Thirty-Second Session – The seas beckon as we leave Kingspire for the Isle of Lone Ait, which looks foreboding even on the map. Foes await!
First, we have a quite lively fight with some seafaring skeletons. “Eight skeletons on a boat? No problem, let’s get them. AIIIIEEEEEE it hurts” is a good summary of what we said.
And then we start in on some adventure about weirdly named people (Shadankin! Queen Cealheewhalool!) because Gallfred has some horn he needs for a fech quest. As I discover later, this is from the adventure DCC#75, The Sea Queen Escapes.
We find the sea cave dungeon readily enough, and as one might expect – LAMPREY MEN!!! They have harpoons, but I have a fire bow.
Then it turns into a platformer, which is super annoying.
More in the summary, but this one is mostly fighting!
Thirty-first Session – We head back into the Kingspire. The weaselly Vizier tries to get the runeblade off of us, so I shoot him in his face for his trouble. Unfortunately two elder kith knights cut down Ned. We manage to save his life, but at the cost of permanent disability (-1 STA and a scar). We kill them all and heft mithril weapons meaningfully.
When we get back to the Crow King we give him his dead lover’s ring and he calls for the Vizier’s head. We say “Oh we just happen to have a fresh vizier head on us, just two silver pieces.”
Anyway, he tell us to stop the time loop we have to kill an “uppity broad” whose sorcery caused the loop, the Lady Ariarch. The degree to which we trust his pronouncements is very low. But after a dinner party, she agrees that she needs to be killed by the Runeblade to stop the loop. Ned does the deed. Afterwards the blade is like “oh you can use me and I’m super powerful and you just have to make the world burn in return”. Ned’s conflicted, so we deconflict him by drugging him like Mr. T in the A-Team.
We get back to the real world/time/whatever, where our followers have captured some random cultists. After some discussion, Old Man Fish sacrifices one to his fell deity. Are we ze baddies?
Back to the mud-farmer village which is all that remains of Kingpsire in the modern day, where Gallfred hangs out with a swamp witch, which is one of his favorite things to do. Sadly, the Elder Kith cultists infesting it aren’t really affected by the fact that we just cancelled their religion by disintegrating all the elder kith, so we murder and loot.
We then “negotiate” with the locals about how they’re free of the cult and should start behaving like civilized people now. But not like us, we’re monsters.
Thirtieth Session – We go find the other elves out of time that should be against the ones in the castle, but they require slaughter as well, so we oblige.
Then we find a Conan the Barbarian style dead guy and, like Conan, take his sword and armor.
When we go outside we have a Tremors type problem with a big worm. It would have been fairly easy to escape, but Ned starts to cast invisble companion and rolls super, super high. So high that if he finished the spell he’ll get a permanent invisible stalker as a buddy. That’s DCC magic for you! So he stands there chanting while we try to fend off the worm and extract ourselves and Ned.
We manage to extract him and now we have an addition to the party, Luigiroth, who is stronger than any 2 of us combined. 11 HD, AC23, STR 22, invisible, flying… Holy crap!
We head back with the sword, figuring it will somehow stop the time loop, but we’re kinda hazy on how. On the way we befriend a crazy jailer who controls rat swarms.
The time loop has reset since we left so we fight the formorian torturer again and try to save the Crow King’s secret lover again, to no avail. Then it’s back into the eternal battle that fills the Kingspire!
My research indicates that Old Man Fish’s desire for darkvision let us into DCC 88.5, Curse of the Kingspire!
Things get weird quick, both camping near the ruins of the Kingspire and then as we approach it (leaving our 8 companions and horses at camp) ghostly figures surround us. And as we approach the tower we are suddenly part of a ghostly ancient battle between hordes of beast-men and a castle full of Kith! Some of the spectres are more real than others and it’s dangerous.
I think Kith are elves. But “old” elves? Kinda like in the Witcher they’re like “Elder blood!” “Do you mean elves, there’s a bunch of them?” “Yes! No! Kinda!” Fair enough.
Anyway, we fight/sneak our way into the Kith castle with the sometimes phantom, sometimes physical savage subhumans close behind. We find a crapload (27) of cultists doing some ritual, doubtless responsible for the ancient battle starting to phase in on us.
Luckily (?) a bunch of worms start eating cultists as part of the ritual. We have to fight our way through a rearguard of archers but Ned gets a super high magic missile roll and “death blossoms” them (Last Starfighter reference!)
We make our way through the ruins and find the cult leader Arkos and his cult champions and initiates and a free range combat is on! At the climax the cult leader throws done some black orb from the top of the chamber while invoking the “Crow King.” Harp powerslides and catches the orb before it hits but it shatters anyway (fair enough, gotta get to phase 2 of the adventure, but I was proud of doing it) and suddenly we’re in the full on past battle!
After some violence we make contact with the Elder Kith and meet the Crow King himself, who explains we’re not technically in the past but in a spell of time stasis. “A difference without a distinction!” we cry! Anyway, Old Man Fish swears fealty to him and agrees to go whack his brother, and gets his darksight!
Then we meet the old Vizier and a big formorian giant type torturer on the way to the brother. It’s obvious to us they aren’t on Team King and they are torturing some chick, so once the Vizier leaves we dogpile the giant and take him down fairly quickly. Unfortunately the tortured kith-maiden perishes shortly after being rescued.
Trapped catacombs ensue and we find some other kith – forces of the brother (who we’re not sure is really the bad guy in all this?) Find out… Next time!
Twenty-eighth Session – In the aftermath of Glipkerio’s Gambit, as well as the advent of the year of our Lord 2025, we make friends with the new extraplanar people that have joined us and deal with swamp life, swamp witches, swamp gnolls, swamp zombies… Ick.
The introductions between our normal PCs and the other-time zero levels goes as you might expect, with everyone trying to get each other to take various proscribed substances. We spend a good bit of the session role-playing here, which is fun.
Gallfred Weasel makes friends with a swamp witch – something that turns into a real recurring theme in this campaign (She tells us she has two sisters. We suspect Gallfred means to bang all three.). We gather intel to go back to Kingspire, land of mud farmers and murderous barbarians, because Old Man Fish wants to do something with the Elder Kith (elves? Super old elves?) cult there to get the ability to see in the dark.
Then we decide to attack a bunch of swamp gnolls unprovoked, which doesn’t go super well for us and we end up fairly wounded. A zombie scare, and that’s it for the session!
Twenty-seventh Session – Into Mount Tyche where weird stuff continues to happen and we end up fighting a bunch of time-shifted wizards!
Hemp is on a quest to get closer to his new deity Aphiel – he has an artifact, the blazefire bow, but it doesn’t, you know, blaze into fire. There is a temple to Aphiel up on that mountain, but apparently someone’s taken it over and shooed out the priests.
We fight our way there, and the most dreaded of encounters happens – the “monsters that steal your magic items” attack!!! They grab up Gallfred’s sword shadeslayer and Podrick’s magic bow and beat wings. Luckily, missile attacks down them and we recover our goodies.
But then we start to encounter an unfortunate number of wizards, who seem to be all the same wizard and disappear before we can kill them. Then we fight some “Komodo dragon men,” which is a lot more intimidating (and infection-causing) than “lizard men,” we all approved. Hemp has a magic helmet that helps him in this, but once he rolles a “7” on a die it cracks and falls off, alas.
The numerology continues with number puzzles! We have to go up numbered stairs but they’re also too large to comfortably go to the ones we need; an enlarge spell from Ned and thinking from everyone overcomes the puzzle.
The nomal dungeoneering is disrupted by a bunch of weirdos from other dimensions suddenly teleporting in from modern day, the 1970s, science fiction… From our recent one-shot! It’s a lot to deal with and since they are zero/first level they are probably just going to get murdered so we settle them in on the lovely temple grounds and go fight a whole batch of the same wizard and have some fun time loop stuff. And then we’re done and I am fully on board the Aphiel train, and hit fourth level to boot.
We all make Triumph’s Dawn resolutions for the new year! Two of them are “overthrow the wizard king”…
Not In Kansas Anymore – Paul runs a weird one-shot funnel where we each generate characters from a different time!
Paul directs us to go make characters from “anything” in the Purple Sorcerer 0-level party generator! I choose “Trailer Park Shark Attack” and others pick options like “Space Dungeon”, “Dying Earth”, “1920s Earth”, and “Modern Earth.” We get a lovely list of 0-levels, some of the most notable are Stacey Thompson the Professional Screamer, Maynard the Meth Manufacturer, and Shad the Trailer Park Santa. Full list in the summary.
With my four, I was inspired by having recently read Carl Hiassen’s novel Strip Tease, so I modeled my four characters after the four primary movers from the book – A middle-school student (Erin), a guy with a chainsaw (Darryl), a guy who looks like Ving Rhames in a Santa suit (Shad), and a Florida man (Dilbeck).
Anyway, with no other preamble all our various characters suddenly appear and are beset by a handless wizard and some lizard men. (Seems like this could have been a King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard reference in another world… Someone needed to workshop an adventure more!)
Turns out this is “Not In Kansas Anymore”, written for 1970s characters and in the “Gen Con 2016 Program Guide.” Did you know those were actual content products? I didn’t!
Tim gets the award for quickest death – “Three Coins” the majordomo is murdered in the first round. The fight against the lizard men is quick and violent; some PCs die; more die as we flee the rising lava. Meth begins to factor in heavily to the party’s tactics.
Wackiness ensues – a sample:
There is a motionless humanoid shrouded in shadows at the top of the stairs. Shad staggers up, yelling “Ho, ho, ho!” He finds that the stairway is trapped: a pressure plate causes spears to shoot out from the walls. Fortunately, Shad has the luck of the drunk and survives without a scratch. He finds that the “standing” person is someone already impaled and held upright by a spear.
Shad shakes the body, shouting “You’ve been naughty this year!” He takes a swig from his bottle of Ol’ Grandad.
We are then told by a prisoner “you must stop Glipkerio from freeing the ancient dragon Slagothorp.” That sounds like made up nonsense to us but we don’t have anything else to do. We find a dead dragon, which we think is good news, but it turns out there’s a young dragon too, which is bad news. Everyone decides to use the bullets they’ve been hoarding for their boomsticks to little effect. But then Batreau, an AirBnB owner back in the real world, has been exhibiting strange Scanners-like brain-exploding powers and he explodes the dragon’s brain. Yay?
Then it’s time to face off with the wizard and a bunch of lizard men – we get cool powers but die like flies. Erin my middle school student pretty much solos the wizard while everyone else is distracted, but finally gets murdered and the wizard disappears. Darryl manages to kill dragon #2 with his .357 Magnum and then the eight survivors from the original group of 20 cross-time weirdos get swept up by magical birds and end up in… Our normal DCC campaign, next time!
Twenty-sixth Session – Back in Weebrook, some Wormtongue type sorcerer named Sylle Ru is now in charge. We immediately subscribe to his newsletter.
This new wizard comes to visit us in the inn with some undead goons. Half of the party is Chaotic, and most of us hate in movies where some good supporting character sasses the bad guy and gets murdered instead of humoring him until they’re out of 9mm range, so we have a nice chat about his economic revitalization program.
The Duke has investigated thoroughly, there is nothing to fear from these supposed undead armies. In truth, the King is just sending us reinforcements to make our towns more secure. And then we can bring in those wretched villages and hamlets that have not been brought into our protection. And with that protection comes prosperity! There are so many nameless villages and communities of subhumans around.”
Podrick responds, “You’re right! I have been patrolling the area, and the subhumans are crying out for protection and discipline!”
Hemp is also on board, “Absolutely, there’s nothing more important than the economy. And how can you have so little pride in your community as to not even name it.”
Sylle Ru Is pleased that Podrick and Hemp are so enthusiastic.
But this doesn’t last long as Old Man Fish decides to assassinate the wizard. All hell breaks loose but we are nothing if not practical, as soon as the plan switches to “murder” we mob the guy.
And the Duke is freed! Apparently it “wasn’t his fault” he was sacrificing townspeople to placate the Black Dog but this guy’s. He says he’ll totally go back up Fythorp from the undead army that’s coming. His general pussiness and the ineffectiveness and numbers of his thanes make us dubious.
The rest of the time in town can be summed up loosely by Hemp as:
Hemp goes and tells the bartender that Gallfred drank a potion, encountered a demonic accountant who called him a “bummer”, and then he spent the rest of the night having sex with mutated horses.
No sooner do we leave than giant slugs attack. And a mutated cat monster. And a next quest, to go jack up some wizard named Glipkerio who’s messing with time. We like time! It’s… when I keep my stuff!
Twenty-fifth Session – Ogre drug dealers enliven the journey back to Fythorp, where baths and treasure sales are the order of the day.
This session is mostly roleplay in town, which is fun. I get there late and spend a solid hour on inventory and selloff, as we have a bunch of stuff and seldom are in anyplace with more than two rubles to rub together.
Oh, and now we’re rich enough to get horses, so we spend quite some time naming them.
Hemp commissions a tiny suit of armor for Zipzap. Hemp names his horse Wildfire. Podrick refuses to name his horse, in to improve his chances of crossing a desert. Old Man Fish’s horse’s name is Matilda. Ned Wimbley names his horse You Bastard. Mordecai names his horse (tbd).
Then we try to convince people there’s an undead army coming for them. It goes modestly. But in the end, they hand some noncombatants and the mayor’s daughter and her girlfriend off to us and we escort them to our home town of Weebrook.
It’s a little weird to be selling treasure and partying it up in a place that we’re pretty sure a skeleton army is going to wipe off the map – we don’t have any immediate way to stop it, either, except a long term plan to get Podrick’s helm un-cursed. We’ll figure something out, I hope!
Twenty-fourth Session – We extract from the Temple of the Carnifex right through a giant Ewok tree village full of goblins!
Well, Gallfred Weasel finally gets his wish of unlimited goblins to kill with Shadeslayer. He still spends a lot of the time hiding. And unconscious. With no Mordecai either it’s just Hemp, Old Man Fish, Ned, and Podrick against a whole raft of goblins and giant bats and goblin moonshine and bat swarms. And a goblin vampire.
Luckily we’re on a hot streak – in combat, and also my one-liners flow fast and furious!
Hemp picks up a skewered, roasted bat and nibbles on it. He tells the others, “The children of the night… What tasty snacks they make.” Ned watches Hemp carefully for signs of hydrophobia. […] The throne is carved from the back wall of the cave, so (sadly) not portable in any way. Hemp tries sitting on it. He finds that it is made for a goblin, so not particularly comfortable. In spite of that, he insists, “I never tire of sitting on dead men’s thrones.”
Twenty-third Session – Deeper into the Temple of the Carnifex we go, fighting through an ancient cult in order to… Well, we figure that out as we go.
We fight a bunch of dudes in here and largely have no idea why we’re doing it. “Are we ze baddies?” we are forced to ask. Mordecai finally shares some of what’s going on:
There is a brief discussion where Mordecai reveals the purpose of the quest: he found out from Lady Skeam that the king is sending an army of undead to march on Fythorp, and he can stop them with the power within this crypt, by taking control of the army and sending them back on their creator. The rest of the party suddenly feel much more motivated.
Anyway, after we kill Azazel the head Pious guy the rest of his seemingly limitless goons die. Then we have a lively discussion over whether we free the evil goddess trapped in here or not. We decide not, and have a big gold Ark of the Covenant box, some mystic tome, and three big ass jewels to show for it. But getting out isn’t as easy as it sounds… We’ll cover that next time!
Twenty-second Session – The party braves Bat Country to go to the Goblin Spires which turn out to be the entry point to the Temple of the Carnifex.
We find a nice little monastery (with carved trees like Aladzha Monastery, you should go visit it if you’re in eastern Bulgaria!) that distracts us with tales of a nearby goblin tribe living in a stone spire.
Unseen by all, a shadowy presence at the end of the table takes sudden, bloodthirsty interest. Gallfred Weasel is always eager to slaughter the goblin races.
So we go there; we thought it was a distraction from our search for the Temple of Carnifex but it turned out to be the antechamber to the place, and suddenly we are in DCC #79 Jewels of the Carnifex.
My favorite part was Hemp finding a starving shocker lizard that he adopts to nurse back to health. I name it “Zipzap.” Once that’s done (after we leave the dungeon, not this session):
Zipzap the shocker lizard Lizard, shocker: Init +2; Atk bite +1 melee (1d4); AC 14; HD 2d8; hp 4; MV 40’ or climb 20’; Act 1d20; SA electrical shock 1d8, Ref save DC 12 for half; SV Fort +2, Ref +3, Will -2; AL N.
Rest of the session’s pretty self explanatory dungeoneering, read all about it in the summary!
Geek Related 