"The Ruin of A'agrybah" - CHA'ALT Campaign 4.14

 

Dark Sun has come home to roost!  

In fact, there's so much Dark Sun inspiration in Cha'alt that it felt relatively similar.  Sprinkled throughout, you'll see what I chose to include in my Dark Sun, and how all this could be picked-up and carried back over to Cha'alt.  Not the Cha'alt we're familiar with, but closer to the equator.

We had the usual four - Strum, Crane, Ug, and Beigizona (who soon became Mista Firestorm once the PCs were transported to Athas).

Leaving off with the PCs ready to head into the downward sloping tunnel leading from the outer edge of Ira'ad to the ruins of that once great kingdom, a sherpa made his presence known, telling the adventurers he was assigned to them by the "Oops, we need another guy" Temp Agency.  This NPC was named Twitchy because of his frequent twitches.

Before I forget, we have the convention page for VENGER CON VI: Belief is Reality.  Here it is.  Grab your weekend badge now.  It's the last weekend of June in Madison, WI.

“You know, if you play your cards right, I’ll take you to the old presidium with the secret entrance to The Electric-Banana Late-Nite Sanctuary of A’achenshablefishtkorrid-dorna’achtbraunschweiggertenz von O’ohm.  It’s a real trip, man.”  

FYI, I wanted to tease that location which will probably come up again at a later point in the campaign.  I had just finished watching that one Monty Python's Flying Circus episode of the German philosopher with the crazy long name.  This doesn't come anywhere close, but it's an homage.

As Twitchy mentioned the various noteworthy aspects of Ira'ad's ruins, the PCs noticed a foreign-looking glyph.  This glyph was drawn with an accent, a dra'awl from the southern-reaches.  Translated, it means "solar eclipse" and could be traced back to Athas, a neighboring dimension.

Interestingly, 3 of the 4 players rolled natural 20s when searching their mental history for information on the Athasian-glyph.  Bemoaning their good-bad luck with such a wasted roll, I allowed them to "bank" their 20s to use later in the adventure so they could re-roll for the current skill-check.  They all agreed.

Hearing a hundred Kha'alestinians approach with wormskin shields emblazoned with purple severed penises, Ug traced the zoth he just purchased from Twitchy upon the glyph as Strum shot flames from his magical fingertips.  Rolling on a d100, the sorcerer immolated 16 of them - which is a lot, but not nearly enough when there's 100 infidel-slaying jiha'adis in front of you.

Finding themselves in the open desert, on the other side of that portal, with a tangerine sky and obsidian city in the distance, they began walking.  This was after being introduced to Mista Firestorm who, it turned out, was a child inside the body of a hulking assassin droid.  Think Adam Sandler from that Waterboy movie.  It was as strange as it was humorous.  Firestorm was also a dimensional traveler, and had somehow followed the adventurers to Dark Sun by getting there before they showed up.  I'm sure all that will be explained next session.

At any rate, Firestorm wanted to help the other PCs hunt down and kill demons just as his parents had done and showed him how to do.  And so they walked...  

Soon enough, they ran into a couple of escaped slaves named Tik and Tak (half-siblings) who were on their way to a slave auction near the city-state of Tyr.  The young natives were hoping to rescue their friend who can sometimes see future events in his dreams.

"Metal is rare, there are no gods – they were either driven out or murdered a thousand years ago, the sorcerer-kings rule Athas with an iron fist, and are served by the cruel templars and mouth-sewn psions (psionic-users, but if they had their full power of speech could command or destroy men at will).  Most of the inhabitants are poor and many are slaves.  Athas is a desert due to the defiler sorcerers who drained the world of its magical energy.  Oh, and you hear that barely audible sound like the back and forth smacking of violin strings?  That means thri-kreen are near.  Hopefully, it’s not a rape-gang.  If we keep moving, we should be alright."

So, if Cha'alt didn't have the Great Old Ones and their ichor replenishing the planet's magical vitality (but was still a radioactive desert wasteland due to the apocalypse), it would look a lot like Athas.

Almost to the slave auction, they came across an overturned slave caravan with several slaves trapped underneath the bone carriage.  A gigantic black beetle was trying to eat them all, but the PCs watched as the first was devoured.  Long story short, they eventually killed the beetle, "freed" the slaves by allowing them to take the party the rest of the way to the slave auction, and Ug made black carapace armor out of its outer shell.  Additionally, a gland in the beetle's interior had the equivalent of sunscreen oil, which they rubbed on their skin and took the excess with them.

Soon enough, they arrived at a small, man-made ziggurat with raised stone steps that terminated in a wide platform where slaves were auctioned off.  The first of three rounds included the dregs, of which there was a one-eyed ex-whore who Strum took a shine to and ended up convincing the sorcerer-king Jethryk to buy for him.

FYI, the standard greeting has changed from "By His loathsome tentacles" in Cha'alt to "May the sleeper never awaken" on Athas.

Speaking of Jethryk, the PCs were eventually invited to his crimson and gold tent and asked about an irregular metal box stained tyrian purple etched with eldritch-glyphs that meant something in particular.  The reason why they didn't open the box is the sorcerer-king's seer saw doom and horror accompanying its opening.  Failing their rolls (and having already spent their 20s during the previous combat), we used a relatively recent game mechanic known as Fairy Dust...

Strum regaled the table with tales of his coming across a scroll-case with similar glyphs during a visit to Hell, and with his zoth fueled delirium when the rest of the party was fighting to protect the bastard-princess from being torn apart, he finally had time to read the scroll whilst hallucinating, providing him with understanding of subtle eldritch mysteries once attuned to such glyphs.

 The sorcerer learned that opening this box is to usher-in the possible doom of Athas, which they pretty much already knew.  That within this box is the location of the sleeper who shall one day awaken, and centuries ago, they came from beyond the stars, a race of gods known as the Void-Black Succumbing.  These gods were ancient... great and powerful.

This was the Scroll of Riva'an and it spoke explicitly of a Great Old One known as Keelta'anpadra'aj.

Having relayed all that, the sorcerer-king's templars opened the box as Strum poured over the scroll, only doling out the barest of details.  Needing a portal back home, the PCs agreed to journey to the temple of absent divinity, find the sleeper, one of the Void-Black Succumbing, and place a creature that would suck its ichor whose benefits would immediately transfer to Jethryk.

Since the sorcerer-king was going to purchase the slave who dreamt of the future to tell him about the box, but now didn't need him, due to the PCs illuminating Jethryk, Crane asked if he'd buy and release Tik and Tak's slave friend so they could be reunited.  The sorcerer-king was in a generous mood and did as the priest requested.

First, of course, they all went back to the palace in Tyr where they enjoyed the royal treatment.  Strum had as much fun with the one-eyed whore in the palace as he did earlier within the privacy tent.  I asked Grok to come up with a suitable name, and from its suggestion, we chose Nyla Blindside.  We also determined that her fake eye was just a painted rock that she wedged in there to keep up appearances and also doubled as a cavity-opener to keep it wide enough to fit other things in there, as well.

Leaving the next day with Jethryk's templar, Junar, they rode giant lizard mounts.  Halfway into the first day, they encountered a floating entity with tentacles hanging, a hundred eyes, and singular, hungry mouth all cracked and scabrous, resembling the fur of a deadly spider.  This thing was coming towards them slowly, but Junar warned that in combat, the entity is fast.  Apparently, it's called a zyrek, which means "punishment for failure" in their land.  It eats people as a means of natural selection, or so the rumors go.

Bishop Crane was hoping his eldritch beam wouldn't fail him in this godless land.  Luckily, it was there and blasted the thing before Ug with his magical sword Orin, the droid's knives, and Strum's magic missiles (with the help of a slave's blood - Jethryk told the sorcerer that unless he used the magical chartreuse syrup they came with, he'd have to spill blood to fuel his spells).  They eventually killed it, but not before the zyrek attacked Junar.  I rolled randomly as I normally do for who got targeted, and then rolled a natural 20 of my own which resulted in double damage - 2d20, ouch!

That was enough to kill the templar, which, as the PCs admitted, would probably save them the trouble of having to kill him later if the sorcerer-king planned to betray them.  Speaking of which, Jethryk gave Strum a little insectoid-parasite to swallow that would allow him to use the benefits of zoth (or other potentially harmful substances) without the ill effects.  Mista Firestorm asked aloud if that was such a good idea, as it came from a 300+ year old despot who wanted nothing more than continued power over his city-state, and perhaps all of Athas.  Strum acknowledged the possibility of danger, but ate it anyway.  

Oh yeah, the blood of this creature was slime-green with just a hint of yellow and the faintest glow.  Upon investigation, it was the equivalent of zoth-lite, diet-zoth, or zoth-zero, having approximately one-seventh the potency of the real stuff back home.  Also, they searched the templar's body and came away with 30 ceramic pieces, 3 Athasian pearls with a tangerine-purple iridescence, a jeweled bone dagger, and a papyrus scroll written in code that the PCs were determined to decipher.  

Junar,

While I believe these are the adventurers from another world prophesied to save Athas from itself, I intend to use their knowledge and efforts to make me the most powerful sorcerer-king in the entire world.  What they call zoth could revitalize our world, but in my hands, I would become unconquerable.  

See that they secure the lashbetta'aq to the Void-Black Succumbing but do not let it awaken.  Our combined sorcery keeps it slumbering, and that must continue.  

If the otherworlders betray us, kill them once their task is completed.  If you must, finish their task before their blood is cold.  Otherwise, bring them back to the palace at completion so I may learn more of their world before sending them home.  It would suit me to have resources on Cha'alt.  

The ithqueka I gave to the sorcerer will keep him under my control.

Jethryk, Sorcerer-King of Tyr

As night was falling, they were about to make camp.  We ended it there.  This session was less gonzo than usual.  Notice that I didn't draw any suggestions from the Black Skull of Secrets.  I wanted this session, and probably the next, to resemble Dark Sun, or how I envision it, rather than just be Cha'alt 2: Less Metal; No Gods.  

I expect the PCs will be out of Athas by the end of next session, but you never know.  Also, I'm not sure on when we'll play next.  Will have to check availability of the players before making that determination.

Thanks for reading, hoss!  Feel free to comment and share.  Perhaps my version of Dark Sun will inspire others?  

Oh, I finally got the promotional artwork for VENGER CON VI: Belief is Reality, and now the convention's landing page is up - you can check it out here.

VS

p.s. Want some hardcover Cha'alt?  Here's how (and they're currently on sale!)!!

Lost and the Living Story

 

I think this image sums up my theory, my philosophy on the Living Story.  Don't know what I'm talking about?  Here you go.

Even before the writers knew what the show was going to be like, the nuts and bolts, they had an idea, a foundation, a go-to grab-bag of concepts that infused and inspired the show, influencing its direction in strange and straightforward ways.  

I've been watching YouTube videos on Lost as I've just started rewatching the show.  This is, I think, my 4th time watching it all the way from the beginning.  You can learn a lot about gaming by watching Lost.  I remember a short-lived discussion I had with that Grognardia guy.

In all ten-thousand of his blog posts, there's one thing they have in common - none of them have anything about me (including my OSR work) or the show Lost.  I can't remember exactly why he refused to watch it.  Some unconscious or apocryphal hesitancy and then force of habit + stubbornness.

As I told him then, I'll tell you now, it's definitely worth watching for many reasons.  One of them being its push, its drive towards something both clear and nebulous, vibes and specific moments that move things along in a certain direction.  

The Living Story is not a screenplay or novel, it's an outline that keeps the GM mindful of what's happening now and what's likely to happen in the future, regarding conflict, agendas, passion, aesthetics, milieu, etc.  Plot-points keep the story undefined enough so what unfolds is character-driven.  

The interplay between the world, story, and characters provide the most freedom without throwing the baby into a void of chaos.  "Go anywhere, do anything" is not a solution; it's tyranny of the blank canvas come to life.

Two sides, one light, the other dark.  From the very first episodes, there was a theme which laid the groundwork and carried the show's narrative resonance until the end.  This blueprint shows that a Game Master, like a writer or showrunner, can have aspects of a story in mind as events, outside the GM's intention, are fully realized in play.

If you would like your campaign (or one-shot) to have narrative resonance, provide it.  Prepare for it, introduce it, explore it, harness it, nurture it, exercise it, and close with it.  All those moments where there's a pause in the game, that's opportunity.  Insert those blank spaces with whatever your theme is, built upon the aesthetic-keys and milieu-nodes that underpin the campaign setting.  

Of course, there's something worse than blank spaces - filling them with THE MESSAGE.  Whatever you do, don't do that.  The woke agenda effectively killed Dungeons & Dragons, RIP 2024.  Luckily, no one from Wizards of the Bro can determine how your own individual game is played... cue tightening grip and star systems slipping through fingers.

As I'm watching Lost again (currently on episode 7 or 8), if anyone wants to chat about it here, on X (the Kult of Kort'thalis TTRPG group on X should have been shut down, but somehow still exists), or wherever, let me know.  Watching Lost is a fun and informative challenge, but it can suck to do it all on your own.  Let's watch Lost together!

Got something to say?  Comment down below, hoss. 

Enjoy,

VS

p.s. Want some hardcover Cha'alt?  Here's how (and they're currently on sale!)!!  I'll do a big announcement when I have all the promotional images, but I'm excited to announce that VENGER CON VI: Belief is Reality will be happening next year (June 25th - 27th) in Madison, WI. 

The Living Ultra-Cosmos

 

I wrote this on X the other day, and wanted to put it down here for posterity.

There's even a level above the Living Story and Living World... it's called the Living Ultra-Cosmos.  But so few GMs are ready for it we may as well not even chat about such things.

When asked what I was on about, I wanted to make sure that the one guy who asked me what the Living Ultra-Cosmos was felt he was ready to receive these unadulterated black pearls of wisdom.

He assured me he was ready.

When your gaming life strangely intermingles with your real life, that is the Living Ultra-Cosmos. 

If you're having troubles with the lady in your life, and you prepare an encounter involving a hyper-critical tavern wench, warping and twisting it to suit the established campaign setting. Then, something happens in a session and you do your best to introduce whatever that is into your own away-from-the-table reality, such as drawing pictures of monstrous things that exist in Cha'alt.

Eventually, you go farther, using in-game rituals and real life symbols, cults, and agendas to increase the power of immersion, as well as, your true will (heart's desire, if female) in both realities. If you're thinking this is a type of left-hand path, black arts, chaos magic, you're right. Occultism in TTRPGs is what all those Mothers against D&D tried to warn you about. 

Most guru / warlock / High Priests would charge you $9.95 for that kind of insight. All I ask is you give Cha'alt a go, and try some of the other books by Kort'thalis Publishing, maybe post a 5-star review.

Oh, and here's a follow-up post I made the next day... 

In that Living Ultra-Cosmos state, a Game Master can visualize his campaign setting as if he were there, witnessing the strange marvels that seemed to already exist before the GM arrived.

If anyone wants to discuss the Living Ultra-Cosmos, post a comment below... or somewhere on social media where I'll see it.

Enjoy,

VS

p.s. Want some hardcover Cha'alt?  Here's how (and they're currently on sale!)!!  I'll do a big announcement when I have all the promotional images, but I'm excited to announce that VENGER CON VI: Belief is Reality will be happening next year (June 25th - 27th) in Madison, WI. 

"The Ruin of A'agrybah" - CHA'ALT Campaign 4.13

 

First, you've probably heard that WotC is bringing Dark Sun back out of retirement - even when many old-school experts believed that would never happen.  

While I don't intend to give any money to corporations that hate me (and other normal gamers), it's aesthetically the most inviting move D&D could have made.  Not at all gay-woke-commie fodder which 5.5 has become known for.  Whenever folks mention new Dark Sun on social media, I hope you'll help me in mentioning Cha'alt, as Dark Sun helped inspire my campaign setting.

I also want our next session to be a Dark Sun / Cha'alt crossover that celebrates the dying world of Athas!  If anyone wants to comment their suggestions, I'm all tentacles.  FYI, I've already got Thri-kreen rape-gangs written down. 

Normally, we wouldn't have gamed yesterday (as we're on an every-other-week schedule), but the wife and one of our kids is on vacation.  Since I'm not a teenage boy in a John Hughes movie, I decided to GM our Cha'alt campaign rather than throw a raging kegger.

This session definitely felt more subdued, which on the one tentacle, makes me long for the truly fucked-up craziness that Cha'alt can bring.  But given enough perspective, the realist in me knows that they can't all be bat-shit insane fever dreams.  

Our 13th session in the 4th year of this campaign was a sort of mid-campaign reset, just coming off the big finale the last time we were all together (minus Strum).  The stage was reset, exposition was doled-out, and travel plans arranged by a helpful NPC, the Royal Vizier of A'agrybah.

Weeks passed as the adventurers rested, recovered, and trained for whatever lay ahead.  I had each PC come up with at least one thing they've been working on, and if that thing comes up in the next few sessions, they'll get Advantage on it.

Strum was managing his battle with addiction - the party's sorcerer had gone down the z-hole, as in zoth (chartreuse gold, Cha'altian tea, or the effulgent ichor).  And that's also where he was during his absence - wrestling with personal demons and in treatment.  His player also asked me to come up with something to "game mechanic" his zoth addiction, so I'm going to put this right here...

Roll on the following random table when a zoth addict uses this uncontrollable substance...

1. He goes into a zoth-induced coma and will awaken in 1d30 hours.
2. His addiction has reached a fevered pitch; he must use zoth again within 90 minutes or fly into zoth-rage where magic is pain and everyone shall be made to suffer.
3. The sorcerer's magic items become... 1) unattuned, and must be reattuned at a rate of one per hour; 2) one item must make a saving throw with the same chances as the sorcerer himself, and if that save fails, the item self-destructs; 3) 1d3 powers are taken away from his collective magic items; or 4) one magic item gains a strange new power.
4. Nothing happens
5. The sorcerer has wild mood swings ranging from depression to mania to stoicism to obsession with something arcane or cheese (yes, in that order).
6. He must make a saving throw; if he fails, the sorcerer has zoth poisoning (nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, body aches, etc.) lasting 2d4 hours.  But if successful, the sorcerer's spells are super-charged for the next 20 minutes, followed by a 40-minute crash where he can't cast anything at all.  
7. The Great Old Ones speak directly into the sorcerer's mind - telling him to drop all prior quests that do not actively pursue resurrecting a slumbering Dark God.
8. ???

Bishop Crane is in the process of building the church and another temple for the righteous redeemers, believing that the Old Ones have always been the Lords of Light.  He's also keeping tabs on Vromka'ad's tower (which, for a very short period of time used to be their tower).

He discovered that the Federation have phase-shifted the tower slightly out of this reality, enough so that no one can go in or out.

Ug spent the majority of his time using the metal titan (so far unnamed) as a sort of Chat GPT, asking it questions in order to learn more about the world, while not fully realizing that it just tells him what he wants to hear and confirms any and all biases the lizardtaur warrior already had.  

From our last half-session, Tinker has sort of evolved into Beigeizona, a valley-girl pixie-fairy who's looking for the missing pages and/or scrolls of a shadow assassin's guild book of dark magic that only the last survivor of the tontine gets to keep.  How the completed or even separated tome knows what to do and where to go when someone in the tontine dies is anyone's guess.  It's possible there's a "magical discord" handling all the behind the scenes stuff.  And perhaps Beigeizona is tinkering with such a system.

If the Tinker / Beigeirona player wants to create a new PC for the Cha'alt / Dark Sun crossover session, maybe he can play a mul, half-giant, thri-kreen, or cannibal halfling?  ;)

Speaking of behind the scenes, so the whole tontine thing came about in that previous half-session where I had the two new PCs (Beigeizona and the Golden Girls type character that temporarily replaced Ug) roll on the backgrounds table in my old How To Game Master Like A Fucking Boss, and she got the shadowy assassin book prize for being the last to die in the tontine - the tontine being a major plot-point in this old movie (The Wrong Box) that I watched with my Dad a couple times over the years.  It was one of his favorites, and watching movies and tv shows together is a fond memory (everything from Doctor Who - Tom Baker was really the only Doctor as far as he was concerned - and the original House of Cards to Blake's 7).

So, to anyone who thinks my Living Story approach to running the game isn't full or random weirdness that takes the game into unexpected quarters, yeah... random tables rule.  I use them, and I run with them, completely changing the nature of the campaign, from one session to another.  That's why it's called the Living Story - it's alive and moving all the time, like a reflecting serpent.

On the downside, I totally forgot to have the players determine what was different about this Cha'alt prime dimension, than where they were in the half-session.  Next time!

While heroes who helped save Princess Lyssa (formerly known as the bastard princess), they're still considered newcomers to the royal court and even have a direct supervisor in the palace named Damask.  As soon as they reported to him, he called them dumbasses and asked if they'd filled out their TPS reports yet, cleaned the palace gutters, and defenestrated the black centipedes.  

Bishop Crane stormed out saying that he saved the princess and had better things to do than wash the worm shit off the winery floor.  Ha!  While working on his own projects, one of his fruitie servants came to him with news - that fruitie has a friend within the CRD (colony resources department).  He has information about the gigantic statue head of Da'agoth the dreaming god that the Federation found while scanning the desert belonging to the sand-swallowed Kingdom of Ira'ad.  In exchange for finding and transporting the statue head all the way from Ira'ad to A'agrybah, the Federation asked for limited zoth rights, but then at the last moment switched their zoth rights to rare Cha'alt minerals which is much less profitable and requires big excavation machines for mineral extraction.  

Speaking of Princess Lyssa, they were asked to visit her before leaving the palace.  She is swollen with child, and made the adventurers beaded bracelets and her very own home-made double-filtered worm wine that tasted of strawberry, cactus-pear, and tentacle.  Oh, because of Strum's zoth addiction, he's become even more devoted to the Old Ones and wants to help Crane with his new church.  Strum is also very protective of the tentacled litter that Lyssa has in her belly.  She also told them a dream she had last night about a glowing-tangerine dust that mutated and corrupted anything and everything it came into contact with.

Oh yeah, one last thing - the party's priest has that infernal glyph from the artifact Pa'azuk.  It told hm the Archduke of the Black Flame declared an infernal jiha'ad on Bishop Crane and dispatched a Hell-worm to destroy the priest and retrieve his demonic magic items.

Upon leaving the palace and walking down the street towards the Z-Hole, a place for blatant zoth abusers and sorcerers who believe they have it under control.  They saw dozens of protestors shouting and holding signs with empathy for the demons, kha'alestinians, and even the Federation.  A few of them believe Princess Lyssa and her unborn spawn should be put to death.

Ug went to tongue-slap a few of them, and mostly missed.  Meanwhile, Strum fireballed the lot of them, immolating every protestor there, and singing the lizardtaur for being so close to the rabble-rousing throng.

By the time they reached the nearest cantina, the Royal Vizier spoke to them on their wrist-communicator.  The Federation has moved their biggest sand-mining burrower to the perimeter of sand-swallowed Ira'ad.  It must be a big mineral deposit, but the vizier wants the PCs to spy on them and find out all they can, as something is definitely up.  The vizier booked passage on the Orient Express, a sand-piercer class high-speed hover-train that crisscrosses the S'kbah desert.  With the Orient Express, the trip would only take 6 or 7 hours; that would be approximately 22 or 23 hours by reptilian riding-spider.

The vizier also granted the adventurers diplomatic immunity.  Not quite sure what that means in this context, they were pleased, as surely their newfound status would be thoroughly abused in the name of bureaucratic authority.

Their train was leaving in a couple hours, so they wandered over to the golden city gates of A'agrybah.  Overhearing a man cry out that his money pouch was stolen by a demon, the PCs went after him.  The demon ducked into a mostly empty Federation warehouse and saw the demon waiting for them.  He was standing in a circle drawn with infernal-glyphs of blood. 

The pixie-fairy went in through a side window first, in order to get a sneak-attack in.  He did minimal damage, which was actually good because the circle turned attackers' damage back on them.  So, Beigeirona took 4 points of damage.  Strum then cast dispel magic which ended the demon's chicanery.  It wasn't long before the rest of the party destroyed him.

Additionally, all but Ug were interested in copying that infernal glyph for their own use at a later point.

Hopping on the Orient Express, the PCs enjoyed their luxury suite on the train as it soon went into a mild sandstorm.  Then, I took out 3 player suggestions from the Black Skull of Secrets - a blinding flash of fuchsia light, a 10-foot around steel spike fell from the heavens right before the hover-train and proceeded to dig its way through the desert floor, and a whole bunch of blue ewoks with little javelins demanded tribute before the hover-train was allowed to continue.  

Ug negotiated a trade, giving them a Federation soldier who he convinced the blue ewoks was the conductor, and knew the various trade routes.  The fuchsia flash of light was connected to a nearby psychic presence below ground - inside the hole recently dug by that giant steel spike that kept getting smaller the farther down it went.

Strum and Biegeirona were compelled to go down and investigate, as their mind was subtly dominated by a floating psionic orange.  

The orange was contained within a magic holding-field of teal-hued energy.  A total of 7 large floating amoeba, one of them being its blood-red leader, were contained within this stone floored temple with altar and tentacled columns.  

Braziers (note to self - create a Cha'alt X-Card for when someone says brazier so that players can play the Brazzers card and turn the scene into some kind of weird porn thing) pouring indigo and violet vapor into the air.  

Whereas the demon from earlier was dispatched relatively quickly, these things took awhile to destroy, paralyzing both Strum and Beigeirona (irony or fate... you decide).  

The transparent blooded creatures did not count as Lovecraftian abominations, even though they technically did had tentacles.  When only two remained, they double-penetrated the orange which Beigeirona had freed with his own dispel magic spell (in their minds, they could hear the floating psychic orange say that he wanted to take over Cha'alt himself, so probably not a good guy), creating an orange-hued ameoba that was slaughtered in a tangerine mist, along with the remaining enemies. 

Searching the entire temple, Strum found a strange and magical deck of playing cards adorned with women in various stages of undress.  The others gawked at a huge, eldritch mural on a temple wall (more about that next time, I'm sure).  Taking the deck of cards, they decided to get back onto the train (being held for them by the metal titan) instead of exploring the subterranean tunnels leading out of the temple.

After several hours of rest, healing from their wounds, a shadow assassin crept into Beigeirona's sleeping quarters, and stabbed her.  She then counter-struck, killing the creep.  It was a member of the tontine, and the party's pixie-fairy took his encrypted scroll of shadow magic, which would take time to fully decipher and attune. 

Finally, they arrived and hopped-on the food truck / tour bus belonging to Egg Chen of Qada'ath Chinatown.  He told them a few wild stories of the place, relayed a rumor of an old Federation facility deep underground that created and still housed (even though the facility was destroyed) nuclear dust.  

Realizing that might be what the Federation were after, they asked Egg Chen, after paying for some tasty eggrolls, to let them off near the mining machine, Federation basecamp, and rocky tunnel sloping down into the sand-swallowed Kingdom of Ira'ad.

That's where we ended the session.  Again, not a ton happened, and nothing that off-the-rails shocking or gratuitously weird, but I think it was a solid start to the second half of this season's adventures.

Saturday, August 15th should be our next game.  I'm looking forward to it!  Thanks for reading, commenting, and sharing.

Enjoy,

VS

p.s. Want some hardcover Cha'alt?  Here's how (and they're currently on sale!)!!  I'll do a big announcement when I have all the promotional images, but I'm excited to announce that VENGER CON VI: Belief is Reality will be happening next year (June 25th - 27th) in Madison, WI. 

Dimension Hopping

 

This goes into my Venger methodology of running games here.  If possible, I like to bring the players into the creative space in order to make it even more of a shared campaign setting.

Case in point!  We didn't have enough players for our regularly scheduled Cha'alt campaign.  So, instead, I ran a 2-hour session including the two players we did have and my son, the one kid of five who actually (currently, anyway) likes TTRPGs.  

The adventure I prepared had certain assumptions.  Namely, continuing from where the usual PCs in our campaign left off.  Throwing a monkey-wrench into things, the two players decided to roleplay brand-new characters.  In order to not screw up the continuity too badly, I decided the events of this session occurred in another dimension (which is my go-to solution for such things).  But when we go back to our regularly scheduled program, I want the events of that half-session to have, more or less, taken place in the prime dimension where all the campaign's action has been happening.  

After giving it some thought, I'm going to (hey, it's 4:37pm!!!) let those events take place in both, but the prime dimension will have differences.  I'd like each player (even those who weren't there for the half-session taking place in a different dimension) to name one difference that uniquely took place in the prime dimension as opposed to the other one (I'll just say the puchsia dimension because that's the first one that came to mind).  

For instance, when the starry turquoise mist coalesced into a horrid entity, maybe the mist was tangerine in the prime dimension.  Yeah, doesn't have to be anything Cha'alt-shaking, could just be a surface discrepancy that's just interesting and fun to note.  However, a player could say that the tentacled, shimmering, turquoise entity whispered his name at some point during the battle.  

"What does that mean, master?" the demon behind the curtain asked.  At this point, the greenish tentacled one nods all too knowingly... 

If a player-suggested detail leads to something more substantial down the road, cool.  If not, that's ok, too.  I think this will be a fun house-rule when significant events also happen in another dimension that the PCs are going back to... or coming from in the skinematic Vengerverse.  All that shit happened, but there are differences and the players suggest them, one each sounds appropriate. 

Ok, that's all I've got for today... oh yeah, one more thing.  For weeks now, I've been meaning to officially come up with a Cha'altian phrase for "it is what it is," "no worries," "no problem," or "don't worry, be happy."  In the ancient tongue of Cha'alt, I give you haza'aka vadar.

Enjoy,

VS

p.s. Want some hardcover Cha'alt?  Here's how (and they're currently on sale!)!!  Almost forget, we're still doing the half-year online convention that shall henceforth be known as VENGER CON V.5 : The Beast Awakens from Friday, January 8th - Monday, January 11th... officially sponsored by the Red Room.  

Revelations from VENGER CON V

 

It came, it went, and it was an awesome time... a veritable blast, hoss!

Thanks to everyone who attended and chipped-in with all the aspects of organizing a convention - especially Game Mastering.  I did my best to GM as much as possible.  That translated into 8 sessions over the weekend.

I ran Cha'alt with Advanced Crimson Dragon Slayer four times, the Monty Python RPG twice, Paranoia once, and my sort of rules-light Call of Cthulhu RPG just one time.  In this blog post, I'll be rambling about my experiences, things that caught my attention, that I learned, stuff I thought about afterwards, and amusing things said at the table.

Opening with a lecture on "the riddle of Game Mastering," (and not Heccaeity, Part 2: Now, This is Thisness that was promised to Judd 10,000 years ago in the bathhouses of Ira'ad) the gathering masses chewed upon the fat of wisdom I bestowed upon them as sessions quickly formed, transmuting lead into gold... pure gold, Jerry!

Everyone seemed to have a good time.  I did ask, and unless folks were fibbing, they did, indeed, have the time that was good.  I had between 4 and 8 players each game, with the average being 6-7.

Some of the Cha'alt games were so gonzo that it was almost too much.  Those sessions tend to happen at night, which is why I've begun referring to them as "Cha'alt after dark."  They're usually far sleazier, wilder, and contain more improv than the regular Cha'alt sessions I run.  Drinking, spamming the Cha'alt X-Cards, and an unconscious (at least, I hope it's unconscious; Lol) desire to break the game.  Not in a bad way, but in a "let's just see how far we can go with this before the house of cards fall in an apocalyptic shambles of weeping Vengers kind of way."

Lucky for me, I remain unbroken.  But like taking LSD, a little goes a long way, and it can be extremely hazardous for your brain; microdosing is best, but of course every once in awhile, you need to let the tiger out of the cage and take a full hit.  Otherwise, how do you know what's too far?  Please don't try any of this in your home game.  Some play-styles are strictly for conventions or anywhere you'll likely never game again.

An all too memorable session of the "after dark" variety involved the PCs getting slightly rich from selling a plethora of zoth, and then going to the ultra-modern, skyscraper, cyberpunk city of Qada'ath to buy all kinds of high-tech weapons, armor, and other equipment.  Then, they went back to the subterranean tunnels and caves to fight literal godlike entities.  

I had 8 pre-gens for my Cha'alt games and 7 for the 1970s investigative horror scenario.  The rest were just random tables to get the basics.  I could have had more tables for the Monty Python sessions, and will go that route in the future, but the players did a good job of filling out the blanks by simply roleplaying their characters with whatever came to mind.  In other words... acting!

A single player from our in-person Cha'alt campaign was there Friday and Saturday.  In one of the VENGER CON Cha'alt sessions, he played Deacon Elijah Crane from the strawberry milk dimension.  That was fun seeing his established and lived-in character come to life in the same setting, but completely different circumstances. His interaction with the natives of Cha'alt was amusing.  I only wish there could have been more.  I believe that scenario was the one I ran at Gary Con earlier this year.  A really awesome adventure (appearing in Pulp-Drenched Cities of Cha'alt, softcover pod available on Amazon) that's fairly guard-railed in several places.  Not as much opportunity to cut loose and do whatever, but I still love it.

I also asked for player suggestions and dropped them into the Black Skull of Secrets, only using 2 of the 6 in our first game, and then I think I only asked for player suggestions one other time but forgot to draw any of them.  Oops.  So, it was a winning "mechanic," that I just didn't use as much as I should have.  And if I had to provide one regret for the games I ran at VENGER CON this year, it would probably be that.  It's just a lot of fun on many different levels - everyone's favorite, let's watch the GM squirm as he tries to shoehorn Sydney Sweeney's massive tits with the Kool-Aid man and an NPC who happens to be the Steven Seagal of Cha'alt.

A'amro the midnight-elf thief who toiled in darkness like his father and his father before him, as was the way of demons in Yeathcha'arvenyr.  Marty played that character to the hilt; he did a phenomenal job.  

After perusing the adult bookshop, he window-shopped until coming to a Chinese restaurant and bought some eggrolls... which, as it happens, was something that appeared in another game I, as GM, had never experienced (I tend to include a lot of Chinese restaurants in my sessions).  But it influenced this session to a degree none of us could have imagined.  I like the idea of imaginary realities affecting each other through the consciousness of humans who play these sorts of games.

While waiting for his eggrolls, the proprietor of the Golden Dragon Palace asked if he'd like to have his fortune read by the lady downstairs.  Not sure if that was a euphemism for something else, he took the stairs and found a half-woman, half-snake behind a screen (no Eddie Murphy, though).

He asked for her to read the stars or tea-leaves or zoth drippings - whatever she did behind that screen - and I rolled on the d4 table I had prepared.  He rolled a 1, and she told him he would not survive this adventure.  Taking it in stride, he went back up, got his eggrolls, and met up with the rest of the party.  Later, almost at the end of the session, A'amro died from being burned, zapped, or squished by a tentacle... I can't remember the exact details.  So much was happening, one thing right after another.

Which brought me to a thought... it only happens rarely, but I should have something prepared for when a PC buys the worm-farm in Cha'alt.  A death soliloquy, if you will, to mark the occasion, singing sweet demons that carry a soul to rest.  It brings to mind that HPL story "The Hound," where the narrator mutters a demonic prayer which St. John had loved in life.  Let's see what I can do, shall we?  Perhaps a Cha'altian ha'aiku (4 / 3 / 7)...

Devil-seed spills
Foetid pits
Eternity mocks their gaze

Bill Allan, active and serious throughout the sessions he played, kept everyone on track and in character.  That was much appreciated.  His interplay with the other PCs, not to mention the various NPCs, was fun to watch.  I especially liked how he brought out the best of snake oil Sean in Paranoia who was absolutely playing the most paranoid character in any game that weekend.

Speaking of Paranoia, apparently I have a type of game or play-style that I prefer because I just keep heading in that direction.  Back in the 90s, there was a bunch of player vs player, everyone trying to blast each other in hopes of being the last traitor standing.  And maybe I'll go back to that "Zap!" mode at some point, but my instinct is to take the dystopian setting serious enough so that it does feel real and immersive, with plenty of dark humor to off-set the grim totalitarian absurdism that is Alpha Complex. 

I even dropped-in a little bit of "Backrooms: the RPG" that I had an interest in trying to write just after seeing the movie, as it had a D&D / survival RPG kind of feel, but never grabbed me to the point of writing a whole bunch of stuff for it.  Basically, the PCs wandered a series of different colored hallways and rooms, occasionally containing bizarre stuff, until it started to get a little bit boring, and then we switched gears again.  

I wanted it to end a little bit meta and with a distinct Cha'alt flavor... and that's what we got.  Incidentally, that's also how both the (identical) Monty Python sessions ended.  That kind of self-referential surrealist 4th wall-breaking insanity goes hand-in-tentacle with Cha'alt, so I leaned into it.

As for the running of Monty Python, this was my first time.  I read the rulebook a year ago, when first purchasing it, and glanced at the rules again in preparation for VENGER CON.  So many rules, mon dieu!  It's its own system, and so just one more thing to learn, fret over trying to get right, teach the players, hope they remember as the session continues, with so many bits that stop the game in order to note a mechanical thing-a-m'bob.

BTW, best "prop" I had ready at the table for Monty Python was a bit of music from The Holy Grail here.

As I tell anyone who asks, the game isn't here (pointing to a rulebook and dice and whole bunch of procedures)... it's here (running my finger back and forth between me, the GM, and whoever is in front of me playing).  Rules-light is the only way for me, as being in that moment of decision where the player is considering things from his character's point of view (and in terms of the genre, setting, etc.) eventually unfolding like a story being told in real time, is what it's all about.

That leads me to another anecdote from one of the Cha'alt games.  A rather quiet and careful PC who originally decided to wager a couple gold pieces in a potentially lethal game of chance soon decided to lay it all on the table, so to speak, once it became increasingly obvious that this was their moment to go all-in, actually and metaphorically, risking everything, or go back to being a safe and very reasonable, level-headed wallflower.  

It was a bigger risk for the player to not put themself out there than it was to play it safe.  Playing it safe is great in the real world.  That's kind of the golden rule of civilized people - play it safe whenever possible.  But for a game that's trying to create pulp-fantasy sword & sorcery stories, playing it safe means death.

BTW, gamers are bandying the term "Heavy Metal" around lately to describe that kind of big tits, eye gouging, strange fantasy aesthetic from the 1981 film (as well as the magazine, I suppose).  Its resurgence is partly because of Mr. Dungeon Tuber or whatever his channel is has that Deathbringer game currently crowdfunding.  Personally, I think that's great because I love Heavy Metal and it's heavily inspired my writing - especially Cha'alt.

But should we call it something else besides "Heavy Metal style," like maybe the boobs & sorcery genre?  Just a thought...

This player realized the coin of the realm was attention - being seen, "on camera," and in the spotlight where all eyes are on you and your decisions matter, not just to that player's character, but perhaps the party, Kingdom, or even the entire world.  And that meant doing things you wouldn't normally do if you were really there.  It's one of those eye-opening "A-ha!" moments where you realize that sometimes the player must be immersed in the metagame to get the most optimal outcome, rather than the character being immersed in the world.  And everything I just said goes double - nay, triple!!! - for one-shots and convention games!

At this point, I'm just going to bullet-point weird random words and phrases that I feverishly wrote down in my notebook before they vanished forever on the cutting room floor.  Perhaps, one or two will jog a player's memory and they'll chuckle over that time we really shook the pillars of heaven.  VENGER CON, baby... VENGER CON.  

• Hookah whores
• 18 vermilion talons
• Science-fantasy strap-on laser dildo battle to see who gets to violate the head concubine (who looks like like that voluptuous redhead in the not-official Odyssey behind-the-scenes).
• Red sphere pimp
• Morale majority
• That time the chaos magic fuchsia after-effect gave the sorcerer the power to manipulate reality four times in a row, he chose... making all girls topless, making all the ooga-booga natives understandable, making magic stuff glow so it's easily seen, and giving every member of the party a turkey leg.
• Apparently, there's a system of tunnels and caves far to the south and deep underground named Zemucha.  Who knew?
• A monstrous godlike entity named A'abshaq-Vethyk made his first appearance. Also, I was surprised (maybe I shouldn't have been) that Will remembered the entity's name from yesterday when they first encountered him.  I was just trying to quickly think of a name, and looked back in my notes from the day before, glad to recycle something cool sounding I improvised.  
• A PC bought a lizard-dog to occasionally bleed when it was a spell emergency.
• "I have an alien artifact... in my pants!"
• A sorcerer used so much zoth to fuel his spells that he developed zoth saturation (where his eyes glowed chartreuse), the stage coming right before zoth poisoning.  
• Porn-hub grown sentient
• That time the Q'rull got stuck in a gigantic creature's butt, his anal sinuses cleansed. 
• Infernal sex panther tattoo across his body
• In a parallel universe, there's a book similar to The Necronomicon called something or other that translates to The Book of Dead Demon-Worm Shadow Names.
• When you finally arrive at Taco Bell and order some tacos, bell, and nachos, but then the guy who took you out to lunch brings lobster, french fries, and a roll of quarters (or nickels) back to the table. 
• "Do you know what maps are...?"  "No, do you?"
• Mordor sounds close enough to Morgansteins department store for all your home needs.
• Dude thought he could just grab a floating orange and start eating it - Ha!
• The old teleportation glyph drawn on the underside of a cantina toilet lid and another drawn upon the outside of a pylon so the pilots find themselves in the bowl, and now you can loot the matrix table's dimensional crystals scheme... yes, of course.  Oh yeah, I also determined that pylon crystals are super-charged dimensionally attuned energy crystals.
• This sword is known as the bastard-maker.
• "Tell me of your English volcanoes, Usul."
• Star-69 navigation system
• The French winning their saving throws on dark-elf poison gave them the best cheese soup and women's prison orgy of their fucking lives!
• "Bitch better have my full XP."
• When you add dry ice to the cheese soup, you get a cheese fog.
• As long as there's more tentacles than spam, you know that Cha'alt is winning (and thereby the Monty Python RPG losing).
• Potato famine skins
• Spelljammer is already the French version of D&D in space.
• Keeping Sybil Danning on a leash with her magic vagina, an artifact unto itself.
• The nacho sombrero 
• The color orange has not been invented yet in medieval Europe.  Instead, it's called reddish-yellow.
• Each iron spike must have its own character sheet... and you must track your item's experience points.
• When a PCs gambling problem is so bad that the anxiety-triggered GM pleads for another PC to hold his money for him.
• Some fantastic names (that I had no part in creating) appearing in just one Monty Python session... Saxon Mangold, Archduke Sir Rodney Sea Montbollery, Vanilla Token, Pees Blossom Pete, Durny Knickerbottom, and Flintstaff.
• Canadian pesos & Turkish lyra (wait... lyra or lira is already Turkish?)
• The opposite of scantily clad nymphs in your sex dreams is lumberjacks, obviously. 
• As'Nas Satanis the vengeful... tempting the heroes of Camelot to ruin the adventure by making it more like Cha'alt, thus proving that it is superior to the Monty Python RPG.  So diabolical - m'wuahaaha'aha!
• And as a joke (since this was the last con), VENGER CON VI: Resurrection... The Quest For More Venger!!!!!!

Thanks for reading, and feel free to comment with anything you wish to say... questions, comments, critiques, etc. 

VS

p.s. Want some hardcover Cha'alt?  Here's how (and they're currently on sale!)!!  Almost forget, we're still doing the half-year online convention that shall henceforth be known as VENGER CON V.5 : The Beast Awakens from Friday, January 8th - Monday, January 11th... officially sponsored by the Red Room.  

The State of Cha'alt

 

VENGER CON is going great.  First day down, two to go.  The hyper-gonzo game at the end of today was just as out-there and fucked up as last year's.  I ran from 4pm to almost 10pm, and the first death didn't come until an hour before we finished (though, it was prophesied to happen in the middle of the adventure).  But once that dam broke, one or two additional PCs died.  Shit was flying so fast, it was insane just trying to keep up with everything.  

The Ghostbusters pulled up to the PCs investigating The Necronomicon inside a gargantuan violet-worm which was full of porn that got caught in a dimensional instability field resulting in witch-sex and demon-tentacle fucking inside the worm's cave-like violet cavity.  Spamming those Cha'alt X-Cards worked their improv magic.

It reminds me of when I was GMing as a teenager.  The PCs would start out as normal mutant-opossum martial artists with machine guns and end with Satan getting blown-up by the Ko-dan armada.  But Cha'alt is that on steroids... it goes to eleven, hoss. 

Anyway, the reason for this blog post is my sharing the Cha'alt opening.  This is the background vibe of what's going on.  Even though some of this didn't affect the actual adventure, it's still a good idea to lay the foundation.  

The State of Things

These are dark times.  It’s been 6 long, difficult years since the O’Bannon Accords which resulted in a cease-fire between the Federation and native governments of Cha’alt.  Factions at home along with a thousand alien cultures have splintered into a pot where nothing melts and no one assimilates… everything is competition; hostilities range from micro-aggressions to genocide to jiha’ad, depending on region, local authority, and socio-economic status.  You could go to sleep in a stable and prosperous settlement of the deep desert and wake up in a warzone. 

In the end, nothing has changed… the Federation wants your resources and will destabilize as much as they can to end export restrictions, non-Federation aliens want many different things – some want to invest, others want to exploit, there’s surging tourism along with smuggling, graverobbing, and running from the law.

As adventurers, you’ve been force-fed multi-culturalism even before the cease-fire.  With a swig of artificial water, an A.I. navigational system ported into your reptilian riding-spider, and the names of 37 different gods (some openly antagonistic to the Old and New Gods of Cha’alt) chanted during daily public prayer, you thread through streets and boroughs of demons, Kha’alestinians, droids, replicants, so many shades of elves you need a color-wheel just to identify them all, humans, humanoids, alien off-worlders, and various other creatures on your way to the next job.

No matter how bad it is out there, the Gods must be paid in blood.  Priests demand ritual sacrifices – the blood of one-hundred-and-eleven humanoids is spilled every month.  The saba’ath continues no matter how much civil unrest.  The poor, infirm, old, diseased, criminals, and non-believers are much more likely to be put to the sword than able-bodied mercenaries.

While this sounds like a sorry state of affairs – because it is – remember, this is all pretend.  So, feel free to go Grand Theft Auto in this dark paradise; balls-out, no remorse, fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.  Remember what Robert E. Howard said about Conan as a protagonist vehicle for throwing off the shackles of civilization.  Back and forth extremes of colonization and decolonization have resulted in disastrous policies such as defund police, abolish immigration enforcement, universal healthcare (fun-fact… once you fill-out the paperwork and pay the 50-talon fee, the online correspondence course to become a fully licensed medical doctor takes a fortnight to complete), there is no border security, and prisons vacated all their convicts. 

Laws still exist, but they only protect those who can afford it.  Adventurers (especially of the 3^rd level variety) are several cuts above the average citizen, as the vast majority are too weak from hunger and thirst to fight back.  Get rich or die trying… or, you know, don’t worry about riches – go after fame, power, retribution, pussy, or whatever your personal goals happen to be. 

Surprise, motherfucker… and welcome to Cha’alt!

VS

"The Ruin of A'agrybah" - CHA'ALT Campaign 4.12

 

While we didn't have all 5 players for the mid-season finale at this point in our 4-year Cha'alt campaign, we had almost that many.  If you are a math major, then your assumption is probably correct... we had 4 players (but not who you might have assumed).

Missing the human sorcerer Strum due to a family vacation, we had human priest Bishop Crane, The Neza'akul human thief, Ug the lizardtaur warrior, and Tinker the pixie-fairy thief / sorcerer.

After some leveling - oh, that reminds me - we got to try out the recent game mechanic I blogged about not too long ago.  Neza'akul had missed the last 3 sessions, I believe, so he was ripe for telling us what he'd been up to during that intervening time...

Scavenging through the big ship blockade; monologuing on the rocks, threating all who would oppose him into the fuchsia heavens, and hiring cantina prostitutes to act as his "henchmen," moving heavy rocks around and shitting into paper bags that would eventually be set on fire and thrown at enemies.  As was expected, one of his suggestions / contributions, that last one, got some creative juices flowing and we riffed on that idea, expanding it.  

So, that was definitely a success.  I proposed that Strum opened a portal for some unknown reason (perhaps, he can come up with the why, when he returns), walked into it... a few seconds later, Neza'akul walked back out, rejoining the party after he bullied a wizard into creating a portal from wherever he had been.

Neza'akul also picked up a new feat as he went from level two-and-a-half to four.  Browsing Cha'alt Ascended, he eventually chose being able to retrieve any non-magical thing from his bag, once per day.  I also reminded the table that Divine Favor can also be spent to get an additional go at a limited ability - just like that once a day pulling something useful from your pack.

Exploring, talking, and preparing to fully investigate this new system of caves and tunnels beneath and only a quarter-mile away from the Crimson Rock of Sacrifice, they eventually headed out.  Ug realized this would be the perfect place for a bed & breakfast, and so marked an X on the stone wall with his magical sword Orin.  Neza'akul took the lead, scouting around after picking up some pocket-sand for later use.

The human thief found a young woman using a silvery wand or baton with buttons on the side who was sucking all the energy from glowing crystals in the wall.  It appeared as though she was possessed.  After Ug directly confronted her as an official crystal inspector, she replied with a deep, male, and alien voice that he was the watcher of the pylon (yes, this idea was ripped right out of the 70s show Land of the Lost), and was gathering enough power to break free of his pylon prison.

The watcher also wanted to "see" Ug's magic sword after she had zapped the magical sheen from the lizardtaur's gourd.  Orin told his wielder absolutely not - "Don't unsheathe me until that crazy bitch is gone." 

Tinker cast sleep on her and then they tried putting her into the purple labyrinth (which broke the psychic connection), and when Neza'akul picked up the wand to fiddle with it, eventually putting all the crystal energy back where it originally came from, he was also possessed by the watcher.  So, they tried putting him and soon the wand in the purple labyrinth, as well.  That place cut off the connection, so they stashed the high-tech wand behind some purple drywall they smashed a hole through, and made their way to the nearby pylon.

On the way, I decided that this rather large cave was the perfect place to pick-out 3 suggestions from the Black Skull of Secrets!!!  While it's not the easiest thing in the world to shoehorn disparate ideas into an existing scenario, that's what improv is all about.  

So, the PCs saw a whole bunch of freezing mist on the ground, not realizing it was covering a gigantic in-ground bowl of cereal with strawberry milk [gag reflex], and various half-frozen fruities bobbing up and down along with soggy pillows of shredded wheat.  As the PCs were swimming, just trying to stay afloat, an equally giant hand came down, picked up Tinker and Neza'akul, and brought them into a mass of undulating tentacles that may or may not have been surrounding a gaping maw, ready to swallow them.  Tinker told whoever was about to eat them that he was friends with Iggy Azailia (meaning Igg-Yig Yatha'ak) and helped him out of a jam awhile back.  

This Great Old One paused his breakfast to psionically check-in with Igg-Yig Yatha'ak to make sure this pixie-fairy was telling the truth.  Sure enough, he was, and this Ancient One let them go, so they could swim to shore or fly out of the cereal bowl to safety.  Also, the PCs were cloned during this whole thing, and there's now a strawberry-milk set of PCs running around... perhaps in the strawberry-milk dimension?

Further down the tunnel, they saw the gold pylon.  Throwing ideas around like just leaving it, tipping the pylon into the strawberry milk (I must confess, I really liked the sound of that), or laying it face-down so no one could access the door, they eventually went with having the girl open the pylon door, throwing a thermal detonator, retrieved from Neza'athul's pack, and quickly closing it back up.  Dimensional ripples expanded the pylon's exterior for a second as black smoke soon poured out of the door cracks.  Opening it back up, they found the matrix table destroyed and glowing crystals scattered on the black floor.

Bishop Crane had been trying to feel if the watcher of the pylon was an infernal force.  It was not, but he did sense a large demonic presence elsewhere in this system of caves.  Shortly, the PCs' scout discovered a massive cavern containing a 100-demon army.  A shadow-demon general named K'xoksan was giving useful exposition, such as they were going to sacrifice the King of A'agrybah who was right there, hog-tied on top of a stone altar, and then this army of demons would reunite with Channa (who had recently married the King and was now eligible to perform her own Ascension ritual at the Crimson Rock of Sacrifice).

The party hatched a plan.  Crane was invisible to demons and had that scepter that could teleport a humanoid 30-feet.  Tinker addressed the demons after turning the shadow-demon general into a turkey, and then lassoing it, while dragging it back through the tunnel the PCs had just traversed.  The demons followed, many of them falling into the cereal bowl.  Meanwhile, the other PCs snuck out along with Crane and the King, as the priest also used the scepter to create a glyph of demon-warding to keep them at bay.

Unfortunately, this blocked the PCs from the secondary exit the demons were going to use to go back up to the surface.  But there were a few caves left to explore at the back-end of the system, so they continued to explore.  Suddenly, they heard the screech of a bald eagle as it swooped down, grabbed the turkey (dropping the infernal opal that K'xoksan had), and soared away... because America!  

Minutes later, they heard a feeble voice asking for help, and went to see what was the matter.  They found Karl, complete with tie-dyed shirt and wonky eye, laying on the cave floor, dying.  

"Dudes, you probably don't recognize me, but I'm your friend from another dimension... a parallel universe, man, it's like [weird gestures]... hard to explain and shit, you know?  Anyway, my name's Karl.  I'm too far gone, but need to tell y'all something.  In my timeline, we fought these bastards... all of them.  I witnessed the final battle in my home dimension."  

Dramatic pause as he waits for the PCs to ask what happened.  Tinker did just that, "Did we survive?"  Karl solemnly shakes his head in the negative.

"But this time, I've prepared for... you to have this."  He pulls what looks like a metal whistle from the front of his pants, as if he'd been keeping it in his underwear for a really long time.  "We're in the end-game, now..." as his voice trails off, Karl gets that far-away look in his wonky eye, letting the PCs know that he's dead.

I asked Grok to make Doctor Strange from the Infinity War movie saying that we're in the end-game, now, but replace Strange with Karl from Workaholics and Grok created a weird hybrid of the two characters... which I'm keeping and is now canon because sometimes A.I. knows best.  Lol

Not wanting to actually put their own lips onto the metal whistle, they devised a plan - put the whistle to Karl's lips, and then basically stomp on his stomach, forcing any last bit of air through his mouth.  Sure enough, that worked.  The whistle sounded.  

Meanwhile, they found another exit and met the fresh air of fuchsia sky and suns-blazing desert.  Just then, a psychedelic painted school bus pulled up with Lyssa and company (who had been waiting at the original entrance), the banana-men and other NPC servants and hirelings, along with the 17 demons that they captured, as directed by Crane a session or two ago.  The psychedelic bus was driven by a different Karl from yet another dimension, telling them to climb aboard - "We're going to the Crimson Rock of Sacrifice, ja'abronis!"

They reached the appointed place, but also saw that several armies were already waiting - the Kha'alestinians, the Federation, Channa and her personal demon and A'agrybah royal guards.  The PCs conceived of yet another plan (that seemed to be the theme of this session, no actual combat but lots of plan-hatching for dealing with overwhelming numbers of foes).  

Crane, being invisible to demons, went over to the Federation side, stood next to a hover-tank, and used his eldritch beam to blast the demon side, which made it seem like the Federation was firing on them.  So, they started attacking each other.  The demon side also opened an enormous portal that released a demonic creature the size of King Kong that the Kha'alestinians began to attack, and then everyone was slaughtering each other, leaving the adventurers a chance to help Lyssa perform her own Ascension ritual.  

This was also the time that the metal titan guarding the backside of the purple priest temple beneath Kra'adumek arrived.  It had been summoned by the metal whistle, and the PCs directed it to destroy whoever was left over, mopping-up the survivors.

Lyssa spoke the words and made the gestures as a portal of her own manifested and a Lovecraftian abomination exited and hovered above her.  The bastard-princess Lyssa told the PCs that she must consort with this entity to fulfill the prophecy.  

As that was going on, two silvery and shimmering humanoid beings appeared, one male and the other female, both idealized versions.  Time froze for everyone but the PCs as the shimmery man spoke...

"You have a choice - slit the bastard princess' throat and be assured that no apocalypse or cataclysm or planetary destruction will result... the Old Ones who are awake now will go back to sleep and the ones currently sleeping will continue to slumber long and peacefully.  However, this will assuredly result in the Federation taking over Cha'alt, turning it into just another colonized world raped of its precious resources."  

The shimmering silver female continued, "The other option is to allow Princess Lyssa to live.  The Great Old Ones will be rejuvenated.  This ritual would be like a shot in the tentacle for the Old Gods, and they will awaken faster and in greater number... potentially bringing about the ruination but also, with hope, prosperity to Cha'alt.  With the Great Old Ones at full strength, the Federation will be repelled for at least a generation, and Cha'alt will have to face its own trials at its own pace.  Decide what you will do, and choose wisely, adventurers."

The PCs unanimously chose to let Lyssa live and Make Cha'alt Great Again with the Old Ones' help.  So, the Lovecraftian entity finished having sex with Lyssa, impregnating her.  It left the way it came, through the portal... this time smoking a cigarette.  

Channa was on top of the Crimson Rock, about to perform her own ritual, but the Metal Titan blasted her, then turned its attention to the demonic Kong who was kicking everyone's ass.  Tinker's player rolled a d6 for the Metal Titan, and I rolled for Demon-Kong.  He rolled better, and the Metal Titan sent a cow-puncher arm of steel right through the gigantic demon's skull, killing him.  

After that, the King of A'agrybah and his daughter were reunited, everyone went back to A'agrybah for festivities and rewards, and to guard the Kingdom from infernal forces as Lyssa's belly swole with the expected child.  Parades, dancing in the street, and Jar-Jar Binks shouting "Meesa gonna put his dick in the mashed potatoes," or some such.

Bishop Crane talked about plans for his church, how he intended to incorporate the Great Old Ones into the Lords of Light as these Ancient, godlike entities kept proving themselves intelligent and beyond good and evil at the very least, rather than being entirely malevolent like infernal deities, nor cruel and callous towards their worshipers, such as the New Gods.

Hours later, I was thinking about the consummation between Lyssa and that Lovecraftian entity, deciding to send the players the following text message (which I posted on X, as well)...

"You couldn't help sneaking a peek.  Its weird, alien penis, greenish-tangerine with purple highlights and lavender veins, extending like a tentacle holding a fat, juicy plum... into her nether regions!"

T'was a strange and satisfying session, concluding what had been happening on Cha'alt.  I'm sure the PCs felt, at times, swept-up by the chaotic shenanigans of all these forces playing out.  As previously stated, this was the mid-season finale.  On the other side, after VENGER CON V: The Will To Power happening this coming weekend, we'll continue the campaign and see what happens with everyone.

Thanks for reading, everyone!  Feel free to comment your thoughts, feelings, criticisms, and celebrations below...

VS

p.s.  Yes, weekend badges are now available for July 2026's VENGER CON V: The Will To Power.  Want the hardcover Cha'alt trilogy?  Here's how (and they're currently on sale!)!!