Fortieth Session (11 page pdf) – “Reality In Flux” – Things start getting weirder than usual on board the ship; reality seems to be deviating from what the PCs remember. Identity changes. More babies. More chaos parrots. More eight-pointed stars scratched into the ship’s wood… Hey, we burned that weird Mythos tome from Ulduvai didn’t we? The Prophecies of the Blind Star-God?
So yes, unbeknownst to the rest of the crew Mitabu had squirreled away an Azathothian artifact (not entirely his fault, he’s crazy and artifacts take action to not be destroyed) and brought it back. And our other crazy spellcaster, Zoamai, started experimenting with it. (She was a PC for a player that was here a brief time and left; Mitabu was a player for a longer time but eventually left too.)
And things got weird fast. Initially it’s bad dreams and “normal” chaos stuff like the eight pointed chaos star they took from Ulduvai as a memento getting loose and scuttling around the hold, but soon reality is shifting without warning. I’m pretty sure the first reality change was a mistake on my part. I randomly rolled Crazy Jake as being on watch forgetting he was supposed to be a captive in Bloodcove, and when the conflict was noted instead of retconning it I leaned in and said “Yes… that’s what you thought… But everyone else says no, what do you mean, it’s Rucia.” I realized how much more effective an undeclared narrative change is than the usual “spooky trappings.” So as time went on suddenly this Elder God chaos infraction has made it so:
- It’s not Crazy Jake being held by the Fulvous Cabal, it’s Rucia
- Samaritha suddenly has twins
- Mandohu from Ulduvai is a lizard man not a flying ape
This interacted strongly with the PCs’ less than perfect memories (“Wait… did both eggs hatch and I just misunderstood?”) and normal screwing around (Sindawe convincing Klangin that Wogan needed a kiss a day to avoid death) and they were actually getting pretty upset. And the cold locker looking like a hellscape is because that true seeing lens Serpent found was cursed. It all turned into one big shit sandwich from their perspective.
Wogan replies, “Sindawe, slap me.” Sindawe slaps him. The pain makes him unprepared for a kiss from Klangin who explains, “It is for your own good.” The unclear distinction between truly surreal phenomena and the usual shipboard surreal phenomena leaves the command crew puzzled and distrustful.
They have a conversation in earnest about simply destroying their ship and escaping. Sindawe’s player was serious. I realized “shit I need to tone this down and give them a little more sense of control or else we might get seriously derailed.”
Sindawe discusses setting fire to the ship and walking away from it all to Wogan, Serpent, and Mitabu. An extra baby, an unfindable eight-pointed star, the carvings, hellscape cold locker, etc. all point to something worse than “they are still dreaming”. Worst case, the old timey snake man cult is teaming up with the shoggoth… or something like that. It may be time to burn it all down and walk away. No one disagrees, but none are eager for all that implies.
Luckily they get to Bloodcove and go kill cultists and rescue Rucia and that gives me enough time to plan the next part of that arc, since I was improvising a lot of it during the first part of this session.
Geek Related 