Topic: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

Here's a story from my LotFP summer campaign Tales of Greed. We're two sessions in and next time we play is on saturday. Couple of weeks ago I asked here for advice on how to begin this campaign and in the end I decided to use the slightly modified Forgive Us.

Before getting into the meat of things, I state that I made the module somewhat less lethal, because I didn't want to alienate the newer players in my group. First, I made the disease less virulent and increased the number of saves to fail before one fully succumbs to the corruption. (When the infection is slower, the PCs have more time to ponder their horrible fate). Second, I decided that Aggraval's party was tasked only with the retrieval of the urn and would prefer negotiation over violence. I planned that together they would prevent a TPK. (Oh, how wrong I was...)

Second thing to note is that we tested two houserules nabbed from Ten Foot Polemic -blog. First, I had everyone roll a failed adventurer career that gave them two skill point to a "profession skill". Second, I gave Magic-users the option to have a familiar that stores an extra level 1 spell slot (and explodes as per a Summon spell on the master's death). We agreed that together they would give the PCs nice extra options.

Our party consists of Pablo Gonzales the Dwarf, William Blitwart the another Dwarf, Thorn Blödrosen the Elf and Medina the Magic-user and Puppet, her beloved familiar.

---

So, the PC's travel to Norwich and have little difficulty in locating Tenebrous Hand's hideout. When their attempt to infiltrate Dog and Bastard tavern fails (no one answers the door), they decide that a diversion is in order - one of them circles around and sets sets the carpenter's door on fire, while the rest wait for the thieves to put out the fire. To their befuddlement, no thieves come out. "Greedy bastards! They must be too busy counting their loot!" Pablo declares and the party scampers to find the local fire brigade.

Some time later the front wall of the carpenters shop is nicely ablaze and the leader of the neighbourhood watch organises a bucket line while thanking the Thorn and the rest of their vigilance.
Then the PCs break in. "There are people inside! We must save them!" Pablo and Thorn declare together.
The party is quick to find the incoherent William Hyde, who refuses to let them into the cellar. His incompliance provokes Medina's wrath, who expends her mightiest spell Faerie fire is - after some unlucky rolls - slain by the hysteric William. This makes the bindings on her familiar dissolve.

Before going into the summoning effects, it's relevant to note that Aggraval's party had entered the complex a bit earlier through the Scribe's house after the sudden fire forced them to hurry up their scouting routine. They managed to evade the dogs on the inner yard with meat and then moved to investigate the noice of violence coming from the tavern. They arrived to the scene just in time to witness the familiar erupt as a summon spell.

Now I have to say that Summon is one of our groups favourite spells and its sudden appearance was greeted with delight and anticipation. My more veteran players were eager to roll the dice and hear the results. "What the fuck Ref! None of us had Summon!"
This was the first time we got to experience one of the Abstract Forms: Memories of the pre-conception.
Next moment everyone in the premises was enslaved under the party elf's cruel will for several weeks. Yes, even Aggraval and his posse (except Ferguson, he has no soul).
After playing around with his newfound power over others, Thorn begins a frantic strip search of the complex - though for some reason he merely casually inspects the cellar and doesn't find the secret door. It doesn't take long for him to get frustrated with micromanaging his minions and after two get infected from the doggie in the butcher's shop, Thorn selects two of the sturdiest (Aggraval and Blitwart) and orders the rest to die in a fire. Then he decides he has enough loot and wants to retire for the night.

All this time the other players have been making new characters: Wilbur the Specialist and Boris Kalashnikov the Dwarf arrive to the premises. Wilbur has heard of the riches hidden by the Tenebrous hand and sees his chance in the midst of the confusion. Boris, on the other hand, hears noises inside and decides that whatever's in shouldn't be getting out. He sets fire to the Dog and the Bastard and tries to trap Thorn inside. (He also berates the bourgeoise western regime that made this possible.) Setting things on fire stays as their favourite solution to all problems in the following sessions.
The fire spreads slowly and Thorn manages to get free, but not before a bunch of firemen spot his hexed minions. Boris manages to rouse some population for a witch hunt.

In the tavern Thorn chose as his hideout, he meets the third new PC: Huxley the Elf. The two become short lived allies when Boris' mob lays siege to the inn forcing Thorn to flee and leave his minions to buy him time.
Seeing the size of the mob and realising that humans cannot tell elves apart from each other Huxley defects to aid the witch hunt. The mob is torn into two as the sides argue whether they should burn the elf regardless or believe him. After some debate, Boris solves the situation by sending half of the mob to build a pyre while the elf could help the rest until they had enough firewood.

Meanwhile Wilbur has found the gangs hideout and through a bit of metagaming gained access to their treasure vault. He nabs some trinkets from the hoard and by chance also takes James Blake's stolen journal. But not before getting infected by one of the things inside. He manages to flee, but forgets to lock the door. (The firemen, who had almost bested the fire, soon had a very nasty surprise on their laps.)

Thorn manages to evade the witch hunt, but cannot find a boat to cross the river. He decides that as elves are witches they are made of wood and thus float. So, he starts swimming carrying most of the gathered treasure.
Unfortunately, he was wrong and sinks to the bottom of the river dragging all the loot with him. Cue the collective groan from the players.

Come the morning, Wilbur has managed to resist the disease with some lucky rolls (two twenties in a row!) and is seeking a clergyman capable of healing him. Boris, Huxley and their mob begin a pogrom against all the elves in the city. They manage to collect a handful and Boris begins construct his own personal gulag on one of the city's plazas.

Doing so he arouses the attention of the city watch and Boris is driven away. Wilbur finds a cleric, one Father Glascoine, who agrees to cure the infection on the condition Wilbur performs one service for the church: an abbess from a remote abbey has been pestering Glascoine for a year about some forest witch and he wants someone else to deal with it. At the same time the city is slowly waking to the strange plague spreading from Tenebrous Hand's old hideout.
This is where we ended the first session.

---

Yesterday the group broke into the realm of the Pale lady and struck a deal with a wandering nun for the tithes of Dunnsmouth. I'll post the continuation of the story later this week, when I have the time to write it out.

I've also run some oneshots in cons and over roll20. If there's enough interest, I can post play reports from these games too.

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

Haha, this is great! And I'm glad my rules are coming in handy!
I've certainly never had a death result in an Abstract Form before. That's awesome to hear. The best I've had was a permanently-bound 1HD Smoke Demon full of Quivering Eggs that was immune to mundane weapons. The rest of the party booked it, so I've got no doubt that it's laying more smoke demons out there somewhere.

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

Hehe, my players are becoming paranoid about Summon - every time its been cast, it has killed at least one party member (and more often, everyone)!
Unfortunately, they promised to make the next MU with a familiar regret their decision, so I don't know if we'll see much more accidental death summons...

Anyhoo, the next part of the adventure is ready to be served! This one became much too long, I have to cut back on prose in the next one.

Note: Again I've fiddled a bit with the adventure. Having the entrance ritual work only on equinox was too problematic for our calendar so in my game the wizard's ritual works every full moon. I guessed that being trapped for a month is as deadly as being trapped for six months. Presumably the rabbit men have a lesser ritual as they only raid during the spring.

The Case of the Pale Lady

The last Tuesday our adventurers escaped Norwich among the last, before the city was put under quarantine and by chance Huxley (or Hugsley) the Elf, Boris Kalashnikov the Dwarf, Wilbur the Specialist and a newcomer Flavio the Fighter, an italian frustrated that he had been driven away only a day after arrival, were pushed into a group by the masses of evacuees. Recognising the strength that lies in numbers (and the wrath of a Referee that has to manage three separate parties) they decide to stick together until further notice and promptly begin searching for a place to wet their throats and plan their next course.

To their ill luck, nearest roadside tavern has  noticed the sudden surge of travelers and hired two thugs to enforce a steep entrance fee - five silvers per customer, eight for dirty elves and italians. Most of the party is willing to pay, but Flavion is infuriated by the bigotry and Boris refuses out of principle. They deduce that the only logical reason for this greed is that the inn has been commandeered by brigands and thieves and decide that street justice must be meted out.
But before they have a chance to commit to their wild plans, Huxley and Wilbur point out that even together they couldn't take everyone in the inn.
Undaunted, Boris and Flavion are out for blood and won't back down until they've inflicted at least some harm to the bouncers: Flavion acts humble and pays the toll, but when inside immediately turns and shoots one bouncer with a bow while the next-in-line Boris draws his blade and decapitates the other. Mass of escapees panics in horror and the party has just enough time to steal some horses from the stable and escape as the furious patrons storm out of the inn.
During the chase Boris laments that he has never met a warrior armed only with a bow and Flavion protests that he also has a shank.

After fleeing to a safer distance the party stops to think their next move: the mysterious journal Wilbur pilfered from the Tenebrous hand turns out to be written in ancient Latin, a language only Huxley can understand. Wilbur is reluctant to part with the journal, but allows Huxley to take a look at it and discover it's an ancient travelogue with directions to a remote island rumoured to contain the treasure of a Greek magus Xenophon.
Old forgotten treasure immediately rouses the party's interest, but Wilbur urges they first seek out abbess Ruth Ford and complete his debt to the church as he doesn't want to spent his eternity in the fires of hell. He reminds that the journal is still his property and the island is far, while the abbey is only a few days ride away.

Nothing interesting happened during the ride to the abbey. On the way the PC's encountered a nun named Titania, who was apparently headed to the same direction, but as she had no horse and considered riding with a man improper they left her in the dust.
Late in the evening they reach the abbey gates and are greeted by the sour sister Purity who reluctantly lets the PC's in when they show Father Glascoine's letter. Abbess Ruth Ford declines to talk business until the next morning and so the PCs spent a cold night on the abbey floor (except Flavion who had been banished outside because of his blasphemous mouth, he slept nice and warm inside his tent).

Next morning the party is joined by Titania and Abbess Ford tells the party about her shaken guest and his ramblings of the forest witch. She shares her suspicion about the witch having the possession of the fabled Word of Creation and promises to lend the holy Blade of Prester John, if the PC's retrieve the Word and deal with the witch.
Party is not convinced that the risk is worth some rusty sword, no matter how holy. After they speak their reluctance Titania adds that she has been tasked to collect the church tithe from the remote town of Dunnsmouth. She'd rather not make the journey, so she promises that the PC's may collect the tithe of 12 000 silver in her stead, if they help Abbess Ford. Dunnsmouth has an ill reputation, so her denomination would be satisfied with mere thousand pieces allowing the adventurers to keep the rest.
Our heroes are far more interested in the promise of easy wealth, so they readily agree to smoke the witch out.

Ford's guest proves to be quite insane, but the party never questions his tale and with interrogation learns the important bits: how to access the realm of the forest witch and that there's a mysterious cube somewhere in her palace.
As the PC's had no star charts we let a d30 (gotta get some use out of them) decide when was the next full moon and it turns out to be the very next night! This chimes in perfectly with the party's plans as they felt no particular preparations were in order.

After sunset the party marched into the nearby woods and found a convenient hole. They all crawled through and entered the flower field, except Flavion who forgot to say the magic words.
Seeing his comrades gone, he got the words right on the way back and thus entered the fields on the opposite side.

In the darkness the party saw little, but Huxley managed to spy two humanoid figures guarding the briar palace's front doors with his keen elf eyes. Thinking that stealth's for cowards, Boris and Flavion moved to combat the two guards. Their swords and arrows struck true, which was good because they had to immediately rush to keep the front doors shut and the reinforcements out. (I think every palace should have two double doors that open outward for dramatic entrances. Except if it's a haunted house, then doors open inwards.)
They use rope, a crowbar and iron spikes to jam the door. They try to find a climbable hole from the briar, but are not willing to climb higher so find nothing. Then Boris' eyes light up: "Briar is a plant! So it burns!" And then he proceeds to pour lamp oil and throw his torch in an attempt to set the place ablaze. Now I know for certain I have a bunch of unrepentant pyromaniacs for my players.
Unfortunately the damp briar does not light easily and during the time it took to bar the door and light the fire, the rabbit-reinforcements have circled from the back door. Not wanting an open confrontation and exhibiting base cunning, they prefer throwing rocks at Boris and others lit by their torches.
When the first rock hits, Flavion goes solo and goes round the other way while the rest are pelted by stones. Alas, he's as stealthy as an ox and has to turn around, when the rabbit men guarding the reed huts begin pursuit.
On his way back he meets the rest of the party that has followed behind him and the group finds itself pincered between two patrols of rabbit men. For a moment they debate if they should set wiretraps with their garrottes, but it's too late! The rabbits charge!
Due to the Referee's dice being cursed, they manage to take out quite a few of their attackers, before Huxley and Wilbur fall down and Boris and Flavion flee in to the woods.
The guards decline pursuit in favour of wondering what to do with their two captives.
As one of them is an elf, both are tied up and carried to the Pale Lady.

Boris and Flavion spend their night in the woods, lamenting their fallen comrades and waiting for an attack that never comes. Before sunrise they sneak into the reed camp and try to rouse the slaves into rebellion, but find the poor beings too afraid and too submissive to rise against their mistress. They hide when the slaves are herded into the fields and spot that the back door has only two guards. They plan an ambush.

Meanwhile Huxley wakes amidst silk to a white hand caressing her face. He opens his eyes and sees the Pale Lady, inches away from his face. "You didn't need to make such a show in your entrance, you could have knocked, handsome", she whispers.
"W-what?" says Huxley.
"Surely you've come to trade, yes? I'm sorry for your pets. One is resting, but the rest... my children are simple and become aggressive, when afraid. I can give you new ones later."
"Trade? Trade what?" says Huxley.
"Spend the rest of the night with me and I'll grant you a boon."
Huxley decides that, as his friends are most likely dead (they weren't much of friends anyway), playing nookie with this crazy lady doesn't sound like a bad fate at all.
Eagerly he melts into a passionate kiss as...

AT THE SAME TIME, Flavion and Boris attack from the woods! Flavion's arrows skewer one rabbit-monster, while Boris decapitates the other furry abomination.
They proceed to give no fucks about magic doors and bash it down. They are inside.
Our duo inspects the room full of flowers, but they didn't come all the way here for some flowers, did they? No, into the hallway it is.
After hearing the moans of passion coming from the Lady's quarters, the duo plan that they can take her unaware. They slam open he door, ready to charge through the silken curtains, but they falter when from the curtains emerges - not the horrid witch - but their equally horrifying compatriot Huxley, who Lady sent to find out what all the racket was about.
After a short chat to get everyone up to date, the trio heads to the guest room, where Wilbur was being tended to. Together they decide that some new plans need to be drafted as apparently the witch now owes Huxley a favour.
The elf wanted to use it for personal gain and power, but eventually relents and admits that asking about the Word of Creation is a better idea. He also puts his clothes on.

After a meal of seeds, flowers and honey, the party joins the Pale Lady in her throne room and plead their case. The now visibly pregnant Lady recommends that Huxley rethinks his favour as accessing the Word is highly unpleasant.
Flavio begins to plan for the moment things will go sour and unbars the main doors.

When it becomes apparent that Huxley won't change his mind, the amulet is fetched and party escorted to the Cube. Lady leaves and with a snap of the amulet, the party is inside. It is glorious. I can see the gleam in my players eyes, when they hear about the free level and XP bonus.
They also mistake the skeleton for a guardian, but when it refuses to guard even after having rocks thrown at it, the party gives up. Huxley begins to realise what is happening and goes pale (but not as pale as the Lady, hur hur hur hur).

Eventually the amulet is snapped again and the party meets their dublicates. ("I knew!" Huxley cries.)
A lot of existential agony later the players choose their destinies: everybody but one chooses the enlightened, level 2 XP-boosted clones, but Boris' player, who needs no stinking XP to kick ass and take names. Enlightened Flavio declares that he is the fake one and so has lost the right to be called 'Flavio'. Then he rechristens himself Florence.
As the situation dawns, the parties realise that they now have twice as much manpower to kill the Lady.
(Only Huxleys speak against the plan: "She's not such a bad person." "She enslaves children and sacrifices them to who knows what." "But she's not a bad person! They're only human children!" * death glares *)
They almost decide to build up more clones for an army, but in the end choose not to because no one was willing to take the initiative (and they surmised that it would soon get really claustrophobic inside the cube).

They crowd into the throne room to "show their thanks" and charge the Lady. (Except Flavio, who runs away and accidentally alerts the rabbit men outside.)
The Lady, who hadn't any that useful combat spells prepared, casts Hold Person, but fails to get the two murderous dwarves she really wanted to hold. After another round of pummeling she tries to flee, but is cut down by a lucky knife throw by Wilbur. The rabbit men break morale and flee and as luck would give, the only PC casualties are among the now-NPC originals. Rest of the originals decide that the new party has changed too much and there is only one Dunnsmouth and leaves the rest bleeding on the ground. They gather under the enlightened Boris and leave. The original Boris curses after them "THAT'S NOT WHAT I WOULD DOOO!".
(HP-wise the battle was a very close one and the Lady fell just before the PC's chose to cut their losses and flee. To my shame, I forgot about the confusion effect that Huxley contracted from sleeping with the Lady as it would probably have spelled doom for the whole party.)

After stabilising the wounded, the party investigates and loots the briar palace. Huxley saves the two children from the pit and is greeted by the magic mirror: "Hello, I am Lucifer. Please sacrifice a firstborn to gain answers."
"What kind of answers?" asks Huxley.
"Anykind", the demon replies.
"... Is my child inside the Lady still alive?"
He sacrifices his unborn rabbit-son and Lucifer is so impressed by the sheer cruelty demonstrated that he promises to maybe answer more than one question.
"I... don't really have anything I want to ask. A raincheck?" Huxley ponders and takes the mirror with him.

Then the party declares that the slaves are free and wisely return to reality through the exact same spot they entered. (The NPC party did not bother to look for it.)
They return to the abbey and notice that their horses are present and the nuns still have their sacred blade. Their counterparts did not want them? Funny.
Ruth Ford is a little annoyed that she has to feed several dozens of former slaves but still thanks the party for getting rid of an evil witch. They, however, refuse to describe the Word of Creation to her. "Go have a look yourself."
Frustrated with the adventurers, Ford agrees.

We ended the session as the party prepared their voyage to Dunnsmouth, where the real reward awaited them. On the road Huxley revealed that he has kept the magic amulet.
"The Lady said there is more than one Word. I am going to see them all. And I am going to be God."

Incidentally nothing really interesting happened last Saturday, when the party reached Dunnsmouth. They almost left after collecting what was in the church (4000sp), but decided otherwise and spent most of the session guilting money out of the poor villagers. There was some seduction going on however, but I'll save the montage until after the next time we play. (I hope that the party will encounter the more interesting stuff in the village. We ended the game just as they were going to visit Uncle Ivanovich.)

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

I couldn't schelude a game for this week, so to pass the time and to keep my mind focused, I'm posting an older play report of the module Idea from Space. I ran this adventure in Maracon (a small local convention) for a random group. The game was back in May, so I've made some educated guesses to fill in the blanks in my memory.

Our party consisted of Specialist, Halfling, Cleric, Magic-User and another Magic-User. They were on a voyage towards the New world aboard the ship Mary Celeste and, being adventurers, had bonded over the long voyage. They all knew Duke Ferdinand by reputation and had heard the rumours that his vessel La Juliana had disappeared somewhere in the region. Additionally, the Magic Users knew tales about a powerful wizard Xaxus that once had a kingdom somewhere in Tierra del Fuego.

The play begins with their ship Mary Celeste caught in a storm and by the time it clears they find themselves drifting near the shore of an unmapped island. Another wreck can be seen by the shore. The ship's captain gathers the PCs together and asks them to search the wreck and the island for supplies. He reasons that as adventurers the PCs can face any threats they might encounter and furthermore he doesn't trust his crew enough to
leave the ship to their hands.
After negotiating an extra portion of grog for the rest of the voyage, our party heads ashore.
They spend some time looting the wreck and discover it is, in fact, the vanished La Juliana. However, the tide returns while the Specialist is still inside and he almost drowns on the way back. After the Cleric saves the day, they head inland and decide leave the wreck's disassembling for later.

While exploring the coast, the party encounters a group of Manakata worshippers. After favourable reaction rolls and friendly banter, the players decide they like these strangely buff sailors and decide to follow and ask them about their gym membership.
They are escorted to the temple and left to wait for the night and the ritual. Naturally they decide to explore around: the party takes a bath in the heated pools and fools around in the oversized breastplates in the storage. They take no interest in the back of the tunnel nor find any secret doors, as they didn't want their swole hosts to get suspicious.
Come the night everyone gathers around the statue of Manakata and the players are given choice to try and lift the thing. Specialist, who fancied himself a strongman couldn't budge the idol, but the weedy (low con, strength just high enough) Magic User manages a squat and is blessed by a quest: Eat one of the other worshippers and gain Manakata's favour.
The evening turns ugly, when one of the worshippers takes interest in eating/killing/fucking some of the player characters. The group tries to leave politely, but soon has to draw swords. The Magic-User tries to eat their aggressor, but is punched into coma by the Manakatan and dragged away by the Specialist and the Cleric, while the other Magic User casts his strongest spell to act as a distraction: Summon.
Oo boy, things are going to get interesting.
He summons a silvery ball of antimatter, but fails the control roll and is attacked by his creation. Luckily, the backlash and resulting light show scared the Manakatans enough that they don't pursue. The Halfling, who had been largely ignored during the hustle, sneaks away and drags one of the fallen Manakatans with him.

Safe distance away at the steam vent Cleric heals the fallen Magic User, who then tries his luck and nibbles some meat off the carcass dragged in by the Halfling. Manakata is pleased and instantly the mage gets ripped. They also spend some time lowering the Halfling through the vent, but he backs away after spotting the sleeping captain. The group sleeps until morning, letting their casters regain spells.

Based on the chatter they heard at the Temple of Manakata, the party decides to explore the towers and look for the duke and his entourage. They make their way on top of the Gull tower and are noticed by the part of Xaxus standing on guard. The part runs to gather a welcoming party.

Meeting goes surprisingly well and the players don't seem much budged by the fact that the duke has become part of an alien hivemind. With little effort Xaxus persuades the party's Magic User (the one that did not become buff) to join them. The player's glee can be tasted in the air, when he takes control of the other parts.
Xaxus and the Buff Magic User spend several minutes in debate, because they feel that they should have a rivalry now that the one is Xaxus and the other has been blessed with more muscles than he can handle. Xaxus, however, proves to be too persuasive and soon convinces the buff Magic User to join him in the collective.
Naturally Xaxus cannot handle two egos that large and the entity is fractured into Xaxus and Xuxas. The two decide to make a truce and vanquish the Manakatans together.

All this time Cleric, Halfling and the Specialist have been following the discussion without any idea what is going on. They decline all offers to join any collective and perk up only, when the entities declare that they can help to repair Mary Celeste after the cult of Manakata has been put down. Gleefully, the party prepares for combat while Xaxus/Xuxas send some parts to fetch their weapons.

First however , they should inform the captain of Mary Celeste, declares the Cleric. They head for their boat, but uh oh! It has been found by a group of Manakatans! Party moves to attack with surprise and numbers aiding them.
The Manakatans fight back and manage to knock down three parts of Xaxus (or Xuxas, can't remember), the Halfling and the Specialist, while suffering only three losses on their side. The winner is uncertain, so Xaxus decides to even the battlefield and casts Summon.
He puts in all hit dice he can and almost summons something horrible, but his terrible luck at Domination rolls continues. He fails by a great margin and rolls 6 on the table. I tell him that the creature demands one of his compatriots as tribute, for it has been greatly offended by this pathetic attempt at summoning.
Xaxus feels a pang of guilt in his heart and chooses himself, so the others would be spared.
But the creature is not amused as the caster himself was not on the menu. Greatly offended, the thing retreats back to its dimension and drags every PC with it... except the Magic User. He is left alone, surrounded by four angry Manakatans.

They contemplate for two rounds where everyone went before pummeling the lone Magic User to paste.

So, the ending was a bit anticlimactic for the players and greatly hilarious for me. Still, the players had liked the adventure, especially the Magic Users commented that they had had great fun playing Xaxus/Xuxas. They didn't spend much time exploring the dungeons (most of my exposition fell on deaf ears) and were more interested in interacting with the two factions. Some of this may be because most of the group was new to OSR, but I agree with them that the factions had the best quirks and interesting leads, while the Gull Tower did not have much in it to warrant exploring. (They never went to the Tower of Xaxus.) Most of them liked the system and were interested in playing other modules.
I had a hangover during most of the session, so personally I'm just surprised and glad that the game went over as well as it did.

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

Alright, last week we played the second and the last session my group spent in Dunnsmouth and boy do I have a tale to tell about it.

A tour in the Scenic Dunnsmouth

Here's the next chapter in the tale of our group. To reiterate, the party consists of Huxley, an elf harbouring delusions of godhood; Boris the Dwarf, ex-member of the dwarven KGB; Wilbur, Specialist who's in it for the money; and Florence the Fighter, man with the best armour, most HP and only ranged weapons. They are joined by Father Matthew (a Cleric), who thinks that the best way to appease THE LORD is a good whip and a bloody back.

After the dealing with the Pale Lady our group headed north to a small port town of Lincoln, where they spent a couple of days restocking and playing a local tavern game Sting. (It involved the local gentry bribing outsiders and other fools to lie down in a box full of scorpions. Got it from Vornheim, love that book.)
When a dutch trading vessel stops by, Florence spends some time haggling for passage. After trying to get a passage to "North", "Edinburgh", "Liverpool", "Somewhere", the Captain politely asks, if they have any idea where they're going (and how big a bounty are they fleeing): Florence lets the name Dunnsmouth past his lips. "Why didn't you say so? We can leave you crazy people there and pick you up a month later."

Uneventful voyage later the sailors leave the party on an old decrepit pier. Soon they are greeted by Herman Van Kaus, who grudgingly draws a crude map to get the outsiders off his back. Florence leaves his horse and pavilion tent (which are soon eaten and stolen by Herman) by the pier.

The party goes to meet the local clergyman, Father Iwanopoulos and soon decide that he's a lazy sod who gets nothing done. They spend a day touring the swamp and squeezing money out of the poor townsfolk. Some highlights include:

They drink moonshine with Obediah Duncaster, and later his wife Jezebel seduces Florence the Fighter, while the rest of the party ('cept Huxley, who tried to match Obediah's drinking) visit Obediah's aunt Ester. Jezebel tells Florence about great hiking paths in the mountains and how they could have a picnic there. The two agree on a date next day.

The party is thoroughly creeped out by Jimbo Samson and fail to get him to put his pants on. In their haste to get away they ignore the telltale glow of the Time Cube. Jimbo just enjoys the rays of his blue sun. That's why he built his house there.

They debate with Magda whether the witch needs to pay the tax as she is just visiting. Both sides try to Charm and Command each other with little success. Magda warns the party about Uncle Ivanovich, a mad hermit who's been after her for a long time, and provides the first cryptic clues about the Time Cube. The party strikes a deal with Magda that they help her get rid of the Uncle and she aids them in whatever endeavours they have in the town.

Huxley the Elf spends an hour diving around Klaudia Van Kaus' submerged first floor looking for a locket that doesn't exist. Almost drowns.

Boris the Dwarf and Father Matthew get too agitated when giving downtrodden Millard Dunlop financial (and relationship) advice.
They try to buy one of his sons to totally become a monk, but settle on the lacquered heirloom armour.

Herman Van Kaus, who had eaten Florens' horse and stolen his pavilion tent, claims to know nothing about either and insists that his new tent is merely a coincidental purchase. The party decides against killing the thief when he begins pelting them with furniture and coins, as they prefer not to agitate the locals too much. (And because they saw Klaudia's crossbow and collection of poisons)

Noticing gorgeous Billy Sue's interest, the party abandons Boris in her care so he would 'get some'. Spends next few hours avoiding her advances.

The party also learned that Klaudia van Kaus and Uncle Ivanovich are related somehow. As we ended the first session the party was preparing a visit to the Uncle. Interestingly, my players were really interested in the locals and in every house they bombarded the residents with trivia questions like "How are you related to the other people in this town?", "What's your wife's maiden name? Where is she from?", "What do you do for a living here?", "When was the last time you paid tax? How much do YOU think you should be
paying?".
This took me by surprise as I was expecting more greedy of the indifference I had seen before.
They also spent a lot of time inquiring the locals about a path through the mountains. This made me stat out a small mountain village (where many locals claimed to be from) and the hike across the mountains. I should have known that by the second session, the players had lost all the interest in the locals and the mountains and ultimately left Dunnsmouth by the sea.

---

We had some time between sessions one and two, and by the next time we played our group had been joined by two new players. Fast Bob the Fighter, a former master assassin and cat burglar (with a Dex of 4!), who came to Dunnsmouth escaping his latest (failed) mark and looking for new work as a bodyguard (the job seems really easy by comparison!) He meets Jimbo Samson, who "hires" him to "deal" with the rich outsiders that harass the outsiders and are a general nuisance. The other player decides to play Magda as she's level 2, has Summon and is already in the village. (In my game players can either roll a fresh PC at level 1 or possess an eligible NPC who's positively inclined towards the party.)
Both make their way to the church. Fast Bob sneaks through the bog, but is spotted by Florence, who woke up early to take the lovely Jezebel camping in the mountains and steals the party's only boat to do so). Luckily he took Bob for a particularly big leech and the two passed each other unawares.

At the church Fast Bob performs his penultimate triple-vault-crash-to-the-floor manouver and is simultaneously outnumbered and surrounded. He and the party soon become friends.
They head out to Uncle Ivanovich's dwelling, a half-complete brick cottage in northern Dunnsmouth. Father Matthew (who's acting as the party face and the team leader at the moment) ignores Magda's pleas for subterfuge. They are on the church's business and thus have nothing to fear. They come ashore and knock on the door. "It's the church! Open the door NOW!" Matthew shouts and hears only barking in answer. "No use pretending to be a dog, Ivanovich! We know you're there!"
Frustrated at the hermit's deception, Matthew orders Bob to investigate, who promptly jumps in via an unbuilt window. A large warhound greets him and Bob jumps right back out. The party circles the cottage and digs around the refuse pit fishing out some human bones. "Quite the digestion the guy has," Boris comments.
"Oh well, he's not in. We should come back later." Matthew decides. "Eff that, lets just loot the place" Huxley the Elf rebuts. "Fast Bob, come to the door and deal with the mutt when it comes out."
Huxley kicks the door in and is squished by a cartload of bricks that had been balanced over the door. And before anyone has a chance to be shocked, Ivanovich' rottweiler springs from the door and lunges for Bob's throat. Bob and the dog trade blows and ultimately Bob emerges victorious. He and Boris venture inside the cabin, while the rest remain to loot Huxley's corpse.
The house's interior proves to be quite sparse and the duo refuses to touch the only remotely valuable thing (dozen golden teeth on the table, parts of jaw still hanging from it). They do discover a partially exposed cellar hidden under a tarp and descend to investigate it.
Meanwhile outside, Magda, Matthew and Wilbur are arguing, who gets to keep Huxley's spellbook (formerly the Pale Ladys). When their backs are turned, something rises from the bog. "Whasyadoinimmahowze?" Ivanovich mumbles and stumbles towards Magda with his cleaver raised.
He gets one good hit in before Magda runs inside. She doesn't see the exposed pit and falls. Luckily Fast Bob, who was trying to come back up, breaks her fall and the two tumble down with minimal damage.
So, currently Wilbur and Father Matthew are alone with the mad hermit Ivanovich ("Whassadoinwifmewife,yebasterd?I'ssgunnastabyewifmehatchetansprinklespiceinyerprettehface").
Uncle proves to be almost too much for the two, especially when Bob, Boris and Magda deem it better to hide in the cellar. (Granted, only after Bob almost broke his neck trying to climb up and Boris almost hitting Wilbur with his grapnel as he wildly tried to drag Uncle Ivanovich down.)
With some solid blows they do manage to bring Ivanovich to half health and the geezer decides to make for it and flee. ("I'llgetyenexttime,yesonsoffrondarses.I'llgetmehsparkliesanskeweryewifmebricks!"
Matthew pursues and forces Ivanovich to confront him, but the encounter ends badly: 6th level Ivanovich still had almost 30hp left, while the 1st level Matthew had just ten. The cleric is decapitated by the murderous hermit, who hoots in triumph and disappears with Matthew's head.
The remaining quartet leave after fishing the rest from the cellar and checking that it contains only jars of pickled man.
They make note to bring the corpses back with them for a proper burial.

Meanwhile in the mountains, Florence has been led to a pictoresque ruin by Jezebel. He fails to see the charm of the cave that is barely visible under all the cobwebs, but in the promise of pie and a great view he agrees to set their towel on the rocks before it.
Time passes and food is eaten and Florence begins to feel a bit drowsy. He doesn't notice the three men emerging from the cave, but finds the resolve to struggle weakly, when they grab him. "I'm sorry, honey, but you'll understand. I promise no harm will come to you," Jezebel says. Florence is taken to the cave and bitten. And then he understands, why it had to be done and that he loves the spider with all his heart.

Some hours later the party is united back at the church. Huxley's replacement, Book the Shepherd (the Cleric), joined the party soon after they arrived. He had drifted along Dunn river in search of adventure. Their stew (frog legs, Father Iwanopoulos' favourite) attracted Matthew's new character Ecuador the Halfling. As they feast, Florence regales everyone with tales of the cave in the mountains and the friendly shepherds living there. He says they should all go together to tax them. "Without any weapons and armour preferably. They can get very nervous."
The rest get very suspicious, but eventually agree to go there first thing in the morning. Magda shoots Florence a knowing look and they covertly figure out that they're both in the cult.
The local clergyman and their host, Father Iwanopoulos, also politely inquires on how the tax effort goes. When Wilbur laments how pisspoor the locals are, Iwanopoulos tells that apparently there's another village, Dunnbank, northward along the river. He has never seen any people from there and the locals seem to avoid the subject, but if it exists, it surely would also pay the tax. He also passes along a rumour that Klaudia Van Kaus has hidden most of her riches in the Van Kaus mausoleum.
Hearing that Book declares that graverobbery is a sin, but using a tomb as a bank is even greater one.


Next day they venture into the mountains and easily find the site Florence spoke so much about. They snoop around the area and clear some webbing away from four obelisks to discover four insectoid carvings. (Ant, centipede, cockroach and a mosquito.) But when Florence urges them to venture inside an argument breaks out. Wilbur accuses him of being too suspicious, while Book wonders how a flock of shepherds could ever support themselves in such a dank cave. No cajoling from Florence manage to convince either them and the group turns tail and returns to Dunnsmouth. The three cultists hiding in the cave breathe in relief as the scary adventurers leave them and their cuddly spider god be.
(And thus my meticulously planned site of Van Kaus' shame went unexplored and the ties to Goblin Hill unfound.)

Next the party decides to try their luck with the Van Kaus mausoleum. When their finest lockpicks fail to open the its locked door, Wilbur declares the building cursed and the party begins searching the graveyard for another way in.
"Mausoleum's totally have backdoors, they're much like malls, but for the dead," Ecuador shares his wisdom.
They find no backdoors, but Magda recognises a peculiar ankh that signifies an entrance to the ominous Ghoul Market (from Vacant Ritual Assembly #1) scrawled on one grave. Book is also familiar with the sign and reminds Magda that ghouls are hungry and always demand tribute.
Father Iwanopoulos arrives to the scene and greets the group joyously as he's never had much attendants in a funeral, but he is quickly pestered away. "No need to strain yourself, friend! Book's a priest and we can handle the proceedings for you!" The party quickly empty the coffins and drag the corpses to the ankh.
They dig themselves a hole and crawl to the ghoul market. Denizens eye them hungrily, but are satisfied by the two (almost) fresh corpses. "Cleric flesh, how exquisite! But next time bring the head too."

The group is mostly creeped out by most of the shopkeepers, but take a liking to Vespero, who offers to sell them magical items and accepts coin and lifeforce. We have a short shopping montage and in the end of it the whole party is somewhat dumber, uglier, and clumsier, but Bob is the proud owner of a pickchicken egg (claimed to open any lock), Ecuardo got himself a basket that never runs out of (cursed) food while Wilbur now has a Candle of Ill lumination (the holder is the only living thing it gives light). Florence also got something for himself: a key with heart shaped handle. This "Key of Love" apparently leads a pure soul to the fair princess of Duvan'Ku, who lies in enchanted sleep waiting for a knight to marry her and reclaim the riches of her kingdom.
The party also browses some of the hexmarks (tattooed spells), but eventually they leave the way they came. (They don't dwell on the fact that if they hadn't used Huxley's and Matthew's carcasses to buy their passage, skinsmith could have stitched both of them back together.)

Bob takes the pickchicken to the mausoleum's doors and the impossible lock is open! (Really, Wilbur just had horrible luck with Tinkering.)
Now able to enter, the party takes care not to repeat same the sloppy mistakes they did at Ivanovich's house. They stay close to the wall and use an oar to prod the floor and walls ahead of them. They spend some time trying to appease the Reaper statue that watches over the mausoleum (and Fast Bob accidentally gets cursed). Soon they accidentally trigger a secret switch when trying to appease the statue and are let into the flooded crypts. Wilbur and Bob dive for valuables ("That nefarious hag Klaudia! She has hidden all her valuables in her ancestors' corpses!") and Bob almost drowns, when one of the dead objects to his graverobbing.
Bob decides he's had enough and as the others aren't willing to go into the water anymore, the party departs.


The players are slowly getting fed up with the village and elect not to risk visiting Dunnbank (and thus, never encounter the Potemkiman residing there). They get ready to leave Dunnsmouth, but Magda insists upon studying the Time Cube first. The group makes their way towards the blue glow (they had confirmed the Cube's location by asking their Lucifer in the mirror about it). They decide not to visit Buck Samson on the way.
Magda is the first one to approach the Cube and the rest have a gay old time throwing rocks at her, hitting her with sticks and laughing at her slow-mo reactions as the time slows logarithmically around her.
Getting tired of waiting for hours, Florence and Ecuardo eventually join her to see what the fuzz is all about. They read the inscription on the cube and lose the ability to gauge the track of time. They discuss for "some time" before coming back where the rest have already set up camp.
Magda makes the claim that she might be able to summon the entity in the cube, but to succeed she needs sacrifice. Human sacrifice.
Florence immediately volunteers Jezebel. Father Iwanopoulos and Jezebel's husband Obediah are also considered. Their final choice is Uncle Ivanovich as he's the highest level person in town and easier to carry than three 0th level nobodies.
They lay a trap: Magda goes alone to Ivanovich's cottage, while the others hide in the swamp. The Uncle cannot resist the lure for long and when he comes to claim his 'wife' everyone rushes to grapple him. He makes for a mighty struggle, but gets tied and taken to the Time Cube. Book, Wilbur and Boris don't want to be anywhere near a summon spell, so they return to the church, where they hear that Iwanopoulos had taken them for dead as they'd been gone for weeks. 

At the Cube Magda performs the ritual and succeeds beautifully (first non-botch summon I've seen). Old Man Time emerges from the Cube, under the thrall of Magda. Surprised that she hasn't been killed, possessed nor dragged into an alien dimension, she begins to demand all kinds of services from the Old Man.
"Make my friend faster!" she yells and points at Fast Bob. Old Man Time has no choice but to obey, so he conjures a timekeeper and winds it up. Bob is now under a permanent haste spell (also causing him to age twice as fast and perceiving everyone as if under Slow).
"It works!" Magda exclaims and decides to be even more generous. "Make me and my two friends immortal," she orders and indicates Florence and Ecuador.
"I can ensure you will outlast all currently known civilisations. Does that satisfy you?" Old Man Time asks.
"So, like a stasis of some kind?" Magda asks.
"Can we continue our lives normally?" Florence and Ecuador ask.
"Yes," Old Man Time answers.
"Well, that's good enough for me! Do so and you may leave," Magda promises. Obeying, Old Man lifts his cloak and hurls it over Magda, Florence and Ecuador. He vanishes and Bob is alone in the swamp with his friends frozen in time and the Time Cube lifelessly sinking into the bog.

Bob makes his way back to the church to tell the news to Wilbur, Book and Boris. On the way he notices that Dunn's current is slowly but surely picking up. At the church he can almost see the sun peeking through the fog.
"You sure took your time, where are the rest?" Boris asks Bob.
"It'scomplicatedandpleacewhymustyoutalksoslowly?" Bob replies and brings the remaining party to the Cube. (It's worth noting even if Bob's and Ivanovich's lines are both written all together, Bob's talking superfast while Ivanovich jsut slurrs and mumbles heavily.)
After making sure Magda and co are immovable, the party fashions crude signs to warn possible intruders ("Our friends. Do Not Touch."), they also decide to leave the Time Cube there as none of them knows anything about it and they doubt it'd sell for much. After two weeks of vigil, they spot a passing ship and barter for passage. It's getting cold as their brief visit inside lasted four months outside.

We ended our adventure in Dunnsmouth here with half of the party dead, the rest on their way to London, where Wilbur finally intends to crack the spine on his travelogue to the island of Thule. We played (the first part of) Thulian Echoes this week, but that's a tale for another time!

TL;DR version: Our party of murderhobos accidentally performs mostly good deeds and save the day during their stay in Dunnsmouth. Half of the party manages to escape relatively wealthy, while the rest must first wait for 4000 years to pass.

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

So, last week we played through the first half (flashback) of the Thulian Echoes module.
If any of my players are reading this, mind that the end of this recap contains minor spoilers! Rouse not the metagods wrath!


Expedition to the Island of Thule

Our party finally got to London and deposited the promised tithes in Westminster. Some of them decided to make additional donations in the name of the Lord. (I allowed them to exchange money to XP.) Wilbur also made his way into the Royal Bank and invested most of his cash. Then they got themselves a room in a cozy little tavern near the docks and finally cracked open the journal Wilbur has been hoarding since our first session. The party is joined by Florence's and Magda's new characters Derk the Horse Whisperer (Fighter) and the fearsome pirate Reggie Harlock the Magic-User (who has Read Magic tattooed into his arms). Father Matthew's player was absent this session, so he didn't get yet.

At the docks they chat with a slave trader from Portugal, who's selling his product at a discount. He says that since Norwich is under quarantine, he has too many slaves everyone he cannot sell will be thrown overboard. So, everyone except Boris spend a great deal of money and buy out all of the slaver's surplus.
Book counts all his coin to buy ten slaves, which he immediately frees. Then he re-enslaves them, because none of them speak English nor have any useful skills. Fast Bob buys himself two slaves and names them Credit and Debit, while Wilbur christens his purchase Hugo and hires him as a servant.
(As they do their business in the city, Debit perishes in a misunderstanding with the guards, while Books flock gets lost one by one until only two remain.)

The journal triggers a flashback that notes how the adventure company consisting of the GLADIATOR, the ENGINEER, the EX-LEGIONNAIRE, the PICT, the RABBI and the SORCERER sail to the island of Thule in search of magus Xenophon's silver treasure. The group lands and the Sorcerer hauls their boat inland. (Funny note: the Sorcerer was the groups strongest character with a strength of 17 and also the groups dumbest character with his intelligence of 7. His player soon decided that he practiced the long forgotten art of muscle wizardry.)
The explorers spend some time arguing, if they can trust the fishermen guard the boat, but when they finally move inland they are quick to find the entrance. The Sorcerer burns the drawbridge away with greek fire, while Engineer and Ex-Legionnaire fashion a ladder from their oars.
They enter the complex and are immediately suspicious of the statues in the lobby. The Pict and the Engineer climb up the balcony while the rest go through the main doors and join them upstairs thus animating the statues. They have a tumble with a group of shadow satyrs and one of the statues from the lobby. When they hear that more are on the way, they flee deeper into the complex and find a tunnel filled with silver engraved granite slabs and glass shards. The lobby guardians are getting closer and closer, so the party has no choice, but to go in further.

They get through the corridor and into the portal room in one piece and attract the ire of the Atlas golems. After some battling the group decides that the golems are too tough, they abuse the fact that the group is faster than the golems and just run up the stairs. (Except the Sorcerer, who spider climbs his way through.)
They encounter Xenophon in his demesne, but as he doesn't seem to do anything they proceed to search and loot the place. However, they don't really find anything that'd interest them (except Xenophon's spellbook, which is taken by the Sorcerer) so they try chatting the smoke-wizard-thing up.
Mindless Xenophon doesn't understand their attempt at small talk, so he summons his undead servants and raises his hand to cast a spell. Seeing that and winning initiative, the group runs away through the portal, where the atlas golems are waiting.
The party makes a cunning plan of showing one golem down the stairs (it had tried to climb them to get to the players) and then running away. It works and after crossing the sharp corridor again they run into the lobby guardians.
They however prove to be easy pickings after the atlas golems and are demolished pronto.
Next the party finds the shadow shrine that keeps spawning satyrs, but they run away when the room begins to fill with the beasts. The Ex-Legionnaire manages to grab the Vril Dagger before they do so.
They barely make it past the lobby and out. There they spend two days healing and debating, if they had enough, but the Engineer persists: he wants to see some of the fabled silver.

The party spends a week making guerilla attacks to the lobby, sniping the statues one at a time and running away as the golems awaken. Then they venture in and pick right this time. They kill the undead guarding the gate to the underworld easily, but decide not to mess with the gate. Engineer pockets the key. Then they venture downward.

"Xenophon's treasure vault must be here somewhere" Engineer remarks.
The party picks randombly from the four options (two vertical corridors and two curving ones) and go forth until the Gladiator vomits his lungs out. (He survives the ordeal.)
Not appreciating the sight of a loose lung, they return to the staircase holding their breaths and examine the corridors from where the air is cleaner. They notice the silver engraved in the walls and the Engineer finally begins to believe that the so-called great magus really wasted all of the silver to line his walls. Everyone begins to get fed up with the island, but the Ex-Legionnaire and the Pict take shine to the crystal-like gems inset in the walls. As Engineer observes, they smile at each other and strike two gems with their picks - and are instantly electrocuted to death.

This uses up the last of the party's plot tokens, so the flashback ends. We return to the readers, who are sitting around the journal nursing their drinks. The mood is sullen. "So, the island is full of things trying to kill you, its basement makes you puke your lungs out and there's no treasure whatsoever in there. The whole place sucks, lets go somewhere else!" Wilbur sums up the party's thoughts.

Pondering their next move, Fast Bob digs up Huxley's old mirror and summons forth Lucifer. As last time, the demon demands a firstborn sacrifice.
"Does my remaining slave have any siblings?" asks Fast Bob.
Lets roll for it, the Referee says. Nah, he tells you he's the only child.
"Alright, it was getting expensive to feed him anyway."

Then he begins asking questions (and I begin improvising plot hooks):
"How can I cure myself from this curse of Haste or, preferably, gain control of it?"
- If the Old Man Time won't lift his curse, seek out the Red King of Isten Vak. He has long since conquered time and will be able to teach you. You may also seek the manse of the Laughing Magician, who has a cruel sense of humour and often dabbles with such magics.
"Hey, this thing works! Now tell me... Where can I find the most valuable gem on earth?"
- To find what you seek search the mountains north of the french hamlet of Chan'Elysees. The diamond you seek sits in a cavern guarded by the powerful Wiki Dot Pod.
"Alright, that sounds promising, but hey where is the magical dagger Ex-Legionnaire snatched from the shrine?"
- Ah, what you seek is the fabled Godslayers Dirge that has been prophesied to end the existence of one more god or godlike entity. The Dirge has found its way to Karlstadt and is currently held by a witch known as the Lover. You must tread with her to gain possession of this artefact.

"Godslaying dirge, eh? Think who we could threaten with a thing like that. Let us head to Karlstadt!" Boris declares. "Yay!" the rest concur.

I'm impressed how lucky Fast Bob was, as the mirror lied to him only once. Can you guess which answer wasn't quite true?

This week's session was full of travelling to Holy Roman Empire and we left the characters at the gates of Karlstadt. I suspect we'll spend atleast a couple of sessions in and around the city, and I'll be writing the next chapter after we are done with the adventure.

Thanks for reading!

---

Since today's recap was rather short, there's some room for me to write down what happened with the first LotFP module I ever ran. Last year I was feeling festive around Valentine's day and I decided to run DEATH LOVE DOOM for my university's gaming group.

Long story short, Specialist, Elf and Another Specialist found themselves in London and in a desperate need of money. And like manna from heaven, their neighbouring table seemed to host a bunch of loudmouthed criminals talking about Bloodworth Manor and how its inhabitants hadn't been seen in days. They claim that the mansion must surely be full of riches and that they were going to rob the place first thing tomorrow night.
And of course, our industrious players decided to be there first.

Our brave burglars made their way to the countryside and staked the manor. When there was no movement, Another Specialist sneaked in through the servant's gate. As he saw and heard nothing, and nothing whatsoever happened, rest of the group followed in. They decided to search the stables first as it might provide some clue on Foxglove family's whereabouts. The decapitated horses creeped them somewhat, but not enough to drive them out, so they move forward to investigate the noises coming from the back room.

Inside they meet Erasmus Foxglove, who's suffling awkwardly around, controlled by the puppet-thing on his back.
"Help please... Get help," he pleads as his blackened member ejaculates black, sticky acid that engulfs the Elf.
He fails his save and perishes in agony in a couple of rounds as the acidic spooge burns its way through him. As the Elf withers and screams, Specialist and Another Specialist try to take down Erasmus, who never stops pleading "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please forgive me, I didn't mean it."
The Specialist falls under Erasmus' assault in a couple of rounds, and convinces Another Specialist that perhaps a life of adventure isn't for him. He books it, leaves town and never comes back.
The End.

Both specialists were familiar with LotFP and were mostly impressed by boldness of Death Love Doom, but Elf's player has refused to play since. He seems to think that everything in Lamentations contains black acidic jizz and genitalia monsters out to get him. (Though I think that by now he's quite fond of the memory. He brings it up every time we discuss LotFP!)

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

Back again with a tale!

Now I know atleast one of my players reads these. Hello!
No spoilers this time, so read with gusto.

Better than any man or the Curious Case of the Seven Witches of Karlstadt

Alright, so after deciding not to bother with the Island of Thule in our last session, my group of players began their journey towards Karlstadt in the heart of the Holy Roman Empire. They took a vessel from London to Copenhagen with little happening during their voyage. Only event happened in the port of Copenhagen, where they dismissed a black clad figure as Fast Bob (who was missing in the session) climbing from the water and disappearing to the crowd.
They were not able to find a guide with reasonable rates as no one was particularly willing to lead them after the Swedish army. In the end they had to settle for a crude map and a set of directions. They supply themselves and buy two horses and two wagon carts.
On the way the party bribes its way around swedish rear patrols and encounters a group of germanic deserters hiding in the woods. They slaughter a group of bandits and grumble how they didn't have any loot on them.
They enter the Karlstadt general area from the north and arrive to Frammersbach. There they lament how expensive everything is and hear news about a group of seven witches (called the Seven) that have taken over in Karlstadt and declared all warfare and violence illegal. The locals seem certain that the Swedes will go there to squash such heresy, take their women and bring all manner of demonic sin with them. "Haven't you seen them? White skin and hair? Ice blue eyes? That ain't natural! And how they speak, absolutely demonic!" Our party promtly decides to hurry up.

They head straight towards Lohr, passing Partenstein and only stop by the river to wash themselves and futilely trying to clean the bloody leather armours they took from the bandits. They also meet a skinless man, who they put out of his misery after he becomes creepily fixated with Book the Shepherd.
In Lohr they try to peddle their wares, but find few buyers. Eventually they blow most of their money on (horribly expensive) food supplies.
They follow the river Main to south and make their way towards Karlstadt through the swamps. Planning to stop in Steinfeld, they find the hamlet occupied by aggressive, dog sized gerridae. The party is reluctant to attack the pests at first (Wilbur: "There are witches afoot, maybe one of them hexed the folk of this poor village? Are we committing murder here?" Boris: "When did we begin worrying about killing humans? Lets get to it!" Everyone: "Oh, he has a point."), but when their horse is slain and eaten by the bugs such moralities fall away. In the struggle Book almost loses one of his freemen (now named Gordon and Morgan) and uses his only Cure Light Wounds spell to save the poor slave.

After the battle the party manages to divide the contents of their wagon among themselves, but refuse to leave the wagon in the town. "Somebody could steal it!" They proceed to drag it to the edge of the swamp and leave it there (where it'll be easier to steal).

The group arrives in the outskirts of Karlstadt by the evening and spends the night drinking watered beer and listening to rumours. They hear about a wizard's tower to the west and a mysterious lion creeping around the area. They also get the details on how to get inside the city and about the ban on weapons.
After some debate in the wee hours, the group decides that ornaments cannot count as weapons. So, they take their remaining wagon and hammer all of their weapons in its chassis. They dub their new vehicle Battlewagon and declare it totally metal.

Come the morning the party prepares to enter Karlstadt. Big Matt the Fighter, former fisherman and Equardo's new character, happens to be next to them in the line. He is impressed by the Battlewagon and decides to join their party. Bob also saunters from the woods and tells a confusing story about a court of Seelie fae and the awesome party they had. He even got a bottle of leftover wine take with him!
The guards who inspect every newcomer aren't all that convinced with the wagon, but after hearing the group's tall tales about the wagon they decide to "let the Watcher sort it out" and move to the next thing on the agenda: repossessing all the food and valuables to support the poor of Karlstadt. Hearing this the players are outraged. "On second thought, we don't want to come to the city after all!" they claim and make excuses before turning their wagon around.

Miffed about the greedy townsmen, Book decides to give away all the party's excess food to the needy, while Boris and Reggie take a skiff across the river and circle Karlstadt to inspect its battlements. Meanwhile Wilbur and Fast Bob stash their weapons and money. They wait a day (Boris and Reggie camp out on the lakeshore as they refuse to pay for a skiff back) and Wilbur and Bob get through the customs no problem.
They trade some gossip in the city and are soon directed towards the Joy as she knows everything about the city.
But the Joy isn't an easy pie and wants to toy with our heroes before divulging anything crucial: she sends Wilbur and Bob to the Defender's house with a quest. "Bring me a lock of her hair - shave it all, if you can. Then I'll tell you all you want to know."
Wilbur and Bob find the Defender in her home, but the witch isn't convinced by their amorous words and slams the door shut. And before the duo come up with another plan, they are distracted by the chatter around the Reminder's house - apparently the witch is teaching magic for free. They join her class, but Bob gets bored with the monotonous teaching in a second and seeks out the Provider in the Town Square.
Bob gets a hearthy meal and Wilbur fails to learn anything and neither of them gain much more than the names of the Seven: the Watcher, the Provider, the Defender, the Reminder, the Joy, the Mother and the Defiler. No one they ask has heard anything about a witch called the Lover, but Wilbur and Bob remain unconvinced. Maybe the Lover is behind all this, because something isn't right with seven women suddenly gaining magic and rulership in the city. The two decide to bide their time and meet more of the Seven.

Meanwhile Boris and Reggie have their own operation: As the night falls upon Karlstadt, Boris climbs its walls and begins hauling Reggie up as well. But their operation goes awry when they are interrupted by a double strength patrol of twelve guards.
Boris refuses to surrender and begins flailing his axe around, while holding Reggie up. With axe and magic missile they get a couple of lucky shots and even kill a guard, but eventually Boris is caught by a mancatcher and Reggie pulled up and arrested. The two are beat up and dragged to Bürgerfriedensmilitz' HQ in the old church for interrogation.
Wilbur and Bob witness the arrest on their way to Karlstadt cemetery to meet the Defiler or find a passage to the Ghoul Market, but their half-hearted attempt to save their companions fails, when Bob's elven wine gives him dreams of a little house in the prairie instead of superpowers. (We used the Purple lotus table.)
Wilbur explains that they are new in town and merely wished to see the heroic militz and the two are let go. The guards have their hands full with a pirate and a foul mouthed dwarf after all.

Bob doesn't waste a moment and goes to chat with the Defiler the instant she arrives at the graveyard. She insist on that Bob proves his status as a living and flies into rage, when Bob (apparently) registers as death-positive. Luckily Bob runs like a wind and easily loses the enraged ghoulhunter.
After waiting for the ruckus to calm down, Wilbur makes his try. The Defiler remains suspicious as "the night is rife with terrors" and Wilbur might as well be a vampire, but having expended her spell cannot be sure. Wilbur wonders why the Defiler has her gun, when all weapons are outlawed and gets a curt answer that the Seven are exempt from any laws. Satisfied, Wilbur leaves.

They stake out the HQ and follow as Boris and Reggie are transferred into the cart and brought to city gate. They leave city and begin tailing their captured comrades.
Meanwhile outside, Book and Big Matt are lording over the refugees they have fed, when a crying woman comes to them. She asks if they are the heroes giving out free food and pleads them for help. Apparently her eldest son has been kidnapped by ghosts that are demanding two thousand silver for his safe return. The woman says she has no such money and has struggled and shamed herself to collect mere 50 silver marks that she'll gladly give Book among with the few foodstuffs she still has left.
Book promises to help as much as he can and gets directions to the abandoned and haunted farmstead in the north. Shortly after he and Matt recognise Reggie and Boris being hauled north. Soon Bob runs to them and fills in the details. The pursuit is on! ... but first they have to fork over money to the greedy skiffman to get their wagon across the river.
They follow the militz convoy north for an hour. Then Bob runs over to the convoy, kills the horses and flees - thanks to his Curse of Double Time the militz have no time to react. Soon after the rest of the group begins to pepper militiamen with arrows. The small convoy is swiftly defeated with the few survivors fleeing towards Goblin Hill.
The battle, however, gained an audience from the remaining people of Gössenheim. The group tries to converse with the creepy, vacant eyed twins, but their sullen demeanour and field of dead pigs convince the adventurers to be on their way.
They decide against pursuing the militz to their mysterious re-education facility and head towards the abandoned farm.

The ghostly wailing doesn't budge the party, but Fast Bob is badly startled by the zombies in the barn. The rest don't believe him, but none want to check the hayloft. Inside the main building they find the trapdoor to the cellar and are caught by the ambush prepared by Gunther's bandits. Thanks to Boris' and Matt's tanking only Bob is struck to the negatives, while Gunther's gang is reaped down. Gunther surrenders and is disarmed. "Scheisse, scheisse, scheisse! I told Fritz this was a horrible idea! This isn't worth it, take the boy and if you leave me alive, I'll share what I know about the Bürgerfriedensmilitz secret headquarters."
Before Gunther is interrogated further, a scream of horror is heard from the back room. "Alright, we found the boy," Boris says as the rest continue looting the place.
Confusion and horror on Gunther's face eventually convinces Wilbur and a couple of others to investigate the back room, where they encounter Old Man Braasch, a decayed insect-ridden corpse about to enjoy his first warm meal in years. The cadaver manages one bite from the boys face, before it's slain and hacked to pieces.
"Alright, lets kill that gangleader. They hang out with zombies!" someone declares (might've been Boris or Wilbur).
"Fuck please no, we knew nothing about that thing! God... we've been sleeping here... Fuck..."

In the end Book is the person to plead mercy and he escorts Gunther from the farm. "We only used this place to hide and stake the merchant convoys. Screw it all, I'm leaving this rotten place."
He gives Book a map with apparent backdoor to the Militz HQ and runs away.
The party spends their night in the cellar and in the morning decide to head back to Karlstadt. In the morning sun they witness hundreds of camp fires just north of Gössenheim. The Swedes are here.

We ended the session as they make their way back to Karlstadt. Only other notable thing happening on the way was when already pale Fast Bob toppled to the ground halfway there. Inspecting the body the party discovers that he apparently fell to his wounds last evening in the cellar, but nobody noticed, not even him. (In the session I remembered LotFP's death treshold wrong and this was retroactive causality catching up to him.)

Our next session will be on thursday, when we'll hopefully see, if our party finds the Lover before the Swedes arrive and meet Fast Bob's daughter Lisa-Marie Slow the Alice, who's followed her father because of a fancy mirror he found. The party is getting a bit frustrated with the amount of treasure they've ran into, but they have yet to stray to the more lucrative areas of the adventure. I do hope that the Godslayer's Dirge is worth the trouble...
Also, it has been great fun to roleplay the german and swedish NPCs in the adventure, as most of us can speak swedish and it happens that I and the only PC who knows german also speak it in real life.

Stay tuned for more!

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

Here's the second part of our tour about Karlstadt.

To my players reading this: I'd love see your commentary regarding these adventures. I make some things up every time I write these and it'd be interesting to read your side of the story. Or just how you've found the ride so far.
Also today's report contains some kinky and explicit scenes, but considering the source material this forum should be okay with them, shouldn't you?

Alright, thursday's player turnover wasn't as big as last time. We began our game with only Boris, Wilbur and Reggie with Book and Big Matt joining us halfway in.
So, the party has seen the Swedish army approaching and are making their way to Karlstadt. On the way they encounter a Jewish family being stoned to death by a misplaced parish. The players scare the Catholics away and free the family.
And then discover that the jews have a lot of money in their wagon and proceed to rob them.

Back at the refugee camp the party buries most of their silver and seek out alternative ways into city. They meet up with a group of smugglers, who agree to arrange for their weapons to appear somewhere in the city. Satisfied with the accord, Wilbur, Boris and Reggie cross the city gates next day leaving Hugo to guard their carriage. (They disregard the news that Gössenheim's been razed.)
Inside the city, the party tries talking with a couple of the Seven, but receive no information about the Lover or the dagger. Frustrated, they plan to wait until night and kill the Defender.

Big Matt and Book the Shepherd had stayed behind to bury Fast Bob and experienced a sudden epiphany from all the stress and violence that drove them temporarily insane. They wake up near the graveyard of Karlstadt sans weapons.
The two try to get into the church, but are turned away by the Bürgerfriedensmilitz, when they spot the Defiler in the graveyard.
They approach her for small talk, but she declines any conversations, before she can be sure that Book and Matt are both living. She casts her spell and Book detects as undead. The Defiler immediately springs into action and warns Matt that he might have been seduced by this foul vampir.
A battle ensues and both adventurers are eaten by Defiler's creature and placed into pocket dimension containing a copy of the creature. (Like someone else on this forum, I put both players into the same dimension for double the fun.)
They slay the beast and are vomited back up, but soon Matt is eaten again. Then a moment later Book kills the thing and Matt is annihilated along with the pocket dimension. Book is shocked.

Defiler runs to get the guards and Book flees the scene. He loses the guards just in time to meet up with the rest of the party, who are planning to kill the Defender. "The Joy wanted a lock of her hair. If we kill her, scalping her will be easy!"
They sneak through the back door and into Defenders bedroom, where her creature is waiting. Its ability is triggered and suddenly Reggie cannot move or cast spells and Boris loses his weapon, armour and HP.
The party resorts to having Wilbur and Book block the door, while shooting arrows and throwing bottles of oil in the bedroom. When Wilbur's HP gets too low, they slam the door shut and wait for the fire to finish the work.
A moment later they hear window open and a loud *SPLAT* from the outside. Wilbur rushes downstairs to see Defender scampering up on the pavement and limping away. Soon another SPLAT heralds Defenders familiar, who engages the PCs. It is quickly slain, but buys enough time for Defender to flee. (The party had a chance to pursue, but not without alerting the guards.)
Shortly after the attack, Big Matts new character Elaine the Elf teams up with the group.

The party flees the scene and waits until morning. They try to leave the city, but find the entrance blockaded. Apparently the Swedish forces slaughtered the refugee camp and began sieging Karlstadt. Apparently last night they sent demonic assassins to assassinate Defiler and Defender and would assault the gates, if the citizens didn't surrender the Seven by sundown.
The players consider it, but in the end decide that they've had enough of witch hunting and go see the Joy.

The Joy is disappointed that they didn't bring any hair from the Defender and sincerely hoped that they had nothing to do with the nightly attack. She offers a special offer for the apocalypse: they can ask about something other than Karlstadt and she'll give them another task. The party decides to ask, if she knows anything about an eight member of the Seven.
The Joy smiles coyly, she might have just something for them - if Reggie lets himself be tied on a table for an hour and let the patrons have their way with him. He agrees.

I asked each other player describe something done to Reggie with the most perverted act getting some bonus XP.

First, Reggie is fitted with a gag and the local men sing sea shanties while pouring good rum over Reggies back and three local hookers tease him relentlessly. Reggie cannot partake in singin, rum nor the girls. "Waste of rum. It was the worst."

Then a candle is stuck in his butthole and surrounding men try to extinguish it with their bodily juices while wearing masks. At the same time the Joy rubs Reggie with her spoogy toes. After that Reggie has to jack off.

After he's done five blind monks from the fraternity of the Long Spear clean him up together using their tongues. They find their way everywhere and as monks their stamina is excellent.

Last, a dwarf covered in soot, puke and mud jams a beer stein up Reggie's arse. He kisses him using his black teeth and ends up vomiting down Reggie's throat. He wipes the vomit away with his beard and makes Reggie blow him. The dwarf passes out while cumming and ends up vomiting over Reggie one last time.

The shaken Reggie is let out of his bondage.

While Reggie is cleaning himself, the witch tells the rest about the Maker, the one who brought the Seven together and performed the spell that killed her and made the Seven rule the city. The party listens and decides they did not really care and this was a waste of an hour. In fact the whole week has been a waste of time, as they've learned nothing about the Lover and are no closer to claiming the Godsslayer's Dirge as their own.
Book asks the Joy if she knows any ways out of the city and Joy mentions knowing the smuggler's tunnel and that she might be able to slip its location, if the group brings Jutte to her. Apparently she'd prefer to die surrounded by the Provider's ample flesh.
One fetch quest later the party enters the secret tunnel, speeded by the sounds of a battering ram coming from the front gates. They emerge at the farm and see Karlstadt in flames and countryside crawling with Swedish patrols.
The group hatches a quick plan to steal themselves some uniforms: they trap the barn, the house and light a candle to attract the Swedes. Some hours later a patrol falls into their ambush and quickly routs with the party killing enough of them to clothe the whole group.
We end the session with the players planning their next move. "A dungeon full of treasure. And preferably no danger at all."


Thus ended our visit to Karlstadt and Better Than Any Man. I'm a little disappointed that the group turned away from all the adventuring locations except the Haunted Farmhouse. (They never discovered the Mound.)
It didn't help that they came to the module chasing a red herring, but still they seemed to regard Kalstadt as the main adventure location. (Sure, it's an interesting location full of intrigue and adventure, but also somewhat lacking in XP and treasure.) At least one player commented that he thought Karlstadt was the most important and lucrative place and the rest just side quest fodder.
Additionally, my players didn't seem to realise the urgency of the situation at first and they took their sweet time looking for clues until the Swedish were almost at their heels and when they heard about Goblin Hill, they decided they didn't have enough time to prepare for a dungeon run. In hindsight, I should've given them a couple of days more time to make up for the goose chase their original goal turned out to be. I'd also liked if the random encounters had been more frequent as many contained clues pointing towards adventure, but we only encountered a couple of them during the whole adventure.

The lack of XP is starting to get to the players and personally I'm a bit stumped on what to throw at them next. I'm considering giving the party a day or two to risk exploring Goblin Hill or the Wizard's Tower before the Swedes find them or placing some of the shorter location based adventures loaded with quest hooks in nearby regions. Or perhaps I should have Ooms, Vespero or some other kook hire them for a job.
I also have a couple of dungeons in my head. Perhaps I should test the tables in Seclusium and R&PL to flesh them out.

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

Alrighty! This has been sitting almost completed for a week, but I've been too busy to post it.
It turned out that I was a tad too hasty saying we were done with BtAM as today my players were not ready to leave Karlstadt region after all.

Back at the abandoned farm the group debates their next course of action, all while hauling the dead Swedish soldiers to the barn. Then as they reach an agreement, they set the barn on fire to hide the evidence. Ultimately the party decided that they have travelled too far and long to leave empty handed and cannot leave before checking out the secret entrance to Goblin Hill. Bolstered by this they travel north avoiding roads and Swedish patrols.
The party is caught in a fierce thunderstorm, but following Gunther's instructions they find the backdoor entrance to Bürgerfriedensmilitz' headquarters with little hardship.
The amount of wasps, ants and other critters in the area makes them reasonably worried, but nevertheless clear away the bushes and descent to the dark cavern. (Rain keeps most of the bugs away!)
The party reaches a large cavern, when Wilbur, their tail lookout, hears a slow skittering noise approaching. Book urges the rest to go on (We could easily outrun the noise!), but Boris and Wilbur would rather deal with the threat behind them now than when they run into something equally dangerous on their other side. Prepare for a fight and effortlessly spot a gigantic beetle homing to them slowly, but oh so surely.
Their battle against the beetle doesn't fare as well as they hoped as Wilbur wasn't fully recuperated from their earlier fight with the Defender and the narrow passage allowed only two hit the creature at once. (First time the absence of spears was lamented.) As they had no Fighter, the beetle's carapace proved arduously difficult to pierce and the group only gained the upper hand, when the beetle broke Book's arm (-1hp) and had to divide its attention between dragging its meal to safety and warding off the crazy dwarf.

After dealing with the beetle the party maps out the cavern with Boris carrying the unconscious Book. They avoid the mold growing on the western side and as they head deeper they again hear the telltale skitterpatter of another random encounter: this time a pair of giant ants.
Neither party surprises the other and they are left in a stand off with about fifty feet in between them. Boris, tired with these crazy bugs, tries to intimidate the ants. Reggie and Wilbur say they'd rather not have another fight with their healbot out of order.
The party backs down and leaves the cavern complex.
The ants do not pursue.

Outside they spend an hour or two scouting the area and climbing atop the Goblin Hill. They spy lights on the northern face of the Hill, but rather than investigating they head towards Hammelburg to resupply and seek shelter.
When they find the town abandoned except for a mass grave, they hole up in the tavern and make a fire from driest furniture they can find. They spend a week in the tavern resting and waiting for Book and Wilbur to heal, while Boris and Reggie hunt for food and I roll for random encounters. ("Bah, humans are such weaklings!" Boris grumbles.)

They are not found by the Swedes or the militz and only have to drive away one insect creature (a flying, poisonous abomination between human and wasp). Twice.
On their fourth day of hiding, Wilbur hears panicked screams and sounds of battle coming from the outside. They almost ignore the racket, but Wilbur recognises one of the voices - it's Hugo!
The party rushes outside and spots Hugo, Morgan and Gordon, the three freemen they thought lost, riding the party's wagon and being chased by seven giant ants. The players run to the rescua as the wagon keels over, but not even they manage to turn the tide of battle: Hugo, Gordon and Morgan all succumb under the assault and one by one the player characters join them until only Boris is left standing as the ants begin to drag their prey away from the scene. He runs to free barely conscious Reggie ("His familiar will kill us all if he dies!") and then rushes after Wilbur and Book.
Wilbur is saved, but Boris is too late to save Book, who bleeds to death and becomes ant chowder.
Boris makes sure Wilbur and Reggie won't bleed out, lifts them on the wagon and hauls it back to the village. Their horse is dead, but at least their supplies (and the magic mirror) are intact.

During the next three days a Swedish deserter, 14 year old Bork Samson the Fighter sneaks into the town and quickly befriends the party. He turns out to be Book's new character. They also shelter and trade gossip with a group of refugees from Karlstadt, who had hoped to meet family in Hammelburg. They learn from the refugees that the Swedes are laying siege Würzburg and are combing through the area to wipe out any traces of witchcraft still present. The refugee group itself plans to head north and try to avoid the worst areas. They invite the party to join them, but the PC's decline.

After the refugees depart, the PC's decide to take one last look at Goblin Hill before abandoning the area for good. This time they sneak to the northern entrance. From a safe vantage point Reggie spies a troop of Swedes guarding barrels of gunpowder and a large pile of dead militz.
First they plan to snipe the gunpowder, but after Boris warns that the explosion could collapse the entrance, Bork is sent instead to gather intel.
The boy (who had abandoned all loyalty to Sweden after becoming an adventurer) quickly invents a lie about an ambush and injured soldiers just behind the corner.
The soldiers tell him that an evil witch lived in the mountain and that the spawn of satan is now dead thanks to the heroic Swedish forces and power of Christ. He also learns that half of the company is still inside the complex.
Bork lures one of the soldiers and a horse with him to "help the wounded". The Swede is fooled by the party's bloodstained swedish gear and promptly killed. It won't be long before the rest become suspicious.
First they only wanted to steal the horse and flee the area, but after hearing about the witch in Bork's account, greed again flashes in Boris' and Wilbur's eyes.
"They probably didn't know to look for a dagger, it might still be inside!" they speculate.
Meanwhile Reggie has put the horse in front of their wagon and the Swedes have sneaked closer. Before contact is made, Reggie spurs the horse to gallop and the party escapes to the road.
Or could have escaped, if Wilbur and Boris wouldn't have turned the wagon around. "We can face the Swedes! You remember how shit their morale was the last time!"

We ended the session just as the party was about to face the eight soldiers pursuing them.

Afterword:
It seems that random encounters make my players really, really jittery. It was those that drove the group away from Goblin Hill and during their stay at Hammelburg I received vile looks every time I rolled that d6. It was hard, almost impossible, to get them to believe that not every entry was out to kill them. If they ever get out of the area, I might prepare something with less randomness. How would Tower of the Stargazer or Stranger Storm sound?

But it's a big if, as I'm unsure they won't be massacred by the Swedes first thing in the next session. Sure, they already beat one patrol, but back then they had the element of surprise, more players and the Swedes made rotten morale checks. This time the odds are more even, except the Swedes have reinforcements incoming. Well, a good reason for last session's players to try recruit more people for the next session...
(We have a group of around six people and play when we get three to four players together. Missing and appearing players are hand waved using R&PL's table.)

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

Today Dirk the Fighter, Boris the Dwarf, Wilbur the Specialist, Reggie the Magic User and Bork the Fighter finally, oh finally, finished their Business with Better than any Man.
Last time we left off with the party taking on a squad of Swedish soldiers. Before the two forces meet on the road, confused Dirk (who wasn't in the last couple of  sessions) wanders from the shrubbery ranting something about swamp children and folk poetry. He joins our heroes side and is gravely wounded in the ensuing struggle.
Nearing the end of the battle a horn signals Swedish reinforcements coming from Goblin Hill - five pikemen, five musketeers lead by their commander on horseback. However, when Reggie snipes the commanders head off with a well placed magic missile and pistol shot, the rest flee back to Goblin Hill and signal for help.
The party is not ready to give up the riches of Goblin Hill, so they decide against blowing up the entrance and venture inwards. (They leave wounded Dirk to guard their wagon that is now decorated with disemboweled Swedes.)

The inside of Goblin Hill is silent and dark and its corridors bear marks of slow and costly fighting. From three possibilities the party chooses the most silent corridor and explores the part of the dungeon that apparently housed the cultists. (Judging from the women, children and unarmed dead left to rot in vast halls.)
Eventually they discover a kitchen that has been thoroughly burned and a dining hall covered in old blood. They almost feel sorry for the Swedish.
But their pity doesn't last for long as when investigating a possible way outside, Wilbur fails his sneak roll and is ambushed by Swedish soldiers springing forth from two murderhole entrances. He's skewered and left to die between the doors.

Boris, Bork and Reggie hear Wilbur's cry of pain and engage the Swedes. After a couple of casualties Boris intimidates the soldiers to surrender, who relinquish their arms and tell about the week long siege, where the cultists fought tooth and nail for every inch the Swedes claimed. They also mention that the cults leader, a witch called "Mother", and her honour guard retreated into their Inner Sanctum and probably still lurk there as the Swedes barricaded the door instead of pursuit.

Alas, the party has little time to react to this information as their chat drew the other patrol out of their hiding place, who had now placed themselves in between the PCs and the exit and set up their muskets.
"Surrender immediately!" yelled their leader in Swedish ("Ägna nu!") and, of course, only Bork and Reggie understood him.
Neither side really wants to engage the other, so they engage in a strenuous negotiations, where the PC party appeal to their brutality while the soldiers remark that they only need to hold out for a few hours, before Karlstadt sends a platoon to aid them.

In the end the PCs agree to release the prisoners and as they do so, they make a mad rush through the Swedes and towards the entrance. Their rush doesn't go as well as planned: only Boris makes it to the other side, while Reggie and Bork get bogged down in the middle of the Swedes. They cannot get through without leaving Wilbur and the soldiers are organised enough to whittle down the player's HP one round at a time.
Boris reaches the entrance, but would prefer not to go on alone with Dirk in the hostile countryside. So he hoists up a barrel of gunpowder, mounts their horse and intimidates it to ride inside.
There he lights a torch holding it near the barrel. "You saw what we did to your comrades, so don't dare think I'm not prepared to take you all with me!" he bellows, which immediately brings halt to the fighting. EDIT: I was reminded by Boris that the actual threat was much better and went like this: "I have come here to drink vodka and kick Swedish ass. And I'm all out of vodka!"

The Swedish soldiers witness the blood caked dwarf for a moment, before breaking rank and fleeing towards the darkness.
Boris hauls his comrades to outside to safety and places them in their wagon. Not bothering to stop, he begins hauling the rest of the gunpowder to the entrance.
There those still on their feet spy Swedish banners drawing closer and closer. They leave just in a nick of time to avoid pursuit with the fast collapsing mountainside heralding their departure.

The party travels for a day and make a camp in the ruins of Gössenheim. They find out they're not the only refugees around, when a long barrel of a musket aims at them in the smoking ruin of a cellar that used to be a tavern.
Boris doesn't mind things resolting to violence, but the guard relents when he sees the party has wounded. Grudginly they are let inside, where a pair of merchants Miraj and Ishab ibn Zoohur have made their camp.
Two groups trade stories: It turns out that Miraj and Ishab are Ottoman traders, who were in Amsterdam when the war broke out. Now they have been trying to get to Venice, where they could purchase a passage home.
Wilbur remembers that Günther, the bandit they left alive, headed for Venice as well and the party decides Italy is as good destination as any. The merchants agree to hire them as bodyguards as long as they are allowed to store their remaining wares in the wagon.

Last, before they depart for Italy, the PCs dig up the old mirror they pilfered from the realm of the Pale Lady. The piece has miraculously remained intact through everything and, as always, Wilbur is greeted by the demonic visage of Lucifer.

Ah, long time no see, Wilbur.
"You fucking lied to us about the dagger, asshole!"
I have no idea what you are talking about. I always speak the truth.
"Oh really? Well, tell us where the Lover is!"
I am afraid I can only reveal the locations of specific objects. I cannot help you.
"Well then. We want easier treasure. Gems. Valuable, but not so big that they cannot be transported."
As you wish.
Your route has two such jewels along it: in southern france there is a valley engulfed by mists. In the middle of it is a monolith and on top of the monolith is a radiant gem the ancient druids call the Sunstone.
Further on, in the Duchy of Milan, you shall find the Tomb of Histep-Ratep. An ancient pharaoh, who sought to conquer all that was known. Tyrant was buried on the site of his death along with his crown. Embedded in the crown is the Gem of Setesh, the most valued jewel in ancient Egypt.

"Ha, this route sounds promising, we'll take it!"

And so our adventurers went on their way.
"Can we please get more XP in the next adventure? This one was a waste of time!"

---

Our last session was spent on the road. Our party stopped in the village of Sacre Fromage and there stumbled upon the Tower of the Stargazer. Tomorrow they shall move on towards the Valley and the Tomb. While there were some interesting happenings in the Tower (mainly the party finally found some treasure), it doesn't warrant its own post. So I'll write about it next time, among with the rest of the journey.

I'm still thinking, where to go from Venice. A friend of mine participated in Raggi's latest call for modules with an adventure situated in Venice (got rejected, I think), so I might flesh out that adventure. Bloodsworth Manor or the house from Hell House Beckons could also fit somewhere in the countryside. While there's always the option to put them on a ship towards Quelong or Yoon Suin, now that they have gone up a level it'd be fun to throw Deep Carbon Observatory or Death Frost Doom at them, if they only had a reason to go to either place. Perhaps they have raised enough ruckus for van Ooms to get interested?
If you have any ideas or suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

Well, IF they even get to Venice as there is still a lot of road to cover and my Travel Encounter Chart has some of the shorter premades in it.

EDIT: Added a player comment.

Last edited by Tallu (2015-10-20 01:12:45)

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

So, it has been a while since my last post. Life's been hectic, but the campaign is far from dead. Let me tell you good folk what's happened since my last post:

Our group of adventurers has made its way towards Venice for the last five sessions. Along the way they plundered most of the Tower of the Stargazer, where their paranoid playing style finally bore fruit. The lack of random encounters gave them ample time to shift through the place inch by inch and they sprung none of the traps (one of them was strangled by living intestines, but survived the ordeal) and found most of the treasure (though they elected to leave some pieces, such as Calcidius' scrying orb, be).
They returned from the Tower rich and suddenly the paltry sum promised by the Turkish merchants seemed trivial. Ultimately the players decided to stay under the turkish employ, because Ishaq the merchant promised to fence their treasure and pay them with reliable bank notes.
They did, however, renegotiate their route to go through any adventure locations they might learn of.

Lucifer's advice and consulting the locals lead the party to Valley of Mists in southern France, where they negotiated between an angry druid and an invading force of Nephilidian vampires. Before leaving the valley for good, they plundered its sacred oak, slew the druid (which had made stew of Bork) and spurned a vampiric dinner invitation.
Before they reached Venice they also took a contract to slay some bandits hiding in Mt Vormoosh, where they made a pact with a magic user called Yxor the Yellow (who had been fleeing the ire of Roxy the Red and Oxyr the Orange) to leave some bandits alive for his experiments.
Along the way a monk foolishly trusted an ancestral sword of Knights of Kite to Boris the Dwarf, so it could be delivered to a crypt nearby. The dwarf naturally kept the sword, but the party still chose to visit the crypt as there might be a matching shield for Boris. Unfortunately some bandits had got there first and disturbed its guardian: the Corrector of Sins. Our band was only saved by the fact that the villagers were slower and yummier.

They plundered the tomb of Histep-ratep with only one casualty: a carcosan sorcerer, who got sandwiched between the crypts stairs and a falling statue. There they received some dank prophesies and saved an alien (very, very ugly halfling), who spirited away and took Elaine the Elf with it. (The Elf would return six months later sporting a brand new powered battle armour.)

Upon reaching Venice the group held a big party, where they made an acquaintance of the local Doge Monteverdi. The posse had grown tired of living as a vagrant and set their sights to purchasing land. However, they were strangers and venetian real estate was absurdly expensive.
So, they were forced to shuffle through the discount bin:
The grateful Doge (who had always wanted to sleep with a dwarf and a pirate at the same time) put them in touch with some estate agents with offers more suitable for the group: idyllic villa Prem just a week from Venice, only 20 000 sp and venerable Villa Cavallo somewhat further away for 10 000 sp.
The catch? Both were haunted and the party was expected to make the land safe before the deal would be finalised.

The party couldn't choose which to pick so they decided to clean both and take the better. Last two sessions they have been destroying statues and plant life in Abelia Prem's old haunt and in my next post I'll share that adventure in detail.

In other words, we played Tower of the Stargazer, Tomb of Hishep Ratep, Secret of Cykranosh and A Single Small Cut during the journey. The party also visited Valley of Mists, an original adventure location scribbled by me. Now we're playing through Stygian Garden of Abelia Prem (a brilliant adventure!) and if they're not sick of old mansion's, we'll be playing Hell House Beckons after that.
The average level of our players (and their characters) has gone up quite a lot, so random death's have become somewhat rarer. Today's encounter with the Marble Knight and Stone Mother gave them quite a scare and I hope Villa Cavallo will make them fear death again.

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

It has been a while since my last update. Our campaign has advanced splendidly and I haven't had the time to chronicle it properly.
That said, at the moment of writing our group has completed two distinct sequences I've decided to call the Mansion Arc and the Switzerland Arc.

The Mansion Arc began, when our party reached Venice and were again without a clear goal. The floating city was full of opportunity, but our party wasn't interested in the golden promises of the conquistador captains nor local crime families (or nobles). They had traveled a long journey and wished to settle down.
Luckily their flashy entrance to the city and accidental friendship with a local person of note - Doge Monteverdi - gave birth to many opportunities: usually foreigners weren't allowed to purchase nor own land, but our groups unique talent at manslaughter was, for once, a social boon.
Two estates had formed an annoying thorn in Venice's social elite's side for far too long - both had a history of madness and hauntings, so nobody wanted to own them. And, left abandoned, they were a risk to surrounding countryside, not to talk of being a black mark in Venice's collective reputation.
So our unlikely heroes struck a deal with the Doge: they solve this little problem of his and he would take them as his vassals and allow them to purchase whichever mansion piqued their fancy.

Our party was told that villa Prem had been vacant for ten or so years after its last owner's, Abelia Prem's, passing. Lady Prem had been an unmarried recluse and, especially during her final years, prone to fits of madness and, as the rumours put it, dalliances with wizards, dwarves and other degenerates. No one had been to the manor after Prem dismissed all her servants, but people of the surrounding villages tell tales of sinister figures and living statues creeping around the grounds.
Villa Cavallo, on the other hand, had stood empty for over fifty years. The estate had a long and bloody past and many wanted only to burn it down. Monteverdi, however, thought its location in the middle of the eastern wasteland was strategically perfect supply station, if he was ever to wage war against his eastern neighbours. To dissuade the ill rumours surrounding the manour,  he had already hired the services of a spirit medium and an experienced craftswoman and only required some muscle to escort her.

After some debate the adventurers decided to investigate villa Prem first. Thus, our adventure through Clint Krause's Stygian Garden of Abelia Prem began.
The party, consisting of Wilbur the Specialist, Boris the Dwarf, Reggie the Magic User, Eleana the Elf (not to be confused with the departed Elaine the Elf), Petrus the Magic User and a halfling dragon slayer, whose name eludes me, entered the grounds very carefully and spent an hour trying to discreetly investigate the groundskeepers hut and the suspicious swarm of bees surrounding it. They acquired an old shovel and a used beekeeper's suit.

They tangled a while with a strangling vine, that had claimed a pictoresque pond its home. At first they weren't keen to approach any of the statues lying around the grounds - they were all proven adventurers and knew that plethora of lifelike statues could mean only two things: a basilisk or murderous stone golems.
However, when the statues failed to butcher the party nor their hired help, they were encouraged to do some experimentation: they quickly emptied the statue named "Man who pukes seed" and were only a little bit disappointed when the seeds weren't cursed nor otherwise magical.
Wilbur took a nap beside Prem's grave and gained otherwordly insight that permanently boosted his Wisdom and making the others fight for their turns napping.
The party was initially greatly interested in Prem's greenhouse, but when the Referee spent ten minutes depicting the field of purple flowers ripe with pollen, they didn't dare take another step inside. Instead they ventured towards the manor.
... and discovered that Referee had been reading the map backwards. What was supposed to be the manors backyard had instead become an impractical front with no roads for carriages nor stables
for horses. "This has to change, once we're the owners", mused Wilbur.

Before they dared to enter the manor proper, Boris wanted to make sure the grounds did not contain any nasty surprises that could ambush them from behind. The party sent their lackeys to scour the surrounding woods, while the adventurers conversed with a unusually talkative parliament of Buzzard Dandies. The Dandies were impressed with Reggie's fancy coat and the pirate decided to broker friendly relations with their soon-to-be neighbours by gifting it to the fowl.
(For some reason I was convinced that the buzzards could talk.)
In exchange the parliament divulged some information about the manor and its inhabitants - most of it was useless as the birds didn't pay much attention to ground issues, but the party did learn about the more ambulatory statues that roamed the manor grounds.
Their chat was interrupted by a bloodcurdling scream coming from the forest.

T'was one of their Jeans screaming. Led by Wilbur, the party rushed to the forest. There they found their hireling crushed against a tree as if hit by a blunt, narrow object. They searched the surrounding area and found heavy footprints. Sadly pursuit proved impossible as the woods were full of similar footprints. The living statues had struck and the party was shaken from their lull.

Picking up the pace they finished their search of manor grounds: They found an interesting treetop sprouting from a hole in the ground. Eleana knew a druidic circle when she was one, but they had no time to think nor look around, because a horrendously ugly gargoyle-like monster leaped from the hole and attacked.
The sudden arrival forced the party to retreat until the Grotesque Spouter had gone its merry way.
A bit later they return to the hole and lower the Halfling down. She makes a quick sweep around the area and when everything's safe, the others join her.
They search the surrounding rooms without venturing too deep. Prem's botanical notes and experiments make the party especially intrigued and especially the super cannabis is a much desired acquisition.
At the same time Eleana bonds with a captured fairy Saffron, who becomes a loyal, and a bit psychotic, friend for life. Rest of the group is disgruntled that she freed a magical thing without consulting the others. Eleana couldn't care less. Saffron asks Eleana, if she wants Wilbur's eyes clawed out. Eleana considers, but decides it best to save it for lated.

Party regroups at the central oak and the halfling uses a magical acorn she found to meet the spirit within. Rest want to take their time to investigate remaining two entrances, but their plan is shaken by Eleana - she's tired of waiting and bored and runs down a previously unexplored stairs.
The rest scamper after her, but they are held back as Wilbur took his time to wake up.

At the end of the stairs the construction becomes rougher and more cavern-like than the cool and decorated greenhouse/laboratory. There is scattered mining equipment lying around and old dwarven graffiti scribbled on the rough stone walls. Eleana sprints through the tunnels, picking her destination at random, the tunnel recedes into a crawlspace and eventually ends to something that looks like an old wine cellar.
Eleana wastes no time uncorking a bottle. The spoiled wine doesn't agree with her stomach, so the elf begins uncontrollably vomiting her lunch all over the cellar floor. To add insult to injury, her pained retching startles a swarm of sleeping - and angry - bats.
She escapes the critters the way she came from, soiling the crawlspace and her robes with elf vomit.
Meanwhile rest of the party had gathered around the crawlspace. A horrendous stench emanated from the hole and agonized cries of some beast echoed inside, so they prepared to face whatever was coming. Imagine their surprise, when their monster turned out to be a sick elf.

When Eleana had recovered, she was sent straight back to clean up the mess she'd made. Boris, Wilbur and Reggie were prepared to do many things others would consider repulsive, but crawling through hundred feet of elf vomit wasn't one of them.
Back at the wine cellar the party barely has time to get their bearings when a sculpted knight marches in from the cellars south entrance and engages the adventurers.
What ensues is a chaotic melee, where Boris and Wilbur don't manage to hit the Marble knight, but the knight cannot get damage through either. By the sidelines, Reggie, Eleana and Petrus are pestered by the bat swarm from earlier that proves to be much more dangerous threat than the knight as they incapacitate Petrus, Eleana and almost Reggie, before they are put down. The cumbersome knight collapses soon thereafter.

After the battle, no one is keen to go through the southern doorway - their lanterns reveal only rows and rows of statuary and the knight already came that way. In the end Boris is the one to break the silence, when he points out that the room is a safety risk, if it's not made safe and all they know it could be the source of the moving statues harassing them.
The group is attacked by the Stone Mother, but the fight's utterly uninteresting. Monster gets killed, no one dies.

Behind the room they find a pond and some stairs, where they discover the same greenhouse they had peeked in earlier. Still fearing the purple pollen, party retreats underground.
Having placed themselves on the map, the adventurers decide to take a closer look at the excavation site.
They follow the winding tunnel up to when they see the dwarven corpses. There they take a moment to check for poison gas and undead and when Wilbur declares an all clear, they step down and search the bodies. Boris is quick to confiscate the dwarven warhammer for such an artefact should only be wielded by a dwarf. Additionally, one of the dwarves was carrying a curious stone tablet with runes and a map to what appears to be an old dwarven temple in Swiss Alps. A place that, according to Boris, should have no dwarf settlements anywhere within 100 mile radius. (A lead towards Hammers of the God)

Deeper in they find the river Styx and the rose. The party is perplexed as they had no idea there were such things under the mansion. What makes them even more confused is that on the other side of the river stand a bunch of their dead companions, some melancholic, most angry at the PCs. The newer recruits of their group are a bit uneased by the fact that there seems to be already one Wilbur and one Boris (the unofficial leaders of the group) on the 'dead side' of the river.
"It's a long story" Wilbur sidesteps the issue towards all the potential worth they could get from such a river.
When no one is looking, Eleana nips the black rose from its bush.

Having already received a lot of interesting loot from the greenhouse, cleaning up the mansion proper became more and more an afterthought. Nevertheless, nobody could move in before it was handled.
The cleansing of the mansion was a mechanical and rote process, where they accidentally killed a mad hobo while trying to interrogate it, adopted a wild goat (Wilbur named it 'Slayer') and had few choice moments of horror with the spider nest in the dining hall. In Prem's study they find her library and notes about the hybrid plants she had been cultivating.

When they'd declared the mansion safe enough, the party retreated to the nearest village and hired a work force to make major repairs - moment later they dismissed almost everyone, when they remembered that their magic users needed merely to prepare and cast mending over and over the broken parts (while making Referee's calculations about repair costs, quality and worker morale needless *sigh*).

Next few months went swiftly as the party repaired their new home. They kept a small workforce on hand to build walls and prune back the wilderness and occasionally had to fight against a lone gargoyle or cherub that had evaded their first purge.
When not on duty, the party spent their time smoking Prem's super-cannabis and reading her extensive library of great explorer Leopold Malando's Plot hook repository - or traveloques - whichever you want to call them.
When they learned about the Stygian rose's resurrective qualities, they shook Eleana until she gave up the flower and stored it in a trapped box.
They also finalised their ownership by paying Monteverdi and signing the papers. The villa Prem was rechristened Castle Grayskull. The party agreed that the mansion was too much influence for mere one person to own, so they had to unionise. And thus was born the League of Extraordinary Opportunity, a guild of adventurers, venture capitalists and exploiters, that declared villa Grayskull its headquarters.
In tandem they formalised their apprenticeship: new recruits would be required to open doors and go first in line until they had earned their place among the League.

That concludes our playthrough of Stygian Garden of Abelia Prem. Despite a few close calls, no one died in the adventure, but I wasn't that surprised as most of the party had reached threes and fours in their levels.
All in all we really liked the adventure's atmosphere and the mix of weird and mundane. There wasn't anything that clashed against the overall theme and most of the loot ranged from interesting to useful instead of plain money. For example, our group quickly hired an herbalist to keep the hybrids alive and held long conversations with the Oak dryad.


We've also adopted some new houserules in our game. Making a level 1 character after each death has become frustrating according to my players as most of the group is somewhere between levels 4 and 5) so after a lot of pressure I yielded and for a while new player characters have received XP equal to the weakest member in the group (present at the moment of rolling).
This has kept the party somewhat more cohesive and also made them rise through levels at somewhat faster pace.
We also decided that after first level, the human classes should get a skill point every odd level to give a better sense of progression and to prevent the situation, where every non-specialist is and remains a dunce in lock picking, climbing etc. According to my players, it also helps differentiate different characters.
We also adopted a new skill Arcana (from Ten foot polemic, I think?) and agreed that non-casters can use it to cast from scrolls while casters can try to use a scroll without destroying it.
Around this time we also played a sample adventure (Lotus eater, VRA3) with the play test and briefly debated adopting the new skills or the magic system to our game. But we haven't committed yet due to negative feedback from my players.
Last, we've fiddled with great weapons (they now deal 2d6, making them something someone would actually want) and agreed that dual wielding weapons lets you roll for both and pick the better (except on doubles, where both dice are counted).

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

Here's the next part, where the party investigates the Horsehead Manor from module Hell house beckons on behalf of Doge Monteverdi.

Oh, and before I forget! A player in my campaign wanted to prove he had most dead PC's so he made a spreadsheet with every PC, adventure they joined and cause of death.
You can view it here: http://tinyurl.com/zv3mtjp

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Not wanting to leave their work half finished, the party decided to deal with villa Cavallo next. "We could always use a summer villa" summed Wilbur.
Thus they headed back to Venice and were introduced to the exorcist group prepared by the Doge.
The party had already met the Doge's aide Gertrude, who would be supervising the mission, and they seemed to get along well with the seer Vidalia and the mason Lydia. Appearance of Lydia's little brother Torrance, however, didn't cheer the League. "The kid behaves or the kid gets left behind" was the ultimatum Boris gave Lydia.

During their two week journey to the manor, Gertrude shared the Manor's ill history among the others. Apparently it had meen built upon an ancient elven burial ground, then used as a school of witchcraft and a brothel. Last 50 years the building's been abandoned, altough there have been occasional reports of squatters. All of the residents had one thing in common: they either went insane, killed themselves or vanished without a trace.
"Sounds like a place fit for us", said Reggie.

Before we delve into the adventure proper, the Hell house beckons has a couple of interesting mechanics: first, the mansion feeds on the suffering, souls and sanity of its victims and the amount of madness, bloodloss and death determines the ending of the adventure. To support this the module adds a sanity attribute that can and will decrease as the players experience the mansions horrors. While I made my players roll themselves a SAN score, I decided failing a sanity test had no mechanical effect other than feeding the mansion (and determining the effects of possession in some causes). By this point the Player Characters had gone through a lot of fucked up shit, and they didn't need me or a mechanic tell them, if they are scared or not. So I told my players they could dictate how they cope with failing a SAN check themselves. Trusting my players worked and most of the more hilarious outburst were due them riffing the Sanity mechanic.
Second, in the module, Vidalia's a real medium capable of restoring the dead to life. I thought that a genuine resurrection mechanic didn't fit our campaign, so I made Vidalia's power a bit more Lotfpy. You'll see what I mean.

The League arrives to the Horsehead manor. As they arrive, present are Petrus the Magic User, Kaylee the Halfling (the dragon/monster slayer from last session), Eliana the Elf, Boris the Dwarf, Wilbur the Specialist and Gilbert the Brave (Alice). Rest of the group were quite acquaitanted with each other, but Gilbert had just appeared on the road and pretended to know the group.  They tie their horses and circle the premises. Finding old, unmarked graves from the backyard doesn't make the explorers any happier, but when there's nothing overtly suspicious, the party steps in through the main door.
Upon entering the party hears racket from upstairs, but they decide to ignore it for a while and follow their code: "Always go left".

They investigate a corridor that appears to be servants quarters. An upside-down nursery confuses them, but their jimmies get really rustled, when Gilbert investigates the bathroom and is momentarily trapped inside a black void. He's thrown back out inexplicably after he casts a light spell, but he didn't come alone: an invisible minotaur decided to join him to eternally loom and breathe down his neck.
The party spends some time trying to kill the minotaur, but give up when it proves to be a good dodger.
"Your own problem, obviously", says Boris, ending the matter.
In the bunk room they find a pile of copper coins guarded by a miniature dragon. Wilbur and Reggie fall instantly in love with the critter: they name it Smög and lure it to their wagon cart by strategically placing bigger and bigger piles of silver along the way.
They note that each and every painting features a pale painter which makes them uncomfortable, but not interested enough to do anything about it.

At this point the party hears racket and see their horses crashing through the mansions front-side windows. They try to help the animals, but their equines are set on killing themselves and in the end there's nothing the party can do.
"Fuck horses, god made them stupid on purpose", said Reggie.
To achieve something, Petrus decides he's got his fill of the racket and the party makes a jaunt upstairs to off a nest of harpies.
After dealing with that nuisance, the League is told that Vidalia's gone missing. Unlike the NPC's, they know to track her by her dusty footprints, so the medium is quickly recovered (she had been scratching her fingers bloody on the grand hall door, murmuring something about "releasing it"). The PCs are not daunted. They debate, if Vidalia should be tied up, but let the plan go when Gertrude protests.
Then they decide that if there's something wanting to go free in the grand hall, they're happy to oblige. Picking the lock fails so they resort to their skeleton key: an axe.
First swing: the door bleeds human blood.
Second swing: the wound gapes deeper, whole house shudders. Agonised souls beg release.
Third swing: Door remains closed, axe starts to get a bit scratched. "Perhaps we should stop this, we don't want to dull the blade."

Then they resume their clockwise sweep of the manor.
The League finds a parlor room hosting a ghostly tea party. The floating tea cups aren't hostile and so the adventurers aren't fazed by them.
Reggie, however, gets a fit, when one of the mounted horse heads whispers to him from the fall "Hey, hey. Reggie. Kill yourself."
He lets out a bloodcurdling howl, buries his dagger deep into the stuffed horse, tears it from the wall and hurls it through the window.
"Hey, Reggie! Just kill yourself, ok?"
"Fuck youuuuuuuu", answers Reggie as he empties his pistols into the head.
"What's his problem?" Petrus asks.
"He's a witch. What do you think?" Boris replies, nonplussed.
They also have a brief encounter with Quiet Annah, the spectral maid, but she leaves, when she cannot possess any of the party (dusting is hard without a body) and the players act mean to her. The PCs discover that ghosts cannot be hurt by mundane weapons, but can be seen through mirrors.


Next in the line is a corner room that the party soon discovers to be an atlas room. During their sweep Petrus investigates a locked chest that, to his ill luck, hides a deformed crazy mutant halfling - Sackcloth boy, the manor's current tenant - and its favourite garden shears.
Sackcloth boy wins initiative and before anyone can do anything, it cuts Petrus' throat open.
Petrus has enough time to look surprised as he collapses on the floor in a growing puddle of his own blood.
Rest of the players prepare to avenge the death of their intern, but never get the chance when Petrus' familiar, a small unassuming raven that no one had really noticed before begins to gurgle and bubble. Oh yes (oh crap), we are still using the rule about familiars erupting as a Summon. Now the players remember why magic users weren't supposed to die.
The Raven is evaporated as a radioactive tentacled horror made from light and colours emerges from its insides. Its tentacles attack everyone in its vicinity and to the players luck, they can flee through the door while Sackcloth boy is snared between the monster and the corner.
So, our always pragmatic PCs retreat outside to follow the battle of the century through the windows.

Somehow the mutated killer halfling actually manages to slay the beast and when the PC's return they only find a rapidly decaying colourbeing (being in the room with it makes your skin tingle in a funny way, Wilbur notes) and a trail of blood heading upstairs that terminates at the second floor. No corpse.
"No chance that thing's dead yet", Boris reminds the others.

Meanwhile Petrus is very surprised when he wakes up in the manors ghost world, empty except for a cold, cruel and distant laughter.
He seeks out the party and confirms his suspicions that they cannot see or hear him. Eventually though he gets their attention through mirrors and minor possessions for them to get worried. (Luckily, Reggie was out of magic missiles)
The League regroups outside to discuss their haunting problem. That's when Vidalia the optimistic Medium interjects: "Oh oh! I can help! We can perform a seance and then ask the spirit what it wants before moving on."
The players suppose Petrus is a safe enough guinea pig to see, whether Vidalia's a hack or not and proceed with the plan.

They use Petrus' corpse as the vessel to perform the seance and after Petrus has a brief tussle with a ghostly dwarf named Vargas, he's back among the living - or at least, sort of.
Vidalia explains that his wounds were too extensive for a proper resurrection, so for now his spirit is strenuously chained to his physical corpus. That way, the giant gash across his throat and the general lack of blood wouldn't bother him. On the plus side, this meant that he didn't need any food and with proper surgery he could swap his body parts for better ones.
But on the minus side, his existence was directly tied to the integrity of his body and thus his CON score. And he would no longer heal naturally nor by divine magic.

Rest of the day is wasted in shenanigans: Torrance has gone missing and when the party finally finds him, his hand has been mutilated by Sackcloth boy.
Gertrude is possessed by Vargas and almost strangles Wilbur to death. And no, she still doesn't believe in ghosts.
The party makes a coup as they detect absolutely no sense of self preservation from their entourage. "The Doge will hear about this" Gertrude protests.
"This place is a fucking death trap filled with ghosts and evil. You will get your important papers, but first you will be a good girl and wait outside or we will make you", says Boris.
"I outrank you!" Gertrude replies.
Boris doesn't bother replying. The petite woman is no match for him, so Gertrude, Torrance and Vidalia are tied up and left by the cart. Lydia has not caused any trouble, but hasn't been useful either, so she gets to go free as long as she stays outside and watches the others.
Having done this the party calls it a day.

Night goes by uneventfully, but Gilbert has trouble sleeping with the minotaur panting behind his ear the whole night.

Next day the party begins by investigating the basement. This is partly because of Lydia's request they'd inspect the manor's foundation and partly because it can be accessed from the backyard and so doesn't require entrance in the mansion proper.
They first descend into the meat cellar, where Eleana is assaulted by Sackcloth boy that had been hiding in a cupboard. This time the halfling was finished off rather easily, as it was still weakened from yesterdays fight. Always pragmatic, the party chopped and incinerated its remains.
Next room appeared to be some kind of laboratory with a polished copper ceiling. There they found scattered notes detailing some of the mansions ghosts and made acquaitance of an invisible nosferatu.
By make acquaintance, I mean that they saw it skulking about via reflection and when it didn't seem to do anything, they teased it ceaselessly. Poor monster.
This caused Evetta, spirit of a trapped and restless succubus, to take an interest in the party. She was especially intrigued by Petrus, who was stuck in a half life similar to her current state.
She made the first move using an ancient demon flirting technique of pinning the victim to the ground and administering one of her soul draining kisses.
To her surprise, Petrus didn't recoil in horror, but answered her adoration. He sucked Evettas tongue deeper in a grotesque french kiss and bit it off - losing hundreds of xp, but disturbing the succubus enough that she saw it best to retreat.

At this point I realised that my players were worse horrors than the poor ghosts and mutants hiding in the mansion. This horror story wasn't about a mansion full of the restless dead, but a roving band of demonic murderhoboes.

Continuing their search the party find a cell block and have another encounter with Quiet Annah and Vargas. This time they are prepared though, and Vargas is defeated by holy water and magic missiles. Annah doesn't appear hostile and instead tries to lead the PC's somewhere.
Following her cue, the PCs ignore the ghost of an elven prisoner and find a hidden room behind a tapestry. There they find treasure, royal papers sought by Gertrude and Annah's remains.
Her grievance satisfied, Annah finally moves on from this world and the party performed its first good deed in a long, long time.
While packing up the treasure to be moved, Reggie finally pays attention to the elven prisoner. It is too thirsty to provide information and when Reggie offers it a sip from his flask, the thankful spirit dissolves into a pile of white powder.
"Sweet! Cocaine!" Reggie squees and rubs the stuff into his gums. He discovers the hard way that the powder was acidic poison made by elves especially to kill humans. His face melts off and he falls down, dead.
... causing Polly, his parrot-familiar to explode into its true form!
Before the party even has a chance to mourn their longtime companion, they are assailed by a being made of wind and genitalia.
Petrus, Boris, Wilbur and Gilber manage to flee its molesting gusts, but Eleana and Kaylee are trapped.
After Eleana runs out of magic missiles and is slain, they have no weapons more capable of hurting it, so Kaylee makes a plan of desperation: she empties her powder horns into the wind and ignites them to cause a dust explosion that would hopefully disperse the otherwordly wind.
She succeeds too well and she is incinerated by the blast along with the beast.

Reggie, Eleana and Kaylee wake up in the ghost world. Reggie heads straight to the party to beg for resurrection, but Eleana wants to do some spectral sleuthing and drags the poor Kaylee with her. They do discover the source of the not-so-distant-anymore laughter: manor's original owner Countess Beauregarde, who now haunts the ghost world to serve her master.
Eleana and Kaylee try to fight, but their spirits are devoured by the malevolent wraith.

Reggie is more lucky and he manages to convince the party to perform another seance. There his luck runs out as the seance again attracts Castellan Vargas. Petrus manages to keep Vargas away using a wall of force, but accidentally also blocks the way for Reggie. This stalls the ritual enough for Beauregarde to track and devour Reggie allowing Vargas to take control of the pirate's burned corpse.
And as he's not very subtle ghost, he is put down and his spirit is finally defeated by a hit from Boris' enchanted hammer Echo Doom.

Shaken by their losses, the party nevertheless decides to carry on. They finish their sweep and find a humid laundry room with a tub of curiously hot water.
Gilbert, who had stuck to the sidelines thus far, suddenly desires a bath and tries to hop in. He's interrupted by Boris and Wilbur who, just to be sure, demand he tie a rope around himself, so he can be pulled away from whatever nasty biz is hiding in the tub.
He obliges, but when he steps in, he disappears leaving an empty noose float in the water.
The party never sees him again.

(What happened was that he was transported to another tub in another part of the cellar. As he was trying to regroup with the others, he ran into the twisted spirit of once-midwife Merigold, who mistook him into one of Countess' children. She nursed him by force and the curious qualities of her milk made Gilbert younger and younger until he really became a baby.
"Hey, a little help please?", Gilbert yelled to the ever-looming minotaur, but he never discovered whether it heard him or not. The party never found him, as they mistook his cries for just general spooky phenomena.)

Some posts earlier I had hoped that this adventure would remind my players of the meaning of fear and it had succeeded perfectly. Shaken by their losses, the PCs became careful and vent nowhere until the room or the corridor had been inspected through a mirror. Thus rest of the ghosts became easy to dispatch. And when they are about ready with the manor, they hear a loud slam, as the once impenetrable grand hall's doors slam open heralded by a demonic laughter.

By a coincidence another party arrives to the manor just before League has a chance enter the Hall: Lorenzo the Fool, a less famous member of the venetian Assassins guild has been sent by the doge's wife to assassinate Reggie Harlock for buggering her husband. Along the way he had met Father Benedict and two unnamed clerics who had been sent by Vatican to exorcise the manor.
The quartet is quickly inducted into the League of Extraordinary Opportunity and everyone heads into the Grand Hall.

Once inside, the demonic laughter begins anew and Boris starts having the worst constipation of his life. With the lowest Sanity of the group, he has become host to the Hand of Satan, who promptly attacks the party.
"Fuck you, Satan! We were supposed to be friends!" Boris yells, but his cries drown in the clash of battle.
("Does it count as a dwarf as it comes from Boris? Can we use Echo Doom on it?" Wilbur asks)
Satan puts up a good fight and manages to crush one of the clerics, send Wilbur into negatives and almost pulverise Petrus, but he falls before the combined might of the angry adventurers.
And with the Hands demise, the manor begins to shake and grow smaller. The adventurers see they are no longer welcome, grab those alive and run out just before Villa Cavallo blinks out of existence.

Exasperated, but alive, the party has little time to celebrate victory. Their horses are dead and the nearest hamlet is two weeks away by foot.
So they make their way back to Venice. Luckily they had prepared an overabundant supply of food and as they had fewer mouths to feed, there was no risk of starvation. Back home, Vidalia and Gertrude (grudgingly) support their tale and so the League was given their reward and they managed to stay in doge's good graces.
Lorenzo presented Reggies corpse to doge's wife and got his reward as well. Then he decided that he'd had enough of killing for money and joined properly joined the League to kill for treasure.
Benedict as well decided that he would best serve God by joining them as the League seemed to encounter satanic forces on a regular basis.

Then the group returns to Villa Grayskull to ponder their next move. After some debate they retrieve the Stygian rose from their vault and feed it to charred Reggie. Some wanted to save the rose, but Boris and Wilbur were insistent, Reggie's a founding member, after all.
To their astonishment, Reggie's burned and melted skin sloughs away revealing healthy skin. Rose crumbles, but the pirate is again among the living.
"I saw only darkness before me", he comments his brief visit to the other side.
Later, Wilbur puts up their old magic mirror and calls forth Lucifer.
"What the fuck, Lucifer!" I  thought we had a deal!" he demanded an explanation and when Lucifer had nothing more than vague excuses and mystical mumbo jumbo, they put the mirror away.
"The fucker's been lying to us each and every time. This is the last time we ask anything from it", said Boris, who wasn't convinced, when the thing tried to promise them treasures to make up for all the hassle.

Instead Boris convinces the others that their next expedition should be to the dwarven temple that they had located in swiss alps near a town named Altdorf.

And that's were things began to get weird.

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

Here's the next chapter. I'm trying to type these out faster than usual as I've got a lot of backlog to catch up with.

We've also updated our Death Tracker. The characters are colour coded by their player, so you can see that this session we actually got a newcomer and also that one of us is playing their twelfth character. Fun times.
You may view it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ … sp=sharing

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So, the party had their next goal: find and loot the secret dwarven temple. They had no hurry though as it was early March and early spring wasn't the safest time of the year to climb Swiss mountains. They had used Abelia Prem's extensive map collection to calculate it would take about a month by foot and cart to reach Altdorf and the best time for travel would be June, so they had three months to prepare before leaving.
Having no shortage of silver, the League built a crypt for their dead (hoping it would attract ghouls to their property). Petrus also made arrangements with a frankensteinian physician, who was fascinated with the Magic User's current state and was more than willing to store and replace body parts for him.
Meanwhile their reputation had attracted a group of wanna-be adventurers to replace those lost in the Hell house: Seventh son of the seventh son the Magic User, Father Benedict the Cleric and Heather O'Connors the Alice.

After about a week of travel our party leaves the pictoresque venetian countryside for the more mountainous regions near Switzerland. There they spot a man crying beside the road. Curious, the party hails the man.
He introduces himself as Felix Langtvurm, a mystic whose group of mercenaries was hired to harvest cysts from a Purple feathered swine that was hibernating nearby. They were ambushed by cancerous monsters and Felix was the only one to flee. He manages to strike a deal with the PC's: he'll instruct them on how to harvest pus from the cysts and if they retrieve his spellbook he'll allow them to learn two of his spells. And if their harvest succeeds, they can claim the reward from alchemis Un-Raga Praag, who currently resides in the Swiss hamlet of Schwarzton. Felix is no longer that interested in adventure.

The League finds the cave with little problems and ventures inside. On their way deeper Father Benedict slips as they pass a sinkhole and falls to a deeper level. Stubbornly he refuses all help from the others and crawls deeper, away from his comrades help.
Doing so he skips most of the cave and finds the Swine. ...though he ignores the beast for a more interesting side passage that leads to a fungus infestation and a small underground pond. Benedict decides that's as good place as any for a lunch break and sits down (for most of the session).

Meanwhile rest of the party chooses to abandon Father Benedict and continue forward. Investigating a small crawlspace, Heather meets Aspeth Montesquieu, one of the mercenaries. Heather attempts to parlay for intel, but Aspeth isn't lucid. She pleads Heather to end her suffering, which Heather reluctantly agrees to. With as much respect as is possible in this situation, she loots the fresh corpse and returns to rest of the party. "Nothing important there."

Arriving to a cavernous area, they run into their first batch of worm tumours. The poor things don't put up much of a fight, as our party is already quite experienced, but during the bout heather and the Seventh son are splashed with Worm goo - so immediately as the battle ends, Heather grabs their lamp from Wilbur and lathers her chest with oil. She lights herself on fire to stop the wriggling larvae burrowing into her skin. Following the example, Seventh son does the same to his arm.
This manages to halt the infection (and also results in some very nasty burns). Wilbur, Boris and Reggie also make sure to burn the dead - both tumours and their victims. As they are building the fire, they retrieve Felix's spellbook from one of the cadavers.
Moving on towards the snoring the party pass a tunnel riddled with crawlspaces. And once all but the Seventh son have passed, a tumour crawls out one of them surprising Son. It takes a moment before rest of the League reacts and manages to slay the thing, but the worst already happened: Tumour had vomited a generous amount of larvae straight into Seventh son's gullet.
"I think I'm all right. It wasn't that much ichor", SS pleaded impotently.
"I'm sorry, trainee. But we have to be sure", Boris replies and raises his sword.

One decapitation later, a certain venetian father only had six sons left.

The party finds the swine, but before harvesting any swine-pus they purge the rest of the tunnels as they don't want to repeat Seventh's mistake. They also retrieve Ben from his retreat.
Felix had given them three doses of sedative and the party did not want to take any chances, so all three were injected into the creatures posterior. Waiting for the stuff to work they jury-rigged bandages and Seventh's leather armour into a cude hazmat suit which saves them from a couple of worm infections.
They are a little bit worried by the fact that the beast no longer seems to breathe after their administrations, but ultimately choose not to care.

They return to the road by sundown and after picking their spells from Felix. The two parties go their separate ways.
After two more weeks of travel the League arrives to the mouth of Leuven valley. They stay a night at Boarshead in, listening for rumours.
Topic of the day is a noblewoman who had travelled through the area a week or so ago. The lady had apparently joined a cult and wished to donate all of her property to it. She had left a group of Obvious Cultists behind who were a bit annoying with their evangelism, but paid their bills and didn't harass anyone too much, so they'd been allowed to stay.
After buying a couple of rounds, League also heard of a group of cannibals living in the southern valley and a madman, who was sometimes encountered in the area. They were also told that there were two significant towns in the valley: Schwarzton in the north and Altdorf in the east.
Heather went to chat with the cultists, who were more than glad to tell her about their Seven Legged God. They made grand promises that if Heather would only donate all she ever owned and pledged her soul to the God, she would never need to be alone anymore and would be allowed to live in their opulent dwellings.
"So, what kind of mansion you guys have?" Heather asked, a little bit intrigued.
"We have a hole in the mountains", the cultists merrily replied.
"Hole... in the mountains? Yeah right" Heather said as she marked the cultists as a lost cause.

The group was also joined by Seventh's replacement: Dirk Keen the Specialist, who made his first impressions by shanking an old priest just because he snored.

In the morning the group decided first to head towards Schwarzton, where they could trade their pus for cash.
There they would also eventually learn about a certain incident with missing children and an old satanist temple.

But that's a tale for another time.

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

Intermission: Maze of the Blue Medusa

I ran Maze of the Blue Medusa at Ropecon, Helsinki last weekend and since the adventure is all the rage right now, I'll tell our experience of it before I write the next proper chapter. We used random level 1-6 premades and the playtest rules with magic from Wonder & Wickedness. Here's how it went:

Ulrich the Fighter, Aristihe the Magic User (and his companion, Dog the dog), Ferian the Fighter, Harald the Fighter and Gilbert the Fighter were an ordinary group of thieves and adventurers that had stumbled upon an extraordinary opportunity: They had stolen a painting called False Chanterelle and all the tales were true: when exposed to moonlight, the painting came to life and the depicted woman pleaded for help. She introduced themselves as Ashen Chanterelle and claimed to be imprisoned by the cruel Blue Medusa. If freed, her noble lineage would reward the adventurers greatly were it still existing - and if not, they would have free reign to loot the Medusa's maze.
The group was skeptical at first:
"What if you're the medusa?" asked Harald.
"Do I look like a medusa?" she replied.
"Come on, guys! She doesn't even have snakes for hair!" Aristihe said. "Doesn't any of you read anything?"
"... I cannot read." Ulrich said.

Eventually Gilbert took the first brave step and as he touched the painting he was transported into the red room with the Chanterelle. This made Harald bold enough to follow and together they struck at Chanterelle's chains. She was freed and the door was unlocked.
"Now where's the treasure? Is this the treasure?" Harald asked as he fiddled a stray painting in the room.
"I'm pretty sure it's just art." Gilbert said.

The Chanterelle was ever so thankful and the smitten heroes told her to wait on the other side as they would make the Maze safe. She stepped outside and after no one had turned into stone, died horribly or met any other calamity Ulrich, Aristihe and Ferian stepped through the treshold too as they wanted an even share of the treasure.
Last thing they saw of the Chanterelle was her smile turning wicked as she covers the painting and their only escape.
"Should've known she was scottish!" Ulrich rages.

Having no other choice the party goes through the only door available, where they encounter a lady with midnight blue skin and gorgeous horns. The woman seems to be willing to talk and after some confused exchanges of words, she and Aristihe find a common tongue in Latin.
The lady introduces herself as Crucem Capilli and tells that she's been hired to destroy the Maze. She's in no hurry though and is willing to wait until the group has gone their merry way. That is, if they collect any interesting art they pass and sell it to her.
She also seems to know the maze, but refuses to give directions as 'she's unwilling to ruin the painting the group will create with their wandering'.
After some negotiating by the players she relents a little and gives some general directions about gardens to the west, a wedding hall to the east and gallery to the north.

The party decides to head to the gallery, for what other place would art be found? They take the middle door to the room that's empty except for a curious mosaic woman that springs to life and recites a riddle about crossing her.
The party solves most of the riddle easily and half of them pass the room with no problem. (Heartbroken Aristihe sacrifices his dog to be the fourth and the killed crosser.)
Harald and Ferian, to their misfortune, missed the last part of the riddle and had no idea how to get through safely. When Harald tries crossing by doing circles, the mosaic attacks.
The party is lucky and no one's hit before the monster dies.
"Was that the medusa? Are we done now?" Harald asks.
"Have you read even one book? Medusas don't work like that!" Aristihe complains.
Next room is a deep pit with a rickety bridge that takes some time crossing. Behind that room they find a grub-like snake-boy thing that's arguing with a bunch of chess pieces.
Snakething introduces himself as Gibba and is mostly interested in the mosaic bits, Ulric looted from the mosaicmonster. Chess pieces want the players cut Gibba open.

The party is initially keen on allying with the chess pieces as they believed the full set was needed to solve a puzzle, but they weren't desperate enough to kill a child. They dare not go into the further rooms (one black, one white) as they might be part of the puzzle.
So, they convince Gibba to slither through the black room with the jade eyes. To their surprise he's paralyzed by the eyes and the party accidentally strangles him to death when they try to pull him to safety.
"Oh well, this solves our dilemma," Aristihe says and prepares his knife.
Chess pieces thank the party by giving some information about the rooms: black floor is a kind of dense liquid that can be walked across (unless you get paralyzed) while the white room has a black line that draws the crossers worst nightmare.
Gilbert refuses to go through the white room and see Harald's mother, so the party uses Ulrich's shovel to push the jade eyes out of their way and cross the western room.
They reach a room empty bar for a glass of winelike liquid on a silver platter. Whích Aristihe immediately consumes. (Being a bit disappointed when it doesn't kill him or nothing)

Among the several exits the party chooses the one leading to gallery. They go in and spend a second admiring the goat skull arch in the room.
Then a crack forms into the wall and Pellory-of-the-Wall, a cancerous flower, squirms through. The creature isn't interested in talking, but has to retreat after a couple of rounds, when the party's combined strenght is too much.
After the battle, everyone notices how ravenously hungry they are (due Gallery's special effects). And to add insult to injury, most of their rations have become spoiled.
Thinking fast they retreat from the room to see if their hunger would recede.
It doesn't, but it isn't turning worse either leaving them with a slight problem.
Their next course is towards the Gardens as "plants are food, right?". In the first room they meet a gigantic snail minding its own business.
"Snail! Food!" Ulrich shouts and they attack.
The racket caused by the fight lures a group of Oku, insane thieves pretending to be tengu, to investigate and ambush the hostile party.
The fight almost goes in the bag for them and they even manage to strike down Ferian, but when Aristihe successfully charms one of them and Harald slays their leader, the rest flee.
Party pursues until the gallery, where they dare not go yet.
Aristihe raises one of the fallen Oku to be his undead servant.

Licking their wounds the adventurers revive Ferian and inspect the snail. They are greatly disappointed to find its made of clay and confused to find some packed rations inside its shell. Ulrich doesn't complain though, the meal's as good as any.

Going forward they investigate the dark room in the south. Apparently its lack of light is caused by a peculiar species of rose that the party immediately decides is awesome. Behind the dark room they trade some words with a gigantic mantis creature and retreat as they cannot handle the more and more creepy garden area.
Retreating to the wine room, they next head to the grand hall in the north as "the medusa might be there". Instead, they find Chronia Torn, one of the more willing prisoners of the Maze. Aristihe immediately makes fast friends with Chronia's pet Fracture-of-the-bone and tries to bribe it to fetch art from the Gallery.
They learn from Chronia that the hungering effects permeates all of Gallery. They find it hard to believe that she's there voluntarily, but eventually relent as she seems to be on first name basis with the medusa.

They politely decline Chronia's invitations to stay and head east through a door which Chronia politely unlocks. They find themselves in an orange room housing some kind of anomaly.
There they get caught by Torgos Zooth, medusa's majordomo, who's in his crescent phase.
This means that no truth can be uttered in his presence making his interrogations and the party's excuses difficult.
Eventually they find some common group, when the party promises to help Torgos rescue his children. He agrees to escort them through the Almery, if they agree to be blindfolded.
He leaves them to the prison area and goes back to his business.

The adventurer's prefer not to mess with the eerily lifelike statues and head the only way they can: west. There they reach another grand hall, that's sectioned with bookshelves and weapon stands. It's like christmas, everyone wants a weapon.
In their greed, they stumble in the centre of the hall, to the dwelling of Blue Medusa herself.
"You fiends took your time enjoying my armory, but the fun is over! You are not the first to try and kill me and you won't be the last!" the Medusa exclaims.
"Err, if it's alright with you, we don't really want to kill you", Aristihe says meekly.
"You don't? Then why are you here in the first place?"
"We'd prefer if you'd let us have some of that", Aristihe continues and gestures towards a table laden with food.
"Very well then. It would be dishonourable to battle you, whilst you are weakened by hunger."

The adventurers feast on Medusa's table and Harald tries to desperately polish the silver tray he took to serve as a mirror.
After they were finished, Psathyrella, the Medusa, again brandished her rapier.
"Now you are fed. Shall we battle?"
"Umm, actually... We don't want to kill you", Ferian says.
"What."
"It's a long story... but in a nutshell we got lost. In fact, we'd just prefer, if you'd show us the way out."
"And you should probably know that there's a dragon lady who DOES wish to kill you!" Gilbert adds.
"Dragon lady? I probably should deal with that, but... I can't really bother. Maybe she'll find her way here and then I'll have some excitement."
Saying so, Psathyrella slumps back to her bed, dejected.
Then Harald decides to be a gentleman:
"Very well, medusa. If you wish to duel someone, I will challenge you!"
And there's life in the Medusa's eyes again.

The duel goes surprisingly well for Harald. Psathyrella has loads of HD, but Harald gets more strikes through with his two weapons. He's almost winning.
That is, until he fumbles and accidentally slaps away the mask Psathyrella covered her eyes with.
Half of the party (including Harald) is exposed to her petrifying gaze and everyone fails their saves and so Harald, Gilbert and Ferian are turned into stone.
"... Now this is embarassing", says Psathyrella. "I'm sorry."
"It's alright, can we keep the swords we stole? And what Harald stole?" Ulrich replies.
"I guess that's a fair game. Here, let me show you the way out."

The Medusa escorts Aristihe and Ulrich to the labyrinth's original entrance, the stairway to the island of Eliator.
"Do you want your friends? I can lend some of my handmaidens to carry them?"
"Nah, you can keep 'em."

And so the duo descended the stairs to Eliator, where they were greeted as gods.
"I think were in Scotland now", Ulrich commented their escape.

And that's how it went. We had premades in reserve, but didn't need them as the Maze treated by players quite gently (and they didn't mess with the more dangerous stuff). It was quite long in the night when they reached Psathyrella, so we decided to end the game there instead of continuing with new characters.

All in all my players really enjoyed the experience. Some of them were mostly new to DnD and none had much experience with OSR. They especially liked the weird narrative the Maze built - they could never guess what would be in the next room, but it was all interesting and it all made sense in certain kind of way. Shame Ropecon was only weekend long as it would've been fun to continue the game later.

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

Alright, it's finally time for the story you've no doubt been waiting for. The story of how the League of Extraordinary Opportunity FUCKED FOR SATAN. Before we dive into the adventure, I'll mention that I was struck by inspiration and decided to map Altdorf, its surrounding area and the dwarven temple to a hex map and pepper the resulting valley with other modules and interesting locales. I've been long wanting to run a hex crawl and this was also good opportunity to let the players explore and decide which adventures they wanted to touch. The specific adventures in the valley were: Fuck For Satan, Thine Eyes Beheld; Smile with us, friend; Hammers of the Gods and Death Frost Doom. I called the abomination Leuven Valley.
Edit: I forgot Lair of Velkis the Vile from my list. On another note, I generated Altdorf with Lastgaspgrimoire's revised Dunnsmouth tables and Vespero from Vacant Ritual Assembly also made a cameo.

But that's enough preamble. I give you

The Schwarzton Incident

The group made their way to Schwarzton with little incident and arrived late in the evening. They headed straight to Un maga praag's hut to claim their reward. They had little interest in the crone's warnings about a certain Doom that would be waiting for them in the valley.
They are quickly recognized as adventurers by the townsfolk and soon the village blacksmith meekly approaches.
According to him the town has a small problem, namely some of their children are missing. They suspect that an old satanist shrine has been reopened.
"So, where did the satanists come from?" asks Reggie.
"We don't really know. Don't they spawn from filth and impure thoughts?" the blacksmith replies.
"I heard north is fulla them! There they're called protestants!" random villager interjects.
"Ma granpa's really wise. We could ask him," blacksmith continues.
"We don't really care. Just lets get to it," rest of the League says.
"... There was a reward promised, wasn't there?"

"Well, we dun really got money and all that jazz, but ye'll be heroes! Lots of local gals in nice marriable age and ye'll get lands as a dowry. How's that? And Satanists! They always making their false gods out of gold, ye'll get those!"
"... Right. You have food right? Give us a barrel or two and we'll make a deal. Lets call it a 'get on with it' discount."


So, the group went to the abandoned seeming shrine. In front of the entrance they discovered an astrological tome and a note urging them not to bother with the cave. Writer of the note, enigmatic Iri Khan, also revealed a secret hidden in the tome - the party followed the note's instructions and spoke out an incantation. The spell drew the attention of an eldritch being in the sky, Twinkly, who hates me (and probably YOU too, as you get kicks out of the PC's suffering) and granted the PC's a boon: in the beginning of the next session they would have a full minute to peruse my notes and GM material.

The session was ended immediately because of player pressure.

Next time we gathered together to play, I was prepared. I decided to handle the Leuven Valley hexcrawl as one big adventure and thus I would give my players a huge stack of notes, printed material and bound books. They wanted information, so let them have it!
To add insult to injury, only three people made it this time: Petrus the undead Magic User, Dirk Keen the Specialist and Boris the Dwarf.
I gave them the stack and began to count time. Their panic suffused the air.
Unfortunately they were far too clever for me and my plan was trumped by modern technology. First thing they did was to snap a picture of the hex map. Then they began photographing the notes as fast as they could. A minute went by faster than it had any right to and when they had to give back the stack they had dozens of blurry photo's from the adventures.

Armed with the pictures they ventured inside the shrine. They waste no time finding the secret passages. Our friendly neighbourhood zombie Petrus immediately sprints to the sarcophagus in the west to snatch the treasure within. Conveniently he doesn't need to breathe, so the devilish sand trap merely slows him down.
On the other side, Dirk rappels down the other well and manages to get his foot stuck in a hidden bear trap. He's too impatient to wait for help and gets the foot cleanly cut off as he fails to get it free. At least the bear trap wasn't rusty.

The rest haul Dirk back up and Petrus snags and embalms the loose foot. "We can stitch it back at home... or at least I'll have a spare part."
They then break down one of the wooden tunnel covers for planks they use to cover the bear traps allowing Petrus to crawl down unimpeded. He finds three levers and luckily their combination key was one of the more clear pics they had, so he knew exactly what they did.
He made some preparatory adjustments and came back up. They left the rope hanging so it would be easy to use the levers.

Having investigated the side passages, our group moved the statue and descended down the central passage. They entered a room with a chasm in the middle and a suspicious altar on the other side. They had no photos of this place. (One or two players did have hazy memories from their previous playthrough.)
The chasm immediately drew their suspicion, as its bottom was covered in tiny holes. Dirk immediately began shoveling gravel from the cavern to cover them. Ultimately they just jumped over the chasm with little trouble.
The altar had an old book on it, but  because of Boris' warnings (from an earlier life) they left it alone.
Several following doors were easily, if a bit slowly opened by Petrus backtracking to the levers and administering the right combinations. It also helped them map the complex, as they knew room/door numbers but had no map of the place.
A curious staircase drew them in and they descended the long dark corridors until they were deep under the mountain. There they met a dead end with only a menacing stone eye and a basin filled with dark liquid.
Not impressed with the piece of art. They turned and climbed back.
And they climbed.
And they climbed.
And they climbed. With no exit in sight.

They backtracked back to the eye and this time counted their steps. No, the exit wasn't were it supposed to be. Peculiar.
They turned to their ill gotten pictures. Text was blurry and only parts of it were readable. "Seeing the eye... illusion... sacrifice... heart..."
"Alright, so we're in an illusion!" Petrus said.
Once again they descended until they could see the eye and this time they tapped, felt, examined and prodder every part of the walls, the stairs and the roof to find a secret door, illusory wall or something else. Finding none, they threw rocks and fired bolts up and down the stairway to see whether they were in a loop.
Then they marked the walls, left belongings behind to see, if they would encounter them again going forward or if they'd run into them as they returned.
They spent all their uses of Detect Magic.
No exit in sight.

"Ref, are you sure you're running this right? This part clearly reads 'illusion'"
I check my notes for the tenth time and keep my face straight. "Yeah, I'm certain we're doing this right. Just keep on trying."
Eventually they go back to the ominous eye. They empty the basin and find several shriveled hearts. Removing and adding the existing hearts fails to reveal an entrance, so it begins to dawn on them that only way out is to sacrifice a new heart.
"I'd love to do it, but I don't know if my heart will do. Being undead and all that", Petrus says helpfully.
"I'm the senior member here, no way I'm sacrificing anything!" Boris says and draws his warhammer.
Both of them start looking at Dirk.
"I won't do it! I won't! Why didn't we bring any hirelings?!" he says.
"We brought you", Petrus and Boris reply.
"Lets think this through. What exactly does the text say?" Dirk pleads. His companions still have some humanity left and they agree that killing Dirk should be the last desperate measure. Each of them takes turns reading the text and after a while a strenuous plan is made.
"I don't think it explicitly says the heart has to be removed from the cavity. Can any of us fit in the basin?" Petrus asks.
The basin itself is quite small and cramped, but after Petrus breaks a couple of his ribs, he manages to cram his chest in the basin in a way the heart is technically inside.
Edit: I was reminded by Boris' player that the one to sacrifice his heart was, in fact, Dirk, not Petrus. Dirk had the highest dexterity score, so he was crammed into the basin.
Then they backtrack up to see, if they're free.
"Wait a bit, I have to read this through", I say, holding up my hand.
"Alright, the text technically allows your solution to work. It's a bullshit plan, but this is a bullshit adventure, so it's only fair it works."
And after two hours of nightmare the players are free. Clever bastards.

The players had little patience left for the rest of the dungeon. They ventured forth double time, figured the magnetized corridor out quite quickly and by dumb luck turned the right level to avoid the vacuum trap in the next room. They did not touch the tombs on the way. Then they chose the left corridor where they were ambushed by a vaguely penis-like worm called the Luck sucker. Fighting it was nasty biz, but it was defeated.
"Sweet! Now I can summon that thing with Phantasmal psychedelia!" Petrus celebrated.
"...Lets not look what's in the right hand corridor."
Going straight they come to the final room where a treasure waits atop a pedestal, watched over by stuffed dragon heads.
"This is definetly a trap", says Boris.
The whole party backtracks to the side corridors and use Petrus' Unseen servant to tie a rope to the goblet. Then Boris pulls.

Removing the goblet causes a spray of acid spurt from a destroyed dragon head that fills the corridors and destroys most of the doors it passes through. All of Petrus skin burns off and he barely survives as a skeletal monstrosity, Dirk completely melts and Boris survives mostly unscatched. Air begins rapidly sucking out of the room, but destroyed doors make sure it will take some time.
The party makes a run for it.

They return from the mountain with one conclusion: there weren't fucking children there. Back in the village Boris explodes upon the villagers (no, not like that, you perv!) and seeks someone to blame. This gathers the attention of the village as the folks try to calm the dwarf down and convince the party to continue investigations.
Petrus spies one of the villagers leaving nervously and motions Boris to stop his tantrum. The situation calms down and they follow the tracks.

The unaware villager leads them to a cavern in the woods (which the PC's already knew was there as they had photographed the map!) and goes in.
According to the noises, there are several others in waiting. The party briefly debates setting the entrance on fire, but Petrus has a better idea:
He boldly walks in and casts Stinking cloud inside the cave. The move incapacitates everything inside, including a grotesque penis-like alien that had been strutting around. Petrus barely pays any attention to it before he kills the beast and ties up the retching villagers.
The party disregards the villager's excuses as they round them up and take them to the village. There an ad hoc jury decides to tar and feather the culprits and hold them in a pig pen until a better verdict is reached.
But there are still no sight of the children.

"Oh, lets stop this farce. It's the fucking bear!" Boris shouts and the party charges back into the woods to kill the bear that's the real culprit of the adventure.
It takes them a day, but ultimately the bear has been killed and finally our heroes can present the mostly digested kids to the townsfolk who finally believe them.
Wilbur, Lorenzo and Reggie appear as the loot is counted. They are also joined by a monster hunter named Siegfried and not suspicious at all Bob the Cleric, who made sure to get the Duvan'ku tome from the mountain cave.
None of the League are interested in the townsfolk's amorous advances, but Lorenzo barters with one family for a child.
"She'll live a good adventuring life!"
"Hmm, well we cannot feed all of our tots. You can have Hildi."
"... Hmm, can I call you Tim?"
Lorenzo was promptly shoved away from Hildi by Wilbur, Boris and Siegfried and declared the team mascot.
"We'll teach you to survive. If someone ever looks at you like Lorenzo again, remember, go for the jugular!"

---

And that's how it went. The adventure has become too famous here in Oulu and so it lost a bit of its ooompf. Those from my group who hadn't experienced the module yet were overeager to get the ultimate Raggi-experience while those who had just rolled their eyes, let the kids have their fun and hoped their foreknowledge would help them survive.
All in all, we had hella fun and, funny enough, I think the imperfect photo's the group had of the adventure made it even better. Especially the infinite staircase turned from a random and frustrating trap into a devious and confusing one. Their sneak peek also let them get some satisfaction in avoiding the worst traps, while the module still had enough shit to throw at them that the adventure didn't become a complete cakewalk

My players seem to like these shit storms. Our group completed Towers Two just yesterday  and gauging from the laughter it looked like they had most fun ever. (Remind me to churn these reports out faster, so I'll get to tell that tale.)

Next report will be about the League's travel to Altdorf and the fun adventures they had on Deathfrost mountain. Do not adjust your set.

Last edited by Tallu (2016-08-17 10:21:58)

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

Before we jump to the next adventure, I forgot to mention that during our last module one of my players was so impressed that he wanted to send feedback to Raggi. To be exact he wanted to shit in an envelope and send it to LotFP HQ.
I don't think he ever went through with it, but if he did... I'm sorry.

The League of Extraordinary Opportunity and Death Frost Doom
Hey, this report contains heavy spoilers about DFD. The adventure's best played with as little foreknowledge as possible, so if you plan on playing through it someday you might want to skip this one.


Now, lets get on with it.
Having saved the village of Schwarzton the League (this time numbering Lorenzo the Alice, Benedict the Cleric, Bob the Cleric, Reggie the Magic User, Wilbur the Specialist and Siegfried the Warrior) resumed their journey towards Altdorf. On the way they encountered none other than Vespero, who had set up his tent by a bridge.
They make small talk with the old man and find out Vespero is here on business: he's looking for the son of Baron Fluffenburger - or his corpse - and has tracked his whereabouts to a nearby house of mad cannibals. Vespero's fighting days are long gone, so he'd like the League to retrieve the signet ring for him. In exchange they'll have one free pick from his wares.

Following his directions the party followed the river up towards a small cottage, where they were confronted by the locals, the Behelden clan.
Poppa Behelden wasn't keen on having visitors and despite (or due to) our party's confident manner, the discussion devolved into bloodshed. The Beheldens were no match for our experienced group, so in a couple of rounds the adults were slaughtered and the children captured.
"What do we do with them? They're not willing to talk" asks Petrus.
"Lets take them to Altdorf. We're not murderers, but they're not really our problem," replied Siegfried, who seemed to have experience with this kind of shit.

Then they scour through the cave Behelden's used as a shrine and find treasure, including a curious basket ball sized eye. Baron's son itself is found from the nearby pond. They haul his carcass up and peel it from the baroque and suspiciously magical piece of armour. Then they head back to Vespero with the signet ring and armour in hand.
When no one wishes to don the armour, they sell it off to Vespero and then buy off most of his stock.
They continue their trek towards Altdorf. Their way goes quietly and without interference except when they come across an old road of dead, black dirt going southward. It didn't seem like anything had trodden it in ages, but no undergrowth had ever grown upon it. The League decided to ignore it for now.
The party arrives to Altdorf at midday and deliver their prisoners. They spend some time goofing around with the quirky villagers, including a devout catholic blacksmith, who used to be an adventurer, a grumpy herbalist with a grudge. The village was formed around an old jesuit fort and the townsfolk were fairly tolerant of adventurers as "a group of clerics saved their village some fifty years ago".
No one in the town had heart of any dwarven temple, but if the adventurers needed work, they could always purge the nest of spider cultists that occasionally wandered near the village and tried to recruit people. There was also the Madman of the Hills, Velkis, who was a constant nuisance. Otherwise they didn't really have any problems.
Players asked about the Old Forest Road.
"Oh, we try not to think about that one. No need to go there. No one ever goes there."
"Why? Are there monsters? Is there treasure?"
"No, at least, not anymore. It all got taken care of fifty years ago. Please, just forget about the road and the mountain."
At this point the players whipped out their completed map of the Leuven valley (that they had photographed last session thanks to Twinkly):
"Waaaaitaminute. The road leads to 'Spine', this scribble looks like 'Duncaster'. Fuck all the gods, it's Death Frost Doom."
"Death Frost Doom?! We gotta go there! Please, can we go there?"
"That's not a good idea."
"It'll be fun! And Boris isn't here today, so we cannot go to the Temple yet."
"Oh well... But this won't end well."

"Wait, there's something I want to try first", Benedict interjects.
He picks up the eye stolen from the Behelden clan. Curiously its the size of a bowling ball when carried, but seems to shrink if you bring it towards your face.
"Hey, Bob, cut out my eye, will ya?"
"Alright" Bob answers and casts Command on Benedict. "Cut your eye out."
"I'm a mutated witch pirate and I find it worrying that no one else sees anything wrong with doing this in the middle of a busy market place", Reggie ponders.
When Benedict plops the magical eye into his empty socket a magical transformation takes place: the Eye grows back to its original size and with it Benedict swells into gigantic proportions.
The appearance of a naked giant (his clothes didn't grow with him) causes an immediate uproar in the village and Benedict has to flee into the forest. Remaining party calms down the villagers by claiming they'd been defending the village and soon have a new bounty promised for the giant's head.

The League rendezvouses with Benedict near the Old road.
"Me is Big Ben now"
"Oh no, the eye has turned Benedict into an imbecile!"
"Nah, me always had intelligence of six. Now Ben not need to hide it."
They use one of their spare tents to fashion a crude overalls for Ben while he makes a cudgel by ripping out a tree.

Then they take the fateful step on the Old Road to the Spine.

The Mad Hermit Ezekiel Duncaster is at his hut, when the League passes. Ben takes an immediate liking to the lonely old man and the party is invited to tea and badger bits.
Zeke's first reluctant to let the party go up the mountain, but when he tells about his project to build graves to all dead up there and they offer to copy names for him, he eases up and shares some information about the mountain. In exchange Zeke agrees to kill a bear and make shoes for Ben.

They climb the mountain. It's cold up near the peak.

The party proceeds with healthy caution through the hundreds of graves. As going through the front door would be too risky, they circle the cabin and then enter through the back door. Bob follows single footprints and finds a relatively freshly frozen corpse. A bit later they find his journal and discover he's Norquist Orve, a famed mountaineer and tax evasionist. Reggie confiscates his journal and climbing gear.
The ethereal hapsichord music creeps the party out, but they are mostly impressed by the magical mirror and triptych piece that shows the party partaking in blood sacrifice.
"This would look good in our foyer", Wilbur decides and carries the painting outside.

They dare not touch the clock.

The party finds the book Zeke's been copying and spend some time writing down more names than Zeke could copy in a year. Bob is suspiciously familiar with the language.
Meanwhile Ben's beginning to get cold - he has no shoes and cannot enter the cabin. Bob has decided that Orwe needs a grave and has been trying to pry him off with little success. Eventually Orwe snaps in half and most of his skin is left behind and Bob has to settle for prepping Orwe to a gravestone and writing his name on his back with thick ink.

When it gets dark, they return to Zeke's hut.

Next day they hike back up, officially to copy more names, but really to investigate cabin's basement. Only Ben stays to help Zeke complete his shoes.
They break the lock and open the trap door to a long, cold descent.

Siegfried is the first to climb down.

They go through the hall of faces and open the Maw door. In the next room they wonder the significance of enshrined left hands, but then move on to the hall of worship.
There they recognise the altar from the triptych.

As they marvel at the hall, the first skull falls.

It shatters on the cold stone floor and draws immediate attention. The party counts eleven skulls remaining. They are on a timer.

They go north and shuffle through the old cult's living quarters. They look through the myriad torture devices in the back, but its the snow globes in the High Priest's room that makes them interested. They seem to depict alternate versions of the Spine-peak. Some little different than others. All equally bleak.
They single out those with movement and pack them safely. According to a scroll they found, it might be possible to communicate with them.

As the rest return to the central hall, Siegfried takes one last look around the oddly mundane kitchen quarters. Looking for a draft he finds a cleverly hidden ventilation shaft. One big enough to a grown man to crawl through.

"Hey, guys. Come see this."

They follow the shaft, Wilbur ahead of the others, to a simple room with no other furnishing than a obsidian black sarcophagus. Seeing no signs of life nor other threats Wilbur climbs down and lets the others through. Only other way out is a door adorned with hundreds of sharpened bone spikes.

Then the sarcophagus shifts. Slowly, but with inevitable force, the lid slides off and a ragged mummy, who wears bone-antlered crown, rises.
"Where did you come from?" it asks in a language understood by all.
"That's really none of your business", Reggie replies, but he's cut off by a sharp pain. Others see a jagged bone spike now growing out of his cheek.
It takes some time and some suffering, but our brave tombrobbers take down the abomination. Then they turn their attention towards the door.
It's barred from the outside. But they break it open. The mummy wore a valuable crown and there might be more deeper inside.
They enter a hallway with other, similarly barred doors.
Only one is left unbarred. A door with a carving depicting a man holding aloft a child pierced with eight swords.

It seemed like the safest choice.

Inside the Praetor-Pontifex Cyris Carnithrax Maximus has sat embalmed on his warthrone for seven millenia. As the League stood by the door, Bob thought he saw a glint in the corpse's eye and is compelled to step inside. Others follow.
Then they hear a voice:
"You stand in presence of the Praetor-Pontifex of the eternal armies of Duvan'Ku. Present yourselves."
"We're the League of Extraordinary opportunity. And we've defeated greater monsters than you!" Wilbur declares (and in my imagination, the PC's strike a pose).
One of the League aims his heavy crossbow.
Praetor-Pontifex lifts his hand and the crossbow melts away and appears in the outstretched hand. Praetor puts it away.
"You shall not be harmed before we've talked. Stay your weapons."
"So, what DO you want? You do understand your choice of decoration isn't very assuring?" Siegfried replies.
"This tomb is your prison as much as its mine. You will not leave alive without my assistance and I cannot leave without yours. Request me to lead an army once more and I shall ensure you shall leave this mountain with your lives."
The party considers what they heard for a moment.
"Well, that's sounds quite reasonable", Siegfried says.
"The terms are negotiable, right?" Wilbur adds.

The party leaves the ancient death lord to his solitude while they make a huddle back in the hallway.
"You cannot seriously be making a deal with that thing?" Bob complains while fiddling his Duvan'Ku Fanclub membership card.
"Well, it's the first thing to talk to us here and he seems sincere. I, for one, would like to live", Siegfried replies.
"And when you think about it, the world is going to end sooner or later. It would be kinda cool to be responsible for it", Wilbur adds. "Killing everything will take a long time. We'll probably be long dead."
They silence Bob and his protests and head back to the chamber.

"We're done. We have a counter offer for you!" Wilbur begins.
"Very well, but there are some things I won't forgo. That includes the inevitable death of everything."
"Fine by us. We shall ask you to lead an army, IF and only IF you agree to: 1. not to harm us or any of our properties. 2. preserve our physical AND mental wellbeing and 3. kill the Swedes first."
"My conquest shall take decades and you short lives mean nothing. But I cannot spare what I do not recognize as yours", Praetor-Pontifex Cyris Carnithrax Maximus counterpoints.
"Hmm, well it's about time our company gained a logo", Wilbur answers.

The League invents their new brand icon on the spot: an upside down triangle inside a larger triangle (think of Triforce) and the two parties reach an agreement.

"The Testifier shall seal our compact, so both sides will abide by it. You will follow", Cyris states as he stands up in his macabre glory and marches out of the room.
He walks to one of the tombs, lifts the bar and steps in. There he rouses its inhabitant: an old skeletal figure with barely any skin to cover his runic bones.
"Any vow witnessed by the Testifier is enforced by hellish law. Let us begin", Cyris exposits.
But before he manages to begin the ritual, Bob pulls out an ancient tome from his robes. The same tome he took from the Schwarzton crypt.
"Fools! You are making a huge mistake! Behold my power!" he shouts as he flicks through tome's pages and thus releases the Poorly-Conceived Half-realized Thing from its pages.
Chaos ensues. The Thing is confused and in pain and lashes out against everyone and everything in range. Unfortunately for Bob it atleast partly recognises and fears those who imprisoned it so long time ago and mostly concentrates on the party.
Others in the League are not sure what to do, so act by their usual methods: killing everything.
Praetor-Pontifex sends Testifier against the traitor Bob and watches the spectacle.
"Once your squabble is over, I'll negotiate with those alive."

Fighting the Testifier proves to be tricky as every round his otherworldly power paralyzes everyone unless they swear an oath. And upon swearing they know it will be enforced.
This also reveals the party's differing motives:
Reggie's most memorable oaths were "I'm fucking leaving this place as soon as I can", "I will become a great wizard", "Once we're out of here, I'm getting absolutely wasted" and "I'll fucking kill Zeke once we are out". While Siegfried's oath's were thoroughly darker: "I swear I shall ensure that at least two of my compatriots survive to release you, Pontifex."
Once it becomes clear they are outmatched and out of their element, the League retreats to the chamber of the Exalted Interrogator and tries to reach the shaft with the Testifier and Cyris following close behind.
Wilbur climbs up easily, but others have difficulty until Reggie uses Phantasmal Killer to conjure a giant cobra and commands it to lift everyone to the shaft.

They almost escape.

Having defeated the Thing Cyris sees his prey is escaping and telekinetically pulls Wilbur back down. He's critically wounded and pounced upon by the Testifier. Siegfried leaps to protect Wilbur.
Soon the party yields.
"We'll swear your oath, Cyris! Just let us tend to Wilbur", Siegfried yells, "You can have Bob."
"This is acceptable", Cyris says and lifts Bob up. He is slammed against the walls until they are painted with his blood.
Sullen, but victorious those left alive swear to escort Carnithrax to the nearest city holding eight thousand and eight souls. After it's done, Cyris  walks back to fallen Bob, expertly flays him and dresses.
"As long as I travel with you, you may call me by your thralls name."
The League follows him as he wakes one monstrosity after another, raises the dead sleeping in the complex and commands them to fortify the cabin and the peak.

They travel down in silence towards Ben and Zeke who were busy making food.
"Oi', you return! Wots wrong with Bob? He look different", Ben greets.
"Perkele", Reggie swears, pulls out his pistol and shoots Zeke dead. Then he pulls out the bottle.

---

This was a really interesting playthrough, partly because some of the players were already familiar with parts of the adventure. I was particularly impressed by how easily they believed Cyris Carnithrax and took his deal (even when they didn't have an undead army pressing on them). Bob was only one against this and I was very impressed how he tried to use the tome against the Cyris and the Testifier. Shame its effects were only a nuisance for them...
I also love the imaginative ways the players use Phantasmal Killer and I think they've used the illusions more for general strongwork than fighting. The spell's probably not supposed to work like this, but the applications are fun and interesting, so I'm fine with this.

Edit: Added Reggie's vow about enabling his alcoholism.

Last edited by Tallu (2016-08-20 20:57:30)

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

"Me is Big Ben now"
"Oh no, the eye has turned Benedict into an imbecile!"
"Nah, me always had intelligence of six. Now Ben not need to hide it."

hilarious

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

This is really great, I hope I get a group together like yours sometime.

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

Another chapter! This one's a bit shorter and finishes most of the loose ends in the valley before our main course: Temple of the Old Miner. That chapter's gonna be a long one, so I wanted to get this off my back first.

This chapter's a good example of what kind of horrors a party of over-leveled adventurers can wreak upon innocent adventure locations.

League visits the Boudoir of Velkis the Vile and Spider Friendship Hole

The PC's returned from the Spine with a new sense of urgency. However, Boris was still doing his business (his player insisted on being present, when the Temple was explored) and he had the only map, so the League could not tackle the Dwarven temple yet.
They decided against taking Praetor-Pontifex Bob to the nearest city yet as it would take too much time and they hoped he would die to some freak accident on the way. Luckily "Bob" was content on following them around as he wished to learn more of the world as it was now.
Having little choice they went on to purge the valley of the two remaining threats: Velkis and the Spider cultists.

Velkis had no consistent behaviour they could see and only seemed to wander around the valley, the party spent a few days trekking to and fro around the countryside hunting for Velkis.
Eventually they run into him.
During their usual pre-battle banter Velkis, the immortal insane walking corpse, is triggered by something one of the PC's said (I think it was Lorenzo) and orders him to walk him home. And 'lo, by an unnatural compulsion he is forced to obey.
The others decide to follow as this would save them the trouble of torturing Velkis' adress off him.
It takes two days to reach Velkis' hole and at the entrance the League jumps and butchers him. Siegfried takes a look inside the dwelling, a strange gravitionally challenged manse, dug into an old grave, and what he sees doesn't make him happy.
"There was a door you apparently had to open with blood. And a tree growing out of some poor people's brains. Lets not go there."
Instead they decide to sell Velkis' corpse off at the Ghoul Market. Unfortunately it doesn't sell for much as 'Velkis carcasses are dime a dozen here'.
Oh well, better than nothing. They do some business and Lorenzo creeps others out by buying child slaves (twelve years and two months) and a ghoul.
("No way we're letting you keep them", the party decides)
The League returned to Altdorf and went to look for the spider hole next.

It wasn't hard to find the place as they had the GM map of the valley. They rappel into the darkness and take the first left, another one and enter a room full of trash. They are about to turn back, when they are greeted by a giant daddy longlegs with a human smile.
The thing introduces itself as Geoffrey and asks the party's pointman Siegfried, if he's come to join their happiness.
Siegfried politely declines and says he's quite happy as he is. That's when he's skin begins itching and the itching soon turns into a dull metallic chill.
Others notice his skin's turned into gleaming silver.
"What the fuck was that?! Why did you do this to me? Explain!"
Geoffrey apologises profusely and claims it was not his doing. He sounds sincere enough that the League lets him fetch their leader Aaron to explain it better.
He disappears into the darkness and soon returns with a man, Aaron, and a gigantic wolf spider Liz.
Liz is overeager to meet new friends and skitters to greet them. Before anyone can say anything, she's already demanding to hear if Wilbur and Lorenzo are here to become her friends.
Both decline and as they do so Wilburs tongue grows long and black and develops a fork to its end.
"Welcome to the club", says Reggie, flicking his frog-tongue.
At the same time Lorenzo's skin begins emitting slick substance much like olive oil.
"So, he became even more like a slimy italian?"
"Isn't that a bit racist?"
"Yes Lorenzo! Stop being such a stereotype!"
"You really are the worst!"
This also aggravates the PC's enough so they attack. Being around their fifth level they easily slaughter poor Geoffrey and Liz, while Aaron runs for it.

They pursue Aaron to the dungeons centre, where he fervently begins praying his heathen goddess for aid. But before anything happens, he is pinned down and knocked unconscious.
Aaron's idol, seven rubies dangling in a web-like obsidian, is broken and looted by the angered adventurers.
Then the walls start rumbling. The adventurers notice their cue, grab their prisoner and leave. They get out just before the ceiling caves in, burying everyone but Aaron under many tons of stone. On the way to Altdorf Aaron once again prays to his goddess and this time his prayer is heard and he's whisked away to resurrect his friendship and plan for vengeance.

So, that was how our adventurers went and slaughtered a (mostly) harmless cave of friendly spiders. Who were the monsters? It's not my place to judge.

The League returns to Altdorf for their bounty. They try to demand extra income due to their afflictions, but find out the villagers don't have any more to give.
Luckily Boris is back in town (turns out he was in his room at the inn the whole time!) and so they may finally venture into the Temple of the Old Miner, the real destination of this expedition.

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

peterwebb wrote:

This is really great, I hope I get a group together like yours sometime.

I'm sure you will! smile
In my opinion the best groups are not found, but develop during a lot of playtime.

---

Alright! Here's the exciting finale to our campaign's Switzerland arc and also the point where the League became an economical and physical powerhouse. I suppose a little exposition is in order before everything makes sense: in the beginning of our campaign the we had multiple sessions with barely any XP, so when we played Tower of the Stargazer and for the first time ever our PC's got a good haul, we agreed not to limit advancement to one level per session. And because of our fairly large party, it hasn't been a problem since - until now.
You see, I placed several interesting, but low level adventures around the valley. To make them more desirable locations I didn't chance the gold standard to silver. Again, it made the loot gained considerable, but not too abundant compared to our level. All was well
But alas - I made the mistake of not converting Hammers of the God to silver standard. Risk seemed appropriate to the reward. Math has never been my strong suit.

So, the two above facts combined to my players' increased cunning equals our level five party hass turned into a level eight party. O boy, I'm running out of adventures to run.

... Can any of you recommend interesting high level adventures for our campaign? Eventually I have to resort to my own material, but I don't want to rely on it yet.

Disclaimer Me and the players remember the part with the tubes a little bit differently. I'll write the version I think that happened, but you guys are welcome to correct be and tell our listeners how it really went!

---

Hammers of the Gods


The gang was finally back together and the Leuven valley had delayed them too long already. It was time to finish their business for good and excavate the Temple of the Old Miner.
They made sure their wagons were packed with supplies and set off to the mountains.
Again the Temple was found without much trouble. They had the god map of the valley to consult. On the way, however, they met some interesting folk: Dwarf the Wizard (Bob's new character, Zak's variant fluffed as a dwarf sage) and Irish Specialist Halfling (Big Ben's "can fit into dungeons" character).

In the spot indicated by the map most of adventurers find a great cavern door and some (mostly ISH) find an ordinary mountainside. The League has some fun with, in their perspective, floating halfling until they tell him about the Temple and he too sees the entrance. (And falls down.)
Behind the doors lies a hallway full of purple, odorless mist. This is an immediate warning sign and they're not stepping in.
While Petrus (only one not needing to breathe) scouts the hallway, the others hunt for animals. They catch some, which they promptly throw into the hallway. The scared animals yelp and whine and run away.
They don't die in agony and Petrus returns and says he only found a coat check before he came back. So the mist seems safe enough.

They go in and and arrive to a large hall, covered in mist. Quickly they discover the floor is littered with corpses, human and dwarf, and fresh blood. Everything looks like it happened mere moments before the PC's stepped inside. On the walls murals made with techniques lost to modern civilisation. They depict dwarves uplifted from primitivity, developing unseen technology, uniting the races and eventually reaching the stars. Althought it's made clear the dwarves will never reach their fate because of their sins.
In the back room they find an ancient dwarf, apparently still alive, meditating in front of a firepit, where the purple mist is pouring from. Yearning for answers they lift the elder and return outside.
They cannot wake him up even when they try to slap him, heal him and speak to him. They cease their attempts at rejuvenation, when "Bob" laughs coldly, cruelly and tells them the dwarf is long dead. And the signs of life are merely his air and blood weeping his passing so much that they will eternally try to bring him back.
Until now, that he's taken out of the preserving mists: soon the blood will coagulate and the decay set in. Thus the last vestiges of life are stripped from the dwarf and he will cease this false-life.
"Bob, that's a bit too edgy."
They leave the old dwarf near the entrance and venture back in. There a dozen reanimated corpses, undead sentinels, have risen to greet them. Short fight later they are no more. Boris' Echo Doom makes short work of them.
The League decides to take a few hours to break every bone on every dwarf and haul the corpses to the high priest's chamber. They do their best to bar the door, but occasionally one or two more intact sentinels get past.

They briefly examine the strange altar, but agree to inspect it later. They venture deeper.
There they loot golden shears from a room filled with shorn beards. Clearly the dwarves here were deeply regretting something. They find a vast library and an entrance to a separate place in the temple.
No one can read the Old Dwarven Runes, but Petrus uses Comprehend Languages to know they are entering the Tomb of Emperor Mar-rune. Boris has never heard of him.

They ignore the glittering gems that lie in a pond in the first room. Instead their attention is drawn to the tomb's intricate rune walls: layer upon layer of carved runes that analyse every aspect of the late emperor's life.
Going deeper they are attacked by a strange, shapeshifting beast that can only move 10 feet per day, but inconveniently parks itself in front of the doorway.
Fighting it is a chore and tragically Dwarf the Wizard is pierced by hundreds of needles.
Behind the thing is a well. ISH descends down and is attacked by a flaming slug that spits burning oil on the poor halfling.

The others hear his death screams and decide not to go down.

Instead they go back to the library. Using Bookspeak and Comprehend languages Petrus translates the index and gains some interesting tidbits from a random tome. The players get properly interested, when the info is given to them via a physical piece of paper the Referee has to cut out of a larger sheet of paper.
They decide they have to get them all.

The League retreats outside and camps for the night. In the morning Petrus prepares all his slots full of Bookspeak and they are joined by Will the (probably) Elf, Dwarf's replacement. (You might notice how his naming conventions have evolved  from William and Huxley to Bob, Dwarf and Will.
Jokes were immediately made: "Will the Elf... survive? ...die horribly? ...be of any use?"
He can prepare Bookspeak, so he's recruited.

So the League spends the next two to three weeks reading through the whole library. They learn much of the world's history including how much they fucked up by doing their pact with the Duvan'ku. Especially Boris is greatly affected by the forgotten culture of his kind and he learns to curse Mar-rune's name.
"You dwarves sure are something. Did you really excavate this whole mountain and then rebuild it, just to add in waterworks?" Wilbur asks Boris.
"Err... Yes, of course!" he answers.
During the nights Petrus tries to befriend Cyris Carnithrax Maximus, but the wight does not warm up to him, so their discussions devolve into cryptic statements and philosophy. Edit: Boris was also part of the befriending effort, when Petrus asked about necromantic lore, Boris tried to pry out Cyris' hobbies and favourite books. Unfortunately, all the answers he got were emo backtalk.
Well, Petrus does learn that a collective suicide is the noblest thing for a species to achieve, that only the unified empires of old were able to defeat the Duvan'ku and that Cyris believes the League's bloody work ultimately serves his cause. Not much of a conversationalist.

Having read the whole library they briefly debate transporting all of the books back to civilisation, but then decide to explore rest of the dungeon.
They return to the underground well, where IRH met his demise and break open the floor, thus making the ladder more accessible to their gear.
They descent and startle the content and full fireslug which dies after it's hacked apart.
They go forward until the cavern broadens into a massive chasm. A single railingless stone bridge crossing across it.
"This must be the chasm the book (literally) told us about", Wilbur says.
They begin their crossing, which takes a while, and for some time they are alone in the pitch darkness with only far away sounds to accompany them.
Petrus has a religious experience.
Nearing the other side, the party's noises wake a fell beast, feathered shadow serpent, from its slumber. It unleashes a horrifying shriek that jumbles everyone's sense of balance and pounces to defend its nest.
Fighting on a narrow stone bridge is precarious and there are few close moments.
But when the serpent is making one of its circles and aiming to drop Wilbur into the abyss, Petrus hits it with his signature spell Stinking cloud.
"Wilbur, please don't fall off the edge!"
He saves Wilbur while the paralyzed serpent falls off into the empty nothing.

They find nothing but a few curios from the serpents nest and so proceed forward to a ornate entrance hall.
Inside there is a wide double door barred and decorated with twelve rubies. In front of the door is a small altar and beside it stand two massive statues of dwarf guardians.
They examine the door and realise the bar is magical.
"You evaluate the door and count that each of the rubies should be worth about 100 gold. The bar is made of an unknown alloy and even without the enchantment it would be worth 500 gold for someone who can appreciate it", I read from the text.
"... Do we really want to go in there? If we take the rubies, we'll be richer than anyone in Italy. Hell, we could just take the bar and be rich!" Siegfried says having done some calculations. "That's an absurd amount of money! And someone has seen a lot of effort to make sure nothing INSIDE that room is let out."
"Äää, are we really going to come this far and then not go inside? Is that what the League is about?" Wilbur retorts.
(And this is where I begin to notice I made a Huge mistake, when calculating (or more accurately, not calculating) the treasure totals.)
"We're not touching the rubies.  Lets just go in", Boris says.
"These statues look suspiciously animate, should we destroy them before they animate?" someone asks.
"No. They'll let us in. I know, it's a dwarf thing", Boris knows.
Edit: Updated the dialogue a bit.

Like always, greed wins over reason, they decide to camp in front of the door and after everyone's prepared they remove the bar and open the door.
Ill wind blows from the chamber, but the statues don't move. Inside is a tomb with thirteen sarcophagi, one of them raised above others, clearly regal. A statue of a dwarven smith is poised atop the grave, ready to strike it with its hammer. It's the only sarcophagus that's locked.
The party cautiously steps inside. Wilbur inspects the lock mechanism and doesn't like what he sees.
"If that statue's going to hit the stone when the lock's opened, it's impossible to get out of the way even if you know its coming."
"Maybe I can use knock?" Will offers.
Meanwhile Siegfried and Boris have been opening and searching the other sarcophagi.
"These honor guards wear pretty impressive armour. Probably worth 1500 gp at the least, if you include their weapons", Siegfried says. "I'll try this one more time. Lets not open that grave. If we take these, we'll be so rich nobody can afford to buy these off us!"
"I'll have to second him. I feel uncomfortable desecrating the tomb of an emperor. Especially this emperor", Boris says. Even now he feels the restless dwarven spirits stirr and anger.
"Alright, we've pushed our luck this far. Lets call it a day, before it runs out", Wilbur says. The rest agree.

Carefully they dust off the old bones from inside the armour and pile the golden plate to the entrance hall. While doing so they keep a close eye to all the statues, which, for the time being, remain calm and not bloodthirsty.
After they have everything they want, they close the doors and replace the bar on the door.
"Do we take the rubies?" Wilbur asks.
"Nah, they're spare change now", Siegfried answers.

It takes three trips to get everything over the chasm and out of the temple. During the journey I re-read my notes:
"Hah, the spirit of vengeance is after you even if you didn't touch Mar-rune! ...öö, remind me again, did you take the bar with you?"
"No, we put it back to its place."
"..." "Fuck."
And so the bastards got off scot free.

"Do we even want to explore the other side? We're already richer than the Pope" Siegfried asks the rest.
"I kind of want to see what's there. The books said something about a giant keystone diamond", Wilbur says.
"And the banes. They are the real treasure in here", adds Boris.

The central hall has begun to stink. Most of the preserving mist is gone and the corpses have begun to rot. Luckily flies cannot get through the illusion.
They examine the central altar once more, but now with keener insight. They strike the meteor with the golden tools provided and, as was written, the doorway in opens.
They find fountains in the next room and thanks to their well read knowledge know that they are part of a cleansing ritual.
"We've trampled this place enough. Only proper to show a bit of respect, eh?" Petrus says and they perform the simple ritual.

Next on the line is a large natural cavern. They can hear the sounds of water and see shapes of construction further in. The waterworks and the subsurface transportation system that was written in the books.
Siegfried climbs atop one of the cranes and finds a sentinel there waiting for him. When the undead strikes him, his grip loosens and Siegfried falls thirty feet on coarse gravel. This only makes him angry.
The warrior stands up and climbs back up. Petrus uses Fly to aid him and together they destroy the guardian sentinels.
Edit: There was no health potion, only sweat and grit.

The party learns that the cranes are a control system for a series of submarine tubes, which were  tubes in total: three moored along the shore and one apparently on the other side. As an experiment the League reels in the extended line and goes to look inside a returning tube.
Their opening of the hatch also stirrs up the brown mold inside and everyone gets a lungful of spores. Siegfried, Will and Petrus can take it, but Boris and Wilbur frenzy and in their confusion think it's best to jump into the whirlpool.
The party manages to restrain Boris, but Wilbur wriggles free and jumps in. He's quickly sucked down and disappears.
"Oh well, that was that. We had a good run", his player says.
"Wait a moment, I think you get a save versus Magic Device."

Wilbur miraculously survives the ordeal and is thrown on the opposing shore. Back on the other side the rest hurry up to mount a rescue operation. (They have to wait for Will to scrawl some symbols on the wall.)

To make certain they have a way back, they first let the tube they reeled back get sucked in. Then they board another tube and follow. On the other side everyone is relieved to find Wilbur none worse for wear.
Having gathered their bearings they have a look around. There are five lifelike statues along the shoreline that trigger immediate flashbacks to Abelia Prem's mansion. Partial relief comes, when one of them is inscribed with the words "We stare willingly into the stone lizard’s eyes so that we may stand vigilant in memory of what our people have done.”
"So there might be a basilisk down here."
The party comes to an intersection. Rightward room is infested with fungus nobody's willing to touch, so they go left towards the strange noises they've been hearing. There they are attacked by a thing resembling upside down shark that keeps screaming louder and louder. It is killed and blessed is the silence.
They return to the intersection and choose straight this time.

They reach another intersection. Left way has nothing interesting in it, and right way has been partially collapsed. There they find remains of an earlier party and loot some interesting spells: Form made flesh and Greater form made flesh.
Continuing forwards is a gigantic hall and in its roof a jewel that cannot be anything else than the Keystone diamond.
"I can fly up and fetch it", Petrus offers.
"Wait, the book might have also mentioned something about the gem holding the weight of the mountain. Lets save some treasure for Reggie and the others who are absent", reasons Wilbur.
They solve the puzzle that's holding the door shut with little effort and move to the next corridor.
"This looks like a trap", says Siegfried while eyeing the wide hallway and something looking like rails on the floor.
"The books said something about a 'juggernaut'. Maybe it's here", Wilbur ponders.
They ignore the side railings for now and cautiously walk the middle path. They don't spring the trap.
Second to last room is a pair of doors.
"This must be the final test. According to the book 'Always choose right' is the Miner's motto. So they trapped the right door", Wilbur remembers.
"Then lets open the left one", Petrus decides and opens the left door.
And triggers the trap. Remember the motto? Always choose right? Clever, eh eh?

They make their tests and no one dies. Once the poison gas has evaporated, they take the right door and enter the Bane tomb.
And they see they're not the first visitors. All except the Elf bane are missing and the remaining bane is locked behind some kind of mechanism.
"Seems that the golden tools would fit here. Now, who has them?" Wilbur asks.
"Erm, I think we left them at the altar?" Petrus says after everyone's awkwardly looked at their inventories. "Someone should go get them."
They draw straws. Will gets the short one.

Having no other choice he boards their tube and reels himself back to the other side.
Somewhere in the middle the tube hits something and stops. Will is alone under several tons of water. Oxygen is running out.
That's when he draws an arcane symbol on the wall and casts Seven gates. He hops in and emerges near the cranes.
"Whew, good thing I prepared these."
He goes back to the altar, gets the tools and returns.
He remakes his runes and boards another tube, releases the cable and goes under.
It also gets stuck. And he didn't prepare another casting.
"Curses. Well, Wilbur made it, so can I." Will accepts his fate, he opens the hatch and throws himself into the current.
And by Jove he makes it!

Wet and cold he returns to the others holding the tools.
"What took you so long? We didn't ask you to go for a swim!" Boris berates him.
"Our way back is stuck. And I have the only way back, so check your attitude", Will retorts.
The League considers clearing the collapsed tunnel from before, but according to their books it's collapsed for fifty miles, so they have no choice, but to trust Will.
Then they remember why they sent him. Boris takes the tools and places them on the pedestal, which then disappears into a slot. Then, just before the party thinks they've been fooled, another slot opens revealing Elf Bane, the magical warhammer and a silver gleaming shield. Boris claims their prize.
The party makes camp and rests until Will has prepared his spells for the day.

Next day Will casts Seven gates again, they return to their camp, pack it and send word to Altdorf hiring several carrymen. They pay absurdly well, so absurdly that no one wants to look at their belongings.
Before heading home they make a detour to Zürich, where they drop off Cyris Carnithrax Maximus.
He walks through the city gates without saying even a goodbye. Will considers shooting him in the back, but then decides otherwise. He has an interest in staying alive.

On the way home the League visits the Ghoul market and sells some of their choice items to Vespero. They also inquire, if they can make orders and Vespero, seeing the value of returning customers, promises to keep his eyes open.
Particularly, Petrus wants to find necromantic lore that would advance his condition to proper lichhood while Siegfried asks for something to make him look normal. Wilbur asks about the nature of Ghoul market and if it'd be possible to get an entrance near their castle.

The journey home is uneventful and back in Venice they decide to throw a gigantic party. First, they auction off their hoard and then they reserve Venice's most extravagant tavern for the next two months. It's a proper carnival, where they dam and empty one of Venice's canals just to fill it with booze.
It is said that during the party Ben is turned into a boar by a scorned witch, then inducted into a blood cult and engaged to a lizard. Siegfried and Boris wake up naked in a bed with a succubus who's wearing priest's lovage. Both have rings on their fingers.
Two thirds of Venice burn down. How? No one knows?
(Our best theory goes to Reggie, who said that one house caught on fire and other houses didn't wish to look square - so they lit theirs on fire too.)
They nearly wrecked the economy. Luckily most of the inflation went to repair the massive property damage caused. League of Extraordinary Opportunity is home and is content.

They enhance Castle Greyskull: a church is built for Ben (which doubles as a tent), while the castle proper gains a tower and a new wing. They begin making plans for an underground tunnel leading to some mysterious place.
They hear Bernoulli, the famous artist, is nearby and decide to hire him to do the interiors. They don't care he has a commission from the Pope. They'll pay more.
Edit:They hired the famous sculptor Bernini, not the mathematician Bernoulli. Tho his work would probably been interesting too.

The League also receives a letter from Vespero. He writes that a group of deadites are interested in Petrus' condition and would be able to make it more stable. In addition, two necromancers expressed an interest for cooperation and might be able to make Petrus reach new states of being. First of them, Henriette, operates from Paris but was about to leave for Khirima, Nigeria for an extended research leave. The other, Razak the Great, was waiting in his tower near village of Mlag, Hune province, Portugal.
For Siegfried Vespero delivered a rumour that prince Zal, lord of Hune, possessed a mask that would make anyone beautiful. Also a certain eccentric Joop van Ooms of Amsterdam had promised a portrait for anyone, who would spend a night in the Ayarai mansion in Occitania and tell him the tale...
Of ghoul market Vespero couldn't say nothing else than that Count Madrigal was the realm's sole lord and all queries would need to be directed to him.

After their hangover had passed, the League began to plan their next journey: they shall buy a ship and sail to Occitania, France. There they will spend the night in the Ayarai mansion, sail to Amsterdam, claim their reward and on the way back they'll visit Hune and its lords.
Last they will stop near Catalonia, where according to Malando's notes lies an ancient empire's deep carbon observatory.

And so another glorious chapter of the League of Extraordinary Opportunity has closed and next one begun! The sinister metaplot is creeping ever closer toward our heroes, who have thus far managed to evade every plot I've thrown at them. The world's end is creeping closer and the League must decide whether they'll fix what they broke or shake this dead world's ashes from their shoulders.

Edit: My players are true thespians and cannot bear when the tale goes wrong. Thus I was convinced to make some adjustments that have been marked.

Last edited by Tallu (2016-08-25 10:41:15)

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

Also in the next installment: the band of murderhobos brings an innocent little girl along for the ride.

Stay tuned.

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

Here's another chapter of our report. These chronicle the adventure Cursed chateau and about three sessions of play. I have to admit that I didn't particularly enjoy running this adventure. One part was that our PCs were clearly overleveled for most of the content, but the Chateau was mostly uninteresting with only random spooky encounters to fill the void - and they lost their luster immediately, when players figured out they were random.
Additionally I try to run my sessions with as little prep as possible and this module's room key was downright horrible when compared to other haunted house's such as Stygian Garden or Hell House. Enemy encounters and random effects that were needed right when PC's enter the room were mostly placed last in the text with nothing to draw attention to them. I think the adventure had enough interesting content for a mansion half the actual size.
Some probably enjoy the space and to each on their own, but the lack of content wouldn't have been so glaring, if there wasn't a barrier preventing adventurers from simply leaving after they'd had their fill.

But enough rant, this is a report not a review. Due to reasons above, I've only written the highlights and interesting encounters. (I've simply forgotten how most of it went.) If my players think I left something out, feel free to add your commentary!

---

As we found out last time, the League of Extraordinary Opportunity had set their next venture. Buying a vessel was no challenge as they could offer so much above the market price.
So, they claimed a nice caravel as their own and christened it Ecstasy of Gold. Reggie was made the captain and he recruited the crew personally.
They set sail for the coast of Occitania. A day out Reggie orders the ship to stop at something that looks like an ordinary shallow stone. Reggie orders the "gift", a blind emancipated child, to be brought from the holds and alone with her he rows to what is, in fact, a pylon rising from the sea.
He takes old, rusty chains that hang from the pylon and ties the child up. Then he leaves.

When the others questions him he only cryptically utters that the Sea Father needs his due. The crew knows enough not to question.
Feeding Big Ben becomes another problem. As a temporary solution the crew begins to drag a net behind the ship and then throwing the fish down the stowage hatch, where Ben waits mouth open. But when he develops a taste for dolphin flesh, Will takes great offence. When he tries to free a hapless dolphin the crew hunted for Ben, Ben flies into rage and kills the poor thing.
Will goes back to his cabin to brood.

Hildi, the farmer girl the League grabbed from Schwarzton, had been assumed to silently follow the party around so far, tending the camp, staying out of trouble and occasionally getting some bits of wisdom from Siegfried, Reggie or Wilbur. (Mostly about Lorenzo and how men like him can be stabbed in the crotch or throat region.)
During their voyage she however takes a liking to Siegfried and he decides to tutor her. Hildi proves to be an adept climber and she also picks up the sword surprisingly easily. They decide their mascot is big enough to join their next adventure.

Eventually they reach Basroucher, a small coastal town in French Occitania. They dock and pay the freak tax for Ben. In the local hotel they learn that Basroucher lies conveniently in Ayarai line's old lands and the Chateau is only short ride eastwards. They also learn that they are not the first adventurers to go into the mansion - and that no one has returned.
"No need to worry. We've become experts at returning from that kind of places" Wilbur muses.
Their plans of claiming the estate as their summer home is halted, when they learn that Ayarai line isn't dead.
In fact, one of them is sitting in the same room opposite them.
He, Severian Ayarai, has been holding house in this pitiful town for better part of the year. He wants to claim the mansion for himself, as is his right, but has no interest in spelunking haunted houses. So he's been hiring adventurers.
The League gets offered the same deal as the others: 50 gold pieces for exorcising whatever demonic force calls the place home and for finding proof that old lord Joudain was nothing more than a devout servant of the God the annals claim him to be. When the League isn't impressed enough by the amount offered, Severian also adds that he'd be willing to introduce such heroes to the court of Paris, where opportunity lies.
And when it doesn't work, he gives up and says he can always find other adventurers, in fact, just the other week he hired one looking just like Wilbur over there. Only without a freaky tongue.
"From what I've heard, lord Joudain doesn't sound like a saint. We probably won't get to cash that reward", Siegfried ponders later.
"Don't be so sure. Long time ago I worked for KGB, the Kääpiö Great Bureau*. And you know what they say of us dwarves: We are great at forgin... evidence!" Boris reassures him.
(*Kääpiö is Finnish for dwarf.)

As the League is leaving the town, they are halted by a plump man and a handful of guards. The man introduces himself as Domovoi Beauclair, the local mayor.
"I know you heard the young lord's offer. Our town is poor and has little to give, but please, hear us out."
"We're listening. For now."
"Lord Joudain was a cruel master. When he still lived his tithe was not mere coin and wheat. He also demanded working men and women, who were never seen again. After that one night of horror he was no longer seen and nothing has come out of the chateau since. We know he was a satanist and dealt with devils. If we had proof, we could make a case to ecclesiarchal tribunal, where they could revoke his titles, seize his lands and redeem our people from our history of sorrow.
We don't have much, but I can offer you 50 pieces of silver from my personal coffers for every piece of evidence that would damn him."
"Hmm, your tale doesn't really move our hearts. The lord promised fifty times what you have."
"Of course, if Joudain is declared a heathen, his lands will be auctioned off. The heroes who exposed him would surely get the chance to bid first."
"That changes everything! Consider your good lord excommunicated!"

It's late evening when the League camps out in front of the Chateau Ayarai. The foreboding estate is walled and the main entrance hidden inside a hedge maze. Some probing with spells and stones gives the jig away: the whole area is surrounded by a magical barrier and the maze entrace is the only place it can be penetrated. Big Ben confirms this with his true sight.
They camp until morning and enter the maze. Its gates swing shut behind them. They are trapped inside.

They wander follow the narrow passages passing by some peculiar sights: a blood red pear tree, each pear grows with the name "Catarina" on it. (Will takes some for himself.) A lilac tree which lulls Siegfried and Reggie to sleep.
A bush, with feet sticking out of the ground in front of it. When they decide to dig out the victim, a pale man appears and asks them to stop. He attacks when they don't comply.
They are accosted several times by a ghastly apparition of a man, who lunges at them, but vanishes when struck. One time Will decides to try the spell Form made flesh and when he casts it, blood rains and the bushes, the ground and the trees are covered in fresh entrails and viscera. This greatly frightens little Hildi, who seeks shelter behind Siegfried's legs.
"What the fuck did you do, you degenerate elf?"
"Never do that again, I swear!"

Later he tries that again. Same thing happens.
But this time, Hildi springs from her hiding place and pierces Will with her sword. Will is surprised, but before he has a chance to counterattack, Siegfried and Reggie run in between them.
"Hildi! That is a dangerous weapon! You cannot poke friends with it!"
"But you said it's used to kill bad men! He did the bad thing again. He's a bad man!"
"Well, yes. You are right, he's a bad man. But he's our bad man. You need to learn the difference."
"O-okay. I'm sorry."
"There, there. We're not angry. Look, Ben healed him, you did no lasting harm."
(under her breath) "Darnit"

Eventually they made their way through the maze and enter the mansion grounds. Before going in they circle the mansion and encounter a smith trapped in his own smithy. They enter through the back door and fight a bunch of animated furniture. They head towards the dining hall, where they meet the mansion's butler and his squad of blood thirsty maids. They act cordial enough before Will (who had fallen behind) came to the room and was immediately attacked. The servants were then slain.
Upstairs they converse with an old man, who claims to be the mansion's master. He mentions other quests who now had been 'escorted to the green suite'. The League decides to investigate.
The green room is barricaded and when they pound the door a familiar voice answers:
"This is our turf! Get the fuck out!"
"... Wilbur, is that you?"
"How in hell you know my name?"
"Long story. Let us in, we're adventurers too!"
"Alright, but no sudden moves!"

As the door is unbarred from the other side. Will (or might have been Reggie) casts Invisibility on Boris. Just to be a dick.
The door opens and behind is Wilbur the Specialist. But not the Wilbur we all know and love. The original Wilbur, way back from the Pale Lady's Boudoir.
He reluctantly lets the party in and motions for his compatriot, Flavio (another face from the past), to lower his bow.
"Alright, tell me all."
"Well, we have a Wilbur too. But he's much more handsome than you."
"Very funny. So, where's the fucker?"
"He's waiting outside. What happened to Boris, weren't you supposed to have one too?"
"... He went a little coocoo after seeing the Word of Creation. Now he's seen another two and has gone full mental. As far as I know, he's somewhere east gathering an army of Boris'"
At this point Boris decides to have a little fun and grabs Wilbur from behind, shouting a loud greeting.
He's almost shot by Wilbur in retaliation.
"We're not saying the B-word", Flavio helps.

The two parties trade stories. Apparently, Wilbur, Flavio and Boris 2 got shunted into Scotland from the Pale Lady's place, where they made their way back only to hear their payment had been claimed from under their noses. They did some adventuring around England, helping some halflings and looting an old church's labyrinthine basement. This raised them enough capital to fund an expedition to Isle of Thule. They, however, didn't find much treasure and instead got lost in the Under-Earth. There Boris found another Word of Creation, which lead to them parting ways.
Now they were here looking for the ceremonial cloak of Deep Ones.
It comes as no surprise that the two parties don't get along well, especially when Wilbur-two joins the rest of the party. So the groups agree to make their separate ways through the Chateau as much as possible.
(It doesn't help matters that the Originals accused the League of adventure crashing and the League began to mock their slow progress.)

So, the League moves on with searching the mansion. At some point they realise most of the 'spoopy stuff' is randomly generated without any context and that the servants could be killed with one or two blows, after which the search becomes a routine chore.
Eventually they find Lord Joudain's secret study, where they catalogue its arcane riches before noticing the huge demon trapped in the middle of the room. (Really, the huge demon is mentioned last in the page long exposition! This module could have used some practical editing.)
"Hey, guys! Mind letting me out? This dude here died before he bothered to do it. It's really frustating..."
"Oh, it's another demon... How are you gonna screw us over?"
"No no no, I just want to be let out. Hey I'll throw you a bone. I'll tell you how you'll get out of here! And when you let me out, I'll fulfill one wish!"
"Alright. We'll negotiate about the wish later. Shoot, why are we trapped?"
"The fool who trapped me here, Joudain, is as much a prisoner as I am. Free him and you'll be free."
"... that doesn't sound like a good idea. Tell you what, we'll finish scouting this place and then come back for you."

They find a deceased wizard, Joudain's earlier guest and defeat the spirit guarding it. Lorenzo pockets rest of the poisoned wine, while Petrus takes his magical cloak. "Sweet, now I'm a true great wizard!"
In a hidden gallery, a small boy advises them to look at Joudain's telescope that would be able to answer their questions. They find the telescope and begin asking questions: First the telescope claims Joudain has possessed one of them and urges them to kill each other, but eventually Reggie realises that listening to a demonic telescope might not be the sanest idea.
"Is it really reasonable to ask haunted house's telescope which of us has to die for us to get free?"
They begin asking the same question several times and thus determine its general accuracy. Eventually they gleam two mostly accurate bits of information: Joudains ennui upholds the barrier and he takes pleasure in the suffering of others.

The League returns to the Green parlor, where Wilbur and Flavio wait, and start planning how to proceed. Again an argument breaks out, this time between Flavio and Reggie, who accuses the italiano of being a weak coward.
So, Flavio challenges Reggie into a duel.
"Alright. I cast Haste. Then I shoot him. Then I shoot him again."
Flavio dies before he has a chance to react.
This angers the original Wilbur, but he's grappled by Siegfried and Petrus and eventually self preservation instinct wins and he yields.
The League considers just killing him, but something about it doesn't feel right, so they just take all his stuff and cram him into a closet.

The League then returns to the demon Bayemon and after negotiating a deal they free him.
Bayemon laughs maniacally and attacks. He doesn't last long.
"That does it! That was the last demon we're dealing with! Unless they're in an union!" Boris says.
"Hey Ref, we saw him, so does this mean we can now conjure a Bayemon with Phantasmal Killer?" Reggie and Petrus ask.
"...", I reply.
They move onto the basement and mostly scout it with Will's Wizard eye. They don't bother going to the wet froggy places, but find the cloak of the Deep Ones (tho it mostly resembles a froggy onesie). Petrus immediately dons it.

One room is full of suspicious gas and when Siegfried enters to take a look around, the hallucinations conjure up his worst nightmare.
"Your Warrior ability makes you technically immune to fear, but this is half-chemical and we don't want to completely trivialise these kinds of traps. Are you okay with making your Magic save, but with advantage?" I ask.
"Sounds reasonable. *rolls* One. And One."
"You keel over dead. From fear."

"Holy fuck! Siegfried died!" Boris yells.
"His hair has turned white and he looks slightly concerned. It truly must have been a horror that appeared to him", Reggie continues.
"Great, now I'm even more like Geralt", Siegfried's player mutters.
"THE CURSE IS LIFTED! AT LAST I AM FREE" disembodied voice of Lord Joudain shouts.
"... What was that?"
"That was surprisingly sudden."
"Well yes, according to the table players get one point every time they curse and you all curse like sailors, so the Joudain's Fun has been near the cap for some time now. Siegfried's death just tipped it over", I clarify.
The party decides they've had enought of the place. They embalm Siegfried and retrieve the original Wilbur. They cannot let him go free when there's still treasure to catalogue, but can't justify killing him. Luckily Reggie and Petrus find a solution: they can repair Bayemon's circle and trap him there. Which they do.

They spend a day gathering everything of value to their cart and free original Wilbur (who leaves hoping they'll never meet again). They locate the nearest entrance to ghoul market and with several trips haul most of the treasure to Vespero.
They also take Siegfried to the Skinsmith and pay it to restore him to life.
"Oi know jost wot he needs", Skinsmith says and begins hammering. He brings two pairs of rotten angel wings and welds them into Siegfried's back. "Fing o' truu beuty he is."
"So, I basically became a bad Second Life OC? White hair, silver skin and now angel wings?" Siegfried sums.
"Our marriage was 'til death do us part, Siegfried! You died, that makes me a widow, bitch!" Boris says, takes off his ring and throws it at Siegfried.

Now that the brunt of the loot had been sold, they only returned to the chateau to pick some little things for mayor Domovoi and returned to Basroucher. They cashed in their quest, boarded their ship and went on their merry way to Amsterdam.

---

At the moment of writing, we're about three sessions ahead. Autumn has meant more work and study for all of us (not to mention new campaigns) so our pace has significantly slowed down. The next two chapters will be about our group's visit to Amsterdam with them meeting Joop van Ooms and the short time they spent in an idyllic village of Mlag in coastal Portugal.

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

In this chapter the League visits Amsterdam and its eccentric da Vinci, Joop van Ooms. It's mostly exposition and making plans, which is why it came out so quick. The next one is about the one action packed session where we conquered the Towers Two. It's a fun one.

---

It takes the Ecstasy of Gold two weeks to reach Amsterdam. They arrive just when the local Beer & Cheese festival has reached full throttle and everyone is stalled for a few hours in the docks drinking cheap beer and dipping bread in cheese. They make some inquiries during the merriments and learn that Ooms is a known figure in the city and everyone knows of his home.
They follow the directions around the city and eventually find Ooms' tower. They knock on the door and are greeted by Gilles de Rais, a huge silent African. After initial greetings, he invites the League in and serves them tea. And despite his silent manner, the adventurers seem to get along with him well.
Eventually they had to move from the parlor to the garden in the third floor as it was the only room large enough to hold Ben, whose shrink spell had begun to run out.

During the wee hours Joop and his aide Henry finally return, piss drunk and followed by a cadre of fine ladies and gentlemen. They are all excited to meet the new visitors and soon the party has moved to the garden, where everyone, especially Joop, is eager to hear about the League's adventures. Joop declares that tonight they will celebrate and business can wait until morning.

Next morning Joop shows the adventurers around his house. It doesn't take long to figure out there's something special about him and his paintings, especially the unfinished one depicting his eventual death. Even so, Siegfried, Ben, Petrus, Wilbur and Reggie agree to be painted. Will and Boris refuse.
During the session Joop makes idle chatter and asks several questions about his models. When he's finished, the League is in for a surprise:
In the painting, Wilbur is depicted with a suit of solid gold, while Siegfried is missing wings, once again has light skin and is wearing a strange straight uniform, with a red armband and unknown insignia on it. Petrus is depicted even more monstrous than he is and Ben's portrait only has one eye and his face has been shaped to fit around it. When they look at each other, they notice what the painting shows to now be reality. (And to his disappointment, later Ben notices that he can no longer grow to gargantuan proportions.)
Reggie, who was painted later, was at first painted in a sorcerous tunic (resembling Doctor Strange's), but after he gets nosy with his mind reading Ioun stone (he bought it off Vespero), Joop makes an addition: single horn growing from Reggie's forehead that displays his thoughts in old scripture. Luckily he usually thinks in Deep Speech.
Will tries to play Ooms' talent and asks him to paint his dagger and one of the blood pears taken from the chateau. Joop decides to have some fun and paints Will's dagger as an apple and pear as if it's made of wood and iron. Will isn't amused. Instead he begins focusing his efforts on somehow curing Ooms' paintings.

After they've agreed on how to deliver the painting to their mansion, Joop gathers everyone back into the parlor and lets them in on a secret: a great evil has awakened in the world and even now dead walk the land. Joop van Ooms is rather fond of this world and so is seeking capable heroes to save it. He has a quest for the League, if only they are brave enough to take upon it. He also mentions that he has two letters to deliver for the League. He doesn't think reading them will do anyone any good, but cannot prevent the curious players. Instead, he only pleads they listen to his proposition first:
Jooms has found two places that might house a weapon, arcana or device capable of defeating the evil menacing Earth. Tales tell of a Temple of Ages That Are Not in the Lost Plateau, Nigeria. According to Ooms, the plateau is surrounded by impenetrable barrier, so he needs a group that has experience with inescapable barriers to pierce it and find whatever's within.
Alternatively he's learned of two grand magi, Levh and Tilia, that claim the mountains surrounding Qelong Valley their home. A party of adventurers could be able to draw the attention of these colossal intelligences and make a good enough case for them to intervene.
And Joop promises to reward anyone to embark on this quest with a free commission. Or several, if they really succeed.
The party promises to consider his proposal, so Joop hands over the letters and retreats upstairs, so the League could read them in peace.

The two letters are as follows:

'Greetings heroes,

words of your deeds have traveled to my ears and I'm greatly impressed. Individuals like you are rare and it would be a great pity to waste that potential - especially now, that your world has been victim to some unfortunate and very, very irreversible decisions.
I wish to offer you a new home - and work worth your merit.
If I woke your interest, you are to prepare for a journey that will be both weirder and more dangerous than anything you have ever experienced. When you are ready - and I emphasize that you should not hurry, for your own good - travel to the Monolith. Do not bring anything you cannot carry on you.
Or find another way. I trust you can take care of yourselves.

Do what you will, I await you in Vornheim, the Grey Maze.

Honourably yours,

Eshrigel
The Grey Medusa'

---

'You have sought me. And now you have my attention.

As it is, I happen to have an use for vassals that are not afraid of the sun. My king Artorius has called for war and if you serve well, you shall not be disappointed in your just reward. The trade routes you've plead will be the least reward for service.
My cavalry rides as the year dies. Come to my manor on the coast of Belfast before it's due. Or send word of yourselves and I shall make preparations for you to follow me.

I hope I haven't been mistaken about you. Mortals rarely become anything remotely significant.

Signed,
Count Madrigal
The Ghoul Lord, Impaler of Belfast, Bishop of Annwn'

---

What an interesting development.
The League has been vying for a better access to Ghoul Market for some time, so Madrigal's (quickly corrupted into Lord Mardi Gras in their mouths) proposition sounds promising. But it seems too much like running away and, despite all of their flaws, the adventurers still care for this world and would prefer saving it. Petrus has his own interests in Khirima, but otherwise both of Ooms' locations have little to offer. Out of character the players are divided between Vornheim and Khirima (with one or two votes for Madrigal's war). They are too savvy about Qelong to even consider going there.
"We're not going to the fantasy - fucking - Vietnam. Period." was how Siegfried put it.

Nevertheless, when Joop returns they pledge themselves to his cause and promise to find a way to save the world. Then they return to their ship - they still have Portugal and Catalonia to visit, before they need to commit into any course of action.

Re: Tales of Greed, a LotFP campaign report

"...dankest adventure ever..."

"You deserved this adventure"

"This was like you turned this up to eleven and higher until all the knobs broke"

"...what the fuck is this shit..."

"It's like completely over the top all the time, but never becomes lame"

"Most we've ever laughed at this game"

Wow. Just wow. This is the story I've been itching to tell you. In fact, I've been churning these chapters out quickly just so I could get to this one.
Towers Two was a spectacle, where the ingenuity of my players met the absolute craziness of the Brockie's brain. And it exploded into tiny pieces. Of flaming shit. Fukken metal.

Before we get to the nasty, I have one thing to say: For all Portugese reading this, I am truly sorry. We don't really think your nation is like this. Nor do we want anyone to think it is.

Alright, lets get to it.

The crew had been sailing along the coast of Portugal and when they entered the shores of Hune, they immediately knew something was awry. It might have been the murky brown ocean water that faintly smelled of shit. It might have been the heavy drizzle that seeped through even thickest clothing and left a sticky, slightly brown tang. Or it might have just been the air.

Mlag might once have been a prosperous town. Now it was far from it. Through their spyglass the League spied one abandoned and defiled house after another, neglected and overgrown salt pits, a ruined lighthouse and few boats with their lethargic inhabitants. One of them was taking a shit in the water.
"Do we really have to go there?" Siegfried asks, though he already knows the answer.
They don't want to dock, so they anchor in the middle of the bay and row towards shore. There's one ship moored there, tha charmingly named Sea Slut. Its captain Olaf comes to meet the visitors.
"What the fuck are you doing in this Odin forsaken shitcastle?"
"None of your business, even if I'm beginning to wonder too", Reggie replies.
"I'll give ya one piece of advice. Get the hell out, there's nothing in here."
"Then why are you here?"
"I swear I'd rather be anywhere else. But my ship was caught in a storm and we had to take shelter here. Now our sails are torn and my worthless crew is too drunk to make repairs."
"Then stop giving them rum!"
"You think I didn't? They go to the Slippery spot, the only drinking hole remaining. This place used to have thriving salt business, but nowadays the locals don't do nothing but drink."
A sudden realisation hits Reggie:
"There's nothing but shit in here... What is the booze made of?! What is it MADE OF?!"

They feel pity for the old captain and make a deal to rent their (currently) sober crew to repair his ship. In return Olaf gives them one barrel from his cargo, ten kilos worth of opium.
"A steal, but it's not like I can sell it here."
Reggie vows that their crew won't be making it to the shore. "I'll double your rum ration, if you stay on the ship! Not even a foot on land, you hear me! It's made of shit! Everything is!"

At this point most of the adventurers only want to leave, but then they would have made the trip for nothing. And besides, Sea Slut's repairs would take a day or two to complete.
"Fuck Portugal! Fuck Portuguese! No wonder they all want to leave!" Siegfried curses.
"Hey, have a little pity. These people have nothing but shit and booze", Reggie says. "- that is made from shit."
"Lets hang on a little further. I was told to meet Razzak here. Maybe he's not that bad", Petrus cheers them up.

The party starts making their way towards the Slippery spot. Locals are not the most welcoming bunch - most they pass by are black out drunk, fornicating with boars or both. Most of the buildings are abandoned and barely hold together.
They pause, when loud racket comes from one of them. Wilbur spies a monstrous giant of a man, who's apparently frustrated and waiting for someone.
So, having no better ideas, Ben knocks the door. This confuses Gorbai, the monstrous boar-man on the other side. So, he does the thing he does best, opens the door and tries to kill the intruder.
Unfortunately for Gorbai, Ben takes shit from no one and has had Enlarge cast on him and with Petrus helping a little, the leader of the boar men is killed. The one he was supposed to meet gets away.

They reluctantly loot the monstrosity and find few things with anything value - the only valuable jewelry is Gorbai's cock ring, which no one wants to touch for obvious reasons. Except Ben, who pockets the stone happily.

The League reaches the Spot that has been shoddily barricaded and, when they knock on the gates, they are greeted by a sullen group with crossbows loaded and ready.
"Get the fuck out, Osuka! You an' your friends not welcome!"
"Who the fuck is Osuka?" Siegfried asks.
"The big'un!"
"No, he's Ben. We've never heard of any Osuka", Wilbur helps.
The debate goes on for a while with the locals either too stubborn or too stupid to listen. Eventually they agree to let everyone in - but Ben.
"We not letting the giant in. No Osuka, we tell you."
This makes Ben mad. He's sick of always being left outside and he's sick of the sickly sweet smell of this town. He roars in rage and swings his maul over the gate at the villagers, who put up a weak defence, but get crushed easily with some managing to flee inside.
They hear the door getting barricaded and Will decides to have some fun, so he throws some of his special coin inside.
Special in the way that they have explosive runes cast on them. A moment later explosion booms from inside and a desperate cry "Enrique, why ya hafta die?!"
So Will casts the runes on his wooden apple and throws it in.
He doesn't get to listen to the results, though, because Siegfried and Reggie get enough of tomfoolery and drag the rest away.
"Lets just get to the towers, deal with whatever's in there and get the hell out", says the ever-professional Siegfried.
"You fiend! These people only have shit and booze. And friends. And you took them away Ben!" Reggie berates his comrade. "Do these pitiful folk really deserve your anger? Really?"

On their way they hear a child's cry from an overgrown field and decide to shoot bolts at it. They move on, when Ben spies with his true sight that the monstrosity flees underground.
"That's probably the Suck-thing the locals mentioned", Reggie knows.

Soon after Gorbai's cock ring and Ben's new prize begins vibrating and emitting strange noises.
Ben fumbles for it and when he touches the gem, a pale, pudgy face appears on its surface.
"Gorbai, do your arse-pimples bleed again or why the fuck you are so late? Wait... You are not Gorbai at all! Explain yourself!" says the image in the gem.
"Hello. I'm Big Ben and I killed the pig man with my friends. Was he your servant?" Ben answers.
"You ignorant fool! Do you not know whose wrath you've incurred by killing the foul Gorbai? It is I, Razak the Magnificent, Lord of Hune and Master Necromancer!"
"That's a long name."
"But you must be mighty for only the mighty could have felled my champion. You should come to my tower for I could offer you servitude."
"Okay! But I have someone that wants to meet you. Petrus, come here!"
"So, this is the lich-spawn that the Ghouls talked of? Come closer!"
Petrus reluctantly does so. "Shit, I'm starting to regret taking his offer seriously..."
"Yees, very good. I have much to teach you. Of Power and Magics! You all must come to my tower for us to discuss!" Razzak concludes and closes the connection.
"The sick fuck. That was a cock ring. Does this mean that every time Razak and the thing talk to each other, the monster was handling his own junk?" Reggie ponders. He clearly thinks too much for his own sanity.

It's dark when they reach the two towers.
"What? They're right next to each other! How is it even possible to wage war here, you can't even fit one army here save two!" Siegrfied rants.
They knock on the gates they hope are correct ones (the tower has more shit smears, so it's obviously more evil). No one answers the door, but after awhile a lantern appears on the top.
"Behold! For it is I, Razak the Great! Cower before me!"
"Hey asshole! Lets get this done quick!"
"Yes of course! I shall prove you my power with my second-grandest invention! Behold the fearsome cunt whip!" Razak bellows as he brandishes something that looks like a leathery string tipped by a vagina.
"Oh lord, are we seriously dealing with this guy?" Siegfried asks.
"That's kinda cool", Petrus admits.
"You must slay my limp-dicked gay brother Zal and I shall teach you all about mighty Deathfuck magic! And you shall gain a boon that is 50 000 silver pieces in size. Take his lump of black tar heroin I've cut with rat feces. He will not be able to resist its lure."
"Alright, alright, we'll do it. Just give that... thing to us and we'll leave", Siegfried says.
"And remember to cut his shriveled cock, jam it into his mouth and then bring it to me, for I want to know that he's been gelded! And I desire to see spit on it!"
"Alright. Yup, yup. Oh boy, so this is what we do now", Reggie says.

Under the cloak of night the party crosses the miniature battlefield to the other tower. After about an hour of knocking someone finally answers from the window. No, they're not interested in buying anything.
"Not even this big lump of heroin we have?"
"Err.. Umm... Just get it."
The gates open and several of Zal's ripped palace guard escort the adventurers in, only Boris and Will are left outside because one refuses to be disarmed and the other doesn't really bother going in.
"Don't worry, Boris, I have an idea", Will promises.
"Get your fucking hands off me, degenerate elf!" Boris yells as Will casts Invisibility and Fly, grabs Boris and flies up towards the roof. Meanwhile the guards bring some moldy blankets for the others to sleep on.

Imagine the surprise of the night guards when they spot a flying midget invading their airspace.
"A dwarf, not a midget you fools!"
"State your business!"
"I have no business! Fucking let me down, you idiot!"
"Err, what do you mean? -Don't move!" the guards shout as Will lets go of Boris.
"We're being attacked by an invisible flying terrorist elf! Quickly! To arms!" Boris shouts as he assumes his most commandeering tone. The guards, still confused, scramble to fire at the air. They manage to reveal Will, but can do little when he flies away.
"Lucky you had me to save your from that terrorist! He works for vile Razak, you know?" Boris continues. The guard, having no other ideas, declare him a hero and bring him into the keep.
"We'll introduce you to General Cromwell on the morrow."

His plans foiled, Will recasts Invisibility and flies to the other tower. There he spies few of the pig guard playing cards, engaging in sinful deeds and neglecting the loaded catapult. He decides that something has to be done and whispers into the nearest pig man's ear:
"Hey there. I am wind. I want to help you."
"Oi? Grog, ya say sumfin?"
"Nah, jus' let it rip real wet."
"Go to the catapult! Aim it and destroy the tower!"
"Wassat? Dun min if I do, hehe."
With a lot of patient advice Will eventually teaches the pig men to aim the catapult. They fire it, but the shoddy bricks manage little other than make a racket and scratch the already worn side of Zal's tower.
Will tries to kill his comrades a couple of times more before Zal's guards launch a counter-offensive with their ballista.
Dejected, Will flies away into the mountains. He finds a nice cave, creates a door with Minor Creation, Wizard locks it and sleeps.

Come the morning the party is woken up and served breakfast. It's roast pig.
While waiting for Cromwell they chat up a few of the guards and find out something peculiar: few remember how long they've worked here or even where they're from. They seemed to be vaguely aware of Mlag, but didn't know much of the wider world.
"I think I don't like this Zal", Reggie decides.
Cromwell, who looks old enough to be a walking corpse, proves to be competent enough and the League is given a tour around the tower. Boris is commended for his bravery against the elven terrorist and gifted a piece of palace guard armour. "No way I'm ever wearing that", he replies with gratitude.
Cromwell says that Boris might have a career in the guard, if he wasn't a short and hairy dwarf (he personally has nothing against them, but the young lord has his standards). Siegfried worries about Hildi and her safety, and Cromwell assures she won't have a finger laid on her.
"Too young for the young lord."

Eventually they are allowed an audience with Lord Zal, who sits in his oval throne room awaiting... and apparently snoring.
After a small beat Cromwell awkwardly suffles beside his lord and gently nudges him - and sending waves through his massive gut.
"Hurhg, waf? O yeff, tfe heroef! I hear you haf bufineff to do wif me."
"Yes. We heard about your evil brother and are willing to hear, if there's a reward for his head."
Zal licks his lips. Hildi almost vomits.
"Yef, he'f a nuifanfe. But you had fomefing for me?"
Deadpan sigh erupts from the whole party.
"Yes, we have a clump of pure heroin right here."
"Exfellent! Let uf retreat to my chamberf to difcuff thif deal!"

With great amount of effort (and some help from Cromwell) Zal rises from his chair and wobbles towards a door. When it opens, a sickly sweet smell of opium and decay wafts into the throne room.
"Hurgh, do we have to?" Wilbur asks.
"Oh yef, it'f not proper to do thif in front of the guard."
Reluctantly they follow Zal into his bedroom, where the floor is crusted with used syringes, battered opium pipes and rags wet with vile ichors. There are a bunch nubile maidens scattered around the bed, all in some stages of stupor. Zal heaves himself onto the bed.
"You fee, I would much like to get rid of my brother. He'f a mighty wifard, but I have found where hif powerf come from."
"I'm not sure we want to hear it", Siegfried interjects.
"Hif magic comef from hif pair fwollen tefticles and fhrunken weenie. You fhould really fee them, it'f like a bratwurft fitting on top of two li'l melonf."
"There's one mental image I'm never again getting out", Reggie says.
("I was right, I didn't want to hear it" - Siegfried)
"Cut the wiener off and he'f helpleff!"
"And how are we supposed to do that?" Petrus asks.
"Eafily! My brother if a raving fex addict. Offer him fome homofex and he'll drop everyfing an rufh for your bum."
"... This was exactly what I didn't want to hear", Wilbur says.
"I can do it", Ben says.
"What." go everyone else.
"One more fing! A great magician made me thif: Invifible Chaftity Belt of the Dentata!" Zal says and reveals something from his drawers. "It haf a hole where bum goef and if you put anyfing through it, thif happenf."
He picks up a carrot from god knows where and sticks it through an invisible hole in the invisible belt. There's a loud snap and the carrot is cut in half.
"O-kay... Was there a reward for any of this?"
"Yef, of courfe! I'll gladly pay you 10 000 filver to bring me my brotherf wiener and of courfe you are entitled to any loot you find from the tower."
"Oh well, for the lack of any better ideas, we'll consider this. We should go."
"Waf there fomething you were fuppofed to have for me?"
"What no... Oh for fucks sake, here you go", Siegfried says and Petrus gives Zal the heroin. Which Zal promptly devours and immediately passes out on the bed.
"Lets just go", Siegfried says.
"Why go back? He's out cold. We could kill him right here and now and get this over with. Besides, Razak promised us more", Petrus asks.
"Do you really want his money? It's probably crusted with shit... Lets talks to Razak one more time. We can return and do the deed, if we decide otherwise", Wilbur says.
"I'm beginning to think we should kill them both, while we can", Boris adds his two cents.
"Wait just a moment", Reggie says and goes to Zal. He takes a good look at his penis, measures it and even cops a handful.
"... Why the fuck did you do that?" Siegfried asks, shocked.
"So I can make an illusion to fool Razak."

They get past suspicious Cromwell by pointing out sleeping Zal and then accept an escort outside. By happenstance they ran into Will, who had returned from his mountain retreat.
On their way to the tower they fiddle a bit with their Kazza stone, figure out it has a call directory (with penises instead of names), accidentally call Cromwell twice and fail to reach Razak.
"Lets just knock."
They do so and no one answers. They do so second time and a bestial grunt tells them to screw themselves.
"I meant Knock", Wilbur says.
"None of us have it prepped", Petrus replies.
"I have!" Wilbur says and lifts his sleeve. "I got this tattoo from the Skinsmith."
"Neat", the others reply.
So Wilbur Knocks the gates that open and reveal one very surprised pig man.
"Wot? Dun come, the ceiling's tra-"
The League piles in and thus trigger the trap. Rocks fall. It triggers the Gorillabear in the guard room. It charges in.
Siegfried bull rushes it back to the room. Will casts Wizard lock on the door.
Siegfried kills the beast.
"Fuck this place", Reggie states. The others agree.
They go further in and meet a hungover ogre (who's also well hung, now that you mention it). Before he has time to get angry, Siegfried starts yelling at him and demanding he show them around. He obeys, if just to get the noise to stop.
In the next room they encounter a chest. Wilbur considers cracking it open, but decides against it when he hears snoring inside.
They move towards the top, barely glancing at other floors. The tower is mostly empty. Now that Gorbai isn't keeping order, everyone is out raiding.

Up top they ditch the ogre and look through Razak's rooms. They are especially impressed by his throne ("A throne fit for a mighty wizard!" Reggie praised it). The undead Voiden give them slight concern, but they don't bother doing anything to them as they fail to do anything but bump into each other so far.
In Razzak's lab they encounter and swiftly kill an amputated... thing that resembles Razak with tits, but when prodded grows spiderlegs.
"That table is a genuine rape table. At least +4, it's probably the best rape table on the whole continent", Reggie knows.
Ben finds a peculiar mirror behind a curtain and briefly converses with a space satan Maloderus Bungus.
But when the satan flenses Ben with hooks, he gets offended and closes the connection.
"Should we try to figure out what it thinks of all this?" Petrus asks.
"Don't you remember? We only deal with unionized demons now!" Reggie reminds him.

Having snooped around enough they get bored and again try to contact Razak with the Kazza stone. This time they succeed.
"Where the hell are you?" Razak yells through the connection.
"We did what you asked. We have Zal's dong. We're in your tower."
"The fuck you have! Oh Loigoi dammit... just stay where you are!" Razak rages and closes the link. Soon after a huffing and puffing Razak appears from the throne room.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" he demands.
"We did what you asked, your brother is dead", Reggie says and shows an illusory version of Zal's dong. (It might also have been made with Minor Creation, I'm not sure.)
"That ain't his cock and you didn't kill my brother. Perhaps I was wrong about you."
"How can you know we didn't kill him?" Siegfried asks.
"I just know. And now I'll show you lying bastards..."
"Before you try to kill us, lets have a quick fuck, okay?" Ben says.
"What? Oh yes, you should have said so immediately!" Razak replies, his bloodlust replaced with pure lust. "Come with me, won't you? And the rest of you, stay the fuck where you are!"

So, Razak escorts Ben into his lab. "Get on the table", he commands while licking his lips and undressing. To his horror Ben sees that Razzak's member really resembles a bratwurst.
Yet he undresses and obeys. I dare not ask why.
Ben flinches when the shackles fasten around his limbs, but still he stays silent.
As silent as he's when Razak clambers on the table, his thing up and ready. He comes uncomfortably close.
"Did you really think I would be fooled?" he whispers into Ben's ear, picks up a death phallus and violently rams into Ben's rectum.

Outside, as the others hear Ben's cry of pain, the throne room door bursts open and Razak's Voiden warriors rush into combat.
Will conjures up a Wall of Fire that manages to keep most of them away while Boris, Siegfried, Petrus, Reggie and Wilbur rush to confront Razak.
The self proclaimed mighty magus has no time to utter a single spell as two volleys of magic and Siegfried's blade are rammed inside him. As he dies his bowels empty and foul smell of shit fills the room.
Wilbur immediately begins fiddling with Ben's locks, while the others finish up the Voiden. Siegfried (I think) reluctantly cuts off Razak's cock.
But they're not safe yet: after being gelded Razak's corpse begins rumbling. Bloody shit, ejaculate and intestine begin squirting out of his ass while his face sinks into his neck. Soon a shit-crusted face pushes out of the intestine - and it's Zal's. Eventually Razak's gone and replaced by the very confused Zal.
"I knew it!" Will yells.
"Zal! You have some explaining to do!" Siegfried demands.
"We did what you wanted, now pay us", says Wilbur.
"I (burp) don't feel so good", Zal mutters and his arse violently prolapses spraying diarrhea everywhere. Razak violently pushes itself from the rectum, gets stuck in the middle. The two amalgamate into an abomination. Shit and blood rain from the sky.
It dies as easily as the last one.

And when the fighting ends, the looting begins. They begin piling interesting stuff on the table. Reggie casts shrink on the throne, Petrus takes a liking to the cunt whip. Will is disgusted by everything and flies away.

Outside he sees the horde of pig men that is racing back to the tower. Wanting to vent his frustration he unleashes his considerable magic upon them.
He didn't count on the fact they were fleeing something - a fearsome golem that was steadily jogging towards them and the tower.
Will casts Wall of Fire on the ground, but the monstrosity is not fazed. Instead it turns its stare towards Will. And jumps. One hit from its great sword makes Will explode into gooey bits.
Then it resumes its journey towards the tower.

Inside the others hear the noises and decide its time for them to go. They enchant the table and pick it up.
"Are we REALLY going to take the table?" Siegfried asks.
"Of course, it's probably the best rape table ever. Someone will pay for it!" Reggie answers.
They are a little too slow as when they reach the ground floor the statue is already at the front gates, hammering at the tower with his weapon.
They run for the backdoor. It is locked.
"I'll pick it!" Wilbur says.
"If you want, you can take additional penalties to rush it", I say.
"Why would I want to do that?"
"Because I'm gonna roll how long it takes for the statue to topple this tower."

This gives them something to think about and Wilbur isn't too certain with his chances. When I nonchalantly roll the lone d30 on the table, it's like a fire was set under the players.
"Wilbur! You have the Knock tattoo!" Petrus advices.
"But I used it already!"
"You can use it twice, it'll just burn away!"
Wilbur heeds the advice and the steel gate swings open. Reggie casts haste on the whole party and they speed towards the ship. To their misfortune, the statue turns to follow them.

Thanks to Haste, the League easily outraces the statue to the harbour. The others jump into the boat, while Ben has Enlarge cast on himself, so he can pull the it.
"All hands on deck! We're leaving!" Reggie yells, when as they climb onboard the Ecstasy of Gold.
"No can do, Cap'n! All the crew's away repairing Sea slut and our sails ain't nearly ready!"
"Fuck. Do what you can, we'll get the crew!"
At Reggie's command Ben pulls the boat to Sea slut and fervently loads their crew into it.
"We're too late! It's here!" Petrus shouts from the skies, pointing towards the shore.
"Maybe it cannot swim?" Boris asks hopefully. Soon after the statue steps into the water and sinks.
For a moment, all is silent.

"All into the other boat!" Siegfried suddenly shouts.
"Why?"
"It's coming towards the ship. We can't let it sink the ship!" he shouts as he lowers the boat.
The others scamper to follow suit.
And they are just in time, just as their boat's tugged away from the ship, a shadow appears in the water.
The statue jumps. It lands on the boat. It shatters it.
Everyone's suddenly waterborne and most are wearing heavy armour. Ben is still at the Sea slut and won't reach them in time.
Siegfried, Boris and Wilbur manage to latch onto ropes thrown by their crew, but Reggie isn't as lucky.
"Come on, Reggie! You're a sailor, only one of us who can properly swim!" Wilbur shouts.
"Zero... hit points... I think this was it for me", Reggie utters and sinks.
"Nooo!"

Not planning on letting Reggie drown, Wilbur jumps back into the water. With strength stemming from desperation he dives for Reggie and shoves something into his mouth.
"Please work... you're not in the negatives yet..." he pleads.
"What's that now?" I ask.
"Angeldown, from our gardens", Wilbur replies.
"Alright. Well, Reggie, you wake up surrounded by water. You feel surprisingly fine, but Wilbur beside you is about to drown."
"Perkele, you shouldn't have done that. Now I have to save you", Reggie curses, but he already has a plan in his mind: "Ref, Phantasmal Force can create anything I've seen, right?"
"By RAW yes, but I wouldn't abuse it too much, if I were you."
"Of course not, but I've probably seen many kinds of fish during my voyages?"
"Yeah, sure?"
Reggie works his magics and conjures forth a swordfish. "Giddy up, Wilbur!"
They both fail their saves against Magic meaning the fish stays corporeal for them. They take hold and Reggie commands it to head towards the open sea.

Meanwhile the statue has been trying to swat Petrus out of the sky. He's doing too good a job at it so when Petrus is forced to flee higher and further, it again turns its attention towards Reggie.
"Reggie, you still have a trick up your sleeve?" Wilbur asks.
"Fuck. All my spells are gone. Gunpowder's wet. Weapons won't hurt it. Aye, Wilbur, I got one trick left: praying", Reggie admits. Petrus turns around, but he's too far away and not fast enough to reach them.
So they pray to the Deep ones, they pray to the Kraken and other gods. Reggie even reads from a suspicious scroll he stole from Other Wilbur. But no one answers, when the shadow appears in the water.
(As Reggie often plays out making offerings and being devout to the Kraken, I gave him his level's worth of percents on d100 for a miracle. He wasn't lucky this time.)
The death was inevitable.

"Did I... Did I become a Great Wizard?" Reggie asks, coughing up blood.
"Yes! Yes you did and are! Hang on!" Wilbur yells, while he struggles to keep both afloat.
Reggie turns towards me.
"I wasn't asking just for drama. I'll be dragged to hell, if I don't fulfill the oath I made to Testifier."
I pretend to throw some dice behind the screen and make tally of everything happened so far.
"Last thing you feel before the void is the hellish burden falling off your shoulders", I say.

The statue, battered and cracked from dozens of magic missiles, has another target. It detects Petrus hovering above and jumps in to deal the finishing blow.
But this time Petrus was prepared.
"Here it goes, my last magic missile!"
He lets them fly towards the advancing golem. Large slabs of stone fall away, but a spectral energy keeps the golem moving.
They meet in the air.
And the golem falls apart, the last of its power gone.

Rest of the session goes quickly. Petrus, who also was on his last few hit points, picks up Wilbur and Reggie's surprisingly intact body (-3! Barely dead!). They erect Razak's old throne on their ship and place the embalmed Reggie on it.

"Well. That was definetly a session", Reggie's player says.

---

And so concludes our playthrough of the infamous Towers two. As you can defer from the excerpts in the beginning of this post, my players really enjoyed the ride. Running this was a real blaze and everything just fit together with the player's twisted imaginations.
Only thing we hated about it was Ragath's animated statue that came in and ruined everyone's day in the end of the adventure. The stats on the thing are just ridiculous: 20DH, 4 attacks all 2d20. Immunity to physical weapons and practical immunity to most status effects.
There's nothing wrong about strong or even unbeatable monsters, but the golem was just boring and reeked of unfinished design. And the lack of any set up only amplified the problems.
(I admit that I fucked up by giving the thing an ability to exchange two attacks for jumping, but by this point all our magic users can fly, and it didn't do the adventure justice to have the last boss be an easy kite.)
Well, atleast it made good prose.

Anyhoo, this was the last chapter in the buffer. Next up is Deep Carbon Observatory and I won't be posting it before we're done with it.

Edit: Here's the link to our Death tracker. This should be the one that'll be updated as we play, so it might be worth following: http://tinyurl.com/ToGtracker

Last edited by Tallu (2016-09-21 00:14:50)