Thug Muggers Under Nibiru 10/6/24
Table Talk:
We had some time off, and i’m feeling much better; and crucially, much more prepared. I got some more Monograms made for characters, i did a lot of work on my D&D/TTRPG pictographic notes font, i got a decent amount of the unseen back work done – including making files and templates for files to make making more future files easier. One other big thing i got made is a one-page-world-building-game-table inspired systems like The Quiet Year where you use cards to decide things, and the random dice tables in the Dungeon Master’s Guide (and similar TTRPG reference books). I toyed with a few different ideas of how this might work; only using it when i couldn’t think of something, using it on my own for inspiration, etc. But, i think i’ve decided that i think each session will end with everyone rolling to build up the setting for the next area of the journey, and i will build it out from those rolls for that next session, that way all of us will share in the creation of the Underdark Wilderness and later i can make a map of the journey based on all that. So we might end up on a freezing bridge with bandits, or lost in a series of tunnels with carnivorous ground, or… well i won’t give too much away yet – but after we use it i will definitely find a way to publish it for anyone to use.
I gave out a fresh map (see below) of the final Sewer and Caves level for the players to see the things Gurf’n referenced and decide what they want to do. It has his instructions noted on it as well: “Here is good path. Below is biiiig-pond-little-lake, has well bottom for city Nibiru. Small tunnels on side lead big chamber. Lake and room both have holes down. Or these tunnels have paths, one more foothill fringe level, then Underdark Wild. Hard to say path in wild, some roads maybe good, others, Xorn eaten maybe. All paths down. Eka under-underground. Find biiiig tunnels, go sideways, hear echoes. Follow echos. Find biiiiig hole biiiiig pit – like empty lake, all black – straight down. Find Eka.”
Reward time! The bonus everyone gets from the good meal and the special-magic-crystal-dinner-tea is… (if you don’t know what i’m talking about and that seems crazy, go back two summaries) is… +1 to both their Charisma and Constitution base stats – WOO, Party! Though Sorin does not get that, he does get… the Vortex Warp* Spell – and an asterisk that until he completes the mushroom-fairy-circle-teleporting-side-quest (again, go back one if you’re confused), he can only cast this spell on loose ground (sand, Dirt, Soil, gravel, grass, etc. – and not wood floors or solid rocks like in most of the caves we’ve seen).
And just really quick before we start; this will be the players’ last chance to ask anything meaningful of the goblins. They learned a lot last time and i had them look over the last summary to get it fresh, but after the intro they only have one more chance to ask anything big and important. So let's read that intro and see what they think of…
I liked it! And now you’ve spoilt it all! And I’ll probably have to go back to a horrible little village you’ve probably never even heard of! Back to bloody milkmaiding! Thanks very much! Every time I see a cow’s arse, I’ll think of you!
-"Ginger" "Delores De Syn" Theda Withel —Terry Pratchett, “Moving Pictures”
🧺🧺🛡️🎲🗡️📿✨🌿Chapter 24: A Shroomful Goodbye
🧺🧺🛡️🎲🗡️📿✨🌿Chapter 24: A Shroomful Goodbye
As we get ready on the morning of Kythorn the19th, checking our gear and stowing our rumpled bed rolls; Gurf’n is preparing some cold food on one counter, and Granny is telling us a goblin story about the early founding years of Eka:
“Great Korang Smashammer fought Lawztraggle. Clashed witts first, in mushroom farms above city. Each played careful game, deciding where step, where put people. Then Korang step wrong, was called out. Lawztraggle called him ‘liar with seductive big jiggly breasteses’. Then they clashed stone.
“In second level they threw rocks, like grub wyrms and Neogilings that we evolved from long ago*. Korang hit her head with rock and half founding family came her aid. See you, she was father of half clan in early days.
“Then they fought on middle level, battled steel. They fought in market through shops stalls and wet sledges**. Korang was struck by blade of Lawztraggle. When he cried, half family came to his side, for he was clan mother.
“Next level they fought with fire, hurling lit rags and burning power words inside rough hewn court at bottom of pillar. But no one could win.
“They turned to magic and fighting fell again***, they dangled from hopes and mining chains over great abyss. The spells mighty, and counterspells fierce.
“Father and mother of early city fought fought fought… finally Lawztraggle missed step. She moved hands, she let go of the rope, fell - this was plan, to land on rope below, but was not rope. Was thick iron chain, wet in pit-damp. Her legs slipped around. Iron link hit her in nuts and made eyes crossed, sent spell wide. Korang’s mighty cleavage shook laughing. He end fight. Sent old mother to doom in the pit abyss forever.”
*like us saying ‘through sticks and poo as if they were still the monkeys we evolved from
**more common than carts in some wet slimy areas – similar to skis in snow or early travoys in marshes
***in old goblin warfare low ground was considered advantageous with so much based on retreat and battles often being fought upside down
Granny wipes her drooling mouth now that the capital S ‘Story’ part of this story is over.****
****goblins consider it rude to break for anything during a story and consider the bigger mess from the longer stories to be a sign of great importance, some older tail chairs still have holes in the seat, and often a messy goblin is considered very wise, with much to say
“Long Korang ruled, from first founding years in young stone, to when pillars grew wide and fat. He built first room of new palace on then bottom level – was top of many palace levels by my time. My family was of his nobel eggs, we were mighty, until long descendants of foul losers. They came up, declared the feud still – but that is another story. Lead to end of Korang egg family and new clan king line – lead evil days, twisted kings, and lead to people's revolting democracy.”
While everyone is letting the importance and foreshadowing of this sink in, and Sorin is trying not to giggle about anatomy, he turns to whisper at Ari, “SO then, do goblins reverse their genders?”
No Sorin, that’s just me canonizing the point that men can have breasts and women can have testes, furthering my gooey liberal stance on gender issues – though i did toy with the idea that goblin males carried and gave birth like seahorses, but i think i’ll leave that for Orcs.
Ari laughs, “No! Haha, haven’t you ever heard of a hero with big boobs?”
Sorin blushes, trying to maintain eye contact and not let his pupils trail down, “Yeah I–”
Cypress turns his back to the boy and fiddles with his shirt, “Sorin… I have something I have to show you… MY BAZOOMBAS!” When he turns around, he is holding two of Gurf’n cantaloupe size cave-melons in front of his chest and bouncing them up and down.
Everyone, except the beat-red-blushing Sorin, falls to the ground laughing as Bostra croaks, “Big bouncing jubbly wubblies! Run, Sorin, run!”
When we sit up, we see the granny goblin standing very close to the boy wizards and whispering in his face, “Sorin confused, I explain. You want see Granny’s nuts?”
We all go quiet, a little self conscious that maybe we were insensitiv-
The old goblin grins and sprinkles a handful of shelled walnut halves over Sorin’s cheeks, sending us all into rolling laughter on the ground again.
After her own turn laughing, Granny picks her nuts off the ground and points to the door, “Now you learn Granny’s secret nuts, you must go, get out my house.”
As we walk to the door, Gurf’n pulls out a small box, he coughs and looks up at Sorin. When the boy wizard turns to him, the goblin’s crunchy voice is gone, replaced by Cate Blanchett saying, “For you, Sorin, I give you this telescope.”
With shining hopeful eyes, Sorin unclasps the lid and sets the box down, holding up the three section brass tube with awe and in pure amazement and childlike wonder – clearly thinking ‘all the story books are right, farmers do give you magical gifts when you’re on a quest’.
Gurf’n’s normal voice is back when he elbows Cypress and Rae whispering, “Ha, telescope in caves, useless. Good gift for clown, good fun, was trash.”
Everyone but Sorin, can’t help but double over with laughter as the boy looks around confused.
As we get to the door, Rae pauses with a sudden thought, “Wait, bi’Feneeh, can I ask you something? You’d talked about being royal in Eka. Maybe you would know about someone we’re looking for.”
“Oh, wait, yeah.”
“Hmm, okay, ask.” Granny nods.
“Her name is Zaanth,” Rae explains excitedly.
Bostra holds up a finger, “It might help to spell it.”
Ari digs in her pack and pulls out one of the signed notes, “Z-A-A-N-T-H”.
With a slightly exasperated sigh, the goblin makes a circling ‘carry on’ gesture with one knobbly wrist, “And? Where apostro marking?”
Rae and Ari look it over, then look back up shaking their heads, “There isn’t one.”
Granny makes a shooing motion, “No apostripfic, not royal, go on.”
With a polite cough, Bostra rests a hand on her arm, “I apologize, madame, but I do know reliably that she is Eka royalty.”
“Ha, then you have wrong name, clever Eka girl trick you!”
Sorin tries again, “Have you ever heard someone go by that as a nickname or something?”
“Silly clown.” Gurf’n says, rolling his eyes, “If she knew, would already said.”
“What about this,” Cypress holds up another of Zaanth’s notes, pointing to the monogram.
Now Granny looks thoughtful as her tough nails scratch a few stray warty hairs on her chin. “Hiding name, bad sign. Names, powerful. Hiding name, hiding self… Tell about hiding girl.”
“She’s half orc, and half goblin,” Sorin begins, rattling off her general description from Chapter 11: Zaanth and the Rat King.
Ari closes her eyes to think back. A memory of a thought clicks into place. “Khopesh?”
“What!?” The old goblin pulls back, seeming either affronted by a bad word, or startled by a rodent.
“She had Khopesh,” Ari explains, “Two long swords, bent backwards with hooks. They were longer than sickles, more drawn out and they were on hand and half hafts, not regular sword handles. She used them like reigns on her mount, hooking them like barbs…” While Ari is explaining how her teacher taught her about khopesh sometimes being a royal weapon like her rapier, Rae is standing behind her – bouncing a hand drawn picture of Zaanth around her horns.
Okay, there’s a lot here, so let's have Ari and Rae make Charism Rolls to see how far this gets us.
Brooke, whooping: “Nat’ 20!
Sarah, hiding: “Nat’ 1…”
Brooke: “Can I give Sarah one of my Inspirations?”
Ashley, jealous: “Since you have like a hundred.”
Sarah, feeling better: “Okay, 9.”
The old lady goblin takes the drawing from Rae and looks down at it, “Drawing not bad, not real, but captures spirit, shows-”
Wait, what’d you get, Rae?
Sarah: “A 9.”
Oh, yeah okay, nevermind, she completely ignores the drawing, it has no effect.
With a fearful tremble, bi’Feneeh climbs up the wall to one of the top most shelves of the teepee-dome hut ceiling. When she comes down, she is holding an old and partially burned book. The edges are mostly unburnt, but the middle is black from char and soot as if someone has held it over the fire time after time, thinking about burning it, but never able to let go and fully destroy it. She leafs through pages of scribbled writings on heavy unevenly-woven paper. After a while of looking at just one page, she closes the book and makes her shaky way back down to us. She motions for Rae’s drawing and starts to make a small change to it as she slowly recites – her voice shaking with emotions. “Small T letter. Apostriffic mark. Capital Z, then little H, A letter then N letter and A again. t’Zhana. This is her name.”
The whole time, she’s been speaking, she has also been in a half trance as her sharp ring finger nail scratches lines in Rae’s drawing. Spiky scribbled lines over the eyes, hasty and uneven, blanking out the eyes with a coarse sharp mess like the red blob made by the priest looking at our unholy note.
For a moment we’re afraid that she will also be hypnotized, but when Gurf’n touches her trembling arm, she stops and gives the picture back to Rae, turning away from us to hide her own eyes.
We can’t see her face now, but her voice is soft and devoid of its earlier frivolity when she repeats, “You must go, get out granny’s house.”
Gurf’n nods, assuring us out, and even though she is turned around, Sorin takes the time to make his most respectful bow. Right hand crossed at an angle to the left shoulder and the left hand meeting the forearm in the middle of the chest to form an awkward sideways Y, then bowing and tilting slightly so that his right shoulder points towards her, a proper Nibiru court bow.
Bostra nods, and we leave the hut.
Once outside, Gurf’n seems anxious, looking back and forth from the rope bridge to the door. “Day was for farming. Bad day now, Granny is…” he trails off and then seems to make up his mind. “You all go. No offense. Granny old, big brain, like big cauldron – keep lot memory inside; sometime memory boil over, damp fire, need someone tend fire, get pot set back right. No farming – I stay help Granny’s fire. Best you not here she come out, don’t want bubble cauldron twice, could explode.” Then with meaningful eye contact to everyone, he walks up to the bridge, then turns back to the house. We hear a mutter of goblin words, then the thick sliding door cuts us off from all the sound inside the hut.
We all cross the bridge with easy – except Ari, who is still having a hard time with it – and then we walk up the bank of mossy dirt, careful only to step where Gurf’n showed us yesterday.
Time to look for a way out.
With some gentle encouragement from Cypress, tZulèe starts to meld into the cave wall on the opposite side from where we summoned Devin to get a feel of the surroundings.
Ari rolls a second nat’ 20 to look at the waterfall and mushrooms in, what we now know is, the north west corner. The mushroom plot growing over here is definitely a newer addition to the farm, the dirt is lighter and the rotting logs look cleaner. Large sections of the patch are covered in a puffy blanket of light and fluffy lavender lichen, and in each of these sections is a clustering of spongy morel-like mushrooms. They’re growing in clumps of seven to thirteen and are a deep purple with a tooth-stain-yellow light fainting glowing from inside their honeycombish holes. She’s looking along the walls there for a crack or a tunnel, and looking all around the waterfall when a thought occurs to her. ‘Oh wait, I've been here before’. Yep. ‘oh… yeah…’. Yuuup, that’s not déjà vu Ari, you were here before – in a brief moment of near unconsciousness as this waterfall carried you up to the Roper nest.
Meanwhile Rae is investing the other corner with the last mushroom patch.
Rae, give me an Investigation Roll, we’ll use the same stat as Ari just now.
Sarah, cussing: “2.”
… Okay… make a Con Save for me.
Sarah: “7.”
Okay, well, fun, we’ll come back to you in a minute.
Sarah, worried: “Do I get to do anythi-”
Nope, we’ll come back to you in a minute.
Sorin is looking up at the ceiling and then – presumably with thoughts of flying carpets and magic lamps – he smiles and looks to his familiar, “Akris, can you fly up there and see if you can find any holes or a way out?”
With mocking jealousy (that Sorin mistakes as genuine), Akris puffs up his not-shoulders, “Whyss don’t you jussst ussse your new tellessscopesss to look! Hmpff!” Then he turns the back of his head to the boy to hide a snicker.
Shocked, Sorin claps his hands together, “I’m so sorry Akris! I didn’t know taking it would upset you!”
“Ifff you reallyss meanss it, then throwsss it away in the rissvsser!”
Sorin gets a dismayed look on his face, and then pulls out the box and starts trudging to the far bank.
“Akris,” Cypress sighs, “leave the clown alone…”
“Awe shshshucksss you’re no fffun when youss take hisss ssside!”
Rae, make an Intelligence Save.
Sarah: “...6.”
Not good, take 6 damage.
Sarah: “What, but I-”
We’ll come back to you in a minute.
Nymbus, i need an insight roll for tZulèe to sense the room.
Nymbus: “17.”
“With a 13-17 it knows the layout of the room, and with a 17-20 it also knows the whereabouts of creatures in that room.” huh, i really could have worded that better…
tZulèe’s face jerks forward in spurring starts and stops, each time pulling a little more of itself from the wall, as it reemerges from the wall. In its characteristic mechanical sing-song stuttering it explains to Cypress that the only entrances to the room ar the two down-flowing waterfalls, and the only exits are the two up-flowing waterfalls; except there is one other thing – a weird magic-both-ways-exit-and-entrance over by the rock where we summoned Devin.
Ari starts to head back to the crystal in the middle and calls out, “Alright everybody, let’s circle up and make a plan.” Then after a moment of looking around and spotting the others, she sees Rae, face down in the dirt, her arms stretched out next to the mushroom patch. Ari rushes in – i mean ‘rushes over’ – over to investigate.
She tries to pull Rae out of the mushroom patch, but fails her own Con Save, followed by a crit’ 1 on her own Intelligence Saving Throw. So, Rae takes 5 more damage and Ari takes 2.
Looking over to where Ari went, Cypress lets out a sigh of sure weary exhaustion before Wild Shaping into a Giant Spider. His eight spider eyes stare at the mass of pulsating red, but they save and he avoids being mesmerized.
This entire mushroom patch is one great roiling sheet, a seething mass of red-orange tie dye. Like cuttlefish skin, the broad caps of the mushrooms have small wart cells that continually open and close due to some unknown force or maybe air current, the effect creating a hypnotics field of undulating red waves.
With a fwip fwip, Cypideress pulls Ari and Rae out of the nest of mushrooms and as they’re pulled out we get the exceptional privilege of seeing a rare and truly unsettling thing.
The roots of the red mushrooms look like veiny slime molds as they slowly pull out of our heroes. These roots had found any little opening they could, scrapes, fingernails, etc. and as they’re slowly pulled out, we’re left with a stark yellow after-image of Ari and Rae’s vascular system – drawn out on the dirt by the mushroom root fibers – a perfect model of where these mushroom veins were exploring their veins and trying to digest them from the inside out.
But they’re out now and conscious, so it’s all fine! 👍
Hey, just, uh, real quick, you two wanna give me some Con Saves?
Cool. Sarah, at the top of Rae’s sheet i want you to just write a word down so we don’t forget, i’ll spell it for you. I…N…F…E…C…T…E…D.
Sarah: “Oh no.”
We’re all conscious and well again, standing back around the crystal. The ways out are: 1) wait several days for the mushroom circle (bad idea – we were just asked to leave and who knows how long it will take), 2) Summon Devin and ask what it will cost to use his portal (i’m rooting for this one), 3) the NW waterfall to the five Ropers (my back up favorite), and 4) the SE waterfall up to ???.
After an all-to-brief discussion, everyone decides not to ask Devin for help (awe bummer), and that waiting around to watch mushrooms grow is not the most adventurous idea. Leaving us just to debate which waterfall to jump in. Ari is down on the idea of fighting the ropers again, even though Sorin is all for it (come on please). We line up both our maps next to each other and think we can see where the other waterfall comes out and how it connects, so everyone agrees that’s the best way to get back on track (this is why i can’t have anything nice).
With that, we all roll our bags up tight, (cast some spells same as last time i’m guessing but we forgot to mention it in game), and walk back across the farm. We stand on the bridge, give each other a look, and jump in.
. . . . .
In the dimly lit cave around Gurf’n’s farm, an overly large Intellect Devourer steps out of the water with two long hooks in its mouth. The figure on its back dismounts and walks over to the table sized crystal where Ari told her story. Zaanth takes down her hood and pulls something from her mouth with an uncorking pop before taking a deep breath of the cave air.
Her eyes are a pale sandy brown with red orange irises that look like a sunrise on desert dunes. They’re a beautiful sight that would set any poet ablaze with a muse’s fury, if they didn’t run away first when they saw her pupils. They are the darkest black, matte and unshining. They are not round like ours, or slits like cats, or even rectangular goat eyes, these are sharp jagged holes, a rough conglomeration of spikes and sharp edges clustered together to form a tear through the center of her beautiful eyes.
And these terrible eyes are staring straight at the cut off piece of crystal with the blackness from Ari’s dagger inside. The blackness has now taken over most of the shard, and seems to pulse, shifting in time with the moving jagged spikes at the center of Zaanth’s eyes.
Her lips tighten in a smile that only shows her incisors over her bottom lip, one long and sharp, and one broken and capped with a dull metal. She picks up the shard of crystal and whistles.
The pads of the human feet on the Intellect Devourer come running and Zaanth lifts the blackening crystal into a banded box tied on behind where she sat. She looks around and creeps over to nearby mushroom plots, deftly reaching in and plucking five baby mushrooms. Then she quickly remounts.
The walking brain with her on top, sinks back under the water with her hood drawn up again.
"Most stories are happy, if you end them at the right time."
–Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink, “Welcome To Nightvale: Ep152”
Table talk:
Brooke is still having a hard time reading maps or understanding how their very concept of directionality and dimensions works. She’s asked me to print off a transparent one, to see if that makes a difference. So we’ll see how that goes.
I gave a piece of advice to the players, that they can go straight down to the next level and to the Underdark, but they might want to mess around and do a little more up here first. Think of it a bit like an open world MMO, there isn’t necessarily a hard barrier here, but there is a glowing text box that reads, “Recommended Level 8 before continuing.”
I had a good conversation with another DM at a party this week and got onto the subject of mind goblins… mind goblin DEEZ– anyways. I wanted to share a bit of the inspirations for the goblins and goblin culture i’ve put into this world. Some is, of course, inspired and reflective of Goblins in the Discworld books by Sir Terry Prachett (go ahead, mark your bingo card or take a drink), in particular the idea of them being grubby cave creatures who don’t consider themselves grubby and get misunderstood and looked down on. Their speech also has some of that, mixed with Gabriella from Zee Bashee on youtube, which also plays a role in the overall aesthetic ascetic. And then we have Magic the Gathering. I’ve included some cards below so you can see what i mean, but i based a lot of their culture on the idea that the MTG goblins are goblins of their historic wars. And MTG players can tell you, goblins get… mistreated… a lot, in those cards. Often it’s a bit comical, but one of the main features and recurring themes to goblin decks is that to advance in play, goblins have to be sacrificed, killed, or blow up; so i laughed for a while and though ‘what would that do the there overall culture, and things like superstiticans?’ And so, the goblins of this world were born.
