Session 1: “If we help Globin franchise on a different level of the dungeon, would it be a multi-level marketing scheme?”
Run on June 3, 2020 | Week 1, Year 1
The party climbed directly down to the sixth and lowest level of the dungeon, where they found a group of undead miming as if they were frantically working in a science lab of some kind. They seemed to think they were trying to prevent the apocalypse, unaware that it had already happened, unaware they were dead, and unaware that none of their equipment was still functional. The party poked around the room for awhile and got some vague clues about quantum entalgement and space coordinates. While they were poking some goblins showed up to strip components out of one of the broken machines. The the undead ignored them, the party helped them and chatted a bit.
Moving deeper into the 6th level, the party encountered a security checkpoint managed by an AI that seemed…lacking in I. They easily tricked it into allowing them past, and in the next room they met a goblin named Globin. Globin was a shopkeep who tried to sell the party all manner of things, and offered to buy any bullets they had for hard rations. The party had no currency to work with, but Globin seemed cool, and everyone parted as friends.
Further on the party followed what they thought was a treasure trail into the lair of a giant mechanical snake. The party mostly escaped with some lucky rolls, and even managed to damage the snake, but they didn’t get any treasure from it. Worse yet: Pinecone the Moss Dwarf became separated from the party, and had to be left behind.
The party escaped the dungeon mostly intact, but with no treasure to speak of.
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HOOKS & SEEDS:
-In the far South of the 6th level, Globin says “The Wizard collects bullets that fall from the ceiling.”
-Pinecone is in the dungeon…somewhere.
-As the party left the dungeon, they convinced the security A.I. that it needed to raise security levels! The Russians are here!
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CASUALTIES:
-Pinecone (Anne Hunter) was left behind, and will become a denizen of the dungeon.
-Human Ghost (Roni) turned an ugly pukey color upon failing to posess a giant zombie head.
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LOOT:
-5 Ancient Passwords of Dubious Usefulness
Session 2: “Cow Tools”
Run on June 17, 2020 | Week 2, Year 1
The party decided to start on the first level. They ignored some “HUMAN’S DON’T STOP HERE!” graffiti, then ignored some “DEADLY TRAP THIS WAY” graffiti, and some of them fell into a deadly trap. They survived though, and the party was able to loot quite a bit from that room. Just as they did this some goblins showed up, the party tricked them into falling into the trap, and Samo collected their corpses for his personal use.
Back the other way, the party met the graffiti artists: The Boastful Bovines. Horrible cow/horse anthromorphs who think very highly of themselves, and not very highly of most humans. The party managed to do some good banter with Bolarius the doorman, and convince him that he ought to try his hand at stage acting. A production was begun, stealing the plot from “On The Waterfront,” which the referee has never seen.
Having made peaceful contact, the party walked leisurely through the heart of the Bovine living space. They acted peacefully, and were mostly ignored. They did take some balls from an old laboratory room though. Otherwise it was super chill. 🙂
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HOOKS & SEEDS:
-The Boastful Bovines want Films for their projector.
-A theater troup was founded with Bolarius as lead actor!
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CASUALTIES:
-Dexadrine Malarky & Vara both fell into a spike bit, but were fortunate and only suffered single-session attack roll penalties.
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Loot:
540 Rations 11 Bullets (5r each) 10 Good Food (10r each) That comes to a total of 695 Rationsworth of treasure. There were 7 players in this session so they get 99r each.
Each player may choose to hold on to their earnings for barter/personal use, OR they may donate rations to the town’s coffers for experience points. 1r = 1xp.
Also: 2 toy balls, 3 goblin corpses, indecipherable goblin map, purple robes, records for all the relevant info on the camera in the Boastful Bovine’s abandoned lab.
Session 3: “I went to highschool in a dungeon, & I fucked in the hallways.”
Run on July 1, 2020 | Week 3, Year 1
The party descended to the second level of the dungeon, and were greeted by a bustling Goblin Market. Here they could exchange currencies, and purchase valuable items. Unfortunately, they did not have sufficient funds to buy anything.
Most of the level was run by Goblins, and the party were able to have a friendly poke around. They met a poker-playing Goblin Bruiser who named themselves “Muscles.” (Everyone else called them “Shorty.) Via flirtation they incepted the idea of potentially running for Chief Bruiser into his mind. Elsewhere the party found a fight pit, and a Goblin trainer/sponsor named Ricky. Taarna and Varnaa both signed up for a match. Taarna of them lost their match, but it was highly entertaining. Varna won their match, but it was painfully dull. For winning, Taarna got a battery and 3 bags of chips (50r)
The party visited several other rooms, discovered that the Goblins had to contend with an infestation of giant scary babies, and pieced together a wild melodrama about a goblin named Hemo being left at the altar by another named Bogo, but now Hemo was with another goblin named Zomo, and Hemo’s cousin Sourry though Bogo was a scallawag. The party became invested and began planning / promoting a dream wedding show called Altered Altars.
The party started on their way out at this point, but decided they had time to do oooooone incredibly stupid thing and open a door that said “DON’T OPEN THIS, IDIOT!” Beyond the door was another door with another warning, and beyond that door was a Cockatrice that very much wanted to turn the party to stone. With some speedy maneuvers and valiant teamwork, the party managed to steal one of the Cockatrice’ eggs and escape. Better yet, some enterprising members of the party had put down significant bets at 6-to-1 odds, and won a tidy little pile of treasure before returning to the surface.
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HOOKS & SEEDS:
-Muscles wants to be Chief Bruiser
-There is interest among the goblins in getting Taarna into more fights!
-The goblin fights are mostly a sort of kickboxing thing. The party has suggested they try HELL IN A CELL wrestling matches.
-Altered Altars.
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CASUALTIES: None!
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LOOT:
-Cockatrice Egg (50r)
-Gambling Winnings (1194r)
(The fighting match winnings were part of the bet that led to the gambling winnings, so they are not represented here)
That’s a total of 1244r, which divided among the 6 players who were present comes to 208r each. This may be exchanged 1-to-1 for xp, or saved to use as currency later.
Session 4: “A Little Girl, Three Wizards, and an Influencer.”
Run on July 15, 2020 | Week 4, Year 1
GOBLIN BAZAAR:
Among heaps of watermelon rind, boxes of “get well soon” greeting cards, and sacks of styrofoam packing peanuts, you find a book containing “Improved Invisibility,” a fourth level spell being sold for 900r. You also find a roll of toilet paper on which some wizard has inscribed the first level spell “Enlarge.” The goblin thinks it’s a collection of dirty jokes and is selling it for 180
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After stopping to purchase Enlarge, the party proceded down to level three and encountered a number of rooms densely packed with purple robed nerds. Self-described nerds. They appeared to live in terribly cramped and unhealthy conditions. The party quickly figured out that the “sacred texts” of the purple robes was a bunch of comic books, and used their own comic book knowledge to get a look at the sacred library. They poked around in here for a bit, hoping to gather some useful information, but aside from some vague metaphysical energies they came up with bupkis. They DID get the Library Custodians excited about the idea of writing and performing fan fiction stories, and learned that the Nerds and the Boastful Bovines have an unfriendly history. As they moved deeper into the dungeon they also learned that the Giant Spiders force the Nerds to work in terrible conditions grinding up Giant Crystals.
They’d learned from one of the Nerds that there was a trash heap to the North. Enticed by the possibility of Mushrooms the party went to investigate. They encountered some of the Giant Crystals floating, communicating via beams of light. The crystals were friendly enough once the party made clear that they didn’t intend any violence, and told the party about the hole where they threw bodies so they wouldn’t pile up.
A little further the party found a room where garbage water and shag carpet had combined to create a wild and delightful valierty of mushrooms. Misaki was able to identify 11 which would be safe to eat. There were a lot which didn’t seem safe. Dexadrine Malarky ate one of those, and has felt weird ever since.
The party’s fungal lusts having been satiated (for now!) they decided to change corse and investigate the corpse hole. It was close by, and the two crystal guards were happy enough to let them pass. They were more interested in keeping things from coming out of the hole than they were in preventing people from going in. Turns out the hole wasn’t just a pit, but a magic portal which led to some other space (persumably within the dungeon?) filled with old toilets and corpses. The party searched the bodies and discovered a small cache of treasure!
It was time to return to the surface, but lo! Snake eyes were rolled on the encounter check. The party encountered XOGTHAX THE INSECT DRAGON, who won initiative and breathed a mighty gout of fire. Some made their saves, some did not, but all were reduced to 0 hit points and suffered permanent injury. Very fortunately, The Influencer was able to cast a 1-round command to sleep on the dragon which allowed the party to flee back to the surface, and safety.
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HOOKS:
-The Nerds are excited by the idea of writing and performing fan fiction.
-The Nerds and the Boastful Bovines have a history of conflict.
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LOOT:
11 Good Food Mushrooms (110r)
27 Rations (27r)
3 Bullets (15r)
Rusted Junk Pistol (40r)
Stack of Comic Books (300r)
3 yet-to-be-identified glittergold mushrooms (0r)
Presuming the party sells their spoils and divides the treasure evenly that comes to a total of 492r, or 99r each.
(Which can be kept as currency, or turned in for XP)
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INJURY:
-Dexadrine Malarky feels strange from that mushroom. It’s not yet clear what that means.
-Dexadrine Malarky’s left leg was completely incinerated by Xogthax the Dragon.
-Misaki got a cool looking burn scar on her back. (Score!)
-Pearl’s lungs were agitated by the heat, and one of them no longer functions properly.
-Samo lost much of his fur, and lost 1 from his max hit points.
-The Influencer got a hole burned through her lower abdomen, and lost a kidney.
Session 5: “They wanna steal our dirt!”
Ran on July 29, 2020 | Week 5, Year 1
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GOBLIN BAZAAR
Amidst crates full of branded letter openers, dieting books, and hollow plastic halloween weapons, you find a jar with a slate blue prism orbiting around inside it. It’s being sold for 1000r because it looks very pretty. Beneath some of the dieting books you also find an active smoke grenade, which the attending goblin is willing to part with for 160r.
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Before the session began, Misaki spent some time studying the Mushrooms she’d found previously. She rolled really poorly, and was only just able to tell that whoever ate them would probably not enjoy the experience.
The party decided to stop off at the Goblin Bazaar before descending to the 4th sublevel. They were enamored of the pretty blue rock, but didn’t quite have enough to purchase it. After some haggling the Goblin offered them a dramatic discount of they could get rid of the giant babies which the goblins were forced to tend to. (On their way to do this they bumped into some goblins returning from a scavenging mission, and traded some spray paint for a moleskin journal with a spell in it.)
The Babies emerged from a mysterious curtain-blocked hole in the wall, beyond which was a magical darkness. The players performed all sorts of experiments:
-Killing a baby caused a humm, and a new baby crawls out shortly after.
-The giant babies DO NOT want to go back into the hole, and if forced will be spat back out violently.
-Dead bodies going into the hole are also spat back out violently.
-The giant babies appear to lack souls?
-Ghosts entering the hole are popped back out, restored to their normal bodies.
-Injured humans who go into the hole are popped back out restored naked, but d6 years younger.
Aside from restoring some injuries the process seemed to be kind of a bust. Pearl was annoyed to be a 5 year old, the Ghost was annoyed to be in a body, and nobody was any closer to understanding how to close up the baby hole. The party instead did a little digging behind the figurative couch, came up with 1000r, and just bought the blue IOUN stone with money.
From there the party descended to sublevel 4, where they encountered some very friendly humanoid robots who seemed to want nothing more than to pamper them. The party went along with them to a room where two other humans were, getting their hair cut and backs massaged. The party enjoyed a bath and let the Robots take their clothes for washing. The ever-suspicious Samno followed, but more to protect the dumb humans than anything else. He was proven correct in his suspicions when it turned out the Robots intended to keep everyone as pampered captives. Misaki was tempted, but most of the party was very firm in their desire to leave by force.
There were shenanigans: Varza throwing buckets of water on the robots, robots wrapping Varza up in a carpet. A very slapstick escape, really. The two other humans (Sunny and Saladin) joined in the party’s efforts once it became clear they might succeed, and Samno covered the party’s exit to the elevator by causing all the meat the robots had been cooking to animate.
The party returned to the surface with two new mouths to feed, and no loot aside from their IOUN stone.
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DOWNTIME HAPPENINGS!
-After a particularly interesting lecture on mushrooms from Misaki, Saladin comments “Dang, you sure like funguses. I bet you woulda got along well with this person I was shackled next to on a chain gang a few weeks back. Never did catch her name…”
-The Former Ghost, The Influencer, Dexadrine Malarky, and Pearl all experience troubling dreams over the next week. Each sees their own parents in terrible aspect, and relive a moment of powerlessness when they were forced to do something against their will. It may have been trivial, or even something they would now agree was good for them, but in sleep the memory is injected with a nightmarish fear, and each morning they wake feeling uneasy.
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HOOKS:
Misaki’s dangerous mushrooms are now out on the market…somewhere. ALSO, the goblins know how to huff paint now.
RELATIONSHIPS:
Muscles +1.
Sunny +5.
Saladin +5.
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LOOT:
-IOUN stone: Deep Blue Smooth Torus (440): Elemental caltrops. Creates a 15′ radius area around the user that is carpeted with extremely sharp edged spiny crystals. These crystal spikes are so strong that they can tear through the toughest hide or leather, causing 2d4 + 2 damage per round on any moving creature. The stone is usable once per week with a during of 2d3 rounds.
-A moleskin journal containing the first level spell “Sleep.”
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INJURY
-The Unnamed Ghost character was forced into a physical body, and is no longer a ghost.
-The Influencer, Dexadrine Malarky, and Pearl were all reduced in age by d6 years. Notably, this reduced Pearl from 9yo to 5yo.
-Those same character’s permanent injuries from last session were restored. Dexadrine’s strange mushroom-induced feels remain.