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Friday 16 December 2016

DCC Campaign Update: The Horse Looks at you all With Haunted Eyes



In our last adventure, the PCs had found themselves in the Shithole, supposedly the most awful place in the very very awful world they already lived in. Bill the Elf  had ended up becoming the boy-toy of a mighty barbarian sorceress named the Queen of the Lake.

Now:

-Yarr the Halfling and Bunda the Transparent Wizard had been left behind in Coolland, escorting the alien-chav-queen Priscilla of the Grey Realms back to Gaga. They did this with the promise that Queen Zoey would recognize her as a fellow monarch and give her lodging, and that Harembe was 'rugged'.
"...so that's why Heather is a total bitch!"
"Yeah, I heard she has chlamydia.."
"OMIGOD, right?? I was wrong about you halfling, I thought you were all conceited but you're not. I hate conceited people!"

-the Players noticed that both Yarr and Emily sure are very good at manipulating self-centered people.
(which leads the GM to think that in two more sessions she'll be running the whole party)

-They arrive at the palace and present Priscilla to Harembe, Queen Zoey's personal bodyguard. "by G.O.D. what is that thing?!"
"holy crap you guys, he IS rugged!"





-"Why did you bring that.. that THING here?"
"She followed us.."

-"Have you ever had a sleepover, Yarr?"
"Yes. That's where you break into houses and murder people in their sleep, right?"




-The PCs don't end up spending much time in the city, however. That night, Jal'udin the rogue appears before Yarr, and gives her a message to send to Bill the Elf. It seems as though Jal'udin is trying to get the point across to Bill that he's not kidding about the threat Sezrekhan now presents to the world. Unfortunately, getting Yarr to the Shithole involves stabbing her with the Dagger of Teleportation. Apparently Jal'udin has a similar view Yarr's idea of what a sleepover is.

-Next, Jal'udin goes to Bunda the Transparent Wizard.
"Sezrekhan has gone insane. He must be stopped!"
"Weren't you a servant of Sezrekhan?"
"Yes, but he has to be stopped or we are all doomed."
"Oh... I was about to join the Sezrekhan fanclub, so if there's something going on I'd like for you to tell me.."

-"Speak to Bill about this. He will understand!"
"guys, I think that Jal'udin has way too much confidence in Bill."
"Yeah; to me it seems he's putting all his eggs in one basket... and the basket is on fire."

-"what's your PC's personality modifier again?"
"Right now it's -2... and also it's -2 all the time."

-Then Jal'udin goes to visit the Equestrian. He's gone back to his house after being recently knighted.
"I have a quest to send you on!"
"Alright! Just let me get my horse."
"Very well, I'll walk with you to the stable.."
"Um... stable, yes. Definitely not my bedroom..."




-So pretty soon, everyone shows up at the mountains at the edge of the Shithole, with stab wounds from the Dagger of Teleportation. Yes, even the Buttercup the horse.

-"So we're going to have to trek through a desert."
"Does anyone have water?"
"No."
"I have chloroform, does that help?"

-"Do any of us have vials to carry water in?"
"No."
"I have a vial of poison; I guess if we cleaned it really really well..."

-"Can I ride with you on the horse?"
"No!"
"But I'm pretty small."
"yeah, the thing is, I'm the only one who gets to ride my horse."
"The horse looks at you all with haunted eyes."



-The Party sees an incoming caravan.
"Ohh, shopping! What are you selling?"
"Slaves."
"Why are they always slaves?"
"well, we're a slave-based economy."

-The party members had been captured as slaves, and eventually got to the village of the Queen of the Lake. Shebubu is there, and he recognizes some of the PCs and decides to try to buy their freedom.
"You walk over to the Slavemaster. You know he's a slavemaster because he has a whip."
"He's either a slavemaster or Indiana Jones!"

-"This is Shebubu. He is your new master now."
"Can we choose to just stay with you instead?"

-"The transparent mutant is getting sunburn in his inner-organs in this desert setting."
Shebubu manages to get him a "pelt" that was clearly once the skin of a mutant.
"It fits just right!"



-Shebubu pays for the freedom of the other party members by healing slaves.
"Oh, thank you cleric.. now I can continue working myself to death for others..."
"It's all thanks to G.O.D.!"




-"What is this G.O.D.? A Demon?"
"yeah, you could say that."

-Bill the Elf (whose player could not make it to this session) sends a message from the Queen's hut, where he's been busy getting busy.
"It says, 'go on ahead i'll catch up'".

-"Is Bill on a quest?"
"Yes, like those you go on with your horse."



-"What about Morris?"
"Last we saw of him, he was walking away very creepily right into the swamp."

-The cleric gets a disapproval on healing the last slave he had to treat to pay off the freedom of the other PCs.
"hey, could you um... just pretend to be not dying?"
"Go fuck yourself.."
"Hey, if you don't play along I'll try to heal you again!"

-The Equestrian convinces the slavemaster to accept some "horse lemonade" instead. The slavemaster immediately realizes what 'horse lemonade' really is, but accepts it anyways, because it's the Shithole.



-"Hey Shebubu, could you heal my liver? It's looking a bit off, see?"

-"Who's this?"
"I am Shlub!"



-Shlub and the transparent mutant wizard immediately bond over being cyclopses.
"You have the right amount of eyeballs!"

-"apparently, Bill attracts cyclopses"
"It's because there's something fundamentally broken in them."

-"who follows Bill?"
"I do!"
"I have been following Bill longer!"
"Really? Because Shlub has not seen you around.."
"I was doing important work for Bill."
"So Mighty Wizard Bill sent you away..."
"Yeah? Well he sent you away now too!"
"...he has sent us both away!!"

-In the swamps north of the Lake Queen's town, the party has an encounter with a massive and deadly-looking Shoggoth! Shlub, familiar with the threat level, runs like hell.
"Come back Shlub!!"
"No!"

-The PCs wisely decided to follow Shlub's example, and ran like hell.

-Later on, the PCs find a shovel, abandoned on a hillside. Deciding it might be of use later, the Equestrian rides up, but can't quite reach it on horseback and doesn't want to reduce himself to dismounting.
"So what, he can't get off the damn horse?"
"..I think he gets off on the horse!"



-"Hey guys, I can see a brown mutant village from here!"
"I feel kind of racist saying 'brown mutant'..."

-The village turns out to be relatively friendly, and its run by a human, who they call the Ageless One. Apparently, he's immortal.

-"We might be followed here later by a guy named Bill. Right now he's busy getting it on with the Queen of the Lake, she wants to create some kind of super-offspring with him."
"Oh yeah, she tried the same thing with me once. She wanted to make Ageless Wizard children."

-"Hey, could I buy a slave from you, in exchange for some Horse Lemonade?"
"...that's just horse piss, isn't it?"
"...yes."
"Then no, you can't."

-"so you guys are going to a region full of radioactivity, instead of the other place that actually has one of the few sources of drinkable running water in this hellhole, just because you heard there's a dude with multicolored skin in the first place and you'd want to see what that looks like?"
"That was the plan, yes."
"Man, you guys really aren't from around here, are you?"

-"we could go the longer way where there's a river, but we should probably go as soon as possible. We have to go to Tijuana, for the horses!"
"...no one said anything about any horses, dude.."

-"Most of the PCs decide they'd rather take the longer route, but the Equestrian continues to argue for going the direct route."
"He's just going to drink 'horse lemonade'"
"What we sometimes do in the Shithole to survive, he does for pleasure!"


-"Once you get used to drinking urine, it's not bad."
"You 'got used to it' right at the start!"

-The PCs continue their travels. They pass a gorge where there is a half-ruined giant head carved into the rock, but they  have no idea whose it was.




-"Does the head in the rock follow you with your eyes?"
""only if you psych yourself out."

-Some time later, the PCs find a perfectly-folded suit of chain mail and a handaxe, carefully left, seemingly unprotected, by the riverbank.
"It could be a trap!"
"In Shithole we have a saying: everything going to kill you anyway!"

-After enormous paranoia, the PCs grab the pristine armor and the handaxe. Nothing dangerous seems to happen, the armor and weapon appear normal and uncursed.

-They continue following along the gorge and find a massive metal bridge. It looks much too high tech to be in the Shithole.
"let's go check it out!"

-As they get closer, they see it's covered in massive spider webs.
"NOPE!!"



-They run like hell and head away from the river.
After some time, the reach a large keep which seems to be inhabited.
"It's a trap!"
"Well, nothing bad has happened to us so far."
"We've had to drink our own pee!!"
"I have to wear someone else's skin to protect myself from the sun!"

-The castle, they found, is occupied by a military force of some very strange mutants. They are vaguely greyish-silver in color, and instead of hair, the top of their heads seem to burn with a greenish-yellow flame. The aliens also turn out to have a funny vaguely-french accent.

-"Does this remind you of something?"
"I don't know, is he going to taunt us a second time?"

-The strange mutants are actually friendly, offering to allow the PCs in. They say that they are members of The Watch. There, they are presented to their leader, the Watch Captain. He is equipped in a pristine set of chain mail armor and a hand axe.

-"We shall be willing to give you sanctuary here, so long as you follow the rules of hospitalite!"
"Which means?"
"You must not cause any violence."
"That'll be pretty hard for us. But you never know, it's bound to happen someday, right?"

-"um.. just out of curiosity, that's a very nice suit of armor you have on and a lovely handaxe.."
"Yes. They are the symbols of a Captain of the Watch."
"And, do you always keep them here?"
"Until a Captain dies. Then his armor and axe are left at the river in a ritual."
"And.. just out of curiosity, if someone else were to touch those later?"
"It would be death!"
"I see.." (cue the equestrian covering up the armor he's wearing with his cloak; and the halfling surreptitiously tossing the handaxe behind a nearby rock)

-"Where do you people come from?"
"I come from a Billage."
"I come from a forest."
"What's a forest??"

-"And where have you guys come from?"
"We have been here for countless generations. Keeping watch. We are The Watch"
"Oh shit, they must be super-inbred."
"How do they even reproduce? They're all guys!"
"Don't even question it."



-"Just so you guys know, if you see any handaxes in our possession we got them from home."
"I got mine from my mom!"

-"So, what are you keeping watch on?"
"We have kept watch."
"I think they don't know what they're keeping watch on.."
"I think they've forgotten what they were supposed to keep watch for!"

-"Ok, so I have to ask.. you're all male.. there's no one else nearby.. how do you make kids?"
"...the usual way."
"Ok, stop. Let's just go to sleep and get the fuck out of this place early tomorrow morning."


-"I'm going to try one more time to talk to one of these guys, not the captain.. hey, what are you watching?"
"I'm watching this hallway."
"Ok, forget it, I just leave."

-"Ok, I know this sounds like a really stupid question guys, but are we going to keep watch while we sleep?"
"I am!"
"Yarr, you should keep the next watch."
"Ok"
"..are you really going to?"
"What, are you going to watch me keeping watch?!"
"Fuck it. I'll just keep watch all night."
"I think this castle is fucking up your minds, guys."

-The next morning they leave the Keep of the Watch as quickly as they possibly can. As they continue their travels through the Shithole, they run into a tentacle monster.


-  Unfortunately, or perhaps mercifully, in the ensuing battle the Equestrian's... um, beloved.. horse Buttercup is killed.
"That's ok... he knew too much..."



-Some time later, the adventurers manage to make it to a village, which turns out to be populated by some of Shlub's purple-hairy-monster race. Like Shlub, they're apparently very interested in finding  a Mighty Wizard to serve, and are envious of Shlub.
Bunda tries to claim he is a mighty wizard, but they don't end up sufficiently impressed in his magic. They're even less impressed by Shebubu's magic when he tries to pass himself off as a wizard.
The purple-monsters then plan to eat the entire party, but get distracted by a conversation about just what defines the mightiness of a Wizard.
"Quick, we should go now while they talk!"
"You don't want to stay with your people, Shlub?"
"No. Shlub doesn't need the competition!"

-They stop to camp out only when they're sure they've gotten far enough away that the purple-monsters won't catch them.
"You lost your horse today, Equestrian, you should rest."
"It was just a horse."
"But.. it was clearly more than just a horse to you..."
"What gave you that idea?"
"Innuendo."

-They head out again the next day and find a single solitary tree. Thinking there could be food or water nearby they approach, only to find the tree unfurls to reveal it was actually a camouflaged tentacle-monster!



-The Equestrian manages to slay it, running it through in one blow.
"Huh. Shlub think he actually more competent since losing his Buttercup."

-Later on, the PCs run into a kind of giant amoeba monster! It swallows Yarr the halfling whole!
"She's still alive."
"I think she's probably safer inside than out here!"

-Color Spray does nothing on the creature. Bunda then tries to hit it, but misses on account of having no depth perception. Shlub tries to attack it, but the Amoeba swallows him as well!
"It has a taste for Shlub!"

-Eventually, Shlub and Yarr manage to cut their way out of the amoeba, slaying it.





-Shebubu has a catastrophically bad Divine Disapproval, and gets the Mark of Shame.
"You know what? Fuck it. I'm just going to keep it forever."

-They camp out again that night, and arrange the watch.
"Why is the Equestrian stuck doing a watch alone?"
"Well, he should have taken better care of his horse."
"I'm pretty sure that horse wished for death.."


That was the end of this disturbing adventure, which will probably not see things getting any less weird next session when hopefully Morris the Creep and Bill the Elf will be back with the group.  Stay tuned!


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