Thug Muggers in the Tunnels 5/26/24
Table Talk:
This session was played at the Mana Games Cafe (FB) in Lincoln, NE as the second Bounce of Brooke's Big Birthday Bash. It’s a great and lovely place, and i highly recommend it. If you’re in the area, tell them we sent you, they won’t know who we are or why you’re telling them, but it’ll be funny…for me. Because of that though things were a bit off. While the location is great for a lot of gaming, it made DMing and immersion very hard. I apologize to my players for the couple times i snapped at them, as well as when i completely lost focus while the people three feet behind me were discussing rules to another game.
I had a bit of a criticism for the players about not being fully dialed in last time and being too focused on the Game and not as focused on the Role Playing. Sorin saw weird Hydrophobic liquid and just walked away? Rae was cut in the face and scarred for life and no one reacted? ??? These were all thoughts that i’d had writing the last summary, and everyone very politely put me in my place. Sorin did want to investigate the liquid but i said no because we were busy doing a plot thing. Ari did react to Rae getting scared by death charging the Green hag in a rag, and Cypress was trying to stop the Hag from doing it again. Fair points all. I apologize for my unfounded critique, carry on.
At this point in discussing the Key we would do well to consider the ordering of the letters IAO. In this first form of the Name we have, relying on the planetary correspondences above, Sol (I), Luna (A), and Saturn (O). In other words, here we have a picture of the descent down the Middle Pillar – the involutionary manifestation of the Worlds, from Tiphareth-Sun (I), to Yesod-Moon (A), to Malkuth- Saturn/Earth (O). Note that here the Omega correlates not to Saturn as Binah, but to its lower octave which is the Lesser Mother – Malkuth – mirrored also in the “Saturnian gloom” of the 32nd Path. This is the formula of IAO as Spear and Grail, as the following diagram depicts:
In this formula of descent, Yesod of Yetzirah (the Alpha) is the fulcrum by which the Magician maybring his will into manifestation, and implant the Seed of that Will into the Lunar Womb.
Derick S Richards - “The Lunar Formula of IAΩ”
🐁☣️☣️☣️☢️🧟♂️🛡️🎲🗡️📿✨🌿Chapter 18: Ding dong the Witch is Undead (cont.)
🐁☣️☣️☣️☢️🧟♂️🛡️🎲🗡️📿✨🌿Chapter 18: Ding dong the Witch is Undead (cont.)
With things calming down after the fight, Cypress goes over to check on Rae. The cut is (I need to talk to Sarah about the location and description, since this is her character and i won’t make big changes like that without her input and final ‘okay’) and the swollen skin is pushing up on the bottom of her eyelid. Even as Cypress tilts her head back and works on patting the wound dry with a cleanish rag, he can tell that this is going to scar. “Stay here for a second.” The healer leaves the elf in a half-kneel-half-hunker. He looks over the gravel floor, scanning back and forth until he finds what he needs. They pick up a palm sized flat rock by the entrance. Checking that it’s fairly smooth, he drips some holy water over it to clean it. Coming back to Rae, he cups her hand and puts the rock in it with the flat side facing up, then moving her hand gently up to the side of her face. The cold rock is soothing and she lets out a soft sigh of relief. “Keep it there for a bit to help the swelling.” Then in a conciliating tone, “Still you’re gonna have a hard time seeing with that eye until the swelling goes down though.”
Reader, this is the narrative for Cypress rolling a Medicine Check and finding that Rae will have a -1 to Perception until the next rest.
On his way over to check out the cool magic basin, Sorin bumps into Rae as she stands back up. With one hand still holding the cool stone to her face, her other arm windmills and she starts to topple over. Cypress ducks under the falling elf and catches her. Rae’s flailing hand is in their vice-like grip as Cypress glares up at Sorin. “Oops, careful Rae,” Sorin laughs.
Cypress very slowly lets go of Rae’s wrist pushing it away from the magic circles inch beneath her. “No, you be careful, Sorin.” The cleric pushes on Rae’s back and lifts her from hanging precariously over the circles.
Reader, this is the narrative for me being cruel and making everyone roll Luck to see if i could get everyone’s favorite zombie eyeball boys back on the board.
Ari is looking over the table with the – now – dead snake in mid disection when her eyes glint off a ring. It’s sitting on the edge of the cutting board where the witch must have set it down right before the fight. She picks it up to inspect it and the electric buzz of magic tingles on her fingertips. There's some spell in here that she can’t quite access. With enough study or magical proding (Identify) or by attuning to it, she can figure it out, but for now she can only decipher the WitchTongue runes for R and F etched by some acid into the shiny metal.
Reader, this is the narrative for – you know what, you get it right? Ari rolled Investigation, found a ring and rolled Arcana.
Rae is looking over the chest in by the other exit. The wood is dark and the metal banding is a deep near-black-purple. The front has a skull where the locking hasp should be, and she can see four more skulls on each corner above motifs of thorny vines. She’s about to call for Ari when a child’s scream stops her in her tracks.
Cypress is about to look over the other table when he’s pulled away by a high pitched girly shriek – like a prom queen seeing a ghost in a fifties horror movie.
After getting scolded by Rae and Cypress, Sorin went the other direction to investigate the cage full of viscera and gore. He stepped over the limp re-re-re-dead body of the Spectator and peered in. Underneath the bloody pulp and the exploded ribcage, he could make out some clothes. He kicked aside a piece of spine with his toe for a better look. The clothes – the robes – felt familiar. Not student or school robes, but similar. Potion robes? Yeah. That's it. He recognized the color pattern of an apothecary. The one where students often go for supplies and part time work. When Sorin moved the broken half-femur out of the way to see if he was right, there was a wet sliding sound… and then a slap as something flat shloopped fwapped onto the floor.
Sorin screamed.
Ari and Rae jump forward, but Ari holds out a hand to stop Rae, “Stupid circle…” she grumbles.
Ari runs across the room and grabs Sorin’s arm pulling him back, looking around wildly. “What is it?”
“Del, del del…”
“What?”
“Delphin.”
“I don’t-”
Sorin gulps and shakes her off to stand on his own. “The name… The name in the notes we found. Del-” He swallows. “Delphin. I knew I recognized it. There’s a potion shop that students use. It’s run by… I guess it was run by a guy named Delphin.” He points to the cage with the remains of what looks like a humanoid exploded out from the inside. “That’s him.”
Now we can all see what fell out on the floor and shocked Sorin.
On the ground in front of the cage is a round flat flap of severed skin in a bloody circle. It has two small holes in the middle around an odd shaped wrinkle. Then two larger holes above that, and one still larger hole nearer the bottom…with swollen lips around it. There is a gray mustache and sideburns, and the eyebrows above the two open holes are bushy, with an age-wrinkled forehead above them.
Rae moves to – Where you going, cool, make a Dex Check for me… Awe… Dang… Bummer… Well, you know what that means!
The Spectator is up in a – well not a blink, not anymore – in a flash, it rises up into the air spinning. The Paralyzing Ray misses Cypress, but the Wounding Ray… How much HP do you have left?
Rae collapses, going unconscious, as the magic eye laser crashes into her.
Cypress rushes over to the fallen elf and casts Spare the Dying, then starts trying to drag Rae back and away from the creatures.
Sorin runs over to help, but can’t get a good grip to move her – at least not without touching anything she’ll kill him for touching when she wakes up.
Ari joins them, pushing Sorin out of the way and carrying her friend towards the entrance. She’s half way there when she has to stop to dodge the first Gazer’s attacks.
Cypress is hit by the Zombie Gazer’s Fear Ray and suddenly his vision is distorted as the sight of the monster swells in his mind to gigantic, hideous opening mouth like a cave becoming him to his death.
Then the second Gazer’s Frost Ray rips into his shoulder and he clutches at it as he goes down.
As Ari is struck with another Fear Ray, she realizes that her feet won’t move. She can’t step forward to pick up Rae and get her out of the room.
Just then Rae’s eyes flash open. With a nat’ 20 on her death save, she’s back up! She does that cool martial arts flip thing where she jumps up to her feet from laying down all cool like. She looks around… and gets a Fear Ray right to the face. That’s fine! She can take it, what’s next!? She ca- the Wound Ray catches her in the chest and she goes down again.
Sorin uses his last high level slot to cast Magic Missile. All three Gazers are blown apart, leaving just eye stalks on the floor. The last Missile hits the Spectator for 9 points, leaving it with 1 HP.
Ari dodges the Paralyzing eye beam and, now that she can move with the Gazer’s gone, she jumps forward and skids on her knees – dipping a Health Potion into Cypress’s mouth and bringing him back into the fight.
Rae rolls another nat’ 20, let’s go! She’s back up with a ‘kip up’ (I learned what the cool flippy move is called while finding that gif).
The Wounding Ray – misses. Dang.
Cypress is back up and with their mind still fuzzy, they raise their hand and cast Sacred Flam-
“Wait, Cypress, no!”
Too late. The Spectator laughs and throws the spell back. Once again, Rae is downed.
Sorin grabs his dagger and rushes forward with an exasperated battle cry. He stabs the Spectator in the top of its head with a classic downwards stabby-stabby-stab. Once the Zombie aberration falls still, he moves back in front of Rae – ready to be a meat shield when the Hag returns.
And here she comes, now!
“Out my way little piss baby!” she shrieks, throwing Sorin to one side for 12 damage.
Before she can strike again, Ari leaps forward and swipes. The cut is close – but at the last second, the Hag pulls back snarling.
Rae doesn’t manage a third crit’ in a row (weak) and is still down.
Cypress casts Spare the Dying for the eighty eighth time in the last twenty minutes, while Sorin hits the Green Zombie witch with another round of Magic Missiles for 8 damage.
Bleeding out and barely on her feet, the Hag wags a finger on her tiny hand at Ari with her swollen arm behind her back. “Nah ah ah, sweetems! Sister has something to give ye!” When she turns, Ari’s eyes widen in shocked recognition and horror. The witch's strong arm is wrapped around the dripping remains of her own sliced off hunchback. She turns at the waist and laughs, sweeping the foul meat sack into Ari – frolicking like a girl in a tropey sleepover pillow fight.
Ari takes the 8 damage and coughs then points a furious finger at the Hag. Two small fires erupt and fly out at the giggling nightmare as Ari’s Hellish Rebuke knocks her dead once again.
“Let’s try to get a look around before we head back. “Rae, just be careful, okay?”
Cypress moves to the corner next to where we came in, to look over the shelves there. They glance into the earthenware urn next to the shelves and see tons of glittering glass shards – hundreds of broken and smashed bottles.
Give me, hmmm… Let’s call it Investigation.
Nymbus: “That’s a-nat’ a-twenty.”
The bottles on the shelves are clumped up in groups of different colors. They all seem to be variations of health potions: Potions of Lesser and Greater Healing, Potions of Restoration, Potions of Clarity, Potions of - wait.
Looking closer at the bottles, Cypress can see that each one has a tiny skull melted into the shape of the glass somewhere. In some, it’s the top of the neck or the stopper, in others it's on a flat side. One is a wide flat decanter stopped with a glass ball, and all around the rim of the base are tiny imprinted skulls. When Cypress steps forward to grab for one of these, his toe hits a bucket. They stop and look inside. The bright acidic drops of poison are stuck to the sides of the pale in big gooey drops.
Not various health potions then, various poisons: Poison of Exhaustion, Curse Poison, Poison of Fear, Paralyzing Poison, and so on.
Sorin is finally making it over to look at this basen… when his tired mind gets distracted by something. His eyes – no, his mind – is drawn to an object on one of the tables. Sitting next to a pile of books is something powerful. He knows what it is before he even really sees it. He reaches out, grabbing the Arcane Focus. With this he can cast spells with no components. He can summon his will with no need to use up ashes and mud and string. This…
This Focus is a small skull. Humanoid, but too small, like a child or shrunken head. The teeth are fangs – stubby, but sharp – and they’re pushed too high up into the cheeks. Around the top is a box-ring of growths – an unnatural perfect square of small curved horns pointing inwards towards the center. And its eyes… in the holes where its eyes once were – where perhaps one might place jewels as a symbol of respect – are two thick nails. The nails are rusted and pitted, driven deep into the back of the skull, leaving hairline cracks in the eye sockets, and small bumps on the back.
Sorin gulps and tucks the Skull into his robes, looking around to make sure no one has noticed.
Next to him, Rae is distracted by a find of her own, on the table with the dissected snake, she can see a book with a very unique symbol embossed in gold on the cover. The symbol is an antique scalpel-like-knife crossed with a hunter’s bone spreader and encircled by a knotted rope. She picks it up and reads the title on the cover plate, “Some Cool Thing Kai Forgot: About Harvesting Body Parts”.
This will work the same as Brooke/Ari’s Manual of Bodily Health, but at the end of the hours of studying, it will grant Proficiencies in Nature Checks and Saves. I thought about only making it Proficiency in harvesting but i decide on full nature because i assume the book will describe not just the insides of creatures – but how to find them, the areas they live, what to expect around them, etc. So i think that works out well.
Ari is taking a look at the ominous chest. Remember, the purple black on with thorns and skulls? She goes to check it for traps, and is certain of one thing. This box is trapped all to hell. There is a puzzle and a int-
Brooke: “Oh hey, I still have a use left. I use my Chime of Opening.”
I… But… I… awe, man…
I have a whole thing planned with interlocking spikes and a vine riddle and… fine…
The chest opens slowly, the heavy lid pushed up by a spring. Inside is a dense misty fog. It swirls out but never dissipates, concealing whatever mysterious treasures lay inside… ooooo…
Cypress is looking for a baggy. No, really.
He walks away from the shelf and starts rooting through the storage next to Ari, to find a sack he can collect all the poison bottles in for later disposal. As he roots around in the supplies, he notices a disturbing trend. All the food down here, the food the Hag has been eating, is rotten. Bag after bag, and box after box is full of rot. Potatoes molding and growing roots like branches, tomatoes gone flat and oozing, grain full of maggots and weevils, carrots shriveled up hard like nails, and fruit with white fuzz growing out by the inch.
With a gag and a swallow, Cypress pulls out a sack of grain.
Nymbus: “Seems like the best option, I mean at least it's probably dry, right?”
They upend the grain bag, and with relief, the barley and oats tumble out as a dry flaky mix. Until the bottom. Cypress has to shake the bag until the last soggy clump slaps wetly to the floor. “I mean… it’s life I guess…” They say with a grimace, watching the worms wriggle out of the glob and into the fresh grain.
Rae has worked up enough courage to finally move again… a few more feet away from the circles, to the table by the statue. She looks down to see a loose stack of papers and her face condorts in confusion. Every one of the papers is black – a sooty black with nothing on them. Rae reaches down and when she touches one of them, the blackness slowly faces away, revealing a ring of letters, and a bloody handprint. She pulls back and the blackness fogs over the paper again. Steadying her nerves, Rae picks up the sheet, and waits until the blackness disappears.
At the table, once they figured out the paint was heat sensitive, Nymbus grabbed the paper and lifted his shirt saying “Here, gimme, I’ll rub it on my tummy to get it warm so we can see it.” Reader, I forget the exact rolls that were made, or who figured it out, so i can’t put it into the narrative too well. But it was learned, so i will explain it here.
These are Soul Contracts, and they can only be signed willingly. When a Soul Contracts is sealed in blood, the person whose hand is on it gives up everything they are. They can be controlled in every conceivable way. They’re mind is no longer their own. Their soul belongs to the holder, and they forgo all sense of free will. They are not stupid puppets who must be told to walk or eat, and they are not mindless automata pursuing a task to the exclusion of everything else. They are still themselves, thinking and moving and living; but every act they do is to further the orders they are given.
I suspect i gave the players more info than this basic definition here, but things were very hectic, so i might let Bostra explain more in the coming summaries.
Cypress turns from collecting the grain bag to see Ari. She is hunkered next to the chest and reaching in. She is completely still, unmoving and barely breathing.
“Uh, guys…”
Rae can’t cross the room and curses.
Sorin comes over and rolls a crit’ of his own. He kneels down next to Ari, on the side of the chest across from Cypress, then he blows on the fog. It wafts away and for just a moment he can see her hand reaching into the fog to touch something inside. He grabs his dagger and ever so gently tucks it under her arm, lifting it up with the flat of the blade.
Ari’s arm is stiff, but it comes away freely. When it does, she gasps and sags backwards with tears in her eyes.
With a nod to each other, Cypress and Sorin each blow on the mist to get a look.
Inside the chest is a neat pile of skulls in rows. Each one is humanoid in shape, and each one is covered in sharp dark crystals jutting out in all directions. These are Damned Skulls.
A Damned Skull is a powerful and forbidden magical device which must be made deliberately, and with decades to spare. Deep in the wild lands of the Hell planes, far beyond the borders of Avernus and the settled lands. Deep with the Tormented Mountains there are caves – pockets in the lands where condemned souls stay screaming out their pain for all eternity. If a powerful magi enters these caves, and survives, they can place down a single skull and draw one of the souls of the damned to it. The damned soul will be the seed of the crystal that grows on this skull. Like any crystal is formed by molecules clumping together in a pattern, the agonized cries of the damned will create a force, sucking in more and more souls. Each tiny layer of crystal takes years and years to form as hundreds of thousands of disembodied spirits are pulled into it against their will, bringing with them all the pains and trials of their damnation. And here, in this chest, there are rows of these skulls.
Ari and Cypress look at each other.
“Do you know of any way to destroy or dispose of them?”
Ari looks scared as she answers, “No.”
“Neither do I.”
They close the chest, and step away.
Thinking about what he can and can’t do, Cypress bags up the poisons. At least these he can sell off to Devin or something, to get them out of the hands of the Thugs and the cult.
Ari is thinking about what they have to do. “Fill the Hole.” She peers over the edge. Deep inside she sees a fog. A calm pale… wait… The fog is moving… It’s… It’s crawling. The Fog grows arms and they begin to crawl up the walls towards us. The fog is turning red as it climbs, higher and higher and-
It’s gone.
Ari rubs her eyes, but the vision is gone. Just an empty hole going down and down out of sight, impossible to fill.
Scared and exhausted, covered in zombie guts and witch blood, the Thug Muggers leave the room.
“It’s too loud and distracting in here, I’ll save the quote for next time.”
Kai, 26.05.2024
Table talk:
Again a note here that this session was just kind of hectic. No fault at all to the Mana Games Cafe – the food was great and they were super accommodating with us. But just being in a public setting when trying to build drama and invent descriptions is difficult.
I don’t have it in the summary, because i didn’t mark it down well in my notes, but at some point in the fight I had made a mistake with the Spectator's HP. This led to a retcon that i think involved Rae not having been downed.
Last note, For anyone wondering, the paper with the Soul Contract on it was printed regularly, then covered in three layers of Black-to-Colorless Universal Magic Paint. The back was also painted black, with a few layers of multi-color thermochromic paint that didn’t show up very well. The design was my own (with stock photo bloody handprint though), and the rings each do have meaning that we might find later, and if we do, i’ll reveal those fonts then … if i remember (just contact me if you’re curious in case i forget).
