We doubled last session's player-count, that brings us up to 4. The new player made it, and fit well within the group. He's a younger guy, and the son of a major player in the campaign. So, hopefully he'll stick around.
The PCs in this, our second session in the fourth year of our face-to-face Cha'alt campaign, are as follows...
Deacon Elijah Crane, human priest; pixie-fairy sorcerer Lanar Tinklefoot who gets high on his own fairy dust, and is always on the lookout for various creams; Ug the lizardtaur warrior who also believes himself to be a lawyer with his growing familiarity regarding the magic liar's book that always seems to accompany the airing of grievances; and a short-lived infernal-elf survivalist named Ta'al who is looking for his Dad, a demon, last known whereabouts... Hell.
First, we tackled XP from last session. I thought it would be edifying for the group to see how XP was awarded before ending with their own calculations when this session was over. Ug and Deacon went over the highs and lows of the previous session, which jogged our collective memory.
Then, I went over rumors the other two PCs had heard just before leaving A'agrybah...
- The King of A'agrybah, Agamen, is courting a lady demon named Channa. She is to be his guest at the upcoming festival called The Night of Too Many Tentacles.
- Channa was a liaison between the Infernal Descent and royal family of A'agrybah. It is assumed that she fell in love with King Agamen and for the last few month, the two have been seen together at various city functions.
- At the upcoming saba'ath, the city's priests will inoculate worshipers of the Great Old Ones with something that protects people from being enchanted by the New Gods. This is coming just in time as the arrival of a New God, Ephraim, has already drawn hundreds of followers from their faithful worship of Yog-Soggoth, Nyza'ag-Shud, and Igg-Yig-Yatha'ak. They say just one look at the New God brings men to their knees.
As we left off, Ug and Deacon were on the demon-side of the rainbow wall, waiting for the big battle to break out. Lanar and Ta'al were already on their own quest to find the infernal realm and some delicious Hell-cream. The two newcomers walked behind Deacon and Ug, surprising them, and then getting shushed so their wait-and-see hiding spot wouldn't get noticed.
After some rolls, the insect-demons outnumbered the Federation; however, their high-tech firepower was no match for the spiked-clubs and swords of the demon faction. After losing about half their number, the demon side fled into the further recesses of those caves.
Conferring with the Federation soldiers after the battle, Captain Frank was preparing to set thermal detonators at the narrowest points in tunnels connecting this area with the extended pathways. In the meantime, the PCs decided to explore what was right in front of them.
The first cave they came to was a red portal of swirling energy. A demon was passing into it as the PCs entered. Ta'al and Lanar went in while the others stayed put. Ta'al realized this was Hell and was probably his best chance to find his father. He headed towards obsidian spires as a Hell-worm barreled down upon him. Meanwhile, Lanar thought better of this plan and went back into the portal. Shortly after that, a pixie-fairy named Tinker (from the Communist dimension, allegedly) also exited the Hell portal.
Since Ta'al had completed his personal quest in record time, Tinker joined the adventurers and became the party's thief. So it goes...
The next cave showed a man doubled-over in pain with severe stomach cramps, holding a gilded scroll tube embossed with the royal seal. As the PCs approached, he told them of the Guild of Shadows (which he was a member of, and the PCs could see the shadow-glyph tattooed upon his forearm). His guild contact was named Vruta'as, a bartender at the Blue Banana. This guy, Preytus, mentioned something about a wet thing going down his throat when he was attacked in the middle of the night. He slew one of his attackers and wounded another. Then, took a scroll tube containing a page from the Dyaza'anine Prophecies, stole a sand-speeder, and fled into the desert to meet with his contact - a tangerine-elf named OJ that lived down here in this system of caves.
The PCs took the scroll tube as was offered by the dying man, and then he passed out... just before his stomach burst and two purple tentacles shot out of his abdomen, wrapping around Ug's neck and Deacon's torso. After a few hacks and slashes, the purple tentacles were defeated. Lanar grabbed his coin pouch, and Tinker searched the cave, finding a hole just big enough for a pixie-fairy. On the other side, he saw a trio of insect-demons planning a counter-strike on the Federation.
Looking at the scroll inside the tube, it was a prophecy stating that if A'agrybah's King married a demoness, the entire city will surely fall into ruin. A plan was soon hatched by the PCs - steal as much of the King's wealth as possible so the demon-bitch loses interest in him and possibly starts dating one of the PCs, instead. A bold strategy, Cotton.
Leaving the area, the PCs found another unexplored cave with seemingly nothing in it, except for some humanoid bones scattered around. Remembering the black skull suggestion-box, I asked the players to each write a suggestion of something they might want to see at some point later in the campaign, and picked one of the two suggestions that were in the black skull from last time - a lake of nacho cheese!
It seems that empty cave wasn't so empty after all. "These pretzels are making me thirsty," they heard before entering into a hidden passage leading down into an underground lake of molten yellow-orange deliciousness. On the edge of the nacho cheese lake were pretzel-people who danced around, waiting for someone to eat them. There was someone already down there partaking of the pretzel-people, but I don't think anyone talked to him. The PCs tried the pretzels on for size and realized they kept talking even when you were eating them, with their high-pitched voice and nothing better to do.
Enjoying themselves and taking some nacho cheese for later, they kept exploring. They found another cave containing several orange-furred man-apes wearing brown robes of a monk or nomad. Another portal - this time leading to the apes' home dimension. These ape-men were searching for crystals, and would trade them for slaves, but the PCs didn't want to part with their crystals and so traded knowledge of Nacho Lake with them for a small and scrawny humanoid wielding a bow and arrow named Flen (everyone seemed to get his name wrong, but how mad can you really get when you're already a slave... just shake it off and focus on the tasks you're given).
Many more caves were explored... one containing only three insect-demons but all of the PCs' initial attacks failed miserably so they passed it off as interpretive dance. There was some kind of grub-worm guarding the stairs down to the next level (bypassed for now). A cave with several more demons and an altar where a Federation soldier was tied-up. They splashed a basin of weird green liquid onto him and watched as the human soldier transformed into one of their kind (an insect-demon). After their trouble with the cave of 3 demons earlier, the PCs considered bypassing it, but then Flen shot an arrow into one of the demons and battle commenced. Lanar used a spell for the first time - fireball, and destroyed most of them, but then was wiped-out from casting. And there was another cave full of eggs, including a cave painting of a weird type of owl-bear. They took one egg for cooking, a second egg for keeping, and destroyed the others.
Eventually, they went back to the stairway going down. The sorcerer used ectoplasmic webbing on the grub-worm's mandibles as Tinker tried to befriend the creature. He rolled a natural 20, so I allowed him to make friends and mount the grub-worm.
Below, they encountered a woman who told them this was the place of the hollow cave where no gods, nor goddesses resided. In fact, religion was all but banned. However, that didn't stop her or her tribe from praising the elemental spirits for their protection and guidance. Then, she performed a ceremonial dance while reciting a poem about her bowel-movements.
After awhile, the PCs pushed on to find a tribal meeting where everyone was asked to write a Cha'altian ha'aiku, and the worst ha'aiku meant that you were going to be decapitated, cooked, and eaten by the rest of the tribe. I recorded the ha'aiku for posterity, here (including the one I hastily wrote for the party's NPC, Flen)...
Lanar
I must drink cream
to make dust
to snort off of a woman's butt
Deacon
Hippie cave freaks
Sing of shit
And blaspheme the Lords of Light
Ug
Tinker
Flen
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