"Follow That Old One" - CHA'ALT 3.10

 

"Every voyage has its own flavor," as Sinbad said in the 1973 film (which I recently re-watched for the nth time).

This session fulfills that prophecy.  Let's dive in and maybe you'll see what I mean...

We had only three players as our traveling playboy was hungover and Bandersnatch's player was celebrating his anniversary.  That means H'ork leveling up to 4th along with Tinker, and Thurberus, maintaining at 5th level, were there to carry forward the Purple Bastards' adventure in the land of purple-Cha'alt.

Just as last session all took place on Cha'alt-prime, this one only focused on purple-Cha'alt.  As we recapped events, Kurva'ak and his minions were slaughtered and the massive dimensional door to the Old One known as Igg-Yig-Yatha'ak (the dark effulgence) was still magically sealed. 

Kurva'ak's former wizard, Zerlin, who now worked for the PCs gave the adventurers two options - blow the magic seal open with something like the plasma reactor core or photon torpedo... or he could magically unseal it via sorcery.  However, that would take the ritual sacrifice of several humanoids - perhaps as many as 11.  After some serious math on the back of a napkin and then sexkerchief, Zerlin felt certain that no more than 9 would be needed when push came to shove or tentacles came to bloodletting, as the saying goes in Cha'alt.

The PCs let it be known that if Zerlin failed, so too would his limbs fail to remain attached to his body.  You know, just to keep him honest and attentive to detail.

Before anything else happened, a purple portal opened, a massive purple claw reached out through the portal, grabbed Bandersnatch, and withdrew back into the portal's purple-lit interior.  Before disappearing, the party's sorcerer threw the amulet out so they'd at least have a chance of controlling or influencing the Great Old One, should they succeed in awakening or freeing him from his prison / slumber.

As the portal stayed open, Thurberus threw a rock into it, hitting Aldous Sand.  Aldous talked with them and they all decided it would be better for him to become some sort of apprentice, rather than stay in the purple labyrinth any longer, practicing his music.

As the PCs explored the rest of this cave system for random humanoids to be sacrificed, a courier ran towards them shouting "Thurberus!"  Holding off on blasting him, they allowed the gray-elf to approach.  He had a scroll tube which the gray-elf opened to reveal issue #14 of Dark Priest Monthly.  

Taking possession of the magazine, Thurberus filled-out the subscription card to receive another 5 years of Dark Priest Monthly, not sure if the bill or subsequent issues would ever find him.  The courier took the card back to the publisher as the v'smm priest flipped through his new magazine.

It featured various ways of luring victims into vans, RVs, and mobile homes by offering valuables such as gold, ammo, and scratch & sniff stickers.  A sexy peach frutie wearing purple lingerie made the centerfold.  Ads for vintage toys of the 70s and 80s (which had the 3 and 4-inch action figures in Thurberus' pack all excited) peppered the slick glossy pages.  Last of all, there was an interview with a dark priest named Father Alfa'anzo who experimented with dimensional magic and lived in the purple labyrinth for years.  His biggest discovery is that other dimensions had their own maze of varying color.  When the PCs scanned the interview for info such as "Why do these labyrinths exist?" it was extraordinary light on details.  Basically, they just do.

Continuing the exploration, the PCs happened upon slaves mining caves for ulfire and jale.  Several male slaves were doing the actual mining while three females sat around, waiting for their own duties to perform - all of them wearing the familiar high-tech slave collars.  

Soon enough, the PCs hacked through the intestinal curtains, killed the guards, and got into a heated battle with the slavers themselves.  Thurberus' magical golden shield saved his ass from a couple critical-hits, bringing him eventually down to 2 HP, and H'ork almost single digits.  Even Tinker was wounded.  But eventually, the PCs triumphed, taking the still alive slavers, their slaves, a bunch of mined crystals and precious stones, along with several scratch & sniff stickers.  Score!

Keeping the head-slave mining, the PCs relieved some pipe-cleaning stress with the women, and then took all the slaves back to Zerlin who was waiting at the magically sealed gateway - but not before Tinker (to whom I passed a note) was revealed to be the purple Pimpernel (or purple pimple as he kept calling it) and saved a couple of aristocrats from Kra'adumek's purple pope and his lilac acolytes of doom who were hot on their trail.  

At first, it seemed like the two aristocrats from the purple city would be the first of many sacrifices, but Zeeder and Chempt were soon treated well, and put in communication with Jay-vax (sub-captain of the S.S. Motherfucker), that racoon from the starship who rescued the PCs from that prison ship long ago.

Zerlin tried his best to minimize the casualties as he worked his sorcery, harnessing the power of the jale and ulfire crystals, along with the warm and inviting flesh of slave girl #2, Korra (whom he fancied so much he took her as his own).  He got it down to 6 sacrifices.  That means the women and purple aristocrats were saved - huza'ah!

The door was unsealed.  H'ork used his half-orc strength to open it enough for them to walk in - it was a dark tomb where an impossibly huge creature lay dormant.  Glyphs carved into ornate walls lined the eldritch sepulcher, many unreadable.  Soon enough, it awakened, spoke briefly to the PCs (the 15% chance of the not-properly-activated ultra-telluric glyph didn't materialize), and left its tomb, breaking apart the cave-system's ceiling and crawling out into the fuchsia-skied desert wasteland north, towards Ka'alestine.

Deciding to follow Igg-Yig-Yatha'ak in their RV, the PCs and their entourage piled-in and took off down the sand.  Coming at them from the eastern side was a Ka'alestinian patrol of about 20 robed cutthroats, a couple of them riding a giant scorpion with a couple human slaves in tow.  Several jiha'adist warriors were holding heads on pikes, and behind them was a decent-sized territory ringed with headless humanoids impaled upon the bone stalks of gigantic insects that roam the wasteland at night.  The Ka'alestinians frequently do this, taking bits of land here and there until they can consolidate them into greater Ka'alestine.

Figuring they could outrun the jiha'adists, the PCs kept going in their RV.  After driving a couple hours (the Ka'alestinians far behind), the adventurers noticed a gathering of a dozen or more people off to the west, just outside the mouth of a cave. 

Getting out to see what was going on, they mingled with two distinct groups - one fancy dressed who were here for a wine tasting in the gilded mauve caves - known locally as Skra'ath Cavern - and the others looked like peasant rabble.  They were here to see-off 3 heroes who decided to "retire themselves" with the high honor of being eaten by the devourer worms - an annual festivity that occurs at Skra'ath Cavern.  

Those about to die usually give blessings, words of wisdom, and sometimes bestow a gift.  Curiously, there was one man clad in black who didn't fit the description of the others.  He looked a bit ruthless and when he tore apart a sand lobster and threw it behind him, a piece that hit one of the peasants almost caused a scuffle, but then the man who was hit immediately backed down after the man in black gave him the look.  The PCs decided to keep an eye on him as they also took part in the festivities. 

First was the heroes being eaten - Sanquen, ranger of the desert night; Bestia'al, a female known as the blood oath barbarian; and Zoffestry, a sorcerer and former vizir of Ka'alestine.  Life expectancy on Cha'alt pretty much tops-out at 69, and these three were well into their 70s.  They wanted a "good death," hence being eaten by the devourer worms.  The juices of death-berries (which grew in these caves) marinated in a large skull.  The heroes sipped the death-berry wine, which was said to prepare their souls for the journey.

Tinker decided to instigate a race war between the mauve folk and gold folk who lived together in Skra'ath Cavern.  Both races were rather small.  Apparently, there was a wizard who lived amongst them, and he used the mauve folk as his helpers, eventually convincing or compelling them to assist him in capturing the gold folk to use in his experiments.  The wizard died over a year ago, but the hard feelings survive.

Meanwhile, Thurberus and H'ork followed the man in black who showed them his magical short sword, figuring they were here for the same reason - to capture the soul-energy of the consumed "warriors" in a valuable object.  Kicking out the mauve and gold folk with the crystals they had planned to ensoul, the man in black, Varker, waited along with the two PCs.  

It wasn't long before the ethereal streams of white energy came into the cave, drawn here via magical means, no doubt, and energized Varker's short sword, Thurberus' brass key he'd kept from The Venturan colony ship where they were originally imprisoned, and H'ork chose the severed hand of Zerlin... for some weird reason.  I rolled randomly, and the soul of the sorcerer Zoffestry went into the hand (which seemed fitting).  H'ork and his new sorcerer-hand companion began communicating, hoping to create some kind of odd familiar relationship a la The Addams Family.

Rejoining Tinker, the PCs + Varker walked elsewhere in Skra'ath, hoping to taste that wine supposedly superior to all others in the region.  They ran into 4 bandits mugging a couple of fancy dressed wine connoisseurs.  The PCs took care of the muggers, looted their bodies, and stole the victims' gold and shoes before moving onwards toward that supposedly irresistible wine.

That's where we left things.  When we pick-up in just a week (this schedule is unusual because I'll be gone on a family vacation in a couple weeks), the PCs will finish exploring Skra'ath Cavern, and then we'll see what happens with the PCs on Cha'alt-prime.

There's also a chance that a new player joins us this coming Saturday.  Tentacles crossed!

Enjoy,

VS

p.s. Want the hardcover Cha'alt trilogy?  Here's how (and they're currently on sale!)!!  Want to join the Kort'thalis mailing list to stay up-to-date on what's going on in the skinematic Vengerverse?  This is it!!  Last but not least, I'm organizing a based-as-fuck RPG convention in Madison, WI this July (Sandy Petersen will be joining us as VENGER CON's Guest of Honor).  Grab your weekend badge for VENGER CON IV: Post-Modern Apocalypse!!!

"Black Pyramid Scheme" - CHA'ALT 3.9

 

It would have been nearly impossible to surpass our last session, truly a "banger," as the kids say.  But I think session nine in the Cha'alt campaign's third year came close to equaling it.  

A slight switch-up in the PC roster saw us with Bandersnatch, Thurberus, Botserdomus, and Tinker.  Since H'ork wasn't with us, and it took awhile to finish the narrative thread with confronting Simon, I decided against hopping over to the purple dimension of Cha'alt - this time.  

The party's half-orc warrior seemed to be more center stage in the purple world, and I wanted to close-out Simon.  But that doesn't mean there wasn't inter-dimensional shenanigans... because there were.  

The Crimson Bastards + purple Bandersnatch were about to leave The Black Pyramid room of Thoth-A'amon.  Bela'ak, the half-demon, half dark-elf vigilante found a cloak of disguise from the sorcerer-priest's armoire, donned it, and became Thoth-A'amon, at least in likeness.  Bela'ak decided he would rule in place of his dead nemesis, influencing if not outright controlling the 8-or-so room domain known in this place as a Docho.

Thurberus saw it as a sort of death and resurrection "rebirth" of Thoth-A'amon, straight out of myth.  Tinker warned Bela'ak not to get too corrupted by the power he will no doubt attain.  The dark-red and purple Bela'ak assured the pixie-fairy that, given his heritage, he shouldn't have a problem with that.  ;)

But the adventurers will always be welcome in Thoth-A'amon's Docho, and the next time they reappeared, they'd be welcomed with a bountiful feast.

Soon enough, the PCs found themselves in a room of white-robed cultists waiting for their time to be devoured by the godlike Zarga'an in a neighboring room.  After considerable banter, the PCs took a sample of the soporific wine (not from the neck-penis of a sandworm, but Zarga'anian piss that tasted like Miller High-Life) and decided to check out a chartreuse sphere of considerable energy.  

Bandersnatch the purple rashly grabbed it with both hands.  I requested a sort of combined saving throw and skill-check, which came up quite positive.  With only minimal damage inflicted, Bandersnatch communed with dread K'tulu and was given the knowledge that this sphere would grant magical blades a glyph of sharpness, making them vorpal (any crit with a vorpal weapon will decapitate the foe).

Bandersnatch felt the presence of another magical sword nearby.  Only having one enchanted blade currently in their possession, they slid the cursed obsidian dagger from a few sessions back into the chartreuse sphere.  Tinker decided to wrap a thin rope around it and use the sphere as a bola, knowing that touching it was hazardous to one's health.

Backtracking a bit, they entered the chamber of Zarga'an.  Bandersnatch went down and Tinker was wounded, but otherwise, the PCs felled the spawn of the Old Ones after a couple rounds.  Looting his room, they got a moonstone of true seeing (at least when it came to domination, possession, and that sort of thing), a massive drow sword named Arythaeldryn [slightly reskinned from The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence] that was a +3 and +5 vs lawful and good-aligned beings that could control other magic swords, and Zarga'an's horn which would grant one person one wish per lifetime.

Tinker wished for hot girls looking to party, at least one for each of them - including a pixie-fairy sized one.  So, they partook of the flesh and got their +5 bonus.  Botserdomus wished for a pet banana-saurus which soon became possessed by the pixie-fairy's demon Nixor.  I must confess, aside from the name, I had little to no recollection of Nixor - I'll have to re-read my previous blog posts to familiarize myself with that.

The other two decided to hold-back their wishes as they returned to the cultists, telling them the bad news - Tinker wanting to quote Nietzsche "God is dead and it is we who killed him."  I rolled for the cultist's reaction.  They were despondent and on the brink of suicide.  Thurberus was at half-chub just hearing that news.  Reinvigorating their obsidian staff with a few souls, including the soul of Zarga'an himself, the priest took the rest as acolytes and they continued on.

Another room showed a half-dozen humanoids holding on for dear life as they were being sucked into the maw of some obscene, leviathan at the back of the room.  Tinker decided to swing his sphere so one of the humanoids could grasp it.  Thinking this could help him get out of this situation, he grabbed the sphere.  It shocked the bejesus out of him - chartreuse electrocution - which fused his hands to the sphere as he and the sphere were pulled in.  Bandersnatch used magic to teleport the sphere and Tinker into another room.  Meanwhile, both priests used their eldritch beam together, essentially crossing the streams.  

I decided to consult the wild magic side-effects table in Fuchsia Malaise, having each player roll a d100 to see what would happen.  One of them opened an orange portal - with an orange floating in space, casting judgement upon those it gazed upon with tangerine intent.  The other turned the Lovecraftian mouth-thing into a jack-in-the-box as it bobbed helplessly up and down.  Those inadvertently saved were grateful.

Two orange-peel PC dopplegangers exited the orange portal.  One was in the likeness of Thurberus, telling him not to ever give up the one ring - Singularum A'analus.  The other told him the opposite advice - destroy it before Singularum A'analus can destroy the entire party, perhaps Cha'alt itself.

Taking a different path, the PCs eventually found The Museum!  The bored and unhelpful curator told them there were three sections - the old wing, new exhibits, and weird art.  Searching the old wing first, they came upon a meteorite, a large high-tech ray gun, a red maple-leaf euthanasia booth, and two elves arguing over a ring on a pedestal and under a glass dome.  

The elf from a hairy-lime dimension wanted it as an engagement ring for his girlfriend.  The other, a blood-elf, just wanted the hairy-lime to not have it.  After listening to their conversation for a minute, the PCs decided to blast or stab the elves and take the ring for themselves.  Bandersnatch assumed Thurberus should wear the ring since those two orange dudes from the last room talked to Thurberus, which meant that he's probably the one who will need to wear it in the future.

One identify spell later... it's a greater ring of immunity - meaning that Thurberus was now immune to pretty much everything.  Someone tried stabbing him a minute later, and sure enough, he was immune.

Wandering over to the new exhibits, they saw a basalt bust of Cholak, their former patron demon.  Knocking it over so it broke, they continued on to find the hammer - it was a ban-hammer (I couldn't resist).  I mean, it makes sense since Simon is just the character of some teenager who cheated in order to become uber-powerful in Cha'alt, formerly the hyper-realistic immersive video game of the same name.

BTW, Karl filled the PCs in on Cha'alt's recent past, that it started as an immersive video game, and then became real, allowing the metaverse of infinite dimensions to also stop being computer simulations in favor of the real thing - this was called The Great Actualization.  Apparently, individuals who were inside Cha'alt's virtual reality were trapped here, unable to leave. 

The hammer could find anyone programed into it, so they asked it to locate Simon.  The hammer opened up a portal, and they went in.  It took them to the room where Ura'az-Vethune was ablaze with golden flame.  Simon was punching holes in The Black Pyramid - to the point where you could see daylight on the other side.  Such blasphemy was akin to someone taking out the crucifix from the Piss Christ art exhibit and shoving it up everyone's pee-hole.  Not cool, bro!

Before combat commenced, Simon monologued about how stupid Cha'alt was - banana-men, tentacled worms, scantily-clad women with oversized boobs and butts?  Was the idiot who made this place a 14 year old boy?  Simon was intent on remaking Cha'alt for "modern audiences."  That's right, this campaign setting would soon look like Disney had acquired the I.P.  Everything potentially offensive, over-sexualized, and edgelord would have to go.  The Black Pyramid with its nigrescent stone... racist, much?

If the PCs didn't want to fuck Simon's shit up before, they surely did now.  No one tries to Disney-fy Cha'alt and gets away with it.  As soon as Botsterdomus attacked Simon with the ban-hammer, he snapped his fingers, taking away the droid priest's legs.  He threw the hammer over to Thurberus who would be immune.  Simon needed to be dealt at least 100 points of damage from the ban-hammer before he was well and truly banned.  

Bandersnatch had a good idea - use his new sword that could command magical blades.  He ordered Simon's ultra-telluric sword to attack its owner, which it did.  From the damage of both, Simon was soon taken down - exploding in fragmented pixels.

At which time, several portals opened in short succession.  These dimensional gateways were from the fuchsia, puce, and banana Cha'alts.  Almost all of them arrived to tell Thurberus to destroy the one ring before it was too late.  His own puce self held a portable hole full of molten lava.  "Throw it in, hoss.  It's the only way."

However, Thurberus wasn't sure.  I mean, can you blame him?  The ring made him essentially invincible.  At first, Thurberus tried to swap-out his lesser ring of immunity (protecting him from blunt force trauma) for the greater ring, but his puce-self realized what was going on, reminding him that such tricks wouldn't work because "I'm you, hoss."

Then, Tinker-prime and fuchsia-Tinker both tried to steal the ring off Thurberus.  That attempt failed.  No one was quite sure if they had succeeded if they'd have worn the ring (and if so, which one... maybe they could have merged somehow?) or threw it into the lava themselves.

Eventually, the v'smm priest did the right thing.  He tossed the greater ring of immunity, Singularum A'analus, into the boiling-hot magma.  The other PCs from various dimensions left after telling Thurberus he did the right thing.  

And that's where we ended things.  BTW, just for the sake of posterity, keeping myself honest, and possibly helping my fellow GMs along the way, I frequently go back and forth between reading text I wrote during prep and speaking extemporaneously (either improvising or going-off from my notes).  Extemporaneous speech is always better, but sometimes, I'm afraid of missing something, forgetting details is easy to do, but on the other tentacle, reading is almost always less dynamic.  

And when you stumble on a word because you can't read your fucking hand-writing... well, that's just embarrassing.  That happened TWICE during this session, so I'm going to make a concerted effort to read "boxed text" less, so I sound less scripted.  I likened it to Luke at the Deathstar, turning off his targeting computer, and instead, just using the force.  Yeah, it can be more difficult, requiring a bigger commitment, but in the end, I believe it's worth it.  

That means preparing my session notes in a different way, more like bullet-point "tags" rather than full sentences written out.  I'll let you know how it goes. 

For reaching this milestone - plus, all the stuff that happened on the way, every PC gets three fuchsia stones of Divine Favor to use next session. 

Oh yeah, mere hours left to back my latest book(s) on kickstarter, namely Play Like A Fucking Boss + Fairy Dust.  Please back and share this project!    

As I've mentioned elsewhere, this game mechanic was cemented at Gary Con.  I've toyed with the foundations of it in our home Cha'alt game, and will be debuting it in actual play, as a player-facing mechanic, at our next game on Saturday, May 24th.

Enjoy,

VS

p.s. Want the hardcover Cha'alt trilogy?  Here's how (and they're currently on sale!)!!  Want to join the Kort'thalis mailing list to stay up-to-date on what's going on in the skinematic Vengerverse?  This is it!!  Last but not least, I'm organizing a based-as-fuck RPG convention in Madison, WI this July (Sandy Petersen will be joining us as VENGER CON's Guest of Honor).  Grab your weekend badge for VENGER CON IV: Post-Modern Apocalypse!!!