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Wednesday 7 May 2014

DCC Campaign Report



In this shocking adventure the PCs encountered:

-the surprising reality that extra-dimensional tentacled entities make good leather-workers, and appreciate reggae music.

-the unsurprising confirmation that the Desert Nomads would be seriously grief-stricken by news of Ted's death; including the tearing of robes and hair, the covering of the face with sand and ashes, the wailing and lamentations of women and the beating of heads against rocks.

-the moderately insightful discovery that blaming the death of the greatest elven camel racer of all time would just about be enough to unite the desert tribes in holy war against the Eco-Ogres.

-the more unexpected discovery that having a drunken metal-skinned cleric swear to take on the Eco-ogre's chieftain in a singular combat of champions would totally seal the deal.

-the repeated confirmation that partying with desert-nomad booze is a generally bad idea.

-the anthropological insight that desert nomads and Eco-ogres alike follow the 'laws of the desert', particularly the rule that oases are absolutely neutral ground.

-the entirely predictable personal realization that the PCs are quite prepared to shit all over the 'laws of the desert'.

-the totally-from-left-field discovery that some oasis-lagoons have Magic Talking Otters living in them.

-the follow-up discovery that said Otters are grumpy misanthropes who want to be left alone.

-the unfortunate conclusion that one well-placed explosive desert nomad is not enough to take out 40 Eco-ogres in one shot.

-the expectable development that adding a thousand water-dragon hatchlings to an oasis may save your ass from the Eco-ogres, but will do nothing to gain you the trust and friendship of the Magic Otter.

-the completely unusual sudden arrival of Time Dinosaurs!

-the delightful surprise of finding that Time Dinosaurs are both sophisticated and pious.

-the unwittingly problematic aspects of asking the Time Dinosaurs to drop you off somewhere "really safe".

-the biological/cultural division of Elvenkind; and the fascinating discovery that "Hipster Elves" are very different in personality from "Smug Elves".

-the disturbing Huxleyan connotations of the Elven Silver Dome Panopticon, and the Smug Elves' suffocatingly controlled society.

-the systemic implication that magic is really the unstable manipulation of uncontrolled nanites.

-the troubling prospect of being obliged to spend the next several millennia in a government-mandated data-entry job under the benevolent oppressive rule of the Elven Queen Jenny.

-the disturbing dystopia of an elven civilization that would think nothing of having your brain rewired to help you conform, for your own security.

-the religious epiphany that G.O.D., in spite of having seriously flawed programming, can occasionally be vitally useful in saving you from a lifetime of serving as a zoological study subject.

-the thematic moral that a "Safe Place" is not really where you want to spend your days if you like being an adventurer.

And with that, it appears to be "goodbye" to Arkhome, and "hello" to the Tangled Forest.  This after having said hello to Arkhome and goodbye to the Elven Rose Dome.  So we could add one more detail to our list: that the player characters have now discovered a clearly emerging pattern of them arriving at a new home-area, promptly making the place worse by their very presence, and then when its really wrecked to epic proportions, getting the fuck out of dodge.

RPGpundit

Currently Smoking: Ashton Old-church Rhodesian + C&D's Crowley's Best

2 comments:

  1. Awesome session last Sunday.

    BTW, when you mentioned the Panopticon, this is what I was thinking about:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

    ReplyDelete