DCC Campaign Update: I Know You're Charmed But This is Awkward

In our last session, the PCs had taken their captured slaver-ship, rechristened the SS Sidequest, and gone after a treasure map. They found the big X in the sand, fought some ghost pirates, and ended up with what they considered a paltry treasure of around 3000gp in gems.

Now:

-"We should all return to the ship before we get sent on a side-quest."
"Yeah, we need to go kill the Lord of Blood and Fire."

-"I need healing..."
"Sami is here."
"Yes I am here"
"She sounds a bit different..."

-"Sami is acting pretty weird. Maybe we should get healing from Lenny, back on the ship?"
"Yes go to Lenny now I must return to my home planet"
"Um, OK..."

-"Where's Sami?"
"She said she had to go back to her home planet."
"She's a mysterious person, with her own life that we don't really know."
"I think she was being controlled but I just don't care."
"What the hell is a home planet??"

-"Can y'all tell me what these two newbies were doing in a cell with only a couple of crackers to eat?"
"A couple of crackers? Back in my day we only got one!"

-"Lenny almost got us to go on a side-quest!"
"More accurately, the DM tried to use Lenny to get us to go looking for another bag of holding, since Sami took the briefcase of holding with her."
"Yeah, well, it was a good try."
"Everybody loves Lenny!"

-"So Sami has the Briefcase of Holding? With all my stuff and all my money??"
"Yep."
"We need to make more money!"

-"Guys, we'll need to get back to this later, the violent fucking whales are back!"

-"Go a-whale while you can!"
"The newbs are getting used to the party!"

-"Heidi is going to punch a whale in the head."
"So your mighty deed is to punch for intimidation?"
"I guess."
"Natural 20."
"You punch the whale so hard it takes 10 points of permanent INT damage, leaving it a vegetable."
"Holy shit, he punched that whale so hard it became retarded!"

-"Is the whale I punched going to live?"
"No, you think it doesn't even know how to whale anymore."
"It does not know the whale."
"This is what happens when Sami isn't here."

-"Zeke prays for an hour before bed, and then sleeps the deep sleep of the just."
"He goes to sleep right away, doesn't he?"
"Yeah."
"Bill needs the sleep-rune to sleep at all."
"Bill can only magically-medicate himself to sleep."

-The ship carries on, sailing along the coast of a region called The Wasted Lands.
"The Wasted Lands actually look like fairly nice prairies, but with areas that have a purple mist."
"Why are they called the Wasted Lands?"
"I don't know."
"Let's go find out!"
"No!!"

-"We're assuming that Sami is coming back, right?"
"Maybe."
"Just because, if when she did, the Catboy was married to Queen Zoey, that would be really funny!"
"OK, that's our new side quest!"

-"Yeah but how could Catboy possibly get Queen Zoey to marry him?"
"Easy, he'll have to seduce her when no one is watching him. That's the only time he's competent."

-The SS Sidequest continues its journey, sailing past the coast of the Beach Giant Chiefs. A group of Beach Giants are trying to approach the ship on giant surfboards.
"I go to the machine gun."
"I go to the other machine gun!"
"The machine guns are in opposite directions and only one can actually hit the Beach Giants."
"True, but the Minstrel doesn't know that!"

-"Catboy hits one of the Beach Giants with 25 bullets and tears him to shreds."
"The other Beach Giants surf away."

-"You guys all notice the Minstrel has leveled up and he's now a wizard."
"What, does he suddenly have a funny hat or something?"
"No."
"Does he want one?"

-The ship is attacked by Pirate Sea-Goblins!
"They attack and do 10 points of damage to the minstrel-wizard."
"Shortest-lived level 1 character ever!"
"He lasted less than 5 minutes of play!"

-"How many goblins are there?"
"92."
"Holy shit!"
"Bill casts scare."
"They all run away."
"So they stayed just long enough to kill the minstrel."

-"The Minstrel wizard is dead."
"He lasted for one round of one fight."
"He was a great character, for the 90 seconds he lived."

-"Catboy eats a potato."
"Bill eats a potato."
"Lenny eats the minstrel."

-The ship sails on, with the minstrel wizard dead he's replaced by the only  newbie survivor, the halfling.
"What's his name?"
"Bad. Bad the Halfling."
"Really? I guess that checks out."

-They sail by a massive building on the coastline identified as The Gargantuan Tower.
"Heidi desperately wants to go."
"Let's just weigh anchor and leave the ship here unguarded."
"I mean, what could go wrong?"

-The party heads into the tower, and quickly encounter some guards; they're constructs made out of ice!
"I wonder what happens when I stab a construct with my Potato Dagger?"

-"You know what would have worked really well against these ice guards? Flaming Hands, like the Minstrel-Wizard had!"

-The PCs move further in and find a strange monument.
"It's a kind of monument with lists of hundreds of names on each side, of what were apparently adventurers who died inside this tower."

-An entryway is blocked by a stone slab.
"Can you help me open it?"
"Me help you?"
"Sorry, I meant you could help me."
"That's the same thing you just said!"

-"Heidi, Catboy, Quilliam and Bill all progressively fail to roll the stone. Then the halfling does it."
"Pussies."
"We helped loosen it for him."
"It's that he has a lower center of gravity!"

-"Heidi do you have a hammer?"
"No, but I have a punch."

-"You reach a large room, where it's raining somehow."
"Do we enter? It could be dangerous."
"The halfling is already inside."
"We have a wet halfling."
"The catboy goes in and searches for traps."
"Now we have a wet pussy."

-"The doorway is stuck due to rust. It would pull open."
"OK, I try to push."
"...then you fail?"

-"The greatest challenges we've had in this tower so far are all doors."

-"You see a kind of port-hole vault; next to it someone has scrawled 'Do Not Open'..."
"I so desperately want to open it!"
"No!"

-"Catboy, you find a discarded silver chalice."
"Catboy puts some vodka in the chalice, to test it."
"The halfling grabs it and drinks it!"
"No you idiot! I was just testing it for poisons!"
"The halfling doesn't care."
"This halfling is crazy!"

-The PCs get to a chamber where there's some smooth ice-construct guards that just ignore them.
"Hello? We have so many questions!"

-Heidi and Bill accidentally trigger a rune trap. Bill saves, but Heidi fails and now he's charmed to think Bill is his best friend.
"Well, Heidi's going to die."
"With Heidi's INT score, he's going to be charmed for weeks!"

-They go on to another room where they encounter four more of the ice-constructs. Bill destroys one with a magic missile and then slips into the Neutral Zone.
"Heidi must feel sad..."
"No, he's happy actually because I know he's safe."

-Inside the Neutral Zone, Bill sees that the dimensional space of the tower all folds in on itself.
"It's bigger on the inside!"

-"the Halfling tries to attack but misses with a fumble that makes him look ridiculous."
"The halfling tries again this round."
"He still misses, but not ridiculously."
"So it was a good attempt!"
"I wouldn't go that far. It was an attempt."
"So I'm as competent as Catboy? I'll take it!"

-"When the potato dagger hits a construct, it doesn't make anything."
"We've found its only weakness!"

-"I'm doing nearly as badly as Heidi."
"Actually, Heidi looks a lot worse; he's higher level and so people expected more of him."

-The party runs into three dwarves who look pretty worse for wear.
"We fear that we are lost."
"How?"
"The rooms change, when you go back its all different!"
"So all my mapping was for nothing!?"

-"I am Torb son of Sorb; this is Florb son of Glorb, and that's Filbort, son of Chobort."

-"We're here to find great treasures to-"
"Go on an expedition to recover the Dwarven Machineholds?"
"You know the Dwarvish way!"

-"We're here to kill the Duke of Ice and Fire."
"This party is SO confused..."

-The party moves on and finds another room, with 8 more dwarves, some of whom seem to be the same as the dwarves the PCs are currently with.
"What the hell?!"
"Torb, how can this be you, you're dead?"
"Berm, it can't be you, I saw you get eaten!"
"There's two Filborts!"

-"This is like Bolt-0's quest where we met alternate-timeline versions of ourselves!"
"So we might meet alternate versions of party members?"
"Maybe we can find a Sami who isn't a bitch!"
"Maybe we can find Cool Morris!"
"Finding Cool Morris is our new Side Quest!"

-"Have you new dwarves found anyone like us?"
"No."
"Well, we found a dead halfling once."
"Wait..."
"Hey, and remember we found that halfling skull before?"
"Our halfling is suddenly nervous."

-They get to another room where they find a half-dozen freshly-dead Dwarf corpses. Again, some of these resemble dwarves in either of their current parties.
"What happened?"
"I don't know. Be careful."
"The halfling rushes over with the dwarves to loot the bodies."

-There's a hideous tentacled albino rodent-creature hiding under the bodies.
"Disturbed by the dwarves and halfling, it creates a psychic blast and half the party and most of the dwarves fail their saves and go insane."
"Well, now we know how they died."

-"Heidi rushes toward Insane Bill."
"Insane Quilliam turns to shoot Heidi."
"You miss."
"You could always burn Luck if you really want to hit him!"

-Heidi restrains Bill to stop him from casting any spells, and eventually Bill returns to sanity.
"Well... you're hugging me. I know you're Charmed but this is awkward."

-"Bill, use the Sleep Rune!"
"Here, Heidi, you try it!"
"Heidi grabs the sleep rune and takes a look at it."
"He falls asleep."
"Oh for fuck's sake.. Bill grabs the sleep rune and slowly waves it around."
"literally everyone in the room except Bill and two dwarves fall asleep."

-The two dwarves who were still awake didn't see the rune because they were fighting each other; one of them is insane.
"I kill the insane one."
"Thank you my friend... what's your name again?"
"I say 'my name is Bill', and then I kill him too."
"Oh snap!"
"Badass!"

-"Bill fumbles and falls down."
"Not as badass..."

-"Bill kills the remaining dwarf."
"I go get the catboy's potato dagger and kill ALL the dwarves!"
"Jesus. Ok.."
"Then I wake the catboy."
"What happened, Bill?"
"You went nuts and killed all the dwarves, Catboy."
"What? But the last thing I remember was the Sleep Rune.."
"Yeah but you murdered them all in your sleep or something. Anyways, we got a bunch of potatoes."
"I think you're lying but I don't even really care now."
"It was your first mass murder, congratulations, Catboy!"

-Full of potatoes, they move on to another room and find it's full of zombie women.
"hello?"
"They seem to move toward you."
"Oh, I think they're attracted to you!"

-"This tower is super confusing. The rooms keep shifting around and it's bigger on the inside."
"Maybe there's a pattern?"
"There's no pattern! The GM is just making it up as he goes along!"

-"I think we just need to go up all the stairs."
"Yeah, and find the 3 giant wasps who guard all the jewels."
"Those are the ones you'd heard the rumor are somewhere in the tower?"
"yeah."
"Maybe they're not wasps like insects, maybe they're giant white anglo-saxons?"

-The PCs find a room with a funerary urn, with a dedication stone saying "in memory of Catboy".

-"Catboy throws the urn against a wall!"
"It falls and the top comes off."
"I look inside."
"It appears to have half of catboy's hand."
"I keep it."
"It may come in handy!"

-As the party moves through a room, Zeke Bodean gets trapped in a spinning ball of death!!
"The halfling will try to charge at the ball!"
"It throws him, hard. Roll a reflex save."
"natural 20!"
"You do an acrobatic bounce off the wall and land on  your feet."
"I stretch out my arms like a Romanian gymnast!"
"The rest of the party applauds while Zeke is still spinning."

-"Heidi tries to grab onto the ball"
"Natural 1."
"He slams at high speed against the wall and lands on his head on the floor. He takes 11 points of damage."

-There's a golden sword sticking into the wall, that is revealed by a panel opening once the ball of death starts to spin.
"The halfling grabs it!"
"It electrifies him for 26 points of damage."
"Let's see him tumble out of this one!"
"He makes his luck roll."
"The halfling is still alive!"

-The party manages to disable the wheel, but zeke goes flying.
"he's broken every bone in his body."
"Lenny, try to heal him."
"Oh G.O.D., please help Zeke... there's probably no one in the world who actually loves you as much as he does!"
"The healing works and Zeke's shattered bones are healed."
"Praise the Lord!"

-The sword turns out to be a magic sword that can redirect electricity.
"Can I have the golden sword?"
"Hey, that sword almost killed me!"
"Why do you want the sword?"
"I figured out how it worked."
"Come on guys, the rest of us already have magic weapons."
"Does Quilliam not have magic weapons?"
"I do, but less than you guys!"


And that's it for this session. The PCs decided to take a rest there, in the tower, figuring that maybe by the time they wake up Sami and the Sky-Mexican Cleric will somehow be back with them.  We'll see, and we'll see if they keep exploring the tower or actually get back to whatever they were up to before that.

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