Caliber's Storyhour (DragonStar ... well sort of)

[Caliber]

The next morning we woke up, and promptly found that it was a planetary holiday. No stores were open, and we had to eat ‘Breakfast Jump-Up’. That’s when we jump up and make our own breakfast. We decided to make a plan. I actually had to ask the drow if they knew where they wanted to go. They were frickin’ clueless! So then I asked them if they could pick up anything on all that damn equipment they lugged down here. They realized that was a good idea, and they found that there was a city with a bunch of weird crap in it to the south. We found it on the map and it was called the City of the Gods! So we started getting ready.

Jhelai went to go find a temple, which made me a little more suspicious: why would any self-respecting gunslinger want to go to a Temple? But, he found it was closed. While Jhelai was out, he found a rental place that was open, and he bargained to rent us two vans. When he came back to tell us, Wang and myself joined him to go pick up the vans while everybody got ready. When we got back with the vehicles, everybody loaded in. All the magic users in the other bus, and all the real studs in ours. Now, I know you hate the drow, but one of them looks like a fellow brother-in-arms: armed to the teeth! I was almost jealous!

So, we set off. Dude, now I said these were vans, but man they rock! A good 115 miles per hour out of those suckas. We ran across something about 20 minutes outside of town. And when I say this thing was BIG, I mean BIG! It looked like a giant floating jellyfish that was three(3) Miles wide!!

[Zoltan holds up Four fingers. Zoltan’s eyes get very big. We realized in session 17 that Zoltan can’t count.]

It was fargin’ huge! With these big tentacles hanging about 100 feet off of the ground. Not knowing what to do, we went around. About 12 minutes later we came across another big floating thing. This one was not as big but it was singing. We sent the fairy out to talk to it. She said ‘Hi’. It sang to her. Then she asked it where it was from. It sang again. This time it didn’t stop. It kept on going and going and going and going… I bet it is still singing now. We didn’t get much out of it, so we kept on going. Not 5 minutes later, we came upon this big giant ‘MegaMaid’! Just kidding, but it might have been her vacuum cleaner. This looked like a big space vacuum, and it was sucking up a fifty-foot wide swath of land and trees. Not knowing what to do, we sent the fairy out again. She said ‘Hi’, again. It wasn’t to keen on responding. She asked more questions, and it just sucked more.

We went around it and in 5 minutes we came across the town of Boggy Bottom. Or at least what was left of it. The buildings that were left had massive scorch marks that look like they came from lightning bolts of some sort. The rest of the buildings were gone. Some people were running around all crazy like. We stopped one and he said that first this big 3 mile wide jellyfish shocked the crap out of the town, and then a big vacuum cleaner sucked up the rest of it. I figure he was a little loony. We got on the Drow radio and found some guy who said he was from the Temple of the Frog. Yeah, I know, it seems a little silly to worship a frog, but keep quiet about that. I bet these people don’t like wisecracks about the frog and the hamster, if you know what I mean.

[Orendil looks clueless.]

Never mind. This guy thought that we were nuts, and he said they were going to send out a team to investigate. We said, screw that, and we moved on. You couldn’t miss the big trail that the vacuum cleaner left. So, figuring that the trail would lead us to the city, we just followed it. We soon came across a fifty food wide, paper thin, layer of goop on the trail. It was moving North. I didn’t like this. I was starting to get a real funny feeling, because I don’t like goop. I, driving the blue van, stayed a little ways back. Jhelai, driving the green van, got a little closer. Again, we sent the fairy. She threw some rations at it, and it just moved around it. Then somebody got the bright idea to throw some metal at it. So the fairy throws a gold piece at it. It then decides to start collecting itself. It quickly starts to shrink in width and get thicker. Soon, two tentacles looked like they were forming on the top. I yell at the fairy and Wang to get back in the buses, and I start moving! Wang had to jump in while the van was moving, and I was gone. Then, as we were passing the goop, the two tentacles shot out a good 50 feet at our vans! Luckily we were far enough out of the way and flooring it, or else it might have gotten more interesting! Nothin’ but gasps from the back seats.

At this point, I am getting a little pissed. A big planet full of wimps. No way to buy new equipment. And big freekin’ weird creatures! This sucks!

We kept moving and we got up to the mountain pass. We are still quite a ways away, when we see a green snake like creature with 8 pink tentacles coming off the sides of its head. Now, this didn’t really bother me, too much, except that it was 40 feet long. Then I hear from the back seat and over the intercom that these guys want to take it. I was in total shock. Somebody gets the bright idea to go up the road and wait for it to come by and ambush it. I was in shock, again. I actually did what they said. Nobody even listened to my plan, which was to stop, wait for it to pass, and move on behind it.

Well, we went up the road a bit, and hid the two vans about 10 feet off of the road behind a tree. The green van was parallel to the road and we were parked right next to the green van. We weren’t really hidden too well. Neither were we prepared to ambush it: We were still in the vans. A lot of people, including you, got the jump on me and got to attack first. Syd tried to cast something but he turned invisible instead. The only odd thing was that his clothes and gear didn’t.

[Zoltan snorts a laugh.]

Luckily, the snake got beaten up really quickly. Then something happened. Apparently, right before I blasted the crap out of it, it did a mind-transference on Jhelai. Then G’Banrak noticed it and yelled out that Jhelai didn’t look right: It was the creature! I didn’t hear that, though (Or Did I?), and blew Jhelai-in-Big-Snake-Body away.

Jhelai looked fierce, too. He had the Eye of the Tiger, and he was about to open up some real WhupAss on the green van inhabitants. Glad I wasn’t in there. As soon as G’Banrak yelled out, Nick was jumping out of the van door; He really likes jumping out of vehicles, I have determined. Moving or stationary, too. Kinda Cute. Then he tries to cast a web on Jhelai and gets his first taste of Wild Magic.

[Orendil tears up. Zoltan pats him on the back.]

It’s OK, Big ‘O’. Everybody realizes once in his or her life that magic is truly unnatural and nasty.

Well, the web turns into some kind of stasis field, so Jhelai is frozen. He can’t move; he can’t do anything. So you know what they do? They keep casting! The Elf Female casts something and falls in love with Jhelai. Milo tries some kind of magic rod, and it starts growing 8 snakes out of it! Heh, Heh. I liked that one! Nick runs around the bus, goes up to the driver’s window and tries to grab Jhelai’s twin pistols. His hands get stuck in the Stasis field too. You try to go pull him out, and you almost pull his hands off. Nick also somehow ruined his amulet of spiked armor by casting something else. Now, I know these stasis fields don’t last too long, so I get in front of the bus and ready a shot for when he gets free. Somebody gets the bright idea of firing a blaster at him. It gets frozen too, just inches from his face. So, then everybody, but me, decided to frag the poor bastard, so that when he gets free, he will be turned into slag.

Sure enough, the next 30 seconds were filled with people pumping the stasis field full of blaster shots, and Nick almost soiling his armor; He didn’t want to get hit by a stray blaster. Stasis field disappears, you pull nick to the ground, and J gets turned into soggy bits. Nick and others loot the body, and the female elf, over there, starts crying. Now, I thought that blaster shots always cauterized the wounds that they inflict. But man, four or five blaster shots hitting someone’s head at the same time, and that sucker EXPLODES! Whoa, what a sight!

The next little while was a blur. Most cleared the soggy bits out of the front seat, while Milo decided to go cut off the snakes head. It was a big head. I mean bigger than Milo. Actually, it’s hanging out in the garden over yonder, we can go see it later, to see if it jogs your memory. You and Milo cut off the snakes head, and then we noticed that the snake was still moving! It was as if something was inside of it! Wait a minute, It’s a baby! Kill It! Kill It! Kill It!

[Zoltan starts jumping up and down. Zoltan makes a scene. Orendil yells at Zoltan to calm down.]

Oh. Sorry. I think Milo actually thought it was a baby human, but I think he was a little delirious. Then I killed it. So we cut its head off too. Now we have a giant snake head, a baby snake head and soggy Jhelai bits.

 

[Caliber]

It wasn't long into the Session that the Drow directed us toward the City of the Gods, a city far to the South where the creatures were apparently emanating.

You might recognize some of these creatures if you used to play 2E, since a lot of the monsters we meet are actually going to be 3E conversions of 2E monsters. The big orbs that sing are Gonns from Spell Jammer, for example.

The big snake was a Cistern Fiend from Dark Sun.

At Boggy Bottom we made first contact with the Temple of the Frog. They were pretty weird and suspicious, especially for what we had seen of this planet so far. We never should have trusted them.

The combat with the Cistern Fiend was really the first big battle we had that involved a lot of Wild Magic.

Not only did Nick trap Jhelai in the stasis field, but he managed to permanently unenchant his magical amulet.

Jhelai, we barely knew ye. We only liquidated you a little while you were mind controlled.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, this is actually how Zoltan talks in game. Honest.

 

[Gez]

Ouch !

This is getting truly weird.

You know what's funny ? In any of my own group, we would have tried to subdue the mind-controlled guy until he recover his own will (with or without exorcism, depending on the case). It seems noone had this idea there. Not a wonder there's much distrust between members.

 

[Caliber]

Well, Nick did try to subdue him in a way.

The spell he cast was a Web, but the Wild Magic changed it into a strange temporal stasis affect.

The real kicker though is that it wasn't a mind-control affect. Mind Switch is more of a Magic Jar type affect. Jhelai's mind was in the Cistern Fiend's body, being blown apart, and the Cistern Fiend's mind was in Jhelai's body.

Of course Zoltan had no idea, being in a different van, when he blew the snake to pieces.

Lacking anyway of returning Jhelai to normal (you may note we have no Divine spell casters at all) we were basicly forced to kill him.

Plus, no one trusts one another.

 

[md3]

Meta-gaming

Gez,

To make one thing clear, we tend to frown on Meta-Gaming, and if they hadn't blown the worm like monster away when they totally intended to, then that could only be because they were meta-gaming. Zoltan was next in line to go right after the switch, and he really destroyed the worm within it was Jhelai.

Now, I guess they could have tried to keep Jhelai's body alive with an alien intellect within it, but then again, meta-gaming. They just saw Jhelai turn on them and prepare to fire. What would you do? He was a relatively new guy in the party.

Later,
Manny
GM for this crazy campaign.

Note, it was planned from the start to have a party with internal conflict. So far many of the characters work together, while few others stab each other in the back. The only problem is again the meta-game alliances that seem to creep up.

 

[Gez]

Re: Meta-gaming

Gez,

To make one thing clear, we tend to frown on Meta-Gaming, and if they hadn't blown the worm like monster away when they totally intended to, then that could only be because they were meta-gaming. Zoltan was next in line to go right after the switch, and he really destroyed the worm within it was Jhelai.

Now, I guess they could have tried to keep Jhelai's body alive with an alien intellect within it, but then again, meta-gaming.

Yes. However, what I meant was most of my characters would have interpreted Jhelai's actions as the result of a charm, or hypnose, rather than of a possession or exchange... And thus would have kept the body alive with the alien mind until discovering the truth. Not metagaming -- quite the contrary.

 

[Caliber]

Well, thats easily enough explained.

G'Banrak is a pretty tough Sorceror. Suffice it to say, her Spellcraft check was sufficient to figure out what was going on.

Zoltan, not being in the van with Jhelai didn't hear what she said. But her exact words were "The snake is in Jhelai!" That tipped off the other spellcasters in the group, Syd and the female elf in particular.

I have to say I am pretty glad that wasn't a Charm. Nothing creates party strife like killing someones character.

Thanks for the feedback though.

 

[md3]

Spell Cast on Jhelai

Syd did try to cast a web spell on Jhelai, but it was modified to a stasis field or something like that.
So, he may have been moving along those lines.

You will just have to read more because it gets a whole lot crazier.

Later,
Manuel

 

[Caliber]

Then we got on the radio and called our radio buddy from earlier. We told him about what we found. He still thought we were crazy, but we asked if there was anybody there who could resurrect somebody. He said maybe, but they were off today. Then he asked us who the hell are we and why do we call ourselves tourists. We got off the radio, and decided to head that way. It was only going to take about an hour, and it was only about 10:00. You had to drive the green van.

So we’re riding along, and off in the distance we notice a blurry humanoid figure walking straight toward us. Everybody wanted to stop but me; I wanted to buzz him and scare him a little bit. So we stop about 100 feet away and he disappears. See, that’s what you get for not having any fun. We didn’t know what happened so we kept on moving. Then in the green van, G’Banrak yells “There’s something in the back seat!”. Everybody in the green van starts freakin’. Nick was ready to jump out of the van, even though it was moving 115 miles per hour. See what I mean? You were wondering what the hell they were talking about, and so were we. You couldn’t see anything there; it must have been invisible. It was actually funny to see everybody up in the front seat. We yell out over the intercom to try and talk to it. The fairy says ‘Hi’. Nobody else says anything. I tell the drow to start scanning the other van, to make sure that they aren’t going nuts. They actually detected some kind of humanoid presence sitting in the back seat, next to the bodies. It was not from this planet.

But, nobody wanted to do anything, so we kept on moving to the Temple of the Frog. A couple of minutes later, while traveling over the river, 7 or so blobs start rising out in front of the water in front of us. We were able to dodge most of them, but we each hit one dead on. SPLAT! Pink blob guts all over the windshield. Yuck!

We kept on moving. We were coming upon a line of trees to our left. Then, BLAM! A massive blaster shot hits each van dead on. All we could tell was that they came from over the tree line. Totaled each van! Yours pretty much started to quit right there; hell, you didn’t even have much of roof anymore. I couldn’t tell where it came from, but I knew it was high up, and I wanted to get under it. Pedal to the Metal!

Right down the beach at 115 miles per hour! I wanted to whip around that line of trees and get right up to it. My passengers, on the other hand, wouldn’t hear of it. But, I didn’t care! I was going for it anyway! 10 seconds to the turn. Milo says, “STOP!” 9 seconds to the turn. The Drow go crazy mad! 8 seconds to the turn. Wang says, “Your Clazy!” 7 seconds to the turn! Everybody yells, “STOP!!!” It was so loud, that it actually got to me, and I had a change of heart. Knowing that I had to stop quick, I slammed on the brakes. As soon as it stopped, I jumped out and went running into the line of trees that are covering us, so I could get a better look. Nick, Wang, Milo, Syd and a couple others join me, but you stayed behind to guard the Drow. That creature was still in the back seat.

We saw a huge wall, 30 feet high, with giant turrets up on towers on the corners. There were people with binoculars trying to look for us. These turrets were massive, like large anti-vehicular blasters. The wall went on down to the south for hundreds of feet. Milo, who always learns the hard way, tried to jump using his ring of jump. He went up a good 35 feet, and was immediately shot at by the turret. Then, he was lucky, I think, that he had his ring of featherfall on, except that when activated, it permanently made him unable to taste apples. I bet he’s sorry he used magic now!

Then the Drow noticed a tank coming many yards down the tree line. We all tried to hide in the trees and swampy bushes. Oh yes, it was quite swampy out there. Nick actually tried to dig a hole and got filthy. Milo got on the radio while the tank was getting close. He talked to the same guy again, and the guy asked if that was us in the vans. Well, Yeah! Meanwhile, the tank then stops right in front of us. It aims its gun at one of the vans and fires; it fell short with a thump. Milo asked the guy why they were shooting at us, and he replied that we were flying real fast towards the temple and they thought we were hostile. Then he asked us again if we were tourists. Finally, Milo told him that we were hiding from the tank. He asked why, if we were tourists, we were hiding in the first place!

At that point, I placed my assault blaster on my back and walked out of the trees up to the tank with my hands up. Almost immediately, somebody pops out of the hatch and levels a gun at me. He got me to drop my guns and then grilled me about what I was doing here, and so on. He spotted 3 others in the trees and asked everyone to get out. Wang was trying to sneak around back of the tank to sneak up on the guy, but he wasn’t too graceful about it. Finally the soldier asks me how many are in our group. After thinking about it, I said 10. With that he got more people to come out, including you, and got them to drop their guns. They were a little taken aback by ‘Syd the Invisible Man’.

Then we noticed a boat pulling up down by the vans, and two soldiers getting out and coming our way. One of them had this really wicked looking gun, and both of them had at least two backup guns. They came up and ordered us to the boat. Most of us went to the boat. I stayed behind to ask the guy about his weapon. He wasn’t too thrilled. The two soldiers collected all of the gear and put it up in the tank. The tank commander then saw another 3 people in the woods. He asked me why I said there were ten of us. I told him the truth: I can’t count. Wang then asked the tank commander why they didn’t actually blow up the van with their gun earlier. He said the plain and simple, obvious truth: “We missed.”

OK, don’t let anybody know it, but Milo, Alahandra, and one of the Drow are still out there hiding in the woods. We got on the boat and took a trip to the garden, which is inside the walls. It was here that we explained our side of the story. We also found out about this place. This is the Temple of the Frog, and it has been here for a very long time. In the past, the walls were built to protect the town from the denizens of the swamp: crocs and other nasties. It all seems a little overblown to me. Their rep is a Three Frog officer in the local militia. They answer to a dude named St. Steven, who is a Ten Frog General. We asked if we could see this Ten Froggy dude, and he said he might let us see him. We asked about the patrol that was sent to Boggy Bottom and they said it hadn’t returned yet. He asked which of us was the one using the radio. Knowing that Milo wasn’t here, I said it was Wang, who at the exact same moment was saying that he didn’t know how to use a radio and pointed at me. We quickly changed the subject.

So, the guy then asked us where the body was to get resurrected. Uh, it’s in the van still. He was a little miffed. You volunteered to go back to the van to grab the body parts and the heads. While you were there, you noticed the invisible dude was still there, but you couldn’t make him leave. When you got back, you waited there with the snake heads, while Nick went with Jhelai’s body to get it resurrected. I think he was going to get cleaned up too. Some guards came out and videoed the heads, and you left the heads with them. I think that they might try to hide the evidence, but no biggie.

The rest of us took a jaunt across the wooden bridge into Frog Town: A small, old time village with wooden huts and buildings. It was quite a change from the high tech guards who have guns coming out of every orifice. Oh, and there are guards everywhere, as if this place is hiding something. I don’t trust them at all, but I want to get some weapons from them. Just a few minutes ago, Wang went with some more soldiers on a boat ride to show them the blobs that we saw down the river. And we also just saw a boat pull up with some prisoners who were led into that building across the street.

Oh, you ought to go check out the animal skin shop down the road. That’s where I got this nice rabbit skin for my helmet.

[Zoltan points to the rabbit skin affixed to his helmet.]

So, that’s about it. Does any of this ring a bell? Ahh, well just stay away from those magic users and you’ll be OK. Lemme buy you a drink.

 

[Caliber]

Ah yes. We surrender again. If we had known what was awaiting us in Frogtown, I can't imagine we would have risked going inside. But thats hindsight for you.

We saw a few less menancing critters this session, the only ones being the strange invisible man who hitched a ride with us and the floating jellyfish which splattered quite nicely against our vans.

Zoltan actualy nearly killed everyone in his van by driving right into the turrets. Luckily everyone at the table yelling at him got through to him. I have no idea why we always let him drive.

The people at the Temple were all very suspicious, paranoid folks. I'm sure we didn't help but hey. What can you expect.

This is where Zoltan's first person narrative ended. There is actually a little bit more of Session 17, which I will post next weekend along with 18. The rest of Zoltan's post is told from a more detached, 3rd person point of view.

And then, two weeks from now, we shall return to my style of writing. And since we are going to be putting our Dragon Star campaign on hold for a while, I might even manage to get completely caught up. Holy Crap!