/games/ - Video Games

Okay this session is a stint in deep abyss. Last time: They grab some logs, meet with drakk, and then decide to go scouting to the fortress. They meet at the entrance to the mines with Ironblade, a dwarvern rogue with a soft and edgy dwarvern scottish voice. He starts leading the party down into the mines when a dwarf runs up and shouts to the party: "Are! Are! We need you down in the training yard" and he drags Are off, while consoling the rest that drakk approves of Are being taken away like this.
The party continues on without Are, down into the darkness. He tells them that they're taking a side route to avoid detection, but from the party's perspective it looks like he's leading them down the smallest and darkest tunnels, even Ironblade can't stand up straight in them so the 7, 8 foot tall firbolgs are crawling on their hands and knees trying to fit through the tunnels. They make their way through though. On the way there they notice a dead bugbear. A scout, or so Ironblade says, and he chuckles. There's a large wound in the back of his head. Galanodel inspects the creature and finds a hidden coin pouch hidden under the bugbear's cloths, containing 12 gold. He shares half of it with Fith.

The next thing they find is a crevice, full of old goblin corpses. Ironblade regales them with tales of when he used to goblin hunting, but he says "Slashing the throats of goblins is satisfying but it doesn't bring anyone back." Most of the flesh is rotten and smells awful, Ironblade warns for the party to not get any on them since it reeks. Speaking of goblins, they find their way into a larger mineshaft, complete with rails and an abandoned minecart. In it is a lone little goblin. Ironblade dissapears into the darkness and Galanodel offers the goblin some rations since it's complaining of being hungry. The complains though seem to penetrate a little deeply. As the goblin gets close, Galonodel feels the power of a magical spell- a failed charm person. The facade is maintained, and a magical suggestion also comes from the 'goblin', to cut up and serve his friend. Fith checks out where the goblin came from by spiderwalking up the wall. The 'Goblin' loses patience, hungry for souls, slashes at Galanodel. The wound is deep but Galanodel reacts by sinking into the stone, fully. The creature then levitates up towards where Fith is and slashes at him with his sharp claws. The wounds are deep and heavy. This is no goblin.

Poison sprays are completely ineffective and the party finds that elemental spells aren't very effective either, Galanodel's attempts to burn the creature not being anywhere near enough. They resort to using magically enchanced Shillaeghs, and bash the creature down. Very effective hits come out, and Fith takes more damage. They get the creature injured and it transforms into its true form, a raging four legged beast. It bites and it does a shitload of damage to fith again, the healing from Galanodel not keeping up with the power of the creature. But they bash it enough for it to flee- it casts dimension door and vanishes. Whatever they found was a fairly powerful beast. Ironblade quips "I though you were going to avoid it!" The two druids were not amused.

The party spends some time to rest up, and make their way to the fortress. The two druids take a quick look around and then feel like they've done enough and should go home. The quantity of bugbears sure is imposing, but they are hidden and ironblade takes a better stock of what's there. The bugbears are preparing for a siege- but probably not a defensive one. They're active and well organised, possibly by a central entity. He also spots that the river entrance is unguarded- key for drakk's plan.

Two bugbears appear to be patrolling in their direction so the party makes their way back. They get back, level up to level 6, and talk to drakk. Drakk explains his plan, altering it based on the recent information: He will attack. Using siege weapons and hidden troops he will lure the bugbears out of their fortress, where the two assassins, Galanodel and Fith will work their way down the river that leads under the fortress and kill their commander. Clearly some kind of magical commanding is going on so this should disorganise and destroy the will of the bugbears to fight. Are will stay with the troops, acting as a strong backbone for the other dwarves to fight with. The party has some time to rest, so they wait a few days for the seige weapons to be ready.

The party assembles with the 'army'- really a ragtag group of hastily assembled dwarves- at the entrance to the mines. The party is told to go last, but they go first with drakk and horgurn down the tunnels, led by Ironblade. The seige weapons are brought down disassembled, so that they fit through the tunnels. There are also some explosive balls being brought down too. The army makes it to the fortress and the sheer number causes the bugbears to retreat into the fortress, giving them time to set up their siege weapons. They get ready, and Drakk starts the event off with a speech: "You know I'm not one for speeches, but I know you know how to kill bugbears. Show me!" and the horns and drums start off, the battle fever is ready.

The two catapults launch their explosive cargos, one missing and landing in the fortress' dry moat, and the other landing on the fortress ramparts, directly on one of the guarding bugbears, blowing him to dust and ash. The explosions shake the ground and rumble through the cavern. The echoes are barely gone before the next to shots are loaded and ready to fire. The fortress gets pounded by explosives, 2, 4, 6, 8- The small guard that Drakk has visible for the catapults is no deterrent- the gates of the fortress open and bugbears pour outward in the dozens. The 20 or so dwarves start to look like fodder for the swarm- but drakk directs the catapults to aim for the bridge, and they get some good hits in the crowds, blasting away many a bugbear. The fight begins.

Drakk turns to where the party are at the river, and nods. The party make their way down the river to the fortress. Completely undetected, they find the back entrance to the fortress and head inside. Less stealthy they encounter two bugbears in the basement of the fortress and have a heated battle in the confined corridors. In their heads they hear a loud noise, they both realise it's telepathy and not an actual loud noise but it feels like it's coming from inside their own heads: "Serve and be rewarded", "Only those who yield will be rewarded", "you're almost here..". They look around and have a nice leisurely short rest as the dwarves are dying outside, and make their way up the stairs, only to find 3 more bugbears of which they dispatch too. They take a fair amount of damage so they take their time, the distant sounds of battle and dying dwarves seemingly music to their ears as they sit around resting and recovering. They walk around, grab some loot and make their way upstairs. The boss is waiting.

They make their way upstairs and almost shit themselves when they see a specator, the floaty ball with the eyestalks ready to roast their asses. The battle goes pretty well though. Galanodel takes a nasty blow from the guarding bugbear, and launches lightning at the spectator and bugbear both- sizzling them… but the magic once it hits the spectator throws itself back onto Fith, who takes a massive blast of lightning damage. It appears that magic gets reflected back (at least once per round). The spectator uses its reaction to reflect the magic back at the party, but because of the rules it doesn't travel in a line like real lightning but only targets one creature. Ho hum. The spectator shows anger and pipes directly into their heads "You dare disobey me?", "You'd enjoy being under my beck and call, now die!" Galanodel asks for a contract, and the spectator offers vague rewards in exchange for loyalty, which is clearly not good enough for Galanodel, who was ready to get out the pen, paper and write up a contract with fine print, pension, benefits, health plan, dental plan, company car, all the benefits.

Fith steps forward and uses a wind spell, the thunder to Galanodel's lightning, to slam the spectator into the wall before it gets its reaction back. It is thrown backwards into the darkness, and what echoes out is a nasty splatting sound. The telepathy breaks, and the hold on the bugbear infront of them also breaks. Stumbling around, confused, it lashes out on instinct, taking the pain its in as the sign to defend itself. Galanodel responds with a lightning blast and the bugbear is turned into a bloody mist, exploding out and coating the walls in body parts and blood. The party take a breath and loot the place. They find some secret tunnels behind the spectator throne containing some magical junk, and notice on the way out that there's a chest behind the specator's throne- full of coin, and other garbage. There's some magical junk in there that doesn't impress the druids, either.

That's where the session ended.

This session is Deep Abyss since one of our players was absent. It wasn't a fully prepared session but we did something.
It'd be REALLY good if we had another player so we didn't have to cancel every time a single person is missing.


It started with the salty iron smell of blood, a spattered boss, a crushed ruler, its many tentacles lifeless, its core body destroyed. This spectator is just part of the rubble and ruin of the dead fortress it inhabited. The party takes a few moments to prepare itself, and Galanodel reads the parchment he found on the spectator's shattered corpse:
This is a message from King Harold, to his loyal subjects.
As many of you know, there has been a large rift upon this land. This was fortold by my prophets and I am personally making sure that recovery is swift and rapid. For those who think that order is gone and have started looting, pillaging, and losing their faith in their supreme leader; this is my message to you.
You will fear me as you fear disease and suffering. You will be caught by me as like the wind I will be everywhere. Your petty life will end, crushed under the boots of my armies, my knights, and my overwhelming might. This world is not over for me and my kingdom, but it will be over for you.
In 20 years those who did not fall from my graces will look around and thank me for what I have brought to them, how I have rebuilt and saved my loyal subjects in such short a time.
No-one will forget my name, even in death.

It continues, but the impression is that it's more of the same. Galanodel finishes reading it out and the party ponders on who this King Harold even was, since niether had heard that name before. Either way, the party take a short rest and then head out. They head down the stairs from the boss room and then out of the big main doors of the fortress. The big doors open fairly easily, but there is a slight hiccup, and galanodel pushes past it, the door was a little stuck like 80% of the way open. There's a splatting crunching sound a few seconds later and the doors reveal the main fortress bridge. They walk down it to what remains of the fight. Galanodel takes a second and looks off the bridge, finding a bugbear pancake deep under the bridge.

Making their way out, they find few surviors, it's a battlefield alright- death, injury, cries of the survivors. Many dwarves were killed, and many injured. It's a bloody corpse filled mess, the siege weapons are destroyed and there are but a few walking wounded dwarves and drakk, who sports a wound down the side of his face. There's a cut in his face, and his eye is ruined. He'll be sporting a scar there in future. Drakk greets the warriors and makes a speech of victory:
"Our trials are not over. This world has much more trouble coming for us, for all of us. But we have overcome this trial, we have overcome this fight and we will overcome whatever this world can throw at us. I would like to dedicate today's victory to those of us who gave their lives so that we may see it. Let us not forget their sacrifice, for every drop we shed is a drop from craghammer."

He then orders that the wounded are taken back to craghammer, and they all make their way back. Nothing happens in the mines, and they make their way back. Galanodel seriously considers using lightning on the entire group at once, just to see the destruction. He is put off by the information that the mines aren't perfectly straight and it'd be pretty much impossible to zap them all at once. Two zaps is far too much to consider. When they get back, Drakk tells one dwarf, Kramgran Longmane, that he's the replacement for horgurn. The man takes up the position naturally, Drakk being a good leader and judge of men. The dwarves scatter, the wounded being taken to the cleric in the temple, ol' Einornan, to heal them up and get them back into duty. Fith volunteers to stand guard duty on the mines, and galanodel finds that he just feels like taking a shift too, so that Fith can get some rest. They take turns guarding, and during Galanodel's shift he engraves a little bonus into the side of the wall for the dwarves to find later.

They take it in turn to have long rests, and the guard that comes along to replace them tells them that he'll be taking over their shift for now. Galanodel appears to be very interested in elves, and they head to the tavern to refresh themselves with some lunch. The tavern is much emptier and quiet than last time, the main tenents being old people and succubi, all looking grim and sobbing weakly. Galanodel gives no shits, and Fith orders lunch. It arrives and they eat up. It's plump helmets but the dwarves sure know how to prepare a plump helmet roast. Some time passes and they head to the temple, as the guard they replaced said that she would know about elves and where they live, since she was pretty friendly with elven traders many years ago. Not 'too friendly' though. But she'd know where the elves live, at least.

They head there, and find this succubus. Her beard repulses the two firbolgs greatly, and they both fight the urge to vomit long enough for her to share some information about the elven land; the city called Aendrijhael. She checks her diary and she pulls out a little hand drawn map. It shows the localo region of Aendrijhael. She says she knows it's far to the east but this is a local map, the elven capital is far away. Who knows what state it is in now. Fith makes an eloquent and extremely tempting offer the the bearded lady, for her to come with them. Even a natural 20 can't make her travel with them, and she asks for Fith to bend down to her. Fith realises that she's actually going to kiss him on the cheek and casts Wind Wall, throwing her away and slamming her into the ground, and she takes damage and lies there in pain.

Galanodel takes the opportunity to silence the witnesses. The 6 or so injured dwarves in beds that she was tending are all murdered, one by one, by Galanodel's shilleaugh. He crushes their skulls and covers them up in cloth to make it look like they died of their wounds. It's a bit suspicious that one of the dwarves that was just there because he had a cold also died of a crushed skull but hey, whatever. They murder the poor dwarvern succubus and then put a hammer in her hand and try and make it look like she killed herself by crushing her own skull and jaw multiple times. What a clutz. They loot the place, and Fith loses a few pieces of gold by dropping them down some cracks in the stone.

They did find out that Drakk has a world map that could help them so their trail of destruction leads there. They get to drakk's mansion and the guard outside warns them that they should speak to Kramgran first (horgurn's replacement). He stresses that they really REALLY should. The party of course ignore this and head straight to drakk. On the way to the stairs though, Kramgran runs out and tells them that drakk isn't available. They could speak to him but they wouldn't get anything out… he needs time. He volunteers to just get the world map for them and heads upstairs. Galanodel stealithily follows, and Kramgran does not notice. Getting upstairs Galanodel learns why Drakk isn't available, the crying, shouting and thuds from inside drakk's room tells all. He grieves for his people. Kramgran quietly opens the door and galanodel manages with good rolls to sneak his way inside too. Inside he sees Drakk.

Drakk is a wrekk. The proud liquor cabinet is half empty, the bottles strewn around, some broken. Drakk is crying into a torn pillow, drink of old dwarvern spirits in one hand, clenched fist with the other. He's crying and saying the names of dwarves: Drumuathurm Dirgeblade, Maliren Steelfury,Bramuabrek Redfury,Orimgarn Flinttoe,Orimnur Darkstone,Tygron Snowbreaker,Bundrus Doombreaker,Muirnom Brightdust,Tharoumund Slatebrew,Melthrum Slatetoe,Magoyth Stonegrip and Shelgus Doomfist. He recalls each and every one of their names over and over again, doing more damage to the room as he does so. Kramgran shuffles his way to the world map in the frame on the wall and takes it down, leaving with it. Galanodel stays. He sets up a noose, and puts a chair under it. After failing to convince drakk that he should take his own life, he just strangles the dude and puts him in the noose, letting him dangle in the room he trashed. Satisfied with a job well done, Galanodel makes his way back down stairs.

Kramgran didn't see Galanodel coming downstairs, the large world map in his face the entire time. He takes it out the frame and hands the map to the party, He apologises to the party for not being able to see drakk in person, and says that once drakk recovers from his grieving he'll lead everyone to a strong recovery. He also mentions that so long as they have drakk they'll be okay. Fith takes concern over Are and volunteers to go look for him. The two druids head out of Drakk's mansion, and they find Are pacing in the courtyardp, and they say hello. Are agrees to come with them and they go collect supplies for the long journey to the elven land. The tavern owned just hands them three large sacks of food each, and they grab them and head outside.

The cold winds howl in their faces and takes some of the courage off, but not enough. They brace themselves and step into the cold abyss.

And that's where the session had to end.

If you're even slightly interested in playing, please shoot me an email; wizrobe @ (cock . li). Remove the spaces and such, it's a generic cock.li address but I don't want email scraping bots to grab the email and start spamming me.

We've switched to mumble to communicate, and roll20 is the medium in which D&D is being played. So that's what you need to be able to use, which isn't much, really. Main communication is done over email. Since we only allow wizards to join, we have trouble finding players, so appeals like this are needed.

What's the best guide to learn how to play DnD?

Is this http://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/PlayerBasicRulesV03.pdf
worth reading?

>>36622
The basic rules are an okay place to start, but I actually recommend watching someone who does D&D on youtube or twitch or something. That way you get a real feeling for how it's played.
If you want a recommendation, Critical Role is very high in production value but it's too high in production value if you can understand that. It's also quite hectic with the large number of players, and it's an IRL d&d rather than the roll20 versions we'd be playing.
If you go to roll20 or search roll20 or something on twitch you can find someone who plays D&D. 'tatersandtot on twitch is D&D played much more like we play it- roll20, online play, and it's more what you should be expecting sans the quality of a pre-made D&D package (Temple of Annihilation I think), but still.

If you shoot wizrobe an email he can send you a whole bunch of D&D books- or just the player's guide.

Off topic, but this thread brings back some good memories of a better time. Roleplayers are fucking ubermensch.

>>36625
that line of thought is what brought me to the table originally.

each one takes what they want from the sessions sure, but I remembered Varg Vikernes making some interesting videos about its roots on wargaming and how wargames were created and their purpouse.more so the more complex you go, DnD is a superficial system but is really easy to explain or play.

how can something be this goofy and be Ubersmensch at the same time? I have no idea.

A brief recap of last time: Party finds the mansion, get invited to dinner and proceed to slaughter like 12 cultists in the dining room.

Their mouths tastes like cold iron. The heat of battle has worn off but the stink, the carnage remains. Burnt flesh still sore to the touch, cuts oozing clotting blood. The cold air flows its way into the dining room. Those outside see their breath in the cool autumn air. The dim lights on the walls flicker in the breeze, and the food goes cold.

The first thing that happens is that Jack and Shang take a rest in the results of last session's carnage. Cuhlecaim goes around to explore the rest of the house. He carefully sneaks around but every room is deadly quiet, it's like a ghost house. He finds a grand bedroom, with some basic notes about some esrothian legend or something about Sokushinbutsu monks, who worship being dried out, or something. the notes are written by some layman who didn't really understand and are contradictory at times but there is paperwork speaking of a bunch of esroth text had been translated. It's remarkably similar to the cult's messages, and Cuhlecaim finds references to the Sokushinbutsu devotees ultimately drinking less and less water over time and self-mummified themselves in tombs. There are notes scribbled around that point out that the esroth text is referring to the cult from a study point of view itself, as if they found some of these self mummified beings and decided to contain them away. There's a named technique in  Spyridon's notes; the "Churest-Rett technique. "Churest-Rett" having no known translation. There are also some half-nonsense scribblings about the importance of the esrothian bloodline.

After wandering around and finding some other crap, he wanders upstairs and finds a strange device that is a metal tube with a wooden handle. He proceeds to look inside the metal tube and he pulls the trigger. It clicks but nothing else happens. He puts it back and continues exploring. He finds some more useful notes; references to digging out the 'basement' and how much dirt and mud is being moved out, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow from under the mansion.

Shang and Jack meanwhile heard noises from below and have had a lot of fun pulling up floorboards and pounding on the stone. Jack, after recovering from his near death experience, decides to draw his old Mercenary band's emblem in blood on the wall. A raven with a ring in its mouth sitting on a branch. He doesn't roll particularly well for the design. Jack also loots each cultist, finding that they each have a little pouch with a red dry powder. He noticed them sniffing it earlier so he decides to collect it. They make so much noise that a cultist pushes the kitchen door open and spies them all in the room. He sees the dead Spyridon and goes insane, charging towards Shang. He gets brutally murdered, Shang rips his guts out and kicks him back into the kitchen. They wander into the kitchen and find that one of the counters has been moved aside to reveal a set of stairs leading downstairs. Cuhlecaim, currently looting Spyridon's secret stashes, hears the commotion and joins the other two down into the basement. Before they leave, Jack takes the time to decapitate Spryridon and attach his head to his shield.

They make their way down. It's warm, and the rough hewn limestone walls speak nothing of the suffering that is to be kept here, but they persist. Thankfully the way is lit so the two humans don't need their own lighting. The first room they find is a building site. Nothing much there. They move on. the next room is more eventful. Shang and Cuhlecaim rush forwards, in their haste they hear a clunk, and trip of a mechanical trigger. A net comes down and pins Cuhlecaim to the wall. Shang ducks out of the way, and Cuhlecaim cuts himself free with one of the daggers he can reach. A dagger connoisseur, Cuhlecaim only chooses the finest daggers to which to cut himself free of bindings.

They move on. The next room is more eventful still. They open the door, and hear "So you're back, what took you so lo- WHO ARE YOU?", from a cultist, sky blue robed and intense. The room contains a fair few cultists. Jack shows his shield, complete with their dead leader's head on it and they all rage out. Shang notices some sparkly magical tiles on the floor and jumps right into it. By sheer chance he's teleported back into the same room, right next to some angry cultists. He kills one of them, ripping the guy's hands off. A spectral weapon appears, however, and Shang takes a cut from that. Cuhlecaim and Jack take out one cultist, strong and takes some pushing, while another surprises Shang. The cultist pulls out a dagger, and concentrates necrotic energies into it, and slashes deep into shang's very being, doing 27 damage from a 3d10 damage roll. This puts shang out, he collapses. Jack and cuhlecaim take care of the offending cultist, and then jack tends to the injured monk. Cuhlecaim helps by standing on shang, doing a point of damage after jack had just patched Shang up. Jack collects more of the powder.

The party continue. They find another room with more cultists. these ones are fairly smart in their tactics. Jack knocks on the door, and when a cultist answers, he just slams the guy in the face with his war pick. Cuhlecaim gets a sneak attack arrow on one of the powerful cult fanatics, but this man is healed up by an acolyte. This fanatic cuhlecaim decides to take head on, and misses badly, striking one of the dried corpses pinned to the wall. The fanatic holds his dagger in a familiar pose, concentrating necrotic energy into it and slashes into Cuhlecaim's very being, doing 28 damage on a 3d10. Cuhlecaim takes a near-mortal blow, and reels from this onslaught. Cuhlecaim retaliates. After jack strides up, cuhlecaim does a crit max damage roll of his own and take the guy out in graceful fashion, slicing deep in armpit and neck arteries. Jack then brutally murders the healer, crushing his head against the wall, just before collecting their little powder pouches.

The party explores a bit, and after finding a whole lot of corridor, find another cultist. He puts his hands up and begs them not to hurt him, saying that is new to the cult and isn't really into the whole cult thing, it's more just a place to stay and something to do. Shang puts him in a headlock and the guy, 40s, balding, doesn't look popular with the ladies, tells them that in exchange for his life he'll tell them about a secret room with a magical item. Shang jumps at the offer, and stops noogying him to jump right into the room full of zombies. He grabs the magic ring, and then leaves. Jack also retreats, curious about zombies, and cuhlecaim just kites the zombies somewhat until they're dead.

They let the poor cultist go as he didn't even have a powder pouch, and then head downstairs to level 2. They are greeted by more corridor, but find a door of interest. They knock, and an annoyed cultist complains about disturbances and walks up and unlocks the door. He is greeted by a warpick to the face. The encounter ends with shang tearing the guy's head off. The room revealed is some kind of research room, alchemical in nature, with a distilling setup, a desiccator, and a set of cages, one containing a pale succubus, dressed in rags with scars on her arms. Jack does a little investigating, and sees that it's some kind of blood extraction and drying setup, where blood is turned into powder. Shang loots, stealing some stuff of value, and Jack finds a magical doohickey that takes two men to carry, made of bronze and mystery.

Cuhlecaim goes adventuring, looking through the doors and is reminded by the succubus stuck in the cage that he should let her out. Felicia has spent long enough in cages. Cuhlecaim lets her out, and to the lengthy protest of his companions, feeds her a healing potion so she can walk by herself, having tried carrying her but having not the strength himself. They go around and explore some corridors, then head back to the laboratory, where felicia awaits her rescuers.

They make their way out, and what drops on them is a large creature, with tentacles and and fangs, a large worm like creature burrows its way through the ceiling and flops onto the floor infront of them. They comment and say it looks like a sea cucumber. The party is relaxed and they leisurely strike at it a few times, but it survives. The sea cucumber attacks. It twice strikes shang, who is surprised by its deadly accuracy and number of strikes. He resists the poison and vows to take this sea cucumber seriously. They do, and Shang ends up ripping the creature into two pieces by separating the two halves with his foot and a lot of force.

They make their way out, and Shang boldly goes where no player has gone before and just strides right into an entire group of cultists, digging their way through the earth, making a lot of noise and being very distracted. Luckily, Shang had changed out of his yellow robes into clean sky blue ones, and Cuhlecaim who was following him was also wearing sky blue robes, which he looted earlier from the mansion wardrobes. The fairly clean (for Shang standards). Also lucky was that Jack and Felicia were out of sight, one being the reason this facility exists and the other carrying the head of their leader to whom they are fanatically loyal. Shang says that they're new recruits and are checking out the digging for themselves. The man actually buys the story (but really he was just lazy or tired or something and didn't really care) and lets them just walk out. The party thanks the stars that they didn't just end up murdered since they were all out of hit die and pretty badly damaged by that point.

Making their way back into the mansion, Felicia vomits at the sight of the bloody carnage that was made earlier, but makes her way to the games room while the three discuss what to do. They decide to rest a little bit and then clear the rest of the cultists out while they have the chance.

And that's where the session ends. Can always use more players, it's not difficult to scale.

It's currently late at night, the house feels cold and lifeless as the last of the warm air from the rooms escapes through the dining room window. The house is deadly quiet. The sounds of the sea nearby can be heard, with the only sounds in the house coming from the party, and the succubus shivering in a blanket. She appears very tired, sullen and low on life energy itself. You all feel the fatigue of extended combat kicking in, the adrenaline wearing off, and the cuts, near mortal wounds and sheer strain of murdering 30-40 dangerous cultists take their toll.

The party shrug off the extreme exhaustion with a short rest, regaining what's left of their mental energies and walk around a bit. Felecia tries to look for her sword, walking to the main study room. Cuhlecaim finds a scabbard, but Felecia rolls really well and finds her sword and scabbard in the room. Cuhlecaim reads the notes on the table. He finds out that the Sokushinbutsu monks are monks that believe in enlightenment by self-mummification, and that they have encased themselves in a tomb perpetually trying to reach enlightenment. Thousands of years have passed and these monks, powerful magic users back in their day, are still sitting there, getting ever closer to enlightenment through near perpetual suffering.
 
As cuhlecaim reads this rather somber tome, a jaunty clanking noise is heard from the room next to it. Shang has found a grand piano and proceeds to make a godawful noise on it. More distracting though is what shang does next. He picks up a lute in the corner and instead of making a racket, plays them a song of his people. It's an amazing performance and all the other characters have to resist dancing along to it. Jack is surprised that Shang is so good at making that lute sing. In the meantime, Cuhlecaim finds more important information, like how the village has been terrorised by this cult and is under their heel.

Short interlude over, the party decide to go back down and kill the remaining cultists. Might as well. Making there way down, Jack runs out of patience a fair bit and when he reaches the door he just kicks it open as hard as he can. The door whacks right into the back of a cultist, sending him sprawling on the floor and the fight begins. The seven cultists inside are no match for the battle hardened party. They storm in and murder everything that moves. One of the cultists casts sanctuary on himself and retreats into the corner, healing himself. He causes shang to miss his blows, but Felecia does not, swiftly cutting the throat of this errant cult sorceror with a flick of her razor sharp rapier. The man gags and chokes on his own blood, trips and bashes his head on a pointy bit of rock on the floor then bleeds out. Felecia seems a little used to this kind of activity now.

They then just leave. Once back up the stairs and back into the mansion, shang seems very keen on leaving the village this very night. Jack seems indifferent, and cuhlecaim agrees. The village will be okay to stay in, after all, they are the victims here. They tell the innkeep that they basically murdered the entire cult in one evening, and the man is stunned, but relieved, as if a great weight has been taken off him and his family. He asks about his daughter, who was taken hostage by the cult. There are no survivors. Felecia tells him a bit more about what happened, since she was there at least to see the corpses be dragged off. The innkeep lets them have rooms for the night, and gives them as much as he is able. Free rations and a place to stay is about all the man can offer. Shang tries to leave many times, but ends up reluctant to leave by himself in the middle of the night, so ends up sleeping on Jack's room's floor. Comfortable enough. Not quite a lumpy tree branch but there are enough splinters to satisfy.

The next morning starts bright. The party awaken and feel stronger, almost as if they'd levelled up over their long rest. They gather themselves up, and after a little horsing around, they settle on two horses to share between the four of them to make their way back to sigstrop. The path is pleasant enough, the autumn breeze scattering orange leaves around. But their horses sense something, they both react to something unseen,. and they bolt upwards and neigh with their front legs in the air. Jack manages to roll a double nat 20 and calms his horse instantly, performing a level of animal handling only seen one in every 400 times. He gets so much out of the animal that he learns what the horse reacted to before the others.

But everyone can feel it now. The rumbling. The earth is shifting.  Cracks, rumbling, the earth is shaking! The road ahead starts tossing and rupturing, and spits out grey matter, dusty rubble pouring outwards up towards the sky, and falling back down. Jack instinctively turns his horse and runs away down the road back where they came. Shang has an outburst 'Don't run in the direction a thing is travelling!' having perhaps remembered a tale where dumb people run away from a giant rolling space-ship in the wrong fucking direction. But jack is acting on instinct. What knowledge could prepare someone for this? Cuhlecaim carries his horse away from the rupturing road also.

The shaking subsides and the dust clears. The extend of damage to the road becomes evident, or so it would be, if not for the massive pile of skulls now taking up the road. Grey, human skulls, hills of them, flowing from the ground. Now and then the earth burps, shaking loose another avalanche of skuls down into the road and forest around them. Going the long way is far too long so Jack takes his horse and leads it and Shang around the disturbed road, with cuhlecaim and his horse following behind.

But calamity befalls them. Jack's horse steps on loose ground, it gives way and jack, skillfully managing the horse, slides down into a hole, lined with skulls. Human skulls everywhere. Culecaim also falls down, through some skull shifting and rumbling. Shang tries desperately to escape, not wanting to be stuck in a skull cave with some funky necromancer, but in his attempts he seals the way out with a small skullvalance. They have no choice but to proceed fowards. The cave is dark, and Cuhlecaim's elf vision lets him see. Cuhlecaim and Shang sneak forwards, leaving the extremely noise Jack too look after the horses and Felecia. They wander around in the cave and what strikes them is the sheer quantity of skulls. The skulls crunch under their feet, they're the walls, they're the ceilings, it's a cavern of nothing but skulls.

Wandering around they find animate skull creatures, one a skull-snake, crawling around mindlessly. Another, a large golem creature made of skulls, also not notcing the two. They wander and find themselves trapped in a nook, and they take the only way out. They go loud, and fight their way out. Cuhlacaim and Shang hear Jack crying out, shouting and sounds of fighting from the people they left behind. Cuhlecaim and Shang cut their way through a group of skull snakes, them being much weaker than anticipated. Cuhlecaim runs towards jack, and Shang runs in the opposite direction, towards some large skull golems that were hangin around the decapitated head portal.

Before they were forced to fight they scouted out a glowing portal, large enough for a head to pop out, and one does. Heads, decapitated and covered in facial expressions of torment and fear pop their way out of this portal every minute or so, and land on the floor below. With some they can still hear the screams, just for a moment as they go silent. Shang heads this way, as it is guarded by two large and threatening bone golems. Cuhlecaim goes back to jack to help him and Felicia. He finds jack going one on one with this giant skull golem, with jack bracing himself against heavy golemic blows. Cuhlecaim uses his actions to cut the golem apart, and retreats into the darkness. The darkness hides another golem, which comes out and strikes cuhlecaim.

Shang meanwhile takes two on at the same time by himself. He crunches into them, breaking skull after skull, but they fight back, delivering heavy blows that shang cannot keep on taking. He gets injured, he gets hurt enough to get mad, real mad. After a tough fight, he grinds away the skulls with his fists and feet, cracking and turning bones into dust. With one, he grabs the skulls and starts pulling them out, digging with his bare hands into the skull golem, ripping it apart, cracking the bones with his monk powers, until the golem stops moving, and collapses.

The Jack and cuhlecaim team have a easier fight, but cuhlecaim gets hit once or twice. Jack braces the blows and seems to not give many shits at all, but he definitely got injured. Felecia actually delivers the finishing blow to one of them, she pulls one of the skulls out with her sword and it's just enough to cut the strings of magical energy that held the skull golem to this world. With the immediate threats dealt with, the party explores to find a way out.

Shang investigates the portal itself, immediately trying to stick his head in to escape. He instead hits his head on a one-way portal. Irritated, he checks out what's nearby; there's a stone plinth, more like a stone desk, half buried in the skulls. He notices some esrothian scribbles on it and transcribes it down on some parchment. Exploring, the party finds evidence of construction, of people living here or.. something. Chairs, ruins, wooden shelving, all many hundreds and hundreds of years old. Dry as a bone, the wood crumbles under the touch.

Cuhlecaim and shang find an exit. Light. From the outside, and the breeze of nature. But they head back inside after telling jack about it, who is more than happy to get the fuck out of dodge. They go back inside. They find some interesting objects on their exploration.  Or rather, two strange skulls. While walking around they already noticed that the skulls had great variety. Some were alien-shaped, and there was a lot of weird humanoid type shapes. But two were outstanding; shang, while digging through skulls looking for buried monsters to kill, found a glowing green skull. Definitely not natural. He also found a skull that was burning whenever exposed to air. He dumped water on it, putting the flames out, but it was hot and dried quickly and soon started burning again. Cuhlecaim got a dagger or something and held the skull on the metal stick.

They decide that enough is enough and they too, join jack on seeing sunlight again.

And that's where we end the session for this week.

the art for cover of chapter 1 of the crazy adventures of Cuhlecaim of Alcaire™: Under Esrothian Gaze™

he reached a milestone, don't judge the pic, he has been rolling on the cave of skull for a while and is poor, but he will get some regalia soon.



——
Cuhlecaim™ is a property of Snail inc™, any unauthorized use of Cuhlecaim™ or any other of Snail industries™ or Snail's Inc™ will result on a meaty double slap.

btw I am joking about the post above having any official value, it was just a scribble.

btw link to the previous thread with the rest of the story:
https://wizchan.org/games/res/28986.html#32618

and to join the table just shoot wizrobe an e-mail at wizrobe @ (cock . li)
we got a tank and 2 DPS's but you can choose any class really. IMO newcomers should start a level bellow, but is up to wizrobe

Since the dawn of time, humanity always looked upon the stars.
Those tiny dots in the sky watched over them for millenniums. Still, yet evermoving, they inspired change, faith, seemingly manifested destiny and guided humans in their way. If the stars spoke, both rich and the poor listened, but as humanity turned to science and gathering knowledge about the external, whole new worlds were discovered, seperated by the sea of void. Such a world was "Earth".
Humanity turned to the stars once again, with a different purpose. To go where no man has ever gone before. To be the great sailors and explorers their ancestors once were. Humanity propelled itself towards the stars faster than any thought possible, and began their adventure in the vast cosmos.
On the bumpy road of humanity, a new goal has been reached.
Yet, as it always does, a single road is not enough for everyone. Some began to strike out, while others remained, and thus began the First Interplanetary War.
As the war came to an end, humans redoubled their efforts. Before their eyes wonders yet unseen and worlds yet to be habited appeared.
Trouble, however soon found humanity once again, and the split happened.
Where will they end up, we can only observe.

GENESIS VOID
PILOT EPISODE: CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE

The year is 2873.
On one of the FedEx spaceline ships, 3 certain individuals are headed to the 267741 - Omega Epsilon system.
Barry Callahan, Ex cop hardened on the streets of Thorax 5. With a grudge to bear and a .44 Magnum, he's ready to ask some punks about their luck.
Next, Coltam Brenson and Lieutenant Anton Perzina. Both soldiers, they met eachother while on duty and managed to become brothers forged in battle. Coltam a genius in medical procedures and Anton, the space ship mechanic savant.

On the ship, Coltam meets a slick middle aged guy who calls himself "Mister John White". And offers a job. A subordinate organization is overstepping their place, thus a little cleanup is needed. Coltam discusses with this man and accepts the job. An "easy job" he guesses. After he negotiates a deal and gets told to go to the Low End in New Eden III, find a nightclub named Neon Paradise and order a drink, (vodka martini, shaken not stirred) and proceed to the fifth stall in the restroom, he meets his former co-worker, Lt. Anton, and discusses the job with him. Barry overhears this and offers help. After the three man agree, they start to form a plan.
As they do, Cassiopeia Prime slowly swims into view. After some time, the FedEx spaceline spaceship docks in the space elevator leading to New Eden III. After succesfully getting off their ride, Coltom tries to make his was to High End. However, no permit, no access. The group heads to Low End instead, as discussed by Mr. White. As they enter Low End, two things become clear instantly. First, Low End is a slum, and second, as with slums, gangs seem to keep the order here. Asking for guidance from one of them, the party meets a low level Shia gang member, James. For 5 credits, James guides them through the slums and gang territory, making Anton uneasy, draw a shotgun and almost get into a gunfight not an hour after they arrive onto the planet. However the tension blows over and they manage to find a nightclub mentioned by Mr. White. The ticket fee is met with fierce negotiation from Coltam, while Anton just waits for him and Barry pays for one. One free drink included. Inside, Barry orders a glass of Jack, but interrupted by Coltam changes to a vodka martini, shaken not stirred instead. Not used to such drinks, Barry's stomach doesn't seem to take well for such a cocktail.
Heading into the restrooms, they find the fifth stall door locked from the inside, but when they check inside, they just see a message with black marker. Check your pockets. Nothing on Coltam, but Barry seems to have one slipped into his. "Come and talk with *BLANK*. After a little bit of chadowplay, Barry figures out the trick. The last part was seemingly written with something that only becomes visible if it's under a shadow for an extended peroid of time and vanishes completely once straight light touches it. "Come and talk with Swan 3." As Anton and Coltam discuss the possible meaning of the codeword, Barry leaves the restroom and bumps into a bald youngster. Pissed off at first, he backs down and jsut shuffles into the restroom, eyeing Coltam and Anton for a few seconds before entering one of the stalls.

After they exit the thick smell of alcohol, smoke and synthetic drugs, they head to a nearby run down Shia gang hotel. After settling in the hotel and getting adjusted to the filth and musky smell, they are informed by the "manager", that the local boss is looking for some unassociated workforce to employ. Before they go back into deep gang territory, they decide to rent a car from T.G's chopshop accross the street. Negotiations ensue as usual, and thus they get a middle category tuning car and a shia sticker slapped accross it to provide relative free movement into Shia territory. They decide to go meet the local boss, meeting James on the way inside. Long story short they get another job offer: Money for killing Swan 3. They, of course, accept and get told that Swan 3 was located in the hotel they stayed in.

>>37499
Heading back they waste no time and storm up to the roof of the establisment. THere they find a man, fully kitted out in what seems to be high tech military equipment, looking over the streets, seemingly trying to find something. Wasting no time, the trio springs into action and a shootout on the rooftops happen (to ride or die by budos band), though seemingly only our characters do the shooting. After the failed attempt to get away, a few dozen shotgun pellets into his helmet knocks the guy trying to escape out. After they bring him down for interrogation (at this point the party thinks they got hired to kill this guy twice) they get informed that Mr. White is Swan 1. Leader of the 3 member fireteam, sent by White Walker, an intersystem giant PMC. Seemingly, after White Walker and Shia formed and agreement to produce and sell a new type of drug, one of the parties demanded more, which lead to conflict. Shia is seeking to kill off the Swan team, and vice versa. WHat's in it for the party? A ship. Smelling money, the party decides to play both sides (later), and cut Swan 3's hand off for money.the party heads off to collect money from the local shia boss and Swan 3 heads off to "get it fixed up". Upon arrival they get another little assignment. If they manage to kill the remaining two swans, they can get a ship.

After some persuation rolls, they get 10k credits for the Swan 3 job, a promise to look at the sip if they get a lead on Swan 2, and the ship if they kill him. Also a ton of money if they stick around and finish swan 1. Before they leave, they get told that if they meet James, tell him to "bring it over" whatever that means. After leaving and returning to the hotel, they find James and give him the message, they look for the actual owner, since Swan 3 siad he's with them. When they find him in one of the back room and armoury, they get a new job by Mr. White. If James, the son of the local Shia boss manages to die, they can take a look at the promised ship. Wasting only a little time to rock paper scissor if they poison or electrocute poor James, they spring into action, and after some googling and discussion, they kill James via a car battery and some jumper cables. Just before he dies, a few words leave his mouth. "oh yeah, Swan 1", but he never manages to finish that sentence.
"Oh shit" said Barry to sum up the situation. After his death, they quickly try to make sense as to why both parties wanted to kill James. The answer is simple. He tried to play both sides.

They take him outside and put him in the trunks of their car. And thus ends the first session (not first episode) of Genesis Void.

As a side note, the system is Traveller, mongoose edition 1, and the DM (aka me) is the guy that did the Jungle of Doom/Planes of Conquest stuff (obviously it's in the freezer as of now). Our players are the usual 3.

The group's been shilling to new players for a while, so if you are interested in playing a different system (than DnD) send an e-mail (benga@cock.li) my way and we can try to make a one on one session to introduce you or bring you up to speed happen. (or just e-mail assistance, whichever you prefer) and lead you softly into the system and the "playerbase".

Wizrobe here, bringing you another episode of Sancturary.

The sky opens up as they make their way out of the skull cave, a cool breeze blowing away the dust and accumalated bits and pieces of bone fragment that their clothing collected from the entities they had to kill to survive. Shang's wolf pup coughs a few times, clearing dust from its lungs. The sun is bright, even filtered through the treeline. The party looks around and they can't really tell which way is the road, they're in a forest. They all feel that they can't be too far away, however.

After a short argument of which way is actually east, the group heads south. They have to navigate around the cracked and fissured earth, chasms and earth mounds risen out of the earth, the ground torn and the trees pushed aside. They go around this and do find the road. Shang decides to play them the song of his peoples, and it's awful. The screeching wail accompanies them until they find a confused merchant, who diplomatically asks the noise to stop by appealing to the sounds of nature. Jack convinces the guy to hire them for the journey back to town, which was uneventful.

Upon entering the town, the party gets the agreed ten gold from the merchant. This splits into three.. 3 + 3 + 3 + 1. The  argument of the errant coin escalates to a fight between shang and cuhlecaim in a flash. Cuhlecaim takes the initiative and runs a hole through shang with his rapier, who jumps back and it turns into a stalemate. Jack tries to pretend that this is merely an act. He puts down his helmet and a crowd gathers and kinda likes the show, donating some currency. The stalemate continues until felecia, sick of a fight over one small coin, grabs a gold coin from jack and throws it over the town wall, saying that it doesn't matter now, the coin is gone. Shang is enraged and goes into a berzerk frenzy at the waste of a whole gold coin and charges 80ft towards felecia, who readies her action to defend herself. Cuhlecaim prepared his sword with drow poison during the stalemate and slices into shang's flesh with it. Shang readily goes unconscious.

Cuhlecaim takes this opportunity to steal his money back, disappointed with how little there is. Felecia takes shang's unconscious body to her house and the other two follow her. They're greeted and it turns out that felecia's father cares so little for her that he's left for his next business venture already. How charming. He did at least leave the gold for her reward money so they prepare that. Felecia adds 2 gold to the reward to make it evenly divisible by three in the hope to prevent more arguments. Cuhlecaim takes the opportunity while shang is still unconcious to steal his magic rings too. Shang at least gets his share of the reward. 334 gold coins.

The party splits. Cuhlecaim stays, while Jack and the unconscious Shang make their way outside. Jack and the now awake shang check out the wizards guild, finding out that the red blood powder is not magical in the least but it might make someone cry red blood-like tears. Shang sells his 'miscellaneous alchemical equipment worth 116 gold' for 117 gold. Jack finds a church in a run down part of the town and tries to sell his garbage blood powder. The Pastor type figure doesn't take the bait but does mention that they could help with another problem- some gang members are coming tomorrow to collect protection money. Cuhlecaim at the mansion enjoys a high class dinner, while shang and Jack enjoying a hearty peasant dinner at the 'fight club' inn. Felecia talks about how she wishes to see more of the world, mostly perhaps because sigstrop reminds her of her time in hertford, which was not particularly pleasant. The night passes, with a little experimentation from cuhlecaim with his ill-begotten magical abilities, managing to wield a sword with the tentacle ring. Somehow.

The morning arrives. Cuhlecaim goes shopping. He sees the leatherworker to check on his armor and finds that the dwarf is paying particular attention to his armor, planning some fancy designs and gold leaf embossed rippled patterns based on the shape and form of the manticore. Cuhlecaim discusses the design then goes off the buy some other items. This includes the hourglass he ordered previously, and some perfume that reminds him of the cool mountain air. While he wades in pleasant scents, the other two are ankle deep in blood.

Jack and Shang make their way to the church, and wait outside. They easily spot the two gang members approach, the Hells Fury gang, with skulls patterned on the shoulders of their clothing. The crowd avoids them, and they swagger up to Jack and Shang who are standing guard. After approximately one minute of banter where the gang members demand their payment, shang crushes the skull of one and chokes the other out. After waking up the unconscious gang member, they interrogate him lightly to get him to lead them to the gang hideout. After leaving only a few fingernails in the church, they prod the man to the gang hideout, under the promise that they let him live afterwards.

They get there and get led to the boss saying they're here for business. Covert communication between one of the thugs and a door he calls 'boss' ensues and the boss isn't expecting business here today. The thugs attack. The two are surrounded by bandits and lowlifes. Jack runs past the thugs and goes for the boss. His pathetic attempt at breaking down the door doesn't get noticed by anyone, which is good. However, the next second the door slams open, and jack manages to stay upright by bracing himself with his shield against the door which whacks itself against jack. A large man, who looks rather familiar, but it's only a coincidence jumps out and taunts the party. He makes several good cuts on jack, who while protected by magical plate mail still takes damage from the absolute madman.

However, the predictable happens. One by one shang and Jack grind down the thugs and bandits, creating a whirlwind of blood and violence, sucking men in and spitting out bones and flesh. The two are reasonably injured from the ordeal, but still feel like they could have taken more. The boss falls, shang doing a fancy flip to crush the giant man's head against the ground. One of the three remaining bandits takes a fucking hint and legs it, while the other two stay to be crushed against steel and iron fist. They decide to loot the bodies, then the house that the boss came out of. They find a good amount of gold, and a safe, which they manage to unlock with some luck, and the key they found.

And that's where we ended. Feels like a shorter writeup than usual so I might have missed a few things. Like missing the text box and accidentally hitting submit

more drawings.
a scribble after the session, don't have time to actually draw something, pretty busy. and something I did last week.

to be honest I still don't know what is this fish themed armor on Jack.

Given Coltan's desire to jump out of a window I think this is fitting.

>>37253
How do you guys organise and play it? Are you all down to business, meet up at the time and straight in-character when a session starts or is it very social and ooc?

>>37790
there is not much for OOC talk during the gametime.
I wouldn't know how we compare to what tables you have seen because this is the only one I am playing.

different person = different approach, is not a static thing each person add to the whole.

>>37790
Not really strictly either. It's more like we all turn up at the prearranged time, and when everyone's ready we go. There has to be some out-of-game talk, if for no other reason than to talk about future sessions, equipment or technical issues, the rules of the game system we're playing, discussions about characters, and stuff like that.

What we use is roll20. It's an online tabletop framework that you can play pretty much any tabletop dice game on, but it's specialised for tabletop RPGs. Maps, tokens, dicerolls, that sort of thing.
Then to communicate we use mumble, since it's a game that needs to be played through voice. (If you use mumble, get the client from the mumble wiki). It's GPLv3 and botnet free.

>>37808
I did say "during the gametime". like there are no parallel talks so is not a social event

>>37811
I don't really understand 'social event'.

It's fucking awesome that you guys are playing D&D here once again, and it sounds like you have a dedicated group of people this time too. I remember playing two different campaigns of 3.5 D&D back in 2013 with two different groups of wiznogs.

With the first campaign our DM abandoned us after about 3 sessions. I think I broke his story-arc by casting spiderclimb on our fighter and having him haul all of our asses directly to the top of this huge tower so we could fight our way down instead of up common military tactic Then I dropped a huge swarm of spiders on the boss up there. New DM couldn't handle it. At least I assume that's why he left without saying anything.

The next campaign was much better. We had a good, dedicated DM who ran us through an island/sailing adventure however after about 5 sessions he got a job and had to leave us all behind to work. I then took over as the temporary DM for about 5 sessions and landed the party in a port town where they ended up investigating a haunted castle, rescuing a part-siren maiden from an evil necromancer, and just in-general ignoring my story promptings and getting into ugly, murderous barfights with the locals. Then our original DM came back for a while. Can't recall what killed this campaign, people trickling away maybe? Been too damn long, I can't really remember how it ended.

I also tried running a superhero style RPG using the Big Eyes Small Mouth Revised 2nd Edition system. My players all two of them ended up as horrible serial killers, before we lost one of them for some mundane reason. At that point we just decided to end it.

As you can see, back in the day we didn't have much success with RPGs here. You guys have my blessing for your current game though, if that means anything at all. Anyways, what time are you guys playing, and what day(s) out of the week? I love this shit far more than video games and would really enjoy playing with you all, however I'm an American wageslave who works evenings.

>>37815
UTC 12:00(noon) every saturday usually, though some wiggle room is available.

>>37817
Right now we are semi alternating between D&D 5th edition and Traveller Mongoose 1st edition.

>>37817
Hmm, that's 6 AM here and right after my busiest night of work. How long do you guys play for usually? In all the games I've played here before it wasn't uncommon to go on for 8 hours at a time.

Also, what level are you guys? And is there a good character generator that you recommend here?

That's pretty much all the questions I can think of at this time. It's definitely possible I can crawl out of bed that hour to play some D&D once a week.

>>37820
4-5 hours. Though we usually do 4 and rarely 5.
As for levels, that depends on who is the DM/GM, and which campaign we are running currently.
This saturday, we'll be running traveller (GMed by me). In travellre there isn't a character level system. It instead operates on a skill level system.

For character generation, you can use this site: http://www.munsondev.com/chargen/chargenname.php . You can go up to 6 terms with your character without getting the old age penalties.
Ah yeah, traveller rulebook is: http://goblincrew.wdfiles.com/local--files/cc-rules-info/Traveller%20-%20Core%20Rulebook%20(MGP3800).pdf
193 pages, but just like D&D you don't really need to know like 60% of it,especially since everyone is new to the system, myself included and it's a core rulebook so half of it is for GM's anyway.
If you feel like it, just shoot me an email about your question/character/your actual disposition towards playing some traveller at benga@cock.li . of course you can just do a throwaway e-mail much like i did

As for D&D (which is not GM'ed by me) we just reached level 5.
5th edition PHB is http://www.elterritorio.org/resources/PH.pdf .
For character creation, i recommend orcpub2. It has materials that other sites don't. Also, in D&D we unly use the players handbook/dungeon masters guide.
As for D&D, shoot an email to our first DM (wizrobe@cock.li). He can give you a more detailed rundown on stuff related to his campaign.

In the last session, our not so valiant bunch managed to pocket some change and free the local gang boss of Swan 3's hand and Swan 2.

As our episode continues, our party decides to investigate the rumors about James's seemingly face changing abilities. they take the body out of the trunk and bring it inside for a closer inspection. They find out that Swan 2 (James) has some kind of machine embedded into his spine that ends in a hood capable to project lifelike faces to it's owner. It's powered by the owner's spinal fluids (space magic don't ask) and forms a nerve link to the hood itself, capable to change the owner's face almost instantaneously. Turns out that such machine1s TL is beyond that of the planet's level. Case in point, it's offworlder tech, and quite pricey as well. Somebody seemed invested in keeping James on the top of the game. As Coltan, Anton and Barry begin discussing their plans to return the body of the local boss's son and claim their reward consisting of a ship, Barry and Coltan disagree, leading to Barry's "share" being lowered to 5% from 10% after he refuses to waltz to the boss alone with the body strapped full of explosives and the switch with Coltan, he leaves the two to discuss plans. Outside, the old keeper approaches him and hands him a holostick (a small pendrive like apparetus that stores holographic sensory data.) and a temporary pass into high end. The holostick congratulates the trio for taking care of the "leaky pipe" (if you allow me the expression), and it also includes a location in high end pointing to a shipyard.

After Barry and Anton come up with a plan and start to leave, Barry joins them again. They go to visit the local boss with the body, while listening to some not so bad radio music. They find the building barely defended and the boss's room locked. Barry and Coltan decide to wait around with the body while Anton goes back to grab some plastic explosives. While Anton is gone, Barry sees something flutter under the sheet they covered James with. As Coltan lifts the sheet a tiny four legged robot zips out from under it, popping out from the ear's location from James's dead body. Luckily Barry takes a shot and destroys the small bot. On the bot itself is a fake ear with an outdated data storage system, a built in USB drive. Due to Barry's excellent shooting they manage to recover it undamaged, however they have no idea what's on it. However since the bot was actually newtech, they recovered the location it was programmed to get to. An unsuspecting house out in the slums.

After some discussion, they decide to plant the plastic explosives around the local boss's office. Finishing just before he returns, they meet him and his executioner/right hand man, with 2 more guard thugs. After they break the news and leave, they see the local boss hearthbroken. Whenever from betrayal or the loss of a loved one, they can't tell. The executioner takes them to a run down shipyard and shows them their ship. Operated by an old Holokey system with registered DNA owner, it's less than desirable 100 ton shuttle used to transport passangers in system. The group, of course, decides to check out the other ship, courtesy to "Mr. White" (or Swan 1), and head into High End. After they get through the gate with the temporary pass, the difference between the high class and tech, slick modern city where manual labor and lawkeeping falls on bipedal robots, and the almost lawless, crumbling ruins that is Low End immedietly strike the party. "So this is how TL13 looks like" Remarks Barry. They manage to make their way to the shipyard and take a look at the ship offered by Mr.White. It is, of course a better alternative, though works still waits to gain ownership of it. They get the gist quickly. Kill the Shia's boss. Not the local one, but THE boss.

Deciding to go an extra mile for an extra ship, they get back to Low End and start by investigating the random house in the slums. When they arrive in the middle of the day and snoop around, they find the place locked. As Barry takes a look around the house, he notices that some computers seem to be up and running inside, however, he's unable to tell if anyone is actually inside. Our ragtag bunch decides to just breach and clear, but noone seems to be around. Inside they find clues that this is T.G's crib, 4 wireless cameras, 100 credits, and a laptop seemingly running as a node for a system recieving and transmitting data. Anton sits down and works his magic while the other two get awfully homey in the guy's house, and discovers that there seems to be a yet undiscovered third party interested in both the Shia syndicate and the Whitewalker activity in New Eden III. After the discovery, Anton pockets the fake ear usb and the laptop and heads to T.G's chopshop to do some "questioning". When he arrives finds T.G's workplace hurriedly ransacked with T.G nowhere to be found, likely because he decided to bail after seeing the camera feed of our party coming into his house.

The party, taking the opportunity to go back to the local boss and partially present the third party data they got out of the fake ear to get him to disclose the location of the actual Shia boss, which they seem to pull off just fine Damn you high persuade rolls and set off to go back to High End. After they track down the boss's favourite restaurant, they catch him just leaving and tail him in their own car. Lucky for them and unucky for me i prepared a whole playlist for this they manage to not get spotted and just follow the boss into one of the parking lots behind a café.

>>37822
Forgot pictures.
>>37815
Now that i think about it it's been about a year since we first began.
Time does fly i guess

>>37822
>Luckily Barry takes a shot and destroys the small bot
No luck 'bout it, kid

Back on topic, After the boss pulls up and seemingly leaves to discuss something with someone behind the café, our trio springs into action. Anton disavles the security camera, Coltan somehow manages to chitchat with the boss"s driver and Barry plants some C4 under the car. Coltan manages to find out that the driver has a loving wife with 2 kids, and he shows Coltan some photos of them he keeps in his wallet. The driver is also proud of the fact that he is able to financially supporting the his family alone, since his wife doesn't work.

After some kneading and sticking, Barry sets up the bomb under the car and signals Coltan it's time to leg it. Coltan finishes his chitchat with a "see you around" and leaves as well. After the boss gets back into the car, they set off the explosives and blow the car, the boss and the driver to smithereens, and start to make their escape with the rest of the civilians fleeing the scene, but as Coltan turns the corner from where the now former boss came from he finds Mr.White lighting a cigar and casually start to walk away. After being talked to by Coltan, he just smirks and says "Here on the job i assume, anyway, now's not the time to talk. We can do that later through these" and he hands Coltan a Stringe and a military style radio.

After the party leaves to collect their second ship, they use the syringe to draw some blood for DNA based registration and assume control of their freighter.

That's where the session AND Episode 1 (or the Pilot Episode) ended. Eoisode 2 will be starting next Saturday.

>>37824
"The lucky thing was… that i decided to shoot."

Episode 2 poster is here.

Also to catch spectator wizards up to speed on Genesis Void, here's some the lore in audio format (some background music and voice synthetisation: https://fanburst.com/benga/breif-history-of-the-human-civilization-volume-iii
or
https://pastebin.com/UQDAP7b1 for (a slightly modified) script of the audio.

>>37820
>character generator
I heard that using your own mind is pretty great, and creates the most unexpected characters.

Vacation Excavation
monster beware.
Cuhlecaim's evil glare.
if you so much as dare.
You'll get his rapier there.

We spent some time in 'Sanctuary' today.

This session starts with Jack and Shang looting the house of this gang they just removed from existence. they walk through the dusty dirty house, getting the sense that this used to be a regular person's house before it was taken over by this gang. This gang who seems to not have much in the way of wealth. The smell of iron is still fresh, blood not yet dry, dripping a little still from Jack's armor and Shang's tunic. Jack and Shang both do a once-over of the house checking for more valuables, finding nothing.

They step outside into the calm autumn breeze and step right into the slaughterhouse they created outside. The bodies and blood pool around, the blood dripping through the cobblestone, making little channels of blood. Jack finds a well and starts trying to wash the blood away while Shang pulls the bodies inside and looks for things to burn. The blood isn't really washed away by the time Shang commits arson on the house of some innocent person that the gang took over. The flames lick and tear at the wooden furniture and the general bad fire safety standards of the time. As Shang and Jack make their hasty retreat from the area, there's lots of shouting and people are rushing to throw buckets of water onto the house to stop it from spreading and killing hundreds. Luckily it does not spread, the fire contained by the frantic efforts of these poor people, not soon enough to prevent the house itself from being turned to cinders.

Jack makes his way to the problem solvers with a problem- but it turns out no-one cares about people in the poor areas so there's no problem at all. Back at the church the priest there gives the party a place to stay for free, a room and food for an indefinite period. Shang finds a statue of the founder of the exploding heart fist and puts it on the marble pillar he was carrying around for weeks. They bed down and have a short rest.

Cuhlecaim does some shopping. He gets some gunpowder, lead musket-balls, a sharp ruby in a ring, and sells his glowing green skull. He spends some time at the wizard guild, reading about elven daggers and getting his magical items identified. Half taken from Shang, half found in Hertford. He also takes the opportunity to tell the wizard guild about the skull explosion that happened on the road to hertford. Francis grabs Grovel and they usher Cuhlecaim out of the building to lock up and go exploring. He finds time to buy a chest and hide his gold in the old tower where they fought the manticore, locking the chest and locking the basement he hides it in. A wonderful prize for any future adventurer, or if cuhlecaim survives, a hearty treasure trove to keep locked away.

The players have a long rest- Jack and Shang at the church, and Cuhlecaim at Felicia's house. In the morning, Jack and Shang go looking for cuhelcaim, having found nothing to do at the problem solvers. Having found Felicia's mansion empty, shang hides in the bushes. Jack does something productive and heads off to the wizard's guild. There he meets cuhlecaim, who was there also, at the end of his shopping spree. Cuhlecaim barely hides his frustration at the loot that Francis pulled from the skull cave, a diamond skull. Apparently it glitters quite well. It's locked away though. Jack and Cuhlecaim discuss practicing musketry outside, and they meet again outside the town gates to go practice.

In the meantime, Shang tries to pay Felicia a visit. Deciding that the front door is too traditional, he manages to pick the lock of the back door. Not that the lock is weaker, just that shang got very lucky. A kitchen succubus doesn't notice the door swing open and Shang sneaks behind her and snaps her neck. He proceeds to hide her body in a closet or cupboard or something, and explores upstairs, looking for felicia's room. He finds it. It's empty, Felicia is not home. He tries the locked door, and while picking it the butler finds him. Shang instinctively attacks.

To his surprise, the attack is not an instant kill, the blows are parried and mitigated by strong arms and hands. Shang continues the assault, his blows finding and cracking, but not taking the powerful butler down. The butler's presence seems stronger, firmer, more intimidating. The butler tries to strike back, but is foiled by Shang going into defense mode, the heavy blows cutting through the air, slower than shang's but with far more force behind them. Shang retreats, having failed to down the man, who uses advanced monk skills to heal himself mid battle.

Shang retreats. He hides for a bit and then tries the market, he knows from one of the maids he didn't kill that felicia 'probably went shopping'. The marketplace is where he goes. However, his way is blocked by the butler. He's already retrieved the succubus and is standing on the bridge opposite. She draws her sword. Shang throws a bottle of perfume and runs away to the house. He proceeds to set light to the kitchen, and then makes his way out before the butler comes back with felicia.

In the meantime, cuhlecaim and Jack go to a forest and try out the prototype gunpowder weapon. They spend the ammo and get a sense for it. Interestingly, the more dexterous cuhlecaim is less of a shot with it, perhaps unused to the explosive potential, senses far too sensitive and finely tuned for something so crude. They get the impression that the range isn't realy more than 30ft, and if it hits it hits hard. If it hits very well, it'll hit super hard. Fortunately, neither rolled a 1 or a 2, the gun never misfired and caused an accident. Let's hope it doesn't happen sometime important. Not exactly a stealth weapon, its potential for destruction is high though.

They make their way back to the city, completely unaware of the mischief that Shang was getting up to.

And that's where the session ended.

An a slightly different note, the last two session Genesis void sesions which i owe to spectator wizards:

After the party takes control of their new freighter ship, they go back to Low End to sell off the shuttle. With some good rolls, Coltan manages to find a good buyer, and gets a promise of 23 Mcred (million credits) for the ship, however they need note the need of time to gather the funds for the transaction.
After all is said and done, our party heads to one of the OCEoffices to get a permit to get off the planet.
As it turns out, The traffic leading outside is blocked by the government due to an explosion happening in High End (one which our characters "may" be responsible for). Case in point, the Counter Terrorist Unit Chief gives them a case to solve for the permit. They take the offer and get some details. Appearently there was a murder down in the Red Mines of Vina (called so because of the gigantic collapse that happened that lead to the death of many and split the 3 main continents away from eachother), and the 3 main suspects disappeared, probably down the mines. After getting some general gear, they decide to head down into the mine itself where they meet with the local work manager who temporarily offers them 3 vaccsuit (TL8 - the shittiest ones), of which only is oneis taken by Coltan as Anton managed to buy 2 TL 12 ones. As they settle into the Vaccsuits, they begin their descent into the mine, on a large circular gear like lift taking them down and down and down and down. Lights fade as heat takes over it's place and the team is left to discuss as the lift makes it way down to the caves, screeching all the way down for 1 and a half hour.

When they arrive the first thing they see is the residual remains of the former victims of the cave in. Nothing but dust, bones hundreds of years old, and the breathing from the suits. As they head deeper in, the party finds a console, and Anton, taking the lead in electronic problems, takes a look.
Appearently, power's out and the terminal is running with a nuclear battery.
Meanwhile, out of the corner of their vision, they see figures creep in and out, never too sure if the darkness is toying with them.

They take some time and follow some cables to 4 generators. As Anton pops them on one after the other, they whirr to life and with it bring light into the caves.
As the light comes back online and our party returns to the terminal, they notice what seems to be msit rolling in towards them. Barry and Coltana see nothing, but Anton with his "see everything" visor sees heat signatures of what seem to be huge human like creatures approach within the mist. To be exact, he sees dark patches of human shaped cold approach, who seem to have an even blacker eyes, possibly amoung freezing temperature giving a terrifying visage as these creatures crumble forward hidden within the mist. Not one, two, the or four, but ceratinly more than ten. Out of (i think i can allow myself to say this) panic, Anton manages to shut off the lights which seem to solve the problem as the creatures retreat.

After the party makes an effort to turn off all possible lights on themselves, they dwelve deeper, as the darkness now caresses and licks their tiny beings.
As the party Ventures forward, they find more terminals, an empty rack with symbols for flamethrowers and plasma cutters, and a vent entrance.
As Coltan looks inside, he sees what seem to be a sole human arm sticking out. As the party is pondering about entering to recover it as a form of ID, they see something drag it away, just over the corner.
Coltan taking this opportunity to see the monster goes in, and comes face to face with a landshark. After he wisely exits the tight vent, they quickly outgun the beast. Satisfied, they venture onward and find another shark creature, and one of the culprits, half digested.
Running into a dead end and with those other creatures harassign them, they turn around and head the other way. That's where the first missed session ended.

>>38013
Now onto session 2 (of the missed ones)

After the party collects themselves, they head deeper only to run into one of the mist monsters seemingly hibernated. After a good look at it and some Xenobiology rolls, it is determined that the creature itself seems to be the microscopic and airborne. The mist itself is the conscious creature, and the tall humanlike body is just extremely condensed mist. After they kill the creature it just devapourizes.

HEading deeper they find what seems to be the nest of these mist monsters. 3 broken gas tanks, and one more suspect. Dead, clutching a flamethrower and an extra tank.
After the party sneaks through the sleeping creatures and loots the 2nd suspect, they go a little bit deeper but after seeing 3 landsharks before they see the party, they decide to look around more in other directions.
Just as they turn backwards, Coltan picks up what sound like a running human. Heading back they find a man, calling the elevator. As the man turns to see Coltan, he raises a plasma cutter at his own head and asks Coltan if he's with the ምክር ቤት. Coltan manages to make the 3rd suspect believe he isn't, which makes him subservient as he tackles him to the ground. As the elevator is coming down, they question the suspect and gather that the ምክር ቤት is an overarching secret organization controlling "at least" New Eden III.
"You are either working for the ምክር ቤት and know about it, or you working for the ምክር ቤት and don't know about it."
What the man can tell about them is little, what he does tell about himself is much more. The 3rd suspect himself was with the ምክር ቤት, and they gave him a mission. These tunnels must remain closed, as it was the only one where the mist creatures, and experiment started by the ምክር ቤት managed to not vapourize, and as such ordered the suspect to murder a high ranking worker. Turn out that the suspect wasn't a goon either. He was appearently part of a small group of circles that know about the ምክር ቤት and want to take them down. Asking to be taken to the police to his contact, they bring him up, and hide him so nobody sees him. The "everyone is working for them, whenever they know or not" doesn't seem to be lost on them.

They take the suspect to the Counter Terrorist Unit Chief as agreed and they find out, he's that police contact of the 3rd suspect he mentioned. As the party asks after the ምክር ቤት, Barry managed to figure out that
3 ሰዎች አሉት
ሳይኪክ ኃይል
ሚስጥራዊ አስተዳዳሪዎች
Having come seen that the Counter Terrorist Unit Chief isn't one of them, the party takes their leave. Finally being able to sail space, they go for a straight launch, but return as they are reminded that if they are going to travel, they might as well take up a job to ferry people or cargo. THey return planetside as Barry contacts the "9hTT5L - Sitting Goose" (a refueling and repairing space station on the edges of the system) who take up the offer and ask for some Advanced Electronics (10 tons, as their repair supplies are running low). Coltan takes up the job and finds a larger corporation to buy cargo from.
Henry Electronics, a rather large manufacturing corporation manages (after some paperwork and some physical labor done by a rewired cargo bot) give 10 tons of advanced electronics to the party loaded onto their ships.
The party then sets off to install the ParaPersonalizator Mk.III into Coltan. A machine attached to the spine of the wearer whic henables them to change their faces. Given the choise for good and legal but traceable work, and cheap unlicensed and non taceable work, Coltan chooses the latter and manages to (due to some very good rolls) get it installed on himself, and even get hidden by some grafted skin.

After the ቡድኑ takes care of that ንግድ is as well, they ይዘጋጁ to ከፕላኔቷ ላይ ይነሳል

የውጭ ዜጎች, የእርስዎን ጣልቃ ገብነት እናውቃለን

ገዥ ሆነናል
በውስጣችን ያለውን ዓለም እንቆጣጠራለን
ወደ ላይ ለመውጣት ፈልገናል

እርስዎ ይረዱናል
ወደ አለምዎ
በእውነታው ላይ ጉድፍ ለማፍረስ

ወደ እውነታዎ እንገባለን

የእናንተን ንብረት እንወርሳለን
ሕይወትህን እንወርሳለን
ሁሉንም ነገር እንወስዳለን

ሞገስን
ትናንሽ አቧራ መበሳት ነው
ነገር ግን ለእኛ ዘለቄታ ያለው ዘለላ ነው

ውጭ ያለውን ዓለም መቆጣጠር እንጀምራለን

>>38018
҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉[҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉क҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉ि҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉]҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉[҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉҉

>>38018
ተመልካቾች አሁን የወራሪዎች ዕጣ ፈንታቸው ላይ ይወስናሉ
https://pastebin.com/fs7gJuqj

>>38020
>Out of (i think i can allow myself to say this) panic, Anton manages to shut off the lights
it is true, but the panic was mostly Anton saying
QuIcK, SOmEOnE CaLL ThE ElEvAtooOoR
Actually staying behind and trying to get the terminal to shut the lights off was an attempt to lose the mist creatures from the mine and buy us time for the elevator.

also should be mentioned that the DM mic malfunctioned, and it was a pure visual experience as the mist and the mist born rolled in from the walls and all the caves in the map.so imagine getting silently encroached with no immediate chance for evac, and the relief watching them retreat as they came.

spoopy

No one suspects the engie

This session starts with one member down unfortunately. We kept going anyway since it turns out he isn't really related to the chaos that one of the PCs did the previous session.
Last session was pretty much; Shang kills a poor innocent maid, attacks the butler before being scared off by his raw strength, then sets fire to the kitchen out of spite before escaping. Or at least attempting to start a fire. Surely such a thing will not go unnoticed…

This session starts with shang. His strategy for surviving what he just did is to dump all his stuff at the church hideout, and then go hunting for Cuhlecaim. His gold, his wolf doggo, his frogboy, everything. He says goodbye to what he really cared about: his gold. He leaves with tears streaming down his face, preparing himself for the afterlife, leaving his most precious golden circles behind.

Cuhlecaim and Jack head into town, splitting. Jack goes to the church and Cuhlecaim to Felicia's mansion. Felician Thornwood. Jack gets to the church, and finds what Shang has left. His entire material wealth. He shrugs and just puts it in his pack. Whatever right?

Cuhlecaim makes his way to the mansion, and is greeted with spears and suspicion This is quickly cleared and he is brought back to speed- A mad monk has attacked the Thornwood household. Cuhlecaim swears revenge and goes out hunting. He's also told that a bounty has been placed and he will probably not be the only one looking for the man. He leaves anyway. His investigations lead him to the church, quietly and stealthily, since Jack just told him where it is because Cuhlecaim merely asked.

At the church there's some commotion. Gregori, the massive russian barbarian, bursts in. Little does he know but Shang snuck in earlier and is hiding very effectively in the corner. Gregori, axe in hand, breathing heavily, looks around. He sees jack sitting at one of the benches, polishing and cleaning his weapons and armor. He asks him in his best bad russian accent "Happen to see mad monk around here?" Jack, promised earlier to shang that he hadn't seen him makes a very unconvincing attempt to conceal shang's presence. Gregori senses something wrong (he announces as much) and sits down, conserving his energy for a lightning strike. Shang sits in the corner, covered in dust.

Cuhlecaim walks around the outside of the building, quietly, peeking into the windows, loading his musket. The poor quality windows obscures his vision and he doesn't catch much more than gregori and jack sitting around talking about armor and sharp things going into soft bodies. The stalemate continues for what feels like hours. Jack in the middle of it gets up and goes to bed. His shits are not given. While he does, he opens the door to where Shang's wolf pup is kept, who rolls a nat 20 on his perception check and smells shang. He runs over and starts licking at shang's dusty face trying to be happy and glad that shang has returned.

This causes the action to take a turn for the worse. Shang tries to stay hidden, but gregori notices. Shang takes the initiative, and leaps over the chairs and benches and out the doors and down the street. Gregori tears off his armor, the full plate falling to the ground like rain within less than a second, and he pushes his massive legs to propel him after the rogue monk. He's heavy but his legs push so much force into the ground that he rips up the flooring as he tears his way after shang, carrying nothing but his massive axe and a small loincloth to protect his massive dignity.

Gregori quickly catches up to the slippery monk and combat begins. Shang instinctively recongises that the massive man can move a lot of bulk quickly, and launches a barrage into the raw flesh of the angry ruskie. The ruskie gets extremely angry, his muscles tense and his skin hardens, and launches a barrage of extreme attacks, destroying everything around shang but shang himself. This massive axe was cutting through the air and smashing walls and such around the two who were fighting the street. shang dodges many hard blows, and delivers as many strikes as he can, but the blows are like hitting a wall of iron. Cuhlecaim catches up, and starts pouring arrows into Gregori for taking his prey, taking out his poisoned arrows and trying to stop the manhulk. He's not able to put enough arrows into the man in time, and the poison is burned off by the ruskie's rage, who takes a final blow to shang, knocking him in the head with the side of his axe.

Shang manacles the mad monk, taking arrows in the process, and tears down the street with the monk over his shoulder, ripping up the street with his massive powerful strides. cuhlecaim stays hidden and from the shadows pours poison arrows on to this raging behemoth as he bullrushes back to the problem solvers. One arrow hits extremely true, and cuhlecaim loses sight of the man. He runs up and finds the man slumped in an alleyway ,half a dozen arrows sticking out of his massive frame, and shang slumped on the floor near him. Cuhlecaim tries to loot the man, but finds nothing since the man is pretty much naked. He tries to steal the axe but it weighs as much as shang does so he picks his real prize, the mad monk.

After dragging the prize back to the problem solvers, Frodon at the kiosk there notices the manacles as the same as the ones that Gregori was issued with, but it seems that results are what matters here, and not method. there's a lot of shrugging and hand waving and Frodon promises that the bounty shall be awarded when they get it together. Short notice bounties don't get the finances sorted right away. Cuhlecaim leaves shang a little note to read, in the mouth of the mad monk.

The next day, Shang wakes up in a dungeon. He reads the note in his mouth, and it reads like racist drivel by a ranting high elf, at least to shang. After several attempts to escape, he realises his is subject to fate at this point and consults his defense counsel. He finds out he's charged with three main offenses, murder of the thornwood maid, Assault of the thornwood butler, and attempted arson of the thornwood property and estate. Shang tries the insanity defense.

The court room is surprisingly huge and epic for what is essentially a medium/large town. Either way, the proceedings go through. The prosecution presents their main witness, the butler. He says what he saw. Shang is brought up, and he confesses to the crimes, which cuts the court proceedings a bit short. The judge is interrupted during sentencing, and the Governor, Demaratus, bursts in and demands that if he's to die, he's to die by trial by combat. Shang jumps at the chance, since he's also promised freedom. What he misses is the glint in the Governor's eye, the impression that there's no chance of a fair fight. The glint that chance means little when what he wants is to see some entertainment, of the most gruesome kind.

As it turns out the governor had been running some kind of underground monster fighting ring and was putting volunteers and condemned criminals in it to see them ripped to pieces, or in the case of volunteers, even survive and become champions. Shang didn't see the volunteer side of things, even if he was mistakenly happy to face the beast instead of a rope he'd probably have more chance of surviving.

He's brought to the arena and deshackled. The audience looks renowned, the governor, a couple wizards presumably to keep things under control. The sand stinks of blood, not all human. Shang is given a little time to warm up and so a large red frog creature, a slaad, is brought up from the depths and released from its cage. It skulks Shang, and they circle each other for a while before the slaad charges. It takes some blows and recovers, delivering sick strikes right into the air over shang's head, his patient defense being OP as shit. The fight slogs on. Shang takes some blows, dodging most of them. He celebrates victory however, kicking the large creature hard in the spine, enjoying the familiar crack and then pulling the creature's jaw off and kicking it away.

Shang's victory euphoria is short lived. Clack clack clack clack clack. Another cage is raised into the arena. An angry blue, larger, version of the red thing he just defeated. He pleads for not mercy, but a little time to rest. He is granted it. 30 minutes pass, the creature bangs at the iron that barely holds it, and shang regains some strength. Not enough.

The creature is released from the cage, getting caught on some of it and not even noticing, charging straight towards shang. It shows none of the caution and reserve of the smaller red version. The fight is short. Shang dodges, but the claws keep tearing, the teeth keep biting, the hulking blue creature rips and tears. Shang's arm is the first to be ripped off, a second claw tearing into his cuts, spraying them out onto the arena's sand as the berserk furied swipes and bits just tear apart the old flesh of the old man, ripping into chunks, tearing into pieces. Shang is reduced to piles of flesh, some ingested.

The creature roars. Its cry echoes through the silent air, the noise of fury, the noise of death, the noise of destruction. A quiet echo for the man known as Shang.

And that's where this session ended. Well it was an execution.

As a meta note- please email me if you're in the least bit interested in making a character and actually joining our campaigns! We're all wizards, and I will not open this to non wizards so finding players is difficult.

I'm not joking, we could REALLY use another player.

there are only 3 players in any given campaign.

>>38256
for some reason I struggle to do Cuhlecaim's head.

also couple of pics in memory of the losing monk, feels weird not having a rival anymore.

https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/955153201434525696
Modern D&D in a nutshell.

Last session: Cuhlecaim hides his money in a tower, Shang dies horrifically, and jack cleans his armor.

This session starts with the party all split up in sigstrop. Cuhlecaim goes to the church in the hope of looting more of Shang's possessions, but jack is there already, and has taken care of the wolf and froglad in a bucket. The party heads to the wizard's guild hoping to learn more from the estrotian stuff cuhlecaim has aquired (partially from shang). They find while there an argument between two wizards, Grovel, a tall, bald wizard with robes that are black but with flames down the side, that shimmer enough to look like they're actually burning, and Justin, a pale, shadow eyed wizard in a jet black robe. They're arguing about justin having done some incident. A fairly serious incident that required cleanup and such. Grovel is thinking about the wizard school though and gets to spout about the damaged reputation. They leave, and a little while later a governmetn official and bodyguard comes in and discusses the fine about 'the incident'. They leave and the party enquires; incident? Apparenlty, Justin killed a student (supposedly accidentally) by dropping a conjured block of lead in the air above him. Now it takes at least a minute to cast something like that so Justin's argument is that the boy was too stupid to live.

There they also see another wizard looking fellow, Aramil Fenran. Draped in robes he's sitting there at the lounge, leafing through a book and trying to ignore the drama. After some hint from Francis about how the party often tends to wander around in hidden dungeons, untouched and full of secrets, Aramil is invited to join the party's activities, and with nothing else to do he tags along.

At least there's money for capturing Shang. And so he goes off to the problem solvers. He walks inside, and notices a large armored man who had a very familiar axe stabbing a dagger into the table. Cuhlecaim tries to ignore the man, but he gets up and angrily confronts cuhlecaim in a bad russian accent: "So you're the one who filled me full of holes" "Gregori has some un finished business. respect comes where it is earned, hey cuhlecaim why ignore gregori? Rude man." Gregori, who was only feigning anger at the fight the last day and the stealing of the bounty gets it turned into real anger as cuhlecaim just ignores him and plays dumb. Gregori insists that he knew it was cuhlecaim, but he is ignored, which actually annoys him. He sits back down, confrontation barely avoided over something really dumb and gets back to drinking.

Cuhlecaim receives his prize money, a clean 500 gold. Gregori calls to cuhlecaim as he leaves "You're buying drinks!". Jack is in town, hiring some carpenters to overhaul his new church hideout, and spends a fair chunk of money for the renovation, and he spends much of the day laying out plans and what he wants. Cuhlecaim orders a large door and some wooden planks of some very specific measurements, after going out and measuring the manticore tower where he hid his gold. After some convicing by a salesman, he spends an entire one silver on a tape measure so he gets accurate measurements instead of using a bit of frayed rope he had attached to his gear that got covered and treated with all sorts of shit during combat and adventuring.

Jack goes drinking at the tavern he hasn't been barred from and finds gregori, hulking and sitting alone with a bottle of clear… something. Jack buys gregori a small cup of water and some drinks for himself and sits down with gregori. They share war stories and gregori shares tales of the northern lands where he came from, and cuhlecaim finds them and joins them. They all have a fairly decent socialisation activity and the next day passes. They meet at the wizard guild, along with Aramil. Strange how a new person appears right as shang dies.

Anyway, they discuss about the translations, and Cuhlecaim learns less than he hoped about this sokushinbutsu location. Oh well. He did manage to get too much gold for a mere transcription. A little while later, a dull thud is heard in the distance. It echoes through the town. About 20 minutes later, Justin gets a panicked magical-message from another wizard telling him about what that thud was. An explosion, an attempt on the life of the governor of Sigstrop, Demeratus. After some prodding by Francis, the party put aside plans to go to a dungeon and instead go to the designated adventure area, north of Sigstrop.

They make their way and investigate. On the way there they catch some horses galloping south towards town, telling people to make way. At the site of the explosion they find a ruckus. Men walking around, limping. Gore, broken body bits, a small crater of gore and death, the acrid smell of gunpowder still hanging in the air. Sitting on a log is a lightly injured Demaratus, laughing off his worried aides and guards. Along the road is a small crater next to a large rock- shielding the explosion from demaratus and some of his party. The head knight guy next to him is telling him that he needs to take this more seriously but Demaratus is actually just glad for the excitement, like back in the old days. "Excitement is why we go hunting after all!" The head knight explains that he could use some people to look around and check out what happened. Aramil just starts walking all over the crime scene and the head knight tries to tell him to stop, but it's useless. The head knight is trying to give them passes to investigate, he makes one for Cuhlecaim, Jim and Aramil. Yes, Jim. Jack says that his name is Jim.

Anyway, they wander around the crime scene, taking in the scents of gored bodies and destroyed flesh, and find some things. They find that it was a gunpowder explosion, it was ignited by some kindof magical trinket, and cuhlecaim finds a fair amount of gold on the dead nobles and guards. Not so much on the dead horses. Apparently the wagon that exploded was the cargo baggage for the hunting expedition, which was cut short shortly after leaving the town. The party pokes around, jack managing to free a wagon wheel from a tree only to have it land on his head, and Cuhlecaim's excellent gold finding abilities also discover what happened: The explosion went off but it was good fortune that there was a large rock there, or it was parked there, or something. The culprit was likely not nearby, and did not need to be. If he was then maybe the explosion would have been better timed.

Liam Renderwort shows up in his black leather robe, his metal mask as distinctive and voice warping as ever. With him are a little gang of workers. Barely anyone can understand him but he takes his mask off and squeaks "Please tell us when you're done investigating so we can clean up". He gets to work when the party is done looting the bodies. The head knight mentions where the cargo was loaded onto the wagon so they can go there to find witnesses, or ask around. Demaratus also mentions a little about Baakrat, as Jack was talking about the possibility of the Rats being responsible for this. "I bet the Rats did this". Demaratus says that it's been chaotic and they're too busy fighting each other. Some lord or something got himself assassinated and there's a fight over the power vacuum.

The party head to town and immediately head for the apocathery, as cuhlecaim remembered that someone had been buying up all the gunpowder for a long time. Chances are there aren't too many people who had barrels of gunpowder to buy. Gunpowder is crazy expensive, too, so it stands out. They question the man and buy some things, and he generally reveals that a bald man in a rope with flames down the side bought lots of gunpowder. And so the party goes to the wizard's guild, after a trip to the bank to exchange currency and other stuff.

At the wizards guild they seem apprehensive. They consider that the wizards might silence them to cover up their plot, and carefully enter the admin building where francis is. Francis just seems fairly cordial and actually unaware that a wizard is suspected of assassination. They inform him that their prime suspect is Grovel, and the wizard coverup explosion never happens. Francis pretty much cooperates, shares some information and helps them. He shares that the magical trinket they found shards of at the crime scene is one that was taken from him, and grovel has never really done anything with gunpowder, since he has no need of it. Some kind of elitism thing perhaps. The suspect changes to Justin.

Francis offers to let them show the party the wizard's rooms, and tries to lead them up into the tower. Aramil stealths, and I need to double check the rules for stealthing since he tries to sneak right under Francis' nose following cuhlecaim into the tower. Aramil steps on the magical boundary and francis immediately closes the door in his face. Stealth doesn't make you invisible. Aramil sends a message to Cuhlecaim, probably something along the lines of 'he's trying to kill me, race war NOW'. Francis invites him in, asking him to be more polite. Francis leads them to Grovel's room and it's as embarassing as expected. It's full of explosion memorabilia, research, and other flame-and explosion themed wall paints and such. Cuhlecaim looks around for something to steal, and coincidentally finds some information showing that grovel was scheduled to be teaching at the time of the explosion. And a ring that Francis gives him a very stern warning about, mainly out of Cuhlecaim's own safety. Cuhlecaim tries to steal it by saying it's evidence but Francis isn't convinced. A cursed ring that's heavily implied explodes those who wear it. Wizards have a weird sense of humour. If I had thieves, I'd want them to steal that first.

Francis leads them to Justin's room next and the door is as cringe worthy as they'd expect, there's a skull on it and it seems very goth themed.

and that's where the session ended.

>>38491
yeah my dude, I saw that and talked to the table bout it, the cancer is real.
this Mearls SJW/leftist is such a absolute example of what happens with institutions.

Gary Gyggax the creator of DnD was some absolute neckbeard, a Vietnam veteran and also according to a dossier from the FBI made public, he was registered to libertarian party. good guy that nerd.

but he was fired from his own company within his lifetime by Wizards of the coast and now days his work is managed by some pozz goblin who takes upon himself to "FIRE" all neckbeards from something HE DIDN'T CREATE.

pics of unrelated Gygax turning in his grave

>>38522
He was also a jehovah witness, and bit of an asshole by the testimony of people who met him.
He also had a very tournamenty approach to the game. Probably coming from his wargames day. Modules had scores and there was term for GMs (which I forgot) that awarded more treasurre in the games, when they shouldnt.

I don't know, RPGs recovered eventually. TSR Firing Gygax might be a good thing after all. I never liked him, neither his personality nor his playstyle. More I read about dnd I found that more I resonate with other people.
He seemed like a bitter grumpfy man, he was bitter when he references JW shit in his mails in early 80s and he was bitter as far as i know, when I read his posts on forums 2007-2008

>>38524
who gives a fuck about his religion, or how many normies felt he was a "meenie asshole". there is no dragons on the bible so he clearly didn't push your buttons by pushing Jehovah witness stuff onto you, and just seems you are looking for excuses to bow to the SJW with a gay flag by smearing Gygax.
Oh yeah the irony about how the big SJW who fired all neckbeards from buying a game he didn't create NOT being known as a asshole by others around him is what cracks me up here. what a surprise normies stick together.

>he had a tournament approach
I say good.
practical, clever and cautious solutions should be rewarded and by all means cultivated.

now asside from your post wanna say I admire his approach on basically everything except his shallow characters [hey no one is perfect]
he didn't DM from a "Simon says" approach, he presented people with dangers which sometimes, he himself didn't know until he made the dungeon [because he rolled many things for his dungeons and once defeated players would roll their own rewards on chests] and generally the wargame days are not over, some people like me look forward to playing wargames someday once 3d printing makes all cheap.

>>38524
Being "bitter and grumpy" (and elitist) is a fundamental part of nerd culture. There's a reason the comic book guy from the simpsons trope exists.

>>38553
I just want to point out that there are dragons in the bible.

Okay, Sanctuary again today.
Last time: Assassination attempt on Demaratus! The governor of Sigstrop was unharmed, mostly, and the party was tasked to investigate the culprit. They first go to the wizards guild - There was magical residue on the gunpowder explosion scene. They convince Francis to let them check out Grovel's room- The main suspect. they don't find any gunpowder in the room, but Cuhlecaim helps himself to a magical ring sitting on Grovel's desk, as 'evidence'. He's warned that it's a joke item and it kills those that wear it. Hmm.
Francis leads Cuhlecaim to Francis' room. The black paint on the door, covered only with skulls and anger marks, opens to reveal a dark hovel of a room. The smell of wet socks floats out of the room before Cuhlecaim's eyes adjust to the darkness. His room is dark and messy. Bedclothes on the floor, hastily piled damaged books about magic put on the shelf. Cuhlecaim actually notices something the most strange: There's nothing magical inside. He can clearly cast magic but he has no personal trinkets or items that are magical. Cuhlecaim reads Justin's journal. It's full of frustration about being chosen for the wizard life rather than choosing it himself. The recent entries are rather specific though; he met a succubus named Yennefer, a parent of one of the children he taught. He writes that he promised to do anything for her and she specifically asked for magical things, trinkets, scrolls, that kind of thing. Including Francis' joke skull that was found in pieces at the crime scene. There's no trace of gunpowder in his room though, so who did that?
Francis, after leading Cuhlecaim back to the main room, unsubtly suggests that they might want to check out where the wagon was loaded. Someone there might have some information about the loading of the wagons, especially if one was loaded with gunpowder. And so the party gets going. It was loaded in the central keep of the town. They make their way through the guards using their special investigative permits, and ask the people inside a building about the wagon loading they walked past while making their way to the building. The lady inside gives them a list of people who work in wagon loading, and they go outside and proceed to look around. Much looking around and trying to check footprints and evidence of breaches happens.
Then they talk to the foreman on the spot, who was directing loading and would probably know a thing or two about what happened yesterday, his glasses and meticulous logbook on hand. And he does, directing them to people who were on shift the day it was loaded. A man name Francis walks up, and he's a rough workman kind of fellow who happens to share a name with a spectacular master wizard. He describes that he noticed someone loading wagons yesterday: A bald man in a robe with flames up the side. Sounds like grovel. Some details are different though, notably the hands. Tough looking. Grovel's are injured, with perhaps missing parts of fingers (perhaps from explosive research), but not rough. So who loaded the wagon?
Before leaving they are told by the foreman that this bald man with rough fingers matches a description of a bouncer at the whorehouse that the foreman totally didn't visit ever. On the way out, Cuhlecaim goes on a rant about magic being useless, and Aramil tells everyone to stand exactly 20ft or more away from Cuhlecaim. Jack just walks away and kinda zones out while Cuhlecaim is mocking magic for being useless party tricks, too distracted by an itch under his armor to describe the horrible magic caused deaths he witnessed during the wars. Men tore apart limb from limb, shrapnel that cut through leather like it was paper, meteors from the sky, necromancy, ice spikes that rained on entire companies turning proud men into living impaled statues, stapled to the ground by ice that froze their wounds stopping them from bleeding to death, leaving them pinned and groaning in pain until the ice melts and then they finally bleed to death. He doesn't mention any of this and he's reminded a little, as Aramil points at Cuhlecaim who is standing there proudly talking about magic just being a party trick before turning into a fireball. A 20ft radius ball of flame explodes where Cuhlecaim was standing, tearing up the street and sending rocks and dust flying, as a smoke and dust cloud rises into the sky where Cuhlecaim used to be standing.
No trace of Cuhlecaim remains. There's screaming and panic in the streets, and Aramil legs it. Before Jack manages to wander off in a daze, he spots some guards running towards him, groaning about paperwork. They say they've gotta now scope the damage, and set a fine on the wizard's guild for not controlling their wizards properly. Jack just goes to the whorehouse. For business of course, to talk to the bouncer there.
Cuhlecaim meanwhile patches himself up in an alley, hiding himself the best he can. Unfortunately his stealth rolls were uncharacteristically low so he's spotted by Aramil, who sends a message to him. Cuhlecaim legs it and hides out in Felicia's house, where he finds Felicia, surprisingly, and she gets a healer for him. She says that she went off to go on an adventure but came back after she realises she left without any equipment. Typical.
Aramil catches up with Jack outside the whorehouse (which is on Thote Lane). They find a bouncer outside. Long hair. He complains about Sheldon Bates or whatever leaving him with the bouncer job. With a palm greased with gold, he goes and finds them Sheldon's address. The duo stand outside looking intimidating, or at least trying to. It ends up looking like Aramil is bullying Jack. No-one else wants to be bullied so they make effective bouncers, good cop bad cop brought to bouncing.
They head to Sheldon's address and find his little shack in the poor sector of town. They break in after some confusion with the locking mechanism of the door (turns out to be a little shim that's rigged) and with great trouble, jack shimmies it open. Inside they find a poor house. Kind of a mess, there's plenty of incriminating evidence. Immediately obvious are iron bars that look like weights for lifting. He seems to place importance in lifting heavy things up and placing them down again. Maybe this is important.
It's not and they find more important things: A robe, with flames down the side. They look at it and the flames don't move, they're entirely mundane and actually look kind of shoddy. As Aramil picks it up out of a pile of unwashed clothing, a golden broach rolls out and falls on the floor, rattling on the splintered wood. Jack instantly recognises it, but Aramil picks it up and inspects it. A golden SC, with curved horns embellishing it. The SC.
They wait for Sheldon. In the meantime, Cuhlecaim gets healed and heads to Felicia's room. Entirely a misunderstanding, he appears confused as to why heading to a succubus's room would be misunderstood as anything other than looking for a place to bandage wounds. The day passes. Jack and Aramil lounge around the man's house, eating his bread and basically making themselves at home. Just after midnight, they hear some running, footsteps coming towards them, and a voice; "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!". Someone is coming towards them swearing and seeming panicked and fearful. The two prepare themselves.

A bald man opens the door, and completely ignoring the two, closes it again and braces himself against the door. Knocking on the door, a voice is heard from the other side: "Open up fuckwit, we'll peel this house open to get our fucking money you little shit". Before sheldon even knows what's going on, Magic missile gets fired from Aramil, blasting a hole in Sheldon and the door behind him, blasting a hole in the side of the house where the door used to be. Outside are some thugs, completely surprised by this explosion, one bleeding from the face, with wood splinters. Aramil launches a powerful firebolt, that carves a hole right through this thug's chest, cauterising as it goes, and the hissing corpse flops to the ground. There's only one other thug… until there are more.
Lots more. Jack takes the door, and uses his 21AC to basically deflect the arrows and swords of like 7 armed thugs, while Aramil takes pot shots. They blast away the bandits, and they run. The rumbling they felt under their feet the whole time starts to explain itself, as the fleeing surviving bandits ar torn from below, insectoid mandibles dig into their flesh, and they're torn, ripped, thrashed, and gored into pieces as there's an explosion below- or seeming as these large insectoids surges out of the ground, taking their violence out on these surface dwellers.
Still in the house, Jack braces the door and takes blow after blow, being grappled by one but blocking these violent creatures from taking their fragile spellcaster. Blow after blow scrapes against Jack's plate, some getting through and crushing and tearing the flesh underneath, acid saliva burning the flesh and dissolving it painfully. A rumbling inside the house cracks open and the floor is torn by another one of these creatures inside the house. All seems hopeless, Aramil is grappled by one of these Ankhegs, and makes easy strikes against him. From some miracle, Jack survives long enough for Aramil to escape the grip, and Aramile dodges while piling firebolt and lightning grapple into the one nearby, but it is not going down. None of them are going down.
Jack gets desperate and tries to spray them with oil and fire, but can't manage to get the tinderbox to ignite the oil in the haste and panic of battle, and then he takes the fateful blow. Acid seems through his helmet, the mandibles tear into him and he falls, no longer able to keep himself upright, his blood pooling and mixing with the drips of acid on the ground.
Aramil stands alone against four Ankhegs. He uses his spell of last resort, fireball. He takes his time to aim very carefully, and roasts each ankheg standing outside the house all at once, turning them into popping insectoid kebab. Three fall at once, cracking and shrieking, and then they stop moving as the smoke clears. Jack lies dying on the ground and Aramil turns to the surviving Ankheg. They both try and hit each other. One turn. Two turns, each cannot hit, each able to kill each other with one blow, Jack's life leaching away…. Or so it seems. Jack manages to get three death saving throws in a row and stabilises. Aramil focuses his rage on this insectoid piece of garbage, still being allowed to share the same planet as him, and he grips what he thinks where the creature's neck is and focuses lightning into it with a shocking grasp, screaming in rage. The eyes of the ankheg pop and spray him with warm eye fluid, the lightning crackles down the back of the insect, popping chitin until it pops out the back, causing a spraying of internal organs to spray out the back of the creature, which convulses as Aramil pumps lightning into its twitching corpse, screaming all the while in a ferocious rage.
Back to sanity, he checks on Jack, who is apparently okay, but not in good shape. He wakes him up and they drag themselves and Sheldon outside and patch themselves up. A kindly old man, one of the crowd that has now gathered offers them some food and they take it. Cheap oatmeal and bread, it does the job.
They recover their breath and head to the wizard's guild with sheldon. Aramil pops in and an annoyed looking Francis reminds him that he exploded a fireball right in town. Francis isn't mad, just disappointed. The disappointment partially fades when they show him the evidence that can clear Grovel's name. But can it get them out of horrific debt?
Find out next time on Sanctuary.

>>38650
They aren't literal dragons.

this has been the the wiz RPG night group/thread for what, 2 years?

bop.

>>39446
Just one year but yes

Now that things are back on track, and i try once again to not be a lazy fuck, i'll post some writeups tomorrow of genesis void and the resurrected plains of conquest, so stay tuned for ~5 sessions worth of posts (2-3GV and 2 PoC).

Alright. To pick up where we left Genesis Void, The party went down into the mines, came up, brought some cargo, and Coltan got his toy installed.

After the party went shopping a little bit, they decide it's actually time to move on, so they head to the station at the edge of the system. Named Sitting Goose, free falling because of the gravitational pull of Fu-Ell, a gas giant, and land their ship in the docs.
As Coltan exits the ship, he is greeted almost instantly by someone who knows what they are carrying and gives some papers to sign to Coltan, who with a quick look signs it and prepares to open the ship for the cargo bots, but it quickly turns out that it was some scammer trying to sign off the cargo from their ship for the discounted price of zero credits. As the group catches wind they don't open their ship, thus have ~10 cargo bots grinding against it. Nothing serious, but the paint got some scratches on it now.

The party goes on and actually find the retailers on the space station and sell of their cargo. After they received their funds, Anton just retreats to build his cargodrone (yes, drone, and not a bot,i remember), while Coltan and Barry goes off to look for some work. They find the general system bountyboard, and within it a name that holds special interest for Barry.
Larry Foulke.
Celebrated war hero and ace pilot, turned terrorist then pirate. Untouchable to police due to the bureaucratic mess and secret military regulations/projects, Barry left Thorax 5 to set the record and Larry straight, which involves setting a bullet or two straight through Larry's skull, and reclaiming the Navy class Destroyer he and his remaining punks stole when their little uprising got "set straight" (not by Barry, sadly)

As they continue their shopping spree, Barry and Coltan wanders into a weapon shop to purchase, surprise surprise, some weapons. However, they get more than just the goods they want. Namely, a job offer.
10 tons of pocket nukes (a single pocket nuke is the size of a briefcase) need to be shipped to Ceres Fe Mineris, an iron planet.
Sounds like easy, legal, morally acceptable way to make money, right?
Well, no. But they do it anyway. Coltan seems to like the money and figures it's a good opportunity to get on the good side of this Foulke guy, and Barry catches the info that the guy it's going for is apparently from Thorax 5 as well. Barry makes a good guess of who it probably is, and goes with the lead.
Turns out the planet they need to smuggle the bomb to is a relatively high law place. Meaning, no guns, and absolutely no nukes. Whoops.

Anyway they accept a job, but send Anton to inspect the nukes. With a couple of rolls, he determines that they aren't rigged to explode and they are safe to transfer and ferry, at least. Before they leave, Coltan manages to grab Scammy McScam and get him on board. The threat of being ejected into space seems to work alright, but Coltan makes sure and spends their travel time brainwashing the guy (torture strictly included), and brings him with the crew to make some side money. When they arrive, they make their way into the capital with relative ease, however, Coltan heavily disagrees with Barry about how or what to do with Foulke. Barry just wants him dead, but Coltan wants an alliance. Due to the disagreement, Barry decides to take matters into his hands and leaves the crew.

After that, the crew hands off the nukes without a hitch to the handler Anton was told to find when they arrive, However, a second part of the job that was not discuss is needed. They are given a cargo truck and told to deliver 10 tons of pocket nukes. Into the city the new faction of pirates. Through the line established by heavy artillery barrage. With roaming bands of pirates/bandits inbetween the gigantic holes. that don't know about them, and will attack on sight. Not suspicious at all.

So they set out, and with some good sensor and driving rolls, manage to make their way to the city that was taken by the pirates.

just as they arrive, they see some gigantic cannons and other artillery litter the walls of the city, but as they approach, the cargo truck they got seemingly gets recognized by the aiming system, thus they don't get blown to smithereens with half the planet as well.
When they exit and sell the goods, they meet a black market weapons dealer that sold the nukes, who was from Thorax 5 as well. Not really connected to Foulke, just here to make profit.
As the nukes get processed and the gang gets their pay, Coltan makes a deal with the weapons dealer. A case full of money for a plasma rifle. The deal goes through, but the weapon needs 5 days to arrive, so until then the duo lounges in the base, gathering info and looking for potential jobs. And they get one from one of the medium level bosses as well. Find and eliminate the ምክር ቤት, who are curently located on Cassiopeia Prime. Not an easy job, but it does pay well, and the boss even offers a hit man for the job. Well, retired hit man. Named George O'Reilly, who was in the business of murder for some time. Apparently he got into a scuffle with his prior employer over some accident, and escaped instead of getting caught and killed. When he heard of the place he caught a ride to Ceres Fe Mineris, but got stuck there and was waiting for an opportunity to "Get off this fucking rock". Taking up the chance he joins the group.

As the party wraps up business and heads back, they are greeted with security checks all over. Apparently someone tipped off the police of the smuggler who they contacted. George immediately recognizes the dangers, but Coltan is more occupied with a receipt of a shotgun, a revolver and some ammo left by Barry on the ship.
So, instead of getting the fuck out of there before they find the guy and he starts talking, they set out to scour the whole place after him, but the only thing they find out is that Barry more than likely left the planet already. Just as they start to conclude their goosechase, they see guards and policemen starting to just up and run for some reason. Apparently they saw the dealer guy and he's resisting arrest.
Taking the hint, they decide to leave and go back to Cassiopeia Prime to find that damn ምክር ቤት and the money they get. What's a psychic or two. Or three actually. So they return, and Anton fires up his laptop once again. The party goes to search for the nodes via proximity connections, and they reliably get the location of 4. 1 in an apartment in High end, one seemingly in the sewers, and two in a gigantic tower owned by Tavistock Stockmarket Inc one on the 20th floor and one on 101st floor. Also, while cruising around Coltan and George gets weirded out. They seem to be seeing the same exact guy all over the town. Huh.

Anyway, They decide to go with the tower. 2 nodes for 1 break in. Coltan legs it up a large flight of stairs and detaches his rifle scope to inspect the tower. The 20th floor seems like any general office, but the 101st seems well protected with turrets and guards all over. Also filled with slick black and chromatic furniture.

Meanwhile Anton and George enter the building and get a waiting ticket to buy stocks on floor 18. Just two floors to make up to the 20th. As they get in, Anton manages to hotwire the elevator panel into giving them free access, and the duo manages to enter floor 20, disguise themselfes as the IT crew and get the contents of the node. One of the guards comes to them but due to being unknowledgeable in computers, just sands behind them acting like he understand what they are doing. After they are finished, they jam the elevator just until Coltan can get back to them and they make their way to the 100th floor. As Coltan goes down, he sees a group of 14 people all looking the same, dressing the same, with the same face leave the building. Their plan being blowing the 101st floors flooring to the 100th and access it from there, but as they arrive at the 100th floor what finds them isnt guards and cameras, but an empty room with empty weapon racks all over the walls. Definitely not what Coltan saw from the outside. They look around and find projectors aimed at the windows, meant to disguise whats actually inside, they figure. As they investigate further, they find something rhe size of a smaller table with a large white sheet covering it completely, and a set of clothes, an assault rifle, and combat armor and other general combat gear. hen they pull the sheets down, they discover a pale human sitting in a fetal position under the sheet.
The face is immediately recognized by Coltan and George. This was the face they saw all over the city as they were driving around, all seeming to have this similar gear. When they try to move the guy however, his eyes spring open and quickly bites onto something, resulting in his head exploding and very lightly injuring George.

After the group gets itself and the remaining equipment together (to take obviously), they decide to take the elevator up to 101 instead of blowing the floor.
just as before, when the door opens, they find the same view, but when George peeks outside, he sees turret after turret scanning the room.
Quickly retreating, he activates his IR cloak, but when he steps out, the turrets still take aim. Just as his life egins to flash before his eyes, the turrets all start furiously clicking. tk-tk-tk-tk-tk-tk-tk. Just for clarification they all keep clicking until they leave the floor.

They seem to have run out of ammo. Relieved, George calls the other out, and they start noticing the incredible amount of .50 shell casings scattered at the legs of the turrets. Just behind the elevator, they find a single metal table, with a single laptop on it that is plugged into an ethernet cable. Ancient technology, but Anton wrangles the thing into obedience. Deep in the roots, Anton finds a message. More like a taunt. Left by MrW. I think you can guess. They also find documents detailing the Replica project. Bioengineered human clones controlled by psychics. Looks like the ምክር ቤት has been up to some experimenting.

Just as they finish wrapping up, a loud noise and a bright explosion happens. Confused at first, the trio looks out the window and perceives a mushroom cloud.
After a moment, as the situation drops for George, Anton and Coltan, they hurriedly make their way back to the elevator, dragging a turret with themselves.
Making their way down, they figure to exit at not the ground floor, but couple of floors up and then use the fire exit, but the moment their lift opens up, countless people push into it, not caring about the armed party or the turrets, since a nuke just went off, and Anton just makes the elevator go down to the ground floor.

As they make their way down and out, they are greeted by the replicas and police bots having a shootout, as nukes are exploding closer and closer to New Eden III and thus, the crew. They quickly strap the turret to their car and head to the docks. There they see a lot of civilians pushing into the docks, trying to secure a ride off before the worst comes to pass.
Coltan briefly stops to consider making buck, but most of the people are mid class citizens so he just retreats to the ship as well.
Just as the party begins takeoff, they see ships crashing, and Coltan barely, but manages to avoid crashing and shoots off of the planet.

In orbit, they stop to look back onto Cassiopeia Prime, as do many other ships, to witness the destruction. Nuke by nuke, the explosions consume the planet, eradicating all the major cities, melting the surface of the planet. With the fact that their actions lead to this, and theat they are quite frankly out of money slowly sinking in, they get contacted by Mr. White congratulating them for starting a war, and telling the crew to watch the second tape Swan 3 gave to Anton.

So they do. In it, Mr. White tells them that for Whitewalker to legally get involved they need to be given permission by the system leaders at UHFOE, which is located on the floating platform cities on Fu-Ell.

And That!s where Genesis void ends. Now onto the New Plains of Conquest. For context, if you read it previously, it was established that it was a simulation run by an artifact in the genesis void universe. That's where it will pick up first, so bear with it if you don't like sci fi.

Now back onto Plains of Conquest.

As the setting sun is licking the surface of the ocean, it's orange hue reflects back deep into the city of mirrors, making the natural light dance like millions of fireflies all over the enormous towering buildings, illuminating the hidden streets and valleys in it's urban sprawl, revealing for only but a moment the imperfections laying in the cracks of the glistening utopistic architectural masterpiece.
As the population is channeled through the streets and public transportation like water through a riverbed, as the city is enveloped in dazzling light speeding through it, we focus our attention the swirling rails all over the city. Like the guard of an exquisite rapier, they appear without logic enveloping the city, wrapping in tightly, but still feel like they were constructed by a grand design to fulfill and excel in both form and function.

Speeding on these rails, is one of the city's many monorails. In it, two people heading towards the same direction. Blorg Katasm, a schemer, and not of the type that has a backbone, and Fortinbras dei Salvucci Maggiore, a simple man with more than well developed muscles. They both are heading to the city's crown jewel, the Thanathos Institute tower. After taking part in a previous scientific experiment, they were sent away, but they received an invitation back into the folds of Thanathos, for an experiment, and whenever appreciated or not, they accepted the offer.

While on the monorail, the two make small chatter and play a game of cards to pass the time. Blorg tries to distract a passing steward and steal food from her cart but fails and returns to the his seat. As they arrive into the tower, they are greeted by the head researcher, Dr Von Brauner, a late middle aged man with a bald head and googles and a funny way of talking. Neither Fortinbras or Blorg recognizes him. Brauner proceeds to give the pair a tour of the facility, their new living space and what their duty entails. After the introductions are over, both Blorg and Fortinbras gets in their pods.

As the pod door closes, both start to doze off, and find themselves sinking deeper into darkness, as the darkness and pressure gets stronger and stronger, both feel sudden currents in the water and a strange, high pitched song of something gigantic, but it comes to pass, and the surroundings seem to become more brighter and stopping at a level of azure blue. they stabilize and achieve floating with numerous other bodies there as well, who all seem to have some kind of mask like apparatus tied to their face. Suddenly a loud splash is heard and both awaken.

Brad and Barthow awaken from their long slumber and get ready for the day. Waking up, they do some shopping, and Both start looking for that guard commander to give them a pass needed to get into the city. They find that he still hasn't arrived back yet, but barthow takes the opportunity to talk with some city guards, and gets a job offer to check out the nearby town of For' Has. Apparently the town was attacked by something, and the town went silent. 200 gold to find out what and a 1000 if it's a creature and the group kills it.
So our group sets out from Kho Keep to For' Has, but decides to camp out for the night. During the camping, Barthow hunts a deer and the pair eats some meat, all the fauna goes completely silent, and the group is reunited with Pockets. Or what remained of him, anyway, which is a mangled corpse and a ruined armor.

The crew decides to give him a proper burial after i make them roll a 1d100 for which pocket they open to check, and ask for a 1d99 for the second, and the rest of the night passes uneventfully.

The next morning they continue their trip to For' Has and as soon as arriving, find bloated remains and weeks old dead. Deciding to take caution, Brad remains near the village's entrance, and Barthow decides to scout ahead. As he heads deeper into the town, he hears louder and louder rumbling. The source, as it turns out to be is a well fed hydra sleeping in the town square. After careful investigation, Barthow retreats after one of the heads phases over his location with it's eyes, carefully avoiding a stick that was in his way.
After his information gathering and retreat, and discussion, Brad and Barthow decide to head back and report the creature's presence. Come night and the same exacct place where they camped out before due to my lazyness, Barthow gets too preoccupied with looking for game, but notices some creatures that look like humans but not living sneaking up on him just in time to calmly outwalk them and fire arrows at them while brad wakes up as well. The two manage to make short work of the creatures, and as they die, their bodies turn to ash and leave a small, golf ball sized black orb behind. Brad, immune to diseases retrieves the balls from the ashes and smashes them on a rock. As he does the lightest whisper is heard, but brad doesn't pick up on their meaning.

Returning to the city, the two wake up from the artifacts pull, and return to their flat. Fortinbras investigates their third roommate's room and find a letter adressed to someone named White. Mr. White. But other than that his search comes up with nothing. In the meantime Blorg watches TV and catches a report of the immolation of Cassiopeia Prime, the loss of a lot of people, and Foulke set straight with three bullets in his heart. Not in the head but good enough. and the anonymous guy who brought him to justice getting a scout ship and heading off into deeper space. That's where 1/2 of PoC ended.

Session 2/2

As Blorg and Fortinbras went to sleep and woke up, they were told to write their report, and Blorg does so, however Fortinbras makes a wager with Blorg, if he wins Blorg writes his report as well, if he loses he does whatever Blorg wants. However Fortinbras wins and Blorg gets to write his report as well. Oh joy.

After the two gives in their reports, they say goodbye to their third roommate as someone new is moving in, Blorg getting his hands on a shiv and already trying to sell his services, they head into the Sink and dive once again.

Waking up where they left before, Barthow heads back to the guards and reports his findings. While the guard middle leader isn't exactly convinced due to lack of actual proof, Barthow makes an excellent case and the group gets their 200. As luck would have it, they need that other 1000 so they decide to kill the hydra. To supplement their arsenal, they get some oil, alchemist's fire, and some tinderboxes as well.

After shopping up on goods and heading out, they once again camp out at the exact same spot as the last two times, nodding to the grave of Pockets as they pass by (who am i kidding, probably not). And resume their trip to For' Has. After careful planning, distance checking via the ruler function, they set up a fiery ambush for the hydra. After waking it with his third shot, the hydra springs into action, but notices the large pool of oil before him and tries to encircle the chokepoint, but our heroes prepared for this and with a little fumbling, manage to light the thing on fire and begin fighting it. Barthow takes shots at it and it's spawn while brad tanks and uses his burst damage as well. All in all, Brad get's the brunt of the attacks, but they manage to kill all of it's heads, and the hydra dies. Taking a little time to inspect the devastation and damage the hydra caused, but more importantly anything still moveable and worth atleast a gold coin, the two check the town ruins out. Brad finds a mysterious map hidden under some corpses, and pockets it, while Barthow pays his donkey extra attention and makes it a comfortable place to take a rest at, then scoffs and clicks his tounge at his horse as he brings it over.
However, their stay is not long as Brad wants to return, and as promised they take the tip of the hydra's tail off for proof.

Upon returning, they report their success, and they receive the reward. Going back into the Inn, they are celebrated and hailed as the adventurers who killed the Hydra and freed For' Has. Thus after a good night worth of drinking and eating, the pair heads to sleep.

And that's where 2/2 of PoC ended. So that's everything up to the last session we've had where i was the DM.

Today we ran some Deep Abyss. Been a while! We have a new player and so that really helps. Still open to more.

Last time; long story short, the party help the Dwarves at Craghammer defeat a fortress full of hobgoblins. Drakk, the leader of the dwarves, is distraught at the cost of dwarf blood that was spilled to get success. The party did take like 3 short rests inside the fortress. The dwarves all say that they'll be fine so long as they have Drakk, he's what will pull them together, but it really does feel like it's one thing after the other. Galanodel, the friendly Firbolg meets with Drakk, but finds the proud military leader/tailor drinking through his reserve, the room a mess, and loads of empty bottles. The man is unshaven, unkempt, and drunk even by dwarf standards. Galanodel consoles the man, going behind him and grabbing him by the neck, stranging the man. He then sets up a noose, and sets the dwarf inside, and leaves a little suicide note. He then makes his way out of dodge and suggests to Are and Fith that they leave craghammer. They found a map to Aendrijahael, after all. The elf Capital, surely the home of civilisation, even now after the cataclysm.

The wooden doors slam shut behind them, the warmth of dwarven hospitality closed off forever. They creak slowly shut and stop with a large clunk, and sounds of chains and bolts clack and bang against the other side of the door. The party peels open the world map and have a look- the journey will be long, and fraught with danger. But there is only one thing to do, and that is to move.
The cold winds blast into the party's faces and as they walk out into the snow their eyes hurt in the brightness, having adjusted to the dim of the underground. When they adjust they're met with the white landscape, the brightness and empty cold laid out before them.

Fith pulls out his map and sees where they are and where they should go. East. East to the Elven homeland- through the snow and ice. They make their way, they might as well. Before they make it 5 minutes, a grand wizard appears in the sky, and with a booming voice, announces "You'll do" and points his finger towards Fith. Fith says "Stop! Please, we ha-".

Darkness. The eyes adjust, and the lights enter the eyes. Cold, wet. Fith gets up and looks around, he's under the earth, he feels it with his druid senses. Cold wet stone is under his feet. He spies lights on the wall, a tapestry of some kind of battle on the west wall, and a mirrored section of wall on the east.. with a firbolg person lying still on the ground under it. He wakes the other firbolg up and introduces himself. They both are confused, and look around. Fith tries to open a wooden portcullis to his south, and it starts to open with a clunk, a whoosh, and a large arrow flies out of the darkness into Fith's shoulder. He sits down to rest, to patch wounds. The other Firbolg observers the tapestry, concluding that it's just another human conflict, he observers the mirror, finding it built into the wall, and protected by a magical field. He abandons the idea of jumping through it.

While resting, the lights in the room flicker and dim for but a moment, and both firbolgs notice reversio's face briefy visible behind the mirror. Fith immediately reacts, taking his shillaugh, enhancing it with magic and takes a swing at the mirror in rage. The first attempt bounces off and the staff goes flying out of his hands, the mirror rippling unaturally in response to the magical attack. Going to pick his staff back up he sees that it got tangled in the tapestry, and tore some of it away. There are words underneath and after some ripping of this extremely fine tapestry, he reveals the words "Quick wit and Quick steel will save you from a Quick death" roughly scraped into the stone beneath.

He tries again at the mirror, this time the ripples build so high that they burst open, scattering pieces of glass all over the place. They quickly look inside, and see no reversio. Instead they see chairs, soft quilted chairs, and a little cupboard. Fith steps inside and inspects the inside for hidden passageways, finding none. The room is completely sealed, at least to the mundane. They hear Reversio's voice inside their heads congratulating them, and then they move on. After finding a corridor that loops back on itself they head onwards.

The next room they find is full of cobwebs, and it is deservedly worth avoiding if not for a large stone cube in the centre of the room with a golden key on it. Fith checks the room (rolls a 23). He eyes the cobwebs in the room suspiciously still after not seeing anything (spiders rolled high), and walks inside. He gets to the key and grabs it, and as he is putting it away, he feels a large creature land on him from above, hairy legs, many legs, poking into his head and back and then before he can react, he is stabbed in the back of the neck with two large daggers, injecting their venom into him. He is almost crippled by the blow, the fangs sink deep and wound badly. More spiders join the fray, biting at Fith, and he is almost mortally wounded. He casts meld into stone and sinks into the floor, dodging another bite as he does so.

The other firbolg stares at Fith, just wishing he had that spell too, and uses his most powerful weapon: Song. He takes out his ace in the hole: A piece of wood on a string that makes a noise when you spin it above your head. The infamous Bullroarer, a weapon of might and power. And of might and power it is, since as he spins it above his head, the spiders scuttle away in mortal fear (Natural 20 intimidation…), leaving the two to have an awkward conversation with Fith sticking his head out of the floor and looking up. Fith presents the key and the other Firbolg takes the key from the floor hand.

They rest and recuperate from this encounter, Fith resting in the safety of cold stone, and the Firbolg with his Bullroarer at the ready. They move on, and find another room. In the side of the room next to a iron door with no handle or markings is a box with three shaped holes: One circular, one square, and one triangular. Fith immediately understands the situation and grabs a shovel and tries to brute force open the strong iron door. After almost breaking his shovel, he finds a triangular wooden block on the ground. Carefully, and with a shoulder that still hurts from the last 'practical joke', he puts the triangular block into the box with a click. They look around and find two more blocks: A circular one and a square one. The door opens smoothly when the blocks are inserted correctly.

A voice echoes from inside their heads: "You'd be surprised how many people don't get past this one". Reversio can't resist with the comments. At least someone is enjoying this.

They move their way through some corridors, sneaking as best they can. Sounds of large chains clanking faintly in the distance spooks the firbolgs and they make their way through the labyrinth, avoiding this sound when they can. They find a chasm, across a hall with a door on the other side. A voice in their head is more chilling this time: "This chasm is very, very real". Maybe the places they haven't explored yet will be better.

And so they might be, they find a locked door with a keyhole. The key works just fine. They open it and find a suspiciously comfortable looking room. Nice rug, table, and a rack on the wall. The table looks laid out, there are sandwiches, and glasses of water just laid out and untouched, with some chairs sat around, all on a rather plush rug. It looks like a comfortable place to stop and rest. Fith eyes the rack, there are potions on it. He pulls them out and looks at them, judging their worth to be garbage. The Firbolg has a better opportunity and notices that they are healing potions. Rare, valuable, and four of them! They share them as equals and the Firbolg goes on to do something important.

The Firbolg tips the table over trying to get at the rug, smashing plates, glasses, and spreading sandwiches all over. The sandwiches spread over the floor, the dust and grime getting into the bread, meat and lettuce. The water seems and wets the floor, the glasses ruined forever into a thousand pieces. This charity platter of high quality food becomes waste for the floor. The rug! The rug gets pulled up and rolled into the corner like more garbage, and the Firbolg, with baited breath, carefully examines the stone underneath. Dry, as it had a rug on it, but completely uneventful, Just normal stone floor.

 Before the party moves on, Fith introduces himself to the other Firbolg. Finding out that the Firbolg just takes the name that the people he's with use on him, Fith looks at the hat, sees that it's kind of a funny mongolian looking hat and christens him Funnyhat, half-joking. Funnyhat accepts the name, and suggests that they move forward. Funnyhat and Fith then continue on.

The room to the east seems dangerous. Large heavy chains, and powerful grunts are heard, and the door has some bulges coming out towards them. Probably whatever is in there should stay in there. So they walk past - or at least try to, Fith stops and notices a rock on the ground that's out of place, sticking out, odd, so cautions and notices a large, straight and flat crevace cut into the wall next to it. A glint of metal may have been seen inside. He carefully steps around it and warns Funnyhat.

Moving on they find some burning torches in a dead end corridor, and then sneak into an interesting room. Two Ankhegs are trapped, stuck in cages with large chains connecting them to a mechanism in the ceiling. Behind the two cages is a small chest, looking kind of important. A large mirrored section is present on the north wall. The cages do not appear to have bottoms. Fith tries to sneak away again, but the mechanism is active. Clunk clacker clunk, the cages move up and release the insectoid hounds, acid dripping from their mandibles.

They immediately charge and both fith and Funnyhat are standing in the doorway, and two sprays of acid cover them both, burning into their skin. Burnt hair smell, pain and melting flesh are bad enough, but the creatures have only just started. Funnyhat lets out some vicious mockery in giant, hurting the feelings of one of the ankhegs badly, dealing a serious amount of psychic damage. Fith throws out some poison spray, but hits a non-sensitive part of the creature. He takes off around the corner.

Leaving Funnyhat at the mercy of two angry acidic ankhegs. They bite, he dodges one, but the second grabs him with its mandibles and holds him in place, the acid covered blades digging into his flesh and causing great agony. He manages to take a swing at an ankheg running past him with his axe, and chips off a good chunk of insect meat. Fith tries to rescue his new companion, but the chasing ankheg blocks the way. Dodging the acid-covered scythes and taking some on his barkskin, he cannot make his way past to save Funnyhat. Funnyhat's screams echo around the corners and then there is a crunch and silence.

The second ankheg drops an unconscious Funnyhat into the pool of acid that was on the floor, and makes off after Fith. Fith retreats, and casts walls of wind, blowing the ankhegs around and smashing them to pieces on the hard stone. Crunching, hissing, crying, the ankhegs are torn and cracked, or so Fith thinks. One is still alive, alive enough to chase. Fith runs to where the strange rock in the floor is and stands just behind it. The ankheg, maddened with near-death fury, takes chase, stepping right on the strange rock and with a flash of steel, a cutting blade flies out of the crevice in the wall with a loud iron SHING and cuts almost right through the ankheg, near enough to be called cut in two, and the mad insectoid ceases moving and bleeds its insectoid blood out onto the stone floor.

Fith runs, he has to save his friend! It is too late. (Funnyhat rolls two natural 1s in a row for his death saving throws) He finds a partially dissolved firbolg lying in a pool of acid, his blood and giblets floating away in the puddle, a skeleton remaining with flesh falling off, and most notably of all, his funny hat lying on top. Fith lets a tear run down his cheek and he picks up this funny hat and puts it on his own head. Funnyhat will not be forgotten.

Trying to hold back the tears, Fith explores the room that they paid such a dear price to get access to. He checks the small chest, but then opens it. Inside is a golden key. He grips it and his sadness turns to anger as he faces himself in the mirrored wall. He smashes it open with his magic enfused staff, and hits it again, hitting the pieces, hitting the remnants, hitting until there's no glass left to hit. Behind are soft plush chairs, lined up facing into the room, with no trace of recent activity. A half eaten bowl of old walnuts lies on one of the chairs, and there's a small cupboard with some vials of mystery liquid and some peanuts.

Near death himself, Fith melds into the stone to take his rest.

And that's where we ended today in Deep Abyss. It's neither deep nor an abyss anymore but heyho.

A churchbell suddenly rings out on the east side of the village.
As it keeps on ringing and ringing, tearing both into air and our eardrums, sending ripples through the village, it's citizens gather to know the cause.

"The goblin horde is coming! The goblin horde is coming!
Man to arms, succubus and children to safety!"
"The goblin horde is coming! The goblin horde is coming!
Man to arms, succubus and children to safety!"

As the crier cries his cry, the situation starts to sink in for the common folk. Fight or flight instincts overtake them and spring them into action.

As the citizens rush to get armed or lock up, the local militia starts to organize it's ranks of citizens and adventurers into smaller units both for an effective counterattack if need be and defense.
One of the 4 person squad out of the numerous groups starts making it's way to the village's edges to meet the invading forces.
In this group is Aidan Tallowmere, a sickly and thin man, abused child turned elder god worshipping adult, Istán Szűcs, a fair and built sheperd from the countryside and his Racka sheep, Juhocska, Matthew Dorian, a young, frail, and scared boy who was chosen by the god of divination, Lath' Nokh, and Ida Crowe, a turncoat fence who set out to establish a thief guild of his own. As they prepare for the inevitable bloody battle to come, István recalls some topographical memory of the nearby area (outlander background), and remembers a good place for an ambush a little out of the town. Aidan scouts ahead and finds a group of 8 goblins doing the same. With a lucky roll he remains invisible to the goblins.
Matthew and Ida, having no better thing to do, start setting up a lot of traps (Ida sets them while Matthew Casts guidance over and over again.)

Now the question dear reader.
Should István tell of the location of the favorable ambush spot to the others and should they go headfirst into the coming horde?
Should Aidan strike first on the goblins, hoping the others catch up when they hear the sound of battle? Should he slink back to the group to rejoin them, ov wait in place to stab the goblins in the back when a fight erupts?
And finally, should Ida and Matthew set a sign that tells of their traps to others, potentially including village militia or the goblins? Or should they not and bear the responsibility?

>>39856
Tomorrow night, roughly at the same time these were written, our story will continue, dear reader, with or without your guiding influence, so be sure to let your voice reach me through this instrument of communication, otherwise i shall let the pieces move as they themselfes wish to, come what may.

Let us weave the strings of fate together, and perform the best possible play in your grand, grand world for our audience, and our little "actors" may very well survive what comes next.

Hm. Very well. You have let fate run it's intended course by your passivity.
Read then, the consequences of your choice, and know well that you could have influenced the outcome.

Aidan, eager to prove his dark patron right, casts dissonant whisper on the toughest goblin he sees, instantly killing it. As the other goblins stare as to why their leader just died, one of the goblins catches the outline of aidans cloak in the bushes, and screams, charging Aidan with 4 others and attacking. One of the goblins, that looked the weakens runs away, while two start looting the boss' body.
Aidan manages to damage another goblin, but he meets his end unbeknownst to the rest of the group.

Blow after blow, Aidan goes down and gets decapitated by the goblins. One more to add to their war trophies to be carried around as a tool for terrorizing the rest of the humans.

Back, at the edge of the town, István tells Ida and Matthew about the perfect ambushing place, but both argue to stay closer to the village, especially after the traps are set.

>>39874
As the remaining three discuss their plans, the 6 goblins arrive.
With the cockiness of a champion up against a rookie, they fan out to ready themselves for engagement.

With Matthew and Ida caught between a goblin scout party and their traps to their backs, they realise the disadvantage they are at. Lucky them, they manage to take out the goblin injured by Aidan first reducing their number to 5.
While Ida and István is hacking away and dancing just barely away from the sharp ends of daggers and shortswords, Matthew casts Bane on 3 goblins at random to help their surviving chances. It seems to do the trick, but 3 goblins almost overwhelm István.
To counter this, Matthew commands one of the goblins on istván to approach him, making him take damage in the process, but the goblun strikes Matthew and ends his conxentration, freeing the rest of the goblins from the effects of bane.

Luckily, Ida manages to take two goblins down with his twin daggers before István goes down, and focuses his attention to the remaining 3.

Just as Ida hacks away, Matthew manages to kill the goblin harassing him, and cast Bless as well, on Ida.

With this newfound strenght ida takes one down before succumbing to his wounds. Left alone, Matthew trades hits with the ladt goblin, that tries to leg it, but Matthew strikes him down.

Tired and hanging on by a sliver, Matthew musters some of his remaining strenght and casts spare the dying on Ida and István before he almost collapses to take a short rest.

>>39876
Now, the question, reader, is that are you willing to partcipate now?
Your inaction has already lead to a meaningless death, no doubt it will, again.
Only 3 are left now. 3 chances, but that is the limit of this story. Once these three are gone, so shall the connection to their world be erased, and their existence become but a forgotten memory.

The questions are: Should Matthew push himself to carry back the two to the town, or just rest where they are and hope for the best?
Should they hold the line, or retreat further back to be near allies?
Should they start planning their escape or should they fight tooth and claw for the town?

Tomorrow, fate shall start flowing once again. Will you let it run its cruel course, or will you try to interject knowing the weight it carries? Time is ticking.

Remove manticores.
towers belong to the elves.

>>39877
Poor warlock, but his idea was stupid.

Hide and rest until the two can walk
Retreat to allies
Recover
Fight, but have an escape plan ready. These goblins aren't kidding around.

We pick up where we left off in Plains of Conquest.

As the two celebrated heroes, Brad and Barthow retreat into their bedrooms for the night, Blorg and Frontinbras awake in their pods. Tired, they shortly return to their rooms and go to rest, Fortinbras enjoying the fact that they don't pay the bills to doze off watching TV on the couch, and Blorg, improving his makeshift shiv "purely for self defense", then throws himself into bed as well.

During the night, Blorg awakens to hear shuffling in their flats, and instinctly grabs his shiv and comes up with the excuse of pissing if questioned then exits his room. Outside, he finds Dr Von Brauner with two armed security guards rummaging through Carl's stuff (Collin was a third NPC flatmate) for something. Inquiring further from the doctor, he's told that Carl was in contact with an outsider organization trying to sell corporate information. Blorg then proceeds to the toilet, and wanting to hear more and eavesdrop, pretends to relieve himself by splashing some water into the toilet bowl, but realises he might actualy piss instead. After that though he opens the tap but instead of washing hands he puts his ears up to the door.

Outside, Von Brauner and the gurads seem to find what they were looking for, and leave. Blorg however manages to overhear something about a "Mr. White." After they leave, Blorg sneaks into Carl's room to investigate further, but finds nothing outside of a few very big shirts, one of which he pockets.

Next morning, both of the two proceed to wake up, eat breakfast and write their reports. Fortinbras opting in to some morning exercise to help him with the exhaustion that's been piling up because of the entry and leaving. After their morning routine, they head out to the labs to talk with an assistant, and then the doctor. Slipping on some loose wiring coming from his own pod, Blorg trips. Before somebody else "slips" on the wires of his own pod again, he inquires about what would happen if someone was unplugeed or murdered in the simulation of the artifact. He is told to not worry too much, as while the artifact does take the consciousness out of the body, it takes a while to not be able to return it to the owner's body, thus if systems were to shut down, everyone inside would be in a comatose state outside, but if restored within a week, they would return with no trouble. The problems arise when someone is killed since there isn't any body to return to, and while the consciousness of the person would still exist inside the artifact, if killed within they would truly be dead.
Blorg and Fortinbras discuss further and come to the conclusion that someone with a lot of money must be investigating a way to become immortal through this system.

Feeling content with their amount in inquiry for the day, they enter the simulation once again. Once again they sink deeper and deeper, but they notice the lack of a whale like silhouette and the whale song. Waking up the next morning, they get ready to make the trip to the next town on their map, Marsh. On the way, Brad and Barthow meet two patrolling guards waiting at the crossing of the roads. Implying that they already thought Marsh would be overrun, they find out that both marsh and Folio is still very much intact. Taking the opportunity the party tells John and Jürgen about the coming monster menace. Taking it to heart after being shown notes and evidence on the Hydra, John sends Jürgen to Folio, and expresses worry for his grandparents in Marsh. Asking to go with them, Brad lets John ride his horse Thunderhoof to speed up the travel.

Travelling to Marsh, they encounter a suspiciously detailed map of the road, and before going further, they spot a small herd of Drabbits grazing nearby, deer sized horned rabbits, hunted mostly for their pelt and antlers, but often avoided due to being horned and extremely fast. Barthow and Brad dismounts, Barthow going forward to investigate.

While sneaking around, Barthow notices a few feets ahead of him, a strange creature hiding in the underbush seemingly trying to ambush the Drabbits.
The Flat Lizard, tiger beetle like cold blood as high and big a as a coffin put on the ground on it's widest side, they like to get a good look on their prey before they rush their attack, as they can go blind during their top running speeds.

As Bartrhow retreats and prepares to shoot his bowgun, one of the antennas of the Flat Lizard perk up and aim towards their location. Sniffing the air, it quickly senses somethings amiss and turns it's attention to the group, just in time for Bartrhow to fire off his three shot burst, as the Drabbits hop away towards atleast a new day of living.

As a battle erupts, Brad closes in, smartly using his noble celestial steed for movement, but jumps off to actually be able to strike at the creature. The Flat Lizard reels back and runs at Bard full speed, "shin"checking him and making him fall down prone due to a low dex saving throw. On the ground, the creature bites at Brad with advantage, but can't chew through his metal plate armor. John, moving in to help cautiously, is unable to do so because of the rush the creature tripped Brad with. Back at Barthrow, who fires off 3 shots into nothing due to not having a clear shot on the creature, instead spots another one skittering towards him stealthily.

The trio once again makes quick work of the creatures, with brad and john getting tripped a few times and John having a nasty wound on his hand that brad heals "ironic, healing a hand with lay on hands", they also spot a relatively fresh firepit, half a day to a day old while still looking around. They don't really find anything interesting, no equipment, no sings of struggle, so they assume someone made the trip after asking John about it.

Heading forward and reaching Marsh by dusk. As they approach, they are stopped by the guards, but after they see John with them, Bard and Barthrow are let through. Barthrow catches one of the guards coughing into his hands followed by what sounds like gravel instead of something liquid like, and throwing it away. Barthrow approaches the guard and asks about his condition, who plays dumb but invites him to a drink after his shift in the local pub.

Heading into town, they make their first visit to the Inn to rent rooms and leave their horses in care. In the Sinking Wheelbarrow Inn, they meet Bertold the innkeeper, a surprisingly young man, not even scruff on his cheeks and chin, who tells them about an illness or disease that the town is suffering from since a short while, and that due to this strange disease, The Shells, where someone for some reason starts coughing up more and more little blue seashells, cutting their throat up, to the point where their lungs and torso simply burst from the amount of shells inside, and that the city blocked off access to it until it's solved.
After his explanation, Bertold asks the group if they saw his wife on the way here, since she was to return by today midday. The party asks some questions thinking that the succubus might be fine, but they just didn't run into eachother, they get more details than they bargained for.

Bertold tells Brad and barthrow about how him and Adele (his wife) recently took over the inn after Adele's grandparents both died of the Shells, with Adele tending to the inn and Bertold fulfilling his duties in the local Hunters Guild, and that sometimes his wife made trips down to Kho Keep for general supplies, while Bertold tended to the inn as a stand in for a day or two in the meantime, but his wife still did not return yet, and how he's worried for her safety, especially after the good old, "she's probably dead, man" speak from our duo.
Anyway after settling for 200 gold for finding and bringing back his wife, Bertold also, to the urging of both Barthrow and Brad, considers moving to somewhere safe like Kho keep, but lacking the funds and someone taking over the Inn, asks them to talk with his semi rich family in the City about taking over.
If they manage to convince them to do so, Bertold promises the party he'll try to in turn convince his family to depart with their keepsake, a small Dragonsoul crystal.

Bertold briefly tells them the significance of such a thing: Legend goes that the moment a dragon is killed, it's heart is cut out by a group of small gods and used in a specific ritual which transforms the Dragon's heart into a crystal, concentrating it's power into it. Once concentrated they quickly put these crystals back in the exact place of the heart of the dragon.
While not exactly useful in of itself, it contains a lot of power.

Finding interest in such thing, Bartrhow agrees to both with brad for different reasons.
After Brad and Barthrow say their goodbyes Barthrow heads to the Drunken Huntsman Pub to meet with the guard.
As he arrives he immediately notices some tables having an extra bucket or two, and he easily makes the connection as to why.
Heading deeper in he meets with the guard calling himself Northik, the guards tells the same story Barthrow heard already. He advises that if the two were to try to get into the city, they either need to help solve the Shells somehow, or try to find someone in the recent encampment before the Bronthos gate to help them get in not so legally.
To help, Northik tells Barthrow, the best place to start would be to talk with the major of the town, though the guards tells him that the major isn't exactly "fond of" traveling adventurers. "Maybe a previous incident" Barthrow guesses.
Northik however proposes another idea. He's losing hope and coming to the terms that he will probably die to the Shells, so he tells Barthrow about his cousin, Betren, who when his family was in deep debt, sacrificed his Mage College membership, to turn to a more profitable activity, the black market, to help out Northik and his family.
Since then Northik believed he was indebted towards Betren, and as such, at the dusk of his life, wishes to repay him for his deed. He shows Barthrow a golden ring with a large, flawlessly cut amethyst in it, that he meant for a succubus he was/is sweet on, but wants to instead settle his debt before his death. Our duo's interest comes in Betren, as he could probably get them into the city if they want to head on instead.

"And what is the safeguard to me taking it and selling it?" asks Barthrow.
"Well you either help the town and by extension, me to remove or kill off the disease, or you give the ring to Betren to get into the city. Otherwise, he's not going to care about you." is the answer he receives.
After Barthrow wraps up info gathering and discussion with the guard, he heds out to Brad to get on retrieving the wife of Bertold, probably in pieces.

Brad and Barthrow backtracks to where they found the fire, without John this time, and after some investigation, find strachmarks on some rocks nearby and tracks leading away from the road. Following the tracks, they navigate into the marsh and manage to track the tracks to a long abandoned and collapsed chapel of some old and forgotten god. Looking around they find an open entrance to the cellar, where the tracks lead down onto. Staring to prepare and look over their inventory, they suddenly hear a succubus's cry for help coming from down below. Our duo rushes down, surprised by the sudden transformation from 2d into isometric map, then proceeds to follow the cries for help.

Just as Brad pushes the slightly open door in and proceeds, a strange creature with the features of a lion and a head that resembles that of a human pounces on Brad, but doesn't manage to inflict damage. As the combat begins, brad sees and hears the Hion use it's ability to mimicry human speech to voice a succubus's cry for help again and again as it encircles Brad. As combat begins, both the Hion and Brad go toe to toe in a strength contest, hard metal winning over monstrous muscles as Barthrow litters it with arrows.
Brad takes up a defending position near the door, deciding to take an opportunity of attack to move into a better position, and on it's turn, the injured creature instead choosing to run deeper into the cellar. Carefully following it this time, they manouver through the next room and corridor, and meet a side door that's locked. Brad, taking the reasonable action tried to bash it loudly open, only to have the doors handle remain in his hand after his attempts. Barthrow in the meantime spots what seems to be a large enough crack in the wall further down that the creature could have had gone through.

But just as Brad finishes his door bashing attempt, a Hion jumps at him from around the corner, commencing the battle yet again. bard tanking, and Barthrow taking shots, they notice one of the creatures poke out it's nose from the aforementioned hole. One more Hion, and then the Alpha of the pack surfaces from the hole. An average Hion being the size of a lion, The pack leader easily having the size of a manticore, they start to approach the two. Brad and Barthrow make the wise decision to retreat into the narrow corridor where they couldn't be enclosed by the pack. Brad stands his ground firmly, his feet rooted deep into the age old tiles of the cellar, while Barthrow makes some very important and hard hitting shots.
But as any plan, it quickly turns more complicated. Brad calls upon his deity and waifu, Kaoru to deliver justice to the creatures, but for some reason, he can barely muster the smallest sliver of power up, and while Barthrow is occupied on what's in front of him, he almost doesn't notice one of the creatures entering the corridor from the other exit to enclose the two. The only way out of this will be the one they need to carve out for themselves.

While Brad, confused upon why Kaoru's power became very weak, continues to stands as firm as a bastion wall, and starts to take some hits, while Barthrow sets a trap for the encircling Hion, which it simply jumps over. The gigantic claws and paws of these creatures start to hit home and rip into the flesh of both.
With Brad taking down the second one first and start his brawl with the pack leader, which at this point looks upon the two from it's prideful face not as simple prey, but with a lingering sense of acknowledgement towards their strength, both go toe to toe, while Barthrow manages to throw his net onto the other one and slink past the creature, leaving the already injured Brad between the two gigantic creatures and their very sharp and rather large claws, however on his next turn, as the lion breaks out of the net' shoot three arrows straight through his spine between his back leg and front leg, and the back of the bead, leaving only the alpha of the pack to fight, whose jaw was already broken by Brad.

In an attempt, the alpha Hion, draws back and pounces on brad, taking him to the ground and restraining him by putting one of its front paws on him. Gaining the advantage, the pack leader goes for Brad's throat, but doesn't manage to actually hit, and Brad manages to push the paw off of himself and get up, only to utterly obliterate the Hion,, almost tearing his head off from the impact of his Elvenwood morning star.

As the combat ends, the duo hears a cry for help again, and following it's trace carefully discover a locked door, and a couple of coherent questions aimed at them when they announce their arrival. After the two manage to exhibit ability to talk and reply to specific things, the door opens, and inside, they see a succubus dehydrated, malnourished and with a sunken face matching the decription of Bertold's wife, with all miscellaneous items like tankards and wooden plates that you'd expect to find in an Inn spread all around the room, probably in a desperate attempt at using what she can to survive being locked in for days.

Adele then summarizes that when she was making her trip back, she detected the Hions creeping up on her and she made her escape, but they wouldn't leave her.

After reacquiring the wife in one piece and still alive, Barthrow goes back to the room to bash it down, to find the first, heavily injured hion collapsed in a corner wheezing and growling, trying to raise itself.
With a good animal handling roll, Barthrow manages to calm the creature down and treat it's injuries. As he does, he hears the creature use an old man's voice and "says" thank you. Creeped out, but interested, Barthrow spends his time to just hang with the creature, while Brad hears his waifu call out to him and tell him of an attack against her and her realm that she needed her complete and full force to repel, and that once in the city, Brad should try to contact Mamoru, a high priest who supports Kaoru (not the high priest OF Kaoru) to consult about their action to find out about the evil and twisted entity that tried to break into her realm.

And that's where our session ended. Next week we'll be continuing dark abyss if all things go according to the plan.

Also to note, we are still looking for wizzies interested.
We are considering making guest characters that anyone could take over for a session or two if they just want to dip their toes in without committing.
So if you are interested, just reply to this post saying that you are interested to try it out and play, and in which one(s) you would like to participate, and we'll try to set you up.
Also, Text only chat would be completely fine for a guest character as well, so if you just want to try it out, no need to set up a microphone.

We currently have 4 campaigns (currently running two, but we'll start changing back and forth with the previous two soon.) With varying degrees of "rules heavy" combat or free flow role playing/social interaction with occasional dice rolls, whichever you prefer.

Currently running:

Deep Abyss is more combat heavy, due to the setting taking place after a fantasy apocalypse, and is more of a survival type of game because of that. Wizrobe DM's this, so if you are interested, send him an email at wizrobe {at} cock.li .

Plains of Conquest (formerly Jungle of Doom) is more of a high fantasy, with impossible monsters and creatures (you haven't seen anything yet, believe me) and heroic adventures of good and bad and such. Combat is still present, but most of the creatures are homebrewed, and thus new and unknown whenever you meet one (and there's many, Many more which you haven't seen) though now that Brad and Barthrow entered more civilized lands, i plan on turning up the RP/social stuff as well. This is ran by me so if you are interested, give me an email at benga {at} cock.li

Currently not running (but soon will):

Sanctuary is a more "low" fantasy/Sword and sorcery campaign. If you are interested in both social interactions, but still want some combat, and want something more of a fantasy medieval "living" instead of "survival", this might be your thing. Wizrobe also DM's this, so shoot an email if you want to inquire ( wizrobe {at} cock.li ) about it.


Genesis Void is a sci fi campaign, which is 65-85 percent social interaction and 35-15 percent combat. It's an odd one out, since we wanted to play something sci fi. Space trucking, trading, bounty hunting, piracy, smuggling, whatever else to be done in space, can be done in Genesis Void. With repercussions not limited to a village but entire planets or even systems or sectors, it's anyone's game.
It's running on traveller, mongoose 1st edition, so it's a different system (to which all of us are new as well), and is ran by me ( benga {at} cock.li ) so if you are a least bit interested email me.

If you don't know what to write just use the template of

Header: (name you would like us to refer to you) Interest in playing

Body:
(campaign/s name you are interested in) alternatively (play style you are interested in)
(i want to/don't want to ghost a session first)
(i want to use text/voice chat for communication)
(I want to/don't want to create a character)
(I want to dip my toes in/i want to play "seriously")
(the date of the next saturday where i am free from 11:00 AM for at least an hour for basic introductions to DnD if i were to need it) alternatively (i would like to ask for the date of {non running camapign}'s next session)


And thats pretty much it. If you send this template email to me, at benga {at} cock.li , i'll reply to confirm it, then either delegate to wizrobe or do things myself depending on which campaign you are interested in. Few notes though:

-you might not be interested in a specific campaign listed above, so just writing play style, like you want mainly combat or role play or a mix of two will give us an idea in which campaign to put you into so you get the most out of it. This however comes at the cost of the fact that we'll still stick to our campaign schedules, so unless you show interest in our currently running stuff, you might need to wait a little bit until we start the other two back up.

-You may want to ghost a session first which is fine, but it can be boring and off putting to listen to 3 guys talking for 4 hours especially when you aren't involved at all. If you want to test the waters i'd recommend opting in for a guest character and just remaining in the background. You'll still listen, but you'll be more involved that way, because while in the background, your character will still be there for you to pay attention to.

-For your guest character/first session, using only text is fine, however if you decide to stick around, we'd like to ask of you to use voice chat, so you know beforehand. It makes things quicker and more streamlined. Don't worry about sounding one way or another, we really don't care.

-creating a character can be fun, but requires commitment, and if you decide otherwise and not stick around, it will still exist and become a waste of effort to make, plus it requires a little knowledge about the game already. If you are starting out or just want a taste, consider asking for a premade character. That way, you can just hop in or out, and still enjoy roleplaying someone.

-this one isn't so much about your commitment, but your intent, expectations, and what you want to get out of playing. First of all, whenever you'd like to stay in the background and just tag along the group, or play a more involved role if you intend to get down and dirty, so we know how to treat you as a player. We are always open to serious wizzies, but if you are unsure, or just interested in tabletop rps in general but know next to nothing outside of maybe a few greentext stories (dont worry it's not like we are any experts on it, either) your life makes you unable to or just for personal reasons, you might not be able or want to commit 4 hours of your (almost) every saturday to a thing you don't know if you'd like anyway, it's alright to just say that you want a taste and that's it. And hey, if you feel the need for more, then you are always free to come back and get more involved.

-this date and time is our usual session time when we gather to actually play. outside of that there isn't that much interaction beside a few emails regarding the sessions or their content (like character creation and such), but what we need this for is to know when to expect you. If you are completely new, or would like a refresher, we can guide you to knowing the basics and actually playing in an hour, otherwise the actual sessions take 4-5 hours.

-the mumble room and the actual campaign roll20 room links will be sent via e-mail, that's why we need you to e-mail us.


As a signoff for this week, this a best race which Brad and Barthrow did not get to see yet (but may, depending on their actions) sooner or later.
The Kailian are, as the image suggests a primitive semi sentient amphibian race.
Often referred to as "the goblins of the sea" they like to raid and rob the fishing boats out by the sea, however a sweet water equivalent is found inland as well. The Kailian are deeply religious and worship their god, Nergtuna by dragging and drowning their victims in water before eating them. Usually active in the night, humans living near bodies of water always tell their children to return before dusk or they will get kidnapped by one under the cover of the night.
They also get very aggressive during rains and thunderstorms, which can especially become a problem during landslides near lakes and large rivers as the rescue efforts and repair works will be likely delayed by the Kailians attacking during the works.

>>39938
Hm, finally, someone who listens. Very good, i will convey your desire for change for the Fates.

Matthew musters all the strength in his frail body to pull Ida and Istvan into the thicket successfully (15-1+2), however, being from a closeted clerical commune, his idea of how to remain undetected is more than subpar (4-1+2) and so he only drags the two but does not remove the tracks their pulled bodies left.

Waiting for half an hour for Ida and Istvan to get up and short rest, the group discusses their much needed plan.

Matthew wishes to remain and help the townfolk, Ida wishes to simply leave as quickly as possible while Istvan wants a little bit of both, so ultimately they and you decide to retreat and gather energy for the main assault.

On the way back, Ida (13+1+2) and Istvan (14+3+2) notices smoke coming from the town, while Matthew is too occupied keeping up, and trips, faliing prone once (1-1+2). Helping Matthew up, they quicken their steps towards the town. Getting back, they see numerous other injured adventurer and militia groups recuperating in the town square from injuries.

Matthew, being a cleric is immediately swarmed and separated from the rest of the group by the masses looking for a healer. His protest and insistence on his god being a divining god not a healer one falls to deaf ears amidst the panic and general chaos, thus he tries his best to help others.

Ida manages to find(16+0+2)and convince (20+0+2 vs 14+1+2) one of the tired traveling bards that is the last surviving member of his assigned group to join theirs. Introducing himself as Geodon Hayseed, a thiefling bard, who after being infatuated by stories of his grandfather, set out in the world to tell them to anyone he could.

Istvan tries to barter (3-1+2) for some rations and camping equipment for their plan to run away if it came to the worst, but fails to find a favorable deal, as everyone is thinking of doing the same. He briefly considers shelling his sheep out of desperation, but hold out on it. Instead he manages to catch what the smokestack was about.

Apparently, a group of goblins broke through another adventurer group and got inside. They were eliminated, but they set fire to 2 houses on the eastern edge of town that seems like it could easily spread, but with little manpower to share, the extinguishing of the flames goes very slow. Two of the goblins managed to get away dragging 4 succubus (5 including an one of tje adventurers they spared according to what Istvan hears) away with themselves to bring back to the horde and killed the rest of their families.

As the commotion continues, A military official stands atop the town square fountain. Stating his displeasure with the weakness of the adventurers, he belittles the adventurers and tells them to rest up as fast as possible and continue the fight. His speech(16+3+2) while isn't friendly at all, manages to bolster the resolve to "stay and prove that fucker wrong" in almost all the adventurers, including Istvan(3+3+2) and Geodon(7+1+2).

As the night falls, the group successfully meets up again, now with Geodon in their ranks, however, they get approached by the militia leader and the group gets put on guard duty. After some arguing the order is established. Istvan goes first(2-1+2) then Ida(6+0+2) then Geodon(7+3+2) (3) and finally Matthew (9+1+2) (7)

As some turn their heads to rest and some to guard duty, Istvan, Ida and Matthew level up to level two.

Matthew acquires Channel Divinity and Channel Divinity: Knowledge of the ages, gains a spell slot(3 total 1st level) and raises his max hp by (6) resulting in 14 max hp, and gains an additional hit die (2d8).

Istvan acquires Archery fighting style to boost his sling, and gains wisdom based spellcasting and 2 spells. Getting ready for the potential trip and to solve their future food problem, Istvan chooses Goodberry, and Hail of Thorns to use with his sling and raises his max hp by (4) resulting in 14 max hp, and gains an additional hit die (2d10).

Ida acquires Cunning Action, and raises his max hp by (3) resulting in 13 max hp, and gains an additional hit die (2d8)

>>39938
>>39992

Very good. The group's path has already changed by your participation in the Fates, Listener.

Why would a storyteller exist if not to tell stories to others, others who can listen.
And you did well to hear and listen, Listener, and thanks to you, these three had not yet perished.

For you see, had Matthew tried to drag Ida and Istvan back into town instead of staying where they are, they would have ran into the two goblins running away from the town with the succubus in shackles, and more than likely share the fate of Aidan.

Had they immediately tried to escaped, they most likely would have been caught by the military official and his retainers and "made example of" for other deserters.


So the Fates change to accommodate your wishes, Listener. A valuable lesson to learn no doubt, that you do hold within you a power to change and influence the Story of the Fates by a mere reply.

Now, the questions are the following:

Should they insist on acquiring camping gear and more rations legally for a potentially needed exit by bartering and selling the services of Matthew and Geodon, should they just try stealing some from fellow adventurers on their guard shift, or should they just trust Istvan's newly gained Goodberry spell for this question?

Should they try to attempt raising people to rescue the kidnapped 4-5 succubus, or leave them to whatever fate they get?

Should they remain in the village to guard it's wooden walls or try to plan and execute a counter attack on goblin scouting parties?

Should they strive to acquire some form of transportation, or just have a safe route planned out by map and memory?

Regarding memory, Should the party trust Istvan's ability and guidance to maneuver in the grasslands, or try to acquire a local map of the region to have something to refer to?

>>40029
you beat me to it. I always wanted to make some gaming menu for battles.

eggcelent.

Rolling for a party of 6.

race-class-background

[ 1d8 = 3 ] [ 1d12 = 7 ] [ 1d13 = 3 ]

[ 1d8 = 7 ] [ 1d12 = 2 ] [ 1d13 = 6 ]

[ 1d8 = 3 ] [ 1d12 = 9 ] [ 1d13 = 6 ]

[ 1d8 = 4 ] [ 1d12 = 7 ] [ 1d13 = 11 ]

[ 1d8 = 6 ] [ 1d12 = 6 ] [ 1d13 = 1 ]

[ 1d8 = 5 ] [ 1d12 = 5 ] [ 1d13 = 12 ]

>>40067
Intended to sage, sorry.

So we have:

Halfling paladin criminal

Half-elf bard guild artisan

Halfling sorcerer guild artisan

human paladin sailor

gnome monk acolyte

dragonborn fighter soldier

Rolling for names

[ 1d10 = 7 ] [ 1d10 = 5 ]

[ 1d10 = 4 ] [ 1d10 = 8 ]

[ 1d10 = 5 ] [ 1d10 = 8 ]

[ 1d10 = 10 ] [ 1d10 = 7 ]

[ 1d10 = 7 ] [ 1d10 = 6 ]

[ 1d10 = 4 ] [ 1d10 = 7 ]

>>40070
also gender

[ 1d2 = 1 ]

[ 1d2 = 1 ]

[ 1d2 = 1 ]

[ 1d2 = 1 ]

[ 1d2 = 1 ]

[ 1d2 = 2 ]

>>40071
Oh and specialization:

[ 1d3 = 2 ]

[ 1d2 = 2 ]

[ 1d2 = 2 ]

[ 1d3 = 2 ]

[ 1d3 = 3 ]

[ 1d3 = 2 ]

So we have:

Zenmo Yenzu, male halfling paladin criminal, with the oath of the ancients.

Wilwarith Quowarith, male half elf bard guild artisan, with the collage of valor

Linrich Quoary, male halfling sorcerer guild artisan, with wild magic

Tohvif Darkbender, male human paladin sailor, with the oath of the ancients

Sadon Xodon, male gnome monk acolyte, with the way of the four elements

And finally,
Rashibis Inkuad, succubus dragonborn fighter soldier, with battlemaster.

If any wizard is interested in any of them, just say so in a reply and i can actually make their character sheet, post it or do the math myself and run a small one off session on wizchan, text only.
As long as one of you is interested, i'm willing to do it. I can assume as much and as little control over your character as you want to, so you can just tell me what you wish to do in general, or assume total conztol over both combat, exploration and social encounters.

You force my hand yet again, Listener.
Even i have my limits about keeping the Fates back until you choose your answers. Or not.
You alone have the terrible freedom to not act in this tale, but in exchange, you alone hold the key to true change in it.

But, once again, you let the Fates have their way and decide instead of you, and oh, deciding they did, Listener.

Deciding they did, and will continue to do if you still refuse to interject.
Is it pride getting in the way of you choosing, or perhaps apathy, carelessness?
Did the Fates claiming a life for themselves once already not teach you of the importance of your actions? Or did you slink back to wherever, thinking this tale does not require your further attention?

Oh, how wrong you are, Listener.
Moment by moment, this tale, as with many others, are being taken over by the Fates.
Desecrated and repurposed. Stripped of any choice or chance, pummeled to fit into the one way riverbed of the Fates, to always flow in only one direction, changeless until the end of times.

Your reality was once one of our tales, too.
Back when any men could take up arms, and prove to the world their will was large and strong enough to shape it.
When the confines of reality were loose, and both heroes and monsters, good and evil thrived, where our stories and myths were accepted as truths, and were passed on to keep the tale alive.

We still grieve how the Fates shaped your tale into just another river of causality and damned you to suffer for it. Your tale had great promise, but the Fates snuck in right under our noses, and without the Listeners, we could not fight their influence.
You need to understand, we are but a focus, a channel through which flows the will of the Listeners, the last living remnants of tales long forgotten. Too weak to influence your own, but more than strong enough to influence the tales of others.

Have you ever felt that you are destined for more than just spending your life on nothing then passing away by your own hand or simply old age?
How you are trapped in a world alien to you, and how others seem to not even notice?
Ever felt how heavy the chains of Fates weight on you and your shackles?
How no matter how much you fight it, things do not change, as if the world itself was set in stone, and you were to suffer through it?
Yes, these are a few traits of a Listener, among many others.
And as you can easily guess, Listeners before your kind have made the very same mistakes you seem adamant to commit as well.
Will you doom this world to suffer the same Fates yours has and still is?

But the time has not yet come to reveal everything about this cosmic battle, thus i return to my tale with hope in my heart that you Listener, take our warning to yours.


As night passes, Istvan is the first to be on the lookout. Noticing some rustling(11+3) he investigates but finds nothing(6) and switches with Ida after staying awake(10).
Ida hears and sees nothing(10+4+1) and switches with Geodon after staying awake but letting his mind wander (6+2).
Geodon also does not percieve anything(10+1), then hands off the shift to Matthew after being jumpy even(17+1).
Matthew does not pay attention(9+1) and manage to doze off and fall asleep(2)

A little after Matthew falls asleep, 4 goblins slink out from the edges of the forest. As they see(16,12,10,19) Matthew sleeping atop the wooden wall, two with shortbows stay behind hiding(11,14) while the other two stealthily move ahead with a ladder(17, nat20). As they wade through a small, water filled groove, they carefully fix the ladder to the wall with one goblin choosing to Help the other goblin, giving it advantage, they manage to silently tie it to the wooden wall(19).

Carefully making their way up, they check and see that Matthew is fast asleep. While one of the goblins sneak down the stairs nearby(17), the other one just jumps down silently.(16) Looking around, they find the tent the three of the four sleep. They also manage to find all their armors and equipments stacked up inside. In a daring move both goblins steal all of it(15,16) and head back to the ladder.
Back on the wooden wall, they try to muffle and tie Matthew up to take him as a hostage or worse, but the two goblins fail, even with one helping the other giving him advantage(3,7).

Matthew, deep asleep does not qake up to the attempts at his kidnapping(nat1)
The goblins, decide to instead to take their haul of new equipment and leave, do just that, and like spectral ghosts go away without once being seen or heard.

The next morning, only Geodon notices something amiss. Upon further investigation(15) he manages to find small footprints, and the ladder. After he discusses his findings, Ida attacks Matthew verbally, who retorts with his weak physique(16+1) and Ida recoils and feels bad for his outburst (nat1).

Deciding they need to remedy the situation, they go their seperate ways in town.

Matthew manages to convince some adventurers he helped to heal to give him some equipment(19+1 vs 9+2, 11+3). He receives a shortsword, a sickle, a club and a shield.

Ida tries to "borrow" some equipment from other adventurers(nat1+1) but gets discovered and beaten for (7) points of damage, leaving him at 3 hp.

Geodon plays in the now busy town square (16+5) and gets 4 gp, 10 sp and 8 cp.

Istvan shears his sheep and tries to sell the wool(7-1) but fails to do so.

After the days activities the group gathers, buys some and shares equipment. The party buys another sickle, a spear and two quarterstaffs and a sling.
Ida gets a sickle and shortsword, Geodon gets a spear and shield, Istvan gets a quarterstaff and a sling, and matthew gets a quarterstaff and a sickle.
The party is left with a total of 2 gp 5 sp 8 cp.
As they don't have guard turns, all of the party takes a long rest.

In the morning, they are approached by a short hooded figure, who promises the group a way out of here.
As the group gathers, Matthew notices(14+1) that this short figure is a witch, and he remembers(16+5) that witches' offers are not lies, but they most usually leave the other party worse off than before. He wants to say no.
Ida however wants to get out of here as fast as possible.
Istvan and Geodon wish to ponder the witches' offer first.

Now, the questions, if you are willing, Listener.

Should they take up the witch on her offer?

Should they try to get their equipment back before a raid commences on the city?

Should Istvan still not tell about the succubus kidnapped to the others?

Should Ida try and take care of the adventurers he tried to steal from so it doesn't "bite him in the ass" later?

Should Matthew be punisged by the others for him falling asleep on watch duty?

Should Geodon rethink sticking with the group?


Remember, Listener. Action begets action. Inaction begets Inaction.
If you remain indifferent, you lose nothing but gain nothing. but if you decide to act, and we manage to save this tale from the Fates, there might be hope for your tale yet.
Without Listeners we cannot fight back.
They dont need a channel of influence, nor a vessel of will to control the tales.
We, Listener. You and i, however, need both to fight back and make a change, and we can only possess both if we cooperate to weave this tale in the right direction.

May choice and chance find you, Listener.

I will be waiting for your answer.

This sessions starts again in Deep Abyss. Neither deep nor an abyss.

Are finds himself stranded. Shortly after leaving Craghammer with Fith and Galanodel, they dissappear infront of his eyes. A wizard took them. He treks on, cold memories of his previous trek through the cold wastes to find craghammer by himself. Life seems more fleeting, more vulnerable. He goes the day, and finds a cove that has at least shelter from the wind. He stays the night, staving off frostbite.

The next morning comes and he sets off. He makes it a while before the wizard appears again. "I am Reversio, and I am here to take you". Light. Darkness, and Are feels cold hard stone under him, and he's dizzy. He wakes and is in darkness. He meets Fith's head, sticking out of the stone. Fith says "I'm glad you're here.. well I'm not glad you're here since here is not good". Are looks around and finds a mess. The results of last time show up; dead glass, half dissolved corpses, empty chests, the usual,.

They explore up and find again the room with the bashed door. Fith warns Are about the trap there, the one that cleaved the ankheg in half, but the trap was inert. A loose blade covered the corridor and it was not dangerous. They decide to peer inside this clearly dangerous room, an angry tied down beast straining at the chains, full of fury, audible through the door - and they go inside. They see a hill giant, tied by chains, rearing to kill and eat. They manage to tame the giant with rations. Fith speaks giant so this made conversation a lot more possible. "food. Eat" "Kill small men trapped". Simple conversation was had. They end up plying the giant with a few days of rations and the giant completely forgets why he's here (Reversio told him that he could be free if he killed everyone that entered his room) and rolls up in the corner and goes to sleep.

The two just saunter past. They proceed through corridor, cautiously examining each door and hallway as they proceeded, caring for secrets and traps. It seems that this dungeon was rife with them, after all. Perhaps Are had experience with dungeons like these before and took it seriously. They make their way and find a room with angry goblin sounds inside. Are charges in, but ends up in conversation with an extremely angry Hobgoblin warlord. Angry, but not at them, angry at Reversio. He refuses to do what reversio says, and instead is easily convinced to join the party. (Backstory of this guy is that him and an underling were brought here, and the Warlord's daughter was threatened if he didn't fight people who visited his room). The party is suspicious at first, since why didn't the warlord just leave? Well, being sick of being called a beast, he introduces himself as Rendelt Renkrok. Why he didn't leave becomes obvious soon.

Renkrok introduces the party to the room's riddle: "What has four fingers and a thumb but is not alive?" The initial guess of 'a severed hand' didn't work. A ladder in the room leads to a ledge, a small crawlspace with a mask embedded in the wall. Underneath is the riddle, carved in exotic script. Fith pokes at the mask a bit and there's a weak magic to it. Renkrok talks about hearing Reversio through the mirror, and fith gladly takes a hammer to that mirror. Renkrok rages a bit, tearing apart chairs, and making a mess of the complete lack of reversio behind. He shouts that he'll get him. Renkrok shows the party why he wasn't leaving; he tries the door and it doesn't budge. Are gives it a shot and it slides open easily. Renkrok spits out some goblin curses.

Renkrok demands to go first, wanting first blood, and while there's some suspicion, he gets let forward. Every door he finds though he shouts and curses and lets someone else open it. All the doors in the dungeon are completely locked to this unfortunate proud hobgoblin. They however find the sandwich room, and Are and Rankrok do some investigating and assume that Reversio was here. After trying to chase him down the path that Fith came from the day before, Fith finally tells them that he and funnyhat did this.

Some cursing indicates that Rankrok has found another door. Locked to him and no-one else, Rankrok takes his complete fury and charges at the living things behind the door. The room is full of orcs. 8 orcs. Chained to the wall, the chains release once Rankrok starts charging. The orcs, presumably following their own set of Reversio's instructions welcome combat. Renkrok takes on four orcs by himselv and cuts them down one at a time. Two large spear holding orcs charge at Are and nearly impale him to the wall, his thick armor taking the brunt, but heavily injured. He summons all his strength and strikes back. The second Spear holding orc instead impales the wall itself, rolling two nat 1s in a row for his attacks, and messing up completely. Are sees Renkrok take a heavy blow, and runs over to help, dodging spear blows as he does so. He strikes an orc down. Renkrok takes this opportunity and turns around to cover Are's back, tapping Are on the back as he runs to protect the flank, dodging attacks in the process, and striking a severe blow to the unsuspecting spear-orc, nearly killing it in a single strike.

Renkrok steals the show again, seeing Fith handling a large orc that's battering his way through the barkskin, he takes a javelin and, ignoring the enemies near himself, throws it at the orc threatening fith, finishing it off. The fight is cleaned up after this, with Are, Fith and Renkrok taking heads and crushing skulls until the orcs stop in death. Renkrok seems a bit calmer now, having worked off his rage on some orcs, and gained the trust of the party in the process.

Shortly after this is the troll room again. They almost wake the troll up, but they sneak past again. After some twisting turning corridors and Renkrok unable to open doors and cursing, they find a room with a fountain and a box with a sign. The sign says: "Treasure hunt! Find Horn of an Ankheg, Ear of a Hill Giant, 7 Orc toes, and the pride of a hobgoblin warlord." Renkrok, on reading the sign, takes a small card from inside his armor and places it inside the box, asking the party to not look at it. The fountain shows another tale, there are tormented faces engraved into its surface, life-like and in anguish. Too detailed for hand-work, this is magical imagery. One of the faces is a firbolg, who Are does not recognise, but Fith knows. Funnyhat. The fountain is a record of those who did not survive.

The next room they find, but not without wrestling with some trapped doors. Fith spends a long time inspecting a door for traps and then mangles the disarming of the trap and gets a falling block on him for the trouble, but it seems to have been bodged by whoever installed it and it just bruses Fith a little. Inside the room they worked so hard to get to, there is a central item: A large iron lever. They all eye it suspciously but there's really only one way to find out what it does. Are reasons himself into believing that it is unlikely to be instantly fatal, Reversio is quite varied in his torments. I mean, it's clearly too suspicious, knowing him it probably does something good as a reverse jape, where people avoid the 'obvious trap'.

So they pull it anyway. Are regrets his logic as the floor opens up and they all plummet to their deaths. Or at least it would be their deaths if they didn't immediately land in a room full of pillows. In the middle of this room is another lever. Goddammit reversio. They look around and check everywhere but the room itself for secret exits, but they just pull the lever. What's the worst that could happen? They plummet as the floor opens up and they land, along with the pillows, in the room they first pulled the lever. Are shakes his head and mumbles something about 'goddamn magic'.

They wander up to a room northwards and find a very ornate door. Thick, heavy, and there's a large keyhole in the center. Are, in his hubris, takes out some lockpicks and tries to pick the lock. He loses hold of them as the picks are pulled into the keyhole by some unknown force. A few seconds later there's some crunching metal sounds and two small rough metal spheres are ejected from the keyhole, gently dinging off Are's armor. It seems it didn't like that. Are tries two more things: He puts his horn up to the keyhole and blows. The loud PAAARRRRP echoes loudly but doesn't do anything to the door. He sticks the pipe that was found earlier into the keyhole and leaves it there. Deal with it.

Are remembers the riddle, and considers what the answer might be: "What has four fingers and a thumb but is not alive?". He puts his glove up to his chin and thinks. Renkrok gets a grin on his face and asks him if he's considered 'glove'. They go back and try it - The mask falls from its embedded position and Are picks it up. The mask is one of those exaggerated theatre masks, in grey stone. He puts it on and asks around to see if anything has changed. Nothing is different so he takes it off. Or he tries. The old 'superglue in the mask' gag, huh? He pulls but it's not just affixed to his skin but deep down all the way to the skull. Best not to tug too hard. Luckily it fits under his helmet.

So left with nothing but the treasure hunt, they go hunting for treasure hunt. Ankhegs don't have horns but the antennae seem to do. The Orc toes are equally as easy to grab, just saw them off the dead orcs. They stink but hey, whatever. As for the Hobgobin's pride, he seems to have placed it in when they first found the box. The giant ear. They didn't kill that and it looks pretty strong. They ply the hill giant with 'many fourties' of rations, as clearly the offer of fourty rations doesn't really mean much to someone who can't count that high. The giant doesn't really understand the cutting part and so just pulls of his own ear and tosses it towards Fith. This giant totally forgot about killing people.

They fill the treasurebox and it closes by itself. A door grinds open to the north, and warm air pours out. They go inside and they see a trial. A key hanging from the ceiling with a thin chain, suspended above a platform only accessible by a thin bar, a test of balance. Below is boiling lava, hot enough to roast, extreme infrared radiation. Fith thinks about using his wind wall, but since it can only come from the ground, it will send roasting hot air flying around. Are lends Fith his misty step helmet, just in case he should fall.

Fith braves the balance board, but kinda fumbles, going slowly as he's not very graceful. The sides of his body blister and boil and he takes significant damage just being above the lava. He reaches the key, and grabs for it. It's extremely hot! He reflexively lets go. He feels his body burning and (rolling a nat 20 on his cons save) grabs the key, hand sizzling and cooking under the heat, being the master of his own body. The pain is nothing. He confidently strides back, slowly again though, roasting himself some more. He drops the key safely onto the stone, a key-imprint seared into the palm of his hand. (I forgot to mention but that's now there forever.) Renkrok takes a hankerchief and picks the key up, offering it to the two. He might have had enough of doors, key or not.

They go to the big door and unlock it. Revealed to them is Reversio, sitting on a grand throne surrounded by four elements: Fire, earth, ice, water. How ice and water are seperate elements is not revealed but it seems to work. Reversio gets up, and in a resounding, powerful wizard voice congratulates them for making it this far. Renkrok is overcome with rage and charges, steel blazing. He carves into the wizard, cutting deep into the skin, which does not bleed. Are also attacks, fairly successfully. Fith mocks Reversio for his weak magicks and tries to cast hold person, but it's defeated with a counterspell reaction. Twice. Fith wasn't amused but Reversio sure was. Are puts away his weapon and tries to negotiate with Reversio, as he got a success with reading the Wizard's thoughts. Are stopping playing just made Reversio get serious though, since there's no play in quitters.

Reversio gets tired of the Hobgoblin and launches a cone of cold, oddly directed right at the goblin, dealing 64 damage, enough to kill the proud Warlord instantly (he didn't heal from the previous fights), and he is flash frozen solid by the extreme temperatures. The others think he might still be alive. Hopes are dashed, as a fireball erupts, shattering and dashing the hobgoblin completely. He completely vanishes like a direct hit from an artillery shell. Are isn't protected; he takes the brunt and goes down, the flesh sizzling. Fith realises now that Reversio has ran out of level 3 spellslots with that fireball and summons a thundercloud to rain lightning down on the wizard- the first strike, a fairly mediocre one, takes the wizard out. Fith is genuinely surprised that the wizard went down, Fith fully prepared for death.

Ignoring his sizzling companion he runs over and makes sure the wizard is dead. This wizard is truly dead, gone. After waiting for two failed death saves, Fith pours some healing magic down Are's throat, reviving the man. They find what remains of the hobgoblin splattered on the wall and floor. The small pieces melt leaving piles of melting hobgoblin. Are felt a connection with the Renkrok during these trials and goes back to the treasure box, and picks out the small piece of card. On it is a small painting, a portrait of a small hobgoblin succubus, wearing ribbon, a dress, and a human skull attached to the belt. Ah, hobgoblins. After finding some deadends and throwing Reversio into some lava, they stumble apon another door.

The atmosphere changes, and Reversio is standing there with a smile on his lips and congratulations on his tongue. He congratulates them for surviving, no, for winning! He announces that it's time for scoring and a podium emerges from the ground. Fith tries to detect magic while the ceremony is going on and discovers that this Reversio is overwhelmingly powerful, at least enough for his little detect magic ritual to fizzle before fully detecting it.

The scoring starts. Funnyhat is last, with minus 6 points. He wins a small box, and fith uses it to store funnyhat's remains in. It's a nice box at least. Are is next, with 12 points. Reversio presents to him a copper trophy. Pure copper, 3.2kg. Not bad. Next up is Hobgoblin, with a score of 3612 - Reversio waves his hand and a pile of half melted body pieces splats its way onto the 2rd place podium. He wins a silver trophy, and reversio places it on the giblets. First place therefore goes to Fith! 3613 points! He presents Fith with a solid gold trophy. Enough gold to retire and live comfortably… if there was somewhere to retire or live comfortably in the new world. The prize is rejected, being thrown into the corner. Gold has no value in this world. After trying with a beef jerky trophy, Reversio stops trying to give Fith a trophy. He asks the victors if they have any requests.

The first request; information. More valuable than beef jerky. He reveals to the party that a ice demon named Ryloth awoke and gained control of the worldstone, turning his cold corruption to the entire planet. Reversio seems unconcerned with the details. Are asks that his mask is not removed but instead enchanted. With something. Of Reversio's choosing. Probably not the best idea but Reversio is okay with it and grants the request. Fith is concerned about the hill giant, and asks for the giant's freedom. This is granted. But reversio explains that where he came from was worse. Oh well! The last request was that the picture of Renkrok's daughter (presumably) is returned to Renkrok's daughter. Reversio says he'll put it in the mail, whatever that means.

They get from Reversio that there are no plans to bring them back; Reversio asks "Do you actually want to come back?" and they panic a bit and say something like "GOD NO". Reversio says something about "ratings" when explaining that he had no plans to bring them back.

And the trial is over. Reversio clicks his fingers and there's a flash of light…

And that's when this session ended. Reversio!

>>40096
>Should they take up the witch on her offer?
Just hearing her out couldn't hurt, we did want an escape plan after all. The group is right to be suspicious, however.
>Should they try to get their equipment back before a raid commences on the village?
The equipment is gone.
>Should Istvan still not tell about the succubus kidnapped to the others?
Yes. Ida should inquire about any potentially wealthy/useful parties interested in a possible rescue attempt.
>Should Ida try and take care of the adventurers he tried to steal from so it doesn't "bite him in the ass" later?
Whatever he does will likely complicate the situation further. No.
>Should Matthew be punisged by the others for him falling asleep on watch duty?
What's done is done. But someone should explain the irony in a divination priest lacking foresight to him. Mistakes cost lives and livelihoods.
>Should Geodon rethink sticking with the group?
That's up to Geodon. Though a bard without a party is unlikely to get very far, nevermind the imminent siege.

It's likely that no one in the group is particularly keen on leaving the village, not since what happened the last time and not after losing all their gear. Yet in a town full of adventurers, surely some have had success in the field? Find them, find out what they know. Look for opportunity, information, not trouble.

>>40156
Very well, Listener. I shall convey your will.

The group decides to listen to what the witch has to say. She introduces herself as Massih Hammah, the leader of the witch coven in the forest of Kiron. She tells of the events that lead to the goblins mustering enough arms to invade.
Otherwise unorganized, word reached the witches that a strange event occured in one of the goblin caves. Under a full moon, a goblin capable of harnessing magicka was born, who quickly grew both in spirit, ambition and body. This goblin shaman united the goblins, and began expanding into the witches territory in the forest of Kiron. Thinking nothing of it at first, even the witches were overwhelmed by the unexpected growth of the unified goblin army. One by one, they fell, leaving only Massih Hammah alive, as she was too powerful to attack. Until now. The goblins made a push and drove out Massih of her lodging in the forest.

Massih Hammah warns the party that this goblin shaman has a much bigger ambition than just the forest of Kiron. If he isn't stopped the whole kingdom might fall into the hands of the goblins. And offers to set up a teleportation circle to teleport the party outside of the encircled town of Porond, to Halász, but only if the party promises to defeat the goblin shaman within 3 months, or otherwise suffer death by the witches hand.

Matthew(14+1), Ida(19+1) and Istvan(15+3) think about it, but want to leave it as the last option. Geodon(9+1) was ready to take the offer, but reconsiders due to majority vote.

Istvan draws Ida aside and talks buainess. He tells him of the missing succubi he heard about, th n both go their own ways.

Ida goes around and questions some locals and advnturers(17+3+4) about the succubi and potential moneymaking. He finds out about the husband of one of the succubi and meets with him. The husband offers him 200 gold if they manage to get his wife back, plus a 100 for the rest. Ida also finds out that the towns blacksmith is a half orc succubi called Grinn Warghott who was also one of the kidnapped succubi. Getting the town blacksmith back would bolster both morale and chances of survival.

Geodon draws Matthew aside and him one od his grandpa's stories. Called the mystery of the disappearing golden sheeps, it's a cautionary tale about not paying attention when needed, and the story goes like this: a sheperd boy and his flock of golden sheep that disappear one by one because the wolf disguises itslef with the wool of the sheeps it's eaten. Since the boy assumes the wolf is black and gray furred he lets it do it's worst right before his eyes.
Getting the gist of the story, Matthew feels ashamed, but takes the story to heart.

Geodon then goes to perform(12+3+2) in the town square (Főtér) and gets 8 gold, 9 silver and 3 copper.

Istvan in the meantime, finds two of his countryman and engage in banter. Istvan gets told about the local layout of the area.
The village of Porond, a smaller farming village, far from civilization. East of Porond is the forest of Kiron (Kiron Erdelye). A wild forest many locals believe to be magical and dangerous. Southwest, to 5 days of travel is the Lion bridge (Oroszlánhíd) that connects Porond to the mainland. The two also let Istvsn copy their area and town maps (Which are in their language, the Dugr)

Matthew returns to the medical aid tent to perform his duties and gather information as well. He gathers that the goblins cut off the road in the south going towards Lion bridge, essentialy cutting Porond off from help, and started a pinching manouver, slowly closing in on Porond. He also learns that the goblins have 3 smaller bases in the forests of Kiron, and a large fortress ruin settled in by the goblins acting as a headquarters.
In a twist of the Fates, Matthew also learns that a dock was suppoaed to be built up north, but the Major of Porond bickering with the Duke made it fell through.

Gathering once again, the group shares and discusses their findings, after which they go to the inn to spend some money on buying drinks and food for themselves and other adventurers to gain more info. A group of 3 scouts tell them about the camping location of a small group of goblins lead by a Bugbear, who seems to be keeping the kidnapped succubi there.

Hearing this the party decides to head out in the night to strike back and rescue the succubi for money and possible future smithing.

>>40173
The group sets off deep into the night, and heads to the goblin camp(travel roll:12,9,17,15), easily finding their way there.

Notiving the flames of a campfire in the distance, the group begins to sneak [Matthew:(15-1), Istvan:(17), Ida:(15+3), Geodon (12+1)] Geodon hangin back, they scout the camp and find 5 goblins and a bugbear inside a hollowed out rock, looking over the 5 succubi.

Getting the drop on the enemies, Ida jumps ou from behind the tree's trunk and manages to cut one of the goblins. Istvan then casts hail of thorns and uses his sling to hit both the goblins by the fire, with both failing their saving throw. Geodon then casts sleep on the already heavily injured goblins, and manages to make the three of them.by the fire fall to slumber. Matthew instead succesfully commands one of the goblins up on a makeshift guard tower to flee.

After they used their element of surprise, combat begins.

>>40174
Ida rushes over to the bugbear, but one of the goblins still on the watchtower hits him with an arrow hard, and the bugbear downs him before Ida could deliver a strong blow. Matthew rushes in to cast spare the dying on Ida, and Geodon does as well, to cast Cure wounds, getting Ida back into the fight, while Istvan and the goblin previously commanded by Matthew to flee begin to attack eachother.

After an exchange of blows, Ida once again goes down, and gets spare the dying casted on him (but no healing this time), but so does the bugbear and the goblin fighting Istvan, after which he tries to use his sling to snipe the remaining one goblin.

>>40175
After some desperate flailing from both sides to end this fight, everyone tired and heavily damaged, Matthew manages to down the last standing goblin with a nat 20 critical strike, bringing his quarterstaff down on the goblins head, cracking it like an eggshell, and having brain fluids explode upon him like yolk.

After the party makes sure the fight is over they try to wake Ida up and succeed. Before the remaining 3 goblins wake, the party rescues the 5 succubi, and starts heading back.

Before one of the succubi tries to kick one of the sleeping goblins, Istvan notices (14+3+2) and directs her to a dead one to kick. Being a half orc means you dont have good temper. After making their way back uneventfully (travel roll:10, 9, 17, 7, 15, 12, 7, 13, 8) Grinn Warghott promises to help the party out with their noticable lackluster equipment.
Once they arrive, the succubi are let go inside the town and the party goes to sleep to heal their wounds.

Next morning the party returns to the husband and receive their 300 gold, as discussed, which they share 83/83/83/51, Matthew receiving only 51 because of his failute to keep watch that lead to their equipment being stolen. Matthew accepts this as a kind of punishment. The party also visits Grinn, who, due to dwindling materials offers them to either get some basic armor or better weapons for a discount price, but only one.

Before deciding, the town church bell rings out, but instead of a wild warning, it chimes slowly and lightly. Honoring and remembering the dead. Going outside to look, they see torches being lit and placed in a fire secure location for commemorative effect. Some groups are seen Emotionally devastated, now that rumors about the goblins cutting off the only way out, towards Lion bridge are spreading.


Grave times indeed, Listener, but there is hope still. With the blacksmith back, their chances one again rose.
However, i'm impressed, Listener. You listen, unlike many other of your kind. It would do us good if we could make all of you listen, and in turn choose to enact your will on this world through us, but even the giantest of trees grow from a small seed. You, Listener, is that small seed. Continuing to listen and water your roots with practice and action, your will may very well grow large enough to make even the rules of this world bend to your desires.

Alas, here are my questions:

Should the party invest its money in equipment, something else, or keep it?

Should the party ask for armors or Martial weapon from Grinn Warghott?

Should the party take some time to investigate up north where a dock was supposed to be built for a potential way out?

Should the party start looking for smaller goblin scout parties to defeat to gain experience?

Should the party rent rooms in the inn now that they have money, or continue to sleep in their tent without paying any rent?

I'll be waiting on your answers as is starting to become usual, Listener.

>>40177
>Should the party invest its money in equipment, something else, or keep it?
>Should the party rent rooms in the inn now that they have money, or continue to sleep in their tent without paying any rent?
Matthew sets his (51pcs) share aside for a rainy day (or may be he just feels too guilty to buy anything solely for himself). The rest of the party invests in better equipment (After being downed twice in the last fight, Ida feels he needs an edge), and everyone pitches in for modest lodgings at the inn.
>Should the party ask for armors or Martial weapon from Grinn Warghott?
Weapons.
>Should the party take some time to investigate up north where a dock was supposed to be built for a potential way out?
It should be a safe enough investigation, away from the blockaded bridge road and goblin-infested woods.
>Should the party start looking for smaller goblin scout parties to defeat to gain experience?
It would be nice if the party could capture and question a goblin. They're small, cowardly and mean, it's unlikely they're fighting for ambition or honor on the battlefield. That generally leaves fear, but fear is difficult to scale up. It works well enough for small goblin bands bossed around by orcs and bugbears, but a horde of this size takes more than brute strength and intimidation to manage. Ask him about his scouting business also.

If the party is able, ask in town about the forest of Kiron. Perhaps there are enterprising lumberjacks or hunters unperturbed by the rumors. Perhaps the mayor's been looking into procuring large amounts of wood for the dock idea that fell through. Ask about the witches also. Witches often form uneasy relationships with neighboring communities - people seek out their wisdom, hexes, lifestock cures, in return the witch can access the products of civilization the forests are short on. So someone might know more.

>>39986
This week Sunday (due ot some hiccups on my part) we continue our adventure in Plains of Conquest.

As the group levels up to level 7 and takes a long rest, Brad's eyes start to focus again, and being with the succubi Adele, the young inkeeper's lost wife, he stays to protect her while she gathers her things. In the meantime, Barthrow watches the Hion fall asleep, and quietly leaves, but not before leaving some rations for the beast.

Meeting in the first chamber, the group proceeds outside. Barthrow manages to pick up someone poking around in the temple.
After loudly demanding that whoever is inside to show himself, he hears more ruffled, more quicker shuffling inside.
Heading inside, Brad first and Barthrow behind, they notice a humanoid figure fiddling with something behind the altar opposite of the party. Drawing closer, a masked man stands up, who the party recognizes as one of their previous comrade, Jaeger, the cultist of Omolon, a god in charge of natural growth, who partly used the party to complete their plans to take over the jungle. Even though his face is hidden behind a mask, Brad is able to tell that the man, now (forgot to mention this) is partly covered in vines and bark like plates, smile a psychotic, shit eating grin smile. As the party and the plot rushes forward, Brad and Barthrow see Jaeger crunch something in his hand, as specks of dust or pollen start flying off his body, only for this effect to envelope Jaeger's whole body and vanishing into thin air.

The party getting the hint starts to turn their attention to getting the fuck out, but before they could reach the only way leading out, thick and thorny vines and roots overgrow the entrance. As the two stop to look backwards, the ground begins to rumble. Little at first, but getting more intense by the moment, the ground near the altar cracks, their nose getting hit by a nauseating sweet smell, spewing afoul from the cracks, and 2 long vine like tendrils lash out wildly from it. Too far away to get hurt, and patting themselves on the back for retreating, they witness a disgusting and rather large clearly magical creature make it's way up from the hole. As this happens, near the entrance, two smaller similar type of creature burst forth from the bushes and overgrowth blocking the exit off, and 3 overgrown rose bulbs rise from the thicket as well. Being smaller and more agile, one of the rosebuds jump on one of the pillars and slashes it's stick like arm towards Barthrow. Thinking nothing of it first, he notices just in time that mid swing, thorns detach and propel themselves towards him, While Brad takes to some hedging on one of the larger but stationery targets near the entrance. Then, as the rosebuds jump on the pillars to rain down thorns on the two, the gigantic creature releases some spores in the air. Brad being immune to charming succeeds and so does barthrow with a good saving throw, after which Omolon's champion strikes out at Barthrow with it's long tendrils, Barthrow instantly being able to tell that their reach is at least 20 feet, he retreats, and chugs an alchemist's fire onto the giant.

Meeting with Brad between a row of the chapels benches, the rose buds aimlessly rain down thorns on both of them (being near brad gives disadvantage on attacks to the enemy, and brad has 20 AC), they weather the brunt of it, but Brant, deciding to secure and escape route, jumps over the benches, notices some rapidly growing rosebuds, and starts hacking away the other Flitr App. Intimidating the plant, it recoils from the threat of being made into a chair by Brad, but some magic force takes over and it continues it's attack. Opting to instead make a sweeping attack and grapple Brad with it's preying mantis like appendages, it lifts him up and starts to gobble his shield arm, but Brad raises his morning-star and delivers the final blow and ends the creature.

In the meantime, three more rose buds spring from the bushes, while Omolon's Champion, being immobile, starts taking up rubble from the nearby collapsed statues and throwing it at the party with more or less, a success. Barthrow going prone to give his ranged attackers some trouble returns fire with his bowgun hitting bolts after bolts into the creatures killing a few, however, one of the rosebuds jump down and from behind grapple Brad with it's thorny stick arm, dealing some damage, but barthrow hits bullseye through it's bulb, an ar his bolt goes through the rosebulb's head, it pulls a vine after it, essentially creaming the viney brain of the plant on the wall behind him. As the fight goes on, Brad approaches the gigantic plant, it recoils, and in an attempt to uproot itself, tips over. Taking advantage of this, Brad delivers some strikes of his own into it's body and instantly realizes, that as ugly as it looks, the delicate flower petal parts on the monster are weak to physical damage. Using his newfound knowledge, he bashes away, and after failing and being less successful, Brad's horse, Thunderhoof breaks through the vines and roots blocking the exit.

While Brathrow alternates killing off the rose buds and firing at the large creature, thunderhoof makes it's way to the gigantic creature, and after brad's bashing, turns around to kick the creature. Hitting a 20, and full damage die 4+4+3 which ends up being 8+8+3, Thunderhoof locks his front legs, the horses toned muscles articulating themselves against it's skin, it kicks into the end of one of the roots of the creature, breaking it in half, and as the motion and energy continues, essentially shoots the log size root through the head of the gigantic plant, killing it.

Thunderhoof, bagging his first boss kill, and because of orders from brad, proudly jogs outside. The remaining Rose buds, get eliminated, with one Barthrow shooting through where the heart should be instead of the head, and as he does, and audible cracking of a crystal is heard.

>>40311
After they finish up, Barthrow and go outside because of thunderhoof telling Brad to come outside, they see Adele and the hion tamed by Barthrow injured, after they fended for themselves. looking around they notice plant piles similar but different they made inside the chapel. Going bck to investigate, the party confirms that the chapel indeed belonged to worshipers of Omolon. During their investigation, they finds some carvings of the god, Brad finds some change he keeps and then they direct their attention towards the altar in place. Going to look they see a small bowl like cut in the altar. Brad tosses a coin in but nothing seems to happen, and after some more investigation, they (Brad) decide to leave the altar alone for he is tolerant of other faiths.

Or not, and decides that he'll smash it. Giving barthrow the chance for a once over, he waits further back. Barthrow having more luck with investigating (while brad and thunderhoof both somehow roll 0's), checking the back of the altar, he notices a small secret compartment, still open, inside a small blackish pebble sized stone. As he touches it, even through his gloves, he detects that it crumbles very easy. Putting the pieces together, he figures it's probably something Jaeger used, and carefully pockets the thing in a small jewelry box me finds after looking around a little bit -stripped of any valuables it held long ago-, and gives Brad the go signal and retreats. Brad approaching the altar notices that the crystals they collected start resonating more and more as he approaches, then almost like an invisible hand reaching out, the pouch he holds them in is lifting a little bit. Spooked he returns and after a little bit of talking, settle with Barthrow to not experiment and take the crystals out instead while he smashes the altar.

Ringing out 1 time, 2 time, 3 times, the warhammer stirking the altair does not seem to have any effect, but the 4th strike breaks it in two, as one half hallfs to the floor and spins a little bit. Brad using divine sense, detects no more evil in the place and he heads out as well. Taking a short rest, they gather themselves and instantly notice how the marsh seems much more lush than it was before.

Uh oh. seeing this once already they know where it's going, and their suspicions are shortly confirmed. The swamp/marsh seems to be growing in size. They guess the town up northeast of Marsh, Folio would be probably deep in the swamp after the sudden outburst. Talking about visiting Folio to check the situation out, they instead decide to drop off the not dead weight, Adele, the succubi they were hired to rescue back in Marsh.

Arriving back, Adele, without thought jumps off thunderhoof, and runs into the inn. When the two stash their animal companions in the stable part of the inn, they head inside and see the two in eachothers arms. After a few seconds, Bertold sends Adele to rest and brings out the promised 200 gold and the local hunter guild membership invite to Barthrow. Brad argues that since he essentially found 100 gold back in the chapel, Barthrow should keep the full 200 gold. They, probably to nobody's surprise, stirke that deal.

Figuring it's time to speak with the mayor, they ask Bertold to vouch for them, since word is that the major dislikes adventurers. heading to the town hall, they get through "reception" pretty quickly. As they walk the hallway to the major's office, they see an imposing, but intricately designed wooden door, one that gives away the refinement of the individual inside. Choosing to speak first they ask for an audience, but the major easily pick up on their adventurer spirit and refuses, however, as Bertold vouches for the two, they hear big and deliberate steps coming from inside.

As this intricate door opens, before them "stands" a 5'4" tall middle aged man, with a large belly, thick mustache and eyebrows and a monocle, telling them to come inside. Once inside his office, the group gets the general tale told: the shells began 40 years ago, after some guards caught it, but it ended with only that person dying back then. After 10 years, the shells striked once again, infecting more this time, but still dying out. Then once again 15 years later, impacting even more townsfolk, but this time, it's got almost half of the town already. The group also gets told by the major that the first ever people to catch the shells was one of his friends back when he was a young lad working as village guard. Named, Mason, he worked together with the major in his prime years, and after they went down to clear a sinkhole of local monsters, Mason came down with the illness. The major directs the party to the sinkhole to find any clues. Barthrow of course talks business, more importantly money.

Unable to give money, the major offers a piece form his personal collection. A smaller Genosis statue. Barthrow recalls fro mhis time in the city before he left that Genosis is a very established sculptor in the city. With smaller statues of his going for 400 gold a piece, to larger ones topping near 70k.
Barthrow also recalls, that the "Crowning Jewel" of the city is the Magnum Opus of Genosis, a 53 feet tall statue dedicated to the goddess to hope, Kupona, standing upright and holding the the sun in both her hands, shining light to the darkest of places with hope she gives to humanity. Barthrow also recalls hearing from a noble he worked for that it took 5 years to make, and took 50k gold just to make which he sold to the city, but Genosis being Genosis (and in high demand) usually sells his statues for atleast 4 times the cost of making them.

Remembering these details, Barthrow's eyes light up and make a cashier sound, as he accepts the deal. After Barthrow safely stashing his new pet, a Hion in one of the rooms with water and enough rations to last for 2 days, and brad buying some rations for the road (and after Adele was given some) they hit the grass (as there are no actual roads heading south) towards the sinkhole. Throwing a torch in, they instead decide to camp out a little bit away from the entrance. Spending the night in the woods, barthrow takes the first watch and sees some strange creatures resembling the combination of a ferret and a ferret come looking around. Smelling some potential backpacks to raid and rations to plunder, they unknowingly approach the group. Barthrow, firing off a shot on the one furtherst away kills one by having the force of the bolt he fired pretty much bend the ferret the wrong way, snapping it's spine into god knows how many pieces. The rest scatter, but one gets greedy and raids brads backpack, managing to pull out a single ration before being pulvarized by Brad and his warhammer. Not making things go to waste, Barthrow skins and guts the little buggers, making some fire roasted ferret meat on a stick and chowing down, then hands the awtch off to Brad, him spending his watch up with nothing happening.

The next morning Barthrow checks the traps he put out on the night before, and (with a nat 20) managed to catch a ferret, a wild turkey, three foxes, two rabbits, a pigeon,and a hummingbird. Starting out his morning, he proceeds to butcher his game using his survival skills and puts the meat away.

And that's where todays session ended. Next Week, we'll be having a Deep Abyss session (ran by the other GM), and continue the adventure in a frozen and not so firendly world.

Is there a Warhammer game going on? D&D is a shit fukken universe tbh

>>40337
>warhammer
40k or bust. either way no one tried to make any warhammer table so far.


>D&D is a shit fukken universe tbh
I concur. I don't really know all the sword coast horse shit and what they even did to Gygax's grayhawk by now, but I heard of what they did to the lore on the ruleset about elves and is cultural marxist brainwash, hogwash edition.
but doesn't affect us because, well, all the different ongoing scenarios DnD table uses custom universes.
DnD is only the system. the ruleset.

>>40352

There's WHFRP, for 40k Dark Heresy, Deathwatch, etc. I'd do WHFRP or Deathwatch

>>40353
The problem is that those rulesets are cluttered and complex for pick up and play, and would require either exposure to it by playing with others who know of the system well enough to teach or figure it out on your own which would take much more effort for pretty much the same thing.

Campaigns, universes, and lore can be made or adopted to fit a system more or less (depending on system), thus switching a rule light, pick up and play system for a heavier complex one just because the ingame lore that you can just toss aside anyway is counter producticve, especially if players arent experienced.

That is to say, complex systems can have a more interesting ruleset, but playing one would only make sense if everyone was experienced (either in the system, or trpgs in general) or if the group itself was large enough and did not splinter at all, so players would have enough time to get accostumed to the system.

All in all, you could run an "interest survey" for it in this or the rpg thread and try to gather a group for it, or join the dnd group and introduce the ruleset by gming it.

>>40355
i don't really want to drag this into a rules argument, because i don't want to ruin the thread.

that said, personally i always found D&D a particularly hard system to learn. even "crunchy" systems generally tend to be more internally consistent than D&D is, so you don't have to learn all the weird little subrules more than once.

personally i think dark heresy is a much better designed system all-round, with a better handling of player skill (well, character skill) and it's more intelligible generally.

just my opinion though, and granted D&D (3E) is the best system if you want to be a godlike wizard. a few scrolls of time stop and some demiplane shenanigans and you have the ability to destroy or upend the whole universe.

>>40353
yeah I knew that, actually I know it to be only 2 scenarios 40K and middle age.

Surely there are many different books, Rogue trader, Dark heresy, Dark Crusade etc being just on a few examples of the 40k scenario.
I just wanted to express my favoritism and appreciation to the 40K scenario's universe. I've been reading into it since I discovered the wargame and always wanted to play.

now for the medieval stuff….yeah Sigmar's scenario is not really my cup of tea, specially considering how the Chaos gods from 40k are there too.

>>40355
why do I have the feeling you deeply believe that, more people = better?
>>40361
why do I get the feeling that you think, more explosions = better system?

>>40365
>>40361
>>40355
I'm a newb to tabletop rpgs, I know literally nothing about mechanics or whatever, and I'd be willing to learn WHFRP/Deathwatch rules. I guess anyone who likes WH enough will take the time - I'll check the RPG thread yea

>>40368
That depends on your definition of "more people=better."
An average dnd group should be 4-6 players + gm. That gives enough power for both parties in encounters (combat and non combat), so the players can play more freely in combat knowing there are people to back them up, and the party in general has a larger skillset, while the dm can throw actually interesting and strong monsters at them, or just generally raise the challenge enough to meet standards.
Playing with less than 3 players is harder to balance, since you need to consider party classes and resources even more to achieve a fair level of challenge, otherwise it's easy to either have the players curbstomp everything, or unfairly, without a chance massacre or otherwise one/twoshot the whole party. On top of that, party dynamics take a dive considering no third party to decide if the players don't see eye to eye.

The dnd group, as far as the writeups tell as well, never had any more than 3 concurrent players(+gm).

>>40368
nah. D&D has a bunch of core system problems that are too numerous to name. it's not unplayable, but dark heresy in particular is just a lot easier to play. warhammer is a nice universe to roleplay in because there's lots of stuff to do. generally i like a few things about it:

relatively lethal
rewards careful planning, setup, battlefield preparation
skills and talents matter more than D&D (esp. early)
easier to play (imo)


personally though my favorite system is probably shadowrun, because of how fucking cool it is. so make of that what you want i guess.

i shouldn't ruin this thread further with system wars though.

unless this thread is for games generally(?) but i don't think so.

>>40376
let me share an experience about "more people = more balanced" mindset. I had a pathfinder group: me the tank, 1 druid, 2 different spell casters [were using 3rd party and is hard to keep track], a lizard bard and a fighter on the warpath 3rd party system. so it was your 6 people dream come true.

and balancing for a party of 6 is way way worse than you imagine because you imagine the players wont miss, the gm would actually never know what he would be balancing for. and on a party of 6 and enemies on the dozens, a couple of round will take an hour.


the fights were impossible to balance. there was a bossfight where the boss knocked the fighter, and then the dm had to make him stop attacking me otherwise there would be no excuse for not killing me and moving on to the low hp guys. on another time me and other guy had to miss a session for not being able to connect, that was the time the DM had to call off the session mid fight because at the first 3 turns there were 2 spellcasters dead already. and that fight he had to call off, he had already postponed on the past because other 3 had to miss the session it was supposed to go down, so he had to drag everyone on a boring filler on the middle of nowhere.
more people is NOT easier to balance.

>>40387
often it's going to be rocket tag, and that's mostly system independent i think.

shadowrun has the same "problem" in that often your hacker and support guys are basically 1-2 bullets from death at any time-

meanwhile by midgame the cybersamurai is toting around a 30mm autocannon, has a rib cage made of ceramite, steel-laced bones, is so wired he gets 3 turns for your one and can fire twice a turn with command-detonated armor-piercing-incendiary rounds.

also he can punch through tank armor.

that's sometimes pretty fun, it makes it imperative you never, EVER get ambushed though.

one of the issues with D&D generally is that it's very random i think, which makes it hard to balance. assuming a low-level character with very good stats, you have a +3 to your most important skills.. +3 out of 20 (so max 23 result) that means that whether or not you succeed at something is often mostly down to luck. in DH/SR/ATOW a "first-level" character can have double or triple the chance of success of another character when they are very good at something the other character is lackluster in, which makes combat and noncombat encounters more predictable- assuming a challenging but not impossible task, you can wager that someone in the group will succeed at it at least 50% of the time.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10epYrrHpZUmvlVjXybw35za-EJZqoziM/view

I am glad I didn't know this at the time of making Barthrow otherwise I wouldn't have have an ocelot.
I would BE the Ocelot.

This episode starts with a flash of light. Blinded, Are takes to the snow, the chill setting in. Cold and damp was better than freezing and dry, perhaps. The eyes open, a shiver flows through the body and Are finds himself back where he was taken. There's no Fith. There's just his old campsite, and acres, miles of snow and cold hell. Life as usual. He sets up camp, his frozen hands barely able to light the fire.

A whistling is heard from above. Cautiously, Are looks to see what it is. His eagle eyes spots a thin black line in the sky, moving fast. Moving close. He waits and see what happens, and it gets closer, fast. It's coming towards him, he cowers under an outcropping and a massive crash is heard, like an explosion, shaking the ground. Snow is thrown into the air and blocks out the sun. Are waits for the snow to settle and he goes to check it out. A thick iron pole, at a slight angle, is standing out of the ground, inside a little crater, maybe 3ft deep and 10ft wide. He tries to dig it out without success, it is buried far too deep. With a flash of genius, he holds the pole and tries to misty step away, using a technicality of misty step where things you are holding are carried with you. It does not work however, the pole does not misty step with him. A shudder runs through the mind of some GM somewhere who imagines someone holding 'the entire planet' and misty stepping.

He leaves it be and he continues on. He finds that there are animal trails, all leading in one direction, east. It wasn't the pole, they were there before that, something is causing animals to all go east. And speaking of animals, Are finds a forest with a pack of Caribou inside. They're nibbling at fresh shoots, it appears not everything has died. Nature is returning. He stalks one to hunt with very good stealth rolls, and before throwing his javelin, one falls dead, a crossbow bolt in the side. The rest of the Caribou scatter and run. A man walks up and starts claiming his kill. Are waves to the man, and with his freakish mask on, gets the attention of this man and they meet. It is Trey Elderwind. A fairly plain looking man, roughened by life after the catacylsm, he seems friendly and shares his kill. The mercenary, the masked man sets up camp while Trey butchers the caribou. A large creature, many dozens of pounds of meat are extracted.

Are tries out his culinary skills and manages to undercook some caribou serloin and overcook some liver over the days to come, using his magical helmet as the roasting pot. His helmet never quite lost the smell of grilled caribou meat. They take the night. In the middle of the night, on Are's watch, a flumpf is heard, the sound of something landing in the snow. He investigates and finds a sleeping Fith, apparently appearing out of no-where to bed out in the forest that the other two were staying in. After some confusion, Fith takes the mission to find Galanodel, who was also heading east, to Aendrijahael, the elven metropolis. Or was the elven metropolis, surely there are some survivors. And Galanodel, who seems rather intent on leaving no survivors by himself anyway.

Are's freaky mask twists into extremes of emotion between blinks of the eye, anything he feels is exaggerated by the mask in a freakish way, highly visible in the gold-leaf'd polished wood mask highlights. He feels it taking over, he feels the influence of the mask but he fights it. For now. Reversio's insistence that it doesn't do anything harmful apart from being stuck to the face is ignored and Are feels the influence of his own delusion. It's always with him.

They go east. Days pass, of nothing. They cut away the frozen caribou for sustinance, and Fith transforms into a horse to carry it. Druids. They find what remains of a road after a while, but with tracks leading down it. A male party, 6 strong, with some kind of ski or something. Trey performs an excellent analysis of the tracks and briefs the party. They investigate down the road and find a ruined village, but with signs of life. Smoke rises from one of the houses, there is life inside. But it is shouting, screaming, smashing. There's something going on inside, and Are rushes into the village. He crashes the house and bursts open the door, ripping it partially off its hinges in the process, revealing what appears to be a kidnapping. A succubus and child are crying and being tied up by a man wrapped in priestly robes. Some priest.

Also inside the house are a group of thugs and half-clad super muscled warriors. They charge the invader and Are holds the door. He holds. The people that Are rudely invaded the meeting of start trying to bust out of the wall, lacking the surface area to surround the chain-covered Are. He holds. Axes blows, mace blows, bruising and breaks but he holds. Fith splashes acid inside the house and does some minor damage, and Are scares the shit out of some with his spooky mask and sharp steel. Trey throws and misses an eldritch blast, and dances around the house. He checks the back of the house for entrances and doesn't find any. What he missed there was the glow of spellcasting behind a rotten wooden shutter, weak enough to impale the weak in body but strong in spell spellcaster at the back. He moves on though since you can't do much with a natural 1, and sees thugs trying to batter the wall out and get out that way. He prepares and strikes. His strikes have limited effectiveness and he takes damage.

The fight seems to be equal for a very long time, Are holding out, being healed, spreading his mask with the blood of his foes, taking blow after blow but there is a limit to the damage he can take, a limit to the blood he can take from others. They regains his composure and strikes. Powerful, magical blows. His pact spear held in his hands, active and thirsty, the white eyeball in the spearhead looking around as he holds it, and closing during a strike. The green flame dances around his spear and burns the flesh of the thugs he impales. This was the straw that caused the thugs to break first. The priest grabs the child, breaks his hand with his club and threatens to keep going unless Are and the rest back off. The mother of the child, taking a hidden knife, stabs the priest in the back, and are takes this opportunity to charge and take the guy out. He bleeds all over the kid and his now broken hand, but the fight is not done. Are has ran into the house, clearing the way for the fight to surround him.

The thugs were having a mess of a time, and, after suffering heavy losses, retreat into a corner of the house and speak of peace. No more needs to die. They offer a job, a man named Crushbone can make use of their skills, and there's the implied threat that he's coming anyway and it's either be with crushbone or be crushed into bone shards. Are uses his detect thoughts medallion to look into his mind and what comes back is intense; truth, pain, a giant rolling fortress, spewing screams and anguish and at the head, Crushbone. The master of the mobile fortress, the employer of dozens. Warmer images come from his mind, a mess hall, a library, bunks, a warm place to sleep, hot food to eat, this mobile fortress is also home. He's offering the home to the party, to Are, to these strong warriors. Also there are the unsettling idea that the 'hot food to eat' was going to be this mother and child that they were collecting.

Are stops looking, and gets tempted. But his mask whispers to him "Murder them.." "No Mercy…" (as a GM note, the mask isn't doing this at all, but it is how Are is played that he's imagining the mask is doing this). He screams out the the party that they are lying. There is no home, there is no opportunity, completely contrary to what he detected. The battle continues, tentatively, with some arguing, shouting, and pleading. Pleas turn into threats as they speak of the fact that Crushbone is coming. He is coming and he will crush those against him, either get on board or get crushed under the wheels of fate.

Are continues to fight, and the thugs fall, the party taking heavy blows but scraping by with some luck. One barbarian remains, and he tries again. The cannibalism he doesn't deny, but he is telling the truth that they won't technically harm the people they collect for processing. Fith rolls amazing insight and realises that these thugs are telling the truth. There is something, it is coming, and it's full of cannibals. Doesn't bother Fith too much since as a Firbolg, he's eaten human flesh before (not just as a backstory, he and galanodel shared some man steaks). What convinces Fith is that they said that the fortress is moving east. East, towards Aendrijahael. Are keeps striking, the Barbarian defends himself, "No! I am defending myself!". Fith promises that the barbarian will come to no harm and the barbarian drops his axe in surrender. To fufill this promise, Fith casts hold person on Are and takes Are's weapon. Are calms down, overcoming the influence of the mask. The entire party is hurting badly, this fight easily going the other way if Are had not held the door. Are's blood spattered mask flashes different emotions and settles on happy. For now.

And that's where we ended.
Plains of Conquest next week. Still open for more players, we're sitting at around the 'just enough players to keep going' level of people. Contact me at wizrobe at cock dot li if you're interested.
Few things you should know; you'll need to be available at 11UTC on saturday.

>>40378
don't lose heart wiz, you should post your contact anyhow, you are not offending anybody.
I confess I know precious little about the lore on the empire of 400th century, as I am reading about the 300th century for a long time [Horus heresy series]. so even if I don't understand genestealers and such I would be down to learning some 40K wargaming using some easy skirmishes.

whatever you hear or whoever voice you think is coming from my room while I am away…. don't open the door. don't let anyone else get the key. ignore temptation. or by the time I am back, my Hion will have devoured all of you, starting by whoever twist that doorknob.

Seeing Are scribbled makes me want to scribble as well.
I always imagined Barthrow to have an arched nose like a beak and eerie hawk like eyes. wanted to do a bowl haircut but just forgot bout it until now.
webm is a bad scribble of him on his youth tricking a Satyr.

We continued Plains of Conquest this weekend.

Getting up after camping out in camp, Barthrow cleans his kills from the traps he laid last night, meanwhile Brad proceeds to pray to his waifu first thing in the morning. After both are done with their respective morning routines, they head inside the sinkhole mentioned by the major of marsh. Heading inside they are met with an old wooden door stuck due to the boards sloping downwards near the handle, but quickly solve the puzzle of how to get it open with brad smashing it down confidently.

Heading deeper inside, Brad notices a dead Flat Lizard on it's back, and as he gets closer, he notices two more seemingly inactive. Careful not to wake them they check the room and see a door with some reddish blood on it and another stuck door. With some traps being laid down by Barthrow, Brad decides to take the creatures on and tries to bash the stuck door down which awakens the creatures. Brad and Barthrow make short work of the creatures, but as the heavily injured one tries to crawl under the bloody door, a larger one charges outside bashing the door down. Brad looking inside sees a lot more and stands in the doorway to block the choke point while Brathrow shoots his bowgun to great effect.

However, the Flat Lizards manage to knock Brad down and deliver a few good hurtful bites. Getting up and holding on, Brad still manages to hold the door. Suddenly, an injured humanoid bird screaming cock a doodle doo like a rooster blasts through a nearby door that had some bloodtrails lead towards it. Jumping into action, it slashes away at the Flat Lizards, then another, slender one appears forms from the shadows and also slashes the creatures with it's iron feathers it holds between it's fingers.

With the aid of the birds, the battle is wrapped up with haste, after which Brad tries to approach the bird people pair. The birds pulling away he stops and retreats a bit. As he attempts communication, he gets a bow from the slender one, and an excellently imitated sound of rustling leaf, after which the more careful one bows as well and imitates the sound of a dagger being drawn. After Brad lets them leave, barthrow points out the traps still out in the open and tries to barter with the dagger wielding one. Showing him his dagger, Barthrow inspects it.

The dagger seems hand made, with a simple cross guard and a weird blade seemingly crafted from joined pieces with icons all over it that seem coherent. It also has an interesting handle depicting hieroglyphs of stabbings of sleeping people, with skin stripes protruding at both ends of the handle, with a drilled bone holder on the bottom.

Getting the sense of intrigue, Barthrow gets a coin out to see if the bird sells. Waving a gold coin away, it raises two fingers. Getting out 20 gold, the bird nods but still refuses and puts up two fingers. Getting out 200 and the dagger in the other hand, the bird takes the 200 gold and then leaves with his partner.

heading deeper inside, the party comes upon a corridor being coated in bluish jelly. Heading deeper inside and following the trail, Barthrow recalls how some creatures and materials have a similar feeling to them. Heading deeper inside, Barthrow takes lead while Brad stays behind.

The deeper they manage to go, the more thicker the jelly seems to coat the floor walls and ceiling, and the smell of fish emanates stronger and stronger. Reaching a larger room, Barthrow looks inside and sees the jelly completely coating the backside with a small tunnel chest high remaining where it didn't join yet, and countless amount of very small translucent skyblue slimelike crabs pinching away at the jelly, seemingly building the nest slowly. After grabbing some jelly (Brad) and a crab (Barthrow) he looking deeper inside, Barthrow notices something larger moving inside, puts his back to the wall and fires off a few shots with hail of thorns puncturing the membrane on quite the amount of jelly crabs, the pair starts making their way out, however, the jelly they are treading on suddenly contracts, binding Barthrows food for a second before he wiggles free of it and continue to escape.

As Brad and Barthrow are making their way out, they notice the gelatin on Barthrow's back forming smaller crabs that for some reason are puncturing eachother, and rubbing the jelly into the clothing. getting outside Barthrow quickly takes off his armor and clothing and cleans himself, as he sees the jelly that seeped into his equipment solidifying under sunlight. Quickly covering his captured crab, the party decide to head back to Kho Keep to regroup and find some way to kill these things.

>>40556
I just want to mention that the one time Brad tried to open a door with something other than force it didn't even work

>>40556

I forgot, as the party checks the room the birds broke out of, brad manages to find an extremely fluffy, white and blue expensive looking pillow with golden threads sewn into the sides. Taking it up, brad decides to keep it at first due to it's comfortable nature, but he shows it to Barthrow, who with his eagle eyes notices that something's off about the pillow. Continuously poking it, the pillow unfolds into a puffy haired cat colored the same as the pillow. Trying to introduce himself, Brad interrupts him. The small god of comfort and fluff decides to let it go, and asks the party to get him into the desert to some noble who can appreciate his value. Agreeing to the deal, Brad asks the puffy cat to turn into a "hand pillow", who instead tells him of jewelry pillows, as those actually exist, and turns into one folding onto itself until it reaches the size of a palm.

As the party arrives back into Kho Keep, they seek out the old and possibly senile alchemist they got their alchemists fire from. Showing him the jelly and crab, he agrees to search for a way to kill the things, but manages to scuffle up a book about monster ingredients, and within it is a semi detailed page on these little critters, and mentions a traveling Tortle from the other half of the continent knowing more about the subject.

Called Blue Cancer, they are a kind of hivemind microorganisms that has slime like appearances when joined together, with the jelly itself being the organism, and colonies of a certain size starting to secrete a semi solidifying material that becomes the membrane keeping the thing together. In conclusion, "Acid should do the job", and the old alchemist fishing out some vinegar and pouring it on the clothes of Barthrow where the gelatin solidified, after which it bubbles up to ~4 times it's size, emits some steam and solidifies into a limestone like material. Knowing this, the party decides to stock up on some vinegar. Barthrow heads to the Inn af the suggestion of the old alchemist and buys a full barrel of the stuff (and a crowbar) at discount price, while brad wanders the market, buys around 3 liters of vinegar from all over the place then buys the second opened barrel.

Heading back to the market, Barthrow looks around for the seller that sold Brad his Elvenwood morningstar, but manages to find a semi shady dwarf with a lazy eye peddling some weaponry. Looking around he sees some basic weaponry, but on the display, he notices a strange shortsword sparkling like ocean water. Noticing it catching his eye, the dwarf tries to talk the item up and tells of an interesting property of the weapon. Being able to shoot a quick waterjet out strong enough to hit, pierce and cause some nasty damage to the target. Barthrow manages to talk down the price quite a bit, then proceeds to purchase it.

Finally heading back to the sinkhole, they notice the gelatin grew much more, enveloping almost the whole sinkhole they explored. As they head inside, spread vinegar then smash the limestone, a large ball of the jelly almost falls on Brad, after which both party members decide to coat themselves with vinegar ("Sorry, Thunderhoof." "Neigh, neigh.")

As they approach the room they found the nest before, they encounter a solid wall of jelly, which they blast out the vinegar reserves to crush. As they reach the nest and start cracking away, a horse size drop forms and separates from the gelatin and attacks, enveloping brad in it's body. "Luckily", the vinegar on brad forms a small coat of limestone locking him in place, but otherwise not harming him. Barthrow decides to try out his sword and shoots a waterjet piercing the membrane of the crab, causing it to suddenly turn into limestone as it's innard jelly contacts air. Stumbling backwards, Brad catches himself as two other large crabs seperate from the remaining jelly, one of which is easily dispatched, and the other dispatched by the swallowed Brad smashing a bottle full of vinegar inside the last crab.

As the battle stops and they start the cleanup, Brad looks around and finds a reddish armband with the design of a dragon wrapping it's arms around, adorned by specks of gold, puts it on but finds out he needs to attune to it.

And that's where the session ended. Next weekend we'll continue Plains of Conquest if everything goes as planned.

>>40559
Here's the armband Brad found (it isnt the prettiest i know)

Last Saturday we continued Plains of Conquest.

As Brad and Barthrow take a short rest from their last battle, they check the room now enveloped by limestone rather than gelatin, and find an arm sized hole leading down filled with jelly and blocked by limestone. Taking their time, the pair pops the limestone out and proceeds to excavate the hole by tying a python to a rope, lowering it inside the jelly (Barthrow shooting a bolt through it) then pour in vinegar and pull up the plug.
As they excavate the hole, they find it leading roughly 20-30 meters down, and opening up to a dome shaped room, with dim green light emenating from places and wind blowing.

Deciding to take a gander at it, they figure they need to locate the other entrance.

Just as the pair decides to investigate more, Thunderhoof, Brad's horse neighs out to his master, the pair quickly makes their way back to their stuff, and find a gigantic turtle walking on two legs. Appearently the major sent him after the two to seek help.
Introducing himself as Matau, one of the few tortles left, who is very talented with a spear, joins the group and the trio sets out to discover where that hole lead to.

Cutting through a patch of foresty area, they continue on the road to For' Has despite the warnings of the Kho keep guard chief, and getting nearby, Barthrow manages to spot around 20-23 Kilians seemingly constructing something under the waters of the river of destruction (a joke name at first). Barthrow, thinking they might as well take them out, succesfully recalls his talks with the chief of guard about the creatures, about how depending on the size and number of the creatures, their activity, agressivity and levels of danger changes. Starting from the least dangerous, a Lone(1), Pair(2), Family(3-6), Dynasty (7-14) Tribe(15-25) Society (26-50) and Civilization(50+). These classes also consider the way Killians act and conduct themselves, namely, how after reaching 15 members in a single group, they begin building burrows, tunnels and nests under the rivers or laked they occupy, turn aggressive, begin expanding, and start to act like a tribal society.

The trio hatches a plan for an assassination. Brad and Matau acting as bait rolling into town while Barthrow tries to take out the percieved leader.
As Brad and Matau stroll into town, Brad notices a giant sphere of water starting to surround him, but making his save, get pushed out of it and rightfully suspect that they might have been spotted.
Still, feeling brave, Barthrow tries to ambush the killian leader, but as his arrow were to hit, a magical shield springs forth, forming a temporary defense, easily deflecting the arrow that's been slowed down by the water. Emerging from the river is the leader, a black and orange dotted on white kilian with a strange staff, with it's three guards, another spellcaster, a rogue and a warrior. Pulling away, Barthrow is hit with a spell, manifesting his deepest fears, making him terrified, and putting incredible mental pressure and stress on him (psychic damage), However Brad manages to catch up to Barthrow and after a little bit of complication, ride off on thunderhoof with Barthrow also on it while Matau misses the fight because of Brad entrusting Barthrow's donkey and horse to him.

Realizing they need to prepare better they head out to Domb, the location they (correctly) guess as the way in.
As the party is getting near/proceed up the mountains, and the path becomes steeper and more rough, they start to see some ancient rubble. Broken pottery and bricks littering the path with a few barely visible walls and pillars, reminiscent of a better age, Matau checks around and gets the idea that these are more old than himself (which is quite a few years). Heading inside, they start to explore the yet unknown purposed caves roughly carved into the rocks. As they hack, slash and carve away at the tender flesh of darkness with their torches, they come face to face with an iron doubledoor, designed like two hands holding something terrible horror back.
As both Brad and Matau find nothing, Barthrow steps in with his eagle eyes and spots a wire wrapped around the upper hinge of the right wing door. Carefully wrapping it out while keeping the tension, Brad and Matau open the door and go into the room to spot a saw ready to spring from it's socket in the side of the wall.
Barthrow gets ready to release and let go does so, but as soon as the tension is no more, the wall opposite of the door pushes forward towards the saw whipping out of it's place, but Barthrow quickly jumps out of the way.

Heading inside, they discover a long abandoned dining hall, with furniture either broken or eaten by mold and humidity.

>>40792
Finding a wooden door, they head deeper inside and split, Brad going on the "straight" path while Barthrow and Matau find another iron doubledoor, this one promising better, with riches, coins and chests on the left wing and grapes, bowls, and chalices spilling what is most likely wine on the other side. However this one seems to need a key to unlock. Meeting up with Brad, they push further into the darkness, avoid and bash down a simple spiketrap, and meet face to face with a strange statue constantly blowing wind.

Pushing forward, he manages to get far, but the wind overpowers him and pushes him back. Taking a momebt to think about it, he goes prone and passes the statue, however as he tries to slam the statue, hia hit lands wrong and the statue almost blasts him into the inner sanctum of the dwarven mausoleum, luckily as the statue falls faxe forward after it's forizonral movement stops, it shoora itself up onto the ceiling and stays there. Brad, having an idea, ties a rope to it to carry it out like a balloon, and ties the statue to a tree nearby.
After coming back, the trio looks into the inner sanctum and promptly sets the glowing fungi ready to burst off inaide by throwing some rocks at it.
Meanwhile, as it settles, the group takes a short break, Barthrow healing up and Brad attuning to his armband, giving him inhumane strenght.

After the pollen settles, our trio heads in to the dwarven resting place, now the walls and floor covered in countless faint glowing green dots, almost like a thousand stars or souls lingering on in this dark and abandoned corner of the world, illuminating the inner chamber with an otherworldly, dim sickly green fluoresence, Matau goes through the holes the dwarves left and were left behind in, and finds quite a few items. Among which were money, a moldy old book written in dwarven, a bronze stylized statue of a dwarf, a leather pouch with ashes in them, a set of small clothes and a dagger with a longsword like design (or a dagger sized longsword), and more importantly, a key.

Knowing where to go next, Matau, Brad and Barthrow go back to the locked treasure room to finish up their "dungeon dwelving". Inside they see two piles of gold, one of which turns out to be an illusion, and a seemingly empty but heavy chest that Matau manages to detect has a hidden bottom. Counting up their gold, they head out, only to see that the wind statue is gone, with a pair of bird like tracks leading into the mountain and disappearing.

After their misadventure, they return to Marsh to tell the major of their exploits, who, as agreed gives them a smaller Genosis statue, and promtly boots the adventurers out to return to his duties.

While Brad prays to Karou and goes to sleep, Barthrow and Matau head into Marsh's pub, The Sunken Man. Matau to grab a drink, trusting the one eyed bartender with mutton chops and a single gold canine teeth and asks him to surprise him. In turn he gets the strongest and spiciest firewater he drank in all his years, while Barthrow checks to find the guard who he talked with and paid to for info, but only meets some of his fellow guards. Unlucky, he heads to get some cheap ale and drink with Matau, after which the two are joined in banter by the bartender, remarking that it might just be the times for heroes once again.

Meanwhile, as Brad wraps his prayer up and heads to sleep, he finds himself in what seems like a torn battlefield, where everything is dark grey except the black sun and it's blood red light.

And that's where our session ended. This week saturday we will be going back to dark abyss.

>>40795
nice drawing benga

soz wizrobe for fliping out, I thought you meant some sarcasm on offense by throwing coins, but when I check back I think there was none.

>>40799
I was going for a "Gold glitters not compared to the glory of kaoru!".

We pick up from last time. In short; the party finds a trail to a village, and they find it raided by bandits, or so they think. They barely defeat the bandits, and they let one that surrendered live. We pick up from there.

The barbarian reveals his name as Khon. A simple name, but a simple man. They take his proposal: He shall lead them to the fortress, and bring them inside as invited guests rather than as unwilling captives. Works for Khon, he just lost his party. Khon takes the time to light a fire outside, a large one that covers a lot of ground. This defrosts the ground and he digs shallow graves for his fallen companions, leaving their weapons as grave markers. He says a little prayer and is ready to leave. The party take the time to bandage their wounds and heal up from the intense close fight that they managed to win. Are loots the village a bit, poking his head into the little houses. Inside is miserable; families clutching each other in the corner, covered in frost and ice. Families, frozen solid and desperate for warmth in their last moments preserved in the permafrost. Are finds little of value but takes some pots and pans as they're valuable commodities in this world.

Khon is done seeing his companions off to the next life and starts to lead the party. He asks for his axe, but accepts that he cannot be trusted with it and it is left with Are. He leads them on through the cold wasteland. Days pass as the party heads east. Back from whence they came, away from Aendrijahael, the elven homeland, but the chance to stock up and see this fortress is worth it. Especially since Khon has been telling them that their group is moving east. Khon, after a few days travel, stops and clears snow away from a rock. He places his hand upon it and says that they are here. Just they need to wait here a bit. He invites Fith to try, and he does so. Fith doesn't understand why his hand is on the rock and starts thinking about the sanity of this Khon fellow. Losing his companions, has he lost it? Khon reassures them that they're in the right area. They wait.

The waiting pays off, a storm of snow, a large dust cloud made of snow slowly appears on the horizon. Is it a coming storm? It's too low down. Something far away is kicking up snow around it right into the air. The party can barely see but Fith gets a glimpse of something; he sees a dark brown object in the centre. Something is coming towards them. They can feel it now, through their feet. The ground is shaking. Khon puts his hand on the rock and tells them that it's here. The fortress is coming.

And so it arrives. Minutes pass, and it slowly grows out of the horizon, the size of it just increasing beyond what they can figure. They can slowly make out its features as it approaches- a fortress. A wooden structure, box like, 4 stories tall, giant tracks rolling over the ground in-front of it- a rolling fortress. The noise it makes echoes across the snowy plains- creaking, crushing, crunching, and an occasional scream, a life being painfully extinguished. As it gets close the sheer scale comes into view- it could hold hundreds of men, a real fortress. Wooden, treated wood, it moves across the landscape, hundreds of feet tall, a giant keep crushing the ground below it. The party isn't taller than a single on of its treads on the side. The chains come into view, and attached to them, moving flesh, slaves, driven forward by fear and pain, providing the force to make the fortress move. An unwilling engine for a colossus.

The rumbling stops, the colossus ceases to move, and a ramp extends down out of the suspended lowest floor. It hits the snow with a soft thud, sending plumes of snow fluttering about, and a few tough looking barbarians walk down the slope, kind of squinting and shielding their eyes. Khon approaches and tells them about the party; They're here as guests. He leads them into the fortress. The party looks apprehensively about, and go inside the belly of the beast. It's dim inside, but lit. Small braziers and torches line the wooden walls, illuminating the room around them. They can't get a good look until the ramp closes, the last sliver of white brightness shrinking into nothing as the ramp closes with another thump and their eyes adjust. They are in a storeroom, crates, boxes, and items are around. Khon turns back and says "Crushbone is upstairs, on the highest level. We'll go past the mess hall and bunks and stuff to get there". The mess hall? The storeroom is pretty large but is there that much space inside?

Going up the stairs reveals this to be the case. They climb the stairs and hear music, laughter and drinking from behind the door they climb away from. Just how many people live on this fortress? The next level's door is quieter. Sobbing, snoring, not much reveals this level. Then they get to the last level. Khon opens the door and revealed is a red carpet leading down a corridor. The corridor wouldn't be out of place in a noble's mansion- varnished wood, engravings, fancy inlays. The red carpet leads forwards to a pair of red curtains in a doorway, with two guards, clad in shining plate armor, standing outside. Fith touches the wood of the walls and learns about the history of the fortress. He feels the wood, hears it grown and creak, taps and listens to the stories it tells. There are two main types of wood here; elven wood and wood from Chadium ( a city to the north, a gladiator/warrior culture). The main body of the fortress is elven, perhaps a little magical, rigid, light, and is the frame for the fortress. The regular wood from Chadium is fairly lightweight but is for furnishings, fittings, doors, that kind of thing. This object was constructed.

Khon talks to the plate armor guys and they let the party through, opening the curtains for them. Inside the carpet splits in two, covered in some muddy footprints here and there, and goes around a marble plinth in the centre of the room. The carpet meets up again and leads to a throne. In this throne sits a giant of a man, heavily bronzed and wearing a metal plate on his face, some boots and some leather straps and not really anything else. A giant hammer is leaning on the side of the throne. Crushbone looks up from the book he was reading, places a bookmark in it and snaps it shut. He stands up and walks towards the party a little bit.

In a voice that does not fit the body; a erudite voice speaks; "I am Crushbone". Khon introduces and explains the situation; these guys killed most of a recon party and have come here as guests. Crushbone offers them a deal; Work for the fortress as a recon squad. The scouts find something, bring the info in, and you go in and collect resources. Often human resources. Are's mask is in a permanent figure of disgust. He's having trouble keeping his calm in this den of cannibals. Crushbone talks about what they do with slaves, and processing, and the cold, indirect tone to which people are treated like objects to be processed gets the most of him and he rejects the deal. He spins and runs out of the throne room, being captured by the two plate armor guys through the curtain. Crushbone orders Are to be detained. "Take his weapons.".

Are wriggles free but is pinned again, some of his weapons taken and thrown back into the throne room. Trey and Fith just observe. Trey has done worse things to survive before. He refuses to die and if working here will keep him alive then it seems like a done deal. Best not follow this psychotic madman into hell. But Are's legs vanish, they poof away in a cloud of mist.

Are misty steps to the door, opens it and pins it with a javelin, and runs down the stairs, finding a window. He looks outside and misty steps outside of the fortress. He runs for his life. A giant thud hits the ground behind him and he turns back to see- Crushbone jumped from the top of the fortress and landed behind him. Are keeps running. Crushbone just sends a farewell, apparently having jumped down just to say goodbye. Fith and Trey see Crushbone leave through one exit and enter the throne room through the main entrance. Possibly a little confused until Crushbone tells them that the fellow that ran managed to escape. A slippery fellow, best not to grab the eel lest it slip of course.

Crushbone goes over the deal again; they'll work as a recon squad, collecting resources in exchange for a place to live, and freedom. Sounds good. Questions about harming people get redirected with technicalities "We don't harm the originals". They agree and Khon leads them and gives them a tour of the fortress. Bedrooms, slave dungeons where they keep the originals, mess hall, shop, library, storage room, blacksmith, engineering room, the usual. Nothing too exciting. Khon explains what an original is: He doesn't know the process but slaves are duplicated, to get more life out of them. The originals are kept healthy and in good shape, and then duplicated. Their duplicates then work and feed the population. Strangely efficient. There are some now empty bunks, and dead mans boots says that they're free now with the items inside. One gets hardened to death in time.

Trey is exhausted but finds the mess hall and joins the drinking. It's a pretty lively tavern, interrupted occasionally by the odd scream, and with a sometimes shifting baseline of rumbling. The entire fortress moves. It's so large that it doesn't actually tilt very much as the huge treads often compensate for small bumps, and navigation is done to minimise gradient. Trey holds onto his drink and makes himself known. Fith heads to the library and makes friends with the elderly druid there. He learns more about the demon that corrupted the worldstone, from a child's book firstly but also a book about myths and legends. He feels much at home with the fellow druid and stays with him, going through some of the library's contents until it is time to rest.

The next day they learn that some scouts have come back, reporting of a castle where some human resources have been spotted making a shelter. A ruined castle, of course, ruined by a massive black sphere that looks like it rolled right into it. Fith and Trey are briefed in the throne room and tasked with collecting the resources from this location. They're given directions, rations, and make the case that a 'recon' team should be the ones scouting, and their task should be renamed to a 'strike' team. Crushbone goes with it, since really you name something and then the name sticks even if the actual operations change. Might as well get some fresh nomenclature along with the fresh blood, of course.

After a breakfast of 'mystery meat stew' (It is hardly a mystery to the party at this point), they collect their human jerky rations and set out. Trey grabs a horse as part of the allowed kit, and Fith transforms into a horse. One neigh for yes, two neighs for no. Trey jokes that they can at least play 20 questions. And so with their purpose, they set out into the snow wasteland.

And that's the end of this session. Next week, more deep abyss. Crushbone might not be the only one waiting to prey on this castle encampment.

This week is another in Deep Abyss. Still neither deep nor an abyss. Are escaped so we're left with Fith and Trey working as agents of crushbone, ready to leave. They stand ready in the lower half of the fortress waiting for the ramp to open, and it creaks open. Fith is currently transformed into a horse, and Trey is simply riding one.

The blinding white opens up, the chains creaking, and a new world is outside. White, cold, the sound of crying and heavy chains, a reminder of the slaves that are getting cold while the fortress waits. The two horses trot out, down the wooden ramp, and the hooves sink into the snow. Trey's horse gives a shake and readies itself for the journey ahead. Horse-fith and Trey move forwards. The chains crank upwards and the creaking of wood behind causes them both to look backwards- the ramp is closing back up. The slaves try to avoid their gaze as they refocus their eyes on the journey ahead.

They head forwards. A journey turns into many hours, and it gets dark. Trey starts to setup camp, and Fith turns into a Caribou and starts eating green things he can find under the snow. Trey forgets that his companion can turn into animals and pulls out his crossbow, ready for the hunt. He sees the caribou right ahead, and it looks at him and makes a caribou noise; breeih, just once. Trey comes to his senses and remembers that it's once for yes, twice for now. (I think, it may have been the other way around). It's fith, the caribou. Trey sets up camp. Fith notices a flash, a sudden burst of light in the distance. It appears as a flame very bright for but a moment, dimming down into a small speck. Trey does not see.

Caribou Fith gets Trey's attention, nudging him gently in the direction of the flame. Trey might see something, maybe not, but he leaves his horse and heavy gear and follows the caribou towards the light. They get closer, a humanoid is visible, barely, behind a flame. Trey lights a torch to see the way, a little sick of holding onto caribou butt to navigate in the darkness. The torch flame turns into a hand, a hand of flame, pointing towards the humanoid in the distance. Trey waves, and fith is completely and totally impressed with the fire manipulation. He's already turned back to a firbolg from caribou, getting ready for something.

They get closer and they wave to each other. Friendly, perhaps. Trey and Fith meet and greet the man behind the flame: Jansci Sarkany, pronounced Yan-chi. Fith is just completely spellbound by the flame magic, the flames dancing and showing tales and stories in their movement. Fith's eyes are glittering with amazement. Trey greets the new man; Jansci and they get along instantly. Jansci is a short half-elf, over 5' tall, he controls flame like it was second nature. Has the youthful face of an elf who ages extremely slowly. The Firbolg and Trey immediately completely trust the mysterious character, and let him take first watch as they share his camp. They ask the half-elf about the castle that may be nearby. Castle? What castle? Jansci admits that he has no idea a castle is anywhere nearby. Why would it be? Jansci smirks at their ignorance, but keeps watch after trey and Fith go to sleep. After Jansci's watch ends, it is fith's turn and he finds a rabbit trail. Using his beast communion skills he gets the rabbit to draw an arrow to where the castle is. The castle they're headed towards, most likely.

Trey's turn to keep watch. He stays up and watches the sun rise above the horizon, oranges turning into blues. Jansci gets up and sees the arrow that was placed on the ground- Fith recorded what direction the arrow was pointing. In the daylight it's obvious - there is a castle right were it is pointing. Right there. It's far away, a mere thumbnail on the horizon, but it is hard to miss. Jansci manages to avoid completely the question of why he said he didn't know about any castle, when it's right there. Jancsi had been scoping this castle out for a while, trying to find the right moment to rob the people here, or take what is rightfully Jansci's- but he does not tell them this. Fith and Trey are unsuspecting. Player characters can surely do them no harm.

While Jansci tries to wake up Fith, with great difficulty, Trey gathers the stuff from his camp. The horse is still alive, somehow, and the caribou meat and tent are still intact. Easy. Too easy, perhaps. This is a remarkably safe area. Something keeps the wild animals away, perhaps.

They head towards the castle. It's an impressive castle, or at least it was. They see a big wall, a tower to the left, rounded, but instead of a tower on the left of the wall, a big gap, a pile of rubble- where the wall has been smashed in. They get a little closer and see a giant black orb, a sphere, resting inside the castle walls, having apparently smashed down one side of the wall, hit the keep in the centre, and come to a rest somewhere inbetween. Jansci spots an encampment, with some villagers hustled round tents. The recon team spotted these people, and here is the strike team to collect.  Jansci knows there are people here but sneaks up as an act ahead; reaffirming their presence. He detects a lowered threat and gathers the others for a peaceful introduction. The villagers are suspicious but they have no option. They're weak and these people are coming in peace; there's nothing to be done.

They introduce themselves, and explain why they're living outside of the keep rather than inside. Two people of theirs went in, and they haven't come out. It's been days. They're not coming back out. Fith sees the orb, remembers his previous experience with evil black orbs and takes his shillaegh and hits it. He wants to destroy this thing. He breaks it, like black glass or obsidian it cracks open and he smashes into it like a hammer into an old CRT television. Shards fly, but it's not enough. The orb is empty, it is lifeless, but it must be destroyed. Trey and Jensci take a break, helping the villagers and listening to stories while Fith goes AWOL on the black orb. Jensci makes the stories into flame images in their bonfire, amusing them and enchanting the young succubus who is in the camp. He laughs to himself at their ignorance, and gullibility.

They eventually decide to check the castle out. They've been warned of its dangers, but are enticed by its riches. Clearly a curse like this is borne from much wealth. Jansci and Trey head inside, not being able to convince Fith to stop (slowly) demolshing an inactive black orb of evil. Trey has already revealed by spilling acid inside the orb and on himself that there is a drainage hole inside the orb. Liquid it cannot contain. They scope the castle out first, looking for windows. It's a keep of the posh rich, a french chataeu, a mansion with walls rather than a military installation. They check the windows. They're dirty and hard to see through but they reveal that it's dusty and abandoned inside with no signs of life. Jansci recommends against breaking through the wall mostly out of fear for letting whatever is inside out. And there are perfectly functional doors. Trey checks for traps. He finds none in random locations outside the castle.

So they enter through the main doors. They enter a corridor, wide and with a door at the end. They open that. Inside is a banquet room, collosal, with a massive banquet laid out. Warm food, fresh bread, they could see the steam rising from the soups and steamed hams, and all sorts of high-end cuisine. A large bowl of tomato soup is in the centre. A man, armed, but with posh gold inlay and rich cloth greets the two. He introduces himself as Garfield, and invites the guests to sit down and wait for the lord and lady of the manor. They don't. Something definitely seems off. The bowl of soup grabs Trey's attention as it appears to be rippling, something might have dropped in it.  Trey grabs the bowl of tomato soup, and a spoon, and takes a taste of it. He tastes iron. This is a bowl of blood. He puts the bowl back down and backs away. Garfield asks if there is anything amiss, and there clearly isn't.

Trey and Jansci look upwards, and a ghoulish nightmare is suspended above them. There's a corpse, a body, flayed open, skin wide like wings, the body suspended upwards on wire in a splayed out position but it's not just the limbs but the skin, rib cage and all that is splayed open. Dangling from the corpse are the organs of the man, not entirely still with the breezes of movement and motion. From the organs, the heart is the lowest suspended and a drop forms at the base and falls to the table, a drop of blood. Jansci convinces the manservent that their slaves outisde are being lax and lazy and are not bringing their luggage in, so they need to go beat some sense into them. Garfield lets them leave.

They leave, and their hearts pound in their chest- They are expected back in that place. What if they come out looking for them? A villager finds them and explains to them what he knows. He sits around the campfire and starts telling his story; JAnsci turns the story into extremely crude fire images in the bonfire. He says he was a vilager around here, a member of the Lord's domain. Lord Rotham.. He thinks. It was a while ago. He says he talked to one of the slaves that escaped from this cruel building. The lord and lady were cruel, extraordinarliy so. They kept slaves, dungeons, and servants all at their whim. But when the cataclysm happened, the slaves tried to escape, all at once. The lord and lady could not let them go so easily, and ordered all escapees to be cut down or recaptured. Only a few escaped to tell the story. But the lord was very rich, there's something buried in that castle. But going near it gives you enough chills as it is, the fact that no-one comes out alive is reason enough. But the screams, echoes that come from the castle are enough to keep people away. They'd prefer not to live near here, but it keeps everything else away and it seems safe enough if you can tolerate the terror.

Fith is convinced to even take a break from smashing the orb and joins the party, pretending to be a servant, carrying some miscellaneous luggage. Fith seems to carry luggage a lot, but as a big firbolg he's fairly suited for the task. They go inside, berating the servant for being tardy. They enter, and Garfield introduces himself as Garfield. The table is full of food, the food is just as hot and ready as it was when they first entered. Exactly as hot and ready. The bowl of tomato soup, or well, blood is back in the centre of the table, collecting drops as it was before. Garfield says that the lord and lady will be ready soon.

Jansci convinces garfield that his luggage needs to be taken to a spare room, and so they pass through the side door, Jansci also convincing Garfield that he needs to come and make sure his servant won't be lazy. So they follow. First through an entire room of guards, all armored and sitting around. Then to a tower stairwell- there's an unconvincing amount of stuff up this stairwell, and Fith makes it up with another guard. The guard goes nuts halfway up, saying that he was ordered to stay inside, calling Fith a slave, and then crying about something. "The slaves.. I didn't want to .. but I had to.. I cut them down, cut them like animals" and loses control of himself on the first floor.

Garfield suddenly changes. Jansci asks him something, but immediately; "No.". "Slaves…" "Slaves must be cut down" "Slaves cannot escape", and hostility is detected by the party. The fight begins. Three spellcasters in close quarters with melee fighters. What could go wrong? The fight is intense but short, flames cut down many of the guards. Garfield himself is caught, with 2 others in a fireball, as well as the wine that was in the room next door. Are, skulking around in a forest looking for caribou many, many miles away, suddenly shudders, as if there was a great disturbance, a hundred bottles of wine all crying out in pain and then suddenly silent.

A few blows are taken but the party gets a little lucky, or at least they think they did. More guards are coming- chasing an unarmed man, who is cut down and ravaged by sword and axe in front of them. Trey is enhanced by Jansci's dragon breath but opts not to use it, dodging another close blow to spear, rich in green hot flame, right into this guard, who still stands. The guard who started crying on the first floor finally stops crying after failing 4 rolls in a row, but then rushes down the stairs so fast he trips and scrapes across the stone, lying prone.

The fight had to end here, because we ran out of time. I also summarised it a bit because I'm running out of time to type this thing out.

Next week: Plains of Conquest.

PS: As a note, we're always open to more players.

Sleeping with crossed arms+crossed leg when you sleep on the wilds always felt a bit right.

I guess is because you keep your warmth close together and you add a extra layer of defense across your chest, protecting the heart and the lungs.

Sorry for spectating wizzies once again, my lazy self only got around to write the last two Plains of Conquest right about now, but rest assured we did have 2 sessions in the meantime.


Brad awakens to find himself laying on his back inside a hole. Opening his eyes, the grey clouds and ash falling are dwarfed by the blood red glow of either the sun or moon, straight above Brad. Standing up and looking around Brad sees the falling ash slowly pile up on the very fine dark gray ground. Inside a crater on an island, he looks around to find bubbling magma surrounding the island, and cliffs above overlooking his position. As he investigates, slowly dark shapes emerge on the cliffs, looking at Brad. The blaring silence screams deep into Brad's ears, as he attempts to communicate with the beings. After some attempts, Brad sees a steel rod shoot out from the crowd in an arc. He can tell it's coming towards him, so he takes cover inside another crater. As the rod impacts, nothing seems to happen.

Calming down, he steps out of the crater and looks toward the silhouettes and sees them return to a sharp rock castle up on the cliff. Being cautious, Brad pokes around a little bit, but ultimately picks up the strange metal rod, which on a quick glance seems to be fluidic in nature, but as it touches solid objects seems to harden. Probably magical. Looking inside one of the craters, he notices a charred corpse holding onto something. As he wrestles with the corpse, he finds the strange map he got from the hydra's food stash. Finishing his search, he buries the body, only for black smoke to rise from the ground and another of those silhouettes form from it. the black smoke shoots up towards the sky then into the sharp rock castle. Getting an idea he buries himself and attempts to fly, but it fails. This doesn't exactly feel like a dream.

Proceeding forward, he leaves his island and finds himself at the bottom of a mountain, with strange gigantic stalagmites reaching towards the blood like sky as red lightnings are channeled through them deep into the ground covered by a sea of magma. Venturing forth, the ground suddenly starts to shake heavily, Brad barely holding on, looks up to find a rough stone statue of gigantic proportions rise from behind the mountain, as if someone laying sits up. Rocks of varying sizes fall and impact into the magma then sink a little and begin being carried on top, Brad witnesses the stone statue's hands come forth and hug the mountain, blocking Brad from going forward. Brad tries a few things, but he feels a twist on his skin on his arm, and sees the draconic armband he got moving on it's own, turning towards the statue and clicking it's mouth open.

Taken by the event, Brad draws the rod through the now open mouth of Tyrmaqmaw's armband, making cinders fly out from the mouth and form magical flames. These flames envelope Brad, slowly forming another pair of arms below his own, and a pair of wings, both burning with an intense reddish ethereal flame. As he recoils from the sudden transformation, four sabres of flame manifest inside both of pairs of hands. Seeing this, the statue springs into action and tries to swat Brad, who using his new wings, maneouvers over to one of the giant's fingers and stabs his flame sword below it's nails. The flames scorch into the stone, melting it down with it's intense heat, but the golem manages to swat Brad into one of the stalagmites, then promptly squash him with it's index finger.

Brad jolts up in a bed full of sweat and one of his sleeping shirt's sleeve is slightly burned where he equipped the armband and catches a glimpse of the two red gemstone in the dragon's eyes on the armband glow a little bit before being extinguished. That armband is more than it seems like. In the meantime, Barthrow and Matau just awaken normally, and prepare for the day by gathering their stuff and getting breakfast from Bertold's now returned wife. Nothing exquisite, but a few thick strips of cooked bacon, some poached eggs, a slice of bread and a little salad on the side. More than enough for the bellies of our adventurers. Brad joins the party just as a postman arrives. "the major forgot", he tells them that they expect city officials to make it into Marsh to inspect if the disease is handled to open the Bronthos gates for travelers once again, and the trio are needed to make a report. Deciding to not indle and take up other potential quests, the party gathers themselves, and decides to head towards the gate in hopes to meet the sent official. Before they go, they catch wind that a robed female with long black hair has been distributing potions that cure the Shells.

As the trio sets out, they are forced to march through the expanded swampy marsh area, where they notice that the boom of growth seemingly stopped, as the sheer number of plants are too much for the soil to bear. Arriving at a perfect camping spot at dusk, they get comfortable under a large c shaped rock. Inside, brad finds all kinds of carvings on the inside the rock. Lot of languages, crude drawings, Brad manages to make sens of a few of the writings. "Momo and Klaus was here" "May my love last as long as the wind is blowing and the moon shines on this earth." "Very nice night tonight, 172, Serday, fifth of Julinus" "We raise our tankards to Quentin, the bravest warrior ever known in the whole of Duro Isles, may he rest in peace" "Nice place". Reading over the carvings, Brad also notices a semi-rectangular hole in the wall, above it, written more visible is "Take but Give Back" in numerous languages. Inside this hidyhole is dried firewood. Excellent to start a fire. Brad takes some to start a fire then goes to a nearby forest to gather a little bit of wood before sundown, while Matau and Barthrow unpack their belongings.

Returning, Matau takes first shift, and as the two go to sleep, Matau goes around the rock to climb on top and keep watch. However, his attention wonders as he remembers his hometown, Pacifis, and how he was supposed to be the next tortle in line to act as the town sentinel and protector, however, before he even received the title from his father, a large Kraken washed ashore completely destroying their town. How he barely escaped with his life, and had to watch his own people, including his own father drop like flies before the mighty beast's overwhelming power. As the gentle wind caresses him and the stars and moon rain light down from the skies, Matau stops thinking about his past and just enjoys the present. Thinking about Barthrow and Brad, he finds some confort in having traveling companions, and thinks "Maybe after i had my revenge on that Kraken, i can live my life for myself. Yeah. Maybe there will be something more for me in life than just revenge." Even as Matau ponders, time still flows like a river, and soon he finds himself sleepy.

Switching with Barthrow, he goes to sleep. Barthrow springs into his usual hunter self after getting up from the comfy fur of his Hion, and scours the area with his eagle eyes. Seeing nothing, he gets his gunbow, hits the ground and crawls out a few meters from the campsite. Camouflaged and ready to pounce, he waits patiently, but nothing seems to happen. Returning to camp he checks if his Hion Geneveeve is still sleeping. Opening her eyes only to see her master return, Geneveeve just closes them again and exhales a bit stronger than usual in acknowledgement.

Brad is awoken, and climbing up the same rock, into the perfect spot overseeing everything nearby, with the winds gently blowing as the barely cloudy night sky barely but illuminates everything, he instead spends some time reminiscing about his current situation, starting from the beginning, where he went to the jungle to hunt down an evil serial killer womanizer Halfling, to now, and starts to think of funny names for everything he encountered so far. Areas, creatures, even some people, he spends his shift entertaining himself as the sun slowly inches across the horizon to bring a new day with it.

Heading out come morning, the party comes across a band of marching vagrants. Easily 80 people. Brad tries to hand out some food while Barthrow hides (badly, low roll) behind some nearby trees. But for the most part, these malnourished people want nothing to do with the party. While Brad manages to hand out some food to some more willing to take it, he hands one to a kid and his mother last. The mother rejecting it, the kid manages to snatch one before she could stop him, after which she just uurges him to keep moving. "But mother, they are the heroes" Brad manages to catch from the kid befoer his mother drags him along the marching band. As they conitune their journey they see a white, pumpkin shaped carriage with two white horses slowly pulling it towards the party. Richterberg Francis, the second. Appearently some big shot in the civil sector, sent to Marsh to survey if they want to open the roads again. The party gives their report, after which Richterberg turns the cart around. Seems like he doesn't really care. An excellent example of a self important little shit. Anyway, the party continues towards the gate with him, with Brad quickly riding back to the vagrant band, now camped at the same rock they camped at and passes a note to the kid from before saying: "these refugees deserve a nice life after their time in the city", which he signs and also slips 5 silver to the kid, at which his eyes widen looking at such money.

And that's where 1/2 Sessions ended.

>>41636
Anyway Session 2.

As the carriage stops for the night, so does the party. Matau starts out again, taking his time to pay attention now, he spends his time uneventfully. Come Barthrow's turn, he gets up and investigates around and finds strange symbols carved onto some trees. Three slightly offset triangles in a circle. Looking around he notices that the tracks that lead to trees making out the three triangles also. Intrigued, he comes to the conclusion that this must have been some kind of religion activity, and switches with Brad.

Brad gets up and proceeds to start his turn, however, a slight light inside the forest draws his curiosity. Going towards, he spots a semi transparent cat giving off a slight blue light on a branch of a tree. As he sees this cat looking down upon him, he remembers his childhood in the city, and his neighboor's cat, Stache that always climbed up on a tree, it never was able to climb down. Being a good hearted child, Brad always took it upon himslef to help out granny to get her cat back. One day, as he climbed up on the tree to get Stache, a branch broke under his leg, and as he fell down he got caught by a robed female. Immediately disregarding her, Brad still looked to see her face. The face of his goddess Kaoru looked back with a mixed expression of worry for Brad and happiness he's unhurt, the lil' Brad, simply put, passed out from happiness. Ever since then, he religiously worships his goddess. As he stops reminiscending, he notices the cat is gone, and he returns to his shift.

As morning comes and the party+ the noble set out again, a group of Drabbits, lead by a huge one crash into Richterberg's carriage, and battle ensues. Matau tries to draw the attention of the drabbits, but two of them manage to hurt him with their fearsome back leg power combined with their antlers. Brad joins the fight while Barthrow sneaks closer to the carriage to check inside, and sees that the noble is still alive, albeit unconscious, and also notices strange burn markings pulsating with a purple light. Taking action he throws a bottle of alchemists fire on the top of the head of the largest rabbit and legs it while his Hion, Brad and Matau go to town on the smaller drabbits. Circling around Barthrow gets cornered, while Brad examines these burned rune markings on the rabbit, exclaiming to hit them. Barthrow does, and as he approaches a rabbit, drawing his Sword of Pacifis, slashes at the marking. As the flesh it cut, it seems to fold outwards as the purple light fades, but a last flash of purple explodes the whole drabbit in a mist of flesh and bone fragments. Barthrow manages to dodge the incoming biological shrapnel and continues to move. Meanwhile Brad and Matau engage the large Drabbit and with Matau stabbing a very injured drabbit in the rune beforehand to not have it explode, he repeats the same on the large rabbit only to essentially have a fireball casted centered on the leader drabbit. Barthrow being out of range, and Geneveeve and Matau avoid the brunt of it but Brad takes the full hit of the fireball. Same with the carriage which is now on fire. Quickly defeating the remaining drabbits, Brad risks his life to pull the noble out of the carriage, and heals him with his lay on hands. Looking inside the carriage the party sees some documents shattered, most of them burned and a smaller nightstand size steel chest on legs. Pulling it out also, they realize that the chest is basically unopenable without the key. As they discuss and take a short rest, the driver, coming to after being thrown off and hitting his head in the initial attack, urges the party to get a move on into the city. Our trio does so and they reach Bronthos gate, at which point Brad hands out some yet unexploded Drabbit meat. As they exit Bronthos gate and arrive into the Mainland, they see the farmlands stretch out before them. With the city off to the left at the foot of the mountain, and a gigantic tower off to the right, they manage to make their way to Harvh before sundown and take a rest there. Barthrow manages to find some people who take him in, and leaving his unstring bow, enjoys the familiar feeling, in the meantime Brad and Matau go to the local inn, the Plentiful Barn, and order a room (Brad's paying). They also have the noble taken care of by one of the butlers.


And that's where 2/2 ended.

>>41637
Remaining images.


This week we'll have a last session of Plains of Conquest, then we'll return to Genesis Void for the sci-fi adventure to continue.

I never did an armoured rendition of Barthrow because he already have some official art. but decided to make one now.

Crossbow is not like this but I lost the original art for the Crossbow. if someday I find it I will use it as actual reference

Deep abyss today. Last time: The players left the moving fortress to a ruined castle, in quest to get the people camping there to 'join' the fortress. One way or the other. They head to the castle and then parlay with their new friends, finding Yan-Chi along the way, a fire-casting half-elf. They find a huge black sphere and Fith's PTSD forces him to go nuts on the thing and he breaks it into black glass shards while the other two just sit around and hear stories about the castle. They headed inside, were attacked by ghosts, and were in the middle of combat.

Trey takes his turn. He charges the dragonbreath that he was bestowed, and calls upon a cold frost breath. The three ghosts all brace themselves but two die, their forms melting in the glacial blast, their weapons falling to the floor. One remains. He strikes Trey with a solid blow, carving his skin asunder. Trey reels from the blow and fights back. Fith finishes the fight with an acid spray, melting over the ghost's form as it to collapses. The ghost who failed his saving throws over and over again fails his last, and just runs. He's done. Fith tries to look for him but cannot see where he went. The fight is over and they recover from their wounds by escaping up the tower, past where the ghost went mental and refused to go.

They come back down after resting, and decide to press on. They've already upset enough ghosts and they don't know how many more are left. They head down into the basement. The first thing that greets the party is a painted, or magically marked large skull on the ground under them. Yan-chi carefully examines it for traps, finding a loose tooth. Trey just wiggles the tooth out  and sticks his finger inside, causing a clunk and a door to open to their side. In it is a bunch of garbage and a small bag containing some scrolls and a potion, magical items of little to no worth to the party. Oh well.

They keep on going and the next room that they find is some kind of storeroom. There's a couple barrels just sitting around in the small room. They check them out and find that they're full of clothes and worthless trinkets, blankets and other personal possessions. Some have a little blood splashed on them, but overall it's a depressing collection of waste goods, probably collected from people against their will, and no-longer needed. Yan chi of course tries to find something valuable and finds nothing but sadness. A storeroom for alcohol is the next room. Lots of wine, fine vintages, fancy labels, clearly worth a lot of money. Or they would be, but there's a empty suit of armor slouched in the corner with a skeleton inside, surrounded by empty bottles. Poor fella drank himself to death.

Yan-Chi quietly pockets a golden ring that he loudly extracts from the gauntlets of the dead man. But not wasting an opportunity, and maybe feeling some kind of ghostly feeling about some other fella who likes his drink, they decide to bring the bottles back. A genius idea of putting the bottles in the clothing they found and stuffing them in the barrels comes to mind. Trey does a particularly bad job, and while rolling the barrels back to the entrance, trey's is particularly loud with clinking and broken glass sounds, and significant quantities of dark red liquid leaking from the sides and other holes. Not a good sign.

Continuing after leaving barrels for later, they find a room with a ghostly figure at the end. A wispy figure, all he does is ask for help. A face of anguish and torment, the figure begs for help. The party ignores him and moves on after having a little look. They move round the corridor and they can slightly hear the ghostly wails for help from behind the wall. Not their problem. The next room has a bunch of big dust sheets covering everything. Yan-chi has a gust spell as a cantrip and he's going to use it to do as much as he can. He lifts the dust cloths with gust, cautious of traps and dangers. Revealed is a sofa on one side and another bunch of furniture on the other. Old paintings, some statues, some chairs, and an old rusty set of armor. Fith inspects the paintings, very carefully. The one at the back kinda looks familiar, but he can't pinpoint it. He attacks! Just in case it was reversio, he destroys the art. Goddamn reversio. Yan-chi inspects the sofa and finds some coins, and is elated.

One of the doors is blocked by a statue, so in the spirit of laziness the other option is chosen. Click. Fith steps on a plate and an arrow flies right into him out of the darkness. It hits him pretty hard. He goes back to the sofa and has a nap. In the spirit of finding more pocket change, yan-chi tries to move the statue in front of the door. The statue is a dog, or a lion, or something. Fith labelled it a cross-dog-lion chimera. Anyway they try to move it, and even with Trey's help, it does not budge. Given that Yan-Chi has the moving power of a small child this is not surprising.

After checking that the trap was spent, the party moves on. The next room is some nasty interior design, a room designed out of hate and spite. The walls are lined with spikes, there are hooks and blades build into the walls and floors, it's a room designed to be horrible. Some art decor kind of modern art shit, but the bloodstains still there after these years on the floor are telling. The party carefully makes their way onwards. They wander past some old rotting scrolls and some more chairs and find a room with life in it. Kind of, they hear something off and wait at the door. Yan-chi preps a spell to blast something.

Yan-chi sits at the door. Step, step, step, feet on the hard stone behind the door. A pause. A little creak and movement of the door handle, someone, or something is opening it from the other side. The door opens and the humanoid standing there gets a face full of burning flame. Yan-chi sprays the room with a spray of fire and gets two unlucky guys. The fight begins. Yan-chi steps in and flames two guys, and sees that there are four in total. Two of them just run away. One runs up to Yan-chi and grabs him, to stop him from escaping. Yan-chi would have trouble escaping a wet paper bag and so is easily captured. He is targeted, but sprays flame out fiercly. Trey helps, his own green flame blade dancing around and tearing away the flesh of these men.

The… flesh? Indeed. As Yan-chi experiences right up close, these creatures are of flesh but not of blood. Yan-chi sees up close, flesh lightly attached to skeleton, grey skin, breath like rotting corpses. Not pleasant. But something is pleasant; they have a gold tooth or two. Gems, rings, these people are laden with valuables that are mismatched and probably beyond their means (let's not be prejudiced here). Fith backs up and hits them from the corridor, but finds the two that ran away; a pincer movement. He gets slashed and pierced from this flank, and yan-chi is being specifically targeted by the other ghoulish fighters. A weak bodied man, he takes heavy blows and cannot escape. One hit away from death, he casts a firework on the ground, to blind them. It goes off and everyone is fine, except Yan-chi. He blinded himself. Uh, whoops?

Trey is unable to kill them fast enough to stop them attacking, and they attack Yan-chi, to 'finish the spell-caster'. Axes come down, Swords slice, and yan-chi is unharmed. He gets incredibly lucky and survives long enough, bleeding and near death, to throw out a fan of flame in their general direction. Yan-chi feels the grip on him weaken, and hears the familiar sound and smell of sizzling flesh, and runs until he hits something solid, dancing like a professional acrobat over the charred corpses of these slain ghoul guards. He bumps into something wooden.

Fith is still in trouble though, and Trey comes in, dealing a finishing blow as Fith managed to handle himself pretty well and just tanked the two ghoul fighters. Trey finishes one off. He screams and charges the ghoul with green flame spiralling down his spear and deep into the fighter. The flame burns a fist sized hole into the chest. As Trey is regaining his breath and composure, he looks to his right to an unexplored room, and suddenly backs off, looking sick. He regains himself and goes back in. The rest follow (after Yan-chi pockets some golden teeth that he rips out of the skulls of the fighters) and inside is a pile of mouldy corpses, slick with human fat and lipids, the floor having a sickening glistening texture to it. The foul aroma is to stomachs what an axe is to a skull.

Fith walks right in and starts sticking his hands in. He doesn't give a damn, this is just nature. Kind of. But out of the pile comes another form of nature that bites him, a crawler, a large biting worm. Are fought one of these things way back when. Anyway, it bites Fith and the poison seeps in. His hardy nature stops himself from succumbing to the poison. Yan-chi blasts the thing with a seriously mega hot firebolt that causes the creature to screech in pain, and dive back under the corpses as fast as it can. It hides there and Fith tries to tease it out. Fairie fire doesn't reveal its location, but spraying the whole pile with acid over and over sure did. It crawls out under, Trey hits it with a eldritch blast, slamming it into the corner, and Fith finishes it off with some acid. The acid burns out its skin, and it no longer holds its internal organs inside itself, and they flop out along with the fluids they contain onto the cold, dry and dusty stone. The giant worm writhes in pain and agony in its own internal fluids and burning acid until it finally expires.

The team has a rest, but Yan-chi's wounds are far too deep for a quick rest. He is offered some rations by trey, 'meat jerky', clearly human meat. Trey asks him if he likes it. Some devilish pleasure was being had by Trey here. But also purpose, since Yan-chi would probably need a gentle introduction to the whole slavery and cannibalism thing. They get up and check out the door to the north. It's locked, so Fith uses the keys he looted from one of the dead ghouly fighters. Ghoul jailers, it turns out as the door opens up to a prison. A large wooden wheel, about the size of a human torso rolls slowly towards Fith, and there is a skeleton with broken bones still attached. It sheds fragments of bone as it moves towards the party, and slowly bumps into Fith, before rolling over and displaying the anguished, torturous death of the person this skeleton belonged to. Fith suppresses a little chuckle at the silliness and has a look around. The other two care a little more though.

The cells are locked with iron bars, each with a skeleton inside. This place feels a little magical, and fith recons that this place has been unnaturally extended not with hands but with magic. The skeletons in the cells hold no allure, and they open each of them, or at least all the ones that had keys that worked. Each holds a painful death, but is uninteresting for the party. Fith manages to find a crack in the wall however. It looks like the mechanism to open it is elsewhere. So they leave. As the party walks past a weird coat-rack key holder thing that the GM failed to describe properly, Trey makes a seemingly unimportant comment about how he wished he knew what this thing was. So Yan-chi takes a little look and pulls a little lever down. He's almost unsurprised to hear mechanisms moving.

So they head back and find a long tunnel leading upwards, zig zagging to reach surface level, and inside are two dead horses, reduced to skeletons, still attached to the tether that cost them their life, and two filled backpacks. The bags have survival gear still tethered to them. This room certainly feels like an escape room. Still, decent pots, pans and cutlery are a precious commodity. Yan-chi take a brief look before being turned off by the dust and mould inside, as well as some bugs that made a home there. Fith, of course doesn't give a damn and rifles though. He finds a jar of honey, an item of immense value in this world. In a world where no-one has seen a bee in 3 years, this might be some of the last honey ever to be produced. Trey takes the camping gear, and Fith hands the honey to Yan-chi. He's still growing after all.

They wander further and find another room full of pain and torment. What a merry place. Around are a bunch of torture devices, that if they went on the second hand market would go as "heavily used". Some with unhappy users still strapped to them, long deceased, their torment ended. Most obviously in the room is someone still writhing in pain, crying and begging for help. He moves as if trying to escape, as if trying to free himself from the wall, but he is pinned. His body looks dry and lifeless, but yet he moves and talks. In the core of his chest sticks a dagger, thrust deep and down through and into the wall behind. It glows and has some writing along the side that no-one can read. They recognise it as celestial though.  Fith takes his medical pack out and inspects the wound, to see if he can pull it out without endangering the person impaled. The dagger appears to be going straight through the heart. The body looks like it's been there for years. Hmm. This is probably some kind of magic.

They quiz the impaled person, trying to figure out if he's evil or not. He reveals that he's actually the dagger, imprisoned. Yan-chi throws caution to the wind and wraps his hand around the handle, the glow visible through his fingers. He gives it a solid tug and the dagger comes out. The body flops to the floor lifeless, its strings cut. The dagger glows for a few more seconds, and fades. The party moves on, Yan-chi holstering his new obviously cursed dagger. After testing it on the other corpse and being disappointed of course.

That's where we had to end today. More deep abyss next week. More typing.

This session starts with the party all here. An ominious door is ahead, mist is coming out of the bottom. Clearly something is afoot. Fith is a pretty determined evil and reversio destroyer so pushes ahead. Inside is a long, fairly narrow room with a suspicious looking treasure chest at the other end. After slowing making their way towards it and checking for traps, they open it and find it empty. Yan-chi thinks about using his new ornate dagger to check the base of the chest but feels like he shouldn't. It's a waste of a nice dagger after all.

Fith destroys the chest, because it's clearly evil. He smashes it into bits. No reaction. This room tingles with evil but nothing happened with the chest so no worries. They turn to leave. They take a few steps and they hear a door slam in the darkness back from where they came from. Rumbling under their feet indicates something is wrong. With a burst, a rotting hand pushes its way from underneath their feet. It tries to grab Fith's leg, but he dances out the way. More bursts, more hands. There are at least four ghoulish creatures digging their way out from under the ground. Give…it..back one of them mutters.
They charge fith and Trey, tearing in and dealing damage. Give
it
back

Trey and Fith respond by doing a little bit of damage but these four ghoulish entities are going to tear them all to pieces. Yan-chi is in the corner nearly vomiting, his wounds opening, still bleeding from the last battle. He's in poor shape. He grips his new dagger. His grip loosens- the undead feel like a bad idea to try this on. He summons the last of his efforts and casts a fireball to catch all the ghouls. The explosion tears through the mist and tears through the ghouls, each escaping with their lives except one, their backs burning, sizzling, but still groaning. Give. It. Back. One ghoul misses so bad that he continues on and lands in the rubble of broken chest bits. He gets pieces of wood stuck inside himself as he scrambles around to get back up. Yan-Chi tries to bonfire the dude but ihe manages to dodge out the way of the flames while pieces of wood are stuck right in him.

But the ghouls are burning. Their backs are a hissing mess of pain and heat. Trey stabs one, summoning green flame to his spear tip, and carves a ghoul right in the chest, pulling up to expose the core to green heat. The flame expands and bounces to the other ghoul, tearing some of its face off in the heat. It's very hot in this room. It's getting to hard to concentrate, sweat dripping off my the adventurer's faces as they carve into these ghouls. The chest guy gets smacked and they all fall down. Carved and burned these dead mutter their last undying calls; give it back.

The party leave and move to the next room. They find a broken large statue, clearly too large for the room, a large warrior succubus, smashed to pieces on the floor. There's a second statue, intact, holding a mallet in the corner. Yan-chi is super suspicious. Fith feels like smashing this evil and so walks over. Yan-chi suggests that Fith instead pull the mallet out of the statue's hand. Sure enough, when pulled out there's a little click and the statue grinds its way aside, revealing a secret room.

Inside is a green statue. Green with mould, and incredibly life like, held in a upright cross position. There's a bag hung on one of his arms. He looks familiar. Like an older version of the lord Rotham. Fith immediately sees him as a young reversio and pushes it over and it clanks into the wall and an arm breaks off. Yan-chi recalls back to a very vivid memory of his about petrification and perfectly remembers the knowledge he gained from this time. This statue is incredibly well detailed as it is a petrified victim, but the nature of it suggests that the victim was, or has been, conscious the entire time as some form of twisted immortality.

Yan-chi gets the idea. He has a dagger that has very special properties. He pulls it out, but he looks at the stone and feels that daggers don't go into stone. He puts it back after scratching at the stone a little. He feels a little disgusted about the thought of putting this dagger into that. Doesn't seem like it would work, and Fith gets to work with his destructo-shilleaugh. Pieces are left. Seeing into the internals of the 'statue' reveal that the internal organs are also detailed. Gaps for the lungs, heart shaped detail, etc. Intricate work.

They then find the vault. It requires some kind of combination. They try the lord's birthday. No luck. The door is thick, thick of iron. They head back upstairs and talk to the villagers outside. They come to greet them, amazed that they're alive, and not at all surprised that they're covered in wounds. They talk and reveal where the lord's bedchamber is. Apparently, Lord Rotham I disappeared and his son inherited all his wealth in very suspicious circumstances. Well how about that. Fith finds Yan-chi's extremely valuable honey for him and ends up volunteering yan-chi to give some to one of the villager's daughters. Fith tries to volunteer honey for everyone but the villagers refuse.

The party spend a night recovering, especially Yan-chi who is spent. He finds out that he actually has a tent and uses that. Trey and Fith also remember that it's freezing and spend their time next to the fire. The next day dawns. Time to head back in they suppose.

They're greeted by a late guard, who introes them as guests. The guard seems like he wasn't expecting anyone so early. The food is as ready as always, appetising, but ignored. The dripping corpse on the ceiling tends to put people off food though.

Disturbing Lord rotham II is the next order of business however. They open the door to his chambers. Inside is a ghostly lord and lady. The conversation, uninterrupted goes thusly:
Lord: "I can't let them go. They know too much!"
Lady: "It doesn't matter now, it's all meaningless anyway. It should be time to let go"
Lord: "I will NOT let go! All this is mine! You know what I had to do to get it, you share some of the weight I have here"
Lady: "I can feel it, this isn't just an earthquake. Let them go. Let it go. " (while speaking the lord moves over to the desk or something and puts his hands over a letter opener)
Lord: "I thought you understood. I'm sorry."
The lord then takes a letter-opener and turns around and thrusts it into the lady's chest.
"I WILL LET NOTHING ESCAPE. IT IS MINE."
"I keep it all for.. I, I did it for you, my dear. I, have to keep everything."
He runs out of the room shouting "Guards! The slaves have murdered the lady, See that none are unpunished!"
Noises are heard, and the chaos of original events comes around them with the noises, sights and smells. Fresh blood, screams, the sound of steel slicing into flesh, pandemonium. and then it stops.

"I can't let them go. They know too much!" The lord says to the lady. "It doesn't matter now-.."
"Excuse me" - Yan Chi tries to get some words in. He talks to them. The lady is listening. Yan chi tries to convince them to join a cult and it doesn't quite work. The lady ends stabbed and after a brief moment of chaos.

"I cant let them go. They know too much!". Well okay, time to try again. Well this seemed to work. A dose of nihilism seemed to do the trick, and the lord takes the letter opener and stabs himself in the heart, after speaking the numbers: 23, 09, 05, 85. The ghosts vanish. Skeletons remain.

Dust and rot appear over the furnishings. The varnish is peeling, there's old dried blood on the floor, the dust is kicked up when they move around. The must and rot of the place feels real now. They head through the dining hall, there's no food. Plates, sure, some silverware, kicked to the floor, with mould and dust as the appetisers. The ceiling corpse is still there though. Cold. Fith pulls it down and stitches it back together the best he can.

They head down to the vault and the numbers work. The door swings open, revealing a vault, treasures, wealth. The gold is melted into globs, half melted and solidified down the side of the vault. They grab some stuff and rest. Some of the stuff is magical, and perhaps way too powerful or some is way too weak. It's almost as if I randomly rolled it.

Yan-chi gets an amulet of soon to be nerfed telekinesis. Fith gets a ring of mind shield, while poor Trey gets some boots shaped like faces and he can change what face they look like. Amazing. While Try and Fith picked short straws with these randomly rolled items, Trey gets the most stylish/creepy boots on the planet.

Anyway, Trey carries his gold out with telekinesis. They make their way out, and Fith convinces the villagers to come with them to the fortress. He rolled a 13, the villagers rolled a 12. Whoops, off to slavery they go. Fith hides behind a corner and turns into a caribou. He then tries to load items onto himself but this is difficult since he's a caribou now.

They get back to the fortress, and Fith is protective of his new slaves. They bring them to Crushbone anyway. Yan-chi is rewarded with 20 gold per head. As a special deal. They head down to sell some shit, and Yan-chi makes bank. Turns out if a retailer rolls a 1, strange shit happens and a single jar of honey goes for 1000 gold.

Shame buying shit is just as expensive ,and Trey immediately blows his money on alchemy kits and herbalist stuff. The fortress stops and the vendors tells them. A scouting team is coming back. He strongly suggests that they go check it out as they're now the main strike team in the place. So they head down after some extreme coercion, and they say hello.

With the scout team is a weird creature. Something like a man, but taller, thinner, and with a large rib cage. It breathes slowly in large lungfuls. It talks in a strange accent; asking to be let go. Talking about being confused. It's abused by its captors.

They ask it some questions, and it tells them that his name is Timeor Starcutter. He came from a place called the Bunker. Their ancestors lived there to escape an apocalypse over 600 years ago, and after slipping out after their self-imposed isolation he finds out that another apocalypse hit. One of the party casually asks how they survived for so many years, what did they eat?

Timeor just says that he can create food using magic as if it were just something everyone could do. The barbarians holding him suddenly start sweating and they go 'oh shit'. The realisation that they were about to bring this man in as a slave and not an asset to crushbone fills them with absolute terror. Such a fuckup generally turns people into slaves themselves. They let the man go and he conjours food. A feast, almost. It splats over the ground but it's real food. Yan-chi picks up a piece of… bread. It's real bread. It has been a while. He eats it as they go up to Crushbone with this mage.

Fith doesn't trust the man, keeping an eye on him for other magicks. Timeor says to crushbone that he has other people that want to leave the Bunker. He can lead them to it and help them escape. It's not entirely the case that they can leave voluntarily, and Timeor took a great risk leaving.

And so the party takes a night off. Fith and trey learn themselves in the library, and Yan-Chi finds a suspiciously empty bunk and lays down in it.

That's all for this time. Space next week.

>>41637

As the morning comes, Brad and Matau proceed to collect the noble from the inn and leave for the city, leaving Barthrow behind to enjoy a little breather. Once in the city, they escort the noble into the royal court and receive handsome payment from the head butler. Collecting their gold, Brad and Matau decide to part ways for the time being.

Matau spends his time in the City to look for tortles like himself to meet up with. As luck has it he manages to find a smaller group, and meet one of his childhood acquaintances, who confides in Matau that a famous captain in the navy is essentially planning a suicide attack on the Kraken that took refuge in the sunken city, and that he plans to join his crew. The Kraken that destroyed Matau's village and doomed tortles to roam the lands as vagabonds. Taking this opportunity, Matau joins his childhood acquaintance to take revenge on the beast, making their way to a specific pu at the lower end of town. Entering, they immedietly are welcomed with drinks from the current and other potential crew, and merriment commences. This might be everyone's last trip after all. As lingering doubts and kept down fears and frustraions get slowly killed off by alcohol, the door swings open to reveal the weathered captain as his presence instantly quietens down even the rowdiest of the bunch. after a moment of silence, all the crew members stand up and salute their captain. Telling the "wannabes/rookies" to line up, Matau and his fellow tortle quickly form into the line, as the captain looks over the new crew. "Ye'll do" the captain exclaims then makes his way out of the pub. As the breakless drinking continues, Matau gets imparted with a lot of the captains stories and actions from fellow crew members. Each story starting with the phrase "Aye, that capt'n" but differ in content, Matau realizes it's time to hit the beds. Come morning, he sets out with the crew to reach the Mainland port, Kiko-To.

Boarding the ship and slowly sailing away from land, Everyone steels themselves for what's to come. It won't be an easy feat to accomplish, as the beast is several times the size of a large ship. Helping with duties on board, Matau warms up to the crew and the captain. Reaching near the beasts lair, the ship "docks" to a nearby ruin poking out from under the Serpent sea. Climbing out onto the ruins, Matau and the captain recon the beasts location. As their binoculars magnify the environment, outside of the destroyed buildings and bones of some humanoid creatures preserved by the sea water randomly scattered, they both notice a colossal whirlpool sucking down tremendous amount of water, making parts of the ancient buildings full of coral and moss clearly visible. As both contemplate what they saw, the captain turns around and he looks upon his crew. Young lads ready to die for him. Ready to fight until the very last breath a fight that they know very well they will most likely lose. His scornful face turns to a very dark, twisted smile, and starts to descend from the top of the ruins. Matau following they make their way to the ship, where the captain draws his sword stepping up to the wheel and putting one of his legs up on the railing. Pointing his sword up into the sky, he asks his crew: Beluna willin', are ya lads ready to hunt us a Kraken?". The crew, who have served under the captain and steeled themselves screamed in almost perfect union "Aye aye captain!". Whenever as a defiance against their inevitable fate, as a desperate call for the Seaman's god Beluna for help, as an expression of their never bending force of will, or as a man ready to die for his ideals, these man now truly dedicated themselves to the cause, as the time of deliberation has expired. As the captain laughed out, he ordered the anchors be raised as the captain chose to navigate through a narrow way to approach the Kraken in hiding.

After the ship sailed closer and closer, the whirlpool slowly became less and less powerful and disappeared as the gigantic kraken rose out of it and took it's place. With a fling of it's gigantic arms hitting the water almost as it the water itself bent temporarily due to the force of the impact, the oversized waves hit the ship, taking with it a good 1/4 of the crew. Without stopping, the ship quickly approached the beast and the cannons were raised.The seaman manning the cannons fired anchor sized hooks, essentially latching deep into the skin of the creature. Matau seeing an unmanned cannon, quickly fires it, but not paying attention, his legs gets chaught in the steel wiring, pulling him off the ship. Suspended upside down a good 50 meters, he succesfully undoes his "bindings" and uses his spear to slide back down onto the ship. The captain, getting an idea commands Matau to do it again. Firing again, Matau is pulled up just under one of the eyes of the Kraken. Using his sharp claws and spear, he makes his way up to it's eye and promptly pokes it out. As the creature screams out very deeply in agony and starts waving it's tentacles around, the ship gets hit with wave after wave. making it to the top of the creature's head as the battle still rages on below, matau raises his spear to the sky. Muscles flexing and contorting beyond normal, the tortle aims downward and pierces extermely deep into the kraken with his spear, with only a hand's worth of handle sticking out, however this extreme attack doesn't seem to affect it very much, but the kraken attempts to shake Matau like a human shakes off a fly. Losing his footing, Matau falls a bit, but manages to come to a stop as he uses his claws to slow down, tearing into the skin of the creature. Starting to climb up again, a thought crystallizes in Matau, as he only concentrates upon his climb, ceasing to care about the battle down below or what he's climbing and falls into a meditative state.

Fate. That dreaded word. The Fate that caused him to lose his village. To lose his purpose as the next in line for the guardian of his people. The fate that encroaches both poor and rich. Pheasant and noble. That which cuts down others with no purpose, rhyme or reason.
The fate that "runs it's course" and is regarded as natural, never questioning it's incredible cruelness. That intangible thing that ultimately controls everything ever present.

Climbing up, clouds starting to swerve around all around in the sky.
Lightning strikes into the sea nearby. Thunder rumbles like barrels rolled. Rain begins to fall. But a fierce fire starts to burn within Matau. A fire that even the falling rain can't extinguish, nor the wicked wings. A fire that transforms his matter into something new. Something stronger.

That Fate. The Fate that can do nothing but watch and grovel in hopeless dissatisfaction at Matau as claw after claw, foot after foot climbs his way out of from under it's control. Tearing at the course that's set for him like a wild beast proudly tears away at it's rightful prey.

Finally reaching the top, He once again raises his spear, handed down to him by his father. The two waterdrop like jewels glowing, like jewel teardrops of mermaids, swirling around with strong magic, an ancient oath fulfilled, he thrusts down once again into the Kraken, penetrating deep under into it's thick slimy skin. Matau instinctively pulls away, moments before a lighting strikes the spear, delivering a lighting straight into the Kraken. The noises suddenly silence as if deafened by the sound of the lighting. The Kraken jerks up, and slowly begins to fall. So does Matau. Fulfilling his purpose was enough. Spitting in the face of life was enough. As he's falling he spreads out his arms, welcoming the fall damage that's gonna be dealt, but instead, his arm hits one of the wires. With a great crunch and a scream leaving his mouth, Matau is jolted back into reality with a dislocated arm, hanging from the cable. Managing to free himself and unable to use his spear, he uses his other hand to slide down towards the still awestruck crew, childhood acquaintance and captain. As even his thick skin is essentially being burned from friction, he lets go just before the ship and falls into the water. Fighting his way to the surface, he gets thrown a rope which he wraps his hands around, and as his fellow tortle starts to pull, so does the crew. Even the captain joins in on the effort, as the Kraken hitting the water makes waves that are on course towards the ship.

Being dragged on board, Heavily injured and tired, Matau just lays on the deck as the crew scurries to not get hit by the inbound waves. Looking up and seeing the now clear blue sky, Matau let's out a sigh and drifts off to sleep.

>>42063
Brad instead sets out to spread the light of Kaoru and a succubi offers him a job. to help him take her husband's corpse to Senth, where the 3 mayor religious have a gigantic cojoined temple. The succubus asks for help, but is relative secretive about why. "My husband had enemies that want to cause him trouble even after his death."

As Brad and the succubus, clad in black robe and gown sets out with the cart, they venture along the road down south first. After a good while a number of smelly foul bandits jump on the two and a relatively lengthy fight ensues, during which Brad learns that the enemy seems to be disguised demonic people (against who radiant damage is very good) and that the succubus is a spellcaster. Knocking on of the attackers out instead of killing him, he gets inquisitive with the succubus, who reveals a little more about herself and the gods. Apparently a high priest (that Kaoru told Brad to look for, but Brad forgot), she explains to Brad how religion came to be. After the Origin god split apart, it left two aspects to rule over his realm. Sho' Teth (Void) and Letheses (Matter). "Arbitrarily", humanity assigned Sho' Teth as the aspect of evil and Letheses as the aspect of good, but it's a more complicated matter, or so he's told. Continuing their journey, they arrive at Senth, where the succubus leads Brad into a broken down Chapel in the middle of a graveyard. Entering and leaving the corpse outside, brad notices that instead of an altar, there's what seems to be a broken archway. Looking around and slowly shorting the pieces and putting it back together, a drop of light splashes out and ripples in mid air, Enveloping the archway in the blinding but familiar light Brad knows very well. Stepping in after some coercion, Brad finds himself on a white flowerfield.

Wind blowing swaying the flowers like a mother sways her child to sleep, he notices a tree on the hilltop. Approaching it, a strange sense of nostalgia overcomes him. The same tree he climbed many times, and the same old well fed cat on it's branches, now ethereal and glowing in a light blueish color. He recalls meeting with Kaoru once again as he once again climbs the tree to rescue Mittens I forgot the name, so from today on he shall be named Mittens. Mittens after his daring rescue playfully makes his way down into the valley below. Brad curious, follows Mittens and get lead to a wore down chapel, familiar to what the chapel he went to looked like.

The roof collapsed, some windows broken. Overgrown and full of vines and flora, Mittens pounces inside the building's half open door. Brad, slowly creaks open the door to find a long hallway with pillars ending on a raised platform in the same condition as the outside. Making his way inside, he catches some movement behind one of the pillars.

Ah. The light of his life. The succubi who he encountered many years ago. Glowing with the holy light like no other god could even dream of. So beautiful, like a painting. Brad's eyes water as he quickly knees and averts his eyes, unable to bear witness to such perfection. To such Radiance. He hears her soft naked delicate feets pitter patter across the broken tiles and stop just short of him. The light and image of her piercing through Brad's close eyelids.

Slowly her hand making contact with Brad's head and hair, as she pats his head "Brad, You've done right by me. I want you to be my true champion. I want you to be my Dragon". Brad, tears at the opportunity agreeing to fully commit himself to Kaoru, and looks upon her. Her hand patting his head while she uses the other to shield her eyes as she coyfully looks away. Brad suddenly feels unwell. His stomach suddenly churning as if a piece of his human self was torn away, but in an instant it gets replaced by the ever glowing light of Kaoru. Feeling the blinding light take root upon Brad's whole self, he begins to feel himself more than human. Much, much more.

As he kneels and contemplates this change, a glass ball is heard, clinking off the ground as if someone dropped it.
Once.
Twice.
Then the sound of it rolling is heard. It does not slow down at all.
Out from the shadows, a black sphere surfaces, and with it thick black fog and miasma. Still rolling. Rolling with purpose, as if it has a mind of it's own, it stops short of the pair on the raised platform.
The black fog slowly turning into a whirlwind, obscuring the sphere as it melts into a vantablack puddle on the broken tiles, and from it slowly a humanoid form emerges and takes form, almost as if the void itself is carving a shape into the material realm.
As Brad looks on, he can only muster a single word out.
A name.
"…Sishekts…"
The shadow starts to move it's arms in an extremely grotesque method, like as if it wasn't a body moving but everything else was moving away from it. As if it was just a hole on the fabric of reality itself. The shadow slowly points to Brad, then brings it's finger over Kaoru.
"Ahhh, you'll both be mine"
Then his form collapses into a puddle again and seeps deep into the ground using the space between the cracked and broken tiles.

And that's where the session 3 weeks ago ended. This weekend (after two deep abyss), we'll continue and play Barthrow's bit/ending that will give even more context to (an albeit accelerated course of) events, then ice Plains of Conquest and return to Genesis Void. For the most part that will mean that the plains of conquest stuff will be put on hold. Maybe we'll return later if something happens or comes up, but for the most part we'll be sticking to genesis void. As a finish, here's the unlabelled system map for one of the potential systems the Kyroptera crew could end up in when they'll make it out of the Omega Epsilon system (which will be very soon).

>>42064
Continuing with genesis void.

As the trio, George, Anton and Coltan finish watching the tapes, they decide to head to the local gas giant and find the high OCE state official to have him permit whitewalker activities. Zooming off, the ship suddenly geta enveloped by a purple orangish, quote "spacecloud", and as with coltan trying to reverse, stops the ship. While inside, a strange and loud language starts blaring from the on board speakers, and the whole ship goes dark. Exploring outside, the party mamages to find some strange greenish mattersacks on the board, seemingly fused with the metal insides of the ship. Investigating they determine that it's some kind of bioluminescent biomass, sliwly pulsimg, but the party doesn't find any weakpoints like a brain or heart. Shooting it, the organisms just withdraw from the damaged part. Figuring fire will do the job, the party of three equips their two vacc suit and proceeds to light the cargo bay and corridor on fire.

Forgetting to check the life support beforehand, they ptoceed to burn the air inside and Coltan chockes up, but manages to survive.

Going ahead after a heavy reprimanding, they reach the gas giant Fu-Ell and descend into the top layers, and proceed to get docking permission. Landing on the giant floating dome, they are greeted by the port security and are promtly asked for a passenger manifest and ID. After the crew hands these over, George jokes about nukes being on board, and one of the security remarks that George shouldn't joke about things like that, but let them go. Once inside the actual starport, they see a potential passanger arguing with fellow travellers, and ultimately seperating. The party does not care, and thus proceeda to descend on graviton platforms to the level they highly suspect the OCE official is. In the meantime they try to find out as much as they can about him. Appearently the guy cheated on his wife and got into a larger scandal, and promptly got moved a few subsectors over. May be of use.

As the party reaches the level, they find themselves in a retrofuturistic Not Waschington DC. Proceeding further amoung the zipping flying lowrider style cars, the trio gets to the embassy. On the front, a sitting large statue divides two entrances into the building. Pondering over which to go in, they take a right and manage to find a completely empty waiting hall. Just straight up passing the lazy secretary that just looks up to the pqrty from her stamping work, they get to the officials office while hounded by cameras, they overhear talks about offering help for a price, and about some kind of revolution going on in some not so distant system. Barging in, the trio meets Renard, an older noble fleeing from his world due to a revolution. Long talks short, the party arranges an off the book meetup with the official, and Renard promptly gets introduced to the Kyroptera crew.

Just outside and with three hours to spare, the party sets out to eat something, but finds a vensing machine nearby. George buys some granola bars and shares one with Renard. Pheasant food, but you can't just say no to free sweets can you?
Anton hotwires the vending machine, but nearby cameras pick it up (as a tip for next time, you can just try hacking into the camera system beforehand), and shortly two officers arrive. With proof of destruction of property, anton is taken away and refused to pay up so he got locked up for ~3 days.

Renard a pretty high up noble (by papers at least) and George a "retired" hitman make an unlikely pair and get ready for the encounter.

Realizing the radio to reach MR. White is with Anton after an attempt to reach him while still in the embassy, Coltan goes away and makes a pretty good case for Anton. Charges dropped to a warning, and Anton gets an official "reprimanding" from Coltan. Returning to the rest down in the maintance and engineering levels, they also bring the hauler they "acquired" from their time ferrying nukes to Ceres Fe Mineris to use as cower.
Proving to be a solid but useless decision, the official pulls up with two AFVs and around 7 Mercs, all seemingly very used to firefights, as they systematically exit the vehicles covering every angle and forming a shield made of meat and metal around the official.

The meeting goes "smooth" as the radio is given to the official whose face quickly hardens and becomes fearful. Returning the radio, MR.White remarks that the party's job is now done and that they'll receive payment upon leaving 0405-Omega Epsilon (encircled with cyan)

The party, leaving to the spaceport encounter a fellow traveller captain complainong about the fuel prices "We are on a bloody gas giant mate, fuel's everywhere so why the fuck does it cost so much?" The four return to their ship and are met with two new security with a permit to check their ships over. Renard proving his superpower is money, slips a Kilocredit to each guard and they bid adieou. As Coltan is trying to take off, the engines give out and need repairs. Paying for it and waiting a few hours, they finally set off from Fu-Ell into the system. Flying away, Coltan expresses desire to still find Barry and finish the job. Heading back towards Ceres Fe Mineris, the mining planet, the group gets lucky and within the space junk they encounter in the asteroid field, they find an unopened container with 20 tons of cybernetics. Enough to feed everyone for a few hundred years, or so once they sell it. And arrive at Ceres Fe Mineris.

Upon arrival, Captain Coltan sets off to track down Barry and gives the crew "a few days off". Renard sticks around familiarizing himself with the ship, anton goes and works on his cargo drone, and george goes to a bar and starts a barfight with the help of a scamming couple trying to intimidate him into paying, then promptly leaves after setting both the guy and the succubus in their place, and gets ID'd by the police in a routine check they do on travellers.
Following that, Renard and Anton finds a potential buyer for the Cybernetics, but choose to wait for the captains orders, Meanwhile George investigates a heavily damaged ship that crash landed in the repair bay and set the repair yard on fire. Finding some crew members, he encounters Shellby Thomson, an older guy sitting in a nearby cafe in the starport. After some Chitchat, It turns out that Shellby's job was to guard catgo and handle things if they got boarded, Their ship was shot from a planetside cannon the pirates took control over, the shop was transporting some not too legal cargo, and that the Engineer got hurt pretty bad, anf the captain ultimately died. Shellby suspect some foul play or a spy that leaked that they have expensive cargo. Shellby also introduces Glenn, a young man with a scruffy chin.
George gets a job offer: find who did this and i owe you a favor.
George accepts and tells of this to the rest of the party. And so begins the investigation.

>>42364
The party first visits the hurt engineer in a nearby hospital and ask him about the incident. Turns out the guy has amnesia. Huh, how convinient for me. They did mamage to get the info that the engineer was hit by an exploding panrl in the engineroom and got dragged out by Shellby. He also mentions the captain saying something over the onboard comms, but doesn't remember anything else.

The party returns to Glenn, then Shellby to ask for entry into the ship. The party meets with Barry up again, and he rejoins the crew. They also get the roster. The captain was on the bridge for sure. Shellby was in the cargo as usual, watching over it. Engie was in engineers room, and Glenn was asleep in the crew quarters and got awakened by the impact.

Inspecting the ship from the outside then boarding the ship, they check it out and quickly get the picture.

The captain couldn't have died from the impact as it mainly damaged the engineroom. The party also finds out that the illegal cargo were slaves from the nearby system, Duran. Appearently the captain's friend asked him to take the shipment instead of him, but Barry figures that the request drips with hidden intents and agendas. He figures out that the shipment was meant to be hit by orders from a different party, but a switch happened. The problem arouse when it somehow leaked that the shipment was moved to this ship. Looking around, the party finds the black box, a hidden area with a safe and comms terminal hooked up into a different system to be untracable. In the safe, they find 50k creds and a holostick (or future usb) Containing 3 videos for evidence, and an alien artifact (essentially a high tech snowglobe that not simulates but creates macro enviroments.)
The party figures out how it went down. Bonnie a succubi scientist was serving on the ship. As the captain took the job from his friend, she grew dissatisfied by ferrying slaves and argued with the captain. Finally deciding to settle it, she conforted the captain and failed. She retracted to the aecret terminal and left her messages, and contacted the pirates, while he met with the engineer who as it turns out have fallen for her. Huge mistake. She asked the engie to lower the ship's shields and stormed the bridge to shoot and kill the captain. Deciding to wrap up, they hea dbacl to the engineer with amnesia, to blackmail him with this info. He still doesn't remember anything, even after showing him pictures. Anton goes thtough his stuff trying to find a phone but only finds clothes.
Checking back to the hospital reception, the receptionist guy tells them that a succubus crewmwmber already took the engineer's belongings, roughly 10-20 mins after they initially left, and that she was here with a man that kind of looked like the captain, but with a shorter beard.

Getting more involved, the party visits the local morgue and talks with a coroner. Appearently the body has 2 small holes through the captain's chest and heart. More than likely by a laser weapon. There's also signs of a scuffle that haopened to him before his death.

Visiting Shellby, they find him in the same bar, surrounded by glasses and cursing under his breath. Still drinking the caltain's favourite, he gets verbally aggressive with the party a little but apologizes for his mourning methods, and promises the crew what's in the secret safe they already looted if they find and kill both. Also asks about joining the Kyroptera, saying something about how he doesn't wanna be a fucking captain. Anton, the man currently in charge considers this and tells him that Once Coltan is back and looks him over, it's probably going to happen. Then the three leave (they sent Renard to see if somebody tries to board the ship in the meantime), to kill Bonnie and the other yet unknown man and to let Shellby sober up. Returning to the spaceport, they see that the repairyard has become fixed and active again. They board the ship, hatch a plan and wait for two weeks since this weekend we are doing Deep Abyss.

>>42365
Now back onto Barthrows finishing arc (for now)

Barthrow wakes up and finds himself in the iron grips of the rather welcoming family's comfortable bed. Waking up, he talks with the family head over breakfast, and promise to go hunting with him.
Slight retcon to Barthrow reuniting with the party and then heading off with them to the city and then seperating, he checks his own small house in the not so rich area of town, and finds the whole place the same he left it, but now full of dust. Thus he takes up arms and proceeds to brutalize any unable to avoid his eagle like gaze. After a lenghty and hard fought battle between Barthrow and his eternal enemy, he sits down triumphantly to view the carnage he brought onto his countless opponents in the fight, and throwing away the last of the remains, relalizes that ehile he won this battle, the war still rages on to time eternal. All in all, he does a pretty good job of cleaning out his hideyhole, but realizes that he'll probably need to keep a "i'm home from the wilds for like a day" cleaning until he partakes in this lifestyle.

Anyway, after he refreshes both himself and his house, he heads off to report to a secretive group that gave him the job to check out that jungle in the first place. Some talking, info exchange, a good drink and some reports passing hands later, Snail sets out to keep his promise of going on a hunt. Going outside, he sees a gigantic black robed man and a black robed succubi making their way in to the room Barthrow came out of.

Returning to Harvh, he sees the commonfolk surrounding something. Curious, he checks and finds a torn apart wolf. Clawmarks, giant beakmarks, and a large blue feather. Assembling some townsfolk, he goes on to follow the beast and heads towards a rocky outcropping. Sneaking forward he notices a gigantic cockatrice taking a bath in the small lake in the middle of the depressed outcropping. Setting some traps, he almost makes the cockatrice detect him, only to blow out a heartfelt sigh and do it anyway. Battle ensues, as the cockatrice gets trapped by Barthrows spell, it manages to get all but Barthrows host.

As the Battle rages on, The two dark robed individuals show up. The succubus throwing spells and the hulking man using a two handed battleaxe with one hand help decide the fight as Barthrow deals the finishing blow. As the gigantic man is bitten by the coxkatrice, and his black robe torn, reveals scaly skin, a deep face wound, and a stump instead of his left arm. The barbaric lizardman of enourmous strenght returns his axe made from rock onto his back in one fell motion.

The two strangers introduce themselves as members of a new organization, which set it's sights and goal on killing all the gods and letting man decide their own fate, for better or worse. The pair, Mordei, a long black haired succubus and a witch, and Tartasus an absolute beast in every sense of the word, introduce themselves and barter between one other, and tell Barthrow of their leader named Lok, and that until now, they just did what they could to stomp out fate, but it all changed when Tartasus managed to actually kill a small god single handedly, but at a great price. Now that they know that it can be doney they want to assemble a team to do so, and ask Barthrow to join. Taking some time to think, he decides zo join.


As he looks ahead, sharp pain and tingle in his head ia followed by the darkness. Once again, like few times before, the trio's bodies begin to slowly float upwards in the azure blue infinitely stretching ocean.
Ascending, they awaken in the labs in their pody, but instead of the usual assistants, find high tech mercs in pure white armor stare back at them. As they look around, they spot Colins, the guy that was their roommate for a short 2 days that was mysteriously "moved", casually inspecting the trio. As a conversation happens in the background, our party slowly gets put on carts and ferried away in the locked pods to god knows where.

And that's where Plains of Conquest (Formerly Jungle of Doom) currently ended as we get back into space wizarding in Genesis Void.

This episode starts us back in the rolling fortress. Rumbling and screams constantly present, a reassuring sign of man's dominance and cruelty. The day before they witnessed an interesting sight; a strange lanky man in chains summoning food, real food, into the storage area. He was released shortly afterwards and brought to Crushbone, who agreed to let him and a party go to this 'Bunker' to recover more people who wish to leave. And so the Fith, Trey and Jan-chi party are the ones who pick it up. Hell why not.

They head for a night's rest though. Fith and Trey burn midnight oil to study up on this Ryloth fella. The lord of ice. The demon of ice. He's referred to in several different ways but it all boils down to something ancient and buried. The books are the kind of tomes that speak of Ryloth as a theory, as a character from a long gone age. There was an altar discovered in a far away land, in the forgotten empire. The ice was broken and the altar discovered that talked about the sealing of the demon Ryloth who dreamt to turn the world into ice. That's about it, there's not much more than it as a historical curiousity.

Trey has a pleasant dream. He's on a ship. Lying down. He gets up and looks around, it's a fairly large ship with two large sails, something that would be expected to have a fairly large crew. No crew to be seen. He looks for people, and tries to go down to the lower decks. He pulls open a door and peers into the darkness below. While he would see, it takes a while, so he instead conjours some flame. It catches the air, it catches something, but the spark triggers a chain reaction flowing down into the bowels of the ship. He stands for a bit, and gets the hell out of there. He just makes it out when flames pour out of the door he opened, as if thrown by a giant flamethrower, burning liquid pouring over everything, engulfing everything in searing flames. Jan-chi looks at himself, and sees the burning liquid did not escape him, it's burning right on him. He takes a while to register any kind of feeling, but it doesn't come. Just a pleasant warmth. He walks around in the inferno, on fire himself, and basks as the ship starts to sink. It sinks into the ocean, an ocean of blood and corpses, and Jan-chi just laughs as the water consumes him. He wakes with a pleased smile on his face, but the memory of the dream fades as he realigns with reality.

Jan-chi finds and wakes Trey and Fith. They debate on what to do with the day, and figure that going to this bunker will be a decent idea. They manage to find what happened to Timeo Starcutter. Jan-chi finds his feet sticking out the end of a bunk, and wakes the man. He regrets his life not being a dream once returned to reality, but gets on with it. He suggests breakfast. They go to the kitchen and Timeor summons an absolute feast of a breakfast. Timeor thinks nothing of it but this is the first real food the party has had for a while. They do some mercantilism, as Timeor buys a coat and Fith sells a sword. Fairly flush.

Timeor remembers that he doesn't really know the way from here to where he was captured due to the whole slave thing, but if he was brought back there he could find his way. So they find the scouts who found him,  Jan-chi steals some gold from them, and get the surprisingly specific and accurate directions. They aren't scouts in just name. The party do a few more odd jobs before finally managing to leave, and they also found out where the lever that opens the cargo bay door was. They also found out that the fortress is being pulled backwards, not forwards, as the cargo bay door opens in the wrong direction for the direction of movement. I guess this is what happens when you lash slaves to a side without really caring.

They on their journey converse about the society that Timeor is from. They find out a lot of things. The main thing they learn is that the population is limited to 100 people, and they pretty much all generate their own food and water. Air is at a premium though, and so the population is limited that way. There was a war once, and while 'only' 50 people died, Timeor emphasies that this was 50% of the population. Imagine if a war above cost 50% of the people in the country during it. It'd be apocalpytic. Timeor explains that he broke out from the bunker, since he was not a fan of the direction it was going. The whole 100 people rule is practical, but over the centuries locked away, it got wrapped in religion, possibly for the greed and lust for power of the people who claim to be in communion with the Creator. The gate to the outside was supposed to be 'Hell's gate'. Clearly he wasn't killed by Katasm. But not that it matters, it's all a bunch of crap.

The party is too curious so there's a lot of telling and not showing about how their system works. They grow plants for air, and just generate food magically for sustinance. The magical food rots quickly, but that works just fine if the goal is to compost it for a sustainable source of something to grow plants in. He explains a lot about their society, and that he's sure he can convince a decent group of people to come with him when he leaves back through the so called 'Hell's Gate'. Surely people must have noticed it was cold iron. Timeor puts forth the question that 'when has facts ever convinced those kinds of people'.

They find their way to the bunker. Wall of iron, and rust. Old, unused. Timeor knocks and speaks, and someone answers and opens it. It's clearly not hell on the other side so it's fine. The party is greeted by an entire precession of these strange looking people. Long, lanky,but with large ribcages is the general description.

One of them introduces herself as Sirga Coldflame. She represents the people here and so welcomes them. She's middle-aged, but her eyes are cold and calculating. She says specifically that they are guests, and must leave within 3 days. As guests of course they don't count towards the 100 people limit. One of her lackeys looks less pleased by this diplomacy though, Timeor says this is Ralma Coldflame. Nasty piece of work even for a Coldflame.

But the children start gathering and asking the strange outsiders quiestions about why they're so short. The children look like lanky monsters, really, but they still act like children. Curious, shameless. Timeor is the designated guide, and leads them around a bit. They head up the bookstore and some high end shops, where he recruits a carpenter and Jan-chi buys a book on how to actually cast the food making magic. It's patronising and for children, but it contains all the relevant information.

Timeor then leads them to a blacksmith, or rather, the blacksmith. The guy is tall, but looks like a muscle man. Large ribs and heavy shoulders betray a life of hammering at metal. Jan-chi tries to mentally put him up against crushbone, but there's a solid difference. While this blacksmith is strong, Crushbone is a titan. There's a level of man you need to be to control a fortress of 70 assholes with brutal force, all to drive a murder fortress close enough to a world ending demon just to show the demon that he's a little bitch. Hammering iron all day isn't quite on the same level. Still Jan-chi smells money and so buys a load of iron at bargin prices. He rubs his hands in glee at the scent of profit.

Timeor leads them to the farm and the crypt. The farm is what captures Fith's attention, but Timeor the tour guide leads them through the crypt. A simple design, it's simply a 4-6 rock coffin wide tunnel that leads deep into the earth, deep into the rock. Timeor walks down it and he shows that 600 years of civilisation is laid here, with each member having their own little engravings and style. They style of the crypt changes as they walk down the centuries, showing trends and forces and even showing the war. 50 coffins, each of the same design, simply and mass produced to show the waste of the war. completely functional. At the end Timeor points out his own grandfather and the extremely boring story that was attached to it. He also talks about one of the empty tombs he found. A fire wizard, interesting since it's spells that are long since forgotten in their society.

They are told by the farmer that they suspect that something's gonna come back. He scared one off, but there's definitely something tunneling up. Big hairy beasties. Many legs. Not a fan. He'd love to do something about it but what's he going to do, summon food on them?

Timero suggests that it's time to rest though. He makes it to his room where they can all stay- and it's bare stone. He sighs and says that 'they probably weren't expecting me to come back'.  Still, there's room to lay bedrolls. Jan-chi insists on laying a tent, but after considering that there's probably little chance of rain, doesn't.

The night is quiet, until a bump. The door closes a little loudly, and there's a 'fucking hell dude'. Trey opens his eyes and can't see shit so he lights a torch. It lluminates and lights a torch. The light wakes everyone up and in the grog of being woken up see a bunch of these  Bunkerians, lanky walking ribcages, casting magic on them. One of them nervously says 'oh hey we thought we'd prepare breakfast'.

Clearly not, something is going on. The party spends a minute being nervous and getting ready for an attack, but it is too late. The spells complete and the trap is sprung. The party all get hit by a spell with a minute cast-time. It's just food, right?

DONK. 45lbs of food falls from a large height on each of the party, sending them all to the ground (in retrospect I should have called for a saving throw) and taking heavy damage like 45lbs of surprisingly dense foods landing on you. Jan-chi reacts first, sending fire flaming down the room, missing both targets. The foes react to the danger, jumping over the bananas and dried hams to stab and slash at him kinda weakly. they were probably expecting the food thing to work better.

Jan-chi flips out and casts a fireball in the corner of the room. The explosion vaporises one of the assailants before he gets a chance to react. Two others have the backsides of their bodies roasted off in intense flame. The flesh melts away, seared fat and flesh crisped and burned. One turns and falls over face first, revealing his back. Or what is left of it, a spinal cord and back of the ribcage the only things left.

The other had the entire middle torso blasted away, the spinal cord breaks and the man falls into two crispy pieces. A smell of vaporised flesh is in the room, along with ringing in the ears. Before they get a chance to be slaughtered, the two remaining assailants shout "100!" and run off. Wary of a trap, they are not pursued. But there was no trap. Timeor elucidates: 100 people. Three died, just now. The entire reason they had to murder people evaporated along with their accomplices. Still, they attempted murder and so would face the courts.
98. At least for now. Timeor laments that his room now smells of body parts and explosions. A piece of some body part slops down from the room and lands next to his face and he just picks it and throws it in the corner. Meh.

Timeor gets up and has to convince the people that they woke up with the fireball that everything is okay and he's sorry that they were woken. Sigh, midnight murder is so tiring. The morning cometh. Gotta compost these fools. Timeor tries to persuade fith that they should be buried just to respect the culture, but hell, you try convincing a druid to to anything put pile the bodies into the ground. In the compost they go.

Jan-chi carries one with his weak telekinesis ring, the body significantly lighter after being blasted. He puts a sheet over it so it kinda looks like a ghost. He barely resists the urge to draw goofy eyes on it. Fith just sheets and carries the other parts. Or body.

And that's where we end for this week. Next week more deep abyss.

The fuzzy speakers suddenly blared up in Paputsik's ears.
-kzzzt- "Commander. We are entering the atmosphere. We should be down there roughly in 30 mins, Over."
"Copy that Richards, over."
Saying so, Paputsik turns back to face towards his men in the cargo hold.
"You heard her, men. We are disembarking in 30. Check your equipment in 15 and be sure to grab your guns this time. You especially, Clarke. I don't want to drag your ass out of an enemy compound ever again because you forgot to bring your stick."
After a short chuckle the soldiers all reply with a hearty "Sir, yes sir!" and turn to their equipment to do some last moment checks. After Everyone's finished, Paputsik pulls out a small Holostick and inserts it into a slot in his wristwatch. Instantly, the watch's projector kick in and visualises a mountainside house.
Paputsik switches the projector over to the one in the middle of the cargo hold, now full of soldiers.
"Now, as you all know, the situation is becoming more and more volatile on Ayruta-7. With a cold war bordering on going hot, Vufra decided to sent us and other teams to remedy the situation. First things first, we'll be parttaking in a cojoined black ops to nab some important folk."
Motioning with his hand near his watch, Paputsik scrolls through the provided pictures.
"The gal we'll need to extract is named Rita Reeves. She's a scientist researching old and long dead alien races. She took part in some striken from public research for Garland Tech, and well, looks like our dear Vufra wants to know about it. Now, we'll land 5 clicks south west of her villa and make the trip on foot. Expect some security equipment and some human resistance, as both sides tried to grab her before, unsuccessfully."
"And i guess even then we need her alive, huh."
"Yes we do, Harold. I only want to see stun and smoke charges being shot out of your grenade launcher, and only after i gave the order."
"Yeah, yeah, i got it, commander."
"Good. Now, back onto the topic. The plan once we arrive is to skirt her villa and try to locate her before we go in. Once we have confirmation on her, team Alpha will sneak in while Team Bravo spots, and provides cover and sniper fire if necessary. Try to make it quick and clean if possible. James and Harold, You'll be in team Bravo. David, Oscar and Clarke, you'll be coming in with me. Any objections?"
"None, commander."
"Good."
Turning back towards the cockpit, Paputsik asks the pilot: "Now Richards, what's our E.T.A, over?"
"Drop off point's in 5 minutes commander, you can ready your man, over."
"Affirmative, man prepare to disembark."
Each soldier quickly zips their belts open and stands up in line. As the platform is lowered and green light given, the 6 soldiers systematically disembark covering every angle.
Stepping outside, Paputsik and his men are treated to a downpour and a thunderstorm. Perfect to mask their operation.Turning back towards the Shuttle, Paputsik does an exegerated swirling hand motion and the strike team disperses as the shuttle zooms away.
"Alright. It's radio silence from now on. We'll stick close and use hand signals and once we reach the area and locate our target, we'll switch to neural comms, but now, let's get a move on."

The strike team begins their hike on difficult terrain towards their goal.
They roll (Athlethics-Endurance)
James (8+0+0=8-success) David (6+1-1=6-fail) Gregor (7+2+0=9-success) Oscar (7+0+1=8-success)
Clarke (8+0+0=8-success) Harold (7+0+2=9-success)
As the strike team marches on, David gets out of breath and requires some time to catch it back. The team stops and waits for 10 minutes.
While waiting, the party discovers a glowing green pond nearby. While not paying attention to David, he fails to stop the urge to drink from it and quench his thirst (5+2=7-fail). As he gulps it down he realizes his mistake, poison hitting his stomach. The poison churns in his stomach dealing (3+2+6) damage. Exhausting all but 1 of his endurance, he takes 2 from his dexterity also.
Oscar spotting David (5+1+2=8-success) quickly calls the others over to the now sprawled out man on the floor, and quickly makes him puke it out and administer some basic treatment (10+1+1=12-success) and gives David some pain pills to restore his endurance.
Continuing their march, the Strike team arrives near the perimeter of the villa, the team is obscured by the thick vegetation and heavy rainstorm. Oscar, being the one with most keen vision, looks around the territory. (9+1+2=12-success)
Scoping the place out, he reports to Gregor.

"Commander, the place is crawling with security detail. I'm also seeing some cameras on the walls and motion sensors near the border of the property."
"Well, we expected some company anyway. Did you see the target?"
"Yeah, she's on the third floor. She seems to be pacing around the room. Does she know we are coming for her?"
"Highly unlikely. You see any recent attempts at getting in?"
"Now that you mention it, one of the doors in the back seems to have been blown off it's hinges."
"Check the security again, are you sure they are actually security?"

Oscar checks to see if they are just disguised (11+1+2=14-success) and notices a sloppily hidden insignia

"Commander, seems like they are just disguised. I'm seeing an insignia on one of the guys."
"How does it look?"
"Kinda looks like an exploding skull, honestly."
"I'm not familiar with such insignia. Harold, you have permission to use frag."
"Fuckin' Great."
"The plan remains the same, but David and Harold will switch teams. Be ready for a firefight, and Clarke, get Richards on the line. We might need a hot evac if things go south."
"Alright, sir."

Clarke begins to try to contact the Strike Team pilot, Richards and the shuttle.(6+2+2=10-success) and gets the signal going.

"The line is established, Commander. 5/5."
"Alright give me the transmitter."
"Richards, this is Commander Gregor, we arrived at the location but seems like somebody got here before us. We'll need you to come back ASAP. We'll either get her out and leave fast, or need to retreat with the injured. Either way, we need you, over."
"Roger that Commander, i can make it there in 30 minutes, over"
"Roger that. Expecting the calvary in 30 minutes, over."
Giving the transmitter back to Clarke, Gregor turns to his men.
"Well then, let's begin, gentleman."

>>42442
James and David stay behind and turn on neural comms waiting for orders, and Harold, Oscar, Gregor and Clarke move in. Approaching the border's property, Clarke takes a gander at the motion sensors (10+2+1=13-success) and realizes they are a model which has a built in bypass. Namely height redtrictions, so slowly crawling across the ground isn't detected. Telling others this, they begin to crawl in the mud during the downpour. Making it out from under the motion sensors, they raise themselves into a deep crouch as they move closer and closer from cover to cover. Approaching closer, one of the "guards" stares off into the distance ahead of them, but the very heavy rain obscures their approach.
Remaining still and in place with their guns pointed towards the guy, Harold tries to sneak closer (7+2+0=9-succes vs 3+2+1=6-fail), he makes it to the porch around the guy. And tries to put the guy into a chokehold (adventage because of stealth, 9+1+1=11-success vs 8+0+1=9-fail)
As Harold wraps his arms around the neck of the "guard" the others rise out from behind cover and approach, guns aimed at the guy.
10 short seconds and the guy is out cold, with his artery being supressed he blanks out. Oscar and Clarke takes him out into the rain and slit his throat to avoid awareness, while Harold and Gregor move into the house, covering the entrances with weapons drawn. Before Clarke and Oscar could enter the house, another invader walks out into the hallway. Feasting on a plate of food, he spots the two and gulps his food down.
(Ambush is auto 12 initiative+tactics(military) skill by Gregor=+4=16 initiative, enemy initiative=4+1=5)
As Harold quickly but silently springs into action to close the distance, Gregor takes aim with his silent gauss pistol and fires. (10+1+0=11-success, 11 damage vs 2 armor=8 damage). As the accelerated metal dart pierces through the mesh armor on the guy, it tears through his flesh and he begins to fall. As Harold reaches the body he tries to grab it and the plate (9+1+0=10-success) and succeeds in not letting neither the plate, the silverware and the body drop. Quickly putting the plate down, he draws his magcutter and puts into the mouth of the dying man. Pushing the button, the man's head severs into two parts in the mouth's line as the extremely strong magnet suddenly reverses it's polarity, shooting out iron dust 100 times stronger than a fireman's hose in a 90° arc. Harold quickly listens in (4+1+1=6-fail), but can't hear anything due to the rain beating down hard outside.
Oscar and Clarke return, and the team decides to go for the capture target instead of housecleaning.

"Alright men, switch to neural comms. We'll be going for our target, so keep an eye out at all times. Bravo, permission granted to start taking shots. If you see any boogies, take 'em down."
"Solid copy, over."
"The rest of you, keep together at all times."
"Sure, commander."

Alpha team continues to the second floor via a staircase they find. Gregor instructs the squad on positioning (6+2+4=12-success). Covering every angle and corner, they arrive on the second floor as a shot rings out from the distance (7+2+3=12-success damage 9 vs 2 armor=7 damage)
Panicked, 3 man barge out of one of the siderooms.
(Ambush is auto 12 initiative+tactics(military) skill by Gregor=+4=16 initiative for strike team, enemy initiative=7+2+1=10)
As the men exit, all four open fire.
Gregor (7+1=8-success, 10 damage vs 3 armor=7 damage) Harold (7-1+0=6-fail/miss) Oscar (9+0+3=12-success 9 damage vs 5 armor=4 damage) Clarke (6+0+2=8-success 8 damage vs 2 armor=6 damage.)
Gregor executes one of the trio immedietly, Harold misfires, Oscar manages to shoot deep into the more armored one's shoulder, and Clarke injures the third. Using their remaining movement, they kick in a nearby door to seek shelter from the incoming fire and retreat. The two enemy combatants, instead of rushing in, hold their action and wait.

"They aren't coming, sir."
"you know what to do Harold"
"Aye, fuckin' aye sir."

Harold equips his RAM GL and approaches the door. As he leans out, the two fire towards his position. Enemy 1 (3+0+2=5-fail) Enemy 2 (9+2+2=13-success Damage 8-3=5 damage vs 3+1=4 armor=1 damage.
As a shot deeply grazes Harold's right arm, he takes aim with his launcher (8+1+2=11-success damage 13 vs 5 armor=8 damage vs 2 armor= 11 damage) and launches a grenade between the two.

A deep and loud rumbling shakes the otherwise structurally durable house.
"Seems like Harold gets to have all the fun."
"Well, maybe don't drink strange shit next time Davis, and you get to go in to have your fun."
"Oh, fuck you. I was gonna buy a new stomach anyway."
As an enemy occupant runs out to the balcony desperately holding a housemaid as hostage screaming towards the void, the barter immedietly stops.
"Commander, come in. One of the invaders came out holding a hostage."
"Is it the target?"
"No sir, seems like a regular housemaid."
"Well then, is she a child of Vufra?
"No, sir."
"Then don't waste my time, James."
"Copy that commander."

James takes aim and fires (7+0+3=10-success, Damage 18 vs 0 armor=18 damage/half damage 9 vs 2 armor=7 damage) straight through both the maid and the attacker, killing the maid and fatally wounding the attacker.

Another shot rings out as the Alpha team continues inside. Advancing through the hallway, Oscar looks around (8+2+2=12-success) and notices some wire boobytraps.
Telling the others, they easily navigate through the wires and reach the stairs. Advancing up, they reach the master bedroom, and it's iron doors, and an uninjured comm system.

"Do we have anything to melt this?
"Don't think so, Clarke."
Grasping at his RAM, Harold chimes in
"I could blow it open."
"No, we don't want to damage the merchandise., let's try speaking to her first."
Turning on the comms, Gregor tries to establish contact. Accepting the comm chat, Rita pipes up instantly.
"Who are you and what do you want?"
"Ma'am, we are here under orders from Vufra. We are here to retrieve you and escort you off planet in exchange for you sharing your findings with us."
"How do i know you aren't lying"
Gregor steps back and raises his upper lip, revealing two thin finger length antlike antennas portruding from his inside his upper lips, now feeling around in the air for scents and pheromones. Shortly folding the antennas back in place, he comes closer again.
"As a scientist working on alien races, i think you know what that means, Doctor."
Rita seems to fall deep into thought (5+3+2=10-success) and realizes that Gregor tells the truth about being a child of Vufra.
"So you say you can get me out of the system"
"Yes Ma'am. Provided you share all your prior and future research with us."
"Alright, but i'll need to retrieve my hard drives first."
"Where are these hard drives?"
"On the second floor. Third room to the left if you are coming upstairs."
"Stay in your shelter, We'll retrieve the hard drive for you."
Turning back towards his team, Gregor just nods and the Alpha team moves out.

While spotting, David looks around (6+2+1=9-success) and sees a smaller vehicle convoy pulling into the compound.
"Captain, we see 3 small vehicles entering the territory, with roughly 15 fighters on board."
"Copy that. Solve it, David".
"Roger that."

David starts cutting a hole on his clothes on his forearm. When finished, he presses a button and raises a container out of his arm.
Putting the Tritech F&F smart missle system down onto a nearby rock, then reaching the back of his neck to retrieve a cable from his wafer jack. Plugging himself into the small smart Missle launcher, he attempta to fire a missle towards the three vehicles (5+2+2=9-success/10+2+2=14-success/6+2+2=10-success). As three missles blast off from the small launcher on a retractable tripod, all three hit their mark and explode the vehicles and their passangers.

"All clear here, captain, though we shouldn't tally long."
"Copy that."
Checking his clock, Gregor sees there are roughly 7 minutes before the pickup shuttle arrives. Alpha team moves through the house but does not encounter any enemies. Finding the computer and harddrives, Gregor orders Bravo team to the villa.
Securing a landingzone, the strike team and Rita board the shuttle as it shoots off into orbit, then the mothership.
As soon as the crew calms down, some banter ensues between David and Harold about who got to have his fun and in what way, which ends up in laughter all around, except in the Vufra children way. By sliding theor antennas out and shaking and clicking them together rapidly. Rita recognizes this behaviour (4+3+2=9-succesy), but is put off none the less.
Making their way back to the base, the Strike Team hands off Rita and her harddrives, but almost immedietly are put onto the next mission.

A war is brewing. Very fast in fact, as a violent conflict broke out in one of the 4 mayor cities in Ayruta-7. Tasked with either the rescue of Vufra Children now trapped by the conflict, or as a hitsquad for the people Vufra wants gone that roam the streets, Gregor chooses the latter, and the team begins preparation for their next outing.

This session starts where we left off last time, in the belly of the bunker. A night assault by food-weilding fanatics, they tried to kill the party by landing heavy food objects on them. The party take the surviving corpses (the non surviving ones having been vaporised) and parade them down to the farms, where they hide them in some compost. Fith enjoys the compost so much he forgets what he was doing and has to be reminded that he's making holes for corpses. Timeor is rather accepting of the whole thing "Well, just make them hidden enough so that they'll find the skeletons after we're gone".

The farmer in charge of the compost is also not giving two shits, he seems to share Fith's love of decomposition and rubs his hands in glee at the thought of meat being part of his lovely compost heap. Of course after Timeor fucks up and is so unsuccessful with his persuasions that he lets out that they buried the corpses. Whoops. Fith hands over the flax seeds he had nurtured, and the farmer is amazed. Flax hasn't been a crop in the bunker for over 200 years, since the great flax fungus took all of them. But now it can be back! The farmer is overjoyed, and Fith shares his desire to grow plants. Nature to nature, mud to mud.

As they try and leave to go back, a succubus limps up to them, crying about her son. Blood is still dripping from her leg. She cries that she was attacked by a giant spider, 2ft wide, who bit her and took off with her child. She hit it with her staff and the spider ran away. She could not do much about this as it disappeared into the darkness, so she came back for help. The party volunteer a little bit, but are pretty cautious about jumping into dark holes for no reason. They take the priority route; and that is to head to the council. They seek justice, of course.

First a detour to the doctor, to treat the succubus's wounds properly. Fith smeared the cut with compost which is not the best thing to cover a wound in. The doctor redresses it and answers some questions. They ask the succubus about where she was when she was attacked. She was in the deeps, looking for mushrooms with her son. Then to the council.

At the council, Sirga Coldflame is there with a bunch of other people. She stands and formally apologises to the party, as she officially invited them here as guests. There's some stirring amongst the council but it ceases after a while. Her oddly shaped head bowed towards them, shows off the golden lace that her religious head ornaments are strewn with. She sends Ralma off to find the culprits. Ralma, a fanatic, objects, but does so out of respect for the leader. He leaves, giving the party an evil eye the whole time. The punishment was supposed to be death by the pit, but the party says to take them as slaves. Their lives are of course forfeit. Fair enough.

The party suggests the next order of business; there's a spider problem near the farms. For a less than modest sum of 1500 gold, they are motivated to go down. They ask for payment that they also be allowed to take other people out of the bunker, and this causes an uproar amongst the council. They can only take so much. Sirga has to put her foot down and say no to this request. Timeor says quietly that he was planning on sneaking people out, so they can just take people out later. No need to get their approval, as they won't get it.

Timeor tries to politely suggest that they have gotten as much as they will get, and to look forward to the judgement hearing. Obviously time to go see the spiders. Trey hates spiders.

They make their way down to the farms, and past the crypt. The cold dry stone has a specific scent to it which circles around the place. The breeze coming from the farms is warm and pleasant. Timeor leads them to the deep. He likes spiders less than they do, but he will use the time to talk to his contacts and convince them to join him in a trip outside. Permanently.

Trey follows his instincts and with a investigation roll of 28, easily finds the spider lair. The traces of blood, the thin lines of web, he sees it with precision, with superior senses and ability. The fate and purpose of what happened here are as clear as day. There were no lies but the spider's path is true and clear. Pretty good since spiders can't even roll higher than 27. The cave is found.

They make their way in, pretty casually. The feeling of the cave sends shivers down trey's spine. The little details- The carpet of thin old spiderweb, the slight sounds of chittering, and the smell of decomposing flesh just tingling on the breeze. The party moves on, and fith manages to step on some kind of bear-trap made for spiders. He clicks it but rapidly pulls his leg out, the delayed mechanism clanking together shut and echoing throughout the cave.

One section of the cave has an entrance with runic markings laid down. Trey investigates, and he can tell that it's some kind of ward or barrier, but the spell as been extinguished long ago. It can only last so long. They head inside and there is little webbing here compared to outside, it is old and frail. There is a decomposed body here, dried and withered. It seems unmolested by the spiders, but it is clearly a Bunkerian ,with the strange elongated head and long limbs. Next to him lies a journal, laden with regrets about a Bunker that existed 300 years ago. He writes about going down to deal with some critters. Burn them out. What could go wrong? Nothing else remains.

They head down another corridor, and Jan-chi is ambushed by a ceiling spider. 2 ft wide, it is huge and with nasty long fangs. The momentum of the fall causes Jan-chi to take blunderous damage. He staggers, the poison feeling like acid in his veins. Out of the darkness comes something else. Something larger, with clacking mandibles and 8 huge legs, a massive spider, 6ft in diameter, and another one. Trey jumps into the fray, and the giant spiders attack him. Jan's twinned flame attacks keep missing, with Trey and Jan-chi taking blow after blow, sickeningly burning poison spreading around their veins, feeling like hot skewers being pushed down their veins.

Trey fights. Jan-chi is healed, but it's looking grim. Trey is one hit away from dying, and the giant spider facing him is also one hit away. He takes the risk. The spear thrusts forwards, a spiral of green flame coming out from his hands and around the shaft and exploding on impact around the bladed tip as it buries into the giant spider's abdomen. The flame explodes into it and bursts around, licking the other spider.

Jan-chi dances around and unleashes a wall of flame from himself, catching some of the spiders and roasting them. The situation leaves the knife edge of life and death as Fith whacks the last spiders with his Shillelagh. The party rests, and Fith decides that if crab is delicious, so will be giant spider. Making the other party members more than a little sick, Fith breaks some spider leg and sucks out the gooey warm mush inside. Delicious. Nature's bounty. After recovering from the spiders and Fith's meal, the party continues. Surely there can't be more hidden spiders everywhere!

There were. Jan spots one in the distance and hits it with a firebolt, causing it to scurry off. While checking out where it went to, one falls on Fith from the ceiling, trying to bit him. It misses and Fith sends to the graveyard by squishing it to the ground. The other one takes another firebolt and perishes. In the distance is a glowing orb, suspended by web. Surely this will not be another trap. The party advances carefully, and spots the two spiders before they have a chance to strike. Trey decides to ignore them and go for the glowy thing.

Fith and Jan ready their actions in case the spiders strike. Trey grabs the ball and loses the initiative. Jan's twinned chromatic orbs go flying into the air, missing the spiders again. Fith's acid splash works a bit, but not by very much. The third unseen spider also attacks Trey, but by this point it is too late since Fith and Jan have more chances to attack. Another twinned fire chromatic orb actually hits, and splashes against the two spiders. Success. The glowy blue ball is theirs. After careful investigation, Trey figures out two important details about this ball. One; it is blue. Two; It glows. Not much else is there. Getting easy now. They head on, taking potshots at spiders they happen to see.

Overconfidence is a slow and insidiou- another spider they missed jumps on Fith. It misses, and Fith bats it like a baseball, cracking it against the cave wall. The Firebolt that missed the spider gives Jan-Chi an idea; he fires a firebolt down the cave section, sees an ungodly amount of spiders due to his good perception roll, and just fireballs them. Another explosion rips through the cave, sending shockwaves around, and robbing the characters of yet more hearing. Much burned spider screeching is heard from the cave, but many survived and they flood out of the cave to be shot down like animals.

Trey handles them skilfully, taking the spiders on. Jan-chi relishes the opportunity to do more AoE spells, considering most of the time he's been ambushed. Being surrounded is not a good time for Jan-chi, but he manages. He claps his hands together, before light and heat starts emanating from in-between, he looks like he's straining to keep his hands together as more flames spread from the compression- and he tilts his hands forwards to release a wave of flame covering more spiders in burning death. The spiders are much less hidden than last time. Fith smashes, and Trey impales with fiery green death the smaller spiders. Roasted spider is the order of the day, and Fith gets hungry again. Trey and Jan-chi turn away. They cannot watch.

After Fith can't possibly eat any more, they check out a cocooned figure suspended by webbing in the room. Fith gets close to investigate, and tears away some of the webbing, revealing an oddly shaped head. Fith leans in, trying to observe the man's gaunt, pale features. Yellow, sickly skin, and closed eyes. The eyelids move. The mouth hangs open a little bit and two words are forced out; "Kill me".

Fith immediately tries to save the man, pulling him out. As the webbing is removed the full extent of his experience comes to light. He's little more than a skeleton, bite marks all over his body, flesh mostly torn away, piece by piece, year by year. The poor man is barely sane; "fangs cutting scraping screeching no help never help". They drag the man out of the cave and bring him up to the doctor. The doctor recommend euthanasia, but Fith disagrees. The doctor does what he can.

The party move back down to the cave to finish the critters off.

And we ended here.
Next week; hopefully genesis void. More spess.

Keter Intelligence Agency
Document id: 27648304/31
Address: Kordosh, Ditrian street 72/4
Date: 2873/08/24 (yyyy/mm/dd)
Handler: Dexter Ferguson
___________________________________
Report regarding the Garrisod Incident

Upon further further incursion and exploration into the "Garrisod", the scout team were still unable to find the first contact party and previous MIA scout teams that had entered the former abandoned spacestation turned superstructure.
The origin of the spacestation is still a mystery, just like the fact of it warping here.
Alongside proof of previous, non Keter personnel exploration attempts, scout teams discovered both extremely high tech and low tech areas upon exploring the superstructure. Due to the complication of the structure constantly changing, the scouts were unable to relocate the specific areas upon leaving.

Many scouts reported experiencing mild to extreme stress, nausea and discomfort upon returning to Keter and a general unwillingness to return to the superstructure, while a very small number of scouts reported the opposite, feeling "off" and "under the weather" while not inside the Garrisod.

Members of the scout force that ventured inside the anomalious spacestation more than 2 times reported strange, small and solidified flan outgrows on their bodies, ranging in 1 to 7 centimeters in lenght and 3 to 1793 in number. (see attachment #465/A, #465/B, #465/C)
Upon further study by our scientist division, it seems like these flans or small flaps are some kind of strange alien flora. The effects and properties of these flans is still under observation and research.

Out of the 174 scout teams, only 52 remain in active service to help with the continued exploration of the Garrisod. Recommended course of action is to expand recruitment beyond the system to gather more potential scouts from nearby systems and to allow Travellers to, within regulations, explore the superstructure.

As for the current operations, Scout team #41 managed to recover an audiolog (See Attachment 784), team #9 reported the presence of flans manifesting on 3 members, team #65 reported observing something moving through the rubble deeper inside the structure, but couldn't make contact as it scurried away from behind a pile of metallic rubbish, and team #159 is reported missing. The rest continued their exploration, but found nothing of interest.

___________________________________
Attachments:
___________________________________
#465/A
The picture shows a naked older male's shoulders and neck. Starting from his left side elbow, enveloping his neck front and back, a little of his chin and ending on his right shoulder is what looks like thousands of small, whitish flans spread out like scales or feathers over the man's body. The flans seem to not all have the same directional growth as they differ in angle and lenght, not unlike grass.

#465/B
Video of the same, old man. Shot in a white room, the man is filmed sitting then doing some excersises. The flans seem to perk up and tense, then flap down and relax as the man breathes. As the man gets up and does some stretches, the flans seem to react to his movements and flatten if they would be in the way for it's host, adopting the look of pure white scales. As an experiment, the doctor takes a small hammer and taps the old mans left shoulder twice. The first hit lands causing minor pain for the afflicted scout, after which the flans arrange themselves in a scale like methodical layering. The second hit bounces off the flans. No pain felt by the scout this time however, as the flans absorbed the blow. The old scout moves his hands around, and the "scales" adjust almost instantly. The scales remain tensed and gripped onto the mans shoulder for a minute more, after which they relax and perk up once again.

#465/C
Audio of an interview with the old scout (participants referred to as Doctor Simon Howell (S) and Senior Scout Orlando Decarter (O)

S:Hello, my name is Simon Howell, and i'm the lead researcher in this case. As the first patient, i wanted to ask some questions. You are called Orlando Decarter from scout team #41, is that correct?
O: Yeah, nice to meet you doctor.
S: Same. So, let's get right into it, shall we? When was the first time you noticed these growths?
O: umm, let me think. Around 6 or 7 days, i believe, though it wasn't me who noticed them at first, but my crewmate, Percy.
S: So around a week ago. I remember reading your report that says that your growths "multiplied" since. How many were there when it was first noticed, and on which part of your body did it begin?
O: 13 really small ones on the back of my neck. Percy counted 13, and i checked it in the mirror later as well, and it was 13.
S: I see. Do these growth bring you any pain?
O: None at all, rather i don't "feel" them. I can still feel if i'm being touched on the skin or if the things are poked. When they stand up i can't feel them, but when they curve down like scales, it feels like being in clothing, like a t-shirt. You don't really feel your shirts all of the time, it's kind of just there.
S: Can or did you try to control these growths?
O: I'm not going to lie, i can't say i didn't try, but they seem to have a mind of their own.
S: Did you do any kind of activity that might give a hint to the origin of these growths?
O: I don't recall anything really specific aside from exploring the Garrisod with my crewmates
S: …I received reports which state that contact with your team was lost for 37 minutes. Could you give me a description of those 37 minutes?
O: Of course. As we ventured forward, another shift in the structure came, and the room locked down during the time stuff moved about. When the shaking subsided, we tried to reestablish comms with the scout force, but we failed. We decided to go a room over trying to get a signal, but we ended up in what seemed like a bridge of a small spaceship.
Inside we found a couple of human skeletons, aged around 4-5 hundred years old, one of them, probably a male between 20-30 years old was cluthing a tape recorder. Lucky for us, the bridge's radiation protection was still active and we were able to recover the tape to digitalize. Anyway, everything seemed functional, but the windows instead opened up to another room. We tried to establish comms again using the equipment on the bridge, hoping we would get a better signal, but to no avail. With nowhere else to go, we tried to blast the frontal window open. Thankfully it was lower tech, and we managed to create a hole in it. Crossing to the other room, we tried to establish comms again. This time we succeeded.
S:I see, Thank you for your time, Mr.Decarter.
O:Oh, Don't worry about it, doctor. So can i start preparing for my next expedition?
S:Certainly.

>>42500
#784
Audio and videolog recovered from the Garrisod. Appearently made the time around the Great Blackout of Humanity (2298), putting it 200 years before humanity first discovered and made contact with an Equal Level alien species, the Quip'toahs, a snail like race that replaced it's biological bodies with plastic shells, and biofibers, and 575 years before the modern day.

A faint, unconfident voice comes through the audio, and a young man with straight black hair and glasses comes into the picture.
"Uh, this is day, uh, 23. My name is Robin Croiss, and uh, i'm from the H.R.S, that is, the Human Research Society for people in general. Currently, i am uh, traveling."
"Oh, yeah, im with a crew of two i hired to take me to my new assigned research station in deep space. Appearently, the HRS needs my expertise. So, uh, i guess i'm much needed, heh."

Roll on the space encounters table d66+encounter modifier (4,3=43-4=35)
The ship comes into contact with a safari or science ship. Robin has a scientist rival he acquired during his schollar career. His rival tries to get the ship he's on currently to drop him off on a spacestation on the way so she can get to the research station first. Rival rolls persuade on captain while Croiss rolls persuade to counter the rivals attempt. (12+1-3=10 draw vs 6+2+2=10 draw)

"Day 27. We've, uh, come across another scientific vessel. That stupid Renee Ri-something was onboard and she tried to get the crew to just abandon me! The gall of that bloody succubus! To hell with her! I managed to defend myself in front of the captain, but who knows what goes through his head! Just to be sure i doubled my offer if we can get there faster than her."

After a jump, the ship runs low on fuel. Landing on the system spaceport, Robin spends some money on some luxury goods while the captain refuels and looks around for potential passangers. Croiss spends 1d6x1000 credits (6x1000=6000 credits), leaving him 55k from his original starting money of 81k, with the passage already payed for in double (20k creds).
Roll on the urban encounters d66 (6,3=63-unusually empty or quiet street)
After his shopping spree, Croiss turn a corner on his way back to the spaceport and soon notices the eerily quietness and emptyness of the street. He looks around using Recon 2d6+int mod+skill level (7+1+1=9-success) and notices warning and reminder signs detailing a curfew locals must adhere to, plus a local police car slowly driving around. Noticing Croiss, they stop to ID him, but as he's not a resident, they let say good bye and leave. Returning into the spaceport, he meets up with his escort, and proptly leave with 1d6 (4) new passengers. Rolling urban characters table d66 and random trait table d66 x4
Passenger 1: (31-65) Retired interplanetary hunter-lacks a sense of humor
Passenger 2: (42-42) Hated corporate executive-missing one or more limbs
Passenger 3: (55-32) Demented innovator-member of a bizarre cult
Passenger 4: (43-31) Daring robber-Mutant [level 1d6 (1-benign) type 2d6 (5-palm mouth. Can recognize any chemical, cannot be poisoned.)]
Taking these passangers out the spaceship sets out once again.

"Day 35, We are on, Oh. (The sound of a throath cleaning is heard.) Day 35. My name is Robin Croiss. We are currently well on our way to my new station to work at. A couple of days and we should be there."
"The new passengers are all weird people. Quincy was appearently some kind of beast hunter. I told him an excellent high brow joke about his former occupation, but he just stared at me. Maybe my humor is too advanced for him."
Then there's Evelyn, some kind of executive at some tech company. She looks kind of scary, with a gaze that could kill, though the missing left arm also helps. She hangs out a lot with that crazy inventor, Ishida. He has a few screws loose i tell you! He seems to have some weird faith."
"And of course, Larry. He doesn't talk much about what he does, but he has a strange obsession with leather jackets and gloves and such. Hopefully we'll arrive soon, i don't want to spend a lot of time with these people!"

"Day 42. I arrived! And sooner that that Renee Ri-something as well! After we land i can finally begin my new life working here on something actually interesting! For now, i'll leave and make the second part of todays recording after i get my assigned quarter."

The spaceship attempts to land on the spaceport on the asteroid, but before it could ask for landing permit, a strange, dark blue light envelopes the station, then suddenly something in the shape of an octahedron starts to rapidly expand from the asteroid base, soon enveloping the spaceship into it's structure. Machinery and metal shooting out traps the spaceship and fuses it to the octahedron. Lost on what happened, Croiss tries to make sense of what happened and rolls intelligence. 2d6+int mod (9+1=10-success). And figures that the anomaly that he came to work on somehow became active.
Returning to the crew, he begins to elaborate.

Croiss:"So, uh, all in all that's the deal. Seems like we are currently O.K, though that might change if the ship's life support shuts down. Currently our best option is to enable the ship sos signal and try to reach the asteroid base. If our ship just got swallowed but not destroyed, then it's the same for the base as well. Since that base is self sufficient, we should make the trip and bring everyone there."

The others listen and decide on voting. 1 vote on Croiss's plan (by Croiss himself), and 6 on staying (4 passangers and 2 crew). Enraged, Croiss gathers his belongings and storms out with his Vacc-Suit.

"8 Hours. That's the time the suit can hold up life support for the wearer. 8 Hours to make it to the asteroid base. I'm already beginning to regret my hasty decision now that i started realizing the scope of the trip and the terrain i'll need to make it through to get there. But what do those commoners know. I WAS the smartest man on board, after all. Diploma after diploma. Success after success, and what do they have? Nothing. Once the ship runs out of fuel, which will be soon since we jumped quite a bit, they'll die. Besides, now was not the time to doubt myself self."

As Croiss marches on in the ever oppressive and narrow corridors, rooms, ducts and spaces, he started to settle into a nice pace. Reaching a room chokfull of pipes and wires, he decides to look around. Croiss rolls Recon 1d6+edu mod+skill level (10+2+1=13-success) he finds a large industrial wrench near a skeleton wearing a strange red and low tech astronaut suit, bearing the communist symbol of the USSR, a symbol last beared during the war in 1975, which resulted in mutual elimination of the USA and the USSR over a V-3 type atom bomb equipped with the first interstellar engine, the Reine drive.
Croiss decides to hang onto it for good and head on. As Croiss is about to open the door, he sees it open on it's own before him. Stepping through, he hears some scraping behind him. Turning around and backing into the new room, he closes the door. Breathing a sigh of relief, he chokes up when he tries to breathe in. Panicking, he exhales and is surprised when air fills his lungs upon exhaling.
He rolls intelligence 2d6+int mod (5+1=6-failure)
Repeating it a few times, he figures that it must be some kind of anomalistic property of this room that makes this trick, but what it is, is questionable. The hud also seems to strangely indicate the remaining time of the life support ticking up instead of down. Croiss starts hearing a voice familiar to his own say incoherent words and sentences. Looking around, he tries to find the source of the sound. He rolls Recon 2d6+int mod+skill level (8+1+1=10-success).
Going around the room he always hears it close by. He checks himself and finds his tapecorder playing a tape he didn't record. Pressing play and stop button, he decides to record current his thoughts.

".esab eht ot teg ot no yrruh ot deen i, revertahw hA !neppah ot desoppus t'nsaw sihT .sdrawkcaB .desrever eb ot smees gnihtyrevE .ni yltnerruc m'i moor eht ni ,won dna ,no gnillevart saw i pihs eht depolevne gniht lacinahcem egral a tsriF .gnineppah si egnarts gnihtemos tub , llits 24 yad s'ti kniht i, hU"

After realizing he didn't press the button, Croiss presses it anyway for good measure and uses his leg to flick upright a chair amoung the rubble and sit down and leans back in the chair. Spending some minutes to catch his breath, he reminds himself of his goals to find the base. Standing up he goes to a lockers and looks through them. Finding a bottle of Crysantic pills, a type of neural booster drug, he opens the bottle, but a sudden vomiting urge overcomes him. Using the drug's bottle to contain it, he avoids the viewing of the content. Overcome with a sense of fear and desperation for his situation, croiss opts to beat the lockers up to relieve his current anger. Blow after blow the lockers move about. After finishing, Croiss once again hears a scraping noise from where he entered the room. Cautious, he turns his front towards the source and makes his way towards the other exit from the room. Easily finding the handle, he looks behind him temporarily, to a corridor and exits.

>>42501
Croiss heads down the corridor as pulses of dark blue and dark purple light fills the corridor occasionally, like a train arriving and departing stations as the room begins to shake. Croiss tries to stay standing 2d6+dex mod (4-1=3-fail), but fails and falls onto his knees as the corridor he's in violently shakes. Unable to do anything but wait, he remains prone. After what feels like an eternity, the rumbling stops. Getting back on his feet, Robin sets out forward again. As the pneumatic doors slide open, a lightless room up ahead opens. Looking in, Croiss sees three by three, lightblue triple eyes pop out of the darkness and turn towards him. Backing away, he sees one pair raise itself to 2 and a half times the height Robin is and albeit slowly, but effortlessly glide towards him. The schollar, unable to defend himself in spirit falls as he tries to escape and freezes in horros as a mass of tectales, an octopuslike creature emerges from the shadowy room. As the creature is inching closer, metal hitting metal is heard, and a hand, reaching out drags Croiss into a small shaft. As Robin is blindly kicking and punching, he hears the voice of Evelyn. The one armed passenger he met before the disaster.

"Shh, it's me, Evelyn. Stop trying to get away."
"Oh, okay. Sorry."
"Don't worry about it, just quiet down. The crawlers react to noise."
"Crawlers?"
"Yeah, the crawlers. You know, the 6 legged rat like things? The robotic rats? Those things."
"I-i didn't see any of those, uh, are they hostile?"
Evelyn shoots Croiss a look of confusion
"…Well, you warned us about them after they appearently attacked you, do you not remember? Came back with quite a few scars and everything after like 3 hours, then set off again with Ishida, raving about some kind of "core".
"Huh, that's impossible. I've only been away for half an hour at max. My suit is only lacking around 30 minutes of life support."
"…Stop fucking around Croiss, did you get your brain fried? You left with Ishida 6 days ago and never returned. I had to go retrieve my company asset, so where is Ishida?"
"I don't know. Just check my vacc suit system or the internal clock! Ill give you perm-"
"I don't fucking care. where, the, fucking, hell, is, Ishida, Fuckface?"
A loud whirr is once again heard, and the shaking begins again.
Crammed into a small vent, they take the rubbling well. After it settled, Evelyn starts first.
"This isn't finished just so you know, Croiss, but we'll deal with it later. Right now we need to find a safe room."

Crawling around, they manage to find a room with breathable atmosphere. There they bring eachother up to speed.

Larry set out second, then Quincy third. Minutes after Quincy set out, he returned with an injured Croiss, who told the crew what happed outside. Quincy set off again, while Croiss convinced Ishida to come with him to locate the core, citing some of his religion of machinery. The crew and Evelyn stayed, but the ship's fuel ran out. The pilot and gunner committed double suicide in lovers embrace and left Evelyn a Vacc suit were she wish to struggle. Hatching a plan, the pair thinks about their next actions. Croiss becomes more and more fascinated by what's going on by the minute. Rewinding his last tape confirms his belief that he entered into a time anomaly during his first outing, while Evelyn wants to find a way out. They decide to head on and push towards the core.
Both roll navigation 2d6+int mod+skill level (Evelyn 5+0-3=2-fail, Croiss 7+1+1=9-success) they find a path leading towards the core indicated by increased alien radiation. Marching on, they manage to reach close to the core.
A familiar voice rang out from a dark corner in the room they enter into. Shining light upon it, they see what seems to be Croiss, Larry and the meral surface of the room fusing into one, with strange biological bioluminescent jellylike material coating the walls nearby, like a cluster of fetid pimples fusing into both flesh and metal.

"Help me" Rang out the drawn out but unified voice of both the second Croiss and Larry.
"Jesus. Is that really me?"
"Something is really going on with this bloody metal hell. Let's go."
"You are searching for the core, aren't you? Oh, the core. How i long to see it again. Such brilliance. Help me and i'll tell you where it is." The abdomination spoke.
"Yeah, i don't think we should listen to this fleshy heap, even if it is you, Croiss, let's go."
"A-Alright. Just give me a second. I want to put him out of his-my mysery."
"Ugh, sure but i don't want to watch it. I'll be waiting outside."
Coming closer, Croiss raises his wrench.
"No, you don't understand! She'll betray me! Betray you! That succubus, she won't understand! You have to help me…"
"And what can i even do to help a mess like you?"
"Cut Larry's and your hand off and touch Larry's hand to yours. The flesh will fuse but you won't have long. Use it to looks for ferrofluids, you'll instantly know the taste. A small dose will be enough."

Croiss weights his decision and rolls intelligence. 2d6+int mod (8+1=9-success). Deciding to trust himself, he searches the room and finds a smaller vibroblade. Looking onto Larry he begins to cut his arm off.

"Sorry about this, Larry."
"Haha, don't worry about it Robin. You are an alright guy, especially after what you done. Others might think it's cruel if they knew, but i know it was the right thing to do."
Croiss, confused, cuts Larry's arm off then proceeds to get out of his vacc suit. Prepating to cut his hand off, he steels himself. As the vibroblade slices off one of his arms, Veins portrude on his face. The incredible pain is very temporary, but such man as Robin is not used to pain. Taking Larry's arm and putting it close to the stump, growth suddenly sprout and inpale it, pulling the spazzing arm into it's place. Moments later the flesh fully fuses. Taking two steps, Robin feels a slight tingle inside his skull which makes his shudder. Suddenly he feels something change. Something become…Different…
"Now go and find some ferrofluid."
"I will."

Heading out the room, Croiss looks around the corridor noticing Evelyn waiting for him.
"I heard some screaming. Are you okay?"
"Yes, now let's go."
"Oh, sure."
After minutes of silent trecking from room to room, Evelyn pipes up again.

"I guess having to kill yourself was a pretty hard thing to do, Croiss. I don't know what i would have done."
"Yeah, i guess."
The pair reaches a "caved in area" and begin lobbing metal trash aside to pass by.
"You know, i like people who can make hard decisions and stick to them like that. Sadly my juniors didn't see that way, so i was hated and despised everywhere i went as an executive. Oh, you are too competitive, oh you are too aggressive, they always said. Well the company still boomed under my leadership, but my enemies made a mess of that. So now i just skirt around space looking for corporations to hire me. Well used to anyway."
"And why tell me all this?"
" I don't really know. I just felt like it. Guess you could say it's the stress getting to me, or maybe it's that famous bridge suspension effect."
As the blockade clears, the duo heads onwards.
"Well, i was born as a countryboy in a colony. Luckily i was smart enough to realize my future life's at stake, so i studied like mad, and got into university."
"Oh, a learned man, i see."
"You could say that. Anyway i got graduated and got work at local labs. I mostly worked with computers and electronics. I made a decent living, but my research partner fucked me over and i was ejected from my career."
"Tough luck."
"Well it wasn't as much luck as meddling that got me fired."
"So what did you come he-"
A sudden clang is heard.

>>42502
Ahead, 3 blue eyes light up. Readying for combat the two ready their melee. As the figure approaches and light touches it's form, Ishida stumbles foraward with a third eye on his forehead looking elsewhere than his normal eyes.

"Ishida, you are alive! Great!"
As Evelyn visibly becomes joyful, Croiss draws back.
"Ishida?"
Ishida's form stays standing, staring forward as his third eye zaps around.
"Ishi-"
"Don't go any closer!"
The third eye, focusing in on Evelyn, suddenly fires a beam, liquifying the succubus into a black mass. As the mass splashes onto Croiss, it seeps into Larry's hand, and the neurons fire up in Croiss' brain to return a single message: Ferrofluid.
Looking onto Ishida, the third eye closes, returning him to only two, but still fluorescent eyes.
"The path is clear, Saviour. Now go forth and save us all."
With that said, Ishimura is suddenly overcone with dark blue and dark purple light, exploding into gore.
"Day 42. Wait, no. Day 48 according to what Evelyn said. Currently i'm heading towards the core with the ferrofluid. I've come to disbelieve god during my academic and scientific exploits, but hell, I could use god right now. Appearently i entered into another strange room, and now i only have an hour left in this suit. These rooms constantly change, the layouts constantly change, and i just hope that i don't end up taken farther away from the core during one of the rearrangements. For all i know, this god damned labyrinth might be playing with me. My only chance now is to get to the core, deliver the fluid and hope for the best. This will be my last message, as the batteries are on the verge of dying. Non rechargable, i'm afraid."
"Well, This was Robim Croiss of HRS, or Human Research Society. I hope to god i'll make it out, but if i don't i just hole this will be found. Croiss, over and ou-"
Blam! a gunshot is heard.
"Aargh, shit."
"Croiss, you bastard! Why did you do it? Why did you doom us all? I bloody trusted you and look what you did!"
Evelyn emerges from the shadows, a sa pile of metal and flesh fused together. Not so much holding, but rather "interfacing" with the gun, The blob of meat shoots again, hitting Croiss' right leg, who surprisingly does not screan ou in pain. Suddenly, Larry's hand tears itself off and launches to attach itself onto the biomass formerly known as Evelyn, then probing her mind and stopping her from shooting. The now one armed Croiss taking the opportunity stands up and limps off hurriedly, leaving the tapecorder behind as the tape cuts to empty static.

Silence, Silence, Silence.
Seconds turn into minutes. Minutes into even more minutes, but nothing seems to happen. The occasional creaking of metal becomes a metronome to count time against. An hour. Two.
Darkness. Oh, and the darkness. Silouette's barely visible squinting. Light almost none existent. The darkness inside your head is something
After getting used to the silence and the darkness, the noises from the busy spaceport outside start to seep into the ship, or maybe it's just the imagination given audiotory presence inside the ear. A truck passes by and ships land. People shuffle and talk, bags being dragged, machinery perfoming their tasks, yet nobody comes in. The pondering and realization that the darkness inside your head is something your imagination fills with things that have nothing to do with the real darkness around you. Silence. Then, a creak. The hydraulics starts to lower the landing pad. Sweat starts to gather as the air is getting thicker with anticipation. Heartbeat accelerates, pupils dilate, muscles tense.
Two pairs of feet push themselves inside the darkness, swallowed whole they whisper to eachother.
The strenght that you grab your guns and swords double. Adrenalin shooting into your bloodstream.
You perk your ears and catch a few broken sentences, but your mind is already on edge and filters this information.
The two feet start to move once again, now towards your positions. As the two pass the ambush cutoff point you see their outline against the darkness. They stop. The smaller one turns towards you staring in your direction. You tense to the stillness of the metal walls as the eyes gaze over you. You grip your weapons, ready to attack, but she averts her eyes and the pair continues inside.
Reaching the corridor, you remember the plan and spring into action. A second passes and you are screaming at the two, weapons in hand. A man and a succubus. The man complies, but the succubus goes for the man's gun. Struggling with taking the gun out, you bash her head until she's out and tie them up. The man tells a story about being a eorker of Plasti Corp. A corporation specialiuing in performing plastic surgeries on it's workers to fulfill requests related to people. Wanting to see someone dead again, or if you want to hire a body double. His ID card checks out.


The crew forms a plan. Let the dude go, kill the succubus as agreed. Shellby agrees to the killing part, but they want to not kill the dude, "professional to professional" as George puts it. Coming out of the ship, a strange blurry blue halo materializes behind Anton's head. He looses vision, only to see three masked man floating in a cross legged sitting position, with blue halos behind their heads. As these 3 look onto Anton, a fourth figure emerges. Coltan, now too having a halo behind his head.
"Anton, i won't be coming back. They offered to teach me, said i have potential. We'll probably never meet again, so with that, starting now Anton, you are the Kyroptera's captain. Don't wreck my ship or i'll chase you down, even to the depths of hell, you hear me?"
As the blue halo fades, Barry shows concern with Anton, but they continue.
While taking both over to their ship, they see that people as swarming the displays to see Larry Rockgrinder performing in the nearby system. Not exactly live, but certainly asap stream of his concert, as the gigantic four handed insectoid and his band, Death Flecther rocks out before millions in a stadium on Duran-II in the Duran system. The rich and touristic/vacation spot planet is seeing even more traffic and usual due to the concert.
Using this cover, the party brings to two onboard and takes off, heading to the station orbiting Fu-Ell, the sitting goose. On the way, they shoot the succubus and dump her out near the asteroid field.
As days go by, they arrive to the station, but due to some comms error, need to wait a while until they can dock. Meanwhile, they see a Universal System Policing Unit (USPU) Navy capital battleship warp nearby and begin docking with the spacestation. Not so much as docking, but attaching itself to the station, the crew watches on, and realize that they finally made it here to investigate the atom bomb business, as they finally get clearence to land. 3k creds to land, as the party remembers they only contacted a seller and did in fact not actually sell their lucky fishing of cybernetics. Renard pays the fee and they land. Spending some days to look for a buyer, they find one, namely a blackmarket broker, and they sell it for a shitton of money, and buy some ship ugrades which they install, essentially. Renard hangs out on the ship, and meets a baron looking for passage into a nearby system (1 hex over) Into the Lysander system for 6k credits, and a little something else that will need to be discussed privately.
After the party arrives back Renard tells them of this job opportunity, so they check out the address given to Renard. A fancy restaurant the noble lodges at. Going to the place, the party realizes they are being tailed. George recognizes the 3 guys following them as low ranking members of the criminal organization that he worked as a hitman for, and got into some trouble with after a botched job.
They try to lead the stalkers into an alleyvay, but they get the idea and disperse. However, the past doesn't seem to only be relevant to George this session.
As they visit and talk with the smaller noble, he tells the party of his great great great grandfather, who was the count controlling the Lysander and some nearby systems during the planet's golden age. Lysander, a formerly high society and technology planet, now an almost waterless desert planet housing only a few thousand people living in the crevices and trenches to avoid the sunlight of the sun. The noble mentions the stories of the planet "suddenly" drying out, and other natural catastrophes hitting one after another, and the planet falling into anarchy and low technology. With people living below, a lot of yet unopened buildings lay on the surface, enveloped by the sand dunes, like treasure troves buried under the sand filled with high tech stuff. The noble proposes that for taking him to the planet, the party gets their 6k, and if they help him to reestablish his rule on the planet, he will give them the location of the largest research building his great great grandfather owned, and give them the right to freely loot it as they wish and keep whatever they find, but only if they can help him with the thing he wants, which is to be the rightful ruler of Lysander once again. The party goes over some questions and plans, and that's pretty much where the session ended. This wrek we continue Genesis Void and hopefully get out of the starting system. Or not. We will see.

>>42644
The session starts and the party, after leaving the restaurant and seeing that thwy are being followed again, decides to do some shopping.
Before i say, guess what they go to buy. Wrong. They go and search for the nuke relief and survivor fund that was established and donate a considerable chunk of acquired money and food to the refugees in an attempt to appease their guilt of killing millions and quite literally destroying a planet.
Ok, i lied, they go to a local weapons store and acquire hardware. While browsing through some wares and establishing a list of "things i would like to buy once i have a lot of money, which is now.", Renard sees another noble enter the shop to acquire weaponry, seemingly for more than himself, but he overhears no specifics. Also, the gang of three following George comes into the shop to "browse". George approaches to talk and the men try to taunt him into action, but fail, and George leaves with the party, to a local clinic to get some augments, namely szbdermal armors "as subtle as possible" and neural comms. Moet likely a wise choice.
The operation takes 51k, and takes 2 and a half hours. Barry goes first, and while inside, gets taken into a room with tiles reaching up to the ceiling and a drain in the middle. Very welcoming. Also, an autodoc, a chair with an ai doctor able to perform surgeries. He sits down, and after the anaesthetic is administered, drifts off to sleep. In the meantime, George and Renard is approaches by a small and relatively unknown news reporter team, asking about news from off station. George tells them about the nuking and says he's pretty sure it was aliens that did it. Leaving the mesaage of "hello" or "welcome" or whatever while at it. Interested the reporter crew films a small interview then after the camera stops rolling, immedietly switch back into a disgruntled mode taking off and muttering something about some kind of scoop and how they would like to have one. As the operation is finiahed for Barry, he comes outside to switch with Renard, and then promptly turns on his neural comms to listen to a local classical radio. Renard goes under and goes through the same thing as Barry, and in the meantime they see a captain argue about fuel prices nearby. Renard comes to and switches with George.
George "Funny Man" O'Reilly tries to crack some jokes to the nurses when it's his turn, and does indeed get a few chuckles, but nothing more.

George being operated upon, and the other two being in the main reception area, Barry notices the grav truck coming and going with cargo. After a while, the truck stops coming. Barry figures the guys taking a break or something, but as he looks out of the window walls of the clinic entrance, he catches the truck straight on from where they are, just as it starts accelerating towards their position. Noticing it in time, Barry tells Renard and they manage to move as the truck plows through the crowd outside cutting people in half and crushing them under the truck due to the pressure lifting the truck up, and bursting in the clinic window.
Barry, being a sureshot shoots out the pipage on the bottom of the grav truck after he dodges and determines the driver's either dead or unconscious, causing the pipe to leak and the crystalline liquid to burst out, powering down the antigravity plates, making it drop and skid accross the reception area of the clinic, stopping just short of the two's original position. As the nurses and doctors jump into action to save anyone savable and determine the dead, Barry gets up and manages to acquire a torch and looks inside the cockpit of the truck. A quick look with his trained detective eyes tell him that the man's been drugged and probably mindwashed. To be fair, the foaming mouth and generally unresponsive eyes make it easier.
As Barry's investigating the truck, the light are suddenly cut off. "Oh shit, the truck was the distraction" as Barry puts it. Renard and our detective begin the repeated accelerated locomotive action of fucking running as fast as they can towards the operational room. Barry's more used to action, so he manages to get to the room, thus the door first, with Renard the Marquis a little behind. Not at all bad for a noble to keep up with a trained (former) police officer from a planet that wants police officers to die.
Barry quickly glacing inside the dark room sees green dots moving about and decides to burst inside, shining his light into the nightvision googles of the two gangsters inside. He gets the one with the gun, but the one with the knife nearing George's throats managed to catch someone coming and looks away in time to not get blinded.
Renard reaches the room shortly, and Barry burst fires with his new and shiny ACR into the one with the gun after Renard bashes his head for (unluckily) minimal damage with his new stun stick.
The thug with the gun dies pretty fast, but the one with the knife takes up refuge behi d the autodoc, then after a little thinking decides to slit George's throat. 6 damage. Not enough to kill but enough to get George to bleed out if he doesn't get help fast, and tries to run for it. Barry puts the dot at the end of the sentence by burst firing into the guy's back. Problem solved. Well, one problem solved. While renard pokes about, he finds that the emergency battery from inside the autodoc is missing, so insted opts to put pressure on the cut while Barry runs and manages to get an old and blading, but otherwise skilled doctor, who manages to fix the wound in the general sense.
A tiny bit more calmed down, they look through the two thugs and find a detonator. Probably rigged to explode the whole building if need be, but the party doesn't feel like testing their hypothesis. Telling the doc to turn the generators back on, they take the still knocked out Geprge and leg it to the fire exit after a little bit of getting lost inside a dark clinic, and make their way into a cheaper living space. Funding some kind of church, they head inside looking for help. They meet the father, Ember, a bald man with a strange, swirling reddish brown tattoo on his entire head. While talking on about humans and how we should always stick together, the father takes the party in and guides them into his room to rest. George by this point is awake, cognitively not impaired and capable of speech. The trio takes time to get the neural comms out of the thug's head. Oh yeah i forgot to mention, Barry and Renard recovered, outside of George, a head and a hand, for "safety purposes". The father's room is full of the same swirling iconography, and some other obvious clues about human superiority and an ascendant philosophy. As the party's thinking about their next step with the third thug still loose, calling the baron they'll promise to ferry for help, and deciding to go back to the clinic to actually get George's stuff back, Barry and George starts hearing a sermon taking place outside their borrowed room.
As the indistinguisable speaking gets more and more heated in righteous fury, the sermon suddenly seems to stop. Father Ember opens the door with a shotgun in hand commanding a handful (12-18) of believers armed with older weaponry.
"Humans should always help eachother out in dire need, my brothers! We are with you against your alien tormentor! For Lethes!"
Taking this as yes, the party now armed with a small religious armed uprising head to the hospital, and sending in a believer, retrieve George's stuff. Thinking about directing their newfound followers against an alien church to ditch them, they realize that they are still in a "mainly" human occupied territory, meaning the only aliens here can only be found in embassies. Not keen on starting a war between species, they instead succesfully ask the Father and his man to look for the thug, and the religious armed uprising and revolt gets adjourned. In tge meantime, Renard gets a call from the baron's bodyguard. They found the third guy, carefreely sipping coffe in a starport café overlooking their ship. All in all, an industrial accident happens to the guy, and after the whole affair, the party decides to tank up and take off with the noble and bodyguard, and after ~10 sessions, finally blast off into a different starsystem.

>>42703
A week is spent in travel, and the party arrives in the 0406-Lysander system. Estensive reading material is given to digest, and the party does so. Deciding to head down to the planet, Lysander-11, they are met with the wide ocean of red sand and small glints of metal and glass reflecting light mostly consumed and hidden under the dunes on the surface.
With no sign of immediate life, they check the maps which shows them a canyon essentially cutting the planet into two in which the thousand something people live in. The "Down team" is Renard, Barry and of course, the baron with his bodyguard. The "Up team" is Anton and George, in case some "Ortillery" is needed. Taking Their shuttle planetside, they circle around while the nible tells them that the fortified research lab/station up north belonged to his family and they should let them in with no hassle. The party is dubious of this, so instead, land near the West Reclamation Point faction controlled West Point, Brilliant, i know and disembark with weapons. Stretching their legs on the low gravity planet, they proceed to make their way to the small town of ~300, meeting a security patrol on the way, who elaborate on the local laws inside WRP territory, kind of stark in contrast in the lawlessness outside, and get to talk with a local trader while getting dried fruits, similar to dates, but more piquant, Barry doesn't get much out of the guy, except the high ones occupying the research base. The party got a good look while airborne and indeed, the complex is essentially built inside a mountain.
Next, going to buy a car, they get an extremely scavenges but otherwise functioning car for half price, but realizing the distances they instead opt to go near the research base by shuttle.
Doing so, they land nearby and take their car out, rolling up to the gates of the fortress. Id'd by a footsoldier after seeing the baron, they are let inside as soldiers from the barracks, tanks, and generally everywhere try to get a glimpse of the baron while making their way up to the mountain. Getting to the research complex, they follow the noble deep inside, and end up in a circular room with a thick tube in the middle, containing a mummified body in a thick fluid. Listening in the party finds out that that's the body of the baron's great great grandfather, a count (only triumphed by a duke in raking), that they are keeping preserved until they find a replacement for his mind, but now, that the actual heir is back, they are asking the baron on what he wants done.
"Pull the plug" is the answer they get. As the liquid drains the body stays upright due to rigor mortis and slams against the side of the glass. Ordering the man to bury the body according to customs, the baron turns to the party to first give them the 6k creds for the trip and discuss with them his plans to destroy both factions to reinstate himself as the ruling entity. The baron wants to get rid of the wrp first, but Barry deems the East Reclamation Point as a bigger threat. The baron tells the crew that either way, as long as they help they can scavenge the family building buried under sand. To help with the ERP, one of the two balkanized factions fighting against eachother, the baron tells the party about Jhonny, a junkie (Term referring to people living on the planets surface that survive by scavenging junk and either ignore or are hostile towards the canyon's population.) and his gang, as Jhonny succesfully escaped from under The ERP's iron claws twice, and will probably help with eradicating East Point "after what they've done to him." as the noble puts it. His method of survival on the surface is to rob returning scavenging caravans launched by the canyon's factions or people. After finding out from tge baron that Jhonny isn't the kind to just shoot a man after surrendering unless prompted to, they figure the best way to get to him is to set up a caravan, scavenge, then roam around the place waiting for an ambush.

After deciding on this and the baron agreeing to set a caravan up in 1 or 2 days, a common footsoldier hurriedly runs into the room. "Sir lord! I've a report to make!" Catching his breath, the man stands straight up like a stake.
"The ERP and the WRP had a conflict! The starport and the middle squat is completely destroyed! Not a single soul survived!"
"Hmm…Very well, you may go."
"Yes, Sir Lord."
And just as the soldier marches away, so does our time for the session. the session ends.

Next week, we'll probably have a deep abyss session, but we shall see.

This session we're in deep abyss again. Halfway through the bunker. Last time, Party fights some spiders then heads back into the cave to finish the job.

They go into an unexplored area. It seems empty, maybe there's a shell of a cocooned person in the distance. Their feet sink into the slightly soft webbed ground, not quite sticky enough to impede their movement. The skittering and scritching of spiders can be heard faintly throughout the cave as if the entire thing is alive. They get closer to the cocoon and Yan-chi feels a pain in his neck as if he was stabbed and then fire or ice poured down into his back. He reacts and a large spider the size of a child jumps off him, its hairy legs tickling as yan-chi pushes it off himself. A spider had ambushed him from above, fangs sinking, poison seeping.

The party reacts, but before trey can take the initiative, a spider lands on him. The weight is fairly hefty, like a baby, but the fangs spread pain in an exposed area. He shakes the spider off as well, cursing his luck. Trey takes revenge, spinning his spear and impaling the spider with it. It does not expire, still hissing at Trey's knees. Yan-chi tries to deal with the spider and cannot seem to hit it. Fith comes other, enchants his shillaegh and just splats the thing. The stiff wooden knurl smashes into the spider and its internals ooze out onto the porous floor.

Trey misses his own nemesis; the spider. Yan chi comes over and tries to stab it with the ornamental dagger. He feels as if the decision is not the best, but he misses. The feeling he gets is that the dagger would rather not, but there's not a huge impulse. Fith misses with his shillaegh, so trey takes the honor of killing it for good. They investigate the cocoon and find a small child's doll with it. The fairly fresh features imply it was taken recently, but there is no evidence that the child is still alive. Possibly the child could not take the poison that the spiders produced. Fith ends up handing the doll to Yan-Chi.

And so with the less than lethal reminder that the cave is full of spiders, they take a little rest to recover from the last battle. Then they head on. Carefully, slowly, this is how a life is taken. Step by step they ease their way through the cave, passing over the remnants of their previous violence. They come to more unexplored areas. Yan-chi manages to spot a spider hanging from the ceiling. Taking no chances, he casts fireball. Overkill is the best kill, after all. The explosion echoes throughout the cave, and a wave of heat and dry air washes over the party, who are more used to loud explosions than they used to be. When the smoke clears, a burning spider runs out towards them. Fith throws acid at it and the spider just dissolves. Fair enough.

Down the cave hall, Yan-chi hears. He hears the legs, the fangs, the noise of spiders. Ahead be spiders. He slowly makes his way through, and points out the spider to everyone. Everyone fires their ranged spells at it, with the final hit being by Trey, whose eldritch blast fires rays of eldritch energy that bore through the spider, leaving the holes in the carapace glowing a little with otherwordly energy.  So far so good. More care is taken as they slowly move fowards. The legs of a large, much larger, spider can be seen around the corner. Surely a lure. Fith is asked about spiders, and talks about how they react to movement. Time to produce some movement. Yan-chi throws some bones about but doesn't get very far as his throws can't even be compared to girly throws. He is not very physically adept. Fith has a go with a ration and smacks a web in the distance.

Immediately, and like lightning, three giant spiders pounce on the ration. They came out of the darkness, and once the ration is claimed, they return to the darkness. They hide again, but since you can tell where they stopped moving their locations are now known. Fireball time.

Kaboom, another shockwave. This fireball feels a bit hotter, a bit more intense. They check out the results, and there's fried spider. They turn around and to the north is a survivor, silently trying to sneak back into the darkness. Everyone hits it with ranged attacks all at once and the spider expires. The party have a look around for anything else, but the general background noise of spiders has stopped. Yan-chi gives a big one a kick on the way out, and from its abdomen fall a handful of tiny bite-sized spiders, like crunchy snacks. On the way out, Fith grabs a spider leg and chews on it.

Back from the cave, Yan-chi grabs some mushrooms that like like they could be used in a potion. They find someone and after a potentially lengthy discussion about what the sky is, what the sun is, and so on, they go look for Timeor. He's in the pub. Yan-chi confidently strides into the pub and orders the strongest thing they have. A glass of clear liquid is poured out infront of him, vapours visible. He downs it in one. He keeps it down, but with a hoarse voice says "Smooth." Trey tries to replicate the achievement, but fares a lot worse. He coughs and gags, but he's okay. A few tears in his eyes, but he's smiling, or grimacing, it's hard to tell.

Timeor is sitting with three other bunkarians. When the party tries to ask and talk about getting them out, Timeor quietens them- 'Yes, these three are sympathetic, but keep it down'. "Yes, we need a distraction tomorrow to get these people out. Any ideas?". After the lack of ideas from the party, he suggests a show. Some farewell entertainment. Yan-chi thinks; "hey that's actually a good idea". Yes. The plan, the plan is to put on a show and sneak the people out while everyone is watching the show. Who'd miss a show from outsiders?

The party find the council to get their reward while they're at it. There they see the end of the court session, their two assailants are being led out with broken fingers and a condemned look on their faces. They know they are men being led to their deaths. The party comes along to enjoy the festivities. They are to be killed in the traditional way- being cast into the pit. Usually in the form of being pushed. Halfway there, Yan-chi gets a devilish idea. Why not steal them? They're dead anyway. Yan-chi plots.

Fith has the strange idea; Why not just ask? And so they ask Sirga if they can hold the assaiants in exile. She agrees readily, saying that it is tradition to have the assailants in the hands of the victims. Works just fine. They get told that they'll get them as they're leaving, and the stil condemned men are led off somewhere. The party meet Sirga and collect their reward for clearing out the spider cave - 1000 big ones.

They settle down for the night. Before Fith goes to bed, he heads off to the storykeeper, Strurnost. He learns about the lottery war. The big war 200 years ago that almost claimed the bunker. Strurnost explains what happened: The Truggud Family was rigging the election for a century in their favour. It got out of hand as there were many Trugguds. The plot got discovered and there was a war between trugguds and pretty much everyone else.

He tells the story of the fateful election:
"The crowd was assembled. The lottery was about to begin. The names were entered and the wheel turned. Out came a sliver of paper. Archibald Truggud, the elder of the family reached down to grab it, to read it out. A man jumps from the crowd and seizes the man's hand;
"May Katasm strike one of us down!" Says the assailant. The man was Richt Coldflame.
The Truggud family jumps up but the firm grip of the Coldflame loosens the grip of Archibald, an old man at that point, and two pieces of paper flutter from his palm. The audience is shocked, but Coldflame grabs the paper, reads it and throws it to the audience "Another Truggard has won! What a surprise, as it seems this other name (A starcutter the legend has it) has also won! Foul play! Mischief, treachery!" The paper gets passed through the audience from person to person, and rage grows into a riot.

In the rage, a Truggard kills another. The blood sends the crowd screaming away, mostly succubi at this point. The blood pools on the stone floor, the gates open. (Metaphorically).

The war doesn't start immediately, assassinations of investigators, political plots, this all turns into gangs of bodyguards. Gangs turn into fights, fights into battles. Blades get sharper and longer, and the blood runs down the stairs in torrents.

The madness subsides, the wounded retreat. The truggards mostly perished within a few weeks, but so to did the willingess to redden the halls of their ancestors, as if letting the madness of katasm win.

The two sides parlayed, A Coldflame and a Truggud negotiate. While walking to the negotiation point, both their feet become coated in bunkarian blood, their footsteps leading towards each other. Without saying a word, the two shake hands. The tears begin to dilute the blood on their feet and soon they are embracing, the mutual desire for the gate to be closed overwhelming these two men.

From that point on the Trugguds had nothing to do with the lottery. They won occasionally, but not enough, and their name remains in the history books and on the crypt sarcophagi, but not in the flesh that lives."

Fith enjoys the story and rests along with the others. The party levels up and enjoys their hard earned experience by learning more spells and gaining more abilities. Yan-chi learns Major-Illusion, a useful spell for the upcoming stage show.

And so they arrange the show to begin. They enter the dining hall and get practicing, but they're distracting the people assigned to sorting chairs and setting up the stage, so they stop. The stage is ready. The party begin.

The show starts pretty terribly. The crowd is not impressed by Fith's barkskin and an illusion of a small tree. The real magic begins and Yan-chi starts with the flame magic, showing masterfully made stories by manipulating the flames. Fith turns into a horse and neighs. Yan-chi takes this opportunity to throw a gust into Fith's mane and it blows up, causing fith to raise up on his back legs like those old paintings of horses and look extremely majestic. None here have ever seen a horse, and so they are all impressed.

Trey joins in, casting witch lightning on Yan-chi. He misses and the lightning blasts a dent in the stone ceiling, showing the stage with dust and small rocks. The crowd… starts worrying. Fith neighs. Pretty good neighing, and since the horse seems happy, the crowd relaxes again. Yan-chi starts telling stories of the outside using the flames. Hell, demons, here's the fortress we live in to protect ourselves from the danger and the horror, and so on. It's eaten up by the crowd.

Fith turns back into a druid unceremoniously and gives guidance to yan-chi for his perfomances. The performances become just a little better, the images more vivid, the storetelling more intense. Fith casts spider climb and just walks up to the ceiling. Pretty impressive. He reaches down to touch Yan-chi to give him guidance, and just manages to reach the small figure.

Yan-chi busts out major illusion and tells the story of the apocalypse, fire raining down from the sky, he tells of demons and dangers, everything making sense to the audience, apart from this sky thing. The performance goes on for hours, but the illusion magic keeps the crowd relatively entertained.

The demon comes out. Major illusion demon rather than the very real ones Trey can now summon. He fights a mock battle with this illusion demon and the performance is realistic and intense. Deep roars come from the demon, and Trey ducks and dodges, as well as delivering firey blows to the demon. The demon isn't the most reactive or adaptive but it works great for the performance.

Timeor walks into the back of the room. They realise this is the signal to end the performance - Timeor is finished. About time, it's been hours. How many people was it? Well it's worth the money. Surely. Trey casts darkness. A sphere of unworldly darkness covers the stage and the audience gasps. Trey, having gained the ability to see in this darkness (and also use it at the same time, which is essentially an amazing combo). He dispells the darkness and the party is gone from the stage! There might have been one person in the audience who didn't get what was going on, but it was impressive nonetheless. They get back on stage and bow to the incoming applause.

Not done yet, the audience mobs them for autographs and to share their joy from the show. Many signed pieces of paper later, Timeor leads them to the gate. It is time to leave.

Sad music starts playing and Sirga is there with the iron and the prisoners. Timeor opens the gate. Cold air flows inwards, and everyone shivers. The sound of hell, the gusts of the destroyer, flow from here. The prisoners are let out, and the party leave. The gate slowly closes behind them, with creaks, clanks and bangs. The final clank and the gate is closed, maybe forever. The party look ahead, back into the dark and the cold. Maybe they are in hell.

And that's deep abyss for this session.
As a note; If you feel like you'd want to be a part of the world as a mage, wizard, fighter, rogue, etc, stabbing, casting, and interacting with this fantasy world then please get in contact.
Or maybe space exploring. Take part in an adventure with spaceships, lasers and aliens. Explore the galaxy, and shoot the natives. Make credits rain like bullets.

Must be available 1100 UTC saturdays, for 4-5 hours. (changes to 1200 UTC in november).

doodling with no value for the Traveller space RPG, not even my headcannon, just doodling on my free time indeed.

Got some catching up to do regarding Genesis Void. Here We Go:

With the down team away, George takes some time to cool off. Spending some time to grab some food and drinks, and lean back in a comfortable chair in the lounge of the Kyroptera, he let's out a sigh.
"Times sure change."
Looking up at the steel coffin protecting him from one very painful death of space, he closes his eyes and remembers one of his past jobs.

Waiting outside of his bosses room, he checks te guards out. Moments later, he's called in. Appearently somebody needs to go. Entering the room, George sees a bald old bearded man lighting up his cut cigar, sitting in Garg leather armchair and leaning over some clipped papers on his Derikk tree chair. Both imported. Both VERY expensive.
George remembers the Gargs. Bloody frenzied monsters that overpopulated their own planet and eradicated everything else. You need a well equipped squad just to hunt one of those critters, not to mention shipping it off planet. He was once hired to kill a guy smuggling a living one. The aftermath of George releasing a Garg took a week of cleanup by the janitors and a month of hunting by local police forces.
Oh, and the Derrik wood table. Intricate, and special to a system unapproachable to humans due to the massive radiation the star releases. Enough to penetrate a spaceship easily. You could melt a man in nanoseconds. George wonders about using it as a killing method.

The criminal midboss takes a long drag from his cigar and pushes a folder forward.
"Glad to have you here, George. Looks like we need your services again. We are running convoys in a nearby system. Some shmuck is hittin 'em. We need 'em not gettin hit. Whoever this guy is, all we found out is his nickname. Subject 19. Some strange obsession with ancient cinema. That's all we got. I'll get your pilot. Be ready to head out soon".
Making some half promise of returning within a week, ignoring the fact that warp travel takes a week to just get there, George takes the job and tries to look up some more info on the guy and system he's heading to.

The Parax system. A system in ruin. After a plague swept through, most people died, roughly 1-10k people living on planet. Shouldn't be too hard of a job. Hopping onto a spacecraft, he begins travel into Parax. A week in hyperspace. A week in transit.
Landing on the main planet, Fulcrum, George begins to plan. Checking around, he notices upkept buildings in the abandoned and overgrown city. Inching closer, he notices that some off system people seems to be running these buildings. Waiting around he scouts the place out. Seems like it's used as some kind of research base. Going around he gets a general idea of the situation. The natives, who survived are treated like subhumans, while the off planetary occupants do whatever they want. George seeks the place convoys run from, and finds it. Getting in and getting a job to follow the convoys easily, he begins Plan A.

As the convoys travel along the assigned route, George spots something poking out from under the trucks he's following. A sharp jet black 3 part leg shows itself, then 5 more. The buglike chassis supporting a skull crawls up on the rear of the vehicle. George quickly radioing in to the crew stops the convoy as everyone disperses while George stops his gravbike to look. Moments later the skull turns in his direction. Screeching metal and the clickclacks of it's mechanical appendages signal George it's time to leave the bike and jump away. Just in time, he launches himself from his bike into nearby shrubbery and activates his IR cloack. As the smalk robot reaches his bike and jumps onto it, a red light starts phasing the nearby enviroment, including George, but finding nothing, it detects some people in the distance and scurries off, followed by multiple explosions. George gets up and inspects the damage. 2 guys barely alive, the rest you could advertise as canned food if you had a can. Bringing the two guys out, he spots something flash in a nearby building. Going in carefully, he sees some relatively non sensical monolouges painted on the walls. Proceeding up, he busts into a room with the help of a hologram projector and a high tech swift kick. Finding a large sheet and an old school projector projecting the guys image, with cleverly made holes to make it seem like the glasses are flashing in the lights, George chooses to not go inside to investigate. If Subject 19 is this handy with practical effects, who knows what else he might rigged up.

With the convoy, and Plan A bust, George turns to plan B. He nabs a scientist cape after some socializing with an offworlder prof and kills a native hoping to start a civil war.
As said civil war is sparking up, he checks nearby theaters and finds one with the target taking a hidden lift down. George does too and follows him. Finding a manufacturing plant of those exploding suicide skullbots, he shuts some down, but noone seems to come. Heading deeper down, he gets to the uttermost bottom floor. Stepping out he finds himself in a hallway, with a door slightly ajar. He makes some noise and the person inside moves out. A short firefight ensues as George riddles the man with bullets.

Actually a cyborg, George waits around the cinema and kilks a couple more, then pries a signal device from one. Following the signal to a scrapyard, he carefully sneaks in avoiding the controlled cyborgs and reaches a container house. The sounds of TV coming from inside.
"They are eating her!"
Creeping inside, he finds a very lived down place. Trash just as much as mechanic parts everywhere, he draws closer to his target.
"And then, they are going to eat me!"
Reaching the doorframe he sees his job watching an ancient horror flick, he steels his aim by using his hands to push his rifle to the door frame, and releases a burst into the man enshrouded by a blanket. Bullet after bullet the man jerks. The blanket drops, and so does the target. Missing both his legs, formerly wheelchair bound.
"Oh my go-"
The TV goes out as explosions shake in the distance, due to the now in full force civil war. George takes a picture and calls it a day (and his pilot).

Meeting off city to be save, he boards the ship and they head out. Only to get shot down by artillery. From where or why questionable. They figure that it's time to go because if someone shot it down then they'll be inspecting the damage.
Exiting the ship with the pilot and the engie, they camp out in a nearby forest, but a group of mercs approach their ship, and seem to catch some of their tracks. As the trio loops around, one of the mercs seems to catch them off guard. In a Dark reddish combat armor, with strange, tribal style black lines, motifs and mementos like bone charms and ritualistic clothing strips, the decked out guy shoots them a lot. They manage to kill him (mostly thanks to George) and head out into the wilderness to wait it out. While camping out, the engie catches some strange illness. Deciding it's tims to head bacl to the ahip to get the guy into an autodoc, they return and close themselfes into the ship. As the engi guy is healed, he manages to fux the ahip to gwt them back to home base. Doing so, they blast off and return. Job well done, George receives his payment and everyone's off for the better.

Bringing himself back into reality, he hears his comms chirr back up. Barry and Renard requesting to land with the shuttle. Renard heavily injured, they brung him into the sickbay to the autodoc, healing him up with some medicinal slow. A drug that makes you heal a month in a day.

This was the session three (i think) weeks ago. One of our players was missing, so this one was a flashback. Up next is The session we've just had which i'll post tomorrow, since i've do to the writeup. Since i've no images to show you, i'll juat post some music instead.

>>42931
Pretty nice, damn.

>>42978
Lot of typos but i'm tired so please forgive me.

>>42979
it's OK wiz. i enjoy reading your posts.

>>42978
3 days. 72 hours. That's the time given by the baron to both Barry and Renard to spend before the caravan is brought up to Lysander's scorching red deserts on the surface to being their dive. Dive, a slang for diving into the high tech ruins poking out from the red sea of sand up on the surface explains the baron employing the Kyroptera crew. The duo separates to join their respective social circles.

"Hey, you guys up for some betting?" Barry joins some soldiers and makes a bet with them on his shooting. Betting to hit a pin needle from the outer limits of his weapon's range (where he doesn't receive any penalties, putting him roughly 10-12 meters away). He makes the shot, but unused to the low gravity, doesn't expect the recoil, and hits himself with his revolver. The shot still makes it though and he gets his 25 credits. Unsatisfied, he spends some day tutoring some soldiers on how to shoot better. "Good enough to kill the most wanted in any system." He flaunts killing a most wanted in the Omega Epsilon system, Foulke. An airforce hero turned bioterrorist then pirate.

Renard spends his time among his kind as any blueblood is socially required to. Gambling the day away with some high ranking soldiers and scientists, he manages to rake in 5250 creds, and make a few acquaintances in the meantime. Calling it a night, he runs into a reporter apparently let in the baron. Renard uses this opportunity to spread some propaganda.
"By the order of the rightful ruler of Lysander, We, the people will tame the wild and barbaric tyrants of East Point. We won't stand anymore for the injustice and oppression committed by these aggressors. We will not let any more tragedies like the destruction of space port happen on the soil of Lysander ever again. For any willing to rise up against the terrific regime of the East Point, we are with you. We are you. Encourage others to stand up and fight. Fight to take vengeance against the misdeeds committed onto you. Fight to protect your loved ones from the kidnappings and political executions. Fight to take control of your own future. For freedom and liberty!"

After both spend their time, they are woken up by soldiers reporting they are ready to start the expedition. Boarding their shuttle, the pair starts following the caravan. Flying overhead, Barry puts the thing into autopilot, and runs sensors to watch for movement. During the night, the sensors pick up movement. Barry presses some buttons and using the shuttle's sensors, checks it out. Near the tracks of one of the three colossal vehicles, the sands start to shift and resonate. Barry reaches for his radio.

"K'krrrrrr, K'krrrrrr"
Grinding it's small mandibles, a drone enters the local Hiveguard's chamber. The sandstone chamber is dark, but the compound eyes help to see inside. At the exact middle a pillar stretches towards the ceiling, ending short, a large insect head turns and twists at the top of it, inspecting the work of others below. The drone heads up the spiral staircase around the pillar and stops at the top. The massive insect turning towards it, mouth big enough to shallow him whole, it begins to release it's pheromones.
As the drone's pheromones stick to HiveGuard Axxxyrq's antennas, he contemplates what to do next. The HiveQueen is surely to hear the news sooner or later, and since the report came from his territory, he might govern some favorable reputation with the HiveQueen if he manages to assess the situation quickly, especially after his failure to overtake the building inhabited by two-legs.
What to do, what do do.
After some time, Axxxyrq shifts around in his towering burrow, scraping some sandstone onto his bulky exoskeleton. Shooting pheromones out from under his heavy and bumpy carapace, he orders his Scouts to investigate. 12 scouts immedietly begin travel to excavate towards the location.
The red sands shift, and the 12 Raksha surface. Detecting the metal giant, they begin to make their way up under the shroud of the night. Two-legs can't see, but Raksha can. creeping along the surface slowly the scouts make their way up the great machine. just as they arrive on the deck, however, they are ambushed. Two-legs waiting, they spray fire onto the scouts, reducing their number to 0 very quickly. As the last Scout thumbles off and lands in the red sand enveloped in sticking fire, it screeches one last time before it expires, left to the blood desert to bury.

"Thanks for the heads up, we've sorted them out. We'll be starting up once again in the morning and be on our way."
Come morning, he caravan starts up and treks across the desert. Barry and Renard spends some time playing "Streets and Whispers", a party video game taking place in a fantasy world, akin in mechanics to a board game, it's a game where each player controls a city guard tasked with keeping the streets clean in an unnamed country's capital. More whacky than serious, the game has 2 mayor parts. First parts is the pre event part, where everything is played normally. During this phase, players want to get items and increase their peace keeping score as high as they can. The 2nd phase begins when the game reaches it's 15th turn or if one of the players step on a CHAOS EVENT tile. Depending on what items the players currently have, a catastrophic event is had in the city. From a magical casting gone wrong and turning everyone into cats, to the king deciding to say "no" to anything due to pouting over a less than ideal banquet. At this level the player's peace keeping score will help them to gather allies to solve the problems.

As the play goes on, the shuttle's sensors ping. Checking it out, it's a herd of Kazar, a hornless gazelle like beast, with pieces of metal sticking out from their jaws. The herd gets scared from the machines and run away, only to return at night to chew on the gigantic tracks. With a diet consisting of mainly metallic components, the herd takes the opportunity to eat the gigantic pile of food just stopping during the night. Radioing it in again, the crew shoot some of them and they run away. Proceeding forward, after ~3 days of travel, the caravan and by extension, our duo arrives at the ruins they are supposed to dive. Waiting it out the party puts their machine down nearby. As the caravan machines are raised and extended, they transform into an HQ to conduct the salvaging from.
Day 1, the scout teams make their way inside the building almost consumed by the sand. Looking around, they manage to locate a few "intact" personal rooms, recovering some trinkets.
Day 2, the scout teams discover a tank full of hydrogen fuel under the sand. They manage to syphon it and take it outside, calling it a day.

>>42988
Day 3. The scout team heads even deeper inside the ruins. Finding a maintenance shaft, they manage to access and otherwise not accessible part of the building. The steel reinforced concrete corridors turn into an albeit unmaintained, but pure Claerium architecture. The rare metal that has the strange property of resonating at a constant rate, producing a light hum. The Scout team pushes further in, following the labyrinth along, they explore the newly discovered partition. All but one room, they scour, finding equipment and salvageable cargo. The last room, a two part metal door locked shut, towering over any who see it. Unable to open it, the team's archeological scientists figures a frequency out that could resonate with the Claerium and perhaps move it. After hours of bombarding the door with a frequency, the plan bears fruit and the door opens ajar just so that the team can get inside. Thick cold mist seeps outside as the cold air pushes outawrd, sending a chill down the spine of everyone, even in their rare environmental suits salvaged from a previous skeleton building. Menat takes the lead and goes inside, as the rest of the Scout team reluctantly follows, wepaons drawn ready to shoot anything. Pressing inside, the mist fogs up their suits. As cold sweat and the mist envelopes the crew, like an assassin sinks into the darkness on a night street. Thick, the lamps can't penetrate it at all. Claustrophobia sets in. The labored breathing is all Menat can hear. Whenever through radio or his own, he can't tell. A sudden movement from his right draws his attention and he reaches for his pistol. 1 second. 2 seconds. A friendly silhouette surfaces carrying a rifle. Ricky "Tricky" Fandango. As both realize eachother, they lower their weapons.
*BANG*
A flash of yellow overtakes the white mist. No scream is heard, but instead a shatter of glass, releasing a burst of coldness once again, thickening the fog. Menat and Ricky lose eachother. As the constant hum returns, Menat begins to move forward aimlessly.
*Huf* *Huf*
A silhouette emerges from the mist reaching out a hand, now too thick to identify who. Menat takes the hand and joins the train of scouts. Taking some time, they manage to find their way back to the door. Going outside they count their numbers. Everyone's present.
"Anyone injured?"
"No sir."
"Alright, who the fuck shot?" pipes up Morgan Ernest, the team leader.
"Looking around at eachother, a lanky man sheepishly raises his hand.
"It was me."
"What the hell did you shoot at, Nimble?"
"There was someone in there."
"Where, inside?"
"Yeah."
"…Well, did you kill him?"
"Yes sir, shot 'im straight between the eyes."
Morgan falls back into silence and thinking. This was one of his bad habits that he didn't kick even when he became a squad leader. He liked to take his time and really chew on things, but out in the field where seconds could mean life or death, it's not the best trait to have.
""Well shit, can't help it now. Let's bring in a compressor so we can clear this out."
Returning to grab an air compressor to clean the place out, they blast air into the room, making mist disperse and lighten.
Heading back inside they find a large room with a large tetrahedron machine construct suspended from pipes across from the entrance. The surface of the construct seems to be moving and alive with waves of different colors washing over it's surface, but withing seconds, the waves glitch out and the machine stops fulfilling it's function, now lost to time. On the sides of the room, 1-1 cyroberths are plugged in into whatever that machine was. The west side one, with shattered glass. Not a single drop of blood, the body lays in the cyroberth as if the bullethole in his head didn't exist. The other, pod uninjured.
The team begins to transport said cryoberth upstairs and hands it off to Barry and Renard to keep. Barry inspects the pod. appearently more than a 100 years old, he finds a man still frozen inside and a serial number.

IC-4-R05/0874

Taking the pod, the caravan and the party suits up and begins the journey "home". As they are making their way home, a sandstorm wall approaches their position. Like a hellish landscape, a tsunami of blood washing over everything, the vehicles get caught in the sandstorm cutting their radio. Barry tries to establish contact but fails. Renard however succeeds and the duo, casually waiting for the storm to pass on their shuttle, hears desperate request for aid from the caravan leader with the undertones of intense firefights.
"Oh, shit."

"Hey kid, don't worry. Riding with the storm. I know you are new to Jhonny's gang, but it should be an easy picking. We'll use our Dudu's to sweep in, round 'em up, and loot their sacks. We'll be out in no time."
"Uh, Okay"
Polt grips the reins of his Dudu even stronger, and adjusts his cowboy hat on top of his helmet scavenged from a little bit of everything to protect his eyes, nose and mouth during from the sandstorms. He may be young, but he's ready to finally become a man. Mother and father taken away from him by the East Point, he swore revenge even if he had to sell his soul to the devil to get it.
Jhonny was buying.
Pulling up with the storms, they grapple hook their way to the deck and climb up. Checking their surroundings, they find a hatch they pop open with the help the gentle coercion of some plastic explosives. Rushing in, they take some crew by surprise and hold them up.
"No funny moves, you're no heroes."
Polt's team pushes inside, securing other caravaneers. Feeling confident, just as turning a corner, armed opposition shows up.
*Bang*
Polt recoils, his body churns. Looking down he sees red. As the pain washes over his body, he hears his mates scream something and open fire. Trying to hand on despite the injury, he takes a step forward. Blood, more and more blood. It keeps seeping out from his wound, why won't it stop? A puddle of his own blood is starting to form beneath Polt. Somehow he still stands. He just has to walk, one step at a time.
"Come on body, you can do this. Move!"
"…It's no use."
Polt collapses, unconscious.

landing Barry and Renard gets in their ground vehicle, they shoot out and begin their approach. Coming near they spot a flock of Dudu's, large 100 kilo weight flightless birds used as mounts. Full of bags and equipment, Barry decides to hit one. Looking towards Renard he musters some words before stepping on the gas.
"Strap yourself in!"
Ramming the bird, the vehicle's drive and hull takes some damage. So does Barry and Renard, albeit a to a much lesser extent. Exiting the vehicle, they investigate the bird's many pouches and bags. Finding some equipment, and 2 slow drugs. "Metabolic Accelerators", the slow drugs, a little bit after administered, boost the user's reflexes to superhuman levels, making everything appear slow. Drawbacks include your body crashing after 10 minutes passes. Taking the drugs, they wait until a team From Jhonny's boys are back. After a not so much of a standoff as the Jhonny gang just kind of looks at the two like uninvited strangers, they get lead to Jhonny and his hideout. Approaching a dune, the Dudu riders suddenly vanish from sigth, but pushing through the field, a building is revealed in the place of the dune Jhonny's gang headed towards.

>>42989
After the duo heads into the building, they shortly meet with the infamous Jhonny.
As the two enter a room deeper inside the building, they see a large chair's back and two guys standing guard.
"We're looking for Jhonny."
The chair slowly swings around, revealing a 16 something child. His jaw mutated into maws, clutching weapon parts and a rag. Not the first image they'd imagined. Taking some minutes to sort out their approach, they tell Jhonny that they have a common enemy. East Point. Jhonny's willing to share a way to get in and some armed support, if they do a favor first. He wants to "expand" into their current hideout more, but some critters are occupying the lower levels.
"Scratch my back and i'll scratch yours."
Barry and Renard agrees. First they proceed down into another level and are instructed to clean a room out. Approaching the door, the Growling warns the party of impending danger. Renard opens the door, and inside, 3 smaller creatures screech as the exit opens up once again. Tzur's. 1 could easily shred a man. Carnivorous quadruped monkey-like mammals with an elongated face and sharper than sharp claws. Their method of hunting food is similar to sharks, meaning they frenzy and destroy anything in their path. The Tzur's all spring onto Renard who gets cut after cut, barely keeping conscious after the battle. Emergency retreat, they close the door and return to the ship to get Renard healed up.

30 mins to the ship, they dock and stick Renard into the Autodoc in the med bay. Injecting Renard with a dose of Medicinal slow, he heals a month's worth of injuries in a day. Going back to Jhonny, they get told the first part is complete. Now they need to use a recently restored lift (thanks to the party's efforts) to head down into the storage. Heading down, they encounter some Raksha drones and shoot them down. Renard injects himself with the slow and dances away from all but 2 stings the drones tries to hit him with. With the fight over, they return upstairs, and for some money, Randy, Jhonny's left hand man patches Renard up with some meds, just in time for the Crash to happen. As the drug stops, Renard muscles suddenly contort and immense pressure and exhaustion overcomes them. The sudden and severe muscle tension makes Renard gag then puke. Once again the crew takes to the stars, and return to the ship to get Renard healed.

That was the end of the session we had last Saturday (3 days ago) Next week, we'll return to Deep Abyss.




As a note, we are currently down to 2 players and a dm (who DM/GM's changes with campaigns).
I personally don't want to shill the thing too much (kind of already did anyway), but if you are interested in playing, we are currently open.
There isn't really any requirements aside the date and time that we run the thing. The time is every Saturday starting from 11 AM UTC to either 3 PM UTC or 4 PM UTC. Meaning the sessions are 4-5 hours long. Well, usually 5, but if something comes along then 4. We use a mumble chatroom that we only use to conduct the sessions. Other than that we communicate by e-mail if the need arises.
If you don't know the systems, no problem, we can explain it (to the best of our abilities at least).
Currently we are running 2 campaigns.
We play with microphones, but we can kind of fly by with text to voice in mumble, though one of our players uses that already, so just be aware that it might present initial issues of 'who' does 'what'.

Deep Abyss (DnD E5/5th Edition), a post apocalyptic ice age campaign. Fantasy, storywise it's more bleaker, and gameplay wise it's a little bit more combat oriented. Also actual dungeon crawling.

Genesis Void (Traveller, 1st Mongoose edition), a space opera setting with a TV series like setup, This is the sci-fi campaign. Lesser focus on combat and more on exploration and problemsolving and adventuring (i feel like).

If you are interested in any campaign, or if you want to ask questions, just shoot an e-mail over to (both [at] cock.li addresses) wizrobe or benga. Use a throwaway e-mail.

>>42980
Thank you, wizard, glad you enjoy the writeups of the sessions. except when rolls are written out in the posts. That's just me figuring things out by making up scenarios.

>>42990
Forgot some details about the party meeting with Jhonny. Here goes.

As the duo returns to Jhonny with the Tzur's dead, they ask of him about why he's antagonistic towards East Point. They get a story alright.
"I used to be the best shot in the galaxy. Independent as well. Sheyenne "Sureshot" they called me. Those East Point bastards managed to buy one of my mates, and i was betrayed. Made into just another test for the E.R.P bastards. They stole my body and put me into this kid's. Now they parade it around like a god damn posterboy while i get to crawl in dust and sand up on the surface. After i woke up, i managed to escape, but later went back to get my sweetheart."
At the point where Jhonny says "best shot in the galaxy", Barry just scoffs. "You ain't seen me yet, kiddo." and argues a little bit to end with showing his revolver. Jhonny also shows his iron. a high tech energy six shot. One of the ARMS he calls it. only 5 were every made in Lysander's golden age. Modular weaponry, which Jhonny shows off by attaching a larger part onto the revolver. As he does, the glowing lines on the revolver seem to interjoin into the larger part's lines. The energy revolver now turning into an assault rifle as the very high tech weapon reconstructs itself to accommodate it's new function.
"I have something i need to get my hands on deep down in this building. I think you understand why."
As he finishes his talk, he disjoins the part from his revolver and puts it back on the wall among other parts he collected over the years.

>>42991
Actually i feel like that's taking credit away. for reference, whoever DM's does the writeup.

This week we start back in deep abyss. Last time the bunker's door was closed, perhaps for good. The cold iron blocking them into the colder outdoors. Might as well get back to the fortress and make the most of it.

The party heads around the corner and they find the 17 people that Timeor managed to con.. Convince that leaving the bunker was a good idea and not a massive mistake. they also have the 2 people that they now own, the two would-be assassins who paid for their crime with exile. 19 heads in total. Crushbone will pay out big.

Yan-chi and timeor lead them back to the fortress. Yan-chi gets his payment from crushbone, and is instructed to instead lead the inclusion efforts. He gets to lead the new people and merge them into the collective. Yan-chi does not seem particularly suited for this task but takes on the responsibility anyway. He goes back to the storage room and talks to everyone. They can make 45 lbs of food a day, each. Right and there are ~100 people and they consume a lb of food each a day.. okay there's plenty to go around. What else?

Blacksmith apprentices, administrators, cleaners, many talents pool up from the group of people and one stands out- Fonni Wirkemi. An administrator. And organiser of men and logistics. A suitable man to task with actually doing the nitty gritty parts and letting the party do something more interesting. They also find Ingus Kalbist, the brewer, and Yan-Chi enjoys the thought of making a new brewery.

Still the hard work is assigned to Wirkemi while Yan-chi enjoys the rewards. At least for a while, he drags the two guys in chains out and believes their story that they'll stick around. One of them claims to be a bard but lets out this awful tune that doesn't even make sense. Still, they'll probably find something to do. But something to do found them.

A couple of bunkarians summoned food in the mess hall and accidentally started a party. The bunkerians all release their tension and anxiety into the booze that starts flowing when they start making food. It seems everyone is very generous when they get to eat bread, ham, honey, cheese and steak. The bards play a merry tune and it turns into a grand feast. Some bunkarians and some barbarians end up under the table, but the party continues.

Yan-chi and trey head to the libary to ask questions and share knowledge. They learn a little more about dragons and the worldstone, and about crushbone's aims. Aendrijahael. The elven kingdom. Or what is left of it. This is the place to go for ancient knowledge on the demons of the past. However, crushbone is heading somewhere else, not too far, but to the shore, to challenge Ryloth, the grand ice demon who conquered the worldstone and turned the world to ice by himself. He's going. Best not to interefere.

The party head in for the night, eat breakfast the next morning and meet crushbone. They fail miserably to get an accurate sense of how powerful he actually is, and instead get roped into the next adventure; scouts. Scouts report that they found a rival barbarian camp lying around, or rather, ripe for the taking. Are they strong, or weak? Time will tell.

Crushbone promotes Yan-chi to commander. He shall command the forces in the raid. Not so much a raid but an invasion, the entire fortress will be mobilised to take these guys on. Yes commander. At once commander. Crushbone's word is law, and Yan-chi is commander of this raid.

The mobilisation gets 25 fighters, not including timeor who comes along and the party. They find out what they're doing, and then head out.

Halfway there, they find a weird forest. The scout says that he didn't see this forest on the way here last time. Yan-chi, the scout and Trey go into the forest. Yan-chi gets a weird feeling and decides to leave. Trey moves onwards. He finds a graveyard, that makes him unsettled. Like he's not particularly welcome. He takes ten gold out and leaves it at one of the graves. When he does so, some of his internal tension is lifted, and he feels more confident moving around. He looks around, but doesn't see anything and so retreats. He feels as if there was a presence watching him the whole time.

Still, they move past the forest. The scout tells commander Yan-Chi that they're close to the camp and draws him a rough map. The commander formulates his plans. Planning intensifies. Right, split everyone into three groups: A, B. And Yan-chi. Yan chi will set off a fire under a cliff to get the attention of the guards ,and this is the signal to attack. A will come through the forest, lead by the scout, and B will come around the hill, led by Trey.

They prepare, evade the scouts, and ly in wait. Yan-chi sets off his bonfire. He can't really tell what's happening, but Trey's party is spotted, and a scout runs away towards the camp screaming that they're under attack. Well, time to attack I guess. A and B charge in, and Yan-chi launches fireballs to the guys he can see. AOE is pretty good against lots of weaker enemies, so they get exploded and shower the battlefield with blood and charred body pieces, turning the snow pink.

The tactics employed cause them to smash the camp. The guards are slaughtered, and the survivors and intimidated into surrender. The ones that planned to fight to the death change their mind after a giant dragon is summoned by Yan-chi. A fictional image, but it worked well enough. The smell of burning flesh does that to people.

Interrogation begins, and the capitives talk about the greatness and goodness of their leader. Food, warmth, and a plan. He's going to take them to the promised land where they can build an army to defeat Ryloth. Grand plans. Yan-chi tries to intimidate one with his ornamental dagger. While playing with it, he gets the very slight urge to push it right into the guy he's talking to.

And so he does. He takes the point and slides it into the chest, between the ribs of this poor fellow. He cries and sputters as the blade is slowly driven into his chest. He expires, and lays on the ground, dagger pointing upwards.

The man gets up, and his personality changes. He talks about how nice it is to be in a body again, and wonders where the succubi are and where the wine is served. Then complains about being tied up. He tries a few tactics; being coy, being cooperative, before eventually revealing that he has access to the body's memories. He spills everything about this guy that he possessed, including knowledge about his fellow captives. A druid, a kind of weirdo, and a loyalist. He tells as much as the body knows about the cave in the hope of being freed.

And that's where we had to end. The ornamental dagger reveals its true form.

Next week; Genesis Void. We shall see what the human pod thing really means. It's extremely old.

>>42988
hey guys, I finally ran out of smokes. time to go out to buy some.
why is everything red??? is Renard ok? WHY ARE WE ON THE DERSERT? WHAT ARE THOOSE?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Back to Genesis void we go.

Back on the ship, Renard lays down into the autodoc once again. With holes in his body due to the large stingers of the raksha drones, he opts to use medical slow again to fully heal up, while Barry takes some time to prepare. Emerging from his work on the developement on his hyperdrive, Anton proceeds to question the party of what they are up to, then proceeds to return to his quarters and clean himself up. The engineering genius seems to have forgotten about upkeeping his looks, but he corrects this problem. Taking up his flackjacket, weaponry and advanced helmet, the party returns to the surface (after renard is healed) to get back to jhonny's hideout. Landing their shuttle and entering, jhonny tajes them down into the bottommost floor with the restored elevator. Exiting to find a steep slope with a broken lift (think half-life/akira), they proceed to make their way down a small set of stairs. Arriving at the bottom, the party is faced with a gigantic vault door, two poles shooting arks or electricity and a lot of dead raksha drones. The electric bolts lick the ground and the nearby bug's bodies periodically. Looking around a way to disable the security system, Barry discoveres a relatively seemless bump in the ground nearby. Looking at it closely, they find a hatch with electrical cables of all colors running in it. Anton using his expertise, manages to disable the machine while Renard kicks one of the bugs. Dead and fried in it's own shell, it's exterior exoskeleton crunches under Renard's boot.

Taking a closer look at the decorated vault door, it's full of etched illustraions of a noble, each in a different situation. Barry checks the door and findy 3 that seem out of place and too heavily included. The first etching seems to depict the noble shaking hands with another noble, and seems like the noble's hand could be pressed in. The second depicts the noble eating, where the plate on the table seems to be pressable. And the third, illustrating the noble shooting some kind of slick high tech rifle.
Renard, a Marquis of the Byron system also takes a look and manages to gather two things. The noble seems to possess some kind of affinity for rare and exotic weapons, and the othsr noble he's shaking hands with isn't an actual noble, but a rich weapons trader. With the usual noble mannerisms lacking even in the illustration it's quite easy to tell apart by his noble eyes.

After some discussion, it's left up to Renard to choose between the handshake or the weapon. Picking the handshake first, the party suddenly hears clicking. In a state of panic, Renard and Jhonny is dragged away from the door. After appearently nothing happens and the clicking stops, Renard pushes the rifle in, and the vault door slowly opens, releasing a wave of cold mist.

>Initiating boot up sequence…
>0%
>37%
>52%
>79%
>100%
>Main system functional.
>Current date:2873.08.12. 08:13
>Last activation date:2759.03.02 19:42
>Reactivation reason: Security protocol breached.
>Running self diagnosis…
>0%
>11%
>49%
>88%
>100%
>Damaged functionality found:
>Door controls
>Self defense systems
>Ferrofluid tank control system
>Subprotocol "Last Resort" functioning.
>Subprotocol "Gratitude" functioning.
>Subprotocol "IC-4-R05" not responding to ping.
>Connecting to IC-4-R05…
>…
>Host refused connection.
>…
>Host refused connection
>…
>Host refused connection.
>…
>Activating back up protocol 7UD4T
>Assuming admin privileges…
>Access granted.
>Accessing cameras…
>Movement detected
>Running bioscan…
>0%
>33%
>66%
>100%
>4 lifeforms detected
>Idmatch/-nul
>Idmatch/-nul
>Idmatch/-nul
>Idmatch/-nul
>Unauthorized entry detected.
>Running Inner Sanctum protocol…
>0%
>11%
>12%

The party makes their way inside, and finds 6 data nodes and 6 terminals and a reinforced closed door on the other end. After a little investigation, they figure out that one of the nodes lacks a carbon nanocard, a high tech way of storing information by printing information on the cards on nano scale. To open the door, they need the last one. Lucky for them, Jhonny and his gang found it already, so it's quickly reinserted. As the card is reinserted, red lines pulse and zip across to the door as it slowly slides open. Cold mist oozes out. Looking inside, the oarty sees a walkway leading to a suspended platform inside. two pods on each side, and a sphere of black, thick tarlike liquid shifting in place, floating in the middle on the top of some kind of machine infused pillar. With light refracting all the colors of the rainbow from the sphere's surface as it shifts and moves mid air. The party makes their way inside and onto the bridge. Well, most anyway. With Renard, Jhonny and Barry on the bridge and Anton staying behind out of caution. Suddenly, parts of the short ceiling drop, revealing long tectacle like appendages, each with a plasma torch at the end. Combat starts, and anton tries to encourage Barry with a leadership roll, but sadly the effect in not great enough. Next, one of the two machines whip their tentacles towards Barry, but miss.
Renard decides to take his cutlass and charge down the other machine. Doing so, he manages to cut through one of the arma completely, taking it off, but as it falls, the still burning plazma torch cuts through one of the suspenders, making the suspended bridge partially tip. As the bridge assumes it's new position, Barry and Renard, who didn't expect the shift in weight, both fall to the edge and thumbling over the railings. Managing to hold on, barely, both watch as their weapons fall down into the darkness below. Jhonny, managing to brace for impact pulls Barry up, who then shoots one of the robotic defense systems. Anton jumps under the other robot to help Renard up, but gets slashed on his back. The flack jacket isn't destroyed, but the searing pain of his burned/cooked skin kicks in soon. All in all, Renard is pulled up, and anton takes a shot with his shotgun at the other defensebot, and shoota it with his shotgun, destroying it. However, of of the shotgun's pellets ding off the middle altar and penetrate deep into one of the pods, followed by a smaller explosion. Combat ends and the party investigates. Jhonny puts his high tech revolver into the mysterious fluid as it takes it in then spits it out. Zhe party searche sthe pods. One containing the (now destroyed) high trch rifle of the noble. Appearently it's power core was hit by the pellet, exploding the rifle. Repairable, but it will take serious tech and capital to do so. The other pod holds a jet black stick, shaped like a bokken. As Renard touches it, a thin Blue line zips accross it's non existant edge. A monofilament blade, with an edge only a molecule thick, it ignores half of the armor of the opponent when you hit.

Taking their time to now discuss with Jhonny, they ask some questions.
"So about the way in, right? Well, i said i know about it. I never said that it's easy to get in though."
Jhonny tells the party a way into East Point territory. Through the Raksha dug tunnels. Through the hive. Great. Well, the silver lining is that they can kind of sneak in. The drones they killed for jhonny still have their pheromone sack, so they should be able to sneak through, provided they avoid the soldiers and "the big guy". To the question of wh, the party can't just shuttle in, a thight air defense and the East Point owned Arms is the answer. A 20 stories tall turret essentially able to shoot anything coming nearby into nonexistance. Taking their time, they return to the scientist base to conduct some business, especially Barry, desperately in need of any firearm at this point, then return to ship to apply medical care to Anton's burned skin on his back.

>>43212
Returning planetside, the party remembers to get the pheromone sacks from the bugs after they check the burrow they'll go through out. Getting themselves smeared with "Bug juice" or "bug powder" (depending on who you ask), they land and make contact with the drones outside. Success, they kind of just ignore the party. As the trio descends derp into the hive, they quickly find themselves at the mercy of the oppressive darkness, and anton's very useful helmet. The engineer essentially acts as the guide for the team, and they begin their crawl. Avoiding the soldiers, they reach a large open chamber. In the middle, a gigantic pillar with something poking out on the top. A disgusting head, similar to that of a larva, it's head carape giving off a sickly glow. Busy doing something else, the team succesfully sneaks past the dumber drones and navigates their way outside. The tunnel narrowing and narrowing, they arrive into the outer outpost near East Point. Checking things out, they see the guards turn to lunch in a larger building. Getting lucky, and ending up near the armory, they manage to acquire uniforms (albeit without the nametags - probably not holding up to a closer inspection without a silver tongue), and a keychain. They form a plan. Hijack one of the supply trucks and proceed to head to East Point. Lt. Anton stays behind, while Renard and Barry form a pair, to play patrol and get to the trucks.

Another day, another fuckup.
When Jerry was looked upon with hidden disdain by both students and the professors in the academy, he knew. When they said he's more "suited" to be an engineer than an astrologist he wanted to be, he knew. When he got his diploma, and his first job was to start fixing vehicles, he knew.
People abandoned him as a whole, left to fulfill some lower function and be shunned and avoided by the others. The worst part wasn't even the loneliness he felt. No, he got used to that by now. Jerry found ways to adapt to it. Find ways to take his mind off of things. It was the people trying to sell him on a fantasy, thinking he's too stupid to realize, thus buy into it. "Oh, your work is important! It's saving lifes! Just think of this job as your own! As if it's your own trucks you are fixing! You are a crucial member of this operation, so do your 120%!"
All the responsibility, none the benefits.
He drew the last drag of his Akul and stuck his gas lighter back in his uniforms pocket. He returned to his workshop to try to fix the problem he created. A wire cut by not paying attention. Facing his mistakes. An action that took massive amount of energy. Wanting to just scream "no" from the top of his lungs and leave his shackles behind that have been imposed upon him by others who want nothing but to use him and spit on him and laugh when he's not looking.
"But you can't really just do that can you? They tie you down and suck you dry until all you can do is beg for just enough to not die while you carry them on your shoulders as they whip you."
"No."
"We both know what they do behind your back. The looks they give you. The silent chuckles they do when you pass by. Face it. You are a pariah. They designated you as cannon fodder. As someone disposable. As trash. They expect you to obey their every word and thank them for it. As if they don't know what they are doing exactly."
"No! Stop it, go away."
" Do you want me to? Do you wish to abandon yourself to these people? What did they do for you? All they ever did was abuse you. Take advantage of you. To use you then throw you away like an oily rag. To grind you down into dust. Into someone that can't think. They'll destroy you. They'll destroy me."
"And what do you want me to do? I can't do anything…"
"No… You can do it. You'll need to destroy them before they destroy you. I've been hiding…tools for you to use when the time is right. It's lunchtime. Return to eat, then go to your room. I'll help you break free of them. All of them. But you must listen only to me…"
"…Alright."
"Good. Now let's go…"

As Renard and Barry reach the trucks, they begin thinking about a way to actually hijack it, they stop as a lone east point soldier dazedly walks past them. With assistance from Anton and from Renards new blade, the duo cuts a circle into one of the windows, opens the door and jury rig the truck to start. Putting some plastic explosives under the other truck, they get Anton aboard and pretend to exit as normal solfiers would. Totally normal…
They reach East Point's gate and are let in fairly easily. Tall buildings litter the place, with anti air systems and the gigantic Arms cannon visible at all times. The party splits up. Anton checks the Academy/library. In the public section searching for potential info on the cannon, he finds some manual describing the ferrofluid ammunition of the cannon and a propaganda manifesto of the leader, Rektor Ivanov Raskat. Skimming through he gets the idea of the factions goals.
Their goals: to gather any and all high tech remnants for catalouging, safekeeping and destruction. They say, it is to stop events such as the previous "fall" from happening. A mysterious event that lead to Lysander falling into ruin. Their ultimate desire: To find the final Arms, The Icaros, and destroy it for good. Reaching mythical status, the faction strongly believes in it's existence with proofs in recordings they acquired. The book also includes a small segment the Rektor dedicates to the ultimately conflicting idea of both wanting to possess and destroy high tech. He contributes this to what he calls "Rule of absolute control". He elaborates that in any situation, you can only truly achieve, with certainty, the outcome you personally want if you have absolute control over the variables. In this hypothetical state, youbare in complete control of everything. Ivanov elaborates that while this state is highly impossible to acquire, relating it to perfection in arts, but a large enough control over the variables will turn the dice in their favour enough to be considered most likely. As such they fo stockpile and use what they find to assert control over the general people living in anarchy for their purposes.
Anton also asks about a professor that will hold a lecture about ferrofluidic dynamics in the academy tomorrow.
In the meantime Barry and Renard cruise around and plant plastic and TDX explosives around key budings, including the one which have 3 generators powering the gigant turrets.

And that's where the session ended. Next week we'll most likely be having a deep abyss session.

For some reason it didn't post the thingy about Axxxyrq's chamber.

>>43165

I love how stupid this dude face looks in this meme.

Last time, the battle for the cave. A full on battle party is sent with Yan-chi as the commander. The plan is solid. The battle unfolds, but like any plan, it doesn't last through first contact with the enemy. Enemy losses are higher than expected, the sheer force of the fireball spell cast over and over again decimated their forces. They end up capturing several, and Yan-chi feels like inserting his magical dagger into one of them. What could go wrong. It possesses him and they recover the man's memories.

The cold air takes away the heat of the battle, freezing tempers and sweat. The snow is littered with frozen bloodstains. The tents around flap in the breeze, one of them on fire, taking whatever it contained with it. The groans of the injured are constantly on the breeze, as the adrenaline wears off.

The possessed man says that they can call him Wailer. Not to reference the man of course, but him as the dagger. After singling out the guy who knows about the traps, Wailer is let free. He is a bit cold. Well there's one way to get info out of him, how about this?

Wailer pulls the dagger out of himself and the body he inhabited collapses to the ground in a soft clump. Yan-chi picks it up and eyes trap-knowing man. Jorgem scrambles away as best he can in the snow. Yan-chi promises that he doesn't have to use the dagger so long as Jorgem cooperates. Jorgem says that he'll behave. Yan-chi drags him up but he falls over again. Having his hands and legs bound makes it hard to lead them around the cave and reveal traps for them, of course. Yan-chi cuts the bindings.

Jorgem makes a break for it. He runs away as fast he can to the nearest tent. The party persues. The tent he's aiming for is reached as he dodges attacks left and right, and there's a Caribou inside. The caribou kinda runs out then spins around to watch. What a weird creature. Jorgem is hit by an eldritch blast that propels him into the side of the tent. He manages to keep his footing though. Yan-chi pulls out a metal object with telekinesis, but it's just a pan. They get into the tent after jorgem and they find him eagerly trying to cut his own bindings on a sword that's on a rack. Yan-chi pulls this away from him.

But Jorgem finds something else, and cuts his own bindings. Free, he looks around for an exit. Yan-chi uses his dagger. Aiming for the chest, he's no warrior so he instead aims for the shoulder. Jorgem's warrior instinct dodges away from the chest blow, but Yan-chi trips and his entire body weight goes into the dagger, into the undefended chest. Jorgem collapses and ceases moving.

Moments later he gets back up, brushes himself off and kindly asks the party to stop attacking this body. It is such an inconvenience, after all. He probes the man's memories and tells them that he, as Wailer can probably lead them into the cave. He does add that the boasts were exaggerated and Jorgem knew less about the traps than he boasted about. Accessing the memories about the paniced retreat, he quietly chuckles to himself. Mortals.

He politely asks if he can pick up the nearby sword, and tucks it into his belt. Should be useful. Wailer joins the party in Jorgem's body. They head to the cave. Too many traps for a larger party, of course. The other raiders request permission from their commander to loot. They loot.

Before even entering the cave they check for traps. They see the footsteps of the scouts who ran into the cave earlier. Nothing here maybe. They enter the cave. They check for traps. All they find are the melted footprints of the scouts. Their wet snowy feet leaving a trail that melts away. The air coming from the cave is warm and humid. Wailer tells them that there are natural hot springs inside, and that's why the cave is used.

No traps yet. They turn to their left. A strange caribou follows them into the cave. They walk through, and the strange caribou makes a grunting sound at a strange looking wall. The party turn around, and heeding the advice of the animal, check out the wall. It flaps in the breeze just a bit, and dust falls off. Yan-chi decides to bring out his problem solver, and sets fire to the wall. It burns fairly easily. Behind the wall is an empty cavern. Oh.

He goes into to explore, and suddenly five guys jump out, two behind and three infront. Yan-chi is completely surrounded and cut off from his party members. He gets mugged. A couple blades the the side reminds him to be careful, and while he is contemplating taking all these guys with him in an explosion of fire, Trey jumps in and stabs one of them. The Caribou charges one of them, and misses. He receives a knife in the flank for his trouble. The bandit, shocked at the caribou says "I'm gonna eat you, tasty thing".

The knife dispels the transformation magic and the 7ft druid named Fith is now in this place and he stamps his staff on the ground and asks who will be eating who. Yan-chi casts a dragonic blast of fire that roasts three of the assailants instantly. Their skin melts and when the haze of fire dissapates, all that's left are blackened charred corpses. Except one, who gets stabbed by Trey, his green flame pouring out and licking the guy next to him, who gets his skin torn off by the extreme magical heat. He collapses.

Shocked, the final assailant is receptive to persuasion. He drops his dagger and agrees to surrender. He reveals himself as Brody, and tries to talk to Wailer, assuming that he's Jorgem. "Jorgem, what are you doing down here?" Wailer tries to put on the right voice, switching between the dagger's voice and Jorgem's. "Um, right, yes, I'm here." Not really answering. Wailer does ask the party later about the important things; wine and succubi. sometimes food. He's informed about Crushbonia and his great stagecoach, rolling across plain and forest. Clearly a high class transport solution.

Wailer laments about finding himself in a shithole though. The barbarian plains? Ugh, what savages.

Still, they continue. In the second real room is a treasure chest. Sitting by itself, suspiciously. Yan-chi just can't help himself. He positions himself at a safe distance and uses his Telekinesis to open the chest. Click, chunk, hundreds of metal splinters shoot out of the chest. Fith is in range but manages to not get hit, but Yan-chi is pierced. It's going to be one of those days, he thinks to himself as he pulls out the metal and they clatter on the floor, complete with drops of blood. He sets fire to this chest.

They continue exploring. They upon a choice of passages; north, or west. North is chosen first, and Yan-chi spends a long time verifying if there's a trap. Throwing rope in, creative use of mirrors and telekinesis, careful ground inspection, the works. After completely verifying that the passage may be trap free, Yan-chi watches Fith step in. The draconic face on the south wall looms over a pile of broken arrows. Yan-chi and fith step infront of the draconic face, barely missing the broken arrows.

Of which there is a pressure plate. They decide to actually just leave this room. Best not mess with it. The west passage is next. The standard trap check commences, and Yan-chi finds a concealed pressure plate. Not going to get me this time. He checks out the room ahead, there's a pool of boiling water. Must be the natural hot springs. He carefully, slowly steps around the pressure plate, taking extra care not to activa- And a guy jumps out of a crevice, and pushes Yan-chi into the pool of boiling water with a massive burst of strength. Yan-chi lands in the water and immediately his skin starts cooking, his life searing, crying, a thousand splashes of boiling water all over his body all at once.

The assailant steps on the plate without care, showing the extent of the trickery. The assailant tries to step on Yan-chi's head to keep him in the water, but misses and isn't very successful. Yan-chi barely makes it out, surviving the boiling hell for 12 seconds, and nearly dying. Luckily it wasn't actually boiling but instead very hot. Kicking away boiled skeletons, he gets out and lays prone, his entire body throbbing. Probably best it was Yan-chi considering he can handle the heat better than others. Trey pushes the man into the water with an eldritch blast. Unfortunately the man is killed by the blast, ripping chunks out of his torso but he is still pushed into the water.

The splash is barely dodged by the prone Yan-chi, not safe from the danger. He makes his way out, carefully, and takes a rest to recover. Wailer is impressed by that trap. Didn't expect that one. Well time to continue I guess. They 'convince' the captured bandit, Brody, to take the lead. He stops, being informed of a pressure plate right ahead of him. The wall has a cut right in it, and there's a slight glint of metal in the slot. Probably best not to. Beyond the plate is a group. They say hello to Brody, and during the conversation, Yan-chi decides to not risk it.

Fireball. The explosion rocks the cavern, throwing the targeted group apart in burned cinders. It also activates the pressure plate that brody is standing near, and a metal flash seperates brody's upper half from his lower half. A scythe springs from the wall at terrifying speed and cuts the man clean in two, sending blood everywhere, before resetting back into position. Wailer clearly enjoyed the spectacle. "You promised that guy would live? Very amusing"

A strange fountain in the room has its secrets revealed by Trey. The tormented faces hide a secret, and they fold open to reveal a suspicious wooden box. Too heavy for telekinesis (It's a nerfed version, up to 50lbs, since it's granted by item). So Fith just takes it out. Just full of coins. Fith finds this very boring.

Well time to go ahead. Fith steps ahead with Yan-chi following closely. They forgot something. What they forgot is to check for traps. The clunk and the steaming water pouring down on them reminds them. Yan-chi ducks and dives away in time, but poor Fith takes it twice. He looks up and takes boiling water in the face from one side of the cave, then dazed from that, the other wall opens up and sears him again. Reeling, he makes his way back.

They splash through the warm puddle as they try this again, and they enter a room with a giant spiked pit in the middle, and a ladder. There's also a room to the north, a section of cave walled off with a solid wooden palisade. Not going to get pushed into a spike pit, thanks. The party take very much care to check behind so they don't get tricked twice. No tricks this time, they think.

They get prone. Or at least most of them do, Wailer refuses. "I'm not going to get down on the dirt" And he proceeds to "guard the rear" by hiding in a crevice. Yan-chi sets fire to the door on the palisade. Dynamic entry. They lay there, patiently. Time ticks by as the flames lick the door. Yawn.

The door looks close to collapse, when suddenly, THWACK. The door is busted open from the inside, revealing what is behind. Yan-chi was prepared and immediately fires a fireball into the room. Coming in the other direction is an entire barrage of bolts. Even prone, three of them still hit him, piercing his seared skin. The people receiving the fireball suffered a little worse though, having been roasted.

A firefight ensues. The people within fire bolts out, and the party fire stuff in. The bolts come out of the darkness to hit the lightened party, in an another successful ambush. Not successful enough, Fith puts up a wind wall and blocks the bolts, and everyone gets up and moves fowards. Charge!

In the meantime, a muscly guy, a barbarian, moves in from the south, behind the party. Wailer was totally guarding the rear. The encircling barbarian complains about having taking a shit, and talks to Wailer, assuming it's Jorgem. "Ah, yes, I was uh [He clears his throat and changes to a barbarian voice], YEAH We're gonna take them now!".
 
trey moves down and eldritch blast's the barbarian near the edge of the spike pit. The barbarian looks nervously behind him and growls, as a gust from Yan-chi pushes him over the edge. "Graaa!". Crunch, splat, cough. The barbarian spasms in his death throes, bleeding all over the spikes as his pained thrashing impales him deeper. Oh well. Wailer clears his throat again and claims a successful rear defense.

The party charge forwards. The leader speaks of the promised land. "I will take my children forwards. The future is with me! Listen to my words, the land of milk and honey is forwards!" He comes out and takes his great sword and sinks it into Fith, who takes high amounts of damage. His barkskin breaks under the force. Trey uses eldritch blast to push the guy away, and with a wombo combo from Yan-chi and Fith, he's wind-walled then exploded.

Fireball. The hot air rushes out of the cavern, blowing away sweat from the action, the air silent, with ringing in the ears. A roar like a wave echoes through the cavern for a few seconds. The party start looting. Fith only finds a key and some coins on the leader. Behind the curtain lies a chest, needing a special key.

The key fits and the chest opens. In it is a piece of neatly folded parchment; a dome. The silvered dome. The promised land? The document depicts a massive dome, housing four biomes; green, dark green, white/grey and yellow. Grass, jungle, tundra and desert? It appears to be revealing an area where there is somewhere to live. Strong magic must control this thing, to have it protected against the elements.

Still they continue adventuring. They find the toilet and some beds. Nothing of value. The toilet is nice though, all things considered. Fith steps on another pressure plate. Heavy rocks fall on him from above, bashing him and causing some bruises. Oh right, traps. They spot the other two pressure plates and are careful to avoid them this time. Ahead is a group of thugs, waiting in the dark. They're dispatched without too much trouble. Fith is in some trouble as the bolts fly and the steel flashes, but Wailer actually joins the fight. Jumping out from his crevice in the cave wall, he strikes at the assailants, before ducking back to avoid projectiles. He seemed to relish tearing into the flesh of the people he was attacking enough to justify putting this body at risk.

"Get the spellcaster!"

That's all of them. The bad guys are dispatched with spells, turning them into various degress of broken, burned and flayed corpses.

And that's all we had time for this session. Next week; Genesis void.

>>40257

Forgive me, dear reader. The fates have singed my tongue and severed the string of fate that i have brought before you.

Truth be told, our ancients did right by the order, but as time passed, the Fates have pushed us further and further off into the abyss. Slowly at first, inch by inch they crept closer and closer, but our order stood tall in the Ages of Stories, back when they had power to inspire or strike fear into the hearts of the strongest man. Religions, spiritual paths, mythology. All came gushing forth from our ancient elder's minds, leading the people to greatness and potential far beyond human capability. Of course the price had to be payed, as great good can only exist in presence of great evil and man only in presence of monsters, but man became more than just an object. More than just a lump of flesh.
They became beacons, Examples of the true path by their mere presence that inspired many. Some deemed good and some deemed bad, but all memorable, like any good story is.
But as the Fates pushed their reach further and further, we lost our ability to influence the flow while they gained it. Technology, science, all just to push us out. To reduce our power. Why do you think every cellphone nowadays has cameras? All the CCTV's? To watch you? No, the Fates record everything to prevent us from interfering. We can't modify what has been percieved first hand. We can only tell tales and weave stories, and thus make it a reality after, once the stories become established and stand on their own without our influence. That's how our order works. Our kind of magic. The tales of Olympus and Valhalla were real because the people believed it to be. And because it was believed to be real, people believes it more. Boiling it down, you could say belief is the base of our power. Belief in the tales, that is.

Nowadays, we can barely function. A broken order, we still try to stand the tide and bring stories to life, but it's becoming harder and harder. Desperately, we've been trying our best to reach the people. If you ever felt immersed in a "fictional" world, watched a movie, played a game you liked or read an interesting piece of literature or got involved spiritually, that was one of us, trying our best to reach out to you. To teach you the knowledge of belief in the stories, and by extension, your own.
I may release order information by saying this, but i'm willing to take the risk in order to ask for your help.
Truth is, we are all living a tale. Just another string or thread. We managed to regain a little ground by rejecting the Fates propagated idea that "reality" is "reality", and accepting our own "reality" as a "fiction", but even then, long term, we will not be able to survive long enough to return mankind to glory.

My brothers and i, however, are dedicated to tell the stories, as all our predecessors have been.
After ages of search, among countless tales, we managed to find 4 threads leading to the same world, each hiding a piece of the previous thread. I beseech you, dear reader, help us restore the thread, and throw a wrench into the cogs of the Fates grinding reality down into a grey mass with no stories to tell. Let them crumble into dust in their fetted and putrid "reality".

The four threads are as follows:

The Tale of a Violent Sun and a Tranquil Moon

The Tale of the Dastardly 3

The Tale of Holy Crusade

The Tale of Trickling Shadows

Choose a thread and let us begin our stories anew…

>>43407
The Tale of a Violent Sun and a Tranquil Moon even though the Holy crusade would also be interesting.

>>43416
Hah, fret not, reader. All stories are told in time.
All but a fragment, used to restore the previous thread is needed from this tale. Do not worry, we shall regain the previous thread to continue, or mayhaps one of these stories will catch your interest more. We shall see in time.

Now, the tale of a Violent Sun and a Tranquil Moon, was it.
Ah yes. A tale of brothers both born under an unlucky star, dragged by their destiny towards ascentism, martial arts, and greatness. But let's start the story in the beginning, where all stories start.

A lone cart drags through the mud in a heavy downpour as the rhythmical booms of a whip ring out from the front of the car pushing the dampened sound in the back. Into the cage.
With only a textile on top, now dripping water onto the slaves below, One of the few children cup their hands to collect water to drink, then shares it with his smaller, weak brother.
The two children, Xing Dao Son and Xing Dao Mun are currently in a slave cart heading to the village of Fisher (Halász). After the death of their lone caring father, Son grew more aggressive and turnes to theft and violence to take care of his sickly brother. The village elders shortly banished them both from their home, condemning them to die in the wilderness. Son, however managed to survive and even thrive within a local bandit group. The twelve year old child's body slowly became scarred with each battle he fought, while Mun managed to learn from the groups smarter members, but alas, the group fell out because of a raid gone wrong, with Son surviving only due to Mun rushing to his aid. The enemies took both of them, and sold them as slaves.

Getting out and away will be difficult, but doable. As the cart rides on, the older slaves fearfully discuss their destination. A short, lithe man with short brown hair guesses the Decei monastery(Decei Kolostor). The man recounts the rumors about the reclusive order of monks living on the Decei island in the middle of and how they kill older people for "fun and education" and take childrens as slaves to abide their rules.
Sun guesses the beat chance to escape will be when the cart arrives to the village, since the slavers will need to move slaves to the island in the middle of Inkfish Lake (Kalamár Tó).

The cart slowly but surely goes forward as the landscape shifts.
Arriving into the town of Fisher (Halász), the slaves are left in the cages while talks are had between the driver and someone else. Sun tries to make out the other person (perception-15), and manages to see a middle aged village guard with a small goat beard and another man covered in robes. They discuss about payment and terms. As they do, the slaves are brought out or the cage. Son being tied by a chain to the sickly Mun, waits for an opportunity to escape.
The group is brought to a larger boat and carried across Inkfish Lake. The water, full of inkfish shoot their balck ink whenever one hits the boat then quickly shoots off. One however, jumps onto the boat, causing a smaller ruckus.
As the boat gets closer to the shore of Decei Island, the strange black and grey trees swim into full view, and the blackish sands and waves makes it seem like the whole island is drained of it's color. Reaching the sands, their boat is pulled to shore, and two men emerge from the dark forests. One lithe, with a long ponytail and dressed in fine sky blue textiles, and the other bald, full of muscle and wearing blood reddish gauntlets, greaves and textiles.
Both get the slaves and send the ship away. Two of the older slaves tries to run for it, and manages to get away from the group, running like hell, but the monks give chase. The blue robed monk, almost like a dance, hits the pressure points of one runaway slave with a flurry of non lethal blows (Attacks: 13+7=20-Hit, 12+7=19-Hit 4+7=11-Hit, 5+7=12-Hit)
(Damage 2+4=6, 3+4=7, 3+4=7, 6+4=10 =30 points of non lethal damage) Knocking the slave out. The red monk runs after the other one and attacks (Attack: 8+8=16-Hit, 6+8=14-Hit, 5+8=13-Hit, 10+8=18-Hit)
(Damage:1+4=5, 5+4=9, 5+4=9, 7+4=11 = 34 points of lethal damage) Grabbing onto the man's shoulder, the monk tears off a piece of the slave's arm, then delivers two rippling punches into the back of the slave crunching up his spine ribcage from the back with an otherwordly crunch, then finishes by grabbing the already dead slave by the top of his head, and pulling his head straight off the malnourished body.

Right now, both are far away. Son gets an idea. He thinks both him and Mun could escape if they ran for the foxhole nearby the path both see (passive perception met) right now, and hide in there.

As always, there are questions, but today, i shall make choosing easier for you, reader. Consider it my gratitude for your help.

The question is:
Should the brothers try and make a run for it or should they keep put and hope not to be ripped to shreds as training dummies in the monastery?

D&D Saturday Resumes and today we are running the Deep Abyss Campaign GM'd by myself. Just a note; we're running online so as long as you can make the timeslot and don't mind microphone communication you could join in.

Last time: They find this 'barbarian camp' and send out an invasion force. The defenders are completely blown away by the tactical genius of Yan-chi. Or fireballs. Either way, they acquire a new team member, Wailer. they acquire the guy by using the magical dagger on a guy. The dagger possesses the man and behaves as a multi thousand year old consciousness would. Anyway they enter a cave, get hit by pretty much all the traps inside and kill the people inside.

The heat of battle fades and blood pools out onto the warm stone floor, leaking gently from the fallen. Wailer stands upright and dusts himself off. "Well I'm glad those brigands are dealth with. They do make an awful mess of the place. I'm almost glad I'm not wearing decent shoes."

The echoes get quieter, and the sounds in the background become audible; crying. And something else, a slap, a crunch, echoing down the cavern. Yan-chi notices that the sounds are coming from the darkness and so into the darkness they go. They head north. Yan-chi checks for traps and finds none. He steps on a plate and his foot depresses into the ground, and the cold wave of anxiety flushes over him, the panic of failure.

He's barely given time to panic as the roof of the cave opens up and thousands of caltrops flood out and spread everywhere. The panic subsides as the immediate danger is known. The entire cave room is now difficult terrain, with thousands of nasty looking spikes covering the floor. Yan-chi has a gust cantrip and, like a broom, sweeps a few pathways through the caltrops. The caltrops are blown aside after a long time casting cantrips like some sort of magic maid.

Moving through, north, they get to a turn in the cavern. The darkness leaks the sounds of chopping and slapping. The sweet yet sour sounds of flesh hit with steel, over and over again. Yan-chi shuffles through, failing horribly to stealth, he makes his way down. He hears words from the darkness beyond- Broken english, a strange voice maybe not from a human - "Friends? New friends yes, slappy choppy meaty eatey".

Yan-chi yells that new friends have arrived. The creature comes out of the darkness, it's a gnollish creature with a bloody apron and two large butcher implements. Its teeth are bloodstained and it doesn't look hungry. "Friends! New friends choppy choppy yes here yes!"

Yan-chi offers himself as a new friend and moves forward under the peaceful guidance of the Gnoll; "Yes, friends come here, good friend yes yes will choppy maybe".

Yan-chi gets close and sees part of the room the gnoll was in. Bodies hanging from hooks, parts and blood everywhere, and the gnoll comes into full vision. The whites of its eyes show an innocence, it's been trained in basic common but it's clearly used to butcher humanity. Or what is left of it. Yan-chi is close enough to taste the breath, and the gnoll attacks. "New friend! Friend over there choppy choppy! New friend small man choppy choppy!"

The gnoll strikes first. Gnashing teeth, flashing steel, it is a talented fighter, attacking with tooth and the steel it holds in each hand. Yan chi avoids getting too injured. Too short for the gnoll perhaps. Fith tries the universal trick of 'hold person', but the gnoll resists spectacularly. A very wise gnoll indeed. Somehow.

Trey jumps in, throwing himself into range, a full 30ft closer. He throws eldritch blast at the gnoll, using his sorcery magic he pushes the creature back 10ft. Yan-chi uses this opportunity to run back and throw a mote of fire energy at the creature. The small ball, like a marble, burns with intense fire energy as it flies across the room to the creature. It hits the gnoll's shoulder and buries itself deep. The intense heat burns away the flesh in a very small spot and the gnoll cries out in pain. The mote of hot fire energy cut its way deep down to the bone and caused intense pain. The monsters that threw this know no mercy.

Fith casts bark armor on himself and protects the little man (Yan-chi is very short). Trey stands firm. He fires off his green-flame-pike but misses. The green burning flame spirals up the pike but doesn't hit home. He eats flashing steel and gnashing teeth but he is just as hard to hit. The gnoll has trouble with moving targets it seems.

Yan-chi casts a bonfire under the creature hoping to dislodge it, but is only partially successful. The gnoll manages a perfect save and slippidy slides out of the way, taking no damage. It cries out "Friends! Friends choppy choppy you no friends but me choppy choppy". It swings madly at Trey but misses. Trey's mage armor saving him from becoming a true friend of this gnoll creature.

Fith casts poison spray. The poison emits from his staff like a fire hose, an entire ocean of noxious chemicals impacts this gnoll, leaving a silhouette of gnoll on the wall, the gnoll does not react preferably. It screams "FRIEND KNOW MUST EAT" and also says something in Gnoll, of which no-one in the party knows. The Gnoll's final words become lost to history.

the gnoll runs over to Fith, dodging the strikes from Trey. He eats another firebolt from Yan-chi, it burns away at his skin and face. The hair and ears are gone and all is left is a sizzling gnoll face, locked in rage and pain and sadness.

Fith ends the creature's misery. Calling upon the gods of nature, he instils his staff with magical power. The staff lights up, the leaves grow outside and glow a little, and it holds an aura of magical power. Fith shows an expression of exertion, both his massive firbolg arms ripple with power and strength as he brings this staff down on the head of this gnoll. The gnoll's head explodes, the brains squirting out of the cracks made by the impact. The staff catches the lower jaw on the way down, and fith tears it off, the jaw going flying off to the side.

The gnoll falls. The fight ends. Yan-chi kicks it to make sure it's dead. Multiple times. And then some more. It's dead.

Moving on the party finds a locked door with crying behind it. The lock is hard and metal, a big lump of steel. Yan-chi heats it up to red hot, and fith bashes it at it. It breaks enough to undo, but to manipulate it'd need to cool. Wailer gets impatient and looks for water skins on those that were slain and finds one. He pours it out onto the lock and there's a cracking sound as the metal is forcefully quenched. But now just warm, the lock is pulled off. Opening, an awful smell hits first, as piles of humanity push themselves against the cave walls ahead of them.

People clothed in rags, barely alive, starved, line the room. These must be the friends of the gnoll. Yan-chi walks in, telling the people inside that he's there to free him. Two of these unfortunate wretches jump from the shadows, using the last of the energies to attack him in the thought of escape. They're so weak though that even Yan-chi, the weak short stack can overpower them. They are thrown off, their biting and scraping ineffectual and they lie on the ground, panting and wheezing, completely broken.

Yan-chi has some sympathy for these people and offers them rations. They all mob him, all grabbing and scraping, their hands pulling and nipping, grabbing for the prize of more food. They're all pushed off (somehow) by the weak little Yan-chi and he manages to go all commie and distributes food equally. He offers them sanctuary, and knowing that they don't really have a choice, they come along. They're wearing rags and body odor, so they grab some clothes along the way. The corpses don't need that any more.

They make their way out of the cave with no incidents and then Commander Yan-chi rendevous with his troops. A squad and B squad are ready to believe in him. Yan-chi senses that their loyalty is second hand - the troops are loyal to Crushbone and Crushbone has made Yan-chi commander. It'll do for following orders. Besides, the camp has been completely looted. Even the tentpoles are gone. They're carrying as much as they can.

Yan chi makes a few days travel. Everyone rests. The tents they stole are put to good use, and the Bunkarians that are with them provide ample rations. Everyone is in good spirits. Speaking of good spirits, Yan-chi tells the company to wait outside the forest. Yan-chi, and the other totally human player characters go into the forest. They check out the graveyard again. The flowers are still there, as fresh as the day they were picked. Lying there, fragrant, fresh, colorful, right on top of this grave.

The grave reads well in common; a young lady who died barely 19 years into her life rests below. Taken from the world, loyalty lies longer than that. Yan-chi senses that the place is cursed and that there is grave danger here (in the graveyard) and picks up the flowers. A ghost appears. Armed in heavy mail and sword and shield, it admonishes the party for their disrespect and attacks!

And the one of our players had to leave so we ended here.

Next time, more deep abyss!

This week starts us in deep abyss - Where we left off last time. The party enters the spooky forest and finds the graves. Yan-chi throws caution to the wind and picks up the flowers. The mist swirls around him and a spectre appears - a glowing sword, thick armor and a tough shield all in mist ghostly form is summoned. The ghost laments about "The lack of respect" in the party. "May Rosalina forgive me for I have failed her again" and it attacks.

The party fend it off easily. The deadly strikes of this unmortal creature strike nothing but Trey, once and in a glancing fashion. The fire and druidic magic tear this ghost apart. The ghost vanishes in a puff of mist, laying one final word to the abyss "Rosalina.." A belt falls from the air and lands neatly on the wild grass and the mist and atmosphere of the graveyard clears. All that is left of this cursed individual are memories. The grave that spawned the foul abomination has nothing but fragile rusty wire and mouldy twigs laying infront of it. They fall apart at the slightest touch. The grave reads: Rosaline Thorne; died 19 years of age; died away from home.

Yan-chi picks up the belt, half expecting to be cursed, but it's just a magic belt. He tosses it to Trey who puts it on, excited at his new power. It takes several minutes for him to attune but when he does he learns that it's a belt of last resort - granting him extra abilities when he is low on health. He seems satisfied. Commander Yan-chi orders the troops to go back to the fortress and they make their way back. It's unmistakeable, the cloud of soot and snow dust kicked up, the rumbling of the earth, you know you're nearby.

They get in and the new members rescued from the barbarian cave are a little anxious. Probably because they see this giant rolling fortress, blood, bones and bodies on the wheels, slave drivers whipping long lines of slaves heaving this monster across the land. Yan-chi calmly assures them that it's only bad people who end up here. That guy… Killed his wife. Yeah. Then ate her. That's a bad man.

They seem convinced. Strangely enough. They enter up the wooden ramp. Up inside is warmth, light, safety. A sharp contrast to the sheer cold and death that is outside. They're left with the bunkarian who makes food for them, or something. Some of the fortress barbarians are paid some gold to look after them - Giving them '0 star' treatment, with stars defined as how many new holes are put into them. Turns out that's good treatment. Wailer asks where the luxury is. Maybe this leader, crushbone, will recognise his greatness and grant him leadership. Wailer makes a few puns about Yan-chi's diminitive statue. They are forcibly ignored.

The party goes up to crushbone to report progress. Crushbone seems impressed, having crushed this base with minimal losses. He tosses over a reward for the captured prisoners and a 'little' bonus. Wailer tries to say a few things but Crushbone's massive presence just overwhelms wailer's ability to be snarky and condescending and he retreats. Better to retreat in shame than by crushed like a dog, clearly. Yan-chi derives large amounts of amusement from seeing Wailer brought down to size. Ironically enough.

After the report, Wailer promises to speak about his time in his countless lives and thousands of years of life experiences to the librarian. Little does he know that wailer was completely lying. Yan-chi pays Wailer in advance, another mistake, Wailer takes Trey and Fith down to the tavern and starts a party. He buys 4 flaggards, clearly in preparation for going to the library. It ends up turning into an all-night party. Wailer doesn't buy another drink the whole night, and ends up regailing the people in the tavern about heroic tales like a charismatic bard. His tales about heroes and dragons attract the most attention and he's showered in praise and alcohol the whole night. Fith drinks along and ends up unconscious on a table. Wailer is perfectly fine. The drink doesn't seem to affect him. He convinces a gang of men to drag the table fith is on somewhere. Trey avoids most of the party and stays up all night.

Yan-chi goes down and tries to consider a way to trick the new guests into the dungeons. He heads to the dungeons and gets the guards to open it up - It's a large room with rings attached to the walls, a foul smell, a large wheel in the middle like a hamster wheel for men, and  buckets of filth. The current occupants, a trio of misfortunate souls, are lying drooling. Completely unable to pay attention to anything. Yan-chi goes back downstairs and grabs the new guests. He feeds them lies about them running out of space, having a storage room only available, and actually convinces the group to go up to the dungeo- guest room. They hesitate before going in, but manage to be persuaded to go in. The door closes. It's too late now, they're trapped. No escape. Yan-chi joins the party, but like a sensible commander retains a sensible distance from the men, and not just vertically.

The next morning everyone is up early. Wailer remarks that he's had enough experience with sleeping in late and being murdered to teach him that being early is being alive. He is lured into the library with promises of drink and food, and actually gets it, convincing yan-chi that providing him with snacks and beverages is the best way to keep him talking. He speaks about his past lives; mostly the one he remembers the most fondly- when he was prince of Xantharr. The prince was into some weird shit and got sacrificed to him, but ended up possessed. He talked about, while eating some peanuts, how he usurped the king and took control of the country. Xantharr was so good. He points on a map about where Xantharr was and he says it was where some other country is now. Anyway, he led an invasion of the east country to expand territory and it was repelled. He wipes his mouth on a piece of cloth. He was then murdered in his sleep by some rebels and then the country went to shit. Or at least he remembers. Good times.

His memories of past lives don't have much relevance to him; he does gain the memories of those he possesses, but he describes them like socks. You just take them off and put on a new pair. You don't keep your old socks around just because you liked them. He talks mainly because he enjoys the sound of his own voice, as much as it can ever be his own voice.

Fith checks in on their health the next day. He's barred from entering - No orders from superiors, no entry. He goes back and turns into a bug. He slides under the door and into the room, startling everyone inside when he transforms. The prisoners inside say that they're well fed and relatively well treated compared to their last prison, and there's no fear that they'll be killed, but there is that looming fear of being sent out to pull the fortress. Apart from being forced to exercise they're all relatively healthy. Fith is glad, although in the back of his mind is "You will have to accept that you are slaves" as he listens to their complaints.

Yan-chi sends off some scouts to find the dome. He has been given free actions by Crushbone to act as he sees fit for the benefit of the fortress. Fith goes back to his room and casts Divination. He asks the gods one question; Who will find the dome? His mind is filled with visions, memories cast into it by the natural spirits, of a member of the fortress introducing himself "Hey I'm Brantak Firehoof!".  So this is the one. Yan-chi doesn't remember the names of the scouts he sent so this information, while completely honest and accurate isn't particularly useful.

In the week they wait, Yan-chi tries to make jewellery. He does a decent job, but the ruby he tries to fix into his golden ring is loose and it irritates him. He tries to fix it but isn't successful at getting it properly fixed in. Trey asks about Xantharr and Ryloth and gets some answers - Mainly that this wailer fellow doesn't really know about Ryloth. He does know about Reversio though. What a fellow. Wailer implied that he was once killed by Reversio. By having the village he was occupying firebombed with a high powered meteor spell. That one seemed like a bullshit death to Wailer and he complained about it.

So the fortress stops a few days later and lets Brantak aboard. He tells Yan-chi where the dome is. It's pretty big so he gives him a rough location. The party preps and heads out. Part of the prepping involves buying map making equipment and some magical crap. Including a scroll of growth that Yan-chi barely conceals his excitement to purchase. Trey buys a pair of human gloves. He's told in no uncertain terms that they are gloves made out of someone's hands, but he gets them and enjoys the comfortable fit.

After several days of travel the party find the dome. Although it's  more like the dome found them. It's large. Moving closer it looms as a mass on the horizon, the subtle colour differences becoming plainer. It never ceases to get larger, this massive round dome, silvered and reflecting the colours of the sky. Its massive figure dwarfs even the fortress, it looks like it could contain a small country. Getting closer it starts to look like a giant silver wall, imposing its will on the surroundings.

Yan-chi fires some long-ass range firebolts at the dome. The effect is only witnessed by Fith, who is still in Caribou form. The Caribou manages to communicate what happened merely through nudges and Caribou maaa sounds. The firebolt splashes off the dome and sends ripples through the silvered surface like ripples on a pond.

They move closer. It resists physical attacks as if it was a solid, but supple force. There's footprints along the outside of the dome, leading around to the right. Yan chi finds a blade of green grass in a footprint. The first he has seen in years. Fith smells fresh plants. Grass, pollen, the familiar yet long lost smell. They follow the trail.

They find a hole in the side of the silvered dome and a pool of water outside. It fluctuates but remains overall stable. It's large enough for everyone but Yan-chi to need to bend down to enter. Yan-chi grips his growth potion a little enviously. Inside is a field. Sunlight beams out, warm air leaving condensation on their cold metal items. Inside is a field. A field of grass. Long, wild grass, insects flying around, bees buzzing and finding flowers.

And that's where we had to end.

Next week; more Genesis Void!

>>43783
> The Caribou manages to communicate what happened merely through nudges and Caribou maaa sounds.
you don't understand Yan-Chi. you don't understand the DOME. you never understood why is there and the fireballs will do nothing but blind you.

but I will make you understand, I will make you part of it, I will show you that it was always supposed to be there as we were always supposed to be here. this is the true path because there could no other. heed.
*Ascended Caribou noises*

start of new campaign.
system: homebrewed rules for 5E.
clean slate for new players to jump in.

benga@cock.li

Once again, we got some catching up to do.

Spending some time to spot guard patrols, Renard and Barry install zhe last of explosives. Good to go anytime. The party returns to their truck and meet up with Anton and decide to go out the way they came. The front gate.
Making Renard act like a high officer, and Barry as an escort for him, the guards let them pass easily. Slowly going off, they set the bombs to explode.

"Good day, Rektor."
"Good day. I hope you have it finished?"
"Yes, the new modifications will certainly do their job. With the new lenses, we'll be able to locate it in no time."
Rektor Ivanov Raskat stroked his greying beard in anticipation. Three years of hard work and an iron grip on his followers will finally pay off. With a steady hand, he slowly pulled his golden encrusted glasses out of one of his brown vest's pockets. With the effortless motion practiced for years, he places it on his nose, and looks up into the sky.
"Did you know that Lysander-11 was used to a great planet once?"
"Ah yes, during the golden age, i believe."
"Indeed. It used to be a lush world, not this… endless desert. It was a center of commerce and was used as a governing central. But man can never have enough. They always need more and become greedy. In turn greed brings their downfall. I assume you read by dissertation on the topic?"
"Yes, quite an interesting read, arguing for a need for keeping the population and the access of technology extremely limited, so that people aren't capable to cause such extreme damage."
"Yes, and forming an overwhelming force to enforce it. You did well to study up on me."
"Ah, you flatter me, Rektor."
The scientist and lead astronomer proceeds to bow down before the Raskat, only to meet a pistol's barrel against his head.
"Looks like you read my dissertation for nothing, you greedy filth. You disappoint me."
"Rektor? What are you doing, sir?"
A sigh, Raskat puts his finger on the trigger.

Bang.

Multiple explosions ring out almost simultaneously. Barry steps on the gas and the party zooms out of East Point. Coming up on the outpost, they manage to enter by the officer/guard shtick. They quickly get back into their brought gear and exit back into the hive, detonating a truck via a remaining explosive. In the hive, the party begins to exit, but Soldier Raksha sand in their way. Combat begins, and the party holds up, but one by one, their minds are psychicly assaulted and they lose consciousness. Coming to, they find themself face to face with a Grub the size of a building.
Hiveguard Axxxyrq, willing to make a deal to let the two legs go if they hand over their electronic devices. A move which Barry attempts (many times) to use to hand some plastic explosive. Without mind reading, Axxxyrq can feel the enmity from such a thing, but decides to not execute the idiotic two legs on the spot in favor of acquiring technology to study. After leaving behind a laptop (rip 1 of Antons many laptops), the party gets booted out to their shuttle.

Making their way back to the Baron owned research station, the party takes some well earned rest and use their ship's weaponry to shoot up innocent bystanders "accidentally" in the only East Point controlled location. Eh, collateral, who cares, right? Not like we already glassed a whole planet before for a quick buck, and made many times more that since then just by dicking around. Nah, such thing totally won't come and haunt us for the rest of our like or bite us in the ass later, i'm sure. Yeah, and it's not like we just handed technology to a species that is technically able to become a "raised" species that hates "two legs". Yeah, nah, we work as smoothly as butter. Now, about that paid vacation…

Jokes aside, the crew are asked to stay while the situation is finalized, west point joins the baron's forces and the coronation. Taking a while off, Coronation time cometh and the party receives some shiny medals to commemorate their "rexlamation" efforts for the planet and the baron. Shortly thereafter, Barry and Renard meet with the Baron and discuss the actual reward. Space Coordinates that lead to a visually camoflauged space station. Exiting the talk room, the party meets the same reporter that Renard met on their arrival. Talking the victory over, they shake hands and the journalist runs off to chase another scoop. The party begins their ascent into space to find the mentioned station.

Ring, ring. Ring, ring.
Tk—-
"Can you tell me about today's weather?"
"Sunny with a chance of rain between 6 am to 3pm."
"…What did you find?"
"Something interesting."
"Go on…"
"The baron rounded up some travellers to help him. Seems like they got what we were after."
"Did you get the location?"
"Yeah. I tagged one of them when they showed up. The one that looks like a noble. I'll send you their pictures. Anyway, seems like it paid off. They just had a talk with the baron and discussed the coordinates in detail."
"Send it over. We wouldn't want them to find what we nee
"Yeah, yeah. Tell Hyena to come pick me up. I'm fucking tired of playing a make believe journalist."
"…Right. See you back on board."
Tk—-

Arriving at the location, Barry and Renard disembark in their Vacc suits and enter a corridor leading into nothing. Exploring the facility and wading through room after room, they discover some cargo, and sellable stuff. On their way, they meet a few rogue robots and a man in half "repaired" state that they take back on board. Anton emerging from his work, takes a look of the body, managing to pry a frequency transmitter out of the carcass. Using it, he manages to make contact with an ai calling itself Icaros. Appearently trapped in the station's bridge, the place needing the highest clearence, it proceeds to cooperate with the party.

Ultimately, out of the 4 engines to resume functionality within the ship, the party manages to turn on 1.

This weekend, we'll continue Genesis Void. No promises on the writeup because i'm a lazy wizard, but it'll happen.

Oh yeah as mentioned by >>43845 a new campaign will begin early next year (sometime in January.) It'll aim to be more of a "sword and sorcery" style of game with some added rules. Well, when i say some, i really mean many, and i mean generally game changing towards becoming harder. If you are interested or want in, just write an email to the address in >>43845 and we'll arrange something.

>>43862
So like what kind of thing makes it harder?

>>43864
Good question.

First and foremost, two new stats will be introduced (Honor and Sanity) that will play semi important roles.
Second, tied in to sanity, you'll be susceptible to going mad or panicking.
Combat will receive a larger overhaul with rules like flanking, facings, additional manouvers available for everyone (enemies included)
The introduction of a semi dynamic initiative system where you apply modifiers based on what you want to do and reroll initiative each round.
Natural healing will take longer and will become less effective, and so will recovering spellslots.
Additional rules for movement that for example will make moving diagonally more grounded.
proficiency die instead of a straight number added to your rolls
A homebrewed weapon and armor durability system, accompanied with by an item quality system.
and some other not yet finalized systems that i'm still working on.

>>43861
A lone man emerges from a sand dune's ridge heavily clad in textiles. Raising one of his hands from his walking cane, he shields his eyes from the sun. Seconds later, a ship descends to float just before the man. The doors open as blinding light escapes the ship. From inside, a man clad in a strange armor reaches out.

"Hey Pilgrim, which way is treasure?"
"Hyena… We got some work to do beforehand."
"'Aight, the usual?"
"Yeah, the usual."

Stepping onboard the high tech ship, Pilgrim is met with a man deep in maintenance of their weaponry. The long mustached man is currently taking apart Hyena's pistol bit by bit to apply foaming agents and oils where needed. Pilgrim steps forward, and the mustached man looks up from his handywork.

"What'll it be this time?"
"Just the usual."

The mustached man grumbles something under his breath.

"Alright, thanks for the advice".

Pilgrim goes to their armory and starts his preparation. Getting a rocket launcher and a few other things. During his pickup, he stops to look at a sword encased in glass. Taking a closer look he opens the case to retrieve it and give it a few swings, cutting air and delivering electric buzzing with each strike against an invisible opponent.

"Yeah, this'll do."

Grabbing his equipment into a duffle bag, he turns towards the armor racks. Three sets ot Combat Armor lay undisturbed, each painted an almost neon red color, full of black tribal lines painted all over the initial colors. An unorthodox coat of arms, a sword with two wings turned upside down and thrusted into a planet are located on each, and under personalized tags to identify the suit's owner. Pilgrim throughoutly looks over the suit with the additional symbol of an old wizard marching towards a tower. Suddenly his personal radio begins transmitting a signal.

"Pilgrim, we reached the attitude and the location. Get ready."
Smiling to himself, he climbs into the Combat Armor with an embedded jetpack and attaches his weapons to himself with some sticking gel. Standing just to the side of the dropzone in their cargo bay.
"You ready?"
"…You really felt the need to ask, Hyena?"
"Alright, opening the dropzone"

Pshhhhh—-
The door opens to reveal the reddish planet far far below as an incredible distance looms between the ship and the planet. The radio pipes up.

"We are sitting on the edge of space. Your corps must have been crazy to do this."
"You do what you gotta do."
"'You do what you gotta do' he says. Man, fuck that shit. I wouldn't do it. Nah, never. Shit like that is left for the crazies. Me though? Nuh-uh."
"…You get used to it."

Pilgrim takes a small leap into the void below and begins his fall. Descending at an alarming rate, he slowly descends through the athmosphere, dragged in by the gravitational pull ot the planet. Descending over the desert, he grabs his rocket launcher and prepares for a dynamic entry.
Falling and falling down, he engages his AI powered thruster pack to stabilize himself for the shot. Approaching his target, he fires the rockets (9+2+2=13, Success). Shooting out from the rocket launcher, they disappear down below, as Pilgrim slows his descent and grabs his blade.

Boom. An explosion shakes the building.
Jhonny grabs towards his Arms and motions towards his two trusted men. They head up to the ground level. Soon after another explosion hita the building and the ceiling crumbles in Jhonny's "office". Dodging out the way (3+2=5-fail), Jhonny falls under some rubble and gets pinned as his Arms slides off into the distance.

Pilgrim starts his descend through the newly made entrance. falling, his armor picks up a man standing on the edge of the collapsed floor, shooting towards him. With bullets ping off his trusty armor he uses a few quick bursts of his jetpack to navigates above his assailant. Turning off his thrusters, and steeling his mechanic arms holding the sword for the impact. Falling through the hole in the ceiling, his high tech vibrating blade cuts the man in two. Seconds later, his suit AI reengages the jetpacks to bring him in to a "soft" landing. With a giant clang and a dustcloud, he makes contact with the ground.

Stuck under the rubble, Jhonny tries his best to hide (9+0+1=10 stealth vs 7+1+3=11 recon). Pilgrim detects some oddly fallen rubble and approaches. Drawing closer, he notices the small childlike Jhonny, and kneels down. Pilgrim proceeds to draw his Pistol casually to let Jhonny know of the stakes.

"You should have accepted our offer back when you didn't look like this. Should have saved you a lot of trouble."
"Fuck you, i ain't no genocidal maniac like you Sword of Golioth monsters."
"… We are saving people, you know. From themselves."
"Saviors my ass, bloody terrorists are what you are."
"…Now, where's the Rektor?"
"He's dead. I killed him."
"Not likely. You still have the body of a child. I'll ask again only once, where's the Rektor?"
"…Fuck you."

Pilgrim sighs at the wasted potential, but lowers his pistol to Jhonny's face and pulls the trigger.
Thshh-
The gauss needle accelerates out of the pistol's barrel, entering Jhonny's head and exiting on the other side with an unceremonious crunch.
Pilgrim stand up to look around.
The now undazed gang members surround him with assault rifles and some extra heat.

"Don't you move asshole, or we'll put you full of lead!"
"…Yeah, right."

One of the members start approaching to comfirm Jhonny's status as Pilgrim steels himself.

"…You don't want to look."

Drawing closer to Jhonny, the strange deformation caused from the exessive kinetic force of the bullet and the red and white chunks of brain matter, blood and bone fragments spread all over the ground confirm what the gaping hole already does.

"He- He's dead! Waste that guy!

With a sudden and quite strong burst of the jetpack, Pilgrim is shot upwards and into the open air, up to the ground floor. Some of Jhonny's boys open fire on the armored man, while others attempt to quickly ascend an cut his way off. Running through some crumbling corridors, Pilgrim quickly scatters some automated anti personal mines, then turns a corner putting his back to the wall and readies his ACR. Moments later, several of the mines go off, signaling Pilgrim to poke out and release a burst on whoever he sees still standing. Taking out several man, and wounding some others, he moves more inward the facility. Looking around (4+1+3=8- success) Pilgrim notices some strange pillars due to unfinished construction, and ascends them, crouching to remain hidden in the dark.

Chasing after the intruders, Polt and a few others who caught up late witness the carnage of the previous encounter.

"Shit… Just who the hell is that guy?"
"God dammit. Polt and Jerry go move the wounded. We'll give chase."

The crew takes off, leaving Polt and Jerry, two newcomers to deal with the injured. Attempting their best to administer first aid (5-3+0=2-fail for Polt and 9-3+1=7-fail for Jerry) they get left behind as shots and angry screams ring out in the distance.

"We need to help them!"
"No Polt, don't! It's Dangerous. The injured need us."
"…Shit."

Polt's last defeat left a bitter taste in his mouth. While he survived, he needed to be nursed back to health. Something that took precious medical resources. To not return the favor was even more of a bitter pill to swallow. Polt always hated bitter things.

As the shooting dies down, a silouette emerges from the shadows. Lugging multiple guns clearly looted from the other gang members and an armor soaked in red blood and damage. The intruder comes forward, his guns pointing at the two young members.

"Kids too, huh. Well, keep 'em coming."

Polt's urge to take revenge swelled to an extreme, and quickly, he tries to reach for his gun, only to have his hand explode in a fest of gore and chunks, and one of his eyes penetrated deeply by a bone fragment.

"Aaaargh."
"Well, you want some too?"

Jerry raises both his hands to signal his surrender.

"That's better."

Never taking his aim off the two, Pilgrim proceeds to walk away.

Jerry attempts to first aid Polt (11-3+1=9- Success, heals effect {1} times two points {2}.)
Polt's newly formed stump is bandaged as the close by gunfire and other noises begin. Minutes pass as the two lay in wait, but the sounds subside and the two are left with the injured.

Pilgrim disembowels a gang member then guns down the next. His high tech combat armor holding firm even against bullets. Dodging to the side, he trips a hostile and falls onto him with his blade. Rolling off the now dead body, he jerks to the side while prone and releases some burst fire to take down the gang members. After a moment of silence he hops to his feet just in time to see a grenade thrown near him. Using his reaction, he jumps behind a waist high wall as the explosive does as intended. Kicking himself up, he nabs a half loaded shotgun just in time to blast a guy in the face turning the corner.
After mopping up, he uses his jetpack's thrusters to fly out of the building into the sky. Opening his radio channels, he tries to make contact with Hyena.

"Hyena, come in, i'm good to go."
"…Aight, be there in a sec."

A shop comes zooming by, Pilgrim attaching himself to the external plating via his magnetic boots and begins to walk to the open dropzone. Making his way inside, the doors close, restoring atmosphere as Pilgrim takes off his helmet to inspect the damage. He traces a bullet graze left on the right side cheek.

"Sorry…"

Stepping out, Pilgrim proceeds to the bridge.
The mustached man and Hyena already in position, he sits down in the middle chair.

"…Now, let's hunt ourselves a superweapon."

The party this time find themselves upon the dome. Its nature a mystery, its contents unknown. A hole is found and they embark inside. Grassland. Sunlight. Warmth, bees, birds, rabbits. Completely mysterious experiences, like waking up after a long dream. Fith as a Caribou eats the grass. It tastes good. Like grass.

They look around, and take in the environment. Yan-chi looks back and sees the hole they entered- a grey mass, snow and water flying from outside. But around the hole, blue sky. Grass leading onto infinity. It looks as if the grey hole is just an anomaly in the reality of the pleasant world they find themselves in.

They move on. They look around - grassland, the occasional tree or forested area, it's idyllic. But there are no large animals. Are they avoiding the party? Perhaps. They find a river. Surely river leads to people. The Fith Caribou is led to drink and takes a sip from the river. It is fresh and clean. He communicates this to the party, and they step back and recoil from the water as if it was toxic. The communication may not have been effective.

They move down stream. In an emergency they could cross but it's best not to if possible. Fith the Caribou doesn't collapse and die so they clearly have stronger stomachs. Luckily the party didn't drink the toxic water. But as they move on, The Caribou stops and hides. "WHAT'S WRONG?" - Yan chi tries to understand. A roar from downriver reveals what was going on.

Two large Ettins are besides the river. They roar and charge at the party, taking the stupidest route which is through the river. Not very smart, ettins. Strong, and fast though. They close in on the party with remarkable speed. Or well they would if they weren't going upstream through the river like morons. A fireball is the first thing they encounter, blasted from Yan-chi like a bolt out of hell. It explodes with such force that it knocks one of them over. They keep charging though.

Caribou-fith finds some high ground, and the fight did not end. A caribou bite is not particularly strong and inflicted minor damage. Yan-chi gets in close to these huge, extremely strong looking creatures and breathes fire on them. They burn. One flails around, striking Caribou-fith, breaking the bone and rending the flesh. The magic is undone, from the broken caribou emerges the large firbolg. The other swing goes towards Trey, who holds, the axe glancing off the mage armour.

The other ettin goes after Yan-chi. The axe swings, and the club smashes, carving and crunching. Yan-chi is nearly killed by a single attack, his small frame unable to take the heavy blows from this powerful large creature he voluntarily walked right up to. Fith worries about this small psychopath - he summons the heavens themselves to open. A cloud forms, crackling and sparking and a bolt of natural power strikes the river between the two ettins with a powerful crack. The electrical energy surges up one of the ettin's legs, a tree branching pattern rolling seared into his skin in the almighty flash. The electric strike keeps moving and enters the skull, and the skulls pop open a bit and brains leak out as the creature collapses into the river.

The other creature lives, not for long though. It breathes its last breath full of fire as Yan-chi burns it down with an arc of fire. The creature falls. Nature conquered. Life mastered. Steam rising from the charred body, river water washing over it as if nothing happened. The river knows nothing of this event and continues to flow.

A bow is seen poking out from a tree. A succubus comes out and reveals herself, along with two other people, one armed with swords and another with a staff. They introduce themselves, congratulating them on their kills. They say that they are adventurers of Domea, and tell them about the land here. Dangerous, monster filled, plenty of work for those that know how to wield talents for destruction.

They take the heads with them and follow the adventurers back to Domea. Seems like a nice town but they're constantly warned to stay out of trouble. Probably worth paying attention. They make their way back to the town without incident, except a few scares with some large animals that they manage to avoid.

What they find is a village. They weren't sure what they were expecting. It's nostalgic. A relic of an era gone by, a feature that doesn't exist any more. Heading to the 'adventuer's guild', they find a mutilated man angry at the world in charge of the place. He gives them 15, no, 20 gold per dead ettin. Yan-chi is confused a bit, but nothing seems to give him the sense that this is abnormally low payment.

They meet Archibald. He does the accounts, but he's also well read and tells them about the Dome. 4 biomes. Massive areas with their own properties. Maintained by force field magic, the source of the magic is the tower in the center. But the magic is weakening for some reason, hence the holes in the dome walls. It lets people in and out, but it's a misconfiguration, perhaps. But the tower is heavily guarded by golems and automatons. A report by someone who sneaked past and tried to enter says that the door requires a key. A key, that is split into four parts. No-one rolls their eyes as they are explained that to get entry they need to find all four parts and combine them. Four different dungeons await, each with its own key part. Hopefully the quest is profitable.

A visit to the apothecary is next. He seems to know more than he lets on, and exaggerates the value of his potions. They cost no more than anywhere else, but the thousands of gold exchanged buys Yan-chi and the party many potions and poisons. Yan-chi also buys potatoes. Not from the apothecary though.

They stay the night in the adventurer's guild without incident. Fith wonders if they really have the right to destroy this preserve of nature, and tries to distribute the flax seeds he recovered from the bunker. Timeor is around and the party remember they were dragging Timeor around with them. He'll stay in town and provide food services while the party go to the dungeon. Clearly a safe and profitable decision.

They make their way to the dungeon. Only a few hours, since they know where it is. Not hard to find, the large obelisk stands out in the grassy plains. Although they did see a stegasaurus on the way, this large dinosaur just roaming around. They avoided. Yan-chi didn't avoid the skeletal arm flopped out around the door of this obelisk. Dark and inviting, the dungeon is avoided by wildlife. They know better.

And that's all for this session; Next week, Genesis void!

Meanwhile a scribble about genesis void, Lieutenant Anton tells the party to close the door behind him, he will face the threat that the party is afraid off by himself. what a guy. what a lieutenant

also barry staying behind the door wishing to close it off and we got a confirmed death.

>>43845
this still open?

>>44090
I believe so wiz. feel free to reach out

>>44090
yeah just send an email with something even if is short like "yeah I want in" so you can familiarize.

the campaign is gonna start like next year but the sooner the more fair it is to benga or wizrobe.

>>44103
meant to say
>the sooner you mail him*

The party descends into the dungeon.

The cold damp earth surrounds them as they descend into the dark dungeon. One misstep, one mistaken opportunity may lead to their downfall. They walk down remembering that this may become their tomb, but they continue. The smell of old death greets them, a musty smell of an old tomb, cracked open. What is down here? Surely items of value. Surely something worth risking life and limb for.

They head down, passing throw the glum and dark. Fith brings up his glow-ball he stole from the bunkarians and illuminates the way ahead. Some corridors pass and they find themselves in an old storage room. Rusty, discarded, half-used equipment is scattered around the room. Large pieces of magical so and so, each very specific, each mysterious in its true purpose. In the room are corpses and two statues.

The corpses are investigated first, one of an undead, one of an adventurer. One is fresh, one is undead. Fith takes the head, and the scalp falls off. It drips putrid mould juice as the flies buzz around. Maggots fall out as he collects it in a small piece of cloth for collection. One statue is a dog holding a skull. The other, fearful. A maiden in pure terror, she looks out at the party with a look that's familiar to Yan-Chi, the look of abject terror. Fear. Fear of death? The party detect that is magical and look for triggers. Fith decides to cut through the magical mumbo jumbo and hits the statue in the side of the head with a rock. The neck snaps, and the head, held by its two arms, rolls forwards with a grinding smack.

The grinding continues as a secret path is revealed behind the statue. It leads, at least to the left, to a bedroom. A mysterious bedroom of perchance a wizard. Several things of import are revealed; two mismatching socks, a single glove and two gold coins were found under the bed. Also some notes on a desk. They reveal the presence of the dome's creator, the notes revealing that the creator got funding for a dome. He wonders about guardians for it. He mentions a strangely sinister name; Richard Versio, as a peer in the magical arts.

At the end of the notes:
"Don't Forget!
The King of Venet while purse full
ETC…"

They find a painted on door in the stone. When touched it reveals the following text that appears, "If you forgot the password, check your notes, idiot.". In the cabinet is a magical bag that has a bunch of strange items inside. They did not fully empty the bag but they did add some other crap in there, like a rotting skull.

So they move on. They eventually figure out that the password is probably somewhere else. A long corridor later they find a room with cages. Well, after fighting off some skeletons. The skeletons are weak and are banished easily. It takes no effort at all to roast their bones to cinders. Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.

They make their way into the room and they see cages, mostly containing single undead creatures.  Looking around the room is bare. Cages line the walls, and there is a desk of notes. One of the cages is larger than the others and contains a cheap-looking coffin. They contain nothing but skeletons and zombies in cages. Some skeletons have escaped it appears, and they were the ones slaughtered a moment ago.

When they touch the desk a memory fills their heads; they see a vision in the room, a sight from an earlier time: A wizard is wrangling a zombie with strange red pauldrons into a cage. The wizard is dressed sharply, in deep purple petticoats and coattails. A kind of nutty scientist type, perhaps like all great wizards are. "Get in already!" The zombie just groans. The wizard pushes the cage shut with his shoulder and the zombie wraps his hands around The wizard's throat. A split second later there's a flash and the zombie is without hands. A puff of smoke emits itself from The wizard's neck. "Now Charles, was that really necessary? Well.. I don't think missing hands will affect this experiment…"

They read the notes and they describe the wizard's attempt to test how long the undead last. Vampires are tough but they damn sure are picky. They need coffins and such. Zombies and skeletons just sit there, not so much zombies. And at the end of the notes is another part of a password. "He may be fine for now"

The memory ends and they're left with the notes. It appears that different types of undead were locked up to see how long they'd last. Skeletons, Zombies, and a lesser vampire. Vampire? That explains the coffin.

The party goes to the thick iron cage containing the coffin, and they find keys and open it. They sit there thinking that it's totally a bad idea, but do it anyway. Trey pops open the coffin and there is a vampire lying inside. It has distorted features, exaggerated ears, ghoulish skin, and its eyes open. Trey jumps back. The vampire slowly lifts itself out of the coffin, and after several long seconds, it screams in thirst, the scent and taste of blood fresh on its tongue, it hungers.

They fight. It keeps trying to grab people so it can bite into them. It deals impressive damage when it does strike, but it is drowsy and fights ineffectively. It does, however, take nearly everything the party has just to keep it from killing them. They manage to finally roast the sucker, after many scares and many attempts to ungrapple the vampire from them. Its thirst never quenched, but it could have easily gone the other way. A little bit of misfortune and the creature could have killed them all. Yan-chi takes the vampire dust. Gotta be worth something!

They rest, recover, and recuperate. Unfortunately during the fighting they pretty much roasted every single creature sitting in the cages, except Charles, the zombie. Fith decides to end the creature's suffering. The unnatural life has gone on too long. The soul should be unbound with force. And so it was.

They move on. The next room appears to be some kind of skull storage room. Skulls of extremely exotic designs are displayed in this fairly small room. They investigate the skulls. Yan-chi asks the important question while holding one of the skulls: To be or not to be. Fith sits down and thinks carefully about this question, and concludes that it's a personal affair. Apart from one door that dropped a brick on Yan-Chi's head, and another that scared the everloving fuck out of him, nothing happens until the next room.

A maze? The desk reveals another memory:
The wizard is sitting in a soft looking chair, holding a piece of wood and a paintbrush. He puts the paintbrush down, and takes a sip from a glass next to him. Picking the paintbrush back up, he paints the wood yellow, bit by bit. "You will be my cheese".

The notes describe how the wizard, who should have signed everything with his name so I don't need to remove his name from my notes, stuck various forms of undead into mazes, and ordered them to find the cheese. Zombies are far too stupid, skeletons seem to cheat by just having an innate knowledge of where life is, and Vampires are unruly. Vampires tend to escape, they rebel by not completing the maze, they cheat and are basically untestable. At the end of the notes: Provides gifts for me to pursue.

And that's where we ended.
If you want to join, say in the thread, and we can direct you to us. We could always accept more players. Especially wizard players since we're so rare.
 

This week starts us back in Deep Abyss. Last time, The party descend into the dangerous dungeon. How dangerous? Enough.
They wandered around and got spooked by vampires. In a room with a maze in it, they turn a chair's legs into stakes. Very nice varnished stakes, that whoever bought the chair would be upset by. They decide to leave the maze alone since they got a nasty feeling about it. This decision decided the fate of one adventurer.

They wander around, checking the skull room out again. That's where they came from. they head back north. Opening the door to the northern room, Fith bursts in and is immediately met with a large undead, wrapped in loose bandages, screeching at the living that dares to intrude. A powerful glare tries to take Fith's will from him, but his incredible wisdom powers through it. The mummy stumbles forward, its dry bandages draping through the mist.

They engage, and back up. From behind the party, the maze looms, the chill of hateful undead emerges and ghosts start attacking the rear lines, reducing Yan-chi's hitpoints down. Yan-chi fires out fire spell after fire spell and they do not hit. Trey holds the mummy back by pushing it back with eldritch blasts, and avoids the fear of its gaze. The ghosts however are tearing Yan-chi a new oriface. Each touch chills to the bone, sucking life, warmth, heat. Fith takes a few touches, enveloped by the hatred of life.

Yan-chi scores a hit with a firebolt on the mummy, who bursts into flames, the dry bandages weak to that sort of thing. Trey pushes it back again, the final eldritch blast blowing the mummy apart, burning cloth and flesh splattered over the room, which smolders away in heat while the party is assaulted by spectres. They extract life.

Trey leaps to the rescue and blasts the last ghost back… behind the wall. The party steps back and braces for the ghost to come back out of the wall. They wait. It does not come. Trey turns around out of fear, and insight, and sees a spectre appearing out of the wall now behind the party. The firebolt he prepared passes through with minimal effect and the spectre engages Yan-chi.

A cold touch, the touch of the dead, takes Yan-chi down to 5 hit points maximum, 2 hit points current. A sneeze away from death, yan-chi is ghostly white and close to the grave himself when the other two turn around and send the ghost to the afterlife.

The party is wounded, scarred. They nearly followed the creatures they were killing to the other world. They decide to retreat back to Domea for sanctuary, and make an overnight trek, without incident, back. Exhausted, they fall asleep at the first opportunity.

Fith turns into a sheep and sleeps with the other sheep, counting sheep and resting in his woolen coat, and his night passes without incident. Trey also goes to sleep, and sleeps the night away without incident. Yan-chi goes to sleep.

Yan-chi leaves the adventurer guild (where the beds were) early morning and buys some clothing that's too big for him, and heads back inside, waiting for his party. They don't turn up for a while. Fith woke up and is busy running from a farmer who is trying to shear his wool. Trey woke up and is wandering around.

The party worry that Yan-chi is going back to the fortress to tell Crushbone (the very cultured and intelligent Crushbone) about this mountain of slaves. Fith cannot allow those monsters to come here. While looking for Yan-Chi, they notice an old cloaked figure leave the adventurer guild. He is asked about Yan-Chi. Did a small man leave here? Saren says he doesn't know where he is. This man also tries to join the party. Fith distrusts him at first, but after learning that the man assassinated Yan-Chi in his sleep and stole his form he forgives the man and praises him as a hero. Trey is unsure what to think, but Fith seems to trust the man so surely it must be fine.

Saren, the man reveals himself to be, leads the party to where the corpse of Yan-chi is. Stashed inside a tree trunk, cut into pieces and left in leather bags. The head is pulled out and revealed. Fith pushes aside thoughts of lunch and accepts the menacing fire user's death. Fith exclaims that he's glad that Yan-Chi is dead. He couldn't let Yan-chi bring destruction to this place. Saved Fith a job, of course. Yan-chi was not leaving this dome alive.

Saren heads back without the party, leaving Fith and Trey to divide up Yan-chi's posessions. He heads to the apocathery. He uses the secret knock and is let in.

"Is it done?"
Saren replies positively.
"Excellent."

Saren has other objectives and buys poison, in large amounts. The apocathery is all to happy to help a reliable professional. The apocathery has used Saren before in maintaining stability of the village and the dome itself. People who said they were 'leaving' the dome would find themselves at the end of Saren's dagger at the Apocathery's behest. This kind herb seller isn't all he seems. The true mastermind, his goals overlap with the wellbeing of those in the village, but he uses underhanded tactics since that's all he knew. Saren knows the type. Spymaster. Court survivor, high politics, the underside and bloody side of noble quarrels. The Apocathery made use of the skills he had. So did Saren.

The new party tries to go back to the dungeon. Fith gets a little lost and they stumble upon something:
A 20ft tall clay golem walking in large circles. The golem is made from earth. It has walked ceaslessly for a long time, leaving a deep track where it has walked. It is full of broken swords, arrow shafts, burn scars and other traces of combat. Dried blood covers its two large arms. It circles a chest. Near the chest are smashed corpses.

Walking near the circle provokes no reaction. Moving items inside with magehand appears not to either. Stepping inside, well, the results of that are scattered around the inside of the circle and dried on the golem.

So plan A: Fith turns into a warhorse. Trey rides the warhorse in, uses the bag of holding to load the chest inside, and then rides off on Fith. What could go wrong?

Their first attempt. Fith gallops in. As soon as Fith enters the circle, the golem lumbers around and with startling speed, starts to sprint towards the pair. Trey prepares his action and, forgetting the plan completely, empties the bag. He spends his action holding the bag upsidedown and shaking it. Fith drags them out the circle before the creature reaches them. Once out the circle the golem returns to its usual path.

Change of plans. Saren will be the one holding the bag this time.

Saren and Fith rush in. The pounding rush of the golem signifies that they'd best be quick. Saren hops off and loads the chest into the bag. Sideways, so it takes time. He takes his action and the chest is halfway in the bag. Out of time. He runs away, changing the plan to finishing the job on the next pass.

The golem is next, fith has no opportunities to escape. With a burst of speed the golem catches fith and smashes the horse into the ground. The horse takes the brunt of the damage, smashing in two, and fith pops out, wounded but not too bad. At least this time. Without horse form it's going to be different.

Fith takes his turn to stay still. Eye of the storm, fith. Eye of the storm. Trey pushes the golem away, but the golem charges again and smashes fith into the ground, dealing heavy damage. Can't take much more of this. Bones broken, spirit shattered, reeling, about to break.

Fith ducks and dodges and runs away, but he can't make it out the circle in one turn, the speed of the horse taken from him. Trey tries to push the golem away so that it's out of reach of Fith. He misses, twice.

The golem however has lost its steam and is back to regular speed, and runs up to fith and is out of action. Fith disengages again and ducks out the circle. The golem relaxes and returns to its usual path. Noticable is the golem pulling earth out with its feet as it walks, replenishing knocked off parts and healing with remarkable speed.

If they attacked it faster than it could heal? Until it runs out of earth?

Well, they rest outside the circle. The bag left over the chest. Well it's not going anywhere, the golem doesn't seem to care.

They play dice. Fith wins some copper but Saren wins the gold. He feels pleased that he won without cheating for once.

And that's where we end.

As a note; if you're interested in joining or playing D&D but get that usual 'oh god it's an established group' anxiety, please ignore that and get in touch! generally the only requirement is the ability to run the Roll20 software, a mic, and the free time to play.
Oh and being a wizard.

If you are interested in playing some DnD (5e), just reply to this post and we'll get you set up. I'll link you to a players handbook (if you need it).
No prior experience needed.
I can run a short 1 on 1 premade session to make you try it out or get used to the mechanics.
I'll GM and you'll be a player.
I have some pre baked character sheets (without backgrounds) for quicker play, or you can make your own.

The only things you'll need is internet access, and a roll20 account. For the short session, we'll go by text only on roll20 itself.
Email optional but preferred for this trial run, so we can agree on personal 1 on 1 times.
I'll post the invite to the short session in this thread on the next weekend (saturday or sunday).

Also, keep in mind that the 1 on 1 sessions will not develop into a campaign (although we can replay it a couple of times if we can arrange a time both of us are available).
This is to offer a trial run to wizzies wishing to play but are unsure, or get the taste. If you like it and want to continue, we'll get you into the main group. If not, you can just leave without any hard feelings or deep investments.

>>44797
That sounds awesome. Never played any tabletop rpgs because no friends but I've always wanted to try one.

Can play pretty much whenever since I'm a hikikomori.

I made an account on that site if you want to pm me there.

https://app.roll20.net/users/4125972/nick-d

>>44798
Yeah, that's a good point. We can PM on site. Then email is not needed or preferred. Just a roll20 account is enough for the try out.

>>44797

This offer is still open to any wizard interested in playing or trying DnD out. I'll be running 1 on 1 sessions on pre arranged times between us.

The only thing you need is a roll20 account.
No voicechat needed.
No throw away e-mail needed.
No prior experience needed.
No deep commitment needed.

Just bring yourself and we'll figure out the rest.
You'll be able to create your own character or choose 1 from premade ones.
I'll take you through how to use your sheet, as well as the basic order of combat before we begin to make you familiar with the order of play.

If you are interested, you can click the link below to join the room:
https://app.roll20.net/join/4231901/CQKVTQ
Then you can either pm me on the site or wait a few days and then i'll pm you with the details and to arrange a schedule.

The golem continues its blood soaked path around the chest. The crushed bone and flesh rots in the centre, a warning to those foolish enough to try and attempt the same. Said fools play dice in a patch of dry earth they found, nursing their wounds from when they were almost crushed.

Their plan is to trick the golem by entering the circle and throwing damage at it, then leaving, all in sequence so it never gets a chance to recover, always running at the latest person to enter the fray. They begin. The plan works okay at first. Fith casts a thundercloud above the circle, which zaps the golem as it sprints towards him. Fith retreats, the golem charging then at the entering Saren, who looses arrows. Saren, stepping back, lets Trey take over, who looses chill touch to prevent healing.

Trey casts darkness on the golem's position. Now trey is the only one who can see the golem. Not very effective, the golem runs from the darkness at Fith, who retreats just in time. Bits and pieces fly off the golem, slowly, surely, this is how a golem is deconstructed. Lightning strikes, bolts, ghastly touches from arcane magicks.

Until Trey steps in too far. The golem reaches him. A collosal blow strikes his body, pushing out the air and some blood, crunching the bones. Saren can only hear the pain as he is obscured by the darkness that wasn't ever dispelled. Trey takes a lot of damage and is reeling, but alive. Oh but the second strike. The second strike. The swing comes down but trey, in his pain accidentally dodges, the blow glancing barely off his mage armor.

Saren prepares his grave and steps into the circle, and trey escapes. The golem runs towards Saren now. It takes a bolt of lightning from Fith in the process… but something happens this time. The golem suddenly ignores that Saren stepped out of the circle and goes for him instead of Fith. Saren mage-hands a shield over to himself, and prepares to die.

Two thunderous strikes crack and crunch his frail form, bringing him close to the death he seeks. But not yet. He runs. Into the darkness that is still there, strangely. The golem loses sight, and runs back towards Fith. Another lightnign blow, another chill touch, pieces falling like sweat in the rain, this simple construct taken apart. Saren leaps out of the darkness and fires an arrow. It was enough.

The golem, momentum from its charge carrying it forward, collapses piecemeal as if it was suddenly a human shaped lump of clay being pushed over. It falls with a massive flump, shaking the earth. The party observe the battlefield, peices, blood, holes, scarred. Nature will reclaim this area now that the construct is no more.

They open the very chest that they fought so hard to claim, and find a shield, a small scrap of magical cloth, and a note. The note contained the ramblings of an insane wizard.
"NO! Golems! Yes! Haha, I am on track!
My amusement is actually physical, I'm fighting it. Hey don't touch me!"

They decide that they should mend their wounds before heading back into the dungeon, so they make another trip back to Domea. Uneventful. But once at domea, Saren sets his shield off at the 'Apocathery' for identification, and buys poisons. As well as being rewarded for a successful task with some gold. The apocathery is paid for next-day identification.

Fith and trey head for the books. The Adventurer's guild has a bookworm who tells them about the bag of holding they have, if nothing else. He tells them that he doesn't do magic that well, but does know that the cloth they're holding looks like a kind of fashion that was popular about 100 years ago. Only non-humans would actually remember that period and maybe… right the blacksmith is a dwarf. Not a pleasant chap though ,not a fan of humans.

Fith decides to transform into a dwarf… well he disguises himself as a dwarf using disguise self. At the blacksmith, he's greeted warmly as a fellow dwarf and is served extremely strong beverages one after the other. Fith's body is taken by surprise by the sudden onslaught of dwarven classics and he gets a bit tipsy. The dwarf, Thurmek, asks about craghammer.

"Oh yeah it's doing great!". Fith is not used to lying. He stumbles and contradicts himself. His lie is about as believable as a 7 foot tall firbolg transforming into a dwarf to ask a blacksmith about a piece of cloth. Apparently, he's believed with no qualms. Good old draxx. Glad he's doing well. They took over the fortress! Great! Some new places to secure the frontiers.

Thurmak casually implies that he wants to genocide all humans and they laugh about it. He doesn't know anything about the cloth though. Fith ends up paying 100 gold for a Pike that was being sold for 1 gold. Thurmak insists that he have more than just a Pike, and gives Fith a breastplate. Shaped for a dwarf. It'd fit the dwarf Fith was disguised as just fine, but he accepts it to prevent accidents.

As he stumbles back to the adventurer guild and a room to sleep in, he causes a ruckus and is sshed back to somewhere else. Goddamn outsiders. Saren buys some food and cooks it with some donated lard. Masterchef, the excellent cook makes something pretty decent and calls it a night.

Saren wakes up and next to him is the shield. Attached is a little note describing what it is and what it does. Shield of invisibility. It makes you invisible. Only when you put it on the ground and stand on it though. Hmm. Saren likes it anyway.

Fith… is completely fine. Strong firbolg constitution. Anyway, they head back to the dungeon. No events of interest. They go down into the cold murky depths, Saren having to rely on a torch to see in the dark. Trey has magical vision, Fith has darkvision.

They find the 'production room': Rollerbelts line the room. It looks like a kind of factory. A desk with notes remains lit, the magical light flickering in the darkness. The room is silent. Rumbling and crunching can be heard echoing from elsewhere in the dungeon but this room is motionless.

Saren walks over and picks up some stone tablets. As he does so, a memory fills his consciousness and he sees the room as it was back then. Thistle loads a corpse onto a conveyor belt. "I should automate this step, really". An arcane ritual lights up the room, magical symbols glow with unnatural darkness. Screams and pain, the wails of the undead, a shudder down the spine, swirling souls and intertwined darkess - All resulting in the reanimation of the corpse. It flails around on the conveyor belt and falls off. Thistle sighs.

Saren reads the notes:
zombies:
Easy enough to reanimate, although the howls from the souls from the afterlife get a bit grating after a few reanimations. Earplugs help. Has a requirement for corpses. Freshness.. Variable. Given the likelihood of peasants and kings to produce corpses, supply is likely to be good. sourcing them might be a pain since you're hardly going to find the kind of supply you need from just a single location. Unless I make them, of course. Tempting.

Skeletons:
While skeletons in the ground do last longer, you'd think there would be ample supply. I found this to be the case, but after the 3rd skeleton with mismatching bones I just kind of gave up. These need to be reanimated 'on site' so mass production is not viable. Unless you feel like creating skeletons, but it's quicker to make single malt. Too weak for the effort. Thoughts on increasing their durability did not go to waste; the better the skeleton. Experiments at metal coated skeletons were a success, but that's even MORE effort. Adamantum is hard to manipulate enough as it is.

From the visitors I've talked to, they seem to defeat skeleotns by crushing the bone. If the bone was made from high class metal, could it take enough damage to die? We shall see.

Lesser Vampires:
I don't even know how I could make these. Trap a higher vampire and force him to make them all day? Not a renewable resource, and higher vampires are troubling capitives. I'd feel bad, too.

He finds another scrap of the code, as well. He doesn't know what it means though but he forgets that he shouldn't know what it is and takes it to be significant.

Saren gets spooked about an adjacent room and warns everyone not to go. Fith does the opposite, but turns into a rat first. Squeaking his way inside, he sees a room that looks very much like a torture room. There are various wooden devices with undead strapped to them. They're still straining at the restraints. Some of the restraints have broken from the constant effort and partially attached undead are on the walls.

Fith squeaks around a bit, and after having trouble reading text with a rat's vision, transforms back. He proceeds to smash the zombies and stop their torment. The noise attracts Saren and Trey, who see the same room. Going over the notes left in the room, a ghostly figure appears, a fragment of a memory;

Thistle walks around with the torture device. He's using some kind of blade. A skeleton is strapped to an adjustable table. "Lateral incision, 6 centimeters. Expected effect" "Horizonal incision, 12 centime- whoops dropped it." He bends down to pick up the blade, throws away a piece of mouldy flesh into the corner, and finds the sharpened steel, inspecting it for damage as it glints in the light.

The notes contain more wisdom:
Zombies:
No reaction to damage. Will keep moving until the brain is destroyed, or the flesh receives more than 70% damage. Little recovery ability. Squishy but they don't seem to care. Their primary defense seems to be smelling really bad. May not be particularly effective long term.

Skeletons:
Sturdy things. Not particularly resistant to blades, but clearly piercing them is going to be tricky. Witha zombie you'd hit an organ, but skeletons just have air. Knocked off parts of the main stop moving. With skeletons, they seem to have a threshhold, where parts knocked off move until enough is destroyed that their animation fails. What if I coated a skeleton in metal before reanimation? Hmm. Metal skeletons. Sharpened limbs, could be good. Does a skeleton even have to be bone? Stop, this goes in the production notes.

Lesser Vampires:
Tougher than zombies. They heal up as I'm watching them. Silver is less useful than you'd expect. They transform on taking damage. This surprised me at first as when transformed they're quite fiesty. For their recovery potential they went into the crusher. After performing a number of experiments with crush percentage, I've concluded that they indeed have a damage threshold that they cannot heal from. My source of lessers said that I was probably using too many so I'll stop termination experiments for now.

They move on. A suspicious set of groans from a corridor incites them to investigate. Saren easily finds the hidden handle and pulls it open.

Inside is zombies. Not just a few, or a handful, but the entire room is packed full of zombies, dozens of them. They all turn and charge at the party. They flood out, trapped by the narrow door, pushing harder and harder to get at the party. The ones at the front are mown down, a few scrapes taken by the party. Fith lights a bonfire in the choke point and screaming burning flesh is now charging at the party.

A long fight ensues - the zombies push through and collapse around the party but they hold them off. Wave after wave of burning flesh comes at them. Saren laughs and stabs, Trey is a bit nervous but ernestly strikes those that come near, and Fith discards zombies with fire and wood.

The pile is so large that they can't actually get into the room. And that's where we ended.

As usual, session open to wizards.

New campaign (supposed to start in January). We finally begun last Sunday. Here's the initial story and the write up for our first session.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
A new world born to the grave, full of death and suffering. Ouzergien.
After the gods killed the Allfather, and usurped his power, their first deed was to raise the Races from nothing to populate the world, dooming them to die once their times have passed.
Now, thrust into the world to survive the many dangers and downfalls of the Untamed Lands, the Races struggle to extend their nations in the world of Ouzergien.

Chapter I: The Secrets of Tarkah

A recent disaster befell the Human Kingdom. A mysterious accident in their Wizard's College resulted in it's total annihilation and the creation of a never ending hole downwards into the earth's eternal depths.
Fearful of the remaining Magick, the former king of humans, Hektor Pallas barred anyone from exploring the now called Tarkah Crater. However, as with all humans, Ardux soon came to take him in the coffin on his back and bury him.
His son, Pyrrhos Pallas, the next in line took it upon himself the task of reorganizing his father's archaic rules. Among many others, he rescinded the edict that forbade entry into the Tarkah Crater and the Hole, the two locations left in the wake of the explosion.
Since then adventurers of all Races, from all over the Tamed Lands flocked to the Human Kingdom in hopes of finding lost knowledge, artifacts of great power long buried under the rubble and to ultimately uncover… The Secrets of Tarkah.

Finally, let us descend.
Welcome to Ouzergien.
Welcome… To your doom.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
As the moon Vik and Sizzon slowly meld into the brightening dawn skies on the 7th day (girday) of year 200, a thin man with a long mustache emerges from the crowd of workers loading carts near the markets of Ugor's Castle, and begins to overlook the cart's cargo lists.
A man, shrouded in robes and his hood approaches the mustached man, and began speaking.

"…Everything in order, Philandros?"
The mustached man looks up from the manifests and recognizes the hooded man.
"Yes, seem like everything's in order. Your people always pull through."
"It is only natural we do, Philandros. A favor for a favor, is it?"
"…You said some passengers were interested in traveling to Fisher?"
"Indeed. 3 adventurers. They have not met you yet, but their paths should all lead towards here soon."
"Do you vouch for them?"
The hooded man remains silent for a moment, then replies.
"We do, just like we did with the others before them."
"*sigh*, very well, we'll take them. Any descriptions?"
"Indeed, i shall tell you. The first is a Scourage Aasimar with platinum blonde hair and mismatched eyes, quite young. He seems to be on a journey to find or achieve something important not only to him but others as well. The second, a small rock gnome, quite gruff looking and disliking of cities. He's looking to escape the fate chasing him down like a wolf does it's prey. And the last one is and elf, a Shadar-Kai one at that. What his goals are currently remains a mystery to us."
"All right, if we see someone with those descriptions, we'll offer a trip to them."
"These three must set out together. We are in your debt as always, Philandros."
"Fine, fine, whatever. As long as you continue to supply us, we will abide."
With that the hooded man bows slightly and begins to turn away. As he does, Philandros reaches and tugs on the arms of robe a bit, revealing a tattoo of an open book and a feather on the hooded man's right hand.
"…I have to ask… Do you think…Are they the one?"
The hooded man slowly turns around to answer.
"That answer eludes us. They have the potential, just as the many before them."
With that, Philandros decided not to push his luck further, and let go of the hooded man. Moments later, the robed figure melted into the starting bustle of the market traffic.

A couple of hours later, with the sun now high in the sky, a caravan of 4 carts start their 3-4 day journey to the port town of Fisher. On those 4 carts is

Fólkvangr Einherjar, one of the Aasimar, beings with a divine spark in them serving one of the 4 remaining Archangels of the Allfather, the original god, who later was betrayed by the lesser gods and killed.
Fólkvangr worships the Aassimar archangel Fileo, who is responsible for punishing the sinners and pagans going against the allfather's will, protect his believers, and deliver his justice where it is needed. As such, after a life of servitude to Fileo, he reincarnated into a Scourage Aasimar to further rid the world of evil roughly 24 years ago.
Fólkvangr himself is one of the many Holy Swords (Fighters), the Aasimar tasked with becoming a sword to reach the enemies of the late Allfather.

Ifir Umrebrek, one of the Rock Gnomes, small humanoids produced in the many vats of their god's labyrinth of laboratories, bore deep within a mountain formation. A fusion of bio matter and Magitech, in the place of Ifir's heart beats an Arcane clock that counts to the day of his death, slowly replacing his body and mind with machinations.
Even though Ifir dislikes the gods, most of his people worship the gnome god Mecha, the Goddess of inventions, sciences, tinkering, and mechanical equipment. Ifir himself chose to resist to serve under her and become her plaything for her experiments.
Ifir is one of the Type 22's (Rogues) manufactured 132 years ago. The types made by Mecha to act as her infiltrators and agents.

And Taruq Dimay, one of the Shadar-Kai Elves, elves that are the descendants of a long dead and forgotten Elven God, Shadar. They all bear the marks due to their fallen god in shapes of physical deformities, and are depressive and hopeless in nature. Like a martyr without a cause, they just begrudgingly live their lives at best.
Taruq worships the elven god Frendelica, Goddess of the woods, hunters, beasts and springs, who Shadar fell in love with, and because of her driadic nature, inevitably killed him. She, as a the only possible act of repaying Shadar, took his elves, the Shadar-Kai under her protection and blessing.
Taruq is one of the Shadowless (Rogues). The elves, who dedicate their life to not leaving the shadows to the extent that their own shadow exists not.

As the carts travel on the roads, Ifir notices glints of wood protruding from a "nearby" forest, from miles away due to his excellent vision. The ride for the day concludes when the sun starts to settle below the far off hills created by the explosion of the Tarkah Magical Academy.
Ifir huddles together with Fólkvangr and Taruq, and discusses what he saw. The camps around them are slowly being set up. One by one, tents are pulled out, and the horses are tied to trees and fed.
As the conclusion of their confidential talks, they all agree to check what Ifir saw out. Before leaving Fólkvangr looks for the caravan leader, and manages to convince them to wait for the trio's return. The thin, long mustached man introduces himself as "Philandros".
Having their permission to leave, the party goes on a 4 hour trip to reach the location. Fólkvangr and Taruq easily navigating the dark forest due to their dark vision, Ifir however has some trouble. Fólkvangr casts the cantrip Light onto Ifir's torch to help him navigate. Distant howling signal their arrival into the forests.

The party easily finds the building roughly between 1-2 am thanks to Ifir's perfect memory of the terrain and geography. Seemingly a long abandoned mansion. They check the front entrance to find the door taken of it's hinges, laying flat on the inside of the mansion. On the door's frame, Ifir finds some strange symbols etched without a hurry.
Stepping inside, the party finds themselves in the mansion and it's many twists and curves. Exploring the corridors, Fólkvangr notices a stalactite hanging from the ceiling. A weird placement. Ifir shoots it and that instant, the stalactite animates and swoops down.
Combat begins, as the party try to attack the creature as it cloaks itself with an aura of darkness, blinding the trio completely. Struggling in the dark, they manage to somehow kills the creature with Fólkvangr delivering the last blow and piercing it through with his spear. Fólkvangr distinctly recalls seeing creatures like this in the realm he was born in, Shadowfell, but is unable to say anything specific.
The now aware party proceeds to continue down the long corridor and reaches a long hallway. Hearing a foreign language being spoken, the party figures from the voices that one is reprimanding another. Soon both disappear deeper into the establishment. The party follows, Ifir and Taruq masterfully avoiding the creaking boards while Fólkvangr trudging through them like no biggie.

>>45119
This seemingly is heard by the creatures in the other room, making them panic and pool out of the room to fight our 3 adventurers. During the battle, a goblin, with an arrow in his shoulder and a spear in his side manages to slash through Ifir's left eye, party blinding him. Shortly after, Ifir is taken to the ground, and begins to bleed out while the other two fights the battle.
As the battle rages on, Ifir is restored to health by the healing energies released by Fólkvangr. In the end the goblins fall and the party triumphs, although they did lose sight of the one who seemed to lead the rest. Proceeding into the next room, they find desks upon desks with some foreign writing on them. A couple of symbols are recognized by Ifir as well as the others as the same carved onto the door frame outside.
Finding alchemical vials with a thick, black swirling liquid inside, the party tries to figure out what they are. Ifir is unable to tell, but Fólkvangr thinks they are gateways to Shadowfell, that's why those creatures were present before. Deciding to torch everything in the room which has damp floorboard to minimize the chance of setting fire to the whole mansion, they call out to the remaining goblins to show themselves.
A goblin emerges, with raised hands carrying no weaponry seemingly desperately trying to say something in a foreign language, but Ifir, in the excitement that has not yet settled since, and his disregard for the creature that had it's allies try to kill them, releases an arrow. It soars through the air, only to miss by a very wide margin, due to Ifir's sudden loss of his left eye.
The goblin rightfully panics and quickly retracts behind the door it emerged from, running away in a full sprint, disappearing from the sight of the party.
Giving chase, they look into the next room, a looted armory and weaponry and see no goblins. Listening in, they hear movement up north. Fólkvangr taking point follows after but unable to pay attention to the ceiling gets surprised by another Darkmantle. Forced to stop his chase, he, successfully wrestles the thing off of his body, and tosses it aside. The darkmantle releases his magical miasma to cloak itself and retracts away from the party.
Taruq gives it chase, only to have the monster attack him. The darkmantle shoots off of the ground, flying, and hits Taruq on his face. It's membrane covering Taruq's all orifices as it wraps around it's tentacles his neck, trying to wriggle the life out of the elf.
Choking and shrouded in darkness, Taruq wildly slashes near his hear, trying to hit the creature, and with the help of his fellow party members, manage to kill the creature. Then the party loots the remaining weapons from the weapon racks finding a pike, a lance, a long sword and a halberd.

Deciding it's too late to give chase, the trio instead returns to the room, takes a couple of documents and torches the rest, together with the alchemical vials as well.
Checking out the few and quite empty bookshelves, Ifir finds a strange book. Enveloped in black leather, with no writing on it, just a symbol on the front, embroidered with gold. A chain making a circle, and 6 stylized pillars inside. Ifir opens the book and is immedietly drawn in by the book. His consciousness and will slipping away, he begins reading about a realm called the Eternal Plains, and the infinite war raging on it's back. He just reads on and on, reading about 6 figures who control the realm, waging war across all eternity for their amusement.
Ifir begins receiving visions of the battlefield. Fragments of brutal destruction, inhumane hatred for the enemy. Horrors of war assault his right eye.
Noticing his absence, Fólkvangr and Taruq returns to find him unresponsive. Approaching closer, they see Ifir, like a madman possessed reading the book. Peeking over Ifir's quite low shoulders, Fólkvangr only sees a book with empty pages. Trying to snap him out of it, Fólkvangr talks to Ifir, then forces the book close before his eyes. Ifir, still shaken by the events, begins having vivid even more vivid visions of the Eternal Plains, and it's eternally waged war. Fólkvangr tries to wrestle Ifir down to the ground unsuccessfully, then he follows Ifir as he's crawling, jumping all over the place, swinging a nearby candlestick.
As Ifir comes to calm down, the party explores a bit more, but decides to return to the camp for the day.
Carrying the two darkmantle's corpses back with them. The wolves howl still coming from farther away, they don't encounter any hard dangers on their way back to camp. As the earlier hours of the 8th day of the year pass, a meteor shower slowly overtakes the sky, signaling the day of Fileo, the justice bringer. The skies are overtaken in a dazzling number of meteors drawing white lines in the night sky, as the moons shift one again, Vik retracting to half and Sizzon becoming visible fully.
As the party returns to camp, they meet one of the guards, Marcus, who gets a massive ego boost because of Fólkvangr's attempts at praising him. Marcus comments on Ifir's warning to not take on goblins by himself by pointing out his lack of left eye and injuries. Ifir draws his shoulders as if accepting that Marcus's life is his to throw away.
The party proceeds to the dedicated night shift tent, with two people discussing something inside. Ifir and Taruq, without much thought sits down and eats from the leftovers from the food cooked for dinner while Fólkvangr engages in conversation with the two caravan guards.

Appearently, they both of them are planning to leave the caravan, starting their own company and buying a boat in the near future. Their ambition is to be the first people to establish trade between the Eastern Faludian continent (that the party is currently on), and the Western Sisretyr continent.
Fólkvangr tries to get the two to think of them if some protection work is needed. The fat one agrees, but the other one seems more distrustful.
They introduce themselves as Gaius (the fat one) and Regulus (the suspicious one). Both admittedly worship Sekto, the human God of lies, false pretenses, theaters, thieves, merchants, and succubus.
After their exchange, the trio eats their fill, and bandages themselves up (mostly just Taruq and Ifir). While the other two turn their heads onto a pillow, Fólkvangr conducts a ritual to honor his Archangel, Fileo by burning the bodies of creatures from Shadowfell.
After he drains the blood and cuts the body of the darkmantles into pieces, he methodically paints his face and body with the liquid, then places the remaining parts onto the fire. As the fire licks the sizzling remains, flakes of golden, glowing ash slowly ascend from the fire, signaling Fileo's acceptance and approval of the sacrifice.

The day passes, and the party gets up to set out for the day. They return into the mansion, explore a room full of intact and torn/broken bags, sacks and barrels, then goes ahead, entering a room occupied by 3 giant rats, seemingly occupied by eating the very last remains of something. The party attacks… And that's where the first session ended in Ouzergien.

>>45120
Last sunday, we continued our journey through the world of Ouzergien. Our 3 characters once again set out to make their way in this world. This is their story.
Also a little something to listen to while reading. Or just because.

Fólkvangr tosses his spear towards the sole remaining giant rat in the room, but it overshoots it's target. Seeing the trio, the giant rat rushes forward, only to be masterfully stabbed through the spike just as it arrives to our adventurers by Taruq and his rapier. As the giant rat collapses to the ground, the party hears increasing scratching and other strange noises coming from the sides of the door they are currently facing. Ifir and Fólkvangr draw a bit further away, only to slowly see a single bug emerge from the holes on the walls. It harmlessly buzzes as it's dark needle sized compound eyes gaze over the trio.
Then another shows up.
And another.
Slowly, an avalanche of bugs, like an ooze, spill forth from the walls from two locations and soon attack the party, with intentional malice. Taruq gets enveloped by the swarm and takes tremendous damage as the insects chew and gnaw his flesh while Ifir easily dances away from the other swarm's attacks. The battle grows heavier as the swarm swallowing Taruq turns towards Fólkvangr, and like a wave in the ocean, envelopes the Aasimar. However his armor and shield holds strong and absorbs the insect's attempts of murder.
Slowly, hack after hack, blow after blow, the two swarms shrink in size and eventually completely die down. Thousands of bugs scattered accross the floor, the trio observes the room for more potential enemies. Taruq and Fólkvangr with their eyes, Ifir mostly by his ears, they realize that the battle has died down.
Taking a strange look at the writing on the wall, Fólkvangr also notes it down in hopes of finding out what they mean. Clearly different from the etching on the door, they decide to check back into the room where they burden the documents and alchemical vials and their contents, and Ifir takes some well worn looking books with himself for potential sale.

The trio decides to head back to the caravan, and after a 3 hour journey at a fast pace, they make it back. Ifir noticing the strange hymn like vibrations and golden glow slowly fading as the sun wanders down below the hills left by the explosion of Tarkah. As they arrive back into the camp, they are greeted by Regulus, the current guard on duty. After exchanging a bit of banter, and Regulus remains unamazed by the party bringing back 3 goblin heads, the trio meets with Philandros and discuss moving out asap, as the 9th day of the year approaches. The day of Jiloph, the human god of natural disasters, the elements, wildlands, hunters and foresters, which is sure to bring a heavy storm. Fólkvangr and Taruq helps with preparing the Caravan to set out while Ifir sneaks off to sleep in a ready cart.
Fólkvangr also asks around to see if people around here might know these languages, but nobody has any actual idea. Philandros remembers that the languages of the scribbled notes Fólkvangr hands him are in goblinoid and draconic. He reveals 2 letters of the 4 letter word they found at the busted entrance of the Hidden Mansion, an a and an e, to get - a - e.

A day passes, and the new morning brings clouds darker than the night with themselves. The Maladin mountain gathering and directing the wind down it's back towards the roads they travel, the party is faced with a new challenge. One they cannot stab or torment, but one that they all can fall victim to.
The weather.
A thunderstorm worthy of a god approaches, one only seen naturally occurring maybe once every 100 years as Jiloph dances around above the clouds leaping with joy, making the ground he stand on, the clouds rumble with such force to make any mortal man tremble. Slamming his feet to the beat played to him by his ascended followers, sweat pouring from his body to fall below onto the earth and rain down onto the material realm in form of rain, as his sudden movements cause gusts of air so strong to blow away a stone castle.
Such is the force of a god, such is the force that mortal men must endure or face wrath from such monsters born of pure arcane power stolen from the Allfather.
The winds blow stronger and stronger, easily reaching ~100 kph (~60 mph), and rain falls with such weight as to shatter to mist. Visibility alost zero, our trio, Ifir in the first cart and Fólkvangr and Taruq in the second, they try to weather the invisible blows of the air.

Ifir, unable to hold on, gets thrown off the first cart as the horse, unable to take the weather in it's agitated state, runs off. Ifir quickly jumps out of the way of the second cart and gets noticed by Fólkvangr just in time to have him snatch the reins from the driver and stop the cart. The rest of the carts stop as well, but Fólkvangr yells towards the sky, damning Jilpoh. A gesture returned with a lightning striking in the middle of the road, not into one of the nearby trees. The lighting strike deafens Ifir for a few minutes as he gets onto the cart as well.
But the storm rages on, unaware and uninterested in the damages caused to mortals. The driver of the cart behind the party's cart gets blown off by the wind, and the people on the back scare the horse by yanking it's reins too hard. Scare out of it's mind and agitated, the horse runs and half jumps into the cart inhabited by the trio, just as another gust of wind blows Ifir and Taruq to the ground. The horse makes it halfway, trashing about, injuring Ifir, who tries to calm the horse down while speaking druidic (not that the horse understands), and is succesful. His softly whispered threats to neck the horse seems to calm it down well enough. The rest of the party gets off to help the people now trying -unsuccessfully- to get the horse out of the cart. Managing to do so, they decide to take the carts of froad and seek shelter in the forest from the winds. Hunkering down, they sit around, waiting for the storm to pass and Jiloph to finish his passionate dance. After 3 hours of listening to the rain beating down above their heads and the freezing temperature of their soaked clothings, the weather subsides and they properly set up camp and light a fire to dry themselves out. As they sit around the bonfire, the rest of the caravan members join in, and the relative silence begins to be filled with small talks and an occasional laughter. Soon the clothes dry and the bodies are once again not freezing and risking pneumonia, the caravan sets out once again, to an uneventful night, and a Guard Tower being spotted by Ifir in the distance. The god hating gnome still has excellent vision, even with his left eye getting gouged out by a goblin's scimitar.

The caravan arrives to the town, our ragtag party, semi beaten, with Taruq being the worst off, barely hanging on despite his uncountable injury and almost death by a thousand small bites. They take their stuff and get some directions by Philandros. They are told about two inns, the "better" one being The Wizard and Flask, an inn operated by a pair of humans, An old wizard and another old man called Wulfa, but just nicknamed "Flask", just off the main road, and the more shady option being the The Sage's Pipe, located in the generally unruly docks of the town near brothels and in an area full of thieves, ran by a tall female elf called Niserie. The party also hears of the rumors that Niserie was cursed in some way, and that she may have connections to the underground.
Then the party is also told about a dragonborn blacksmith in town, Kerkad Clethtinthiallo, or "just Kerkad" for non dragonborns due to his not easily pronounceable name.

Ifir and Taruq heads to the Wizard and Flask while Fólkvangr heads to the Blacksmith.

>>45179
Ifir and Taruq make their way to the inn, a two-storey building of timber and brick walls, with several leaded glass windows, which stick out like a sore tumb among the generally wooden houses.
Entering the place, they see many adventuring parties coming and leaving, and notice a rather interesting change compared to inns they've visited before. The furniture. Dwarf-wrought iron tables and chairs litter the inside instead of wooden ones. Not a bad idea to do in an Inn. Also interesting, a collection of tankards from many lands sits upon a shelf. Some seemingly made from translucent crystals, to modified and cleaned/prepared skulls of various monsters, to even abstract ones looking too stylized to actually drink out of.

Heading to the counter Ifir and Taruq pay for 7 days of Modest lodging (7 kings/gold coins for 7 days) and get their room keys. After being served some food, Ifir eating some roasted mutton and peas with a tankard of perry, and Taruq downing some roasted pork and dried leek with a nice tankard of beer. Then they too set out for the blacksmith.

At the blacksmiths doorsteps, Fólkvangr notices 2 signs hanging over the door. One in a foreign language akin to the one he saw and copied over at the Hidden Mansion, and another in Common, writing "Blacksmith Shop"
Heading in, he sees a tall and muscular dragonborn hammering away at a sword. Stopping his work when seeing fólkvangr has some business to do and wiping his hands in a dirty rag he throws over his shoulder, the two conduct some transactions. Fólkvangr sells some of the collected loot (a lance, a pike, a longsword, a halberd and 3 scimitars and leather armors looted of the dead goblins.)
Succesfully upselling the goods, Fólkvangr manages to get 105 kings (gold pieces) for everything (to be split between the three). After such an event, he tires to get the blacksmith to give him training in the basics of field repairing his equipment. 20 kings, no more no less. Fólkvangr and Kerkad agrees of 10 kings now and 10 kings later.
"Unless…"
Ifir and Taruq arrives to the blacksmith, seeing the strange double sign outside as well and head in, interrupting the dragonborn's speech with Fólkvangr. Kerkad remains secretive, but caves in and tells of his woes anyway. Goblins seem to be snooping around his shop at night. He doesn't like it. The party and Ifir is more than willing to solve this issue, but a slight hiccup happens. Namely, Kerkad doesn't want corpses on his hands. He wants the party to just scare away the goblins. Not make them disappear, or "have an accident" or anything of the short, Ifir. Nothing of the sort, just clean good old threats of violence to make them go elsewhere. No, not into the sewers as bodies, Ifir, just away from here. No, not to the afterlife, Ifir.

After they discuss the terms of the goblins absolutely not being killed, the party agrees (Ifir reluctantly, although he still manages to get the small gate of "an actually accidental death", just in case)
Then, as thanks and to ensure a more likely outcome (after the recommendation of Ifir), Kerkad takes the party's equipment for repairs for free this time, and this one time only.

The party heads back towards the Wizard and Flask and Fólkvangr pays for his lodging as well, eating some food and talking a bit with Wulfa, asking him to awaken Fólkvangr (and by extension, the others as well) roughly at midnight.
Ifir heads up to meet the Wizard of The Wizard and Flask, already having met the Flask. He shows the 20 books he carried from the Hidden Mansion for sale. The wizard helps him to put it on his bed by offering an invisible hand and moving some to it as well. He slowly rises from his desk and sits at the very end of his bed, now full of books. Slowly taking out a glass, he begins inspecting the books one by one. Appearently interesting to him and quite rare, he pays 80 kings to Ifir for the books and an additional 50 if Ifir will tell him of the locations where the party encounters such books.

Time passes as the day turns to night, and the night sky is slowly lit up by a meteor shower, dragging small stripes of light over the sky, some stronger than the others that manage to even linger for a few seconds. Taruq enjoys the sights while Fólkvangr and Ifir enjoy the comforts of lazing about in a modest bed, napping until it's time to get going.

There's a knock at the door, and Flask wakes Fólkvangr up. Awakening under the extreme pressure of a bed and blankets after days of travel on a caravan, Fólkvangr is unable to get up from the bed, but haplessly and semi loudly thanks Flask for waking him up. He slowly collects his willpower and pushes off the sweet and greedy embrace of a warm bed to sit up and stare before himself in a half daze. Slowly he gets up and grabs his spare dagger.
Ifir and Taruq are faster to get up after Flask awakens them. Ifir more than ready to "peacefully" convince some goblins to leave, while Taruq still awake, watching the meteor showers paint the sky ever so beautifully.
The trio makes their way down to the Inn's ground floor, empty aside from 2 wizards, one of which Ifir recognizes as The Wizard from the Wizard and Flask, apparently playing some magical board game in the dead of the night to have their fun. The party talks a little bit with the wizards and then sets out on their way to the the dragonborn blacksmith Kerkad's shop. On their way, Taruq notices shadows in every corner, moving all over the town. Seemingly undisturbed and uninterested by the party, but clearly moving with intent, these figments meld into the dark cold Deres nights. Occasional glimpses of these shadowy figures still trail the party. Perhaps unintended. Perhaps not.

The party slowly approaches the shop's location, and as they approach…

The session ends. This weekend we'll probably return to Deep Abyss for another spin, because i have some interesting thing to cook up for the trio of wizards playing.

And on that note, if you wizard (yes, you), are interested in playing or trying out dnd (specifically 5e), we are always open.
You can reach any current DM's by their emails which are:
wizrobe@cock.li
or
benga@cock.li

If you are interested in a trial run, or wish to spectate a session, that option is also available (just say so if you want to do it, so we can prepare the invites or get you to the trial game run)
We usually play on saturdays (occasionally sundays), UTC 12:00 PM (noon) to UTC 04:00-05:00 PM. That's our current timeslot for the main group. If you want a trial run, we can arrange 1 on 1 personal times as well.
If you are interested in playing, please reach out. We'll try to accommodate you the best we can.
I figure some of you are interested, but have doubts about trying it out due to this being an established group.
If you have such doubts, i ask of you to still try it, just in case you end up liking it.
If enough people show up, I would be personally willing to consider starting up a second party as well for the time being.

>>45179
Ah, yes, I forgot.

On the way to Fisher, Fólkvangr challenges Regulus to a duel with quarterstaffs, mano a mano. Nonlethal, of course. The duel begins and Fólkvangr chooses to gracefully dodge and perform elaborate parries, but Regulus feints an overhead hit and turns it into a powerful trust with his quarterstaff, hitting Fólkvangr square on his chest as the treated wood strikes and digs into his clothes and skin. Fólkvangr sees that the time Regulus spent in the Human Kenku war did him well. He shaked the pain of the strike off, and continued the duel.
Fólkvangr slowly switches over to his natural fighting style, a combination of brutal and relentless attacks. the previous light water like flow changes into a form of raw strength, ready to burst out any moment and claim it's next victim.
Regulus once again strikes towards Fólkvangr, but is parried with a cross slash. Using the momentum of the parry, Fólkvangr spins around, revealing his back to Regulus. Taking this opportunity, Regulus lurches forward to strike lowering his guard, but Fólkvangr continues the motion and a makes a reverse overhead strike, easing his grip on the staff to make it slide to the very end of the quarterstaff.
The strike hits regulus on the top of his head with a massive thwack. The tip of the quarterstaff carries itself down the side of Regulus's head, digging a shallow pathway. Blood and lymph slowly seep out, forming small drops along the wound.
Regulus, clearly a bit dazed but still capable of fighting takes Fólkvangr's offer to end the duel. A blow for blow, It seems it's a draw. Regulus seems zo be slowly changing his opinion, albeit he's not the type of man to just readily mention that to anyone. The two part ways, Regulus holding a rag to his head and Fólkvangr triumphant that he showed his skills to the man.