Session 39 – This Isn't a Motel 6

Dramatis Personae

+Frotz Self as Varouj
+Ronnie Whelan as Ronnina
+Moreven Brushwood as the Gobbos

Loot

Ronnina’s Gift was a spellbook from the future, written in her own hand. It contained the spells “Hold Magic,” “Magic Glare,” “Cone of Cold,” and “Hold Missiles.”
Each of the Gobbos received a shiny new tricycle. Blue, green, yellow, and purple in color.
Varouj’s gift was an aluminum, telescoping, 15′ pol with a collapsible hook on one end. He also received a grappling gun. The size of a flare gun with a grapnel sticking out of the barrel. Liquid micro-filament cartridges provide the rope. Pulling the trigger causes the grapple to launch, and releasing the trigger causes it to retract, pulling the wearer up to wherever the grapple latches. In exploration turns, a grapple can be assumed on locations up to 25 stories high. If time is being measured in rounds, a to hit roll is required against an AC of 1 per story of the building.
The Gobbos stole a quilt made of patches of birds.
Ronnina took the eyes of the Hardstare, which contain 16 souls. Destroying the eyes would be a profound kindness to those trapped within. However, there is always the option of keeping the eyes. The souls can be spent to permanently cause one of Ronnina’s spells to become significantly more powerful. The player may pick the spell, but the referee determines in what way the spell grows in power. Each time this is done, one of the souls within the diamond would be sold into Hell. Damned to an eternity of suffering for your benefit.

NPC Interactions

Robot Monster – Varouj helped to attack the guys who called Robot Monster a dummy. Bond raised. (Bond 5)
The Formal Child – The party encountered this child for the second time. Just as with the previous encounter, they walked away immediately upon seeing him. (First encountered in Session 15. Not noted in the NPC information of that session)
The Applicant – A young man waiting for a meeting with Mongrel the Magician believes that the party are in the employ of Mongrel, sent as part of a pre-screening test to see if he’s suitable for being Mongrel’s apprentice. He believes he passed the test.
The Christmas Beast – Vomited his gifts upon the player characters.

Highlights Recap

Standing outside Mongrel’s tower, Ronnina summoned a pack of Spectral Dogs, four of which the Gobbos quickly mounted, and went speeding off into the Lightning Bolt Tower. They passed rapidly through an opulent entry hall that seemed to fill the whole space of the floor, then into an opulent throne room. Here they stopped briefly to climb the pedestal the throne was on, flip some switches on the armrest, activate some crazy fuckin’ traps, then moved on again into what appeared to be a well stocked armory full of mundane equipment. After this, the gobbos returned out front to where the rest of the party was, and they decided to follow Robot Monster as he led them back the way he had come down after being created in Mongrol’s laboratory.

Robot Monster led the party through the same room’s the Gobbos had traversed, then into a fourth room with a squared spiral staircase leading up. At the top the players found themselves in a nice hallway with a number of doors. Robot Monster led them into a particular one, which opened into a completely empty room. Here Robot Monster stopped in confusion. He believed that there should be another door here, and yet there was not. Only the entrance through which they had come.

Mogmurch the Gobbo, thinking to create a door, tossed a bomb into the room while everyone ducked outside. The bomb started a small fire, and caused a whole shit ton of noise. It was only a moment before a group of three ape men appeared to find out what the ruckus was about.

The party at first tried to pass themselves off as guests who had witnessed the ruckus, but their lie was unconvincing, and the ape men attacked. Notably, they called Robot Monster a dummy for leading these vagabonds into the tower, which Robot Monster found to be deeply hurtful. The party killed two of the ape men, and sent the final one running.

From here they investigated a few rooms. The first contained a creepy little boychild wearing a formal suit, who told them not to be rude, so they closed the door. Several rooms were empty. One room contained a nervous looking young man who thought the players had come to take him up to see Mongrel. When the players instead revealed that they were attempting to see Mongrel by force, and invited the young man to join them, he paused, then smiled and asked if this was a test. The party looked confused, until he put on his best “job interview” voice and explained in over-long detail that he would wait until Mongrel decided to call for him, because he would obey Mongrel’s commands no matter what. The party talked to him a bit more, and was never anything but honest, yet the young man remained certain that this was a test sent by Mongrel, and refused to leave.

Then there was the woman with the diamond eyes. She asked if Mongrel was ready for her, and when told that he was not, she insisted that she be left alone. Then she saw Ronnina, and recognized her from when they had met in the laboratory of Zessler Vox. She attacked immediately, and the party dove backwards to hold the door on her. It became a contest of wills: the party held the door closed while she tried to open it, and the party hoped that the capricious Hardstare would lose interest before she won the tug of war.

The party was wrong. The Hardstare managed to overpower Robot Monster, pull the door open, and attack. The battle was fierce, and the party found the aura of misfortune surrounding her to be nearly impossible to overcome. Thanks in large part to Robot Monster’s stunning ray, they were able to defeat her. Varouj dealt the killing blow, and a blinding light arced from her eyes into his. In a moment he experienced her entire life: from being on the colony ship, to seeing earth destroyed in the sky, to the riots, the collapse, scrounging for sustenance in the sewers, dying, and the endless search to fill the void inside of her. When he awoke he remembered it only distantly, save for one thing. He remembered the months spent making charcoal paintings, and gained Charcoal Painting as a skill at 4-in-6.

Ronnina, meanwhile, took her eyes.

The party dragged the Hardstare’s body into her room, and cleaned the hallway as best they could. Their plan was to try and imitate the Hardstare long enough for everyone to rest, restore a few hit points, and have Ronnina get her spells back. Only a short while later there was a knock at the door. One of the ape men–fortunately not the one who escaped–was checking with all the guests to see if they knew anything about the intrusion. Varouj successfully passed himself off as the slave of the Hardstare, who was regaining her spells and could not be disturbed. The attendant was somewhat suspicious, but fortunately, he was also lazy. He marked the room checked, and the intrusion was apparently determined to be a daring quilt heist, since that was the only thing anyone could find that had been taken.

The party rested here for several days, eating from the complimentary ice chest, recovering their hit points, and (fortunately) not being called upon to visit Mongrel until they had become good and rested.

Just as they were getting ready to go, a claw tore through the wall, and a giant red bird-thing appeared. It had a long neck, a mane of white feathers, and a plucked, plump, meaty body colored stark red. It vomited bile upon all of the player characters, who also had paper mache eggs drop to their feet. They opened these, and discovered gifts. The Christmas Beast then disappeared, and the wall was magically repaired. It might have been a hallucination, if not for the very real gifts the players now held in their hands.

Not long after, an attendant came to fetch the Hardstare for her meeting with Mongrel the Magician. He took them to the same room Robot Monster had indicated, opened a secret door, and noticed that Ronnina was terribly unconvincing as an undead creature. The attendant conspicuously asked the party to wait here while he went to “introduce them.” The party waited only a moment before they realized they had been found out, and the attendant was going to warn Mongrel. They decided simply to follow the attendant through the secret door, which led to a hallway, and a set of stairs leading up.

The party ascended the stairs.

The session ended In Media Res