His Majesty The Worm - Session 3

 

Matul Bentgirder net the Elite Undermen Excavation Company by the hospital outside town.

• Aethelbald, Earthblood Orc Rogue
• Candella Panthercoppered, Dwarf Fighter
• Hyacinth "Cindy" Hakkapeliitta, Human Brewer
• Mikado Open-The-Belly, Gnome Sniper 

Rather than offer a job for pay, the undermobster offered them a bag of freebies to put the hurt on the Fire Giants as payback for kidnapping his distant relation. 

• Fungus Purgit, for dissolving melted stone
  
• Oil of the Frost Wraith, for adding ice damage to weapons
• Potion of Flash Sweat, for immunity to fire damage
  
• Shrink Bomb, for negating the size advantage of a roomful of monsters

There were effectively two ways into the Forge. Go back down the stairs under the Temple of Swords and directly confront the Giants, or follow the underground river south into the Stone Garden and use the Purgit to dissolve the melted stone blocking the passage. The Guild took the long way around, excited to explore a new area. They also decided to take on Aethelbald's personal quest to retrieve a magnificent horse from the dungeon.

 

Unknown Armies Playtest - The Rose and the Nightingale

Lecomte du Nouy

 

1798. General Napoleon Bonaparte led the Armée d'Orient into Egypt against the Mamluks, a military aristocracy of former Ottoman slave-soldiers. In the Nile Delta, the French stormed the castle of a Mamluk Bey. Artillery smashed holes in the walls. Fusiliers stormed the battlements. The defenders surrendered or fled. The Bey and his wife stepped into his secret escape tunnel. The castle was hit by French artillery and the happy couple were immediately killed by a piece of falling masonry, leaving five Eunuchs in command of the harem and his palace.

• Agha the Gardener 
• Baybar the Physician
• Faisal the Librarian
• Hassan the Guard
• Malik the Bath Attendant
  

They debated what to do about the impending French assault on the harem. They were split between their desires to escape, protect the Bey's concubines,  loot the place, or do some combination of the three. The palace was surrounded and even if they could get out, they'd be penniless, friendless and without protection in a land being invaded by foreigners. They needed a plan.

 

His Majesty The Worm - Session 2

 

Fresh off their victory over the Vampire Voivode, three adventurers stripped down for a soak at the thermae, and to meet their next client.

• Breadrick Bravebelly, Halfling Rogue
• Gyrfalcon "Gary the Mage" Hakkapeliitta, Human Mage
• Candella Panthercoppered, Dwarf Fighter

The Dwarf mobster Matul Bentgirder lounged nude in a private bath with a handful of huskarls, sturdy bodyguards who didn't need weapons or armor to deal lethal damage. He was happy to see the Undermen Breadrick and Candella, and to meet the human Gyrfalcon. He had a job for them, a rescue mission in the Fire Giants' forge beneath the Crypt of the Vampire Voivode. It was a favor to a relative, to rescue the human Leupold Hakkapeliitta from Giant captivity. For this he'd pay out 150 gold pieces, provided the prisoner was brought back alive.

 

The Fire Giants were a hot topic in the adventuring community. Weapons that looked suspiciously like Fire Giant forgework were regularly seen in the hands of brute squads from the Temple of Swords, leading to rumors of forbidden commerce with the Giant slavers.

 

The Guild debated whose personal quest to pursue alongside the rescue mission. They decided to get a piece of fine art for Candella's tomb, since the Fire Giant Forge would probably be full of fine metalwork and jewelry. There was the little problem of the Vampire Voivode, his wives, his servants and his pets, all of whom were pissed off at the Guild for their conduct on the previous delve. But it was nothing they couldn't handle, provided they moved fast. All they had to do was move fast to the drain in the floor of the mulch room, which led down to an underground river that fed the Fire Giant Forge.

 

His Majesty The Worm - Session 1

 

Four adventurers stood in the entry hall of the Crypt of the Vampire Voivode.

• Breadrick Bravebelly, Halfling Rogue
• Chelicera, Cave Elf Bard
• Gyrfalcon "Gary the Mage" Hakkapeliitta, Human Mage
• Candella Panthercoppered, Dwarf Fighter

Their mission, given to them by a Gnome crimelord in the Hangman's Quarter outside of town: Enter the Crypt and pluck an Avern, a special moonlight flower used in Elven monomachy. Breadrick had personal reasons to descend into the vampiric tomb, which the rest of the Elite Undermen Excavation Company agreed to help him with: he needed to find a special bottle of wine as a courtship gift.

All that remained was to choose a direction to explore first.

Creature Compendium Test Drive: Widow's Grove

A trio of Elf Druids has broken away from the See of Trees and built a hideout in a mesa overlooking Hogman's Plain. To the sorceresses of Widow's Grove, the scalphunters and sandbusters and shipping magnates and self righteous Clerics sent by industrialized civilization are nothing more than prey animals to be devoured.

Creature Compendium Test Drive: The Marsh on Mogart's Creek

moxica

 

The River Hog is the fastest and safest way to traverse Hogman's Plain, right up until you hit a snag. Adventurers, colonists and scalphunters aren't the only creatures drawn to the cool flowing water, which protects travelers against the searing sun and swarming undead alike.

John Tynes Ain't Dead Contest Results

Komoda

The John Tynes Isn't Dead Contest just wrapped. Submitters had a couple months to write submissions based on entries to the Unnatural Phenomena page, an Unknown Armies fansite dating back to the early 2000s (and mirroring content from other, now defunct fan pages).

 

The jam was initiated after Atlas Games allowed the Statosphere community content program for Unknown Armies 3e to die by neglect, ignoring DrivethruRPG's communications on the subject and subsequent fan communications asking about the status of the program. UA3 was basically abandoned anyway, but the disappearance of Statosphere through bureaucratic incompetence added insult to injury.

Creature Compendium Test Drive: Palace of the Naga Raja

Robert Talbot Kelly

A fierce beast sinks any vessel which sails past the riverside fort. Monsters devour travelers who approach on land. Even the air is contested by shrieking fiends, who fly to frontier settlements on evil wings and carry off defenseless victims. Pestilence spreads across the Plain, ruining crops and sickening farmers.

C Series Masterpost

Introducing the C Series, a trilogy of linked dungeons. A monster infestation beneath a sanitarium leads adventurers on a quest across the planet, and beyond.

 

C Series Music Post

For C1 I mostly used the Barony soundscape, falling back on Machinarium for the safe areas of the Fazenda. C2 was a grab bag. C3 happened the way it did because I wanted to use the space theme from Metal Slug 3, and the rest fell into place after that.

C Series Session 6: The Clay Moon

Roddy Applecreek the Mad Bomber, Delgal Haberkorn the Hundred Handed Mage and Al Hafiz the Preserver went out into the Fazenda gardens to retrieve the Threshers for an expedition through the second portal, into the heart of the alien base. They found La Mal wrestling with a huge pile of lianas and yellow trumpet flowers, while Condition Killer shouted pointers. He explained that the success of the expedition against the Gnolls on the previous day convinced the Grain Cult to loan the team a Mound. It didn't have a name, but they called it Phosgene because it smelled like hay. Al Hafiz collected his ax wielding henchman Eric the Barbarian, but Grit was dead and Gowonry was nowhere to be found.

 

A team of masons and carpenters came out of the portal in the Gnomish mines, carrying trowels, saws and other tools. One of them handed Al Hafiz a business card, bearing the epigram

 

Stone is not too hard

Nor mud too soft

 

and an address in the Marble Cliffs. Condition Killer explained that he hired these people to do some work in the tomb, to make it easier to get into the portal and stop desert beasts from nesting there.

On the other side of the first portal, the entrances leading out from the tomb to Hogman's Plain were all bricked up. The workers added a ladder going up and down the central shaft, surrounded by a wooden cage to stop the user from falling off. The party mounted the ladder to the third floor, waited for Phosgene the Mound to catch up, and went through the other portal - the one that led to the alien base.

 

King in Yellow Tarot - A Second Reading

 

After some discussion with a friend I decided to do another KiY tarot reading. In my first reading I just used the Wikipedia interpretations of the cards, which it seems are strongly biased toward the symbolism used in the Rider Waite set. While Kurt Komoda based the color scheme and linework on the Rider Waite set, the dev team packed the designs with their own symbolism.

This time, I'll try to interpret what's actually on the cards and how it relates to their assigned role in the story, rather than using someone else's opinion of someone else's deck.

King in Yellow Tarot - A Reading

 

My King in Yellow stuff from the Delta Green Conspiracy Kickstarter arrived today. 

 

I've been looking forward to the tarot cards since the earliest previews dropped around seven years ago. The cards come with a little booklet that explains the lore and mythos behind the KiY Tarot, which is familiar to anyone who read the old Countdown splat for the original Delta Green. There's some additional exposition regarding why John Tynes picked the character "Madame Sosostris" as the creator of the deck, based on her appearance in literary works from the interwar period.