vendor. While wearing the stone, a person’s maximum hit points is reduced by whatever the max result on their hit die is. (So, for Ronnina, a Magic User, it is reduced by 4). In exchange, they may identify one of their hirelings, followers, familiars, etc.
The designated creature receives a +1 to their armor rating, a +1 to any saving throws they need to make, and a +1 to hit points for each of their hit dice.
This benefit can be spread to others by further reducing the caster’s hit points. For each increment their HP is reduced by, they can spread this benefit to one other follower. The benefit does not stack, and cannot be applied twice to the same person. Any change in ownership or target of the IOUN stone takes about 1 week to attune.
Rulings
It was determined that the Alchemy skill can be used to identify whether someone’s fresh-drawn blood is human or not.
Worldbuilding
There are insects on mars which look like tiny naked humans with stubby lumps instead of heads.
Haven Turn
Haven Encounter: 5, GUN AUCTION. A functioning Civil War musket is available for sale, for 300cc. The weapon takes a full round action to reload. Deals 1d8 damage on a successful hit. Is loud, and may possibly attract, or scare away monsters.
Varouj: Sends a message to Davo of the Dukes of the Dome. See response below. Varouj spends most of the month with Helen, and develops a good rapport with her.
Ronnina: ???
–Dividia: Levels up to 2 as a Fighter.
–Sheniqua: Levels up to ? as a Magic User
Don Harper: Continues training up to “Expert” with Machine Guns (Month 3 of 5)
Umquat: ???
Letter from Dayvo
My friend,
The grim subject of your letter is not pleasant to speak of, but I am certain you contacted me with some noble intent, and so I will share what I know. Though our territory boarders theirs, we have little contact with them. Disappearances happen from time to time, and for those who live near the edge of that place, the fiends within are often considered a likely culprit.
It may be just as likely that these missing folk were lost to beasts, slavers, or any one of the many perils of the dome. But it is hard not to sympathize with these people’s fears. It may be true that the foul things slink out from their domain in the night to take unwitting victims back to their lairs, but for a certainty I cannot say.
I hope this letter finds you well, and that you will not tempt fate in that dreadful place. No treasure in hell is worth the seeking.
Faithfully yours,
Duke Dayvo, of the Dome.
Highlights Recap
At the start of the session, the players responded to the various events which had occurred during their long haven turn. They asked Sheniqua how she felt about the fire in her old home (she was fine with it, they’re all assholes anyway), they granted sanctuary to the woman from the Friends of Needletooth Jack, and assigned someone with basic medical knowledge to tend/keep an eye on her. Also Varouj paid Nrrk his 12,500cc to keep him from taking the other job. Nrrk was pretty happy about it. Ronnina also hired a 1st level fighter named Dividia Gaym to serve as his hireling.
The party started to make plans to go toy around with the murderer who was acting in the name of Akiovasha, but just as a plan started to take form, they made a sudden 180 and decided that what they REALLY wanted to do was talk to the woman from the Friends of Needletooth Jack, and see what her deal was.
Her name was Helen. She was fairly distant at first, but grateful to the party for giving her a place to stay. She explained that she had grown up & lived in the Dukes of the Dome territory. She’d been a baker, and one night while she was sleeping a black smoke dragged her out of her house. She tried screaming, but couldn’t make a sound as she was whipped around through the streets.
For an untold amount of time she was kept locked up in tiny cells, strapped into machines. Things were pumped out of her, and other things were pumped into her. She says that a few days ago, she noticed a crack in her cell’s wall. She had picked and pushed at it, and made a small enough hole to climb through. Then she just started running, and eventually ended up here, where she hoped she would be safe. Though, now that she was here, she didn’t think she’d ever be safe.
The party offered to help her contact her family back in Dukes territory, but she declined. She doesn’t want to drag them into anything yet. Let them think she’s dead, until she actually knows whether or not she’s going to be alive for much longer.
Varouj tried, as tactfully as he could, to ask for some of the woman’s blood so he could test it. Helen was trepidatious, understandably having some severe trauma related to getting fluids pumped out of her body, but she was willing to do it if it meant the group would let her stay here awhile longer.
Varouj drew the blood, and performed his tests, but the results were inconclusive. It’s unclear whether Helen is human, or something else entirely. He apologized to her for forcing her to go through the procedure for nothing, which she accepted.
The party determined that it was about time they investigated the Friends of Needletooth Jack, and equipped themselves for the journey. The Gobbos, who had been playing with bugs out in the field this whole time, decided that they would come along as well.
While traveling through Fighting Mongoose territory, the party noticed a glint in the grass. The gobbos, pretending to be playing around, gradually moved towards the glint, hoping not to alert whoever was there that they had been noticed. Once the gobbos were close, a thin, severe looking woman leaped out of the bushes and ran off, clutching a pair of binoculars. The gobbos gave chase, repeatedly throwing some of their severed dicks at the woman, but unfortunately she was able to escape.
Continuing on their way, the party entered an area of the park where huts made of detritus were packed tightly together. They heard a loud pounding sound, like meat being tenderized, and decided to follow it. They eventually reached a clay hut with a bit of sheet metal leaning against the entrance, serving as a door.
Barging inside, they discovered a woman viciously kicking a man on the floor. Upon the party’s entrance, she immediately berated him for being so noisy that he disturbed these nice people, and the man apologized. It was not clear to the party whether they were witnessing BDSM, or the actual abuse of an enslaved human. After trying to figure it out for awhile, they decided there was a decent chance it was BDSM, and just left.
Two hours later, they heard yet another severe beating taking place nearby, and realized they had wandered into the BDSM district without realizing it.
Moving on, the party finally reached no-man’s land between Fighting Mongoose and Friends of Needletooth Jack territories. It was deserted. Unsettlingly so. No Man’s Land is always a bit more sparse than the more settled territories, but it was absolutely unheard of for the Dome–usually an unpleasantly overcrowded place–to be so thoroughly empty.
The FNJ territory rose up before them. In the time before, it must have been a financial district or something. Towering buildings were clustered close together, forming a kind of maze, leading into a dark, empty streets. The party warily approached.
They opened the door to one of the nearest buildings, thinking that they should establish some kind of “forward base” there. That plan was immediately abandoned when they saw what was within: a latticework of nerves growing across every surface. The floors, the walls, the ceiling. Every table, every chair, every abandoned tin can on the ground was coated in a network of the things. And from all of them a red-black goo was secreted, oozing over every surface, and occasionally dripping from the ceiling.
The party retreated back outside, and looked up at the windows. Now that they were looking for it, the veins were obvious from the outside. They moved to another building, and found much the same situation within.
Varouj took the first step, entering the building, and immediately the nerves beneath his feet began to twitch, and the twitching traveled away from Varouj’s foot, causing the whole room to look like it was vibrating, and then it disappeared beyond his line of sight. With each step he took, the process repeated, but no danger appeared, and so the rest of the party continued in after him.
Immediately before them was a lobby, with two rows of elevators, and a set of stairs. With a crowbar, the party opened up one of the elevator doors, and discovered a massive translucent tube within, filling the whole of the space, traveling down below this floor, and up above it.
Opting for the stairs, the party moved downwards, past a parking garage on the first sublevel, all the way to the basement. It was dark all the way down, illuminated only by the party’s own phones. The nerves continued to vibrate beneath their feet wherever they went.
At the bottom, there were halls going off in various directions, and a large glass wall looking in to what must have once been a meeting room. Now it was filled with feculent sludge. Mold, and excrement, and slime, and menstrual blood all heaped together.
Not sure where to go first, the players decided to see what happened with the tube they’d noticed above. They pried open the appropriate elevator, and saw that the tube ended about a foot from the top of the door. There was a sphincter there, and the party wondered what it might be for.
Just then, there was a scraping. Echoing down the hall, the sound of something metal being scraped through the sludge assaulted their ears. Something was coming, and the party didn’t want to be here when it arrived. They quickly fled back up to the main floor, and waited to see if whatever had been down there followed them up.
It did not.
Deciding to explore in the opposite direction, the party took stock of their rope: 50′. If they needed to make an emergency escape out of a window, they couldn’t go any higher than the 5th floor. 6th if they didn’t mind rattling their knees a little on the ground. They chose to play it safe and only venture up to the 4th floor.
Once there, they found themselves in a lobby, with again hallways going off in many directions. And, as everywhere, every surface was covered with the nerves, and the sludge they excreted.
Deciding to look for the nearest windows, the party moved South, into what had once been a cube farm. Now, the dividers had been rearranged into a sort of maze. Since the panels only come up to a person’s chest, it was easy to walk across or climb over, as the party moved towards the windows.
Once they approached, they saw that there were little eyeballs growing out of the nerves near the windows, positioned just far enough back to not be visible from the outside. There were dozens of them, staring out at the streets below, down where the party had just been earlier.
The group toyed with the eyes for a bit–shining light at them, dumping dirt on them. Aside from the twitching of the nerves and the dialating of the pupils, there was no real response. They just looked at anything moving, then turned their attention back out the window. Rita was creeped the fuck out.
Hoping to make it back to Trumpquatia before the sun set, the party started to make their way out. Before they left, though, they wanted to observe the elevator tube for awhile. They pried open the door on this floor, and watched for about an hour.
Ronnina and Sheniqua occupied themselves taking notes. Varouj tried tapping out prime numbers into the veins. After about 40 minutes, something happened: the tube contracted, pulling something up from below. It was human shaped, but moved through the fleshy intestine too quickly for the party to get a good look. It was time to leave.
They made their way out without any incident, pausing only briefly to peek into the sewers just outside the building. They wondered if the veins extended down there as well, but they couldn’t see, as the whole of the sewer passage was blocked off by a big fleshy wall.
Returning to Fighting Mongoose territory, they were briefly accosted by a pair of police cops, who asked if they were staying out of trouble, which the party assured that they were.
A few hours later, they heard some laughing and revelry a few blocks over, and went to see what all the fuss was about. A group of mutants were traveling together, having raucous fun. When asked what was up, they revealed that they were going to the mutant hospital. They all had particularly frustrating deformities, like the woman with a nose that drooped down to her knees, or the guy who had a little pair of butts on each ankle.
Rita made friends with a little girl with tentacle hair, and the tentacles constantly pinched and pulled at her face. Rita gave her her CD (shine circle) .
The two group traveled along together back to Trumpquatia. There was one last encounter before they arrived: a fellow in a teddy bear costume, wearing a flag on his back that read “Brzdrz’ Curios.” He carried a large sack, and when the party said they wanted to see his wares, he removed a single small gemstone, which immediately caused the sack to deflate as if empty. Ronnina purchased it for 20,000cc.
The party returned to Trumpquatia, and had a nice rest after their creepy adventure.
So ended October 2517 C.E.