Do Crayons Have Angry Souls? [CHA'ALT campaign, episode 15]

 

Another session, another chance to caress the true reality of tentacles, blood, and slimy openings beneath this matrix veneer of what we wrongfully assume must be legit...

This entire session took place in Carcosa.  One of my goals was to make this world feel distinct, and I think I accomplished that.  We had the core-four + a special guest player, a friend of one of the players who lives next door to him and is about to finalize his divorce.  One of the benefits of unmarriage-ing is being able to do things like this, so we were glad to have him.  If his work schedule permits, he'll be joining us again.  He travels a lot, so it shall be up to the Gods themselves. 

Because we didn't know if he'd be returning anytime soon, I commented that he was like a special guest star that the showrunner would like to make a recurring role, but the show probably couldn't afford.  Like if Land of the Lost was able to snag Ernest Borgnine for one glorious episode!

Before I forget, we decided to do the session number roll thing again.  Since this was the 15th session, anyone rolling a natural 15 would get a critical-success (including me).

We left off with the PCs, Drogon the human sorcerer, Nix the demon-clown thief, Jua'an the crystalline warrior, and Gorra the grog priest, foraging for spam and tang on the crashed starship.  Having ate, drank, and rested, they began to explore the rest of the ship.  

Weapons locker - empty.  Stasis room - dark, but Drogon fiddled with the keypad and got it open, only to find a solitary human frozen in time, and about to punch someone.  Moments later, he was mobile again... alive.  He asked who the 4 humanoids were, not recognizing them.  Jua'an claimed they were part of the maintenance crew.  Gorra said that he was that dude from the future.  After introducing himself as Quin, he ran out of there, heading for the bridge.

Eventually, they connected, along with another crew member who survived the shining tetrahedron in the sky, and watched a hologram asking for help.  Apparently, there was a ship damaged and being chased by the Koda'an armada that went through a wormhole and made emergency landing on this planet, Carcosa.  

The ship they were currently in was a rescue ship sent after the first ship.  Unfortunately, something happened in orbit, knocking the ship out of the upper atmosphere, causing it to crash here.

The sky was a dim, dusky purple, a t-rex could be seen some distance away, along with the Nameless Plateau up ahead.  Just then, the surviving crew member the PCs found who was scared shitless of the shining tetrahedron thought he heard it coming and hid under the captain's chair.  Moments later, the floating pyramid disintegrated a 5' x 7' chunk of starship ceiling as it passed overhead.  Going outside, they could see it was moving away.  Now, they believed, was their chance to explore.

The PCs knew why they were here on Carcosa - find the sorcerer atop the Nameless Plateau and convince him to open a gateway to Quorta'ath, where the super-weapon resided that could defeat Isa'ac back on Cha'alt.  Quin just wanted to get off this planet, which was motivation enough for traveling with the Crimson Bastards.

They reached the plateau without any problems.  Nix checked it out first before the others joined.  A green-man sorcerer had 5 purple-men tied to 5 standing stones, and a wicked-looking curved dagger in his hand.  The PCs approached and told them what they wanted.  The sorcerer replied with what he needed from them in order to create a portal to Quorta'ath, which he'd done before.  He needed 2 more purple-men for sacrifice and his favorite concubine who was stolen from him several days ago, now in the hands of the purple-men chief.  They live in a cave about a half-day's journey from here.

Believing that sounded like a fair trade, the PCs set off with a crude map drawn in blood.  Before descending the plateau, the adventurers watched as the sorcerer, Irro, slit the purple-men throats, spattered their blood upon the stone monoliths, and invoked Tsathoggua with strange words and silly walks.

There were 3 hazards on the way to the purple-men cave.  The first was a t-rex menacing 2 orange-men.  Drogon attempted to fireball the dinosaur, but his spell backfired.  He decided to stimulate a Cha'alt X-Card, which we explained to the new guy - anytime a player wants, he can grab one of eight cards that promote a certain aspect of the campaign, of Cha'alt... eldritch, gonzo, science-fantasy, post-apocalypse, humor, sleaze, pop-culture, and grindhouse exploitation.

Drogon's player chose humor, and had an idea about the t-rex's gas igniting the magical flame.  While we made the assumption that such a thing might have also taken place, an idea - a very Carcosan idea - suddenly came to me and I went for it.  The orange men, who were both hiding among a cluster of boulders, saw the sorcerer using his magic to take down the dinosaur.  One of them decided to aid his casting by taking out a dagger and stabbing his orange-man companion.  Sure enough, the humanoid sacrifice boosted Drogon's magic, and the t-rex ran away from the sorcerer's burst of flame.

Gorra attempted to lay on hands and save the orange-man's life, which he did.  Both orange-men were grateful and pledged their lives to Drogon, Gorra, and to the adventuring party.  All this prompted the PCs to ask themselves why magic in Carcosa is fueled by ritual murder.  The prevailing theory, posited by Jua'an, was that these crayon-colored people must have angry souls and releasing that energy somehow powered sorcery.

A few of the PCs wondered aloud what was going on in this world, which led to the angry soul theory.  Quin speculated that the shining tetrahedron, seemingly separate from the Old Ones, might be keeping the inhabitants of Carcosa in an artificially barbaric state - monitoring from the sky and disintegrating forms of high-technology, etc.

Continuing on, the PCs stumbled upon the outskirts of a green-man village.  Three women were picking berries and putting them into wicker baskets.  These startled gatherers didn't run away, but offered the adventurers berries.  The PCs began to flirt with such stellar game as "Hey, ladies..." and "How you doin?"

I made everyone roll to see how well their seduction worked.  Quin, Jua'an, and Nix (I believe) were the lucky recipients.  Heading over to nearby shrubberies to engage in amorous activity.  Upon nutting their way to the sleaze factor-5, they continued on.

The purple-men cave in sight, they saw 500' of putrescent pits containing pools of a strange liquid that appeared colorless, then suddenly iridescent mauve, puce, and some kind of beige that glowed unnaturally.  Jua'an threw some sand into a pool.  It sizzled and bubbled.  Best to stay away.  By the time they reached the cave, they were attacked by a putrescent lurker.  It devoured Taz in one round as Quin blasted it with his makeshift plasma splicer.

Oh yeah, Quin was a level 4 mechanic and gizmo-engineer who knew his way around a blaster.

Just inside the cave, they heard stuff, so Nix went in to see what was what.  He noticed a smaller, weaker purple-man about to be killed by two muscular purple guards.  Nix blasted the guards, saving the smaller one who was named Tor.  Like the orange-men before, Tor felt duty-bound to serve Nix and the party for the rest of his days.

Since Tor lived in the purple-men village, the PCs used the guy to show them around.  He found them black robes, like gender-neutral berkas, which non-purple humanoids were supposed to wear inside their village.  

When someone asked why Tor was being persecuted, he replied "I dared suggest that numbers may exist above and beyond 37."

Tor gave them a guided tour of savagery as the PCs saw the executing of rival tribesman captured in the last raid, women being sexually aroused by tentacled horrors whose teeth had been removed (in preparation for the nightly tribe orgy), and priests doing mysterious things down a far-off cave.

Eventually, they came to the chief's personal cave.  He was out on tribe business, but there were 2 guards preventing them from entering.  The PCs, especially Jua'an, dazzled them with tantalizing tales of H.R. departments, 401 K plans, fancy new uniforms, paid time-off, dental, and they'd actually get paid... eventually.  All this if they would stop working for the purple-men chief and join the Crimson Bastard workforce.  The guards agreed, and let the PCs in.

They saw 3 women, lounging in the chief's sleeping cave.  One was only purple because the tribe had dyed her skin that color.  Irro's favorite concubine didn't really want to go back to him, as the green-man sorcerer liked to engorge him member with bile from the nigrescent crab, which doubled his size and potency, but also frequently gave her yeast infections.

While all this discussion was going on, Jua'an assumed there must be treasure around the chief's cave and started searching.  He rolled a 15(!), finding a massive, obsidian sword with an eldritch eye where the blade meets the hilt... along with an infernal sheath that resembled a bright orange-cracked rock of volcanos near bursting with hot lava.  Both of these were magical.

However, the PCs convinced her [I don't think I gave her a name, so I'll call her Jaura] that once she was delivered to Irro and he opened the gate to Quorta'ath, they would be able to abscond with her through the portal, so she'd never have to submit to the crayon-folk ever again.  She agreed, so off they went.

On the way out, they heard agonizing screams interspersed with colorful albeit disjoined prose coming from the priest cave. The party was divided on if they should investigate.  They split the party to see what was going on.  Briefly, several humanoids were being tortured by the priests who were drinking the milk of rancid moon-lotus which gave them visions.  The words between screams were used as prompts to direct the priest's visions as they wrote down what they experienced.  And those experiences would eventually become both lore and law for the purple-man tribe. 

Killing the priests, freeing the prisoners, and telling them to drink the rancid milk of the moon lotus because now they were the lore-givers, the PCs fled the cave in hopes of making a speedy dash out of these caves and back to the Nameless Plateau.  Rejoining their companions, the adventurers reached the cave mouth from whence they came.  However, it was blocked by 4 purple-men guards and a gigantic toad spawn with a thousand eyes.  The PCs would have to fight their way out!

Oh yeah, before leaving that cave where torture poetry was born (there's a Taylor Swift joke in there somewhere - find it and gain a point of Divine Favor), Gorra sipped some of the rancid milk from a moon lotus.  Nothing happened for several minutes - and you know what that means - when the effect does come, it's probably going to be a doozy!

Just prior to facing the enemy at the cave mouth, I passed a note to the sand-construct's player - "You see a purple portal in front of you... several purple tentacles beckon you inwards."  Gorra went in.

As combat commenced, Tor advised that energy weapons would be useless on the toad creature, and that Jua'an's new blade was known as the sword of the conqueror.  So, Jua'an hacked away at it, the others blasted the guards, the orange-men climbed on top of the horrid spawn punching it from above.  Nix tried to backstab the giant toad, but missed (as he would continue to miss - but thankfully the toad also kept missing him).

I passed another note to Gorra's player, "You've been having sex with purple tentacled whores for days and then exit the portal where only a few minutes have passed."  With his +5 bonus in hand, he charged into battle.

The toad scored a crit when I rolled a 15 on the attack for Quin.  He would have been at zero, if not for the +5 hit-point bonus for laying with that sexy green chick.  Meanwhile, Drogon believed his sorcery was doomed without human sacrifice, so stopped short of blasting it with a fireball.

Jua'an was the only one doing lots of damage to the creature; although, Quin had an outside-the-box idea of shooting the cavern ceiling.  His first attempt failed, but the second time he rolled a 15 and a stalactite fell down, impaling the sucker from above.  But it wasn't dead yet.  More hacking, guards coming from the rear which Drogon blasted to keep them at bay... one of the orange-men was eaten by the toad-spawn but the other landed the killing blow - punching it through an eye-socket that must have reached its brain... or better yet, putting his entire weight upon the fallen stalactite that impaled its skull.

With that, they were finally able to leave the purple-men caves towards the plateau.  That's where I decided to end things because time was up, and all the major events of the session head been dealt with.  

A number of hilarious and/or poignant things said during the game...

• "What's your 5-year goal?  Lol, what am I talking about - this is Carcosa!  Ok, what's your 5-week goal?"
• "Are you a God?"
• "Do crayons have angry souls?"
• "Roll for butt stuff."
• "The government shall be one man and he decides who they'll go to war with."
• "The softer side of murder-hobos."
• "This is my journey of discovery."
• "Red shirt or stormtrooper - who will the monster go after first?"
• "Save a life, get a free slave!"
• "If this is the best they've got, in 6 months we'll be running this place."
• "I don't know what you guys are playing, but it's not D&D.  This is the craziest campaign I've ever seen."
• "It's like Inception meets Star Gate."
• "Was the purple tentacles, whores, and sex even real?"  "Well, It sure felt real to you."

A day or two before session 15 of the Cha'alt campaign, I ran a virtual, one-shot Cha'alt scenario on Roll20.  I'm waiting until I get another Roll20 one-shot under my belt (most likely Thursday) before I do a session report write-up of that.

Thanks for reading, hoss!

VS

p.s. Want to find out for yourself what it's like to live in an absurd and awesome wet fever-dream of savagery, super-science, and sorcery?  Experience the magic for yourself.  Next month is VENGER CON III: Revenge of the OSR.  If you don't have your weekend badge yet, get it here!  Need the gorgeous hardcover Cha'alt trilogy?  Here you go!