After a long break, due to the festivities at GaryCon, we resumed our face-to-face Cha'alt campaign. This is the 5th session of year 4.
We had 4 players... Strum the human sorcerer, Deacon Elijah Crane (priest), Ug the lizardtaur warrior, and Eldrad the blind v'symm warrior searching for his 7 eyes (I have a feeling that the player will be keeping that character, but that's for him to decide).
Oh yeah, if you want to attend VENGER CON V: The Will To Power this July in Madison, WI... now's the time to grab your weekend badge!!! You won't want to miss the most hardcore RPG con of the year.
The adventurers were trying to make their way out of the tunnels and caves so they can arrive in A'agrybah in time for the Night of Too Many Tentacles party and the saba'ath the following evening.
Right out of the gate, something was whispering to Eldrad. Though everyone in the party could hear it. Eldrad went to investigate only to find an Easter egg. Full of something, he took it with him.
The following cave contained 9 insect demons worshiping a golden pylon where the door was fluctuating between open and closed on account of the tetrahedral green crystal above the door being off-kilter. Using a zoth-fueled fireball, Strum roasted them alive.
Ug used Orin his curious sword possessed by the essence of Venger Satanis to hold the door open until they could gain entry, fiddle with the matrix table full of multi-colored crystals (to no avail), and Ug reached his arm out to rotate the crystal - which he did successfully.
More crystal fiddling transported them to a purple jungle. They got out to explore. Ug climbed a tree and saw the top of a giant head while Eldrad reached out with his sonar-senses, locating a survey team nearby. The PCs sought them out and discovered this team was looking for a fuel source in order to get their starship flying again.
The two groups decided to join forces before encountering a purple crystalline baby doll head hovering in the air named Perplexo, believing something interesting and/or useful would be in or around the top of that giant head.
After some back-and-forth discussion between the PCs, the scifi survey team, and Perplexo, the adventurers reasoned that purple baby doll head was some kind of artificial intelligence, even though he proclaimed that his intelligence was organic and not artificial. Perplexo wanted to find a hatch leading to the subterranean depths of this island, where he could reprogram the underground computers to prevent some sort of disaster involving candy eating the planet.
Did the PCs try to kill Perplexo? Yes, they tried. Unfortunately for them, he had a purple force-shield that prevented any of their blows from landing.
Regardless, all three groups made their way through the purple jungle to what turned out to be a gigantic, metallic, deep-purple sphinx. Eventually, the PCs found their way inside by putting a couple of swords into the same hole, thus leveraging the main blast-door at the front.
At this time, the Easter egg was hatching and an Easter-worm wriggled out and slithered into the jungle. Eldrad fared him well, believing the worm would find a new home on this purple island.
Inside was just a bunch of techno mumbo-jumbo clutter and junk. Everyone searched for awhile, but the only thing of interest was a hatch in the floor. By this time, Ug and Perplexo failed to see eye-to-eye. Each one accused the other of insult and passive-aggressive hostility. Ug sat on the hatch until the others bade him walk it off.
There was a metal ladder going down, so down they went (one of the surveyers, Daniel-Day Lewis, stayed topside to guard the hatch, just in case). they walked down a long hallway that turned once or twice before leading to a massive cavern (with several smaller tunnels going elsewhere). This big cave was inhabited with at least 35 purple-skinned primitive humanoids. These purple-folk allowed Perplexo to waltz right in and access a computer terminal on a cave wall.
This cave also had purple crystals embedded into them, big ones that could easily fuel the survey team's starship. But the natives didn't like that idea, not that anyone could understand their "Ooga booga" language. Eldrad used his empathy ability to make friends with the biggest and baddest of the purple warriors in their tribe. That allowed him and the others to walk freely, looking over Perplexo's shoulder to see what he was doing. The screen flashed all sorts of numbers, phrases, and symbols.
In the end, the friendship between Eldrad and Ock! could not prevent violence from breaking out. Strum used the zoth to fuel a wish spell to blast all of them to handfuls of purple sand. He did. In the wake of this devastation, several weird magical side-effects transpired, eventually leading to an ice wizard forcing the PCs to either fight each other or his ice golem (eventually, they killed it). That was a black skull suggestion that I pulled out, which got me to thinking, our last session of the campaign (year 4, anyway, should be influenced by just continually pulling unused suggestions out of the black skull).
Checking on Perplexo, he was successful. The way he protected planet 109 from being eaten by candy was to blow up the island. Everyone had approximately one-thousand seconds to leave.
Believing he was on a roll, Strum once again oiled the strings of his ukulele with zoth and teleported everyone back. The survey team was back on their ship, with the purple crystal, and the PCs arrived back at that cave on Cha'alt, but without their pylon. Elijah cursed his luck to be once again stuck on Cha'alt. Just as the portal was closing, Eldrad heard an empathy-laden cry from Daniel-Day Lewis as he screamed "God no, the candy!"
Before leaving the cave system altogether, the adventurers overheard a conversation between a human and elf. They talked about how beautiful and alluring Cha'alt women were - especially King Agamen's former wife (he's a widow, now). Even he couldn't keep it in his pants and thus a bastard princess was born about 19 years ago. They surmised she must be hiding (rumored to have found sanctuary in Ja'alette, the city-state matriarchy), and it was wise to do so as the demoness Channa, who currently had the King's wandering tentacle, would surely have her killed in order to prevent anything from coming between herself and the royal power of A'agrybah... as several prophecies have stated, A'agrybah will soon fall.
The PCs introduced themselves, asked if they could share the Cha'altian weed the pair had, and in exchange, Strum gave them each a magical Leprechaun skittle from a session or two back.
Soon enough, the adventurers found themselves back in A'agrybah. After a good night's rest and hearty meal, they walked the streets in the direction of the palace as this evening was the Night of Too Many Tentacles.
They ran into their old cantina boss who was catering the event in the palace garden. He pointed out 3 faces that the PCs should probably acquaint themselves with - the Federation Archbishop who was Elijah's superior, Zarsden an affable noble, and the royal vizier.
Long story short on the last two... Zarsden asked the PCs to retrieve a demon killing blade called Kaltha'alax located in a tower between here and Ja'alette. The vizier took the PCs to the Yog-Soggoth temple and in the basement was a library full of sacred tomes. All of them paled by comparison to the one and only Necronomicon. The vizier shed them proof that demons were alien to Cha'alt, invited by the snake-men to the planet from the lavender moons which they infested thousands of years ago.
One day, it is written, demons will again take hold of Cha'alt's surface and make humans and elves slaves. To prevent Channa from seducing the King and destroying A'agrybah, the vizier promised them each a templar-knighthood and as much gold as they can carry if they journey to Ja'alette, meet with his contact (Ta'ala), escort Princess Lissa to the Crimson Rock of Sacrifice, and make sure she bears her mark of Yog-Soggoth to claim her royal birthright. Easy-peasy!
The big shock, however, was Elijah Crane's one-on-one with the Archbishop. It turns out that the Federation recently had an election, and a new administration just came in. All connection between the Federation and the one true church of the Lords of Light was now terminated. The Archbishop told Deacon Crane he has two choices. Give up the priesthood and sit behind a desk in some bureaucratic office somewhere in space, or preach on his own, independent of the Federation, continue to live on Cha'alt and "go native" for lack of a better phrase.
Elijah picked the latter, and his companions welcomed him to a life of crazy adventures on Cha'alt. Oh yeah, and Eldrad acquired a monstrous eye, one of seven empty sockets, knowing full well that something wild would come out of this gambit.
The session ended with the PCs tagging along to the noble Zarsden's afterparty where there were many, many naked women in a pleasure-giving mood.
Session 5 is a good place to introduce a world-altering event into your campaign setting. With the Federation chucking religion, there's bound to be a lot of fallout and unintended consequences. Speaking of which, using all that zoth to fuel a sorcerer's spells will not go unnoticed by the Dark Gods. Let's see what zoth-mania and zoth-withrawl looks like in session 6. ;)
Thanks for reading, hoss!
VS
p.s. Yes, weekend badges are now available for July 2026's VENGER CON V: The Will To Power. 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. Want the hardcover Cha'alt trilogy? Here's how (and they're currently on sale!)!!
