Another wild ride of a session that saw two distinct adventuring parties in parallel universes. Lots of threads got tied together, exposition fell out of people's butts, and hilarity ensued!
Yes, that's a real "Like A Fucking Boss" desk name-plate. It suits me and our Cha'alt game.
The "core 4" were in attendance... the half-orc warrior H'ork, Bandersnatch the blue-suede elf sorcerer, Thurberus the v'smm death-cult priest, and Tinker the pixie-fairy thief. I banged the gong, and let the starting notes of southern darkness and desolation from Danzig's "Black Hell" play as I voiced the Cha'alt intro. Now, it starts...
We began with the Purple Bastards in their purple Cha'alt dimension, except for the "normal" Bandersnatch who'd traded places with his dimension-brother last session. After discussing what had happened, H'ork wasn't sure about this new not-purple sorcerer. Realizing that his anti-purple bigotry might be a problem as the others wondered aloud just how much they could trust a stranger who looked and acted very much like their own Bandersnatch, but wasn't. The sorcerer thought about entering the purple labyrinth just to see if it was possible to switch back, then the PCs heard and saw thunderous lightning coming from a cave up ahead. That distracted them enough to temporarily put aside their reservations about adventuring with this non-purple "imposter."
Oh, I should also mention a few things before they checked-out that lightning storm cave - Bandersnatch (both of them) can nebulously feel the presence of the other. Not enough to communicate, but they're vaguely aware of their counterpart.
Another thing is Bandersnatch's turquoise helm. The gift he received from Cholak, the PCs' patron who turned out to betray them. It fractured during the fight with those giant slugs and broke apart when removed from the sorcerer's head. The helm's purpose was to focus magical energy of the wearer, but its final task was to nullify the poison in his veins.
Last of all, I told the players to come up with at least one difference between their normal characters and their purple counterparts - H'ork is 1/4th crustacean, feistier, more chaotic, and an anti-purple bigot. Bandersnatch has Tiny Danzig (see below), more chaos aligned with an eyepatch because one of his eyes was gouged in a knife fight. Thurberus' mask was made of a purple metal and is magnetic, his suicide cult is more of a cargo cult based on this shake-weight device he carries with him - do you practice the mystic arts of tantric shake-weightism?" Also, he's more benevolent. Tinker can turn into a 2-inch earthworm instead of a full-blown sandworm.
Tinker checked-out the cave and saw Kurva'ak's sorcerer in meditation upon a prayer rug, lightning buzzing all around him. Checking for traps, Tinker noticed a spherical shield of magic surrounding the sorcerer. Bandersnatch cast dispel magic on it, Tinker went to backstab, H'ork sliced off his hand, and Thurberus (being a kinder, gentler priest) used his golden shield to body-check the sorcerer into the cave wall as he was running away while complaining that now he's only got one hand to masturbate with.
Getting knocked-out and tied-up, the PCs questioned him. The sorcerer decided to switch sides and gave away the warlord's plan - Kurva'ak wants to use the plasma core to blow apart the gigantic stone doorway separating them from a Great Old One named Igg-Yig-Yatha'ak, also known as the dark effulgence. Kurva'ak has an amulet with an ultra-telluric glyph upon it that has been "activated" or "attuned" in order to control that ancient god. Although, the sorcerer (Zerlin) wasn't sure the ritual was correct - he was guestimating. But if the amulet didn't help Kurva'ak control the Old One, his fallback plan was to let it ravage the desert as he and his men plundered, raped, and pillaged the settlements and cities devastated by the ensuing chaos
The cave was criss-crossed with veins of ulfire, a rare Cha'alt mineral. Valuable stuff, if the PCs had a way of mining it. Bandersnatch got himself a wand of lighting with 11 charges. Zerlin was untied and stayed with the PCs in the background, in case his services were needed.
Moving on, they came to cave with deep jale cavities (another rare Cha'alt mineral) that somehow manifested a half-dozen dreamlike women of rare form. Kurva'ak's mistress was also there, but she was a bitch - telling the PCs that they looked like flunkies and her warlord master would kick their ass if they didn't fall in line. Both she and the PCs called for the guard who took Secra away, leaving the adventurers with the lovely dream women. One of them led Thurberus to a discrete cave towards the back. Luckily, Tinker flew behind at a distance to make sure the priest was alright.
Turns out, he wasn't. That dream woman's skin hardened, cracked, and opened - revealing a slimy green humanoid thing underneath with tendrils that attached themselves to Thurberus and almost sucked the life out of him. Tinker slashed at the tendrils, waking the priest up so he could take out his blaster and send that green slime thing back to Hell.
Meanwhile, Bandersnatch and H'ork were watching the other girls put on a show... until Tinker ruined it with the unfortunate revelation that these girls were not what they seemed to be. H'ork dispatched one or two and the rest fled.
Next, the PCs came to the main cave where Kurva'ak and his 9 minions were about to remotely trigger the plasma core to destroy the transdimensional door in the middle of the cave. Bandersnatch used his psionic ability to disrupt the timing device. That means someone would have to set it off by pushing the button themselves. Bandersnatch himself volunteered, planning on tricking the warlord.
But the warlord anticipated that and sent one of his men to spy on the PCs as they left the cave system. Sure enough, the PCs turned the plasma core off and placed it in the purple labyrinth as they said hi to their musician friend who'd finished with Purple African Child and was still working on Purple Haze With A Bit More Purple In It.
Once the spy saw this and told Kurva'ak, they came back to face these intruders. As the feat implied, H'ork mowed them down with his sword. "With a rebel yell," H'ork charged the warlord's minions. That, of course, led to someone mentioning the Billy Idol song, and then I found it on YouTube and played it during the fight, but not before H'ork's player asking me if mauve was a type of purple, and I said it was. "With a rebel yell... she cried mauve, mauve mauve! In the midnight hour... she cried mauve, mauve, mauve - mauve, mauve, mauve!"
Maybe you had to be there, but I laughed long and hard over that one, awarding him a purple stone for Divine Favor - why is it purple, rather than fuchsia, and what does that mean? Well, as I'm thinking about it now, something purple will happen when he spends that point of Divine Favor. Only time will tell exactly what's in store...
Also, purple-Bandersnatch named his little demon familiar Tiny Danzig, which also warranted Divine Favor, in my opinion.
Then it was time for a duel - just Kurva'ak vs the half-orc warrior. Each hit for ridiculous amounts of damage - Kurva'ak had a sword of ulfire and another forged with jale and used them both against H'ork. As the ultra-telluric blade's damage is tumescent, whenever Divine Favor was used, I allowed the player to role the potential future die (usually a d8) for additional exploding damage. The half-orc was down to single-digit HP when his final massive strike decapitated the warlord.
Taking the amulet, they were still discussing what to do next when I thought this the appropriate time to pause the timeline happening in the purple dimension. Restarting with the Crimson Bastards + purple-Snatch, the PCs realized they'd be much stronger if they got Ura'az-Vethun back from Simon... and then kill Simon because he's a dick and WAY too powerful to let him be.
They drove the RV for a couple hours before running into Karl, holding up a sign that said, "Hey, I'm Karl." As the lore dictates, Karl was cloned many times over years ago and there's quite a few of them all over the place. Asking Karl to pay with gas, grass, or ass, Karl started unbuttoning his pants when they told him to stop. Their hitch-hiker friend talked about his dismal return on investment from a lemonade stand. He didn't have any lemons or water, but didn't think that was a big enough hurdle to stop him. Given the PCs' advice, Karl decided to acquire some lemons, feed them to a sandworm and get lemon-flavored worm wine, instead.
But it turns out, Karl had pipe-weed with him, he just thought the adventurers were talking about ordinary green grass. Apparently, something strange happened with the cloning process when Karl stepped inside the booth. It cloned a thousand of him, but they're all kind of dumbasses.
The additional 6 hours of driving went by quickly as the PCs passed-out and woke up right outside The Black Pyramid. Upon entering, they read the circular room's parchment under glass - which I've read dozens of times over the last six years, and has prompted me to come up with a new one for the next time adventurers traverse The Black Pyramid... maybe it varies by dimension?
BTW, Tinker's player who's newest to the gaming group had never heard the spiel before, and I found his commentary after I'd finished reading to be priceless. He said, "At no time during that entire thing did I know what was going to come next."
In any case, they followed what they believed to be sand tracks up to a black triangular room. And wouldn't you know, but a strangely color-shaped entity floated above the floor. Tossing stones and blasting holes into it only created windows into forever. The PCs gazed into it until they saw ultra-telluric glyphs (the encounter literally states that staring at it might impart ultra-telluric knowledge, so I took that, of course, as part of the prophecy).
They learned that the ultra-telluric glyphs needed a special "translation activator and ritual" in order to use them, and that each glyph corresponded to a specific Great Old One (fun for the whole family, collect them all!). Once the PCs had absorbed enough exposition, they noticed a secondary exit - a black portal that shone with some of the kaleidoscopic tones from the entity. Believing that to be a better option than the standard door, they proceeded through the black portal.
They came to a black room with a coral-skinned elf with webbed hands and feet laying in the corner of the room, gutted like a fish. The elf's blood pooled around him, quietly coagulating. At the opposite corner was a banana-man rocking back and forth. Upon approach, the banana-man (named Shento) told the PCs about the handsome man wearing beige robes who attacked and killed him, saying something about revenge.
When the PCs responded with conversation rather than violence, the banana-man opened up about what else he'd heard Simon monolog before the bloodshed started (though, Shento still doesn't know why he took revenge upon the coral-skinned elf). Apparently, Simon is neither a New God nor one of their avatars. He is, instead, a 16-year old who stole thousands of dollars from his parents to bribe a tech guy who used to work at the company that developed Cha'alt: The Immersive Computer Virtual Reality Game to make him the most OP, badass character on the entire server.
Before leaving to go to another room with the banana-man as "carrier of unnecessary items" or junk-humper, H'ork wanted to taste Shento's ripeness. He ate his banana middle-finger knowing that for the next few weeks or even months, whenever he ate or drank something, it would have a banana under-taste. Since the half-orc warrior loved bananas, he went ahead with it. And lo, it was delicious.
In the next shiny, smooth, irregular, black room was a black trapezoidal altar at its center. Driven into the altar was the magic sword they were looking for - Ura'az-Vethun, ablaze with golden flame. A lone humanoid stood not 5-feet away, holding his arms in front of him. The humanoid appeared to be a gilded statue. Naturally, the PCs feared touching the sword.
As they were deciding what to do - whether it would be worth risking the life of an NPC to see if touching the sword surrounded by gold flame - a flash of outrageously puce light startled them as a small group of humanoids fell out of a portal. These humanoids were very animated, agitated, and with a distinctly puce glaze.
It wasn't until they started giving the PCs direction that the Crimson Bastards realized the puce-hued individuals were themselves from yet another dimension. "We don't have long to talk, so quickly tell us where you are in your timeline?"
After a smart remark by Tinker (I believe he asked what was currently happening in their timeline), The Puce Bastards told them about The Hive - Nexus, destabilization of the Federation, and a banana-shaped dildo shortage on Alpha Blue. There wasn't a moment to lose, apparently, because the fate of the galaxy was in their hands - having mostly to do with the banana dildo thing.
Before leaving for their puce dimension... puchsia, is that a thing? Hmm... Anyway, before leaving they told the PCs not to touch the golden flame, and they should go to The Museum within The Black Pyramid and look for a special hammer that could defeat Simon.
Vanishing from sight, but not before asking where they could find the museum, the PCs headed down more rooms, quickly moving through a room full of precog judges accusing a man of trading away an access crystal. Eventually, they came to Thoth-A'amon. In this room, he was being attended by a variety of servants and the place was full of hangers-on, clout seekers, sycophants, and cultists - Thurberus, eat your heart out!
Thoth-A'amon, of course, was the revenge target of the half dark-elf, half demon NPC Bela'ak whom they met a few sessions back. Bela'ak asked the PCs to create a diversion. The PCs were all too happy to distract the folks inside this room and Bela'ak, lavender light dancing in his eyes, slowly made his way up to the sorcerer-priest who rules this ocho... docho? Yes, Docho, or 8-room realm or domain - could be 7 or 9, but traditionally 8, and routinely these Docho are used for immersive and hardcore training, learning, and military campaigns. Yeah, I just made that shit up, FYI, but it sounds cool so that's a thing now.
I gave Bela'ak Advantage on his attack roll with the obsidian magical staff because he'd been waiting for this moment for a long time. And if he failed, I also planned on the dark-elf demon using his one-time (for certain, special NPCs) lavender demon-moon die of destiny to finish Thoth-A'amon off. Turns out, I didn't need any of that. My first roll was a natural-20. Bela'ak got real close and said something like, "Thoth-A'amon, you killed those dear to me, and now I shall have my revenge - say 'ello to my little fren!"
Bela'ak blasted him center mass and Thoth-A'amon went up in flame and moments later that fire died to reveal nothing but ashes. Having completed his chief objective, Bela'ak gave his obsidian staff away to Bandersnatch.
I can't quite recall if we ended the session there or if they made it to the museum and then ended it. Either way, that was it for the night.
Saturday, May 10th is our next session. It's the day before Mother's Day, so hopefully that won't conflict with our gaming schedule. Thanks for reading - I love comments, so comment, y'all!
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 Peterson will be joining us as VENGER CON's Guest of Honor). Grab your weekend badge for VENGER CON IV: Post-Modern Apocalypse!!!