You've got to love the OSR. This last session, I used not only the DCC rulebook (obviously) but also the AD&D DMG, the AD&D Monster Manual, the Adventures Dark & Deep DMG, Arrows of Indra, and Yoon-Suin. I also glanced at the 5e Monster Manual, for that matter. Most of the above (except the monster books) was for random-tables.
Anyways, this adventure saw the PCs:
-Meeting yet another group of newbs. In this case, we had a Hippie "herbalist", a green mutant cow-cleaner, and a Walrus-Man (that's the common name for them, they call themselves the "lolri").
-Discovering that contrary to rumors, Lolri do not ride walruses, they ride Yaks.
-Having Ack'Basha the Cleric, default leader of the PC group, "volunteer" the newcomers to join the party, by force.
-Learning that the Walrus-Men worship the Walrus-Buddha.
-Get harassed by a strike force of Blue Elves in power-armor, who accuse them of having stolen an interdimensional portal. They talked their way out of it, but were now left with the news that there's some group out there that does have that Elven portal, and they've been promised a reward by the Blue Elves if they should happen to find it (and were given an elven comm-beacon to signal if they do find it).
-Were given strict orders NOT to press the button that activates the beacon unless they find the portal; which of course makes Nigel the Religious Fantastic desperate to press it.
-Had their own potential ideas about the portal, particularly Ack'Basha, who was immediately thinking about how he could use it to get to his hated enemy, the daemon Sezrekan.
-Started to run out of food as they traveled through the grasslands of the southern continent. Luckily, Rashid the Cow-Cleaner has a vial of Holy Cow-Sweat on him; which Nigel quickly uses to summon and then slaughter a cow, much to Rashid's abject horror.
-Learn that trying to explain that this was not a regular cow but a "magic cow" only makes it much worse.
-Spending much of the next day's travel pausing to scrounge for any carrion bits of dead animal they can find, so that Nigel has a stock of material components for his animal-summoning spell.
-Trying to find the Portal with the help of Clerical vision, but for this, divine approval is needed. So its forced-conversion time for the newcomers to the party.
-Going up into the Nanda-Parbat mountains, where they meat a caravan of Giant-Goblin Wizard-Merchants, who are protected by Spider-Man guards. The PCs confirm that Spider-men do whatever a Spider can.
-Trade the Walrus-man's Carnivorous Radish for some spiced cheeses.
-Learn that a group of elves had been spotted in the area, and had crossed the great glacier. So it's glacier-crossing time.
-Felt they needed some more help, so Nigel invokes his patron Lariel the Heretic, but all she does is gift him a pair of Holy Knuckle-Dusters to help spread the "good word" of G.O.D's love by beating the living shit out of anyone who refuses to believe.
-Encounter a very dangerous-looking Ice Dragon, who appears to be the owner of the glacier.
-Manage to save their asses by virtue of the fact that both this Ice Dragon hates Bill the Elf, and can confirm that Ack'Basha hates Bill even more.
-Note that the Ice Dragon had correctly assessed the newbies to the party as "dragon fodder". Fortunately, he decides to let them all pass anyways, since he craves revenge against Bill and thinks Ack'Basha might just be the cleric to get the job done.
-Note that Ack'basha's crusade against Sezrekan has reached epic-fame levels of notoriety; which may be helpful at the moment, but it also means Sezrekan has almost certainly heard about the whole 'quest for vengeance' thing too.
-Get to the other side of the Glacier, where there are a number of possible mountain-passes that would lead to the 'decrepit monastery' that the PCs assume the Elves went to. Ack'Basha's second sight tries to seek out the safe path to the Monastery, only to discover that in fact there is NO safe pass to the monastery.
-Find a creepy cave entrance surrounded by bones. When a wave of darkness starts to pour out of the cave mouth, they decide to cast Light at the darkness, which is at least smarter than casting magic missile.
-Learn that in retrospect, Magic Missile might have been better, since the darkness was being generated by two extremely powerful Fire Demons.
-Know the meaning of fear; literally, because half the party runs away screaming and wetting their pants when one of the Demons uses his Emanate Fear power.
-Mostly didn't stick around to see Nigel the Religious Fantastic call down the wrath of his patron Lariel the Heretic. Unfortunately, said wrath was not quite enough, and Nigel is immolated one round later. Schul the rogue did stick around; not to help Nigel, mind you, but having made a safe bet that if he stayed hidden in the area he'd soon get to loot Nigel's charred corpse. And indeed, he did!
-Saw Lariel return with Nigel 2 as reinforcements... only too late.
-Noted that Ack'Basha the cleric has been spending too much time with the Religious Fantastics, as he tries to baptize the Walrus-man with beer.
-Plan a careful sneak attack on the Fire Demons, only to have the hippie totally ruin it because he's stoned out of his gourd.
-Get totally screwed when the Demons' combination of Scare, Sleep and Charm leaves everyone except Schul (who was hidden) and the hippie (who had wandered off) incapacitated.
-Watched helplessly as Schul made a desperate hail-mary Backstab attempt on the larger of the two Fire Demons, and then ran like hell when the hit didn't drop him.
-Assumed the worst when Schul caught up to the hippie and declared that they were "the new PC party" from there on.
-Had a brief glimmer of hope as Nigel 2 recovered, only to have those hopes dashed as Nigel quickly became the second roasted Religious Fantastic in the span of ten minutes.
-Had yet another glimmer of hope when Schul changed his mind and crept back over, in time to see that Walrus-Man had been torn to pieces by the Demons.
-Noted that Ack'Basha is a heavy sleeper.
-Finally turned things around when Schul's insistent poking of Ack'basha rouses him, and he calls down the Divine Wrath on the demons.
-Looted the lair, where they found a lot of skulls, a scale mail, some holy beads, some herbs, a lot of silver pieces... and a hovercar.
-Discovered that the hippie "herbalist" can identify herbs, but he tells them the ones in the lair are "not useful", because they're just magic herbs and not the kind that can get him high.
-Divide the loot, with the cow-cleaner getting the holy beads, the cleric getting the herbs, the thief getting the scale mail, Nigel-2 (who survived his burns) the bones, and the hippie gets kicked in the groin.
-Speculate that the hover-car might have belonged to the blue elves who stole the portal; the first hint being that the car is blue.
-Take off in the hover-car, resolving the problem of how to get five of them into a four-person hovercar by tying the hippie up, mad-max style, to the front of the vehicle.
-Made the fateful choice of leaving the Blue Elf beacon behind, in the demon cave. They did this after figuring out that the beacon might be tracking or even spying on them, and mainly after deciding that they really want to keep the hovercar! They also start discussing the possibility of keeping the portal for themselves too, or potentially destroying it (remembering the rambling warning the King of Elfland gave them last adventure, where he had suggested that some elves somewhere could potentially cause the end of the world).
-Finally fly their way to the monastery, which turns out to be a really creepy dilapidated monastery full of weird dead-eyed monks.
-Confirm that, like most religious institutions everywhere, the monks are ranked according to how large and ridiculous their hats are.
-After refusing to just go away or accept that "there's nothing for you here" is a valid reason to take off, quickly figure out they're about to be attacked by 50 or so probably-undead kung-fu monks.
-Also end up finding the missing elves, who have also become undead monks; and the portal, which is in the process of being used in a creepy pseudo-buddhist ritual that will apparently create a Black Hole of some kind, presumably to end the world. Score one for Grandpa-Simpson Elf-King's ramblings.
-Come to the conclusion that, in retrospect, getting rid of the beacons might have been a fatally bad idea.
-Start to drop like flies under the flurry of undead-monk blows; and this time both the cow-cleaner and Nigel-2 run out of luck.
-Score a surprising victory when they manage to take out the Grand Master of the monks, and all the rest of the monks de-animate. Also, they blow up the portal.
-Think it's all over now, except that it turns out that the Grand Master was being possessed by an incorporeal undead, that now tries to attack them. The Hippie decides its a good idea to try to inhale the grand-master, and almost dies.
-Finally finish the ghostly grand-master off, and now find themselves temporary owners of a corpse-filled monastery in the high mountains with no food. But that's OK, since they've got a hovercar to hightail it out of there with all the monastic loot they can carry.
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Brigham Anniversary Pipe + Image Latakia
Goo goo g'joob. No one said that yet?
ReplyDeleteNone of my players did; guess none of them are big Beatles fans. Ironically, one of them got the "spider man song" reference, in spite of the show that had that song having never aired in Uruguay.
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