EVIL METAPLOT TRACKER[spoiler]
Plot by Haphixian, the beholder:
[spoiler]Somewhat evil plot to seed hatred in Kalibri and Lothos in hopes that they will fight each other to the brink of mutual destruction, allowing him to come in and establish a puppet government in the aftermath, and rule over half of the known world. Bad because war is bad, good because both rulers are tyrannical dicks already, and Haphixian would probably be a nicer guy.
Completion Level: 20%[/spoiler]
Plot by Lehksar
[spoiler]Vampire who created Forsako. Plotting to live out his days drinking aged blood like it was going out of style in his penthouse suite in Forsako.
Completion Level: 100% [/spoiler]
Plot by Bruce
[spoiler]Bruce plans to use his superior knowledge of the maps and charts of the trade ships to corner the market on piracy. All pirates in the seven seas will eventually work for him, if his successes go unchallenged.
Completion Level: 10%[/spoiler][/spoiler]
Session 1: The Awakening
[spoiler]The party began the game having won fabulous trips for two to fabulous Forsako! Where the party never stops, even when you're dead! Much to my chagrin, there were a few (some planned, some not) interruptions, and chargen took a long time. Anyway, one player started out by immediately manifesting False Sensory Input on one of the other party members, who failed his save with a natural one. The guy then proceeded to alter the conversation held between said party member and a third party member to sound extremely bad. While the exchange was quite funny, the least I could do to not have the party get totally OWNED by each other at that point, I did what any DM would do: I attacked them. I was gonna do it anyway. They began to hear the lamentations of somebody's women, so the knight and scout went to go check.
So what came out of the waterworks after them were what I described as this:
You see coming towards so some people... only they've got something wrong with them. Crossed over their chest, coming from over their back, are 4 short little appendages that look like elbowed tentacles, with powerful stingers on the end. Their skin is shiny and polished, almost like armor, and they have a crease running along the sides of their bodies, almost like what you'd expect from a die-cast mold. Their eyes are blank and pupil-less, and their faces are entirely devoid of expression; they aren't angry; they aren't sad; they seem to know only violence.Well, the tentacle whip wielding Knight went and totally closed down the battlefield. Nobody could charge to him, and he kept tripping until he eventually succeeded. The Scout, meantime, swerved in and out of traffic and snapped HIS whip daggers into them, dealing great damage, but a little bit less than he'd have liked. Eventually, the Knight made the fatal mistake of letting the guy get up in his grill, and that's when the tears fell like rain. 4 tentacles + improved grab = yikes, and he got bludgeo'd for hammer. Took about 20 damage that round, and the guy sucked a bit of his life force out with him.
I didn't get to grapple anyone else that day, because between his tentacle whip poison and his eyebeam symbiote (which reminds me I need to look that up), he paralyzed one guy and he and the scout took care of the rest. The psion didn't do much at first, but he did manage to stagger the guy who grappled the knight with a Recall Agony and kinda save his bacon there. The knight then brought out his trained axebeaks and giant firefly and flew the women into the air so that they wouldn't get hurt. I swear if he gets any stranger...
Anyway, that's all we got to, but the party at the very least now knows each other. The psion's character started out being a dick to other party members, and while I admit it was funny, I did drop some hints about the party not having to take him along.
Interesting note, 3 guys gave their characters girlfriends.
So that's the synopsis of the first game session. We left off with the party about to engage six more of those things, which, by the way, brutally owned a lot of things. This session was mostly winged, and it turned out okay, this being the type of encounter that is easily winged. Once I run them through their 4 encounters of the day, without their armor for the most part, then we'll have us a rest and some exposition, next time, on WORLD OF WONDER!
*Camera pan*[/spoiler]
Then the Second Session happened on saturday.
Session Two: The other Awakening. [spoiler]
We got off to a slow start this session, seeing as how I (as usual) was disorganized and forgot notes and etc etc. Anyway, once we started, they all went and had fun in forsako. A few things to know about this place:
1: Upon entering, they stamp your hand with a stamp, which signifies how long your stay is.
2: All your expenses are payed, and everything is free. Hookers, Drugs, you name it.
3: There is no crime. Nobody's stupid enough to steal anything, and nobody ever seems to want to kill anyone.
So immediately that makes one guy suspicious. Anyway, after taking everything for granted, something that happened at the end of last session comes into play:
The party's going to leave, and the ships outta here are being held up by several Kalibrian military police. They're searching through the crowd, looking for Zane and Sera, who is the party Psion and his friendly NPC. They do it the most lawful and efficient way, which is to make sure nobody leaves and check each person, ask them what they know, then move on. This delays the boats for a considerable number of hours. The hand stamps begin to fade. Then the city begins to fade. Then their lives begin to fade...
When the party wakes up... half of them are hanging from the ceiling in a dark room, illuminated by candles, hanging over a bucket of blood. They have no shoes, and they can't feel any sensation at all in their bodies. They promptly escape (they were supposed to wake up a bit later than this as far as the baddies are concerned), and check out the room. The room is dark, other people are hanging, including their NPCs (they cut those down), and most of the stuff they didn't have stashed on their person is gone. Also being introduced is a new character (who had come back to us after quite a long while of being away), who remained nameless because it was clearly not the time. There is a locked door, and an unlocked door. Also a secret door but they don't know that yet.
There are two fighter types in the party being subjected to horribly torture. This is step two of the five step process. They wake up tied down to tables in a room illuminated by many torches. Their chest cavities are open; their organs are all missing. Many of the nonessential muscles and bones (a few ribs, abdominal muscles) are gone. The flesh of their arms and legs has been peeled back to the bone, and their muscles are being tweaked. They open their mouths to scream, but they have no lungs. Only a dull whisper comes out. 4 small little creatures with purple fur, a gaptoothed smile
and nothing else on their faces, and 2 large skeletal figures with black shrouds and fire deep within their bodies, breathing light through their cow skulls, occupy the room, along with several moaning and one screaming victim.
The Warblade named Marrack who is also a warshaper easily busts out by springing claws out of his wrist. The two guards of the place walk over (they're large, so they squeeze), while he disentangles the Crusader. The rest of the party at this time happens to notice the light under the unlocked door sort of move away, and they head to investigate. They notice the two figures moving in on the fighters, and they SAVE THE DAY.
(It should be noted here that I have ruled that intelligent undead have minds, and can be mind-effected).
Combat rounds are initiated. The warblade and crusader hold for the fight as the rest of the group bursts in to save the day. The scout and rogue are semi-useless in the combat, doing very little to scratch the creatures, not to mention that they heal 1d6 per round in this negative energy dominant place. The warblade and the crusader shine in this encounter, with Joe Crusader healing up as much damage as is humanly possible with Crusader's Strike and Righteous Vitality, being a tremendous help all around. The warblade carves the minotaur skeletons into itty bitty chunks. Honorable mention to the psion with his bolt of sonic that dents the wall and the creatures too.
Meanwhile, during this swordfight/shouting match, the new rogue tumbles behind the minotaur epicly and rushes over to the next door. It's locked. Sorry. The 4 little guys go to her. They're intelligent, and immediately begin to focus fire her down to her teens over the course of the entire battle. She becomes a carrier of Corpse Bloat. The skeletons are eventually defeated, and the tomb motes follow in short order, as they are kicked, stabbed, cleft, and bull rushed, they finally bugger off.
The party then takes time to acclimate themselves to the new surroundings. They begin making a search, looking for their stuff. They find a secret door with piles of loot, an even bigger pile of boots, and a desk, with a list written in blood, and a brain in a jar. The brain looks up and notices them, then begins to talk to them.
*Vince from Shamwow* B:"Hey. Uhh... who're you?"
Z:"Who're YOU?"
B:"Alright, alright, manners. I'm bennie. And you are...?"
Z:"Zane"
-Sera
-Marrack
-Joe
...
B:"Hey, listen to me. I need your help. I can help you outta here."
Party:"You can?"
B:"Yeah, I kinda know the layout of this place."
He tells them that the door from the organ stealing room leads to part 3 of the 5 part process.
The Five Part Process1: Drain the blood
2: Remove the junk
3: Replace the brain
4: Shave off the dead weight, and keep it off.
5: Get a job.
Bennie agrees to help the party, as long as they help him find his friend Rocco when he gets them out.
At this point the rogues come into their own. First, the warblade stabs open a door to hallway with an *Obvious trap* in the form of a shrouded figure carrying two tomahawks. note to self: Obvious trap takes focus away from nonobvious traps. They go down to search it, but only one rogue gets high enough search to see it. I have them roll initiative. She loses. So before she can shout "it's a trap!"... IT'S A TRAP! Swing swing swing swing *disarm* They then peek through the door at the end of the hall, and see a line of mindless drones with black shiny eyes, standing perfectly still, and the rest of their vision is blocked by darkness.*
The party then comes up with a brilliant plan with hats of disguise and bags of holding to sneak past the line, disguised as the people in the line. With the reduced weight due to having no lungs and the utility of a handy haversack the party
just squeezes into a bag of holding, sans the two people with utterly ridiculous disguise checks (I really like this about my new skill system). They then shuffle by very slowly, up to room 4, where they see a boneclaw shaving people's faces off.
The problem? They're using hats of disguise. So after a long clever thinking session, they cast false sensory input on the boneclaw, roll a bedroll up and fill it with rocks, make it look like a head, and then float it in front of it while it shaves it lovingly like a head, twice. So, in short, the entire party loves their characters.
The two rogues then get tagged (their names aren't 'till later on the list, so they get random names and jobs). They go outside into the street, and they see a horrible apocalyptic landscape, and nobody else seems to care. At all. There's still plenty of revelry going on, and the undead are performing their jobs with lockstep efficiency, but they're doing horrible things like cutting up dead humans and just dumping them on a plate in the kitchen, or counting strips of flesh and bone chips in the back of a casino.
They search the town for days, eventually finding a splinter cell of others like them in a ghetto which is basically a coat rack for undead who are off duty for maintenance. Rocco is there, and he is a big giant man-thing composite of dozens of bodies (Cadaver Golem). His voice, though he's never spoken, will be high pitched and girly, for great justice.
The splinter cell manages to smuggle everyone onto ships, and the party, with Bennie and Rocco, gets passage on a pirate ship. They hide in a meat locker, contaminating a fair bit of it. The pirates bring them before the captain, a large creature with rows and rows of teeth. He grins at them and introduces himself with a jovial "G'day, mate." After some negotiations, the party barters passage for 100 gp per head. The psion tries to charm the pirate captain, but unfortunately for him, he's a 10th level psychic warrior with a wisdom of 28! Fortunately, temperance is a virtue, and he just has him tied up. bennie charms the psion and says that it'd be a great idea to let everyone else handle it. We called the session as the party was dispatched to recoup the meat lost to spoilage by fishing. The psion charms a school of fish into his net, and sort-of redeems himself.
And that's the second session. The party snuck by two encounters, in an entirely awesome way. The knight was absent, so we'll see him when the pirates raid the city of Jamakal(his character's girlfriend, i believe, is from there), on their way to Hole, in order to get the kobolds there to remove their curses and restore them to life. Tucker's Kobolds? I think so.
*Actually taint elemental.[/spoiler]
Mini Session happened on thursday:
How not to be seen.[spoiler]
The party finds themselves "convinced" to go on a raid for the pirates. Their specific task is to break into the home of a wealthy businessman and steal the documents that contain vital information: Shipping times, navigational charts, schedules, etc. I expected this to be a stealth mission. How wrong I was.
The party psion was the first to deviate from my planned adventure. The party gathered information (which I expected), and then the psion began hitting on one of the maids from the merchant's house. He convinced her, starting out by singing sweetly into her ear (which he roleplayed quite well). Then he began to chat her up. Eventually, he convinced her and got her swooning. She was to sneak into her master's map room, find what he wanted, copy it with a magical piece of paper (amaneusis), and return it to him. He was to wait by the servants' quarters inside the gate.
The instant she opened the front door to walk out, the TRAP sprung! She was hit by five darts against her 1d4 hp, and then 4 dire wolves sprang out and mauled her to a fine mist. She took about 90 damage that round.
The party sneaky people went in the back window. Again, not what I had in mind, but I rolled with it. The rogue disguised her-him self as a maid. The study had a maid cleaning it, and they came in through the ballroom. The maid in the study popped out, did a 180, and locked herself in. The rogue went up, the scout popped out of her bag of holding, ran over with fast movement, picked up the scrolled up document, and ran.
Meanwhile, the new sir clankity-clank (his old character was a literal police officer in a party of now-pirates), challenged the dogs to a fight. They charged him, he skewered them on his gigantic spear of power
TM. The dire wolves were made short work of with a combination of False Sensory Input, Suggestion, and good old-fashioned stabbity death. Meanwhile the sneaks ran out the back window just in time for the cops to arrive. Being a wealthy upscale neighborhood, they arrived quite quickly. The guards, wearing armor, were easily evaded, and the party made a smooth getaway back to the ship, where they were congratulated. Their passage paid, they have decided that in order to remove their curse, they will go to the mountain city of Corgalla, which is a magocracy populated entirely by goliaths. [/spoiler]