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[ZEITGEIST] The Continuing Adventures of Korrigan & Co.
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<blockquote data-quote="gideonpepys" data-source="post: 7029388" data-attributes="member: 79141"><p><strong>Reboot 'Prologue' (or Session 123): Uru's Garden</strong></p><p></p><p>One of the major player-driven side-plots we explored during our three-year 'heroic tier' Zeitgeist campaign was that of Uru's Garden. Uru is a sinister deep faen, native to the Yerasol archipelago, and he has a child-like fascination with death and technology. Always closely aligned with shadow magic and the Bleak Gate, he was drawn to the ghostly inhabitants of Cauldron Hill and the Nettles, and following the events of the Dying Skyseer, determined to do something to provide succor for the lost spirits of children killed in industrial accidents, and through poverty and disease. So he began to plant an underground garden, filled with fungi and plants that grow only in those rare places where the Bleak Gate and the Dreaming coexist. The garden is fertilized by limbs lopped off in the unsafe factories throughout the city. He also brought bizarre insects (flux wasps and chaos bees) from the Malice Lands to live in the garden, built little mechanised gardeners to keep it tended when he was away, and allowed some local children to help, and maintain the upper reaches of the garden (where an abandoned wellshaft surfaced in the tumbledown yard of an abandoned building).</p><p></p><p>This subplot came to a head when Uru brought Tokoloshe, a bottled quasit, back from the Isle of Odiem, and followed its advice to create a Grim Candle that would enable him to cross over into the Bleak Gate and draw all the spirit children to his garden now that it was complete. This was a trick, and Uru was abandoned, dying, in the Bleak Gate (having stumbled upon the Cauldron Hill facility beforehand). He was rescued by his ghostly familiars - Little Jack and Winkin, Blinkin & Nod and , once nursed back to health by Malthusius (the party's loremaster and spirit medium) he determined to exact revenge. He learned Tokoloshe's truename, forged a Vendetta Bullet, brought the evil little demon to heel, and imprisoned him in a clock-like 'liturgical calendar' in the centre of the fungal garden. On holy days, Tokoloshe is ejected like a screaming cuckoo through a fine mist of holy water.</p><p></p><p>Uru's player once said that he would love it if his garden could one day be a 'dungeon for first-level characters'. Searching for a way to segue from our Cypher System one-shots into our Zeitgeist reboot, I created this dungeon from our notes, and for our reboot 'prologue' ran a deadly one-shot (never once revealing the setting, in fact Uru's player was kept unawares of our plan for a reboot so this would all be a lovely surprise).</p><p></p><p>And so it was that five criminal ne'er-do-wells were hired by a mysterious benefactor to retrieve some rare plants and fungi (such as lesser edgemoan, and baby-in-the-pond) from an underground network of tunnels. They were warned that the tunnels might be haunted, but that this day in the church calendar was the 'nadir' of ghostly visitations and therefore the safest time to undertake the task. I won't go in to huge detail on the adventure, and simply say that it was designed to be deadly in the extreme. As a matter of fact, there was almost no way the party could win. Each of the characters had a hideous secret involving child murder, pederasty, child trafficking or some such, and each would - at the climax of the dungeon, when the liturgical clock struck 'midnight' and plunged the area into the Bleak Gate - be assailed by the vengeful ghosts of their victims. As they did so, Uru began to tease and taunt them from the shadows, confronting them with their terrible crimes. One by one they perished. </p><p></p><p>I have never run such an evil, one-sided, impossible dungeon before. It was my own twisted version of the Tomb of Horrors, and I had great fun coming up with horrible ways to despatch the hapless characters. (One died shitting fish, thanks to the sting of a chaos bee; another's eyes were burned out by the dark woad supplied by his employer (yes, it granted darkvision, but it also burst into flames on command...))</p><p></p><p>But my favourite moment was of course when it finally dawned on Uru's player what was going on. I think he had his suspicions for a while - as things got steadily creepier - but confirmation came with the demonic screams from the Liturgical Clock. Then I handed him his new Cypher System character sheet and told him our campaign reboot would begin next week.</p><p></p><p>(Sadly, it didn't, as I got the worst bout of flu I have ever had in my life, and from which I am still recovering almost a fortnight later, but I digress.)</p><p></p><p>So that was out 'first' session. (Actually, our 123rd, I still haven't decided how best to keep count from now on.) Hopefully, I'll be able to write up our first real session of the reboot some time next week.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="gideonpepys, post: 7029388, member: 79141"] [b]Reboot 'Prologue' (or Session 123): Uru's Garden[/b] One of the major player-driven side-plots we explored during our three-year 'heroic tier' Zeitgeist campaign was that of Uru's Garden. Uru is a sinister deep faen, native to the Yerasol archipelago, and he has a child-like fascination with death and technology. Always closely aligned with shadow magic and the Bleak Gate, he was drawn to the ghostly inhabitants of Cauldron Hill and the Nettles, and following the events of the Dying Skyseer, determined to do something to provide succor for the lost spirits of children killed in industrial accidents, and through poverty and disease. So he began to plant an underground garden, filled with fungi and plants that grow only in those rare places where the Bleak Gate and the Dreaming coexist. The garden is fertilized by limbs lopped off in the unsafe factories throughout the city. He also brought bizarre insects (flux wasps and chaos bees) from the Malice Lands to live in the garden, built little mechanised gardeners to keep it tended when he was away, and allowed some local children to help, and maintain the upper reaches of the garden (where an abandoned wellshaft surfaced in the tumbledown yard of an abandoned building). This subplot came to a head when Uru brought Tokoloshe, a bottled quasit, back from the Isle of Odiem, and followed its advice to create a Grim Candle that would enable him to cross over into the Bleak Gate and draw all the spirit children to his garden now that it was complete. This was a trick, and Uru was abandoned, dying, in the Bleak Gate (having stumbled upon the Cauldron Hill facility beforehand). He was rescued by his ghostly familiars - Little Jack and Winkin, Blinkin & Nod and , once nursed back to health by Malthusius (the party's loremaster and spirit medium) he determined to exact revenge. He learned Tokoloshe's truename, forged a Vendetta Bullet, brought the evil little demon to heel, and imprisoned him in a clock-like 'liturgical calendar' in the centre of the fungal garden. On holy days, Tokoloshe is ejected like a screaming cuckoo through a fine mist of holy water. Uru's player once said that he would love it if his garden could one day be a 'dungeon for first-level characters'. Searching for a way to segue from our Cypher System one-shots into our Zeitgeist reboot, I created this dungeon from our notes, and for our reboot 'prologue' ran a deadly one-shot (never once revealing the setting, in fact Uru's player was kept unawares of our plan for a reboot so this would all be a lovely surprise). And so it was that five criminal ne'er-do-wells were hired by a mysterious benefactor to retrieve some rare plants and fungi (such as lesser edgemoan, and baby-in-the-pond) from an underground network of tunnels. They were warned that the tunnels might be haunted, but that this day in the church calendar was the 'nadir' of ghostly visitations and therefore the safest time to undertake the task. I won't go in to huge detail on the adventure, and simply say that it was designed to be deadly in the extreme. As a matter of fact, there was almost no way the party could win. Each of the characters had a hideous secret involving child murder, pederasty, child trafficking or some such, and each would - at the climax of the dungeon, when the liturgical clock struck 'midnight' and plunged the area into the Bleak Gate - be assailed by the vengeful ghosts of their victims. As they did so, Uru began to tease and taunt them from the shadows, confronting them with their terrible crimes. One by one they perished. I have never run such an evil, one-sided, impossible dungeon before. It was my own twisted version of the Tomb of Horrors, and I had great fun coming up with horrible ways to despatch the hapless characters. (One died shitting fish, thanks to the sting of a chaos bee; another's eyes were burned out by the dark woad supplied by his employer (yes, it granted darkvision, but it also burst into flames on command...)) But my favourite moment was of course when it finally dawned on Uru's player what was going on. I think he had his suspicions for a while - as things got steadily creepier - but confirmation came with the demonic screams from the Liturgical Clock. Then I handed him his new Cypher System character sheet and told him our campaign reboot would begin next week. (Sadly, it didn't, as I got the worst bout of flu I have ever had in my life, and from which I am still recovering almost a fortnight later, but I digress.) So that was out 'first' session. (Actually, our 123rd, I still haven't decided how best to keep count from now on.) Hopefully, I'll be able to write up our first real session of the reboot some time next week. [/QUOTE]
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