The PCs had just rebooted G.O.D. using a Wish Parasite, and had been teleported to the tower of the Azure Order of wizards. This also marks the 3-year anniversary of our campaign, give or take a week or two.
So, with G.O.D. having activated something called the "Apocalypse Protocol", everyone has a strong suspicion that the shit is about to hit the fan.
This time, here's how it went down:
-the campaign got a brand new player, who made his first three level-0 PCs.
"So your first DCC character ever is a morbidly obese Emu mafioso involved in the slave trade, who likes to sing while he kills people".
"Let me sing you the song of my people!"
(some Emus just want to see the world burn)
-His other two PCs are a mad-max style road warrior, and a human orphan who was raised by wolves, and possesses a mysterious letter that was found on him as a baby.
-"The Azure Order has already decided, by consensus show of Jazz Hands, to hold a conference to decide whether to go to the other conference, on Mt. Parnassus, where the great and the good will talk about what to do about the Apocalypse Protocol".
-Bill the Elf (in the body of Blade the bounty hunter) had vanished from the dungeon of the wish parasite; now we find out he'd been kidnaped by Nikos the crazy asshole wizard.
"I saw you were in dungeon, and I teleport you here to warn you! I find out there was prophecy that the Wish Parasite would be use to bring about destruction of the world!! And this is most important part: it will happen because one person in group questing for it will be teleport away at crucial moment!"
-After Bill explains how Nikos brought about the very disaster he claims he was trying to avert: "Maybe there still time!! Hmm... now I really wish I not kept you in stasis to probe you for presence of the wish parasite for last 23 hours... yeah, we probably too late!"
-Nikos and Sezrekhan were apparently friends long ago, according to Nikos, until Sezrekhan had a fight with him over Nikos' sister. But you can't really believe anything this raving lunatic says.
-Wanting some proof, Bill asks Nikos to reveal something about Sezrekhan no one else knows. Nikos tells him that Sezrekhan once confessed he was jealous of clerics.
-Having already failed his master Sezrekhan yet again, and gone AWOL, Bill decides it's a great idea to contact Sezrekhan and immediately tell him that he knows this humiliating secret.
-Sezrekhan is at a meeting of most of the major Daemons where they're trying to put together a plan to stop G.0.D.
-Bill suggests Time Travel, because that's always worked. He points out the King of Elfland can time travel, because that's always worked too. Just ask the pre-emptively extinct Cyber-dragons.
-"You're a human orphan who was raised by wolves in a religious commune. You're usually the one they get to trade with local mutant tribes, who don't like the wolves much."
"Because my family are wolves?"
"No, because they're polygamists."
"Wait.. are they Mormon wolves?"
-On the way back home the Orphan is taken by surprise by Jal'uddin, Sezrekhan's assassin, who interrogates him about the Time Dinosaurs, something the orphan knows nothing about. He then buggers off, as suddenly and mysteriously as he arrived.
-The human orphan's entire religious compound is destroyed by a beam from heaven, but he is teleported away to safety.
"do not fear! You have been rescued from G.O.D.'s disintegration wall. Food and blankets will be distributed shortly."
-Stuck in the Azure Wizard's magic circle with Chu and Ack'Basha, the fanfic-writer spends his time writing bad fanfic.
-The Azure Wizards are debating their options: they could try to destroy G.O.D., try to shut him back down into Emergency Mode, or somehow try to reason with him. The problem is none of these seem really possible, since G.O.D. is found in the Crown of Creation, the highest dimension, which can't be reached by anyone (not even the Daemons), except G.O.D. himself and command-crew level Ancients (who are all dead, as far as anyone knows, since Bill the Elf accidentally killed Alice, the last Ancient girl).
-"Maybe we could create some kind of 'Safe Space' where we would be protected from all of this?"
-"I propose we sacrifice Ack'basha to bring an Ancient back to life!"
"Do you know how to do that?"
"No, I figured we could just kill Ack'basha and see what happens"
-"We Azure Wizards operate on a Consensus-based decision making process, not a democracy!"
"What's the difference?"
"In a democracy, the majority gets to force what it wants on everyone else. In a consensus, we keep talking and talking until everyone agrees with whatever the most annoying person who won't stop until they get their way wants."
-"I hereby release the three of you from the magic circle."
"Great! Where's the bathroom??"
"Just over there."
"Is it gender neutral?"
"Of course!"
-Ack'basha is granted his freedom from the circle when he agrees to go with the Azure wizards to Mt. Parnassus, to defend his choices before the great congress of the great and the good. They don't trust him to keep his word, but he surprisingly agrees to be examined by ESP.
"Wow... I'm reading your mind and.. you're just a total piece of shit, aren't you?"
"Why? Those people were all going to die anyways."
-"From time immemorial, the great and the good of this world have gathered on Mt.Parnassus in times of great crisis, to talk about what to do until the crisis passes."
-"There's no clear evidence that G.O.D. is going to kill everyone, or repair everyone; but the evidence of the huge disintegration beam slowly making its way across the world sort of points to 'kill'."
-Bill the Elf, meanwhile, was given one single job by Sezrekhan: keep an eye on Nikos and distract him from doing anything that could fuck things up! Naturally, as soon as he's given these orders he gets Nikos to send him away.
-Bill ends up in the palace of Anthraz the Destroyer, the incredibly old retired super-warrior. Anthraz explains that Nikos' story about having once been a teacher for his PC party was total bullshit; and that Nikos was responsible for killing half of his original team. However, a bit of rooting around Anthraz's enormous treasure-pile uncovers a memory of an artifact, a relic arrow, that might be able to guide them to a living Ancient (if there's one left anywhere in the world) or someone or something else capable of getting them to the Crown of Creation.
-Unfortunately, Anthraz doesn't have the arrow itself. That's in the hands of his old wizard friend Timoteus, who was driven bugfuck nuts by Nikos and became the villainous wizard known as The Archemaster.
-The Archemaster used to have an ice palace far in the north, but was driven out of there by the Council of Really Old Wizards after they took over the Elf Rose Dome. Now he's created a new base in the middle of the Dust Sea.
-Anthraz was about reveal all this when Bill suddenly gets teleported away, by the Azure Wizards. He's taken by them because Ack'basha (who suspects that "blade" is actually Bill the Elf) may be 'important' to them at the conference.
-At the conference the PCs meet a large number of their old friends or former acquaintances, including Sandy (the former bikini-chainmail barbarian, and now the new Warlord of the Dreadfort). There's also Doctor Theobald, the Apeman Scholar.
-They also see that Zargon, master of the Ribond, is present, representing the Daemons who have sent him as their spokesman.
-Notably absent are the Presbyterian Clerics, who were apparently destroyed by a Sky-Nazi attack.
"As they were no doubt predestined to be!"
-There's also some new people to meet, like the Techno-walruses, the Legion of Super Cool Teens, and the X-mutants. The latter consist of "Cyclops" (who is an actual cyclops), "wolverine" (who is an actual wolverine), "Colossus" (who is an actual colossus), Kitty Pride (who is a mutant furry-otherkin who pretends she's a cat), and BOLT-0, for some reason.
-"Is there anything that BOLT-0 hasn't done at this point?!"
-"Bolt-0, you're an x-mutant??"
"BOLT-O WAS A MEMBER OF THAT GROUP LONG AGO, AND THEN LEFT. BOLT-O IS KIND OF LIKE THE 'BANSHEE' OF THE X-MUTANTS"
-"Our calculations indicate that the Disintegration Wall will reach its opposite side in four days and 22 hours."
"So it's Ack'basha's plan to stall for the next 5 days until G.O.D. kills everyone?"
"We're here with the Azure Order; they're natural stallers!"
-Anthraz shows up at the great conference, pissed off at all the young whippersnappers who are as useless as ever.
-Ack'basha tries to stall by suggesting that seeking out Bob Shoggoth would be a better idea then going on this madcap quest for a magic arrow.
-Anthraz accidentally outs "blade" as being Bill the Elf in front of the whole conference. Now about two-thirds of those present want to kill Bill, to match the two-thirds or so who want to kill Ack'basha.
-"Yes, I'm Bill the Elf... and I also have a Shoggoth as a friend."
-Bill tries to convince the conference (and a few of the PCs) that they don't need to kill Ack'Basha.
"What?? But I thought you guys were mortal enemies!?"
"Not in my fanfiction they aren't..."
-"Ack'basha, I want my Primo Staff back."
"It's mine now, Bill, but if it's to contact Bob Shoggoth, I will let you touch my staff."
"...Ok, I guess that well of fanfiction inspiration hasn't quite run dry yet..."
-unwilling to wait any longer, the X-mutants (including BOLT-O) teleport away to the Dust Sea in search of the Achemaster's Arrow.
-After getting stoned out of his mind, Bill does contact Bob Shoggoth, who is going into hiding. He explains that G.0.D.'s apocalypse protocol will wipe out almost all life on the inner surface of the world of the Last Sun, with the plan being that he'll rebuild everything from the genetic seed banks of the Ancients. The problem being that those seed banks were destroyed or corrupted by the Dark Ones long ago.
-Zargon declares that he is leaving, and will inform the other Daemons that all the great and the good of the world of the Last Sun are as fucking useless as ever.
-The PCs finally agree to go looking for the Archemaster's arrow, once Dr.Theobald points out that the arrow will be useful for just about any subsequent plan anyone in the group might have, regardless of the fact that the PCs' goals after that will be in direct opposition of each other.
-Before leaving, Dr.Theobald gets a little collection going to help equip the newbie PCs (and some of the other PCs who are woefully under equipped). As well as some standard armor and weapons (mostly looted from the bodies of the refugees that have been flooding into the valley at the bottom of Mt.Parnassus), and a couple of magic items, and a book on demonology (that may have been written by BOLT-0), they get a high-tech briefcase of holding (courtesy of the Techno-Walruses) and a hoverboard (thanks to the Legion of Super Cool Teens).
The Emu takes the hoverboard. "It's every Emu's dream to fly!"
-The refugees are starving and killing each other for racial and religious reasons.
"Have you not given them any help yet? What about the blankets and food you promised them??"
"We'll be giving them blankets and food as soon as the conference is over."
"My god, they're all going to starve!"
-The team heads off to the Dust Sea, a desert wasteland where nothing can live. The Road Warrior feels right at home.
-The team is attacked by a couple of dozen sand-skeletons! After a vicious battle, the skeletons are defeated, but the Emu has died.
"How tragic.. oh well, we'll be eating chicken tonight!"
-"The Dust Sea appears to be a massive graveyard... in fact, most of this dust in the air is probably from bones."
"Well that's not very hygenic!"
-Carrying on, they find the remains of the X-mutants, all of whom were slaughtered by a giant sandworm. Except BOLT-0, who was not in the sandworm's diet.
-Carrying on a bit further, they end up running into said giant sandworm, and it's a biggie! The battle is on!
"I hit it with my flamethrower!"
"Great; now it's a giant murderous sandworm that's also on fire!"
-"Aren't you going to help?"
"I don't know what to do with a giant worm!"
"That's also my problem... get it?"
-The Giant Sandworm swallows Bill the Elf whole! But unfortunately, the rest of the party slaughters the worm before it can finish digesting him.
-The sandworm pays off with a bunch of gems and coins in its belly. Also, the road warrior takes a few dozen teeth for a necklace.
-The party decides to camp out there, by the corpse of the giant worm.
As it was getting late, that's also where we stopped for the day. Stay tuned next time, to find out if the PCs manage to stop the Apocalypse Protocol, or fuck everything up beyond belief as usual.
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti Solitario + Rattray's Old Gowrie
No Nightcrawler who is an actual worm? Lame!
ReplyDeleteI missed that one!
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