It has been awhile. What have we been up to? FYI, this first image is a painting I completed shortly after VENGER CON IV. It's the glyph of Kort'thalis.
Well, after the convention, we had a single session with half our crew, that was meant to be a "bottle episode" segueing away from and then back to the Cha'alt campaign proper. We didn't get too far into it, so I had the whole second half of that adventure to run.
We planned on playing last weekend, and 3 players got together. One of whom felt mostly fine before leaving his house and then deathly ill once he arrived. So, we talked for a bit, realized we wouldn't be able to play, and vowed to pick things up next Saturday when hopefully all would be right again.
So, last Saturday we were able to finish the scenario. And even though I created the Kult of Kort'thalis community on X for all your TTRPG needs, I haven't been as active as I wanted to be, and I'm trying to sneak in this blog post.
My wife REALLY wanted another puppy. Long story short, we got her. She's super cute, but it's almost like having a newborn. That's how much time and energy has been sucked out of my schedule. In another couple weeks, things should get back to normal. But for now, we'll all have to take what we can get.
Ok, since it had been so long and a few of the players weren't there for the scenario opener, I basically repeated it. Each player could choose his character from whatever dimension, universe, or color-vision plane of existence he wanted. Plucked, by the ivory guardian for this particular mission.
H'ork picked kaleidoscope-Cha'alt (actually, the player chose to roll on my d100 color table in How To GM Like A Fucking Boss - that was the result) and wanted his demeanor to be like The Dude in The Big Lebowski. Then there was tangerine Bandersnatch. Therberus was from the planet of thinking rocks so he could be a rock salesman, and the party's pixie-fairy thief haled from Cha'alt-Jamaica (yes, we insisted he attempt the accent, no matter how bad it was). BTW, we're still looking for one more player we can add to our multi-hued bastard roster.
Basically picking up where we left off, except for going over the details of the quest - find the transparent cube somewhere within the Caves of Carnage and give this key to time and space to the ivory guardian so he can prevent the multiverse from being destroyed or some such. Along the way, there may be other guardians with their own agendas.
After a conversation with the cannibal cave whores, and trading a nice rock (with promises of more where that came from) in exchange for some mango-pineapple BBQ sauce flavored people, the PCs traveled deeper into the cave-system.
They soon came upon a gateway to Spider-Silk Road where several traders and merchants were situated, unclear why the gates would be closed. And not just closed but magically sealed. The adventurers surmised that what they did to Chud-Letha'az might have something to do with it.
When Therberus wasn't hawking his thinking (but definitely not sentient) rocks, Bandersnatch was making a case for magic space sand that was once owned by a bloodthirsty emperor - damn, now I want some of that sand, too.
After trading some shroom-spice for another couple thinking rocks (Therberus' sales pitch keeps getting better and better - even I wanted to own one of those rocks... such storied history!), they kept moving. Even after a free sample in a to-go shot-glass, the PCs weren't interested in the double-filtrated worm wine peed out by Sydney Sweeney!
They came to a frog-folk congregation, 22 of them, being led by a High Priest about to sacrifice a dark-elf woman. In this massive cave was a statue of T'sathagg-Kha built into the rock. Not standing for a bunch of amphibian supremacists ritually sacrificing a lady of elven blood, they attacked (Tinker sneak-attacked the High Priest) and won.
The new puppy, Zara, is sleeping, so I'll forego the battle details...
The High Priest escaped via a secret door at the base of the toad-devil statue. The PCs followed (but not before being singed by flame coming from the statue's mouth), walking up a spiral staircase to a chamber within the statue's head that contained a mechanism for blasting the cave with fire.
After that, the PCs explored a broken down amusement park in the darker regions of another massive cavern. They fought some night-clowns before dispatching their reinforcements in a clown car with a well-placed thermal detonator.
Oh yeah, the PCs kept meeting these other guardians in various side-caves along their route further inside the cave-system. There was an emerald guardian who wanted them to try out this super-weapon like a battleaxe chained to a unicycle. And a banana guardian who wanted the PCs to close their eyes and then guess which of three banana-shaped objects inserted into their mouths was the real banana. Therberus got a load of that guardian in his mouth. Then there was the blue-raspberry guardian and a few others.
It didn't take the PCs long before realizing these guardians just wanted to fuck with them, and in fact a scroll fell out of one of their robe pockets - a charter that stated that exact fact...
We the heresigned agree to fuck with the aforementioned lesser beings and sub-creatures. Whosoever receives the most points gets access to the executive restroom which includes the holy glory hole of endless sha'abli [in the ancient tongue, sha'abli means "girl mouth"].
I got to introduce a soda vending-machine that contained a few cans of Psychotic Break energy drinks. The adventurers busted through the glass so they didn't have to pay for them. Not a huge loss since the cans' expiration date was approximately 88 years ago, before The Apocalypse, (and the company producing them went out of business a long time ago).
Continuing on, the PCs found a brothel coin with a glyph on one side (that read "put the pussy on a pedestal") and a view of Chud-Letha'az embossed on the other. Minutes later, a familiar voice came from a darkened tunnel up ahead. Walking over to them and cocking a bazookoid. It was their old friend Isithar after revenge (what else?). He started monologuing about how the Purple Bastards betrayed him. In an astonishing feat of de-escalation that worked better than it had any right to, Isithar wound up agreeing with tangerine Bandersnatch that the Purple Bastards were scum, and the multi-hued Bastards would be happy to help Isithar in hunting them down and teaching them a lesson. Isithar then returned to his portal to locate the exact bastards who did him so dirty, instead of contrary-colored clones who only appeared to be the ones he swore vengeance upon.
Before the end, the PCs spent some time on the amusement park equipment like the ferris wheel and bumper cars imagined as a slideshow montage a la The IT Crowd - tangerine Bandersnatch got a handjob from Thea, the dark-elf woman they saved.
Just when the PCs were starting to realize there was no cube, the PCs came to a cave containing the transparent cube sitting on a stone pedestal connected to 8 other smaller, lower pedestals with a different colored banana resting atop each one. All the colors of the rainbow, plus obsidian-black. It took the PCs awhile to work their way through the puzzle, and I'm not sure they actually figured out what was going on under the hood, but sure enough, they were able to get their hands upon the key to time and space.
Before handing it over, when all the various guardians showed up, the adventurers wished the guardians back in time to just before The Apocalypse. And then wished themselves onto Alpha Blue for some sleazy R&R.
That's where we ended it. Next time we play - Saturday, August 30th - should get us back on track with the main leg of our Cha'alt campaign. We did sporadically use Zeeku, and it produced some good results. A defining aspect of great game design is that if it's neglected for a short or long period of time, the game doesn't lose its luster.
Thanks for reading; hope you enjoy!
VS
p.s. Rest in peace, Terence Stamp. Zod! Want a great new TTRPG community where you can hang out with other gamers, get ideas, advice, and training in order to improve? Look no further than the fastest-growing group on X - it's the Kult of Kort'thalis.
