DCC Campaign Report: Most of the Guards are Playing With Fidget-Spinners

At the end of our last session, our stalwart non-heroes had managed to get to the Azure Tower, only to have the Azure Order magicians send them off on a whole other side-quest; this time to save Coolland from a zombie invasion.

Now:

-Before leaving the Azure Tower, Mu finishes studying his new spell, making use of the Spinal Fluid of Drewmij to successfully learn Magic Missile.
"I bet he was just telling you that was 'spinal fluid'!"
"Hey, if it gives me +2 to learning a spell I'll drink any of his fluids!"

-Publio the page is broke and sorely lacking in equipment, so he tries to sell his services as a page.
"Where would we even send a message? The town is tiny and there isn't another settlement for days that isn't full of cannibals!"

-"Why don't you just make like a leaf and go away?"
"That's not how that phrase goes. It's 'why don't you make like a tree and go away'!"

-Publio leveled up as a Warrior, but doesn't have that many hit points.
"Well, Mu is pretty robust for a wizard!"
"You mean chubby; Mu is pretty chubby for a wizard!"
"You mean fatass; Mu is a fatass!"

-Since there's a gigantic horde of thousands of zombies between the tower and Coolland, the Azure Wizards decide to teleport the PCs to Coolland. Unfortunately, on their first try they fumble the spell, and all the PCs weapons disappear, teleported to an unknown location.
"Son of a bitch!"
"We had plasma rifles!"
"My grenades!"
"You fuckers owe me a +4 mace!"

-On their second try, the Azure Wizards manage to teleport the PCs, but not to Coolland's capital. Instead, they end up in the coastal city of Minaj.
"Can we contact the Azure Wizards?"
"I don't think so."

-"So this is not the capital?"
"No, adventurers. For all we know, the city of Gaga may have been overrun."

-The commander of Minaj's militia, currently making preparations in case the zombie army comes that way, is the old peasant woman/minotaur-slayer Elsa.

-The PCs decide to risk the overland journey to Gaga.
"Will you come with us, Elsa?"
"Niet. Elsa will stay, protect village. Make up for time when all Elsa's old village in Old Country was all killed. This time if Elsa here, maybe only half this village die!"
"That's progress..."
"In Old Country, that is Miracle!"

-"Mr. Old Woman, what was the source of these zombies?"
"It is from time ago, when Queen Zoey uncle try to take over kingdom. Other group of adventurers, led by Bill Elf, they go in forest and Bill Elf make great toxic cloud that kill whole army.  Zombies are whole army."
"So this is Bill the Elf's fault?"
"In Old Country, we have saying: Fuck Bill Elf!"
"I think a lot of countries have that saying."

-"Uncle Evil of Queen Zoey return and send zombie army that Bill Elf killed."
"Is the uncle a zombie too?"
"Not sure. If he was vampire then Elsa could help. Elsa was vampire slayer in Old Country."
"How many vampires have you actually killed?"
"One. How many you kill?"
"Ok, never mind."

-Tonut the Cleric shows off his flying armor, as Tonut tends to do.
"Oh, he is Rocket Red, like from Old Country!"

-The PCs say goodbye to Elsa and start on their way to Gaga.  Soon they encounter what they at first think is a zombie.  They send Publio to bash its head in, but it turns out to be Heidi, who they had last seen at Highbay. They discover it's Heidi when he pulls a gun on the ex-pageboy just as Publio was about to bash his skull.

-"He can talk!"
"Yes, Heidi usually does that."
"You knew it was me?!"
"Yeah, we wanted to see what happened, though."

-It turns out that when Heidi was in Highbay, he went sightseeing and ended up in The Factory, where a group of artistic weirdos drugged him, and he ended up posing in a series of pictures with a Yak, some naked women and a land-octopus.

-"What happened to all your weapons??"
"We have shovels now. If you don't have a shovel it means you're just square."
"Ok, fine, I was going to share some of my five weapons but since you're all happy with shovels..."

-"Who's the kid that tried to kill me?"
"That's Publio the page. He wants to be a warrior. We're training him wrong as a joke."

-Continuing on, the PCs end up running into a sort-of "adventurer" named Gilbert. They immediately identify him as a kind of con-artist more than an adventurer.
"In the Shithole we used to eat people like you."

-"Tonight I will cook us a nice curry!"
"Again?"
"Oh! I love curry! Back in Gaga there was this shop called Spicy Bharatan Tender Pork Tacos, and they were fantastic. So authentic! But then they mysteriously closed.."
"They were making their tacos from mutant children."
"What?"
"Yeah. You ate mutant children."
"Oh my god!!"
"They were poor children.."
"That's even worse, I don't know where they'd been!"

-"I'm from the Shithole. I'm not going to make a big fuss about having eaten children."
"Well, if you're from the Shithole it's probably not the first time you did that. Or the worst thing you ever ate."

-"Do you guys even have any idea how you plan to deal with the zombie army??"
"We need a bomb."
"There's a LOT of plans in this campaign that just come down to making a big explosion happen..."

-The party encounters a small zombie raiding party.
"Attack!"
"Huh, what? A duck?"
"No, attack!"
"Oh, that's much worse!"

-The zombies appear to be strays, unfortunately-undead local coollanders  dressed in adult male rompers.
"Nothing of value was lost."

-Kumar accidentally fumbles his chill touch attack, and ends up chill touching himself.
"Does he go blind?"
"He will if he keeps doing that."

-"Well, that was a really successful first round of combat: not one zombie was even slightly injured, and Kumar chill-touched himself."

-Gilbert runs away after that first round, only to come back and act all heroic when there's only 1 zombie left alive.

-Publio fumbles his attack, breaking Heidi's borrowed spear.
"Oh that's OK, that's only the spear my father gave to me!"

-With the zombie still alive, Gilbert tries to run away again, only to have the zombie strike him down. The zombie dies right after.
"Hey great, I've got a new spear!"
"You mean I have a new spear, right?"
"Can I have my shovel back?"

-"Do you want your father's broken spear back, Heidi?"
"You really are ingratiating yourself into this party, Publio."

-The next day the party proceeds along a large-ish river; they see tons of zombies (mostly orc zombies, but also some Coollanders) milling about on the other side.
"They can't cross the river, its no problem."
"Those ones over there seem to be doing something..."
"It.. it looks like they're chopping wood?"
"They're building a bridge."
"Oh shit."

-Realizing that the zombies are definitely being guided by some kind of superior intelligence, Tonut and Heidi fly up above them and try to talk to their master. The zombies all respond in unison:
"You may speak!"
"Are you Uncle Evil?"

-"I am the rightful ruler of Coolland, Duke of Abstinence, Chosen One of the Lord of Blood and Fire!"
"Hey Tonut, he's like you, an asshat!"
"You realize we're 200' up and I'm carrying you, right?"

-"My zombie army will cross into Coolland, take the city of Gaga, and bathe its streets with blood!"
"And fire?"
"And fire!"

-"Cool, but could you teleport us to Lol?"
"Dude, he's the bad guy!"
"We've never been totally clear as a party on that whole good/evil divide.."
"Yeah, and remember, this is just a stupid side-quest!"

-"Who is it you're seeking revenge against, Duke?"
"My niece 'queen' Zoey, and Bill the Elf!"
"We know where Bill is!"
"Yeah, we'll totally give him to you."

-"Bring me Bill the Elf and I will teleport you!"
"We need to teleport in order to get to Bill the Elf!"
"We have quite the catch-22 going, don't we?"

-"Ok, here's the plan: we tell the Duke we'll capture his niece for him, then we'll put Publio in a bag."
"What? No!"
"GM question: do any of you actually HAVE a bag?"
"We'll get a bag in Gaga."
"We should probably get a dress for Publio too. You know, to make it believable."
"I don't want to do this!"
"Look at it this way, Publio, have you ever gotten to spend time inside a bag before? It's a new opportunity."

-"Duke, we'll bring you your niece!"
"..in a bag.."
"In a bag! But we have to present her to you personally!"
"Why?"
"because... we want to meet you! You're pretty famous."
"Also, we want to be sure you follow through and teleport us."
"Oh yeah, also, this kid we have with us that looks a bit like a princess won't be coming back with us, so don't suspect anything if he's not with us when we return."

-"Wait sirs, is it not the case in fact that Mu can change into a girl?"
"Kumar is right!"
"No!"
"Yes it is true sir!"
"OK, new plan!"

-"Actually, Duke, the kid will be coming back with us after all, but not the wizard, he's got other things to do!"
"I hate you guys so much.."

-"So when we give him Mu, he will teleport us?"
"No, we're going to kill him."
"Oh."
"Wait, Kumar, you thought you were going to just give me to him??"

-"I'm just happy I won't have to crossdress anymore!"
"Actually you sound a little disappointed."

-The PCs finally get to Gaga.
"Who goes there?"
"Adventurers!"
"Did Gilbert send you?"
"Uh, yeah, sure."
"Sergeant, the adventurers are here!"

-The glitterati of Gaga all come out to see the PCs. Queen Zoey is there, as is the hip young handsome prime minister, Zoe's attendants Emily the elf and Queen Priscilla of the Grey Realms, the court wizard (the only old person in all of Coolland), and of course, Queen Zoey's head of security, Harembe the gorilla-man.

-The defenses of Gaga and their army do not look very promising.
"Do you think we could whip them into shape?"
"Most of the guards are playing with fidget-spinners right now."
"So that would be a no."

-Queen Priscilla hasn't become any less annoying.
"You guys all look lame, if only Bill the Elf was here. He was hot for me, we totally did it once."
"Bill did it with.. that thing?"
"Oh man, if only Bill were here!"

-"We have a plan your majesty; our wizard Mu is going to make himself look like you."
"Um.. he doesn't look much like me?"
"Well, he can magically turn himself into a girl."
"Goddamnit, I am a girl right now!"
"Seriously? This is you as a girl?"
"Holy shit you guys that girl is really fucking ugly!"
"Even Priscilla thinks you're ugly, dude."
"That's the pot calling the kettle ugly."

-"Our best plan is still to make Mu look like the queen."
"I have a question: has the Duke gone blind??"

-"I still say we can integrate the zombies."
"You definitely can't."
"In a generation they'll adopt our values!"
"Mr. Prime Minister, they're undead. In a generation, you'll all be zombies!"
"Don't be racist."
"It's not racist, because they're really ugly!"

-"If you want Mu to be able to pass for me, I and my ladies of the court will have to give him a makeover! Guards, seize him!"
"What??"
"To the makeover room!"
"Will it hurt??"
"Well, the bikini wax will."
"You'll pay for this Tonut!!"

-While Mu is subject to a makeover and a sleepover party with the Queen and her girls, the rest of the PCs get some shopping done.
"We'll want to leave town first thing in the morning; we just spent 12000gp worth of counterfeit smithplium pieces here."
"Yeah, we should definitely leave, and then come back with more fake smithplium pieces!"

-"If you succeed, you'll all be heroes of Coolland!"
"Yeah, and I'll probably do it with one of you!"
"I'd probably do Priscilla."
"Shit, Mu, you have serious serious self-esteem problems."

-Mu's makeover was largely unsuccessful.
"If you put a princess-dress and facepaint on a cow, it'll still look like a cow."

-Along the way back to the zombie horde, Tonut the cleric uses Divine Aid to temporarily change Mu's appearance into a copy of Queen Zoey.

-They find the Zombie horde; with them are a group of Uruk-hai zombie guards, a zombie wizard, the Duke, and a Fire Vampire.

-The Duke is not a zombie, apparently he survived Bill's cloudkill, but suffered horribly disfiguring burns.
"Give me my niece!"
"We will, but only once you lead us to the Blood Gate so we can teleport back to Lol."
"Or the Fire Gate."
"They're the same gate!"

-"My men will take you to the gate, but I will have my niece now!"

-"psst, what's our plan?"
"We kill the Duke."
"He's surrounded by thousands of zombies, his guards, the wizard and the Vampire!"
"I've seen Bill make some bad plans, but this one is just ridiculous."

-While the PCs are busy debating their options, Mu is starting to change back into his usual ugly visage.

-The PCs decide to not give a fuck, and attack.
"Oh man this is not good."
"If Bill was here we wouldn't be in this mess."
"If Bill was here we'd probably be in a bigger mess!"

-"Which one is the Fire Vampire?"
"The Fire Vampire is the one that's on fire."
"I miss Captain Obvious!"

-The Fire Vampire disappears in a puff of fire.
"Not blood?"
"No, this is a fire vampire. There may be a blood vampire somewhere that disappears in a puff of blood."
"So, by 'blood vampire', you mean a vampire, right?"
"Yes."

-"Betrayers! Destroy them all!!"
"Morris sent us!"
"So we're trying to badmouth Morris now?"
"Yeah, Morris is the new Bill."

-The fire vampire reappears next to Tonut, who had obviously taken to the air to save his own life.
"Oh shit, it can fly! G.O.D., Sezrekhan, Nikos, Ack'basha... whoever is up there, save me!"

-Tonut fails his divine aid, but Kumar manages to slay the zombie wizard, which causes the zombies to go out of control. This helps, but there are still thousands of zombies trying to kill and eat them.

-The Duke is getting away, and the PCs are in terrible danger of being slaughtered by zombies, except Tonut who is about to be destroyed by the Fire Vampire. Tonut tries one last Divine Aid, to teleport them all back to Gaga.
"Oh, almighty G.O.D.... Screw This!"

-The Divine aid works, and the PCs are all teleported away, but there's a slight error in the teleportation and they end up crashing into the city wall. Several of them are terribly injured, but they all manage to survive!
"I can't believe we're alive."

That's it for this session. The planned invasion of Gaga has been thwarted by the PCs, and incredibly they're all still alive. But the Duke of Abstinence got away, and there's still thousands of zombies in Coollandish territory. Plus, the PCs still have no way to get back to Lol, and they're no closer to getting past the side-quests and onto the job of stopping Sezrekhan from assimilating the entire universe.
We'll see what they come up with, next time!


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