The last adventure had found the party severely separated. Ack'Basha the Cleric had been summoned by something called the Supreme Council of the Presbyterian Church, the Dwarf Wizard had been arrested by the Yard on suspicion of murdering everyone at Norrington Manor, and the Weaver had been taken prisoner by the Sky-Nazis. At the same time, Alice (the last surviving child of the Ancients) had been captured by the Dark Ones (revealed last adventure to be dreaded Gnomes!) and taken to their Gnomish Netherverse. The Gnomish Netherverse was the plane of the Last Sun where the Gnomes had first breached this reality from the Void Beyond, and it was utterly consumed by them and made into a twisted twilight realm of their nightmares.
Now:
-Ackbasha meets the Presbyterian Council, who turn out to be a denomination of Clerics that believe in pre-destination. He quickly figures out that this means they're mostly useless as human beings.
-The Presbyterian Council governs a large city of humans called The City of Reasonably Efficient Plumbing.
-They kidnapped Ack'basha because they think he is pre-destined to go stop a Tarrasque from awakening from its magical slumber. Apparently Grenoble the cleric had imprisoned it on an isolated island in the Mid-Inner Ocean some 150 years ago, but now the activities of the Party Pandas threatens to wake it.
-The Dwarf Wizard and the Weaver, meanwhile, are each being interrogated by their respective captors. Although the severity of the interrogations are quite the contrast with each other.
In the Yard: "We can get pretty tough with you, you know: for example, no tea for you!"
In the sky-prison of the sky-nazis: "strip the skin off his genital slowly!"
-Ack'basha requests that the council bring his friends over to help him. The Council summons the Science-Presbyterian, who informs them that said friends are no longer in Norrington Manor but he will search for them. Meanwhile the Service-Presbyterian (who is passively contented to be 'predestined' to a life of menial servitude) leads Ack'basha to some quarters where he can rest.
-Ack'basha gets an idea and asks the Science-Presbyterian to find a teleport BOLT-0 to him, expecting (correctly) that BOLT-0 would still be where they'd last known him to be going, in the dragon cave in Yeti Country.
-"BOLT-0 IS QUICKLY REMEMBERING WHY HE LEFT THIS CITY"
-The Weaver and the Sky-Obergrupenfuhrer who is interrogating him develop a rapport over their mutual interest in crafts and crochet. The Sky-Obergrupenfurher is quite pleasantly amazed to hear that the Weaver is actually a pre-Disaster human who had been preserved all this time in suspended animation.
-The Sky-Obergrupenfurher decides to contact the Sky-Marshal with the news, and leaves the Weaver in his most comfortable torture cell, to be lightly whipped by a leather-clad blonde named Inga while he is given some Sky-Nazi reading material: "Volk Und Blud Magazine", "Sky-Reich Weekly" and the Sky-Fuhrer's seminal work "Mein Struggle With Childhood Obesity".
-at the Yard: "So you're expecting me to believe that out of nowhere, Gnomes just showed up and Murdered everyone?"
-"I didn't summon the gnomes!"
"Then why do you have lobster claws for hands, eh??"
-"Could we somehow bring Alice back to life from the realm of the dead, if the Gnomes have killed her?"
"IT IS LIKELY THAT IF THE GNOMES SLAY ALICE, IT WILL BE FOR HER DELICIOUS DELICIOUS SOUL".
-The Weaver has informed the Sky-Nazis that there was an Ancient child at Norrington Manor, but she was kidnapped by Gnomes. As the value of a true Ancient would be immesurable to the Sky-Nazis, the Sky-Obergrupenfurher decides that they must return to the manor, and calls on the SS-Runenwizards.
-He has other plans for the Weaver, however: "As a pure-bred human, you are to be taken to Sky-Base-1 of the Sky-Reich, where you will be made to breed with physically perfect Aryan women for the rest of your long life!"
"you know, I'm cool with that!"
-Suddenly, the Weaver is teleported away from his promised future of Sky-Nazi breeding, as he has been found by the Presbyterian Council!
-"But I was supposed to breed!"
"Clearly, you were not predestined to do so!"
-"Fuck me, I've been cock-blocked by the Presbyterians!"
"If you were cock blocked, it was by G.O.D., long ago!"
-"with great power comes great responsibility..."
"But I can only cast Ropework!"
-The Presbyterian Council will determine whether they are pre-determined to be determined to assist the PCs.
-Meanwhile, the PCs are teleported to the island of the Tarrasque, where they encounter the Party Pandas who appear to be busy with a neverending dance party to the tune of a song called "what is love".
-while the other PCs try to carefully observe and negotiate with the Party Pandas, endeavoring to explain to them that not only their lives, but countless others, will be doomed if they awaken the Tarrasque, the Weaver just decides to cut out the diplomacy by running through DJ Panda with his laser sword.
-The Party Pandas immediately turn feral and start to attack the party, but they're scared off by Ack'basha's invocation of Divine Aid. Bolt-O smashes all their sound equipment, and the PCs destroy everything in the Panda village, except the barrel of Ecstasy pills, which they keep for themselves.
-Back at the City of Reasonably Efficient Plumbing, the PCs learn that the Presbyterian Clerics don't really have an armory, but they do have a collection of comfortable orthopedic shoes.
-"BOLT-0 WANTS TO KNOW HOW YOU KNEW HE HAD A BOWL OF COMMANDING WATER ELEMENTALS INSIDE HIS CHEST COMPARTMENT!"
"Do you want me to talk about the other things I saw in there?"
"BOLT-O IS NO LONGER INTERESTED IN CONTINUING THIS CONVERSATION!"
-Meanwhile, Sezrekhan brings Bill the Elf back to life, in a new body, with the mission to infiltrate the group and recover the Ancient girl, if she's still alive!
-the Presbyterians conduct a ritual to open the portal to the Gnomish Netherworld in the Weaver's torso, prompting BOLT-0 to tell Weaver "REMAIN STILL WHILE BOLT-0 GOES INSIDE YOU"!
-They arrive at the Gnomish Netherworld, a photonegative world of barren landscapes, giant hills of piled-up underwear, and fairy-tale giant trees with cute little treehouses on the branches.
-The disguised Bill The Elf arrives at the Supreme Council and gets to go through the portal just by telling the Presbyterians "I'm predestined to go through this portal".
-Once through, Bill presents himself to the PCs as "Blade", a demon-hunter.
-Before the PCs can really question his story, they are immediately attacked by a band of sand-surfing killer gnomes, led by a commander named Fizzletwist Staffpounder.
-Bolt-0 summons a massive Water Elemental.
-"Oh great, another great huge loud thing... there goes the element of surprise."
"BOLT-0 LIKES THIS THING!"
-Bolt-0 and the Elemental go off to make a big distraction, while the PCs sneak into the giant Gnomish tree. Bill/Blade makes use of his gnomish-impersonating amulet. Beneath the tree there's a huge high-tech complex.
-They find their way to a room that has a button indicating there's a "super happy funslide".
"Nothing is going to be super-happy in here."
"It might be, for the Gnomes!"
-sliding down it, they end up in the complex's trash pile and get attacked by an undead Gnu.
-defeating the Gnu-skeleton, they get out of the trash pit, up an escalator, and find their way into a place filled with little red hats. Among these, there are some hidden Gnomish assassins, that go after them with flame-throwers!
-Forced to cast spells to save the group, "Blade"/Bill-the-elf tries to convince the group that he's a special 'demon hunter' class taken from some obscure sourcebook or something.
-The group makes their way into another corridor, where they're attacked by an Elemental Snowman!
"So wait, the gnomes attack us with flamethrowers first, and then their second line of defence is a snowman? Did they not think this through??"
-They find the Ancient girl, trapped inside a dark magical triangle, in a room filled to the brim with gnomes! But they use some divine aid to teleport Alice out of the room and into the hallway, drop a huge choking cloud in the room and then run like hell.
-They hear a war horn sounding behind them and soon they have gnomes surrounding them at each turn, requiring a brutal running fight.
-They run into special forces gnomes, specifically, the Hyperdiabetes-inducing Cuddly Death Gnomes!
"I'm going to run past them!"
"Ok, but you realize that would generate Hugs of Opportunity?"
-They manage to get into the next room, but then Blade/Bill's "ward portal" spell works a little too well, and ends up getting them locked in.
-They manage to use a laser sword to burn their way through, and after facing some gnomish snipers, they get out of the complex and manage to get away (after a frightening encounter with some blinking gnome statues). They get back to the portal only to almost get themselves garotted to death by gnomish assassins with little red scarves. Even so, they finally make it out.
-"No, you can't cast Ward Portal on the Weaver's torso".
-The Weaver wants to be sent back to the Sky-Nazis and their appealing-sounding breeding program. Since his body has a portal that could spew deadly gnomes from it at any time, the Presbyterians are only too happy to oblige.
-As soon as he is happily reunited with the Sky-Nazis, the Weaver lets slip that Alice the Ancient girl is alive and staying at the Presbyterian Council.
That's all for today, stay tuned for more DCC goodness in a couple of weeks!
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti Horn + Gawith's Navy Flake
Just curious. Do you play these sessions in Spanish or in English ?
ReplyDeleteEnglish
ReplyDeleteYeah. My Traveller campaign was in Spanish (so are almost all my campaigns except DCC). And the Trav one was very gonzo too, for Trav standards, but there was parts of the humor of the DCC campaign that would never ever work in Spanish.
ReplyDeleteI honestly believe, after 12 years of living here, that Spanish is a language less capable of effectively transmitting humor. And Spanish culture is (probably BECAUSE) of that, a culture that has much less developed comedy. The only spanish-language comedian I really like is Capusotto, who strongly based his humor on English-language comedy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LY2hDrMScc
ReplyDeleteCapusotto, with English subtitles (if you press the CC button)
so, the Party Pandas had the song "What is Love" on endless repeat?
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing the Tarrasque was going to wake up, just to make the song stop playing?
Yes. The foolish thing was the expectation that the PCs would first try to make the Pandas listen to reason. But no, they just dealt with it in their usual fashion.
DeleteIn the words of the late Brahman: "if it's not solved by violence, it's because you are not using enough violence"
ReplyDeleteI'm just nitpicking here, since I enjoy these posts a lot, but Mr. Rogers did not necessarily believe most of the children were going to hell. Plenty of Presbyterian ministers don't believe in predestination, and even if they hold to the historic teaching of that church, there's no agreement on how many people were predestined.
ReplyDeleteWell, I kind of hope you're right.
DeleteI miss one session and Bill is back in the party. Well done, boys.
ReplyDelete