Rumors / Facts:
• purple sun drains energy, which can be avoided by mushroom milk • the planet is devoid of plant life, except for mushrooms • white round (Resta) puffball mushrooms release a blinding cloud • tall, tiger-striped mushrooms (Viscuson) with woody stalk provide mushroom milk • greenstone shards can power relics and artifacts, but then are consumed • underkith stated that there may be large quantities of greenstone shards or gems underground • Tio-Lizzix seems to stay alive by eating the fruit of a plant that grows out of corpses • Raiders come to the purple planet to look for mushrooms and greenstones • Other raiders claim that the name Tio-Lizzix belongs to a legendary warrior • Tio-Lizzix claims that he is that Tio-Lizzix • Kith consider non-kith to be subhuman, but the definition of non-kith is loose • Kith believe that he who gives the killing blow has the right to loot the body • They also believe that their fallen foes must be consumed or they will return as ghosts • Kith bury their champions in tombs in the Ancestor Peaks; non-champions are placed on cairns and fed to the lizard-birds • The two biggest kith houses are Reagen'Tor and Cotcyst ○ Cotcyst: militaristic, organised, totalitarian ○ Reagen'Tor: disorganised, chaotic • The Black Redoubt is legendary in kith myth; he who controls the fortress controls a main passage into the Ancestor Peaks, but no one has succeeded • The Ghost River of Varnasu is the legend of a thrashing, violent river that flows uphill from the wastelands into the Ancestor Peaks
At a raging house party in Toronto, someone drunkenly throws some tinfoil in the microwave and turns it on. ZAP! Everyone vanishes in a flash and a puff of smoke.
#84C: Escape from the Purple Planet
They awaken to find themselves plopped into various bodies, supplanting any previous consciousness (but retaining some knowledge), all chained up together. They escape, finding shoddy weapons, and emerging into the haze of a strange, purple sun, surrounded by the sounds of battle. It's an arena, filled with battling Kith, fierce, bear-like, primitive humanoids, and occasionally other humans, who seem to be completely out of their element.
Joined by Skreeki, another Kith and healer, trying to escape the melee, they escape down into the depths of the arena, finding Tio-Lizzix, an insane humanoid who seems to have kept himself alive by feasting on a plant grown from corpses. The party takes Tio-Lizzix with them, finding a strange ship half-buried in the rock. They learn how to use its basic functionality to scry the planet's surface and then to teleport above ground, and in doing so manage to rescue a few more humans from the arena, before warping away.
After resting a bit, they warp into a large mushroom forest to gather supplies. They encounter a Kith scouting party, also foraging. A fight ensues, and Estred Emu, beekeeper and wizard, casts spider climb, but the magic on the weirdling planet causes acid geysers to erupt, spraying the Kith and scaring them off.
#68: People of the Pit
Having heard from Skreeki about the Black Redoubt, a citadel with legendary status among the Kith (but which seems impossible to hold on to for any amount of time), they stumble across it using the orb on the ship, and warp to it. Exploring the empty fortress, they find that the courtyard seems to be the lid for a large pit beneath the citadel, and that the tunnels along the pit are populated by half-humanoid, half-tentacle creatures.
Ghet, elven barrister, is tasked by his patron to slay the foul beast Palymdibis, who resides at the bottom of the pit. They descend, slaying a demon guardian of Bobugbubilz, recovering the matte black sword Shadeslayer, and slaying the mighty tentacle beast through the power of the Three Fates. Rigley, acolyte of Ildavir, the goddess of Nature, abandons her god in the face of its mockery (majority of spells rolled were failure/disapproval). They also release several Kith prisoners who join them, but only one survives the journey: Woiglinko the prophet.
With the pit open to the sky, and the beast vanquished from its bottom, they warp to the bottom of the pit in their longship, and begin exploring the underplanet. They encounter a green, glowing, gelatinous river, which exhibits some sign of sentience. Rigley, godless and forlorn, inserts her hand into the goo. It re-emerges formed into a solid stone shaped like an icosahedron. They continue further underground, where Rolley, farmer and wizard, is attacked by a strange spore-ball, and grows tiny mushrooms on his neck which store magical energy.
They encounter a group of humanoids, claiming to be the true Kith, and desiring to be led to their lost house and ascended masters. The party leads them to the entrance tunnel, and takes some on board their ship, to show them the tunnels near the surface of the pit, thinking that that could be their house. Confusion ensues, and the party warps back down to the bottom of the pit, but the concussive blast of the teleportation injures and kills a fair amount of the Underkith. Seeing this as an assault, they attack with powerful psionic abilities, and the party warps away, finding a small cave in the Ancestor Peaks to land beside.
This warp catches the attention of a kith burial procession, and another battle ensues, with the remainder of the Underkith being slain (or sealed in the cave), and some of the other Kith being taken captive.
#84A: Tomb of the Ancicents - Tomb of Immortal Kahl
Guided by a glowing thread only visible to Ghet, a party is lead to the entrance to a tomb, where Ghet is instructed by The Three Fates to destroy a life-altering machine within. Beadle gets zapped by a security system and suffers a stroke, his speech being lilted permanently. They free a friendly, if stupid, human from a statis tube, and then promptly and willingly let him fall to his death. They then find the machine, which seems to involve two people and with no clear purpose. Ghet and Rigley sit in the machine and activate it. After a dramatic few moments, with some sparks flying, the two awaken having switched bodies. The Three Fates are furious, and revoke the newly dubbed Ghetrina's powers until she can terminate Sotark the Destroyer, without any of their assistance.
An attempt to switch their bodies back goes horribly awry, and they both end up unresponsive on their thrones. In one last desperate action, Brosario, potato farmer and wizard, engraves a carving of Trogdor on his arm, and expends almost all of his life energy to power the machine again. He collapses, but Ghetrina and Rigley reawaken, but still within each others' bodies. The party dismantles the machine, taking the core orb with them, and departs.
Arriving back at the longship, the party notices a strange cauldron-like machine heading their way. They determine that it seems to be a band of Kith, hauling a huge cauldron on stilts, filled with an eerie light. The light interferes with using the longship's orb properly, but they decide to ambush and assault the tribe regardless. Warping in with surprisingly accurate aim, the party manages to break one of the stilts on the cauldron, tipping it over, sending strange metallic skulls rolling about the tribe. The skulls emit a horrible green light, melting any flesh that they touch. The survivors scatter.
#84.1: The Rock Awakens!
Tracing the cauldron's tracks, the party scry the wastelands using the orb on the longship, discovering both a ruined city, and a giant pit of worms. Exploring the ruined city, they discover that it is beset by earthquakes, as titantic, long tentacles slowly arise from the ground. Silver discs patrol the skies, but yield plenty greenstone shards when dismantled. They find a strange, blue Kith who speaks in rhyming nonsense. He is taken prisoner, and tied up alongside Tio-Lizzix. Exploring a squat, metallic building, they activate a device that sends a beam of light to somewhere in the Ancestor Peaks. They release a strange, three-eyed, star-skinned being from stasis, and flee as he attacks the party.
They regroup, and decide to explore the village that was in the vicinity of where the beam of light struck. Ghetrina begins the scrying process and finds the location, but when she tries to warp, something goes horribly wrong (she rolled a 1), and the ship gets sucked through the void, slamming into a floating island of rock and grass in the swirling chaos of Limbo. The ship is broken in half, and several Kith prisoners end up crushed in the hull. Tio-Lizzix and the blue rhyming Kith survive. Rigley vanishes completely, no where to be found.
Their warp into Limbo attracts the attention of another longship full of raiders, the same type as Tio-Lizzix. The raiders are fought off and a counter-attack is launched, with the party claiming the new vessel as their own, while locking several of the raiders in their own hold.
Ghetrina pours all of her energy into one final warp in their new ship, and focuses in on warping back to Earth, but they end up back at the purple planet again - perhaps a sign that this is actually Earth, but at another time?
They interrogate the captured raiders, learning that each of the two Kith houses of Cotcyst and Reagan'Tor each possess a large greenstone gem, which are much more powerful than the small greenstone shards. The raiders come to this planet to collect mushrooms and greenstones. They agree to leave peacefully as long as they are first returned to the broken hull of the old vessel, to use that to return to their brethren. One raider convinces the party that he is skilled enough to warp back to Limbo, as it takes great precision, and makes the attempt. He shortly realises that the old ship has been consumed by the chaos of Limbo, so he transports the party to a fortress in the Astral Plane, where several other raider longships were docked.
The party kills the raider pilot, and then mounts an assault on one of the other docked ships, but quickly realises that they are outnumbered, and warp back to the purple planet, abandoning the raider captives in a mushroom forest.
Camping in the mountains near the village in the Ancestor Peaks, the party experiences a fierce thunderstorm that night. Rigley appears, now garbed in the robes of the god Amun Tor, having been whisked away and trained in an infinite pyramid by a sphinx.
Exploring an area where the storm hit, they come across a strange rock, which seems to have been broken apart. Gromdar touches Shadeslayer to the rock, and the party blacks out, awakening several hours later at night, the sword has bound itself to Gromdar's arm with strong black tentacles. He doesn't quite feel right, and begins to feel immense feelings of dissatisfaction.
They then make contact with the village, whose inhabitants are blue Kith, similar to the rhyming Kith that was captured in the ruined city. They are led by Zhirh, another one of the three-eyed beings whose skin shimmers with stars. She makes a deal with the party: provide her with a greenstone gem, some DNA, and transportation back to the old city, and she can take them to the stars, and maybe help them find a way to go back in time to their own world.
Later that evening, some kind of spirit temporarily takes possession of Beadle, conveying the possible location of Sotark the Destroyer to Ghetrina. It lays near the Howling Stones, a site sacred to the Kith.
After transporting Zhirh and her people to the ruined city, they warp over to the Howling Stones, where they encounter a small Kith warband from the house of Reagan'Tor, and a frantic battle ensues, where Fabru, mercenary and warrior, survives a blast from a black death ray, only to be laid flat by a champion's iron club. Woiglinko also falls, speared by an enemy Kith. Both ultimately survive, though Woiglinko is horribly crippled.
Returning to the ship, they come across the remnants of another Kith camp, and follow their trail into the mushroom jungle. They find the Kith embroiled in a battle against a nest of Gribb, lizard-like birds. After the battle ceases, the Kith, of house Cotcyst, recognise the party as ascended masters, and present them the treasure they found in the nest: an old stone dagger. The party then instructs the Kith to hunt down and destroy house Reagan'Tor. They part ways, and the party continues exploring, following the spirit's instructions to come across an entrance that delves underground.
#84A: Tomb of the Ancients - Tomb of Sotark the Destroyer
Exploring the tomb, fighting off lairing predators, and sneaking past deadly traps, the party comes across Sotark's statis chamber. Fiddling around on some levers, they release him, a powerful Kith with cybernetic gauntlets and a strange eye-gem. His gauntlet's project a force shield and force sword. Before he even has a chance to stand up, they attack. Rigley's opening spell leaves her encased in a solid cylinder of ice for the next 13 hours. Owaj, guild beggar and thief, is lain flat by Sotarks mighty shield, and begins to bleed out, but is healed at the last minute by Skreeki's quick thinking. Sotark is slain, his gauntlets destroyed, his gem taken, and his corpse devoured by Skreeki.
They return to the ship to rest and regroup, and a new party sets out to explore the Howling Stones. As they approach, an exact clone of Rigley's old body (and Ghetrina's current one, minus the stone hand) emerges from the mouth, with glowing green eyes and a faint green luminescence shining through its skin. It bids the party enter, to travel deep underground to converse with its master. They oblige, following it down in to the depths of the purple planet.
To be continued...
Part 2
Forward
It has been over two years since Part 1, and the game is still going. Less often, but what it lacks for in frequency, it makes up for in intensity. It has challenged my DMing skills, as well as my players' RPing skills, as you'll see later when their own characters turn on each other. Despite incredibly lethal dangers, the cast of characters has grown rather than shrunken, and we've had only one (potential - remains to be seen!) fatality. The game has survived the DM changing continents (and the players have to get up at 8:30 AM to play now), busy times, periods of months without play, and not all players being able to attend. And yet we keep going...
Recap
When we last left off, the party had split, with one group heading deep underground, following a strange, green pseudo-clone into the bowels of the Purple Planet. The rest of the party remained on the teleporting longship, awaiting the party's return.
Into the Underground
Heading into the underplateau, the party follows the green pseudo-clone for several days, eventually leading him to lake of green goo, similar to that which they had encountered before, and showed some form of sentient life. It also transformed Rigley's hand into a isocahedron when he plunged his arm into it.
The creature then asked the party to drink of the Green Flow. The party refused, and the creature got angry and attacked. After defeating it, tentacles of green rope lashed out from the lake and the party ran, narrowly escaping a strange fate. Taking a moment to regroup, they now realise they have no idea how to get back to the surface.
Wandering for days, through tunnels and strange forests of mushrooms made of red crystal, the underparty eventually encounters a lone underkith, who seems to have been abandoned by his tribe. Convinced the party are the ascended masters that he seeks, they convince him to try to guide him to the surface. One problem: He doesn't understand the concept of surface. They continue wandering more or less at random.
84A: The Bunker
Eventually they come to some kind of underground structure, half collapsed, long abandoned. They encounter some of the mechanically-animated cyber zombies, and Beadle, who seems to enjoy electricity*, gets blasted by an electrical arc, barely surviving. They find a huge room full of deactivated cyber zombies, set it on fire, and escape up an elevator shaft to the surface. Hal is overwhelmed when he sees the surface world, and the party has to blind him and calm him down.
*Beadle was zapped by a nanite trap in the Tomb of Immortal Kahl, and he suffered a stroke and now talks like Jean Chrétien
They camp that night at the surface entrance to the bunker, and only Brosario sees a strange green glowing dragon flying amongst the stars. Rigley uses ESP on Brosario, to try to understand what's happening, and within his subconscious only finds one thought: "BURNINATE"
In the morning the party can see some smoke in the distance to the south, so they set off towards it. After walking for several miles, they can make out signs of creatures fighting a battle near the smoke. Suddenly the ground erupts, with a cloud of green flame blasting into the sky.
To be continued...
On the Surface
A couple days after half the party descents into the underplateau, the remainder on the longship hear a strange bang echoing through the nearby mushroom forest. Using the helm to scry through the forest, Ghetrina spies some raiders, in a longship similar to their own, attacking a band of kith.
A fierce battle ensued, with the raiders using strange magic to render some of the party useless. After Ghetrina murdered the captain from afar with her Blades of Atropos, the navigator teleported his ship into the party's, breaking the party's ship in half, the prow plummeting to the ground.
Realising the danger the party was in, Rolley begins casting sleep, pouring all as much lifeforce into it as possible. At the same time the spell goes off, the navigator, in an act of desperation, flips his own ship. Everyone but Rolley falls asleep and plummets to the ground. Rolley, exhausted but still awake, manages to grab the railing as the ship flips, and slides down to the ground on a rope, using the strange egg-artifact to heal his comrades.
After recovering from the battle, the party explored this new longship they have, and found some kith tied up on board, along with some corpses used a fodder for corpse flowers. Interrogating the prisoners, they learned that they can find the Citadel and Ash of smoke somewhere to the north, and it's easy to spot from its column of perpetual smoke. They then transferred their goods to the new, intact ship and made it their new effective home.
While a swarm of bird-lizards descended to feast on the battlefield, Ghetrina warps the ship to the north, to try and seek the citadel. Something goes horribly wrong (she rolled a 1) and the longship finds itself being pulled through the void.
Parking Ticket
The party finds themselves hurtled into a land of cogwheels and mechanisms. Settled the boat down into an area of some kind of concrete steel, they find multitudes of strange bio-mechanical creatures about. Most of them ignoring them, but one approaches, tells them that they have parked their boat without license and permit, amongst violating bylaws about noise and violent gestures, and they must now pay fines.
They are led to a court, where they learn that the penalty for their violations are steep, including executions for some of them, and manage to fight their way to freedom. They escape back to their ship, where the modrons try and arrest them. A battle ensues, and they warp back to the Purple Planet, bringing some of bio-mechanoids with them. After the jump, one of the modrons seems to turn against the rest. Once the battle ends, this rogue creature acts to follow the party: He wishes to explore the multiverse. The party name him Mecha-Woiglinko, in honour of their fallen kith friend.
Curiously, they also learn that Tio-Lizzix was completely lucid and coherent while on Mechanus.
Reunited
Hearing the explosion and seeing the green fireball rise into the sky, the party on the boat comes to investigate, and finally rejoins with the underparty. Bits of old corpses and robotic parts litter the crater: It seems that the fire the party set in the bunker caused this. The party surmises it was maybe due to the greenstone energy that powered the cyber-zombies.
Continuing their search for the Citadel of Smoke, they come across an ancient pyramid. Exploring it, they find a grand throne, occupied by a corpse, hundreds of silvery threads spewing from its mouth, going through the ceiling. Consulting Amun Tor, Rigley learned that the throne powers an ancient portal, but it requires immense power.
Leaving the pyramid, they also discover, by chance, that the ship can be flown, not just teleported around. Scouring the wastes from the sky, they come across a kith burial ritual. They were challenged to 1-on-1 combat, and being victorious, demanded to be taken to the Citadel of Smoke, claiming that they wanted to pay tribute to the ascended masters.
Not long after, they encountered the Citadel, a massive ziggurat, carried above the ground by thousands of kith slaves, marching ever forward. At the top was a strange city of black smoke, to which some of the party entered, wandering aimlessly for hours, encountering only weird appartions. Eventually the party split, causing the illusion to collapse, presenting the man behind the curtain: An ascended master named Hoan, his daughter, both made entirely of wispy carbon clouds, and a huge greenstone gem.
Claiming that they will die if the greenstone gem is removed, Hoan tells the party that House Cotcyst also possesses a gem. He promises to give him a warband of kith if they decide to attack House Cotcyst. They accept, and begin trying to locate Cotcyst's camp, given directions from Hoan.
Eventually finding it, they sail the longship in from the sky, trying to convince the kith that they are ascended masters. Eventually, Em-Kiln, the master of House Cotcyst emerges, and they invite him on to their longship, hiding the Reagan'Tor warriors in the hold. He accepts, and the party teleports away with him on board. Impressed, he also tells the party of the two other gemstones he knows of: That of Reagan'Tor, but also one that belongs to the Worm Queen, the Vatya Ibdid, situated in a giant pit to the north.
A negoation with Em-Kiln follows, and he agrees to help out if they attack Cotcyst. They bring another 200 warriors onto the longship, keeping them on the top. Em-Kiln also comes with them, and they attack Reagan'Tor. Quickly using some magic rope, Ghetrina grabs the greenstone gem from Hoan, pulling it away, causing Hoan and his daughter to vanish into nothingness. The ziggurat collapses onto the kith below, and Em-Kiln is also disposed of. Taking the rest of the Cotcyst and Reagan'Tor warriors still on board into the waste, they form them into their own new house: House Spacefuckers, and instruct them to roam the wastes and slay Cotcyst and Reagan'Tor wherever they are found.
Taking them gem back to Zhirh an the blue Kith, to offer the gem to them. Zhirh disappears into a structure of the strange rock city, which she explains to be a living spaceship. It would still take some time for the ship to awaken fully, they decided to try and take the greenstone gem from the Worm Queen Vatya Ibdid. Flying over her pit, they had not expected how massive she would be: A giant worm, its mouth many times wider than the longship itself, but with a green glowing gem on its edge.
Unsure how to proceed, they decided to visit the Cotcyst camp again, to secure weapons. However, it turns out another ascended master was still there. He had awoken and attacked the party. However, before the rest of the kith camp could be rallied, he was slain, as were three other ascended masters, who used android bodies to move around. The party installed themselves as the new Ascended Masters, and order the kith to lead a genocidal war against Reagan'Tor. Taking the greenstone gem, the party tries to devise a way to destroy the Green Flow.
Wondering what would happen if the Green Flow was exposed to sunlight, they decide to descend back into the underground, bringing with them the greenstone gem, where they will try to detonate it, creating a hole above the flow (or maybe at least just damaging it in the process). Half the party heads back underground, gem in tow. Rigley asks Amun Tor for information, learning that the Green Flow is neither good nor evil; it's ambitious but not yet powerful enough; where its core is located.
Following the path given to them, they trek deep into the underplateau. Eventually they found their way to some kind of laboratory, where worm-creatures are brought to regurgitate some kind of green liquid. That liquid is then processed, and somehow used to grow green-crystalline humanoids. After a harrowing fight with one of the worm-creatures and some of the green-crystalline men, they encountered a prisoner: One of the raider captains whom they had taken the ship from, who went by the name of Skem. They had let him go in one of the mushroom forests, and somehow he ended up here. He promised to tell them where to find powerful, special mushrooms, and how to use the reknowned captain's sword that one of the party is carrying, if they can just take him to the surface. They agree and bring him with them.
They spend a while studying some diagrams and paintings in this strange laboratory. They seem to detail some kind of history of the descended creatures: Peace and bright sun on the surface, later followed by war and purple light. Dying plants and people being guided into caves. Green light and men worshipping it, later being turned into crystal and pushed into the a giant worm's lair.
After leaving the laboratory, Gromdar was zapped by a security system, maybe malfunctioning, which turned him into a creature with the lower body of a beetle.
Soon after, they encountered a branch of the Green Flow, and it parted, letting them advance. Not long after, they came to the Undersun, a vast chamber, with a massive green crystalline structure in the middle, from which the Green Flow exudes. A green crystalline man approaches them, and offers them food and accommodation, and to stay as long as they wished.
Back on the ship, Ghetrina became possessed by something, singing a song about how the kith are dying, the purple sun is waning, the green river is growing, and the orms are in ascension.
I am Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds
Consulting Amun Tor again, Rigley learned more things about the Green Flow: it wants to expand into space; it can read minds; it's ancient; it is hurt by purple rays, but the purple sun may have waned too much already to do any damage. Deciding to try out their plan, the party finds a small cave on the edge of the Undercity. They take the full greenstone gem and affix it near the top of the Undersun cavern. Taking cover in the cave, all the spellcasters ritual cast Magic Missle, Brosario leading, resulting in a full strength cast. An effigy of a green dragon, a strong human arm protruding from his back appeared amongst the casters, yelling "BURNINATE" and torching them all with fire as the spell goes off. All survive except Estred, who is reduced to -3 hp. The magic missle hits the greenstone gem and their world goes black.
Those underground at the time of the explosion: • Brosario, accidental follower of Trogdor and lover of Magic Missles; • Rigley, acolyte of Amon Tor, trapped in the body of an elf; • Gromdar, thief, bound to the corrupted blade Shadeslayer, and turned into half-man/half-beetle; • Estred Emu, follower of the King of Elfland, burned horribly during the casting of Magic Missle; • Owaj, thief and wielder of the Happy Mace*; • Beadle, warrior and connoisseur of different electrical experiences • Mecha-Woiglinko, rogue modron from Mechanus who is exploring with the party • Skem, Ythoth raider, ex-captain of the party's longship
Back on the surface, the party on the longship hears an immense explosion, and a mushroom cloud of green flame and dust erupts on the western half of the plateau. Swarms of hundreds of thousands of the bird-lizards all seem attracted to it, and the longship follows to investigate, but all they can see is dust pouring out of a gaping hole in the earth.
DM's note: this cliffhanger drove the players nuts. It was made worse by the fact that it was very hard to get us all together again to resume playing. Then I figured out a way so that we could play even if not everyone could make it. Also at the time I had no idea what to do. What do you do when your players essentially detonate a magical nuclear bomb while standing beside it? TPK? Boring! So: scattered across the multiverse!
Gromdar found himself awoken in a strange world: Instead of an infinite sky, there was another world above his head, with ambient blue light and clouds between. This was the plane of Bytopia. He had been found unconscious in a field near a pastoral village. The dwarf, Ranat, had recognized the now-corrupted Shadeslayer bound to Gromdar's arm as a sword he had forged over 200 years before.
Ranat had asked him to go with Iuliack (new PC character, a gnome), and purge some restless spirits that had arisen in the barrows since Gromdar had arrived. One of the spirits turned out to be Azulrut, the patron who commissioned Shadeslayer in the first place, and had initially wielded him. Once complete, Shadeslayer lost its corruption, and also some of its power. Ranat then imbued Shadeslayer with his own soul, and it will re-energize once it fulfills its original purpose.
Gromdar remains in the village, helping work off his debt (of food and care) by picking fruit - made easier since his body's lower half is still that of a giant beetle.
Next we go to Pandemoninum, an underground plane filled with maddening winds. Agleau (new PC, Cleric of Bobugbubilz) and Uchie (new PC, Elf of Azi Dhaka), are hired by one Rotham to find Beadle (stunned by the maddening winds, and temporarily an NPC), since it seems he knows of the greenstone gems. They find him and begin escorting him out of Pandemonium to the Bedlam, but Maltin of the Athars has somehow found that Beadle's body contains some kind of strange nanites, and wants to use him to prove that the gods are not as all-powerful as they claim. A scuffle ensues, but the PCs gain the upper hand and manage to make it to Bedlam. (This story to be resolved)
Brosario, however, finds himself awoken in a keep, attended to by the Order of the Blinding Light, an organisation dedicated to the purging of chaos. Claiming that his arm had become a source of pure chaos, they had amputated it. In particular, the place where the Trogdor scar was, had become a necrotic lump of chaotic flesh, and it had to be isolated. Given their laws, Brosario was to be "purified", aka turned into a mindless servant of the keep.
Enter Qua'ren (new PC, Warrior) and Iato (new PC, Thief), both followers of the Cult of the Bloody Stump, both of whom had infiltrated the Keep in order to retrieve a chaotic artifact. They manage to set part of the keep on fire, escape with Brosario, his arm, and the lump of flesh, and start making their way back to the cult.
Owaj found himself trapped on a blasted plane, surrounded by a grim red sky, barren lands and iron fortresses. He found himself atop a small patch of starkly bright green, perfectly circular, featuring only a skeleton glad in shining chain mail, along with a fancy shield, the design of which seems to resemble the Happy Mace that he wields. Not long afterwards strange creatures (some part horse, some part snake) approach, yet never step on to the grass. Some throw stones at him, forcing him to hide under the shield. The creatures fight amongst themselves, and taunt Owaj. The strange horse-creature entices him to come with him, offering him safety, immediately after it had swallowed the snake creature whole.
*DM's note: Each of the above synposes were each a separate single session, where we played despite missing one character.
Back on Earth, Gavin had finally just finished dealing with the police, after dozens of his guests vanished into thin air at his house party. Rumour is is that someone had put some tinfoil in the microwave, but there was no evidence except the lack of people, and a missing microwave.
Crossing the police tapes to enter his suite to retrieve some goods, a "zap!" sounds from the kitchen. There Gavin sees the strange, thin, gangly raider Skem. Both are astonished that their language resembles the others enough to communicate on a basic level, Gavin eventually gathers that Skem wants to go gather mushrooms. He takes him to the super market, but then they set off north to the forests of Muskoka, to go mushroom picking...
Of Estred Emu and Rigley, no news has yet to be had.
Back on the Purple Planet, the party waits for a day for the dust to settle, yet it shows no sign of easing up. Suddenly a portal opens, and a burned and battered Mecha-Woiglinko emerges, followed by a horde of other modrons. Some of the modrons engage the party, while the others chase Mecha-Woiglinko into the hold, eventually destroying him, but not before he is able to give the party a data crystal which they can use to locate their scattered friends.
Using it, the party warps to Brosario, who is being escorted away from the keep to a town where he will eventually be ferried to the Cult of the Bloody Stump. A scuffle erupts between the party and Iato and Qua'ren (both also controlled by player characters), and Iato escapes with Brosario's corrupt lump of flush, while Qua'ren is captured and charmed by the party.
From Qua'ren, the party is told that the cult wants to use the lump of chaotic flesh to destroy the world by summoning a powerful being. The flesh was to be ferried to their outpost near Plague-Mort via a contact in the nearby town of Morva. The party decides to try and make it to that contact before Iato does. They therefore walk to the front gate of the walled town (DM's note: First time they've come across anything resembling a medieval town this campaign), and it's not long before the guards spot the corrupted party, proclaim "Demons!" and attack. Rolley quickly casts a powerful invisibility spell, and the party is able to run into the town before the guards can close the gate. However, the spell is imperfect, and the guards notice what is happening, and raise the town alarms.
Hiding in a nearby empty house, Ghetrina experiments with a control tentacle scroll that belonged to the slain demon Palymdibis (taken in an early session from #68: People of the Pit). It summons some weird limp long green/purple noodle, yet simultaneously a demonic voice is heard echoing above the town. The population panics, and the guards begin a door-to-door search.
Meanwhile, Iato is able to sneak into the city, meet his contact, and they both sneak out and head for the cult's outpost.
Guards eventually locate the longship parked outside the city, and Brosario raises it up into the sky to get away from them. Seeing the ship from their top-floor hangout, the party manages to send a signal. Brosario then teleports into the city, rescues the party from their house, and sails away from the town.
Coming out of the valley, they find a strange spire looming on the horizon, with some kind of circular object on top. They begin sailing towards that, eventually coming to a strange, irredescent, shimmering curtain-like mist. Sailing through it, the magic-users on the ship feel tingly, and the ship flies less smoothly. Flying through a second curtain, the ship becomes more unstable.
While flying over some grasslands, they come across a herd of strange half-human/half-sheep people, who direct the party to one Venrak, a "knowledge-eater." They then come across his strange tower, a cylinder of smooth black obsidian. As they approach, Venrak appears on the deck of their ship, exclaiming curiousity at it. He offers food and provisions, and they strike a deal: directions to Plague-Mort in exchange for giving Tio-Lizzix to Venrak. They also offer the corpse flower in exchange for knowledge on how to power the longship, but Venrak is unable to deliver on this.
Venrak then gives Skreeki (whom he has dubbed "honourable warrior") a gold necklace inset with an obsidian stone, claiming that it will help them find each other later.
The party then sets off towards Plague-Mort, a several week journey (the teleportation ability doesn't seem to work as well on this world). En route they passed a ravine full of writing, colossal, gray tentacles. Rolley cast control tentacle again, and it seemed to have an effect, and the tentacles reached up for the ship, though they weren't long enough.
Eventually reaching Plague-Mort, a winged snake-creature approaches the ship and settles on the railing. Introducing himself as Kotros, he bids the party come down and speak to the Arch Lector.
And that's where we're at. What has become of Owaj? Or Rigley? Is Estred Emu a burnt corpse lying under a pile of rock, or was he also scattered across the multiverse? Was the Green Flow damaged by the explosion or maybe by the light from the purple sun? What is Skem doing back on Earth in our time?
Overview:
Cast of Characters: • Beadle Dee, Beadle and Warrior - While exploring the Tomb of Immortal Kahl, Beadle was electrocuted by a strange nanobot security device, suffering a stroke. Now when asked about his opinions on kith protestors, he prefers to put pepper on his plate. • Brosario Dawson, Potato Farmer and Wizard - in a frantic bid to save Ghet and Rigley from dying while switching back to their original bodies, Brosario carved a scar of Trogdor into his arm, and poured all his energy into the machine. The arm has since started reacting, and growing stronger, while he experiences nightmares featuring giant lizards. • Estred Emu, Beekeeper and Wizard, and dealer with the King of Elfland - Shortly after encountering the kith, Estred cast Spider Climb in an attempt to get a better view. Acid geysers erupted in all directions, spraying the kith and sending them scattering. This has since been used to great effect in other dangerous situations. • Fabru "Flav" Edeupet, Mercenary and Warrior - Fabru survived being blasted by a black death ray, and enjoys collecting tentacle-cultist talismans. • Ghet(rina) Karter, Ex-Elven Barrister, and dealer with the Three Fates - Tasked with destroying Palimdybis, the Throne of Immortal Kahl, and later, Sotark the Destroyer, Ghetrina swaped bodies with Rigley using the Throne of Immortal Kahl, becoming a human woman. Ghetrina's right hand is a stone icosahedron, which is part of Rigley's body still. • Gromdar Egrov, Beggar, Gravedigger, and Thief - Bearing an intelligent matte black sword, Gromdar touched it to a large, strange black rock. He woke up several hours later, black tentacles emerging from the sword, entering his hand, and binding the sword to him. • Owaj Ejov, Guild Beggar and Thief - Owaj has killed a considerable number of cultists from the shadows, and seems pretty content with that. • Rigley Pagliaccoo, Squire and Cleric - Initially a cleric of Ildavir, Rigley abandoned her, later being enticed to join the ranks of Amun Tor. Rigley inserted her hand into the green flow, and it was transformed into a stone icosahedron. Later, after using the Throne of Immortal Kahl, Rigley swapped bodies with Ghet Karter, and is now an elven male. • Rolley Wov, Farmer and Wizard - After being attacked by a floating puffball, mushrooms grew on Rolley's neck, which store magical energy. Rolley has also become fond of a strange healing egg, but has been known to lend it out to the others on occasion. • Scoil Edo - Halfing dyer - A polearm-wielding, lucky halfling, Scoil has managed to keep himself out of much trouble. • Skreekii Quarl, Kith healer - A renegade kith from the Reagan' Tor clan, Skreekii was dumped in the arena after showing signs of pacifism. He was then picked up by the rest of the bunch, and has tagged along since. • Ugre Ostroz, Dwarven mushroom farmer - Ugre really enjoys splitting skulls, and is very good at it. • Woiglinko, Kith prophet (NPC) - Rescued from tentacle-cultists by the party, Woiglinko looks forward to ridding the purple planet of all "non-kith." However, after being impaled on a spear, and yet surviving due to the luck of the gods, his body is starting to fail him (2 Stamina)