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| Follow along at home |
Timekeeping
Player Characters Present
Downtime
Session Report
Last session Slippery Pete had found a trap with a chute going doing two levels at the top of a stair not far from the Crypt Thing room. After examining the area it appeared that the Robopriest and his henchmen had gone that way, not having tampered with the Crypt Thing themselves and been teleported away.
After much fiddling around, the trap door was triggered and then wedged open so the PCs could lower themselves down by rope. Once at the bottom a passage lead north then turned east into another corridor. The party felt a tingling sensation as they entered this area, and the dwarf volunteered that he sensed they were now deeper underground than before.
The walls of the corridor were covered in detailed paintings in the same style but unlike others they had seen so far. One large mural featured a line of pelicans and several "Cars" recognisable to Brovenloft veterans as horse-less carriages: a 90's Cadillac, with a strange barrel projecting from a window towards the driver of the second car; a brand new 1996 BMW 750 with a black man in a black outfit at the wheel; the third car held three women apparently in conversation with the BMW driver: one wearing Pink, one Cyan, and one Red.
There was also some writing around this mural. It turns out we had not yet established which languages Were'sbane could speak/read, so one is now allocated to early 90's gangsta via hieroglyphs.
The lyrics translated to: "No one knows my struggle, they only see the trouble." "Even though you’re fed up, you gotta keep your head up." What hidden meaning, if any, did these words have?
They continued past the mural and, after 60', there was a four way intersection. Here they turned right and down another 60' to another four way intersection. The walls along this path depicted spectral ghost-like beings chasing and consuming the souls of humans. Upon further investigation, the figures wore Pink, Red, Black, and Cyan.
They turned right again followed the corridor 50' west, and then 40' south. The lack of rooms or chambers was becoming a cause for concern when Sever, looking to his left, saw, to his shock, that Sheamus was gone; in his place was a tall mummy wearing sunglasses and a lot of bling, the infamous Kangsta Wrapper! The Ranger readied Were'sbane before he heard the mummy asking him, in Sheamus' voice, what was he was doing?
The Fighter assured the rest of the party that this was just an illusion and patted himself down; he was still the Irish giant that they knew and he still had his equipment. Satisfied by this, the party continued pretty much turning right where ever possible, travelling more turning corridors; before rounding a corner and seeing a strange mummy creature, obviously female, whose bandages held a faded red tinge.
Both sides were surprised for one segment; but, as nobody playing this week had high enough dexterity to negate this, we moved on to the next round. The female mummy turned and fled, apparently at the sight of "Kangsta Wrapper". What on earth?
The party cautiously continued in the opposite direction, coming to a T-intersection just as the illusion on Sheamus dissipated. Here a similar looking, but pink, mummy faced them from their left, and a Cyan female mummy was down the corridor to their right; where they could see, just behind her, the beginning of a stair going up. Both mummies were clearly going to attack.
The mummies charged, but the party won initiative, so I allowed them to reposition to meet the attack from within the corridor they had just stepped out of; this meant the two mummies attacked from the front of their position rather than from either side. Since this was just a matter of a few feet it seemed fair enough.
The first round saw both sides just warming up; but things got even warmer next round when Bumblebore tasked O'Malfoy with a strafing breath weapon run across the face of the front line. Due to the proximity, but also considering the cover of the walls, I ruled that Sever and Sheamus could save for 1/2 or no damage (rather than full or half); but unfortunately they both failed and burned for 5 hit points. Sheamus, who pointed out that O'Malfoy had already bit him in session #12, added this to his grudge against the magic user's familiar.
Both mummies failed their saves and also took extra damage due to their weakness to fire. Sever and Sheamus then finished off the pink mummy, leaving only one; but, at the same time, the red mummy returned from their rear and ran into a well prepared dwarf who was looking for just such an eventuality. What no one was expecting was a tall mummy in black rounding a corner in front of them.
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| Tupacman! |
No one failed the ensuing fear save, and the mummies closed to attack, missing every single time ( I was devastated). As these mummies required a save vs fear on any hit, this was somewhat unexpected. With their hands full at the front, the party had to rely on Deltacron in the rear holding up the Red Mummy on his own, and if the enemy dice had been even average he would not have survived. Their luck held and the party beat down each remaining enemy until the monsters collapsed, dematerialising as they did so. Soon they were free to continue exploring.
Having noticed a possible stairway, to the east, earlier; they chose to investigate and indeed found a stair going up one level; but, it lead to an apparent dead end. The walls here had fewer pictures and featured a large, empty, frame like construct. Convinced that there must be a secret door here, the party spent about a turn searching; but found nothing.
However, something found them. Approaching from the bottom of the stair was what appeared to be the very same three female mummies, looking very much...undead; they showed no fear and were going to come up the stairs after them.
Suddenly on the blank frame-like area of the wall, there appeared a moving picture, as though the wall had become glass and revealed a room beyond. Standing there was the Alexus Murphius, the Robopriest. He thrust his holy symbol, a shield shaped badge, forward dramatically, and declared: "Bitches leave!"*
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The undead monsters were turned and they fled away into the maze. The Robopriest then explained, in his flat monotone way, that he had found his way through the maze (I had run this with the Patron in downtime, one spell was enough to solve this problem for him; can you guess which?) and was now in an observation room that was magically projecting his presence to them.
The top of the stairs did lead to an exit, a teleporter, but it only became active after "Tupacman" had been "killed" for a second time; but they had to hurry, after 5 minutes he will reform and the teleporter will deactivate.
There was a bit of back and forth over the details; but then the connection terminated, and they were on their own again.
Now with a much better handle on the situation, the PCs came up with a plan to find another spot with the Kangsta illusion glyph. As they moved they found large gold ingots had appeared, spaced every 10' or so along the corridors. They picked up those in their path, but did not risk clearing out the whole place and becoming encumbered. Knowing what to look for, they soon found a glyph to the south east and not long later, the red mummy rounded the corner in front of them. Once again Shaemus transformed into an image of the Kangsta and the mummy fled, then they advanced until they found Tupacman. Sheamus declared he was going to go "Biggie smalls" on him; but I didn't get the reference.
They engaged the monster and soon wiped him out. There was just one hitch, the mummy's final attack hit Sheamus and the fighter, in Kangta form, failed his save vs fear and ran off. Only Deltracron could stop him, doing so by becoming a living speedbump for the giant human to trip over: in the process taking what was probably enough damage to knock him temporarily unconscious; but I forgot to check on that. Anyway they raced back to the stairs before Tupacman could return and found the floor of the room at the top glowing with the light of thaumaturgic circles and the like.
They stepped through and came out...elsewhere. They were disappointed to find they had not arrived at the location the Robopriest was broadcasting from, instead they were on their own in some sort of indoor temple; 50' by 40', with a row of columns running on either side and there was a 20' tall statue of the Kangsta with its back to the north wall.
A brief search yielded no further information, so they left via a narrow corridor that ran both east and west and came to another, similar, room; but without the rows of columns. There was also a lot of writing on the walls in the now familiar script, some of which read:
"The RatKingCoal found me, like KV5
Come see my crew who were buried alive!
My studio's in the basement downstairs
You know that the Kang's got the sweetest of lairs!"
Deltacron discovered that the statue in this room could be opened via a mechanism hidden in its big toe. Beyond were more corridors and rooms, and the party really motored through them, somehow avoiding any random encounters. They discovered that the whole area was part of a hidden tomb that had, sadly, already been discovered and looted. The only thing of note was an encounter with a Poltergeist which only served to muddy the waters even more.
The Amber Light closed in and they vowed to get to the bottom of this mystery next session.
* This of course references a famous scene in Robocop. A story goes that Verhoeven did not understand the pejorative nature of the term, and on set routinely referred to the actresses as bitches. For the rest of the session we did so as well, even though I never mentioned this history.
Can't wait for your next devious diversion! But I'm not getting down on my knees in front of Sheamus again. I said I was going to overbear and even if he's AC 2 I've got over a 60% chance. He might be a "giant", but his greater weight merely pads him from damage. I'm 4'6", 163 pounds, and ready to rumble!
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