A pretty good one!!!
THE CAST:
Clariandra, 11 year-old little necromancer girl, looking for her dad, collects thumbs
Krema Affogato, very tall mutated thief, coffee addict, hyper-capitalist
Dave, teen barbarian, dumb as hell, heart of gold
Lucidius, orgish street-preaching lunatic mystic of Mother Silicon, metal jaw
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| The box canyon in a greener, warmer time of year |
2. Skipping past the visible caves for now, they examine the northern (STONEHELL-facing) side of the gatehouse, read some adventurer graffiti, and peer nervously into the darkened interior. Lucidus hears some snatches of sound from the eastern entrance, lights up his lantern (I guess he did buy lighting? w/e) and quietly ventures in. The rest follow.
3. Little of interest in the first room they search, but the second contains a collapsed writing desk, a pile of rotten cloth and wood that was once a bed, and a spray of ash across one wall with a negative-space handprint in the center.
4. Lucidius hands his lantern to Clariandra and smashes the ruined bed with his mace. There is a great splortch and two surviving VENEMOUS NACREPEDES squirm outwards, bent on revenge for their slain brothers. Lucidius' orgish physiology resists the sickening effects of their bite but he still suffers a couple of mandible-wounds.
5. He manages to grab one before it gets into his pants, but it takes 3 more full rounds of combat with everyone else involved to kill the remaining centipede. He takes a moment to recover and curse his "detestable carbon body."
6. Krema cautiously investigates the handprint; the ash reforms wherever it is disturbed. Reasoning this is some kind of magical bullshit, potentially involving an invisible man, she drives a dagger into the center of the handprint, finding nothing invisible but depressing a hidden button. A trapdoor grinds partially open, the mechanism quickly snapping in half but revealing a corroded metal ladder.
7. Beneath they find a tiny room subject to an ancient fermentation disaster: Burst glass bottles, dark stains on the walls, broken all-chemy equipment, etc. There is, however, one survivor, the contents of which is sniffed, found to smell fucking amazing, and quickly decanted into a sturdier container. There is also a fine, impossibly well-preserved black leather jacket and a lovely poncho stitched in the Pomelo clan style, the pattern encoding a temperature-regulation enchantment (resist cold).
8. As all four PC cram themselves into this tiny basement-closet, the door to the room they're in creaks open (first random encounter of the campaign). Three ash-streaked double-jointed mutated little freakazoids demand the intruders show themselves, but get a 9 for the reaction roll, which means all they really want is for the party to quietly get out of their hideout (these were the source of the sounds Lucidius caught at the front door).
9. None of the PCs have a great grasp of steppelander politics, but half-true, three-quarters-racist rumors inform them that without a centralized judicial system, the nomad clans deal with criminals and traitor-gangs by driving them into the middle of the grasslands and abandoning them to dehydration and the vomes; if they make it back alive it means they've proven their worth and can petition the khan for re-entry into the clan, but popular knowledge is that this never ever happens and the banished criminals either die or turn into crazed hyper-violent survivalists. These three, the party assumes from inside their hole, are the latter.
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| the general vibe |
9. Dave shouts that no one is here and that they should go away and look somewhere else. Krema emerges from the nook, draws herself up to her full (7 foot) height, and asks who dares speak to Her, a Very Important Person, in such a way. One of them says they are of the Rebar Clan in a thick steppe patois; another tightens her grip on a long iron rod studded with clinging concrete and starts looking agitated. "Thiz our place. We do it nicen easy, you begone. We hidenout! Begone!"
10. Krema sneers, demands that they put down their primitive weapons and get out of her face, or else they'll be taken to one of her "many successful plantations" in the Violetlands to toil as "unpaid interns." The one with the iron rod grits her teeth, hisses, and without further warning steps forward and smashes it into Krema's shoulder, rolling max damage. Diplomacy has failed; the other Rebar clansmen draw their shitty knives.
11. The entire party loses their initiative rolls, which means one of their foes runs over to the half-open trapdoor and begins to wrench it closed with everyone else still inside while the other attempts to stab Krema's knees. Dave, on his turn, spiral-jumps out of the narrowing-opening and carves one of the mutants in half like a fucking christmas ham. Lucidius and Krema bludgeon the rod-wielder to death between them, and Clariandra pops her head aboveground, tells the remaining guy to "stop being so impolite," and casts Wernher's Redistribution of Vitality at him. The man seems to age a decade in seconds and runs away in abject terror.
12. Krema, filled with hot wet fury, gives immediate pursuit. The little freak leads her forward down a long dark hallway. As he attempts to clamber up a shoddy ladder and through a partially-open trapdoor in the ceiling, she catches up with him and stabs him to death. They loot the bodies for their silver, and, in Clariandra's case, their eyeballs.
*Mechanically this was meant to give +1 to the first check per character that failed by exactly 1, but my players actually unpromptedly texted me specific prayers, so maybe St Moho will help in a more specific way?
Kills: 4 Nacrepedes, 3 Rebar Warriors (50 xp)
Loot: Cool leather jacket (10 sp), poncho of resist cold (250 sp), "healing potion," bits of silver worth 24 sp
