Session 90: Don’t Touch the Hobo’s Treasure | Fall
Maw of Snails | Played on July 9, 2022
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Party Members Present:
Luke WarDuke (Of the New Hampshire WarDukes)(Gus L.)
Avaunt
Velxori
-Itty Bitsy
-Skelby (The Handskull)
-Unnamed Slime
-Big Round Beetle (no longer on a string)
-Purple Snail
Zafira (Ava)
Ecco
-Zeehaw
-Bluepie
-Bree Yark
-Bluepie’s Boar Mount
(Talking Horses)
-Annette
-Bqarbara
-Stacy
Party Members Absent:
Glint
-Hibub Karate
-Bulgurd
Adelaide
-Ornoc the Waif
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DOWNTIME:
Summer passes into Autumn
Bluepie’s birthday! She is now 9 years old. (9 y/o) Bluepie had just turned 6 years old when she first joined the party. I am writing this in such annoying detail so that it’s easier to search for this information in the future.
Ecco passes on his Snake Staff to Bluepie.
Elrica sends a postcard to Bluepie about all the wicked cool evil shit she’s doing with her cult. \m/ >.< \m/
Velxori begins cultivating Nilhog’s Nose Mushrooms. Her little farm will produce d4 mature specimins each Downtime Turn.
Itty Bitty, Velxori’s snake, grew 4 more inches. It’s now 19 inches long. (next hp gain @ 24 inches)
Unnamed Slime, Velxori’s slime, now 16″ in diameter, gained 4hp (Total of 8)
Skelby and Beetle do not develop further this downtime turn.
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The wizard Fon got in touch with the party, and requested that they seek out a bit of Magitek for him. He gave a very long, very wizardly explanation for what it is, but the simple version is that it looks like a long stick with a doughnut on the end of it. He’d performed divinations suggesting it could be found at the bottom of a shaft out in the Western Desert.
The party moved through the Feywood in which they are guaranteed safe passage, then into the desert where they found a hobo statue containing hobo treasures, and hobo sign insisting that if you take something you must leave something, and warning fellow hobos not to take hospitality from the folks in the forest. (The party did not encounter them, perhaps due to their fey protection?)
The party passed by some shepherds with their flocks, and came at last to a heap of snail shells around the opening to a great shaft. Around the top they met Tais, an eccentric hermit who believed in a messy theology about the shaft leading down to Snail Heaven (with slug hell being in the sky up above). He explained that each night snails emerge from the shaft, and when they die under the hot desert sun he collects their shells to make into jewelry and trinkets of various kinds. The party purchased some with gifts of food, and stayed with him awhile to watch the snails emerge. Luke WarDuke, having accepted the Snail Heaven theology, slept among the snails and received Snail Dreams of giant monarch snails attacking those who carry fire. No one else who slept received snail dreams.
The next morning the party approached the lip of the pit, partially blocked off by an acidic poison goo from generations of snails dying in the sun every day. Avaunt gobbled some up and—after passing a saving throw—was mutated so that he can stick to and move along walls, so long as he’s fully back-against or front-against the wall. No one else is a mutoid, and so no one else attempted to receive a snail mutation. This was probably wise.
The party dropped into the shaft. With Velxori’s ability to climb sheer surfaces, Avaunt’s ability to slide along walls, Ecco’s ability to conjure stairsteps beneath his feet, only Luke WarDuke and Zafira needed to use an actual rope to climb down, which they left anchored at the top for their return trip. Just below the edge of darkness the party found a rusted steel gantry spiralling down the edge of the shaft.
With careful use of 10′ poles the party avoided weak points in the gantry, and made their way down to a door, which led into a small office area. In these rooms the party found a bunch of mushy messed up papers. The only notable information they were able to divine from these was that there was a mining pick on the letter-head. There was also a mysteirous dearth of snails. They found some to to be sure, but not so many as they’d expect considering the great wave of them that burst from the top of the Maw eacn night.
One room of the offices had a number of paintings on the wall, including one of a middle aged woman with an upturned nose and a downturned gaze. Behind that one Zefira found a locked safe. Velxori’s first attempt to open it failed, and the party opted to come back later when (hopefully) they would have the key.
The party went down a hall marked “Barracks,” and found an empty mess hall when it was pointed out that we were past the end of game time, and the session came to an end.
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RULINGS:
Velxori’s X-ray amulet, if used to examine a lock, grants her +20% to picking that lock.
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LOOT:
Velxori acquired a snail with a purple shell.
Ecco acquired some 2′ long eye stalks from the largest snail to escape
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INJURIES:
Zeehaw has Tomb Crystal Poisoning level 1.
Session 91: Blorping: Verb Describing the Movement of a Giant Snail | Fall
Maw of Snails | Played on July 23, 2022
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Party Members Present:
Luke WarDuke (Of the New Hampshire WarDukes)(Gus L.)
Avaunt
Ecco
-Zeehaw
-Bluepie
-Bree Yark
-Bluepie’s Boar Mount
Zafira (Ava)
(Talking Horses)
-Annette
-Bqarbara
-Stacy
Party Members Absent:
Glint
-Hibub Karate
-Bulgurd
Adelaide
-Ornoc the Waif
Velxori
-Itty Bitsy
-Skelby (The Handskull)
-Unnamed Slime
-Big Round Beetle (no longer on a string)
-Purple Snail
Luke WarDuke (Of the New Hampshire WarDukes)(Gus L.)
======
The cafeteria was trashed, so the party moved on to the Barracks, which was also trashed, but Avaunt looted a piccolo from one of the chests there. While the party was digging through the mess, there was a mournful moaning sound, and twisting streams of light began to form together. Everyone managed to dive into hiding before they were noticed by the creature who manifested in the barracks: a swirling mass of sorrowful faces wreathed in flame. Their chorus of voices seemed torn between begging for help, and seeking nonspecific revenge against anything that dared to live an existence beyond suffering. It did not spot any of the hiding members of the party, and they waited quietly for it to wander off—thankfully back the way they’d come, not the direction they wanted to go.
The party continued through the dungeon, bypassing a store room, which led them back out into the main shaft. With their various vertical-traversing abilities they were able to move down to the next intact section of gangway that included a door. This one leading into a passage of rough stone, with deep gouges where veins of precious metals had been extracted. They collected some incredibly tasty bioluminescent fungus It was so good! Just a little spicy, with a complex gamut of earthy flavors.
In a pool of dark water the party disturbed a massive Snail Potentate, but were able to defeat it by maneuvering into passages it couldn’t easily get into, and throw salt at it. (How convenient that their previous adventure involved so much salt treasure!) They cut the snail’s massive shell free of its corpse, and found a skeleton wearing a jade pectoral at the bottom of the pool.
In a further chamber, flled with mushrooms large enough to climb on, the party found another snail potentate (which they avoided waking up) and a few other valuable bits of treasure, including a magical shepherd’s crook lying in the hall!
The passage out of this room notably went around the mine’s central shaft without intersecting with it. On the other side the party started making its way back up, but were deterred when they heard the moanful wails of the ghost from the Barracks up ahead. They opted to delve into one of the lower chambers where they found a third Snail Potentate, and ambushed it for a quick kill.
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RULINGS:
Avaunt is able to gain 1 mutation per level (not including starting mutations). Requires exposure to a mutagenic force + successful saving throw versus poison. If a new mutation would give him too many, he may choose to get rid of one.
Avaunt’s charge is +1 to attack/ x2 damage. Is able to do it by dropping from the ceiling, even if not using jumping legs.
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LOOT:
Empty jeweled book cover of black demon bone set with amber. Pages are all rotted away (200gp)
Jade pectoral of the Noon Sun (500gp)
Broken sword with a silver wire hilt, gold chased guard and pommel (150gp) (If only we could find the rest of the blade…)
A silver priest’s mask, pitted by acid (150gp)
That’s 1000 gp/xp, or 333.34/each for Ecco, Avaunt, and Zaphira
A satchel of the soil the tasty bioluminescent fungus was growing in + one of the stalactites that was dripping moisture onto the mushrooms.
A few bioluminescent mushrooms.
A piccolo
Sheperd Saint’s Ivory Crook – Able to cast Command five times a day, but only effects Ungulates.
One 8′ Diameter Snail Potentate shell, with the dead snail potentate cut out of it, has been left where the party can retrieve it. If they can figure out how to remove it from the dungeon, it would likely be worth 600gp on its own.
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INJURIES:
Zeehaw has Tomb Crystal Poisoning level 1.
Session 92: Stuck On One Page for Nine Hours | Fall
Maw of Snails | Played on August 6, 2022
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Party Members Present:Maw of Snails | Played on August 6, 2022
Avaunt
Ecco
-Zeehaw
-Bluepie
-Bree Yark
-Bluepie’s Boar Mount
Zaphira (Ava)
Velxori
-Itty Bitsy
-Skelby (The Handskull)
-Unnamed Slime
-Big Round Beetle (no longer on a string)
-Purple Snail
(Talking Horses)
-Annette
-Bqarbara
-Stacy
Party Members Absent:
Glint
-Hibub Karate
-Bulgurd
Adelaide
-Ornoc the Waif
Luke WarDuke (Of the New Hampshire WarDukes)(Gus L.)
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After cutting the Snail potentate open to look for treasure (they found none aside from some snail digestive goo, which Avaunt dutifully collected), the party discovered that the swirling moaning ghost had passed them by. They were able to follow the path it had blocked off previously, and explore several large quarry chambers. They avoided attacks by swarms of snails via clever application of Salt, and found the mummified corpse of the mine manager, still carrying her key. In a nearby natural cavern they found a small vertical shaft leading up, which gave them easy access to the manager’s office, allowing the party to open the safe and collect the Mine’s paychest. There was also a pool of standing water beneath the shaft. The party collected the scum sitting on top of that water for some reason as yet unknown to the referee.
Further in, the party came upon an old quarry that the ancient miners had carved into a crude temple for the worship of their drooping eyed, masked saints and celestial thrones.Finding nothing to do here, the party returned to the central shaft (narrowly avoiding several encounters with the moaning, many-faced mine ghost). After reaching the bottom-most gangway, the party began climbing down a broken and rusted pipe, until murky water came into view. Being immune to toxins and to breathing, Ecco was the natural candidate to investigate this water. Beneath its surface he found many things! Including the magitek device (donut on a stick), 8 pomegranates of alchemical steel, and the skulls and bones of about a dozen individuals. The party collected all of these, and climbed back up to the gangways above.
First thing they did was arrange the bones in the temple space, and said some words of solace over them, which put the moaning whirling Mine Haint ghost to rest. Then the party returned to the Snail Potentate shell they’d stashed, and rigged up a system of ropes to haul it gradually up the shaft. They made their way up bit-by-bit, only to discover at the very top of the shaft that their entry rope was gone! Given the large number of party members capable of vertical travel this wasn’t much of an impediment, but it was an irritant! What’s more, their wagon had been turned upside down to form a crude shelter over beside Tais’ shell hut.
Zeehaw informed the party that Tais had done all this over her protest, and she hadn’t interfered because he seemed unstable, and also nothing he was doing would be difficult for the party to undo later. For his part, Tais didn’t seem to recognize the party, and just tried to sell them snailshell jewelry and snail heaven religion while they gathered their belongings. Avaunts suggestion that the party throw Tais into the shaft was roundly rejected, much to Blupie’s displeasure.
The party returned to the keep, and enjoyed a bit of autumn downtime.
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LOOT:
Ancient Pay Chest: 800gp
Reward for Recovering the Magitek Device: 5000gp
That’s 1450 gp & xp each for Avaunt, Ecco, Velxori, and Zaphira
1 Snail Potentate Shell
8 Pomegrantes of Alchemical Steel (1 makes a magic weapon, 4 makes magic armor)
Slimy Contents of a Snail Potentate’s Stomach
Scum skimmed from a pool of still water.
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CRAFTING:
Zaphira spends 4 Pomegranates of Alchemical Steel to hire craftspeople to make Meteor Armor for her:
–Meteor Armor (as Plate)(Begins at Dormant)
–Dormant Meteor Armor: 1/2 damage from falling, and always land on your feet. Obviated damage may be stored in the armor for up to 1 day, and released in a 10′ fireball centered on the wearer. Once the armor has absorbed 100hp of damage it awakens.
–Awakened Meteor Armor: Once per day you may launch yourself into the straight into the air at a height equal to your normal move speed. Once the armor has absorbed 500hp of damage it achieves its Exalted state.
–Exalted Meteor Armor: Once per day you may fly a single time for up to 10 minutes.
Zaphira spends the Snail Potentate Shell to craft a Shield of Spell Reflection
–Shield of Spell Reflection (+1 to AC)
–When equipped, grants wielder a 15% chance to resist magic, prior to any saves.
–As an action, the wielder may position the shield to intercept a spell and reflect it back at its caster.
Zaphira grinds the scraps of the Snail Potentate Shell down into a spell-reflective sand.
-Avaunt has 2 Alchemical Steel Pomegranates as-yet unusued.
-Velxori has 1 Alchemical Steel Pomegranate as-yet unusued.
-Ecco has 1 Alchemical Steel Pomegranate as-yet unused.
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DOWNTIME
Velxori’s Pets:
–Itty Bitty: Grows 7″ longer and gains 6 hit points. Is now 2′ 2″ long!
–Unnamed Slime: Doubles to 32″ in diameter, and gains 3 hit points.
–Skellsby: Velxori feeds it 400 of her experience points. (800/1200 to level 3)
Vexori: Trains to improve her dexterity with her tail. Her baseline ability now allows her to use it clumsily. She’s about as dextrous with it as she is with one of her feet. Additional downtime turns spent training will improve her tail skills.
Ecco: Adds some decorative Snail Potentate eyestalks to his head. They look nice. He also continues his routine of helping out around the keep, and socializing Blupie.
–Blupie: After helping a local shopkeep with a pest problem, Blupie has discovered a love of trapmaking.
Zaphira: Seeks instruction as an Engineer. Picks up enough engineering & carpentry to work as an Apprentice. (d8v5 if checked)
Avaunt: Looks around for someone who can restore the eye he lost. Fon hooks him up with a cleric who performs lengthy and complex rituals, which cause a fresh eye to grow in Avaunt’s head.
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INJURIES:
Zeehaw has Tomb Crystal Poisoning level 1.