Re: Veins of the Earth play reports
c'ren and gang wander forth into a large cavern full of tall buildings. A man approaches, clapping slowly. "Well well well. What do we have here?" He's got a cigar in his mouth, and he wants to bring the party in on a heist. His plan: to lure and board the Civilopede, and escape via a "portal painting". His name is Gavin.
(For those who don't know, the Civilopede is a huge centipede that collects art and stores it on its back. It has great taste.)
The party says yes, they make preparations, specifically C'ren prepares 4 feather falls to make the boarding easier. Gavin and his team unveil a large pile of stolen art, and waft it with large paper fans. They climb the tall buildings and wait.
13 hours pass. Then things begin to rumble, there's some noise, finally huge bright headlight eyes erupt into the cavern. The Civilopede cometh. As it runs benath them the pc's jump, C'ren mass-casts feather fall, they land among some tents. Immediately a Canonite, a yellow art bug, asks them an art question. Nobody, the specialist, steals some canonite sweat and rubs it on her friends, they blend it and the art bugs stop harassing them.
All around them are piles and piles of priceless art. There's some question as to what to do; they try to cheese the Ynn invocation from earlier-- they get a painting of a garden and chalk that up with a door and a garden wall and write "Ynn, By Way of The Physical Plane" with chalk on the painting but no magic happens.
An art curator, also aboard the Civilopede, approaches, asks some questions. The PCs pretend to be performers, like, they do an Abbot and Costello routine. The art curator goes away. The Civilopede reaches around and pulls a figure from its back; it's Gavin, who's eaten alive.
The PCs go find Gavin's survivng friends, who join the party. Apparently Gavin got eaten because he was cutting a painting out of its frame. There's some effort to find an organizing principle to the art; there's been generations of labelling attempts. Beehive discerns a sorting method: by geological era of origin.
They head to the butt end of the Civilopede; they run into 4-5 Curators. The Curators aren't happy about boarders, and after an art argument between C'ren and the head Curator, like, C'ren's trying to claim that the Curators are in an ivory tower and that the adventurers are down to earth (her argument doesn't fly), the Curators send up a messenger towards the Civilopede's head, omniously enough.
The adventurers head to the butt end, where they make the decision to camp. However, minutes later, the Civilopede begins to reach around again, and figuring they should jump, they do. They grab some prehistoric art before jumping. Jon's character dies on the fall, everyone else survives; they're in a strange tunnel. They recoup. They set out to follow the tracks the Civilopede left to try to make it back to where they boarded... so they can use their map again.
Travel happens; there's some encounters. The first is with a half-broken tank filled up with Panic Attack Jacks. They defeat this relatively easily and score the tank; no one suffers Rapture. Next up Beehive incites a bunch of predatory floating red lanterns; they have to abandon the tank to flee. Finally, on the 6th day of travel, another Still-Tor man drops from the ceiling, this is also easily killed.
They make it back to the big cavern with tall buildings. One of Gavin's survivors is there; he joins up. They plan a route to the Mushroom Kingdom; they decide to take the shortcut, which is a long, long squeeze of a tunnel.
The squeeze tunnel requires laying down, all the time. Or sometimes sidling. They travel for five days this way. On the sixth day, Beehive suffers Rapture; in his head, he faces an old man with a sharp knife. The Rapture wins, and Beehive begins destroying his carried treasure, and then grabs C'ren's pack. C'ren shoots Beehive with a magic missle, killing him. C'ren then suffers Rapture herself, mentally facing a mirror image of C'ren, who also has a chainsaw. The rapture wins again.
When C'ren wakes up she has chainsawed Jon's new character to death and is facing combat from some of her allies. They stand down after communication; that's the end of the session, two dead PC's.