When we left off, the party was hiding out in the armory of an Ancients' complex that has been overrun with servants of the Dark Ones (Brain-Eaters) plus some feral dwarves and a retreating band of Dark Elves. They'd lost two of their number (Tonut the Cleric, and the party's manager/agent Chris), but gained a former Hooker. Half the party was also missing, having been on a watch and then just disappeared.
Now:
-Sammi the Hooker levels-up and becomes Sammi the Cleric. Switching from the world's oldest profession, to the second-oldest and far less honest one.
-"The character sheet we're using has the saving throws placed right next to the Ability Scores that modify them."
"I never noticed that before!"
"It also has a shield for AC!"
"And a trapezoid for HP, the trapezoid being the universal symbol for health."
"Of course, that's why hospitals everywhere have a giant rotating trapezoid on their roof."
-"So how much should I charge you guys for healing?"
"It's usually free."
"OK, but the pegging is extra."
"Clerical healing is free? Have you guys not spent a lot of time around clerics in this setting?"
-"I'm looking at my notes here, who is Sammi?"
"That's my character, you know, the one I just leveled up?"
"Oh, OK, right. So who's Androman?"
"Who?!"
"Androman?"
"Wait... did you maybe write 'and Roman'?"
"Ohhh..."
-"I wish we had a character named Androman!"
"Wouldn't Androman just mean 'man man'?"
(Androman is real! And possibly related to BOLT-0!)
-"I need money to reduce my disapproval if I'm going to keep healing."
"See? I told you it wasn't free!"
"So, you're really right back to your old job, huh?"
-The joviality is interrupted by the presence of a feral humanoid figure smelling of shit scratching frantically at the service duct grill.
"We kill it with fire!"
"Wait.. I think that's Mu!"
-"Christ, we lose him for 1 day and he reverts to a goddamn animal!"
"Hey, it was 2 days!"
-Sammi had not yet met Mu.
"What kind of monster is that thing?!"
"I'm not a monster, I'm a wizard."
"Wait, Mu's a wizard?"
-"Being all feral and covered in shit for most people would be a big humiliation; for Mu, it's Tuesday."
-"Where's Tonut?"
"Tonut is dead."
"Tonut's dead?!"
"Wait, which one was Tonut?"
"Your nephew!"
"OH! Yes, right... I'm so sad about that."
-"Chris is also dead."
"But before he died he transferred the right to your contract to us, so now we get to keep 80% of your treasure share."
"I refuse to believe that unless I see a contract."
"Ok, wait a second... hey, has anyone got any paper?"
-"So I was meaning to ask: what are all of you guys doing in this ruin anyways?"
"We're saving the universe."
"Really?"
"Yes, and believe it or not, this is the sanest, safest way to save the universe."
-The party having been reunited with Mu, and having rested and healed enough, they move on to the next room. It turns out to be the old water reservoir of the complex. And they find it guarded by Water Elementals!
"Be careful, they can only be harmed with magic!"
"Then we're doomed!"
"Goddamnit Mu, you're the wizard!"
-One of the Water Elementals swallows Kumar! But he quickly unretracts his retractable hoverbike and shoots out of it.
-Mu dives into one of the Elementals after casting Chill Touch.
"You do two points of damage, then the chill touch wears off and you start to drown."
"No I don't, I have gills, remember?"
"What?"
"He's more of a freak than we thought!"
-Sammi made use of the spell we now call "Ack'basha's Sanctuary" to protect herself, and then backed away about 20' from the action.
"Kumar is hurt and could use my healing, but he's too far away..."
"He's 20' away!"
"So, so far.."
-Heidi fumbles and falls on his back.
"It's very wet here."
"That's what you get for running by the pool!"
-Mu is just floating around in the Elemental, whose internal body is now full of shit. He's desperately flailing around but can't get him out.
"This is your life now, Elemental!"
-Mu pretends to be drowning to see if the elemental will stop trying to pull him out, but the Elemental doesn't fall for it.
-"I guess Heidi's OK?"
"He's doing better than Mu's elemental!"
-Heidi flies up on his jetpack and divebombs the elemental! He does damage but of course goes right through the other side and slams at full-speed on the pavement, knocking himself out and destroying his jetpack.
-All night, the GM has been accidentally calling Heidi "Ack'Basha".
"You know why? Because Heidi kicks ass now, and reminds me of his last badass!"
"He's even got a power armor!"
-No matter how hard Mu's elemental tries, he just can't get the slippery bastard out of his body.
"The funny thing is that if I was casting spells right now I'd be rolling really well!"
"..you probably wouldn't."
-"Mu's elemental now seems to have fallen on his knees, put his hands on his face and started to weep. The Elemental behind him is patting his back in a hopeless attempt to comfort him."
-Kumar and another elemental mutually off themselves, thanks to Kumar's chill-touch and the Elemental's high-damage slam.
-"Kumar is dead, guys!"
"Looting time!"
-Roman had run off at the start of the battle, when his sonic tool got soaked. He finally comes back in from the armory, his tool repaired, and starts blowing up Elementals with it.
"How the hell did you do that?"
"With... the powers of vibration. Yes, that'll do."
-"I got the thing you shouldn't get."
-"Roman, would you like to keep Kumar's hoverbike?"
"No, better not. There was a bike race in the desert once... things got weird. It's not a Vincent Black Shadow, is it?"
-"We should give Kumar a decent burial... throw his corpse into the reservoir."
-No sooner do they toss the body into the water, that a huge Water Elemental emerges from the pool.
"Mu, you fucking idiot."
-"Cheese it!"
"Yeah, but don't run by the pool!"
-Running away from the Elemental, they make their way into an exit gate. It looks too small for the Elemental to pass through and maintain form, so they run through, along a broad promenade. They suddenly run into a trio of terrified people running the other way!
They are a Blue Mutant Psychic Shaman, a Blue Mutant Orphan, and a human Lumberjack... or hipster.
"His trade good is a mirror; he's definitely a hipster."
-Turns out the trio were servants or slaves of the Dark Elf expedition, and the reason they're running in the opposite direction from the PCs is that they're fleeing the group of Brain-Eaters who just murdered all the Dark Elves.
"Do I know where the Brain-Eaters are?"
"Yes, they're in the opposite direction from where you're running."
-"What are your names?"
"How about we tell you after we finish fleeing for our lives?"
"We're not really in danger, nothing's after us. Well, except for 3 Brain-Eaters."
-The party goes into a room off the promenade, which triggers some kind of sinister memory in Mu's mind from when he'd gone feral. Vizi the Shaman uses one of his psychic powers to detect that Mu had a very traumatic experience here involving a kindly old dwarf and three wight-like ghosts.
-The party moves on to another room, one they hope is actually 'safe'. Inasmuch as anywhere is safe in this death-dungeon.
-The room has one broken door; so Mu tries to cast Ward Portal, finally turning into a man again. But it's not well cast, so he tries again, becoming a woman. Finding it insufficient again, he tries it a third time, becoming a man again, but to no great effect. Then he loses the spell.
"So is he a woman again?"
"Honestly? I can't tell the difference."
-"Should I spellburn to try again?"
"It doesn't really matter, Brain-Eaters can become ethereal and pass through walls."
"So we're all dead anyways, if they find us?"
"Yup."
"Why didn't you say that before?"
"I just wanted to see Mu struggle."
-The orphan is just desperate for affection.
"Hello, what's your name?"
"Heidi."
"Hello Heidi; I'm Udin the orphan. Will you be my friend?"
"No."
"Oh, well, that's OK, that happens to me a lot."
-"Hey Mu, do you want to know what happened to you back in that other room?"
"No, Vizi."
"So just to make sure, you don't want to know you were raped by ghosts? OK, I won't tell you then."
"You already said too much!"
-That night, an attack comes from the broken door. It's not Brain-Eaters, but rather Giant Bats!
"We shouldn't have stopped here, this is Bat Country!"
-Numerous giant bats swarm on the orphan, biting him fatally.
"I'm finally being adopted!"
"Is the orphan retarded?"
-Roman uses the Sonic Tool to make all the bats' heads explode.
"Take that you goddamn animals!"
-"I'll need healing now."
"I have shamanic herbs..."
"No, I need real healin-- wait, what kind of herbs?"
"'Medicinal' herbs..."
"That you smoke?"
"Yes."
"I will have some of your herbs, my good man, and I think this may just be the start of a beautiful friendship."
-The orphan is dead.
"Did he have anything of value?"
"Rum!"
"Man, they get started early these days..."
"I'll take that rum!"
-"Mu was very expensive to heal."
"Well, his worth is.. not much, actually."
-The next day the PCs explore down the way the bats were. Going deeper into the complex they find their way into a huge chamber that took some serious damage at some point; the room is bisected by a huge chasm.
Vizi the shaman mutant uses his psychic powers, and sees a visions of ancients trying to flee on skyships when a terrible explosion cracks open the earth. It looks like everyone dies, but any remains of their skyships and possible cryopods would be somewhere down at the bottom.
-"G.O.D., please fix Heidi's jetpack"
"Your divine aid roll wasn't very high. Some cosmetic repair is done, but for the most part the jetpack is still clearly non-functional."
"G.O.D. did a half-assed job!"
-"I try not to look into the abyss, because if I do it'll probably look back at me."
-6500gp in sacrifices and divine aids later, the cleric has finally managed to repair the jetpack.
-"hey guys, over the edge there's all these bridges and ladders and shit. It looks like we could just walk the whole way down."
-It turns out that repairing the jetpack wasn't as useless as it seemed at first glance, since when they're about halfway down the chasm, the party gets ambushed by goblin archers!
-"I was just about to kill all the goblins, but then I remembered I'm a pacifist."
"Heidi's pacifism is very gradually wearing off!"
-"Are you present, Roman?"
"Its hard to tell, I'm on a lot of substances."
-The goblins were leading the PCs toward a Troll!
-"Wait a sec... water monster... goblins, deep caves.. are we in Moria?"
-Mu uses his levitation scroll to move away from the Troll, which throws Roman off the bridge! Mu is quite happy about this until he floats right into the crossfire of the goblin archers. They fill him with arrows and he starts to fall. Fortunately, Heidi saves them both.
"And you guys said there was no point to the Jetpack..."
-Unfortunately, goblin snipers kill the lumberjack. No one cares much, since it was pretty obvious that the Psychic Shaman was the one destined to become the new level 1 guy.
-The troll, meanwhile, tried to jump at Heidi and ends up plummeting to the bottom of the chasm.
-"The troll is still around... I can sense him."
-"can you decapitate a troll?"
"I intend to try decapitating him with this grenade."
-The PCs get to the bottom of the chasm, which is full of garbage from thousands of years of trash. One of them finds a hoverboard!
"What's a hoverboard?"
"There's two things you have to know about a hoverboard.."
-Vizi the psychic mutant, on the other hand, ends up finding a laser sword.
"So... he's basically a Jedi now."
"Wait, does that mean Heidi is Boba Fett?"
"I want to know if Roman is Palpatine..."
"Mu is probably Jar Jar."
"Yeah, I probably am."
"I don't like this game. It means as the only girl I'll probably end up in a slave bikini."
-The group finally finds the shell of a skyship with a number of ruined cryotubes.. but one still seems to be working.
"Always just ONE? We can't ever luck out with a backup?! Why??"
-The Cryotube has an ancient. He's an adult male, very large and muscular. Since Roman is the only one who talks ancient, the two have a conversation.
"He says his name's Mongo, and he's a great fighter."
"Oh shit, I think he might be retarded."
-The troll suddenly springs out to attack! He survived the grenade, but this time, the PCs finish him off. Mongo rushes in after and stomps on the Troll remains, shouting like an imbecile.
"Told you so."
"It doesn't matter! We just need an Ancient. Even this one will do!"
-"Now we just have to get the fuck out of here and manage not to kill our Ancient."
"That's going to be hard..."
That's it for this session. Will the PCs manage to get out of the complex, without killing Mongo? Stay tuned to find out!
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Davidoff 400-series + C&D's Bayou Evening
