GONZO TEMPLE: Back to the Temple, 3.awesome style

[ScyldSceafing]

This is the first game recap from my new campaign, a replay of Monte Cook's Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil dedicated to pure gonzo mind-blasting. We're playing 3rd edition, but with the emphasis heavily on Awesomeness and not at all on Balance.

I call it the "3.awesome" ruleset - we use whichever ruling, wording, or version promises greater access to Teh Awesome. Command Undead as a 2nd-level spell? Heck yeah! Broken Haste/Heal/Harm? But of course.

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The whole thing began with Vig, Jeff's half-orc monk, getting the boot from the monastery in which he figured (previously) to live and die. "Vig," said Master, "these men mean to kill you, and you must take your leave of us. We will detain them while you make your way - I suggest east, toward the rising sun."

Meanwhile, Pho (Sarah's human rogue/fighter) got a tip that a dwarven noble was going to recruit help for some kind of esoteric job. Weird thing, though - recruiting talent in a backwater like Hommlet? Guy's gotta have an angle ...

The Church of Pelor sent Kedrin (Kelly's human cleric/fighter) to Hommlet's Brewfest gathering for reasons I hope Kelly clarifies, since my notes on this matter are merde. And further, I remember that Shaun's Zeppo the druid was particularly awesome, although any gnome riding everywhere on a panther is a sort of fantasy version of Colt .45 - it really does work every time. Again, though, my note-taking smells of the sewer.

So everyone descends on Hommlet on the Tuesday of Brewfest, which is the festival week separating fall from winter. As the name implies, it's very alcohol-oriented - on the night in question, Hommlet was hosting three packed tents - a music/beer tent, a wrestling/wagering/liquor tent, and a rootbeer/kids tent. Zeppo was rocking the kids tent, letting the wee ones pet Badger (his panther), generally being gnomish. In the background, watching and listening and remaining unnoticed, was Pho.

View this now from a nearby hilltop - village, river, glowing tents full of revelers; put an armored man ahorse in the foreground, looking down upon the scene. Notice the man's sun-symbols, those of his horse - this is Kedrin, and this is where we began the story in play.

Kedrin descended to the city, happening upon a still-distraught Vig just at the edge of town. Vig explained that someone wanted to kill him, and Kedrin immediately sussed out the half-orc might need sheltering under the protective arms of the Church of Pelor.

Unfortunately, the Church was partying. An acolyte sent the pair to the tents.

A quick search of the tents led them to the wrestling tent, where Yethir was at the center of a mad wagering bubble. The observant Pho figured the hulking half-orc and the dude in armor were likely to be the locus of serious action, and made her way there. Zeppo had just preceded them, using his break-time to win drinking bets with locals.

Kedrin displayed admirable patience, first shunning a wannabe named Chatrilon Unosh ("maybe we need to work together, eh? I know people"), then trying to explain the situation - "Vig needs sanctuary, no you don't know me, etc. etc." - to a drunken, distracted local priest. The whole thing was interrupted by the appearance of Pho's dwarven noble, Umber, who strode in all self-important-d-bag style, surveyed the folks in the tent ... and strode up shamelessly to the hulking guy in PJs and the dude next to him in gleaming armor.

It was quickly decided that maybe a pow-wow away from the hoi polloi would be ideal ... and maybe this dude scalping the locals from panther-back should attend? So they retired to the Welcome Wench to plot and scheme.

Umber is a noble dwarf, it turns out, part of the ruling families of the Principality of Ulek to the southwest. His cousins and uncles led an expedition to the north, following rumors of rare metals in a particular patch of mountains north and west of Hommlet. His proposal, arrived at after some back-and-forth, is 2k up front each, and 20k each for verifiable word of the fate of either or both of Umber's cousins. Minds are blown, and everyone signs on.

Sometime during the negotiation, a man bursts in, shouting for "Rufus, Burne or Elmo." He was told by Vesta, the waitress (the only otherperson in the place) that they were "off checking out a hobgoblin raid." He blundered out, shouting for help, and the group returned to Umber's presentation.

Finally, the aforementioned Chatrilon slunk into the room in pursuit of the goth half-elf waitress Maridosen; they seemed surprised to see a meeting in the common room, but Maridosen slid smoothly into waitress mode and got the party going a bit. A time was agreed for setting out, and everyone enjoyed a drink ...

 

[ScyldSceafing]

GONZO TEMPLE: Kedrin's awful dream

(This dream-sequence brought to you by the people who hope Eric's grandma isn't paying all that much attention. This was sent after the first session.)

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Maybe it was all the free beer, but Tuesday evening finds your sleep restless and dream-haunted. One dream in particular stays with you after you wake; in it ...

You are dazzled by a bright light - a sun, the symbol of Pelor - although your eyes quickly adjust to the life-giving glare. Or perhaps it's just that the light is diminishing, because you find yourself falling away from the light, tumbling backwards into darkness.

As you tumble away from the light, you hear it speaking to you in a rough, whispered tone: "Pelor, hear my plea; Pelor, shine your light upon us..." The voice, far from expressing the power and might of Pelor, is cracked and weepy, as if under tremendous strain.

Suddenly you are no longer floating backwards in the darkness, staring at a receding point of light. You are elsewhere. The room is ill-lit and low-ceilinged; some sort of dust or powder floats lazily through the air. You see a paunchy, middle-aged man hanging from hooks in the ceiling which look to pierce his shoulders and upper back. Two chains attached to the ceiling swing in front of the man, unused. His hands are busy elsewhere - you cannot help but notice (given his nudity and position before you) that he is in a state of sexual arousal, and it is to this evidence his hands attend.

He is watching something else, not looking at you. You hear grunts and screams but don't turn to look. Finally, though, the man on the hooks notices you watching him and shouts, "You idiots! He's got to watch!"

Your visions is wrenched to the side as someone unseen turns your head - apparently you are bound, because you cannot resist. There you see a youngish middle-aged woman, bleeding from several wounds on her sides and scalp. That's the least of her problems, though - she's chained over a wooden chest, hands on one side, feet the other. A large man is assaulting her, gloating toward you, while the man on hooks shouts encouragement. The look on her face chills you to the bone - exhausted and resigned and filled to overflowing with the horror of the moment.

You take the scene in quickly - the dream lasts only a few seconds. As you wake, you hear the cracked voice again: "Pelor, hear our prayer ..."

 

[ScyldSceafing]

GONZO TEMPLE: Part the Second

Brought to you by Pho's 31 on a Listen check ...

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The party gathered in mid-morning to set out on Umber's quest; most seemed in good spirits, but Kedrin (Kelly's priest of Pelor) seemed less than well-rested. “Bad dreams,” he explained.

Initially, the group intended to purchase mounts before leaving. Pho – Sarah's rogue, now revealed to be part of the party – confessed that she fears horses and will not ride one, changing the plan slightly. Zeppo (Shaun's gnome druid) scared up a couple of reliable pack mules in town, and off they went to find the lost dwarven nobles.

{Hi there. I'm Sean Spence, the guy writing this, and the DM for the game. I didn't plan to have a talk-directly-to-the-reader section in this writeup initially, but all plans change upon contact with the players. I'm here to tell you about one of those changes.

{There's a cult rising in the area of Hommlet (shock, horror!), see, and the PCs have already met a couple of the cultists. I decided that the cultists would be a very out-of-the-way encounter for the PCs; I'd dropped clues they'd ignored, essentially, so they just weren't going to cross paths. The PCs were going to hie off to Rastor and basically skip the first fifth of the adventure – it's alright, it happens.

{For versimilitude, though, I needed to know what the cultists were doing. I went a little insane, cribbing things online, making up my own details. In short, the cultists were sexually assaulting their former hosts prior to killing them, all for a bit of fun before they packed up and got outta town. Hey, this is an adult storyline! Book of Vile Darkness and all that. I don't want to hear it.

{So the cultists are getting their rapine on, but they're not completely defenseless – far from it. They have a sovereign eye outside the building; they have a multi-layered response prepared for any interlopers. If the PCs do stumble upon them, somehow (I anticipated), they won't forget the fight. Magical darkness, vile damage, two hidden casters – I had many an evil cackle over the nasty that awaited them. Or so I thought.

{Read on, gentlepersons, to see the wrack and ruin of my planned ambush, all thanks to one off-the-charts Listen check.}

So, leaving Hommlet is boring. And quiet. The group shuffles about five minutes along a bluffside road in town – looking down, to their right, was the river that ran through town. And on that river, below them, a mill, its waterwheel turning idly in the morning sun. From that direction, Pho hears something: “Anyone else hear that?” she asks, suddenly bristling, and then sprints in the direction of the mill.

{Yes, sprints. If Sarah had said almost anything else … sigh. Her Listen check was a 31 … in my mind, prior to rolling it, I thought “Gee, I guess maybe a 30 would hear something.”}

The rest of the group, spooked by the decisiveness of the newest member, follows without much more caution. The mules wander halfway down the bluff and decide now's a great time for snacking on these tender shoots here.

The cultists are literally caught with their pants down. Pho enters the basement to find a human man assaulting a woman who is chained across a chest; nearby a half-orc forces another human man to watch. In the corner, hanging naked from a series of hooks installed in the ceiling, is the leader, Master Dunrat. They have time to fashion looks of surprise and dismay before they get to work dying on the blades and fists of the PCs. Vig takes on the other half-orc, knocking him out before he can draw his weapon. The rest is a blur – Pho blocks the second, hidden caster from escaping, and Dunrat is subjected to the first gangland-style beatdown of the campaign.

Zeppo takes some awful wounds from a lance of Vile Darkness(tm) wielded by the good (very bad) Master, but the group wins the fight easily. Oddly, Kedrin's healing spells don't effect Zeppo's wounds; they later discover that the same spell cast in the temple of Pelor works wonders.

The group finds, among the phat lewtz in the chest, a note that indicates the cultists are hard at work trying to find something in the old moathouse.

{And just like that, we're back on track; the stuff I thought we'd skipped is again in play. Cue scrambling for notes mid-session...}

So, the moathouse – its state of decay is palpable, although Zeppo notices plenty of signs that foot and cart traffic has frequented the area. Pho presses forward, searching for traps; finding none, she motions the party into the ruined courtyard of the place. The structure had a timbered second story, now collapsed, but the place has clearly been cleaned up in a rudimentary way to allow traffic.

Piles of shattered timbers and wall-stones lie here and there, and it was behind one of those piles that the inhabitant of the courtyard was slumbering. A body in ochre robes drew the interest of Kedrin and Zeppo; they were puzzling out the manner of the man's demise when a lightning bolt crackled through both of them, and the drums of war began pounding again, demanding Rolls for Initiative.

The blue dragon wasn't the largest – about the size of a pony, with a wingspan of maybe 8 or 10 feet – but it wasn't a fool, either. After his lightning-blast opener, he flew up about 15 feet and hovered, creating a localized wind-storm in the courtyard.

The party was nearly routed at this point. Staggering about blindly, they managed to find a corner room and barricade themselves against the wind – all but Vig, who ran the other way out and became the (overconfident) dragon's next target.

Vig, it must be said, is a pretty hard target. Whirling and feinting, the half-orc delivered blow after blow to the dragon, proving to be very difficult indeed. When, a few seconds later, the now-sighted group returned to pour damage on the beast, the blue realized that, absent his tactical lock-down, these folks were going to murder him. He streaked off into the sky and vanished, leaving the winded party alone in the courtyard.

This is where we find our heroes next time: In the courtyard of the moathouse, puzzling over a dead body in ochre robes, scanning the sky for signs of a returning, vengeful dragon, and trying to find a path down into the bowels of the place.

 

[ScyldSceafing]

GONZO TEMPLE: Dungeon-crawling at last

STARRING:
Pho (Sarah's human rogue/fighter)
Zeppo (Shaun's gnome druid)
Kedrin (Kelly's human cleric of Pelor/fighter)
Vig (Jeff's half-orc monk)
WITH:
Badger (Zeppo's panther animal companion/mount)
AND INTRODUCING:
Mojo (Chris' human sorceror)​

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With the dragon driven off, the group got down to the business of trying to find a way down. Zeppo noticed signs that foot and wagon traffic had entered the courtyard, and the papers left behind by the grotesque hook-riding, rape-ordering Master Dunrat indicated that a cult group was attempting to excavate something below.

The search didn't take terribly long. A skirmish with a pool of pseudopod-extending ooze was disgusting but uneventful; Vig splashed the thing about with a two-fisted assault, shuddered off the effect of touching the thing, and that was that. Pho found recently-used stairs going down into darkness, and crept down to listen for company.

There are times when it's handy to have a genius polyglot as your scout; this was one of those times. Pho not only heard the two gnoll guards sufficently to make out their numbers, but she also could understand their tongue – meaning she got more.

“There's two guards in the room at the bottom of the stairs,” she said simply upon her return to the group. “They're part of a larger group. They wonder when the end of their shift is, when they can go back down. They're trapped by the dragon. They're all living down here.”

Pho's terse summary sharpened the tension – the cult was here, right here, with some of their gnoll muscle. “Let's do this!” Zeppo declared, climbing on Badger's back. Everyone loosened weapons and a general move toward the stairs began. “I have a plan,” Kedrin hissed sotto voce. “Wait!

“Perhaps we can encourage these guards to investigate, and then slay them before they raise the alarm,” Kedrin went on once the general bloodlust subsided a bit. “We surely don't want to fight all of them at once?” Pho agreed instantly with the plan, and shouted kar-artan down the stairwell, telling the two gnolls to “Come see this!” in their native tongue.

The gnolls came, but not incautiously, foiling the gambit. The first gnoll reached the landing at the mid-point of the stairs, turned the corner, and had just enough time to register a look of comic canine surprise before meeting a volley of projectiles. The second gnoll, surprised but not unmanned by the attack, simply stopped, drew his weapon, lifted his muzzle, and let out a piercing, haunting howl.

Time slowed down, or everyone sped up; the two states are similar. Vig led the way, his massive shoulders just avoiding the walls as he leapt down the stairs two at a time. Torches! “Room has light. Will help my friends,” he thought. The monk met the howling beast with a simple uppercut, hoping to befuddle the dog-man, but to no avail. Past Vig and into the space poured the rest of the party – this was one gnoll with a bleak future.

The room into which the party sallied was low-ceilinged – the gnoll fought while ducking his head a bit – and deeply unsavory. Black-stained manacles and broken cells spoke of imprisonment and torture in the not-too-distant past; the cells receded off into darkness. Little of this registered as the group administered a particularly vicious form of last rites to the dog-man – Badger's raking attack and Pho's final-shot backstab are a horrible way to meet one's end – but the focus swung toward the cells quickly enough.

Everyone has heard that creatures – at least creatures with bowels – produce massive bowel movements when slain. Gnolls have bowels, so it's not entirely surprising that everyone assumed the ghast's stench was merely the second gnoll confirming hearsay. The smell crescendoed well beyond the range of gnoll-crap, combining a sulfurous biting aroma with a evil, rotten funk; imagine slimy, black banana peels, days old in the sun, covered in the last unscavenged bits of extravagantly rotten lamb, accompanied by a burning pile of hair and cat dung – this gives some idea.

Vig and Pho, alight with the joy of kicking gnoll behind, were cast abruptly into darkness and fell to wretching, although the massive monk evaded the ghast's attack easily. From beyond the ghast came more of its type, their rancid, blackened flesh stringy over shambling bones, half-fleshed hands extended, faces slack but registering a greedy glee. Kedrin assumed a stance of power, raised his gilded sun-symbol, and flashed, strobing the room with a burst of purified sunlight.

All traces of glee vanished from the ghouls. Their expressions were amended into fervid evocations of horror, their mouths now unjointed, the darkness in their eyes turning desperately away from the man who glowed like the sun. They fled into the furthest corner of an adjoining room, away from both the light and Kedrin, leaving the ghast alone between the gnome and his snarling, slashing mount.

Follow now the fight back a bit in time; consider who heard the guard-gnoll's howl. Two rooms away, a human woman in ochre robes contemplated some of the finds from the dig below. Touching some of the items gave her a tingling thrill, imagining the shock of the unbelievers when the Dread One rises; perhaps her stepfather would get a visit from her when in her power … her pleasant daydream was broken by a warning-howl from one of the idiot doglings who served as guards.

“Get out there and help them,” she snapped at the two gnolls lounging in the room, guarding her by napping. Changing her mind, she put a hand on a door. “Wait, no – wait for these bonemen here,” she said, then flung a door open and murmured a word of dark command to the five skeletons trapped in the room. Barely 10 seconds after the howl, the gnolls escorted the skeletons through the intervening room and, hearing combat, burst open the door to allow the lifeless vanguard to pour in.

Zeppo whirled about to face the bony onslaught, his fists already aflame from an earlier spell, and changed, stretching in every direction at once, growing taller, heavier, and hairier, his lower face pushing forward into a snout, his hands (still flaming) losing fingers in favor of inches-long talons. Kedrin, not content to be outshone, shouted “FOR PELOR!” and strobed the room again, once, twice, leaving everyone there with flashing after-images of the skeletons exploding into flinders, shattered utterly by the touch of the sun-god's power.

For the once-confident gnolls, the response of Zeppo and Kedrin was a knee-trembler. Still, they understood that failing the skinny, pale human woman behind them meant not just death; no, she would enslave their corpses, walk them around like she and they were packmates. Never. Bound to her beyond death, they staggered forward to their doom.

It wasn't long in coming. Flaming bear, whirling half-orc, darting human, slashing panther; the ghast fell, and the gnolls, and the gore made the floor slick. The skinny, pale priestess tried one last time to aid her cannon fodder – the massive orc-man shook off her attempt to arrest him in place – then slipped out the back door to warn her superiors about this new threat.

No sooner were the gnolls dispatched than another door swung open, and into the charnel-house stench stepped an oddly-dressed human. His headgear seemed a snarl of leather strapping interrupted by two circular discs; on his wrists and across his shoulders he was similarly wrapped in odd bits of leather. His cloak was sumptuous, though, looking warm without seeming heavy. “Hey, thanks for that,” he said. “Been waiting for my chance to get out for a couple of days now.”

“I should introduce myself. Mojo. Mister Mojo Risen. Is that dragon still up there?”

 

[ScyldSceafing]

GONZO TEMPLE: Interlude from magical academia

An excerpt from “Heroification: How Adiles' Process of Magical Idealization Explains the Heroes of the Covenant” ​

Abstract:
Recent research by Underscrivener Arvos Adiles has given us insight into the efforts of certain extraplanar beings to capture or control what the Doorkeepers call our 'Crystal Sphere' – our universe, to the layman. Those efforts typically involve a process Ardiles calls 'Idealification,' which he describes as “a magical half-conversion through unknown processes which renders Everything Solid and Perceptible into a more palatable and digestible energy-form.” This process was most noticeable in the run-up to the so-called Devourer Invasion of two centuries ago.

This paper proposes a second process which is perhaps a corollary or side-effect of Adiles' Idealification. We call this process the Hero Process, and believe it is caused by the dwoemers which push local matter up the energy well (such as the ones Adiles identifies in his work). As the invader-being or beings prepare the matter of our universe for consumption, our universe seems to respond by empowering small groups of individuals to conform to the Ideal of the Hero. We see these effects in the rapid and unpredictable rise of Wyn A'rienh, Kerrick the All-Powerful, et al.

Furthermore, we wish to demonstrate, through some simple and repeatable experiments, that the process seems to be underway once again. We do not speculate as to causes or potential outcomes.

 

[ScyldSceafing]

GONZO TEMPLE: Introducing Mr. Mojo Risen

“... so then I met up with Spugnoir here, and we got down to looking for these weeds he was collecting,” said Mojo, grease from a spit of squirrel-meat dripping off his fingers and face. The pair of them, the sorceror Mojo and apothecary Spugnoir, ate like men who'd been trapped for two days in a room guarded by snappish gnolls and filled only with broken bits of furniture, fittingly. Apparently they'd eaten a rat at one point, which Mojo had “accidentally cooked” from across the room.

The entire experience had been shattering for Spugnoir, Hommlet's potion-master, who wanted nothing more than to return home as quickly as possible. “I must away. My daughter's alone!” he said, sounding panicked, but Pho had comforting words. “Your daughter's Renne, right?” she offered, smiling a bit. “She's fine. Better than fine. She's worried about you, though.”

News of his daughter's resourcefulness seemed to shame the potion-maker a bit, though; after the exchange, all he could talk about was returning home, “as soon as possible, risks be damned.” Mojo had different ideas: “I'm gonna stay with these folks,” he countered. “I'm not from around here.” What he didn't say was “the answers I need don't lie at the bottom of a potion bottle.”

So, once the food was eaten, Pho and Zeppo scouted the stairs and moathouse. Finding no dragon, they sent Spugnoir on his way. “Look me up in town,” he said just prior to vanishing along the trail to Hommlet. “I'd be honored to repay your kindness with my craft.”

Here, then, is the group: Pho, bold and inscrutable; Kedrin, upright and confident; Zeppo, gleefully vicious atop his big cat; Vig, obdurate and meditative; and this new fellow, Mojo – whose entire affect seemed off-kilter, whose clothing looked outlandish even to worldly Pho, and whose ability to assist the group was in some question. The earlier quartet edged closer together in the discussion that followed, herded by the feeling that the new guy wasn't from around here.

For his part, Mojo was struggling with a rising tide of panic. He'd fallen asleep at home, in the Suzerainty of Glin-Bermont; he'd dweomered his Tik-Tok Timepiece to awake him just before dawn; he laid upon his canvas cot for some time, thinking over the Orders of Binding, worried about the next day's test. And then he'd awoken here, this somewhere else – at least he thought so – in the woods. He'd wandered about for a few minutes before finding Spugnoir, who insisted on checking him for head wounds after his questions. “Glinbermon? Academy of Thoth?” he'd repeated, clueless.

So he'd followed the potion-maker toward the moathouse, where a particular weed grew in abundance in the marshes. So they'd discovered the dragon. So they were driven down the stairs in a panic. So they'd had to hide. So they'd spent two days peeking out the door. So here he is, here these people are; they seem decent enough, but more than that, it was clear they had power. They'd come into this dungeon like a wave of the commanding hand of Order, and butchered Mojo's prisoners in a 30-second orgy of violence and magic. If he really was somewhere else, he'd need powerful help. “So, hello, new friends!” he thought, giggling a little at his cynicism.

A search of the rest of the complex turned up some items of interest. Pho found the secret door through which the cultist had escaped; the rogue marked it to make it easy to find, and then spiked it closed to prevent any surprises. On a folded expanse of snowy-white cloth were some items the cleric had left in her haste, possibly products of the 'excavation' here mentioned in Master Dunrat's letters. Some of the items had a magical aura (a small black sphere, a heavy iron torch) while others did not (a black scepter decorated with violet gems, a smooth black metal tube). Unequipped with the proper divination magic, and exhausted from the effort of two rapid-fire brushes with mortality, the group bargained for watch order and fell into slumber.