"There's No Place Like Home" - CHA'ALT Campaign 3.6

 

Ok, this doesn't have anything to do with this particular session, per se, but our family theater room is up and running again, and we kicked-off the new projector (last one died when the bulb burned out and fried some internal electronics) by watching Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2.  

That scene after the opening where they're fighting the abilisk and rip it open - the thick, effulgent chartreuse blood pouring out - that's basically zoth.  What the Old Ones have flowing inside their eldritch veins... not just them but their spawn and their spawn's spawn, and various servitor-entities such as the star-born sovereign, black-yoke vassals, and principalities of darkness who attend to their divine pleasure.  

The last time I watched the movie, I remarked on that, too, but I'd forgotten the scene and watching it again made me perk-up.  It's almost as if Cha'alt were slowly but surely coming to life right before my very eyes...

This session is brought to you by skin-of-our-ass-games!  As in, we nearly didn't get to play today, but just made it by the skin of our ass.

Three players - Bandersnatch the blue-suede sorcerer, Thurberus the v'smm priest and cult leader, along with the astonishing appearance of Botsterdomus the droid priest ladies' man, and prophet of the almighty algorithm.  

Yeah, no thief and no warrior - good luck, hoss!

After leveling-up Botsterdomus and the opening evocation, I flashed the PCs back to the beginning of last session where they placed the soft blue dream-crystal upon a boulder-sized chunk of stone masonry from the temple at the end and beginning of the universe.

Reminding everyone what happened at the end of last session with the RV and the crash of The Venturan into the desert, I described the twisted metal and black smoke wreckage of that colony ship where the PCs' adventures began.

They slowly drove along the length of the crash, murdering a guard they never liked, and just seeing what's going on.  Soon, they came to Bela'ak, a half-demon, half-dark elf sorcerer who I wanted to introduce from my GaryCon pre-gens.  That one Cha'alt session in particular stayed with me, and the parallels between the LOST style plane crash on the beach and the colony ship crash in the deep desert seemed apropos.

So, there he was - Bela'ak stabbing survivors of the wreck with a magical staff of obsidian-like flesh.  Each soul taken added another thorn - 7 thorns meant that his staff could blast a death-ray, but then the thorns would be gone and he'd have to start collecting souls all over again.  The staff's name was Nya'avenkshem, which means "seven souls cast into the pit of Hell."  

The dark-elf demon would say "Praise be to Yog-Soggoth!  His seven-lobed burning eye gazes into the unquiet void."  The PCs questioned him, and Bela'ak seemed nice enough.  He was looking to kill Thoth-A'amon, the sorcerer-priest who made his home in The Black Pyramid long ago because Thoth-A'amon had killed those dear to him.  Bela'ak, realizing the formidable nature of the adventurers and cognizant of the fact that they were on a mission from god, made a deal with them.  He would adventure with the party until Thoth-A'amon was dead.  After that, he'd give up his staff to the party and go his own way.

Bandersnatch read his aura and saw it was both dark and transparent.  Sure, you couldn't trust him farther than he could be thrown.  Nevertheless, Bela'ak wouldn't betray the PCs out of hand.  He was an honest villain.

BTW, I decided to break-out a set of dice that I'd never used before... this one's got more orange and some shimmery purple.  I felt like coming back from GaryCon, I just wanted something new to mark the occasion.  

The 6th thorn was acquired when Bela'ak stabbed yet another wounded crash victim with his staff.  The victim, with his dying breath, said "Nexus... the hive.  It must be destroyed!"

Moving on, the PCs encountered a tribe of primitive Zevateef wearing animal skins.  They were beating on an energy shield protecting 5 silver-skinned humanoids with colorful forehead crystals.  Their shield would give out soon by the way the wave patterns were fluctuating.  So, the PCs decided to wait it out to see what happens and possibly loot the bodies of the winners (whom they would surely murder).  

However, the silver-skinned dudes asked for help and pledged their loyalty to the cult of the dead and tentacled cow.  Botsterdomus lobbed a thermal detonator that went right into the central primitive's satchel.  They pretty much all died right away.

Oh yeah, there was a faction of Jurtwee throwing mud cakes and sand-balls at both factions.  A missile command spell made them scurry back to the recesses of The Venturan... or what's left of it.  One Jurtwee fell down from his perch and Bela'ak used him to gain the 7th and final thorn.

Moving on (with the silver-skinned humanoids following close behind - they were from the space station Liberator and so called themselves Libertarians), the PCs ventured inside The Venturan to see what could be salvaged.  Another small primitive but heavily mutated tribe was trying to get inside a locked door - hitting it with "the holy vessel" from the first adventure, which was revealed to be a plasma reactor core.  The PCs cautioned them not to smash the volatile power source into the metal door.

After investigation, no power was getting to the door, which is why it wouldn't open.  The mutants included a pink-skinned female with fish scales and 3 breasts.  Botsterdomus took her to a more secluded area where he laid his healing hands upon her and began "gleaming the cube" which, on Cha'alt, means running his pick-up artist game on her in order to achieve mutually beneficial sexual gratification.  

The sorcerer and priest waited patiently while listening to the moans of the pink girl.  Eventually, Botsterdomus came back to help with the door and they got it open - it was a theater room with Beta-Maxxx laser 8-track casette disk player - including 4 different Beta-Maxxx laser 8-track cassette disks that were clearly foreign imports, but still exactly what the cyber-surgeon Reznik wanted as payment for his digital services.  

The titles were... 

• Lucky Blonde Gets Her Fuck & Internally Jizz
• This Chick Named Ka'ara Has a Scandinavia Mature Babe in Her Pussy
• Edward Penisworm & Banana Vagina
• Womb Raiders of the Lost Lesbian Prophecy

Oh yeah, while they were waiting for Botsterdomus to finish, Thurberus inducted the rest of the mutants into his cult, and they promised to faithfully adventure with the PCs in exchange for a quarter of the loot found beyond that door.  Which means, this mutant tribe is now the proud owner of the Scandinavia porn diskette.

Before any further exploration could occur, Bandersnatch felt a disturbance in the magical fabric of the metaverse.  Putting his scrying crystal up to his head, he saw a cave containing a warrior wearing a badass helm and a sorcerer standing behind him.  Kurva'ak the warlord wanted his wizard to grab the mutants and their plasma reactor core, which is exactly what happened.  Becoming a giant, orange holographic head made of light, Kurva'ak told the PCs he was taking the mutants and their weapon of mass destruction (which was prophesied towards the end of last session by the Supreme Council of the Violet Alien Demon Worm).

With the mutants and their WMD gone in a plume of orange energy, the PCs were at a cross-roads - take off for the warlord's subterranean lair now, or continue to search the wreckage for valuables?  In the end, they chose the latter.  After all, they might find something that could help them fight - and at only half-strength, they probably wouldn't be able to defeat Kurva'ak, his wizard, and small army of men on their own.

Continuing on, they encountered the flying manta-ray scorpion that was still guarding the upper level.  This time, the PCs had weapons and experience.  So, they decided to slay the guardian and see what was up there.

It was a harrowing battle.  Thurberus was paralyzed for 5 rounds (I made a judgement call and decided that a paralyzed priest could potentially heal someone, but the other party would have to do most of the work, like pick up his paralyzed hands and lay them on him so all the priest would have to do is generate the energy or rather focus the energy generated by worshiping his god), Bandersnatch was knocked unconscious, Botsterdomus couldn't hit the broad-side of a barn-worm, and the NPCs weren't of much help, either.  Luckily, Bosterdomus did a fuchsia burn and scored a much-needed critical hit that crushed the manta-ray's skull.

Such a strange creature, the adventurers felt sure there was something to be harvested from it.  I had them each roll a d20.  Thurberus rolled a 1, but the other two rolled well and had heard rumors of draining the blood, treating it with zoth so it would become a sentient ooze - 2 gallons worth!

Due to the death-cult's priest crit-fail, I determined he was sure that putting the manta-ray-scorpion's nuts in his mouth would do something awesome.  So, that's what he did.  Looking like a squirl with bulging cheeks under his bronze (or is it gold?) v'smm mask, the others prepared the thing's blood.  Not wanting to waste the opportunity, I rolled the flavor random table in Chartreuse Shadows and got "pretzels," which made sense as we laughed at those salty manta-balls resting in Thurberus' mouth. 

Additionally, one of his cultists ran up to take a photo of the cult leader with his mouth full of salty, pretzel-flavored manta-balls.  "That's going in our cult newsletter - most likely the centerfold!"

Searching the upper-level, they found the armory.  I decided to give the players a chance to "win" weapons of war with the same dice rolls which had all but betrayed them in the previous battle.  I listed out what would have been there assuming a fully-stocked armory on The Venturan.  If they rolled a 16 on a d20, that item was still there.  Anything over a 16 meant that there was more than one, determined by how far over they got.

In the end, they found 2 stun-batons, 2 laser-swords, and I asked if they wanted me to roll (as I was due for something good, I thought, and they had been rolling so terribly).  This was the final roll with the biggest payoff!  They said yes, so I prepared the d20 for rolling, softly grinding it between my palms.  And then, I rolled a natural 20!  That means they found 5 (my math was wrong before... stupid math!) - yes, 5 - photon torpedoes.  Those things are, like, seven-fold more destructive than a thermal detonator.  Score!!!!!

Telling his remaining cultists to put their newly acquired weapons stash in the RV, the PCs had another decision to make as they looked out a window and saw a gigantic spider carrying a dozen Ka'alestinian jiha'ad fighters beyond the wall, heading for the crash - keep searching or go back.  In for a talon, out for a gold piece; they decided to push their luck.  The top of the punishment dome was cracked open with a rope already tied to some metal infrastructure so they could shimmy down.

They did, and soon rescued their crab friend from the first adventure.  Destroying the security droids with laser-swords and getting his inhibitor off, the crab followed the PCs onward.  

Next, they entered a weirdly angled five-walled room, each with a strange symbol upon it, and a blue sphere hanging mid-air in the room's center.  Meanwhile, a disembodied voice could be heard repeating two distinct sentences...

• "The black sphere leads to death."
• "This is the riddle of Tyr, the God-King of shadow dimension 11-A-437."

I won't reveal the secret of this room, except to say that Thurberus accidentally solved the puzzle almost immediately and then decided to merge spheres and that was a good end-point as we had 5 minutes remaining and I wanted more time to think through the ramifications of the sphere experiment being performed.  

Oh yeah, I rolled twice on the NPC detail table found in one of the Cha'alt books (this is for Bela'ak, since he's likely to be sticking around for awhile), and came up with sensitive hearing and magenta cat named Mistoffelees.

In the downtime, Bandersnatch wants to make that 2 gallons of sentient ooze into his familiar, which I thought was a fine idea.  

Ok, next session is in two weeks... Saturday, April 12th.  I'm awarding 2 more points of Divine Favor to Bandersnatch and Botsterdomus, and 3 to Thurberus for being such a good sport and going with it as those manta-ray scorpion testicles sat in his mouth.  How long were they in there, anyway?

Here are some amusing quotes from the session...

• "Part cassette, part disc... all laser."
• "All the zeroes have turned into ones." - that means a machine is horny in binary language (get ready for a non-consensual robot orgasm.  Surprise, motherfucker!).
• "Clear!" - the idea of someone using Thurberus' hands as electro-shock paddles in order to heal themselves while he was paralyzed.  Lol
• "Hey, Bela'ak.  Tell us about your hot-pink pussy." - referencing his magenta cat.
• "Say cheese, Thurberus.  Oh yeah, that's going in next month's issue."

I just found my notes from that GaryCon Alpha Blue / Cha'alt session which I couldn't find earlier when I was writing up my convention report.  So, I'll just put them here...

• "Grabba the Butt... he'll mess you up... butt-quick!"
• "Purple petrified sand from a worm massacre - tastes like cinnamon."
• "There'll be space Hell to pay."
• "You're playing with space fire."
• "Do androids have artificial souls?"

That's it.  Thanks for reading.  BTW, I have the VENGER CON IV games list (so far) on the landing page here.  Lots of great stuff, and I'm hoping to announce this year's Guest of Honor soon (tentacles crossed the stars align and that comes together)!!! 

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.  Grab your weekend badge for VENGER CON IV: Post-Modern Apocalypse!!!