In space no one can hear your stress

We are trying out the new Alien RPG! The first session turned out to be a lot about getting used to the system and how Stress dice work. We found ourselves getting super stressed very quickly. Heeh. In the end there were some house rules we decided on for next time.

We began by having our characters waking up from cryosleep five days earlier than scheduled. Another spaceship had been found. There was a dead body floating around and a Synth that wanted to murder us. It very nearly succeeded because Stress is a tricky mechanic and we may have been doing it wrong? Oops.

For the next session again, we found another ship, the Potemkin, where we also came across a teenage kid hiding in a room. Wait, why do these things sound familiar? Is there a ginger cat around here somewhere too? ;)

And the last thing, which I believe was on a third ship, we found bodies hanging from the ceiling. Like thousands of them. Space is apparently not a very nice place, but then we're probably about to find some of those alien things, aren't we? Things are bound to go downhill from there!

Introducing the future victims:

• Don[atella] "Dry" Martini, pilot
• Joshua "Josh" Brown, doctor
• Michael Knight, Colonial Marshall

 

Don't look a gift knife in the mouth!

We continued our plan of taking over the Irish gangs' territory, partly because we want to and partly because they fucking tried to murder us. Seeing as how the week leading up to this session had been spent on writing pretty extensive backstories for our characters (well, two of them at least) Lottie, through Auspex, finally realised one of her cousins has a long-standing crush on her BFF and now ships them in character as well as out of character.

So, we were trying to get some info on a place that had a gambling den in the basement. It required catching one of the people used as a look-out and persuading him to talk. He was not an easily persuaded kind of a person, despite our best efforts. At this point the GM hadn't actually read the backstories we'd so painstakingly put together (with miles upon miles of rope with which to hang us later), but it was rather fitting that the guy decided to suggest he'd been busy fucking Frankie's sister and that's why he didn't fancy answering. It hit right in the backstory berserk button. The guy was slightly more talkative after a broken jaw, but he was never getting out of there alive. Cousins fed, Frankie drained the last two points of blood, punched the corpse for good measure and lost a Humanity point in the process.

Someone who didn't lose a point in Humanity this session was Val, who, after we'd raided the gambling den decided we should blow it up to avoid witnesses. Because that's totally how the mafia roll ...

My Jetpack skill is called Gorbash

Once inside the bridge (or one of the bridges, at any rate) of the flying fortress thing - not to be confused with the Boeing B-17 bomber, which is considerably smaller - we had to set the charges ... or rather, we had to work on opening the doors, setting the fuse (or whatever), chucking the bombs and getting the hell out of there.

We had seven tries before they'd blow up in our face. We got the door open on the sixth.

After that we just had to try and find our way to the outside, somehow, and then literally jump ship. Thankfully we're friends with a dragon, so some thrilling aerobatics later and we were safely on the ground, having severely incapacitated a big-ass flying fortress. With the cunning use of a vengeful dragon and some dragon friends and an air elemental. We have the best of friends, clearly!

I'm not foreshadowing or anything

Having defeated the group of spider creatures, we had eventually made it to the bottom of the stairs and found the other troll we were looking for, along with six trolls in a singing circle. That was the end of the last session.

In this session, we took on a couple of Spites - the creature that stung the trolls and infected them with murdery larvae! We also had to deal with the trolls, but the ones that were too far gone, we murderised and the ones that could be saved were knocked out and saved.

We realised that the Spites were coming out of a hole in the ground, and plugged it to stop further attacks. As a reward we were given the title "Defenders of Erdugald" and given a blue gem that will glow when Erdugal is threatened, which means we're supposed to come running to help save it again.

Oh, and it turns out that the Old Prios symbol Valgai's carrying is actually a spider symbol of some kind. THE PLOT THICKENS. Except not right now, because this is our last Symbaroum session for a bit. We're doing a few boardgaming sessions and then it's off back to either Godbound or Rifts, but we'll be back in Davokar eventually.

Is Davokar in Narnia?

Turned out that yes, ice trolls could get out. While we were camped up inside Elindra's witch circle, four of them came sniffing about, along with an abomination and an undead that sort of looked like a mummy. Luckily, we kept quiet and they went away - and we weren't going in the same direction anyway. Not that we got lost on the way or anything, not at all.

When we did get our bearings again and set off in the morning, we eventually came across a troll in fancy clothing, but he was badly injured. There was a stinger left in his neck - apparently he had been attacked when asleep - and his friends were infected too. With some nasty parasite thing, eww.

How to solve this? First by removing the stinger remnants so he can actually regenerate, and then by letting the pet spider poison the troll to kill off the parasite but not the troll - using healing to make sure of that.

Anyway, it turned out the troll was Damaka, one of the two trolls we were tasked by that arch troll to find. Well, here he is, and we just saved his life, yay! And there was Erdugald as well, the mysterious place, which turned out to look like a tower.

A very moist tower, that also played with our senses because we're not trolls. Going down into the structure we eventually came across a dead troll, who looked to have had the same idea as us, i.e. use poison to kill the parasite. Unfortunately he also killed himself in the process.

And then we heard FOOTSTEPS approaching ...

Let's have a pre-emptive NOPE

The making-a-rat-drunk experiments continued, but we eventually had to let the little fella go. If there was poison in that wine, at least it wasn't meant for rats.

As luck would have it, we could now finally start our journey into Davokar! You know, the thing we were supposed to have done ten sessions ago but got side-tracked when Murmei was put into protective custody.

On the very short road leading into the forest, we found a small camp of witchfinders. The wine was mentioned. They took one look at it and said it was very bad mojo indeed. There was darkness in those bottles, make no mistake. As they knew what to do with said cursed liquids, we gave them the rest for safe disposal, while we continued into the forest.

We were attacked by a Skullbiter named Steve, and after much deliberation decided not to attack the group of them we found a bit further away, because while we could take down one of them (somehow, it has stupid levels of armour) we couldn't guarantee the same with a whole group. When it was killed it turned into a pile of earth with a piece of a runic spear in it. Interesting.

Near a place where it was fabled a dragon had been taken down ages ago, there seemed to be a witch's circle protecting the area. Somehow we ended up in a bubble of sorts, by a cottage occupied by a ghost we decided to call Rafe. Apparently in order to get away from there, we'll have to come up with some very tricky questions and the answers? We ... we might be stuck for a while.

Roll Save vs being afraid of the dark!

Deeper into the forest of Davokar we go! We were attacked by giant hairless cats who were so hungry they decided we should be food. That didn't happen, through the cunning use of weapons and grappling hooks on people floating down the river. On the plus side, we made it to the Ordo Magica outpost! Some people were huddling inside, but were happy to see us.

As we made our way toward the headquarters out there, we came across freeze-dried spiders, weird purple lily of the valley where everything else was dead (did someone see a picture of a bluebell and didn't think to look further than "it looks a bit like a lily of the valley, but not white").

The Ordo Magica HQ was now full of goblins. Fortunately, Murmei knows how to speak their language and is proving to be strangely proficient at diplomacy. The goblins spoke of being scared of a "darkness". They also had a trap door (under which they kept a hungry troll), a wizard who was quite out of his mind, and a communication circle going straight to a big spider creature who said she was very benevolent and kind indeed.

The story continues ... and will hopefully be finished by Christmas at this rate ...

Spiders and reapers and fairies, oh my!

We continue our venture into Davokar Forest. There be swarms of spiders. We fought them off and got out of there. They were delicious. (They were represented by pieces of salty liquorice, so your mileage may vary.)

Then we found a group of treasure hunters who wondered if they could join us for the night (we said no), followed by a Necromage coming to attack them because someone in that group had decided to steal something of its. They died, it took its thing back and went away.

And then there was a wizard with fire-y bodyguards that turned out to be part of Elindra's arch enemy hindrance. Fun times were had. And by that I mean death (theirs).

It's fun to heal at the OMHQ!

Valgai got the minimum amount of healing possible from someone at the Ordo Magica because dice are evil. We also delivered the book back to Master Eufrynda, who was so delighted with us she gave us another task we could do. Someone had gone missing in the Davokar forest and would we mind awfully going after them?

Yes, yes we would, but here we are, putting together an expedition and planning to escape the town unnoticed ...

Speaking of unnoticed, Elindra was trying her hardest to spread misinformation around the beggars and cutpurses ... but was so terrible at Persuasion she ended up murdering a whole bunch instead. C'est la vie?

THAT'S how you kill someone!

Elindra had a look around town and came across some shady people in an inn. The other two went to the Ordo Magica, as it would probably be prudent for Murmei to report for duty now that he's in town. The surly gatekeeper wasn't too happy with us trying to skimp on formalities, especially not when we kept coming and going all the time.

Turned out "Master Vernam" had signed himself in the ledger after his untimely demise and taken a book out of the library. A book on how to break links to objects, such as that crown that the elves were looking for.

Puzzle pieces suddenly came together and we tracked down the skin-stealer, the book and the skull/crown thing. Valgai very nearly died, what with going down to zero hit points because his Bale dice have "always had a personality". A murderous one at that, it seems. ("More of a chaotic neutral screw you roller dice.") The GM rubbed it in a bit extra a few days later: "Just thought I highlight that failing 11 and below on 6 rolls in a row is about 0.83%".

Well, at least it turned out alright in the end. Bad guys dead, us still alive, book and creepy skull/crown combo artefact recovered. Now where to put the crown so that no one else thinks it's a good idea to put it on?

Stop rolling 20! This isn’t D&D!

We made it to Thistle Hold! Finally Elindra and Valgai can hand Murmei off to Master Vernam and not have to hear his inane prattle! Unfortunately, things were not that simple, because of course they weren't.

On the way there we were ran into by a peasant girl who was being chased by some thugs claiming to be witch hunters. As they were shouting something about being witch hunters and "stop that girl" and such, she was apprehended by Elindra, who happens to be a witch hunter. As things turned out, the girl wasn't a witch, because of course she wasn't. (It was like the 1600s all over again.)

At Master Vernam's we were greeted by a servant woman, who had only just come back home and found a most gruesome scene in her master's study. It seems the Flayer running around in town had got to him too. OR HAD S/HE? The skin next to the body seemed to belong to someone entirely different - are we looking for a sorcerer who uses other people's skin as a disguise? But why have they taken Master Vernam, and seemingly want to frame the elves for the murders?

Using evil to do good

We had "rescued" the bodies of 24 gods, yet when we came back to look at them (and put them some place better), Varian's servants had put "the bags" into the furnace. Luckily the bodies hadn't burned yet. Pulling them out of the furnace, there were an additional ten of them, but Varian having selective amnesia meant he had no idea where they came from.

As we were doing our usual Godbound business (rebuilding Suzail and so on), a GINORMOUS black dragon flew overhead. The infamous Balefang. A large number of gnolls and other suspicious type critters were trying to dig holes into a mountainside, hoping to uncover the bodies of some gods previously slain, so that they could be resurrected. This wasn't appreciated by Asmodeus, one of the gods who killed said gods originally, hence the dragon.

We may have got involved in the ensuing fight. On the plus side, we didn't actually die and we disrupted the ritual to pull the god into a new body. On the downside ... the chapter ended by us being stranded inside the Night Roads. This is not unlike being stranded inside the Ways, and readers of the Wheel of Time will know what a bad idea THAT is. Even if we happen to basically be Rand, Mat and Perrin ...

An adventuring party? Here? With OUR dice rolls?

In this first proper instalment of the new adventure, we eventually managed to name our airship - The Lady Peregrin (yes, Ladyhawk was a consideration) - and take it to Myth Drannor and when out adventurising we ended up inside some kind of beast. It was okay, we killed it before it killed us. It was admittedly very close, because our dice rolls were garbage most of the night.

We made friends with Viconia, a Drow battle cleric of Kelemvor. We learned about the Silent Forge, and how it's headed by a red wizard of Thay (Elani's favourite people) who is also a lich. Yay, combo bonus!

And we finished off by getting an unsettling dream about three Orc gods who were now among the greater gods. What does this even mean???

We're middle management with magnet armour

The GM started regretting he set this adventure in Forbidden Realms rather than a non-D&D setting right about when the ranger/druid character (Elania) thought it would be a great idea to use the local fauna as miners.

Was this before or after we had a great debate about cold versus hot custard? Because that was a thing. Hot custard vs cold vaniljsås. Your mileage may vary depending on if you're British or Swedish.

Anyhoo. Game-wise we headed south, and entered a thing called Land's Mouth, which is some kind of opening to another dimension or something like that. The map looked like a diagram of female anatomy, at any rate. There was a crashed sky city in there, and creatures that drew metal spikes and swords out of their arms in a decidedly creepy way.

Are you trying to abuse your powers?

Forgot to post this last Sunday, because we have been busy playing what is effectively Godbound the computer game - Divinity: Original Sin 2. We didn't have a roleplaying session this week, but it was time to post this, on the other hand.

We continued to work on the town. There was a visit to a nearby farming community to talk to the people there about how Tilverton had been liberated and they could now go home. Then a visit to that person's sister was paid, and reiterated that Tilverton was free and it was time for re-building rather than invading, and so on.

Then we all met up again and went into the cave system underneath Tilverton in order to find some people who had gone missing down there. There were bone golems, but luckily we had brought meat shields.

I love it when a plan falls apart

We got the attack victims back to the little ramshackle town from whence they came. Turned out they used to live in an abandoned city nearby, Tilverton, which had fallen victim to darkness like 150 years previously. Not that this was a deterrent for us.

We went into the city with the muffin top of darkness and slew a bunch of nasty creatures, and did a fly-by to grab an amulet off a Cthulhian type creature. This made the muffin top go away, along with all the nasty critters, so the townspeople could have their city back.

We're big damn heroes now. Severely injured heroes, in two out of three cases, but heroes nonetheless.

The GM's a pain in the ass

Our Victorian superheroes went across the globe to India, where they were subsequently attacked, because roleplaying game! :D

Everyone's killing innocents, why can't I?

With a van loaded full of innocents (and some of the party that don't have their own means of transportation), we got the hell out of Coalition State. Without dying, so there's a plus. The SAMAS and their pals tried their very best, but while we don't actually have plot armour ... we sort of still appear to have plot armour. ;)

Can I use the ship's guns to shoot something on the planet from space?

Arranging a visit to the planet down below, the Captain and the Librarian were very nearly ambushed by some Chaos beings. Fortunately, the Chaos beings were taken care of by the cunning use of the Arkadius's onboard guns, blasting the Chaos to bits from space. A warning flare was totally fired beforehand, honest guv ... *cough* There's a fetching new crater on the planet now.

The actual, human, residents of the planet were much nicer.

Then some Dark Eldar came along, but umm, we may have shot them slightly - using the bigger guns of the derelict ship and a blatant disregard of the laws of physics. But hey, at least they weren't pirates out trying to steal the ship (again), and hopefully the Explorator won't have picked up the super virus from a transmission he listened in to.

Life is too short to remove safely

Finishing off the Rivergard Keep, the party came out victorious. Lo-Kag, being a noble paladin, decided to dig graves for all the slain cultists as a penance for having killed them. When Kyla and Aial tried to help (using magic instead of shovels), he got a bit upset at their blatant disregard for honour that he'd rather they not help at all.

This worked out well for the rest of the party, who went to check out the rest of the castle in case anything had been missed off. They went back to the hidden boats and found that going in one of them and rowing into the darkness meant some kind of creatures trying to capsise them.

When the creatures in question were eventually returned to death and the whole party were assembled, they rowed all the way to the main water cultist temple, because this is what roleplayers do. That's not what the adventure book thinks should be done for another couple of levels ...