In this adventure, the PCs were caught up in the midst of:
-The Cleric Ack'Basha falling deeper and deeper into the rabbit-hole of his implausible revenge-fantasy against Sezrekan.
-the new Warrior in the party, Byfeld, turning out to be pretty much based on this guy:
-discussing whether someone could "Forest Walk" through a Necrotreant; and deciding to err on the side of caution
-a minor incident when the Warrior Redneck claims that "all purple mutants look alike".
-A series of other George-W-Bushisms from said Redneck Warrior
-coming to the realization that Schul, the party's rogue, is a really terrible liar. As in, really bad at it.
-Encountering the dreaded Necrotreant, and learning that among his various statements of religious-policy, he has declared hats an abomination.
-meeting the Purple Mutant Chief, who is desperate to prove that he's still totally relevant, and has not at all been completely marginalized into obscurity by the Necrotreant and his religious cult of shaman-wizards.
-Bush-related paranoia. Not as in George W., but as in literal bushes. It's scary to try to sneak up on the Necrotreant in the middle of a forest when the dude can apparently turn any foliage into a horrific vegetable-undead monstrosity.
-A near-interminable rambling and pointless anecdote from the King of Elfland, who is very clearly the Grandpa Simpson of Daemon-Patrons
-realizing that to the Necrotreant, it's not just hats; pretty much EVERYTHING is an "abomination".
-finding that the whole of the Purple Mutant Tribe is just in denial. Caught up in their best chance ever to destroy their hated enemies, the Smug Elves of the Silver Dome, they've managed to convince themselves that when the NecroTreant says that "mutants are an abomination", he obviously must mean all those OTHER mutants, not them. Surely this won't come back to bite them in the ass.
-Realizing that for the moment it's probably better to join them rather than try to beat them; though joining them might mean having to eat a delicious-looking stew made out of Green Mutant Princesses.
-reluctantly joining the cause of the NecroTreant in exchange for Queen Priscilla of the Grey People being liberated, rather than added to the stew. And immediately regretting it, because now they have to put up with Queen Priscilla again. Queen Priscilla, on the other hand, is very pleased with the death of her fellow princesses, since she was pretty sure they were all "skanks" who "probably had STDs".
-Discovering new boundaries to just how badass Sandy the Bikini-Chainmail Barbarian is, when she manages to be terrifyingly threatening while armed with nothing more than a sharpened carrot.
-Figuring out that casting Sleep while floating sixty feet in the air might not be such a good idea, if you misfire and end up dozing off in mid-flight and plummeting to your near-death.
-the clear confirmation that the Purple Mutant Chief is definitely no longer in any way relevant.
-Finding that the Purple Mutants like the worship hard, sacrifice hard, and then party hard with a post-cannibalism rave dance. It's pretty much like that with all barbarians, as the party's willingness to party is pretty evenly split along barbarian/civilized lines.
-waking up the next morning with a variety of levels of hangover; the best case being very mild, the worst cases being Redneck Warrior who got into a drunken knife-fight, and Queen Priscilla who accidentally killed a Purple Mutant during some heavy necking when she forgot that she was poisonous to humanoids. Fortunately, Schul the Rogue might be a really bad liar, but he is a fully-trained former grave-digger.
-getting that Queen Priscilla may be the most annoying entity in the multiverse, when she can manage to get Ack'Basha the normally placid party cleric to mock-drown her in a bucket of water. Though he was still nice enough to give her a potion of water-breathing first. Predictably, Queen Priscilla thinks Ack'Basha is the 'perviest cleric ever' and that he's obviously doing it because he 'fancies' her.
-An assessment of their present choices: Night the Elf is fighting a one-woman guerrilla war against the NecroTreant, while everyone else in the party has decided to join him in his assault on the Silver Dome. No one is sure if either is really a good idea.
-Deciding to get the heck out of Dodge (or rather, of the Purple Mutant town of Cordallen) while the getting is good; but pausing briefly so Redneck Warrior can pick up some wild carrots to make up for the one he lost in the drunken knife-fight.
-later deciding to tie Queen Priscilla to a tree and abandon her in the woods while going to see how the Purple-Mutant/Smug-Elf battle-royale goes down.
-Watching as the Elven lightning-gun defenses cause a near-immediate rout among the panicky purple mutants. But things get interesting when the NecroTreant apparently sacrifices all of his undead treants to drive roots up against the foundations of the Dome, cracking it open.
-Continuing to watch from the security of a hiding place as the Purple mutants rally, only to flee again when their shamans accidentally botch their Choking Cloud spell and cause a lethal poison-gas attack on their own ranks. Things get worse when the Elves release their hunter-killer droids; but the NecroTreant still has some tricks up his sleeve, as he entangles them in fungal vines until the robots are crushed.
-Finally deciding to join the fray, or at least try to make a dash-and-grab for some quick loot, when they see the Purple Mutant elite warriors sneaking their way toward the crack in the dome while carrying a mysterious and elaborate box that just screams 'secret weapon'.
-Managing to get through the crack under a spell of darkness only to get pinned down under a hail of blaster fire from Elven and Android troops.
-attempting to hold against the barrage; all except Night, who flies off to keep an eye on the NecroTreant, and Byfeld the Redneck Warrior, who tries to hide inside the Secret-Weapon-Box even though it's clearly not large enough for him to fit in.
-Discovering that the Secret-Weapon box is filled with hideous writhing fungal-undead seeds. Not sure what else to do, and seeing his team-mates on the verge of getting slaughtered, Redneck Warrior decides to do what he does best and smash the living shit out of the weird seed-pods.
-observing the shattering of the NecroTreant's dreams of purity, as the seeds he planned to germinate in an explosion of the Silver Dome's powersphere (an explosion that would have utterly annihilated all life within a radius of a thousand miles) to create a new race of Mutant NecroTreants are destroyed by a human yokel with an oversized mace.
-running like hell from the super-efficient Smug Elves and their Android soldiers, abandoning the critically-injured Redneck Warrior to his fate.
-an act of blatant opportunism as Night the Elf takes advantage of the NecroTreant's distracted grief to hit him with every spell he's got. As it turns out, the King of Elfland's modified 'haste' spell provides Night with ALMOST enough power to kill the already-wounded NecroTreant; fortunately for Night, good old-fashioned fire manages to finish the job before the NecroTreant can retaliate with his death ray.
-groaning as the King of Elfland, who just maybe, maybe, is not quite as senile as he lets on, cannot resist the pun of saying that the NecroTreant's "bark" was worse than his bite.
-a denoument, as Byfeld the Redneck Warrior wakes up in the middle of the Tangled Forest, finding that instead of being elf-food, he's been set loose in the forest, and his horrific laser-injuries repaired in the form of a cybernetic lower-body... and possibly a mind-controlling brain-implant.
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Mastro De Paja Bent Billiard + Rattray's Marlin Flake
Nice.
ReplyDelete