DCC Campaign Update: Let's Go Assault a Child

We left off with the party massively split-up, mostly in the city of Lol (though a couple of PCs were still down in "the Sphincter" and presumed dead).  Bill the Elf was imprisoned by the High Council of Wizards in a place called the Infinity Pit.  Yarr the halfling had ingratiated herself to one of the council members, Princess Fairywinkle, in an attempt to negotiate Bill's freedom. Morris had ended up 'encapsulated' for fighting in the public thoroughfare with Rainbow Deva. The yellow mutant boat-arsonist had received an important message from Jal'udin the rogue, and was absolutely sure not to deliver it.

Now:

-"I don't want to play Muu anymore. I want to roll up some new characters."
10 minutes later, Muu's player has generated a blob-man, a furry space insect, and a techno walrus.
"I just wanted to play someone normal!"
"He wants to play what he's not."

-"Dude, you know how many players would love to play any of those characters?"
"fuck it, I'm playing Teal the mud-mutant warrior from my last batch."
"Thank you for wasting all our time."

-"Your mental-defective boat-arsonist is sleeping in a closet."
"Hey! He's not a mental-defective. He's Handi-capable!"

-"Notice how everyone associated with Sezrekhan is terrible at who they actually choose to trust with important things?"
"That's because Sezrekhan is the Ayn Rand of Daemons."

-"What's going to happen to Bill? I wouldn't really care, but he's sort of my ride..."

-Heidi and Teal both regain consciousness at the bottom of the Sphincter. They both survived their last plummet into the depths as they tried climbing down the canyon because their fall was broken by a large mass of rotting radioactive sludge.
"You know what this is from, right?"
"Feels like it's from a dead shoggoth who was blown to bits with dozens of atomic mini-missiles."

-"so Arnok actually saved FIVE PCs now?! That was so not the plan!"

-Teal enters the crystal shard and transmats to Lol. There's a nerdy intern waiting at the transmat platform on that end.
"Are you a wizard??"
"Um.. yes. I'm the knife wizard!"
"You're not on the list!"
"...can I see the list?"
"..OK..."
"I'm...this guy!"
"You're Raistlin?"
"Yes."

-Seconds later the intern starts to see through Teals pathetic ruse, and Teal runs for it, rushing into the flying Space-Kirin's corral and hiding in a storage room.

-Heidi beams up to Lol as well.
"Hello. Have you seen a mud-mutant around here?"
"The 'Knife Wizard'? He's not a real wizard you know! He lied to me! I put my trust in him!"

-Meanwhile, Teal is quickly found by the Guardian Robots.
"ENCAPSULATE! ENCAPSULATE!"
"I stab one with my knife!"
"The knife breaks."
"Damn."

-Bill and Pertinax are in the Infinity Pit, getting high as all fuck to try to contact Bob Shoggoth. Actually, Pertinax didn't want to smoke any, but second hand smoke ruined his efforts to avoid having anything to do with Bill's crazy plan. Soon, they're both stoned out of their gourds, talking about cheese.

-"Man, I've lost all respect for Pertinax now. He used to have some dignity!"
"Yeah, until he met Bill!"
"He has that effect on people."

-Bill contacts Bob Shoggoth, and just for shits and giggles has Bob show Pertinax his true visage. Pertinax starts screaming hysterically, having lost all his Sanity Points from the encounter with a Thing Man Was Not Meant To Know.

-Bob Shoggoth is leaving all of creation, because of Sezrekhan. After totally disbelieving everyone who had warned him Sezrekhan was going to fuck everything up, from his fellow PCs, to important NPCs, to the High Council, Bill instantly believes in the danger when a rastafarian shoggoth tells him so.

-Also, Bill forgets to ask Bob Shoggoth to rescue him from the Infinity Pit.
"I forgot. Things kind of went another way and I got distracted..."
"It's because he got high!"

-So Bill is still stuck in the Infinity Pit with Pertinax, who won't stop screaming and has started to bleed out of his eyes from the Lovecraftian horror.
"..this is fine."

-The blacksmith and the farmer had found a cheap inn to stay the night, and the Blacksmith goes to de-encapsulate the prisoner he'd bought at the auction earlier that day. His new indentured servant turns out to be a seemingly ditzy prostitute named Myla.

-lost in the city of Lol, trying to find absolutely any of his team-mates, Heidi (who keeps insisting his name is pronounced 'haadee') runs into a crazy madman that's screaming about how "All is Sezrekhan!!". Some of the pepperpot-shaped Guardian Robots show up and encapsulate him.

-He then runs into a whole group of people, really creepy people who are also chanting in unison that "all is Sezrekhan". They are stalking toward him trying to grab him.
"hey, look over there, it's Sezrekhan!"
"They turn to look"
"I wasn't sure that would work. I run like hell!"

-He runs into another alley where he sees a couple engaged in man-blob sexual intercourse.
"I back away slowly."

-The blacksmith and the farmer desperately  need money, in order to buy Morris' capsule at the auction tomorrow.  Myla tells them she can get them some money.
"Ok, just don't tell me where you're going to get it from..."

-Heidi runs into a weird guy who apparently mistakes him for someone else. He tries to use a secret code with him.
"The crow flies at midnight..."
"I guess so?"
"oh. Sorry, nevermind!"
"Hey, wait!! You don't know where Bill the Elf is, do you? I came with him.."
"You're with Bill the Elf?? Come with me."

-The guy leads Heidi into a hovel where there's several shady looking characters. He has found The Resistance!
Their leader is a tough smart blonde woman in a tight dress.
"Wait.. is that Myla the prostitute? The one that was with the other guys?
"Yup."

-"Had Bill come here to destroy the Council?"
"He wasn't very clear... he said something about joining them, or destroying them... I think Bill might be dyslexic."

-"So Bill is in the Infinity Pit... what about Morris?"
"He's been Encapsulated."
"Somehow that doesn't surprise me."

-"The council has been subverted by one or more diabolists. Those wizards who aren't corrupted are too decadent to do anything. Bill is our only hope!"
"Oh man, you're so fucked."

-"He isn't our only hope... there is another."

-Meanwhile, the next morning Yarr goes with Princess Fairywinkle to meet Cylor the Cyclops Wizard, who they hope to convince to join Fairywinkle in sponsoring Bill to go through the test of membership in the High Council, which would get him out of the Infinity Pit on a technicality.

-"You know how I found that book of zoology last night in Fairywinkle's bookshelf and spent most of the night reading through it?"
"yes."
"Well, you told me that Cylor is an obsessive collector of rare birds?"
"Yes, now that you're here you see that as well as attractive young male and and female slaves, he has many gilded cages with fancy birds, plus magnificent giant cats, and a menagerie full of monsters. He's quite the collector."
"Good. So I use everything I read to talk with him about some of the animals I recognize and flatter him about his collection."
"...damn, you're good."

-As Yarr enters Cylor's tower she notes a great statue given to him in gratitude from the people of Minotauria.
"Wait.. Minotauria??"
"Yes."
"WTF?"

-Yarr succeeds in convincing Cylor. But she can also act as a witness to the fact that Bill couldn't have had anything to do with the disappearance of the Hippomagus, since he'd been in the Shithole for the past several weeks.
"If Bill was not the culprit, that means that someone on the council has betrayed us all! I'm fairly sure it's Zak the Grey Alien Wizard."
"Well, I think it's John De La Pole!"
"So why do each of you think that the person you named is the traitor?"
"Well... Zak thinks he's so cool..."
"And De La Pole is all stuck up."

-At this point everyone realizes the High Council of Wizards are much like a gang of high school students.

-"So now we are allies, eh, Fairwinkle? Well, Cylor has had worse allies!"
"And once we free Bill you'll have a worse ally again!"

-"I only hope we don't come to regret this."
"They're freeing Bill, of course they're going to regret it!"

-"Man, Cylor is like one of those guys from 'I Claudius'!"

-Meanwhile, Myla has agreed to help the blacksmith and the farmer purchase and decapsulate Morris. She takes them to a Frog-man loan shark. He demands the Farmer as collateral, and gives them a 2000gp loan in exchange for them paying him back 3400gp and 98sp.

-"you just sold out the farmer, and you guys call me the psycho!"

-Heidi ends up a prisoner of the Resistance. Myla brings the blacksmith there too, hoping to confirm that Heidi isn't a secret double-agent of the High Council. Unfortunately, the two had never met until just then.
"One or both of you could be spies."
"Probably him!"
"Who were you trying to free?"
"Morris."
"Really? You probably don't want to free him."
"Ok, I think Heidi's legit."

-"I think Bill broke Pertinax."

-With Pertinax a 0-San lovecraftian-horror-victim, Bill does the obvious and loots his cellmate. He finds a horn which turns out to be a Horn of Dutchmen!
"Yes, you have summoned us for a while.. isn't that weird?"

-He also finds a ring of weakness and puts it on, instantly dropping his Strength and Stamina to 3.
"Damn. Oh well, I chop off that finger."

-The auction begins, and the Blacksmith turns out to be outbid on his attempt to purchase Morris. He notes that the winner of Morris' capsule happens to be a frogman.  He realizes he might have made a mistake by mentioning that Morris had thousands of gold pieces on him.
He does manage to successfully bid on Rainbow Deva.

-Teal is being auctioned at the same event. He ends up being bought, and subsequently de-encapsulated, by a mercenary bounty-hunter named Malaprex the Violent.
"What do you do?"
"I mostly kill people!"
"Me too!"
"Great! Let's go drinking!"

-At the meeting of the High Council, Cylor and Fairywinkle manipulate the technical rules of the Council to get Bill released from the Infinity Pit. They're all stunned to see him horribly weakened and missing a finger.

-"What happened to you??"
"Well, first I contacted a Shoggoth.."
"WHAT??"
"He serves the Void!"
"I don't serve the Void! I just sometimes smoke weed with someone who came from it.."

-The Archemaster was supposed to be at that meeting of the council, to complete his re-application for membership. But he's conspicuously absent.  Meanwhile, Heidi discovers that the Archemaster has been recruited into the Resistance.
"Do you serve Bill, Heidi?"
"Not really."
"...good answer."

-"Should we really be trying to blow up the high council with an enormous bomb?! I mean, what about the Sezrekhan problem? Shouldn't we be trying to form a coalition?"
"Let me tell you about coalitions: when G.O.D. awoke, a grand coalition of the great and the good took place on Mt.Parnassus. You know what they did? NOTHING. They talked and talked all through the crisis."
"Well, we're here now!"
"So if it wasn't those guys, who stopped the crisis?"
"...that's not important."

-Myla and the blacksmith follow the frogman who bid on Morris to a ki-rin rental store that appears closed. The frogman knocks on the door and gives a secret password to enter.
"...shadilay."

-a young frogboy leaves the shop shortly thereafter, heading toward the Loan Shark's shop.
"We have to stop him!"
"OK, let's go assault a child."

-Meanwhile, Malaprex the Violent and Teal (the also violent) learn that Bill has been freed by the High Council.
"Bill's head would fetch us untold riches in any of a dozen kingdoms! You need to infiltrate Bill's group again and then betray him."
"ok!"

-Teal gets to Cylor's tower, where Bill is staying.
"Oh it's you."
"Yes, I'm here to help"
"Good. Well... um.. go find Morris!"
"Does he even know how to find Morris? Does he know this city? Do we even have any idea where Morris is?"
"He has resources!"
"He doesn't look like he has resources. He looks like an imbecile."
"Hey! I... don't know what that word means!"

-Teal immediately proves himself an imbecile by mentioning that he's been sent by Malaprex to betray Bill.

-After taking out the little frogboy, the Blacksmith and the resistance break into the Frogman shop and steal Morris' capsule. Then the Blacksmith and one of the resistance get to the Loan Shark's place before he's been alerted to anything, and pays off his loan, freeing the Farmer. They head to Decapsulate Morris, but on the way they get intercepted in an alley... by Jal'udin and his assassins!
"Have you contacted Bill?"
"Um.. yeah, sure."
"Did he get my message?"
"...no?"
"...tell him to meet me at the Dancing Harpy Saloon.  It is time we worked together to stop Sezrekhan."
"Weren't you allies once before?"
"Yes, long ago... then stuff happened."
"That sounds a bit sexual..."
"What?! No! I meant I killed him"
"Ohh.. that's much better."

-Before the blacksmith can get Morris de-encapsulated, the Resistance member who'd come with him suddenly goes nuts and starts shouting that "all is Sezrekhan". The Guardians come along and "ENCAPSULATE!" the guy.
"Shit, that's too bad. Well, I'll go de-encapsulate Morris"
"The resistance guy had Morris' capsule"
"Oh fuck."
"Wow, a capsule within a capsule, how does that work?"

-The blacksmith and the farmer decide to screw the resistance, and head to find Bill at Cylor's tower.
"Wow, you must save a lot of money on sunglasses..."

-Cylor has Teal act as bait to draw out Malaprex and then quickly subdues him with his Spider Web spell.
"So, Cylor can do whatever a spider can?"

-Heidi tries to convince Myla and the Resistance to let him go to Bill, promising them he'll recruit Bill for them.
"Do you really think you can get Bill to betray the council?"
"Bill can't stop betraying people! It's in his blood."

-Worried that the blacksmith betrayed them, Myla lets Heidi go.  She and the Resistance (including the Archemaster) will go to a new undisclosed location, and carry on with their plan to blow the council to bits.

-Finally, the boat-arsonist ended up wandering the streets of Lol utterly aimlessly. Eventually, he came across a troubling scene: BOLT-1 was meeting with several of the Guardian robots. He told them that the "Organics cannot be trusted to deal with the oncoming crisis", and that their 'plan' had to be accelerated.
"You must proceed on my signal, to cleanse the entire city of all organic life."
"WE OBEY! EXTERMINATE!! EXTERMINATE!!"

-Naturally, he did the only thing he could. He wandered off again and stole some eggs and a skillet from a nearby household. Literally, with his intelligence level it's the only thing he could do.

That's it for this session.  Not a lot got resolved, and instead, as usual, the PCs find themselves in a rising storm of oncoming shit about to hit multiple proverbial fans.

Will they be able to solve all the various problems, save Lol, the council, organic life, and the universe? Let's face it, probably not. But it'll be fun to see just how they fuck everything up! Stay tuned.


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