Tag Archives: story hour

Thirty-Seventh Session – It’s a tie as to what’s the most dangerous experience this session – tentacle-birthed monstrous servitors of a dark god, or Ned setting our campsite on fire – twice.

We travel through weird random encounters and Ned setting our campsite on fire. At long last we get to the Shrine of the Bethines where Podrick needs to cleanse the Helm of Chistu, which is supposed to be all kinds of help against the evil undead hordes. It’s just full of horrid Servitors of Zeron, though you can knock their teeth out and eat the teeth to get protection from hostile elements.

The experience of swallowing malign chaos magic is deeply unpleasant, about like smoking, eating the contents of the ashtray, and washing it down with Ivanovich vodka. After that, the characters each experience a mild, cold numbness.

He means Ivanabitch vodka, which is the worst thing Chris ever fed to us. He got it on clearance for like $2. It’s a “menthol flavored” vodka. It tastes like a stripper throwing up in your mouth. This was easily a decade ago but it still haunts us.

We delve deep into a weird dungeon, including a room with 30 skeletons in it that we manage to not have to fight. A gaseous demon poses a real problem but luckily my magic flaming bow gives it a good what for.

Finally we emerge with a cleansed helm! And Ned sets our campsite on fire again.

P.S. This appears to be “The Zeron Protocol” from the 2016 Gongfarmer’s Almanac.

Thirty-Sixth Session – We head from Kingspire to Wymoor and meet some bewitched goons we manage not to murder, and then some other goons we do murder.

We take our large retinue on the road. The first night, we meet the artifact hunters on the road that we were sure were going to just waylay us last time we met them. This time they found an artifact, a crown, that has clearly bent them and they insist Hemp is the True King and should put on the crown. We tweak to that immediately but the fight doesn’t go great until Ned managed to magic missile the crown for an insane amount of damage and they all get a grip again.

We decide to put a curse on one of the artifacts they’re selling up the river to the evil lackey of the wizard king, Lady Skian. Turns out she and her undead army have taken over Fythorp, which we figured was coming eventually.

Then we come across some friars fighting some prisoners. For whatever reason, most of the PCs decide to murder the majority of the friars until Hemp finally gets everyone to calm down. The friars insist the prisoners are guilty of random crimes so we have Podrick judge them, which he does fairly but sternly.

Grond, Barka, and Skarn are three berserkers who decide they have nothing better to go back to and are grateful, so swear to serve Hemp as his personal bodyguards! Nice.

We settle most of our otherworldly followers in Wymoor where we buy them a house. Logistics and carousing takes us through the rest of the session!

Twenty-ninth Session – And now – weird elves out of time!!!

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!