DCC Campaign Update: Robots and Chickens Edition

In this adventure the PCs were considering whether to return to Highbay with a Dragon horde they'd obtained, or go into the mystery transmat portal leading to somewhere called "Living Habitat 23" in the Ancient tongue.  When all of a sudden:

-They were found by a trio of lost newbie adventurers!  As tends to happen when Bolt-0 declares that "UNKNOWN LIFE FORMS DETECTED" followed by "RECOMMEND WE ENTER STEALTH MODE IMMEDIATELY" all while completely unable to modulate the volume of his voice.

-They discovered that two of the three newbies were immigrants from the Southern Continent, much like the Brahmin and MC Untouchable! It turns out that some guy called the Serpent King has been conquering the small kingdoms of that continent left and right, gaining in power every time he ritually sacrifices a king to his daemon-patron.

-They learned that by a stroke of luck, the third newbie was a beggar who happened to be an expert on the Ancients!  It turns out that in the world of the Last Sun 'studying the ancients' is like a bachelors in unemployment.

-They were surprised by the newbies carrying two live chickens with them in spite of being near starving!  It turns out that the Chickens were sacred to them. The Untouchable's third eye is also sacred. Apparently, on the Southern Continent all kinds of stupid shit is sacred.

-They were stunned by Bolt-O deciding to trust Ack'basha the cleric with a secret! It wasn't the secret that was stunning, it was that at this point anyone would still trust Ack'basha the Cleric.  Apparently "BOLT-0 IS AN ENDLESS OPTIMIST"!

-They discovered that Bolt-0 has a storage compartment in his torso! And it has a small skull in it, the size of a halfling's.. or a child.  The PCs decided not to even ask him about it.

-They learned that Bolt-0's greatest tragedy is that he cannot enter into "conversation mode" with himself.

-They chose to eat the day-old red dragon carcass! Which turned into a great opportunity for the GM to refer to the "dungeon dining" table in his old but awesome "Forward... to Adventure! Gamemasters' Notebook!" (aka "FtA!GN!"), which is full of incredibly useful tables for your gonzo campaigns.

-They are awoken that night by Bolt-0's intruder-alert! And by the fact that two-thirds of the party are suffering from explosive diarrhea from having eaten that dragon meat.

-They discover they are facing a dozen deadly Chan Trolls, the most ravenously violent and mindless trolls in the entire world!

-They are horrified to hear the Chan Trolls literally tearing the Brahmin's elephant to pieces as they feast on his flesh! On the other hand, it's the only thing that saves them since the Trolls are too busy devouring the Elephant to attack the PCs en masse during their moment of gastrointestinal vulnerability.

-They grasp the sophomoric infantile humoristic irony that the Brahmin was always a pretty shitty Brahmin but now he's really a shitty brahmin!

-They defeat the first wave of trolls! But realizing there's no way they're going to beat all of them, decide to rescue Bolt-0 (though none of them are quite sure why they would) and get onto the Transmat to "Living Habitat 23".

-They are transported to a strange retro-future underworld! It isn't Dwarven, as the Dwarf-Wizard confirms, so it seems plausible that they've actually been taken to the site of one of the Ancients' own dwellings!

-They quickly discover that like everything else in the world, Living Habitat 23 has gone to absolute shit!

-There's a computer terminal in the transmat room! But there's no interface. And no apparent way to turn it on. And "BOLT-O DOES NOT HAVE WIRELESS CAPABILITIES".

-They encounter another robot! This one is called "CHEF-9" and when they hear her say "FOODSTUFF DETECTED, ENTERING COOKING MODE", they quickly realize that they are the 'foodstuff'.

-The Brahmin slices off CHEF-9's motor column, having just learned that robots apparently are easily mobility-impaired! But before the PCs can question the robot, the Brahmin keeps right on going into a robot-killing frenzy that everyone agrees is clearly an act of vicarious slaughter to get out his frustrations with BOLT-0.

-The Brahmin declares, satisfied, that he "wants a cigarette" after cutting CHEF-9 into hundreds of tiny bits! Once again proving he's a really shitty Brahmin.

-Bolt-0 makes a startling revelation! It turns out that "ONE PART OF BOLT-O IS A CIGARETTE LIGHTER. BOLT-O DOES NOT WISH TO REVEAL WHICH PART!"

-MC Untouchable tries to play the lute! BOLT-0 opines that "BOLT-0 THINKS YOU ARE MURDERING THAT INSTRUMENT".

-MC Untouchable has a stunning plan! When they need to explore a mysterious kitchen, he ties a rope to himself and tells the group "I'm going in. If you hear me screaming hysterically, pull me back!"

-MC Untouchable encounters a cowardly hideous creature that looks like a cross between a dwarf and Dr.Zoidberg from Futurama! BOLT-0 analyzes the creature and comes to the conclusion of "...BOLT-0 DOESN'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THAT IS."

-The Dwarf-Wizard also fails to identify the crab-dwarf creature!  "This is not in the Book of Grievances".

-There's a huge hole in the floor of the mess hall! The Brahmin warrior decides to be lowered down to the next level on the rope, but just before reaching the ground he discovers the floor is electrified, and barely escapes being fatally fried.  "I have a new respect for life," he says, "It'll probably pass as soon as I have something to kill".

-Ack'basha the Cleric is willing to throw the hideous but clearly harmless crab-dwarf creature to its death to test out the elctric floor! But this isn't a big surprise at this point; they all agree that by now Ack'basha would screw over anyone in his party if he thought it'd help his revenge quest.

-MC Untouchable comes to the conclusion that Ack'basha must have had some very bad experiences to make him how he is now! "Did you have something happen to you when you were a choirboy?" "No, but there was this one time the party had a guy who served the Lord of All Flesh..."

-The group comes to the obvious conclusion that they may have teleported into an Ancients' living complex, but they definitely didn't telport into becoming better people!

-They also realize that for the first time in ages they did not teleport from or into a bathroom! But then they remember that this time they used tech, not magic. Apparently only magical teleportation requires a bathroom as a material component.

-The Brahmin comes to a stunning self-realization! "I'm not inflicting violence on anyone right now, and so I have to spend time thinking instead... I don't like it!"

-The group finds a second mysterious non-functioning turbolift shaft!  But it's full of little bits of glitter that turn out to be people-eating nanites!  They discover the nature of this terrible danger by throwing a defenseless crab-dwarf at the nanite swarm. For once, this wasn't Ack'basha the Cleric's idea; and now he thinks this means he's suddenly not the asshole of the party.

-They manage to capture a sample of the nanites in one of the tupperware boxes from the kitchen pantry! They toss the tupperware at BOLT-0 (who's still on the other side of the hole in the floor) for him to analyze, but he's momentarily confused as to why his party members are throwing storage containers at him.

-They destroy the nanites with Divine Wrath!  Making their way up the shaft they find a lab with some cryo-stasis units, which include one that appears to be occupied by a young girl. One of the newbies suggests they try to test out the correct sequence for safely reversing the stasis process by stuffing the last surviving crab-dwarf in a spare unit. "you're going to fit right into this party", says absolutely everyone in it.

-The Dwarf-Wizard's engineering skills prove able to work the cryo-stasis units!  "Now let's wake up the little girl... everyone be ready to stab her!"

-The young girl awakens! And it turns out she may be the last surviving Ancient in the entire world.  They decide to tell her about the cataclysm, the fact she's been asleep for over ten thousand years, and that her entire species is probably dead.  "she's just a child..." "hey, she needs to grow up sometime!"

-The Ancient Girl (whose name it turns out is Alice; which everyone thinks sound Elven, but she corrects them that Elven sounds like Ancient) demands that they get her to the control room to restore power! She says she wants this to try to 'contact the Bridge Officers', the meaning of which none of the PCs understand. But she also makes the mistake of answering the PCs' question about whether there's an armory; there is, and the PCs decide to go there first instead.

-The Ancient Girl is not impressed with the PCs' spellcasting! "Your magic is an Alpha-Primitive Cargo Cult of our technology".  "I didn't understand any of what she just said but I feel like we should feel offended". She also apparently reveals that before the Disaster, Sezrekan was an AI program to teach children. Cue bad puns about "SezreKHAN Academy".

-The Ancient Girl reveals a shocking fact: apparently, there's no actual difference between Ancients and Humans.  They are the same species, except the 'humans' were "Alpha Primitives" while the Ancients called themselves the "Command Crew".

-The PCs make it down to the Armory Level! There they are forced to fight a Guard Robot. But they kill it off fairly easily.  Unfortunately the vault itself is magically (or Ancient-Technologically) sealed; however, some Divine Aid manages to break it open.  Unfortunately, most of the Armory seems to have been emptied long ago; though they do manage to find a couple of laser swords and vibro-swords, a box of cigars, a .45 pistol, an instant-soup processor, and an Ancient Battlesuit. By the party's standards, its the fucking motherlode.

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