Session 52 – Alright, You Murder the Children

Alternate Titles

“C’mon Baby, Do You Really Wanna Die a Virgin?”
“Nick: Great Referee, Terrible Lover”
“We Don’t Want To to be Evil, That’s Just the Way it Turns Out.”
“Can I Shoot the Children Before They Get Away?”

Loot

8 Powertie Headbands
A red Christmas ornament bulb.

NPC Interactions

Sheniqua: Is a little annoyed at Ronnina for leading her into a trap. (Morale remains 10)
Lugud Feels good about how well the trio evaded the Kobold’s trap. (Morale increases to 9)
Albert the Great: Doesn’t really like worms. (Morale remained 11)
Faylana: Also doesn’t like worms. (Morale remained 9)
Norno: Got really turned on by the spider-teens fucking next door. (Morale improved to 10)
Robot Monster: Does not like Buzzword. That language makes him feel dumb. (Loyalty remains 8)

The Tortured Kobold: Continued to be carried around by the party, continues to hate them.
The 8 Businessmen: Exchanged pleasantries and goods with the party, thinks they seem like alright–if “startup”–folks.
The Bluescale Kobold Clan: Attempted an Ambush against Ronnina and failed. Is fearful of retaliation.
The Spidermen: Lost two of their children, don’t know why, but it’s not terribly hard to leap to conclusions.
The Two Young Spider-Lovers: Don’t know the party was listening to their lovemaking. Really don’t want their parents to find out about it.

Languages

“Buzzword,” spoken by tribes of Businessmen throughout the Dome.
Ronnina and Umquat speak it.
Varouj and Don Harper do not.

Worldbuilding

It was determined during the session that when Spiderman children are born, they’re extra tiny, and cling to their mother’s ass until they grow big enough to move around on their own.

Highlights Recap

At the start of the session, Ronnina decided to walk back upstairs, through the Kobold’s territory, to retrieve her Zombies, figuring she could just tell the Kobolds to stay out of the way. As she was doing this–a frail child alone without the rest of her group–the Kobolds decided to set an ambush to punish her for the mutilated body they’d found pinned to the walls.

As she passed through a central room, Kobolds poured in on here from every side, surrounding her completely and pelting Ronnina, Sheniqua, and Lugud with damage. Taken by surprise, the three were in serious danger of being killed. In a panic, all three took action: Lugud dropped smoke bombs, Sheniqua summoned spectra dogs, and Ronnina conjured a Spider Ball which killed all but 1 of those spectral dogs.

The Kobolds managed to inflict still more damage, but opted to retreat to non-smokey rooms, since they could see the spiders, and lost several of their number who inadvertently stepped into them.

Ronnina took this opportunity to call her companions, who rushed to her aide. The group moved vengefully through the area, but the kobolds had scattered to the four winds, and were nowhere to be seen. Ronnina went to retrieve her zombies (against the better judgement of her fellows), and the whole group returned to the 2nd sublevel without further incident.

Meanwhile, Umquat had found a tool shed.

With Ronnina’s spells almost entirely depleted, the party resolved to find some place they could hunker down for a few hours and rest. They investigated several rooms: one that looked to be full of sludge tendrils, one that had spider-man murals, another HVAC room which had various comic pages depicting Spider-Man’s origin story hanging from the vents.

Finally, they found a more-or-less empty room, with enough space to rest in. Ronnina’s Zombies (including a bunch of new ones made from spider person corpses) set up watch in nearby rooms, and Umquat, Varouj, and Don Harper arranged for a 3 watch cycle.

The group managed to spend a quiet 8 hours, save for during Don’s Watch. Don got the idea to send his homemade rover through the air vents of the floor below this one, hopefully scouting out some of the rooms they might encounter. He discovered that the whole floor below this one was full of waist-high worms, wriggling on top of each other. There also seemed to be people living there. with hubcap-sized platforms hanging from some of the ceilings, and even a boat with some guys wearing ties as headbands, and painted with printer ink.

As Don was doing this, a couple of young Spiderfolk walked by. He kept low, and listened to their conversation: a typical teenage back-and-forth, with the young man doing a piss-poor job of seducing his lady-companion, who was unsettled by the recent violence. Don tried to scare them off by having his rover bang around in the vents beneath them, but the young woman decided not to be ruled by fear, and the pair spent 15 minutes bangin’ in an adjacent room. Once they left, Don went to check for eggs, of which there were none.

The rest of the party’s rest was restful, without further restlessness, and they set out for the stairs leading down to the next floor.

On their way, they saw a few spider children sitting on the ceiling, bouncing a ball to one another against the floor. When the children saw the party, they dropped their ball and ran in fear. Worrying that the children would alert the spider men and cause a whole new melee to break out, Varouj whipped up his crossbow, and landed 3 bolts into the children’s fleeing bodies, killing them. One fell to the floor, while the other remained hanging from the ceiling by a single foot.

Varouj and Robot Monster retrieved the bodies, and used them to test whether the worms at the bottom of the stairs were dangerous, which they were not. After leaving the bodies hidden among the worms, the party went back upstairs to pull some doors off their hinges to serve as simple rafts. They then lashed the zombies to the doors, and had them pull the rafts along atop the surface of the worms, while the living rode in comfort.

Shortly after they began mushing through the worms, the party encountered a group of Businessmen meeting on their boats. They greeted the party in their native tongue, “Buzzword,” which Ronnina and Umquat were both familiar with.

The two groups conversed for awhile, and traded some goods. The party gave them a pair of NGage phones, for which the businessmen traded 8 head ties. Varouj also made offering of his Shako hat, for which they traded a Christmas tree ornament.

After this exchange of goods and pleasantries, the party asked how they might find Team Gopher. The businessmen seemed surprised that anyone would seek out such obviously dangerous folk, but pointed the party down a hallway. The party said their goodbyes, went down the hallway, and discovered a high-tech, keypad door installed just above the level of the worms. Don Harper used his Tech skills to hack the keypad, the party tethered their rafts, and dropped themselves into the Worm Decontamination Chamber.

The session ended In Media Res