Ok, this was another great session, and I hope another enjoyable session report. 4 PCs... Strum the human sorcerer, Bishop Elijah Crane the human cleric, Ug the lizardtaur warrior, and Tinker the hybrid thief / sorcerer pixie fairy.
From last session, the PCs emerged...
Purple Resurfacing
After many hours of the claustrophobic purple darkness that
became your world, you finally make it to the surface. Even before exiting, you saw the fuchsia sky
and squinted at the twin suns greeting you, along with the hot breeze. You can already feel your dry lips cracking
and instinctively go for your canteen, which is of course empty as you drank it
all during your exploration of the well-caves below the subterranean temple of
the purple priests.
The next thing you notice is the yelling and shouting and
movement and purple flashes of light and energy on the periphery of your
vision. Taking a look around, you assess
the chaos all around…
A much smaller number of Kha’alestinians wearing the purple
severed penis symbol of their New God faith are busy stabbing random
citizens. You make out about 15 of them.
Directly opposite is a squad of badass mercenary banana-men
and the raspberry fruitie that Crane summoned with his ivory scepter. The banana-men are armed with low-tech
firearms like rifles and machine guns.
There’s maybe 10 of them. They’re
firing on purple priests charging at them with a flame-thrower.
In the distance, though not distant enough for your liking,
is an amorphous translucent purple-glass alien demon worm that almost resembles
a purple tidal wave of gelatinous ichor between moments when it looks more like
a worm and others where it appears singularly demonic.
You can see where Kra’adumek emerged from the underground
temple of the priests. The whole area
looks demolished.
Purple priests who have climbed to the top of the golden
domed temple are crying out and making the sign of Kra’adumek, but the
purple-god-thing is not paying attention to them. It’s preoccupied with sloshing into hundreds
of citizens on the street as it absorbs them into its purple ichor.
Eventually, Kra’adumek amorphously moves towards the temple
and with a tentacle absorbs all the priests into itself as you can see their
flesh quickly melting away leaving only skeletons behind. Then, it smashes through the temple,
destroying it. It’s like Godzilla
tearing through Tokyo.
With pandemonium all around and so many options, what did the adventurers do? Crane sent his entourage of the faithful to help the banana-men and purple women, freeing them so they cannot be sacrificed to Kra'adumek, thus stymying his ever-growing power.
As Tinker began looting nearby vehicles ablaze and storefronts (he rolled well and found several pairs of fancy shoes, a vest made of midnight-elf skin, a ring of keys, and 6-pack of zima ice lemon-lime worm-wine. Also, a partially singed (from the fire) wig of blonde dreadlocks, and an peace-sign necklace that looked ridiculously huge on the wee pixie-fairy.
Meanwhile, the violet flame communicated telepathically with Crane, due to the glyph upon the priest's flesh. It told Crane that a way out was nearby. In the basement of a curio shop called Zimsa'alabim was an accessible portal to the purple labyrinth.
They entered the shop after disposing of three purple priests, one of whom scored a critical hit, plunging his dagger into Ug's jugular. Blood was flowing as the player marked off 11 points of damage. Ug critted himself, killing one and wounding the other enough to send him on his way. Tinker took care of the last by ramming him with his flying trident.
Inside the curio shop, they saw the shop owner gathering his most valuable possessions and two handfuls of purple talons before teleporting away. Three more rioters broke the front window and were about to do more damage with a molotov cocktail as Crane threatened that they'd easily be killed if they didn't leave right now. They skidaddled.
Before heading down, Tinker (who was flying as per usual) noticed something on a high shelf, towards the back and covered with dust. It was a jade ring with a 1.5-inch diameter. This, in fact, turned out to be the cockring of Senor Cha'ang Do'Urden. Upon concentrating, a holographic projection of the small Asian dark-elf man who conquered half of the subterranean kingdoms decades ago when he was at the height of his powers. "Looking for a little spare Cha'ang?" is just one of his frequent name-puns.
Taking the only other door to the basement, the violet flame told Crane to look for a book on one of the dusty bookshelves called Amazing Stories. The book had a false middle containing a vial of glowing purple sand. A sprinkle of that would open the portal to the purple labyrinth.
The Purple Labyrinth
Soon enough, they were wandering around purple corridors and weirdly shaped rooms. It's a bit like the backrooms, except purple instead of "mono-yellow."
After nearly a half-hour of getting lost in purple, they found several signposts that gave directions to A'agrybah, Kra'adumek, and Ja'alette. They were now back on track to finding what they were looking for in Ja'alette - Ta'ala who was the contact and handler of the bastard princess Lissa who was basically under house-arrest for her own protection in that matriarchal city-state due to her life being in constant danger.
The PCs sent all but Shinta'ak and Bento to the portal headed for A'agrybah, so they could go defend or at least check-out what was going on at Vromka'ad's Tower, the new Temple of the Lords of Light. That means 8 men-at-arms and 8 banana-men went forth to pursue their holy mission.
Just before reaching the portal for Ja'alette, Kaltha'alax (via his infernal-glyph) whispered to the priest that taking a hard-right would lead him to a powerful and dangerous demon that they really should kill for the betterment of Cha'alt.
In for a talon, in for a gold piece... the PCs headed for the demon. Crane concentrated on making himself visible as the violet flame glyph made him invisible to infernal beings. He faced-off against the demon as Tinker crept around his back. It was a cray-nax demon with three humanoid slaves he was taking back to Hell.
Ug leaned against the purple wall trying not to bleed all over the place, and failing (a purple goblin could be heard asking aloud where all this blood was coming from). Meanwhile, Strum cast mesmerizing magenta mist to subdue the slaves, just in case they had any ideas of protecting their demon master.
Tinker cast a spell, giving the priest Advantage as Crane scored a crit, and almost killed the demon outright. The thing about cray-nax demons is they can use nearby magic-user vitality to cast their own spells. The demon, on his turn, used the HP of one of the sorcerers to cast a purple fireball (I'm going to make it official, so remind me if I forget - all spells cast in the purple labyrinth manifest as purple-hued). It did a lot of damage, especially since everyone failed their saving throw, except for Strum who rolled a natural-20... no damage taken at all.
In fact, Ug and Tinker both died, their bodies turning to purple ash. Strum held his action to see if Crane would be victorious as he still had Tinker's enhancement spell working for him. He hit, but damage was minimal. However, the priest used one of his seven lavender demon-moon dice of destiny to up the damage enough to kill him (bringing Elijah Crane from 8 to 9 XP, enough to reach 5th level), thus taking his soul into the demon-slaying sword and bringing it up to a +8 weapon vs infernal creatures.
Strum knew enough about the purple labyrinth to drizzle zoth upon both their purple ashes, which restored them both (and with full health). Their new flesh each had a purple labyrinth-glyph, but they had no idea what that would do.
Strum was feeling exhilarated and nauseous from handling the zoth, as he remembered over-indulging not long ago. I have to hand it to Strum's player, his acting was so good that I asked him if he needed some ibuprofen for his physically strained condition. In time, he recovered and Ug mentioned the sorcerer was looking a little less chartreuse around the gills.
The party's main sorcerer also knew that wearing the flesh of a cray-nax demon allowed a sorcerer to borrow vitality remotely from nearby magic-users, just as the demon had. It takes about 3 or 4 days for the demon's flesh to dry out and become useless, so Tinker kept fingers and a penis inside his zima bottles of worm-wine, and wore the demonic back-flesh in order to use the cray-nax's power for a few days.
The now-freed slaves told the adventurers that the demon knew a shortcut to Hell, and it was near the treasure vault. Realizing the side-quest kept side-questing, but also knowing this might be their only opportunity, they walked toward the portal to Hell.
What did they see in that infernal realm? I pulled two suggestions from the Black Skull of Secrets, revealing there was three gangs of rock people, paper people, and scissors people all on the right. To the left were rotten fruit-folk who I deemed demon-fruities. Tinker used his crystals to power a spell that made the scissors and paper people attracted to each other, which basically eliminated both factions and then the rock people finished them off and went away.
For using the crystals, I had Tinker roll on the fuchsia side-effect table and it said fruities would challenge the sorcerer for supremacy of wherever they currently were. So, the fruities were drawn inside the portal and demanded the pixie-fairy fight them to see who controlled the purple labyrinth. It was a fight between the chess club and math league, as everyone missed. No one could land a blow. Eventually, Tinker cast another spell, reversing know languages so he could make the demon fruities not understand each other. Babbling and dejected, the demon fruit-folk began to wander the labyrinth.
I won't go into detail about their brief exploration of Hell, but I got to use one of my rock and lava maps as the PCs made a friend of this demon dog with a rainbow ear, and eventually scored the minor artifact they were seeking - Pa'azuk, which would allow its owner to know the thoughts of infernal beings around him.
Ug acquired a "fire stick" which is basically a wand of fireballs with 4 charges. Crane took possession of Pa'azuk as he could internally hear the celebration of all three demonic-based entities reunited; Pa'azuk creating the third and final infernal-glyph upon the priest's flesh.
Oh yeah, and Strum's player rolled 3d6 for some of his lightning wand damage and all three were 1s. That means a portal opens and a man holding a fish slapped Strum in the face. At least he got a point of Divine Favor out of it.
Brothel of Mistress Steel Kiss
It didn't take them long to head back to the portal, fight a big demon who was guarding the purple labyrinth entrance, and making their way, finally, to Ja'alette. They appeared back in the man-whore brothel which they had visited earlier in the campaign.
A bit of roleplaying later (Tinker donned the partially burned blonde dreadlock wig and pretended to be a woman in order to just get around and communicate with the denizens of Ja'alette), leading them to the gladiatorial vulva arena, past the uterine parthenon and cervical bank of Ja'alette, eventually to big momma's house of corrections where they located Ta'ala who told them the princess was hiding inside a magical pink gem that Ta'ala herself had given her after finding out that Ta'ala was about to be arrested for saying that non-slave men had their uses and letting a man titty-fuck her, which goes against their religious law.
That's where we ended it. The PCs need to find out who has possession of that pink gemstone so they can release Lissa and get her to the Crimson Rock of Sacrifice so she can perform a ritual that will restore her birthright and hopefully save A'agrybah from being taken over by demons.
I received a large miniature banana-man with some kind of firearm (and banana clip which several people noticed both at the table and online), and that became the visual focal point for the badass merc banana-men blowing ja'abronis away back in Kra'adumek gone wild.
This was the 10th session, which means we're close to the halfway mark. The PCs are either 4th or 5th level. The breakdown of experience points based on various personal benchmarks of the PCs as the campaign progresses is going well.
Next game should be Saturday, June 27th. We're getting nearer to VENGER CON V: The Will To Power!!!
While I'm excited to celebrate the occasion with a weekend of awesome gaming, I've made the decision that this will be the last convention. Attendance just isn't increasing. I assumed, as most conventions do, that it would keep going up and up, but it's dwindling. That's ok. One more thing off my plate will allow me to keep focusing on the other aspects of the hobby I love and continue to pursue.
Anyway, I vlogged about it here.
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!)!!
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