Esoteric Enterprises - No Town Like Cow Town - Session Nine

Session nine was great. Both players were running first level characters and had basically no context for what was happening in Cow Town, but by giving them an abbreviated version of the situation and some mission parameters, I was able to get them into the game with (relatively) little pain. They still stumbled a couple times due to lacking crucial information from previous games, but once they decided what they were doing the game was fast and decisive.

In attendance:

• Bruce Bellows, Pyromaniac Bogan (Mercenary, Lvl 1)
• Beauregard McCaffery, the Thinking Man's Gangster (Mercenary, Lvl 1)

Since neither had any idea what the hell was happening, I decided they were a couple of hoodlums fresh out of Coal City. They'd heard there was a brawl brewing in Cow Town, and were hoping to pick up some riches from the ensuing factional conflict. The Light Market was ferrying people through the portrait route if they were willing to fight, so they climbed through the painting into the Seekers' underground lair.

The pair of goons wandered into the guest room, where a goat man and a lizard man were directing traffic. John and Jo were happy to give the duo a mission, after Geasing them to ensure they couldn't reveal the Occultists' plans. They needed someone to deliver a package to the Dungeon Druids, then return with a package that the Fire Cult needed. They had to hurry though, because the Grangers were planning an attack on the Druids' grove. The hoods were happy to help, and the Illusionists handed them a thermos of soup each and sent them on their way.

The mercs climbed through the portrait into the Occult Gallery and immediately got lost. They wandered the exhibits for about half an hour before they asked the Living Room for directions. The transformed vivimancer directed them on their way, and they found the portal to the underground vault showroom.

(This was partially because the last group hadn't finished updating the communal player map with the underworld gallery, and partially my fault. On the underworld map I showed them, there were two locations labeled "gallery". They thought they were in the one to the North, and kept looking for a way to travel West to the old fire cult lair, rather than looking for the painting to the underworld vault. Once this misconception was cleared up, they quickly found the way through).

The offending image

The goons climbed out of the painting into the underworld showroom, where one of the vault inhabitants was explaining the painting's features to a pair of suited corporate executives. McCaffrey pegged them for meat cultists by their greasy skin and vacant stares. Thankfully, neither of the mercenaries were known to the UMT alliance yet, so they were able to leave without any trouble. They went out through the offices, past the ATMs and into the cistern. From there, they navigated the buried ruins and entered the botanic gardens, through the route so many explorers before them had passed right by but never investigated.

And there was a reason for that. The first room was filled with compost piles and corpses, which disgorged shambling mounds that chased the mercenaries into the next room. Thankfully, the shambling mounds were about as fast as their name suggested. The footpads wandered through a bog filled with wooden buoys, a circle of sacrificial standing stones, an underground stream flowing through the gardens, and a cactus glen guarded by salt elementals. They used a branch to probe the path through a mysterious swamp, and managed to avoid getting eaten by the carnivorous but immobile plants that lived there. They were contemplating a strange fungal garden around a crystal clear pool when they heard the sound of laughter and argument from the next tunnel.

The druidic grove was filled with druids, who were busy arguing, imbibing intoxicating substances, and other salacious activities. They noticed the mercenaries right away though, and assumed a battle ready stance. Bruce defused the situation by offering them the strange resin that the Occultists had sent as payment. The druids handed over the package for the Seekers: a brick of their most powerful deific hash, enough to plug the toker's mind directly into the God of their choice.

The Archdruid, a tough old woman in a revealing animal-hide singlet, swore that the circle was discussing something important before they became distracted by drugs and drink. The mercenaries suggested it might have been the strike force of Grangers on the way to the grove. The Druids agreed that that was definitely what they had been about to discuss before they got distracted. The Grangers had never seen eye to eye with the Druids, what with one advocating for hardy agrarian self sufficiency, and the other worshiping the Idea of Thorns. The Archdruid asked the mercenaries if they wanted to make $1,000 in peyote, in exchange for helping the circle defend the gardens. The roadagents agreed, and began planning their defense.

(I gave the players the map of the area so they could actually plan the defenses)

By collapsing the entrances in the kudzu room on the East side, they reduced the frontage they'd have to protect. They decided to defend the killer plant swamp and the stone bridge over the black goat pit. The druids instructed the eels that swam in the river to defend it against any amphibious assault the Grangers attempted. Bruce took position in the swamp with the archdruid, while McCaffrey defended the bridge with another nature-worshipper. They sent a skirmish line of scouts into the rooms ahead to alert them when the enemy arrived.

The initial Granger push was hampered by encounters with shambling mounds and bloat zombies in the early rooms, but they pushed forward until they hit the druidic defenses. McCaffrey deftly used his smoke bombs to control line of sight, preventing the mass of rifle wielding farmers from shooting him as he engaged them in hand to hand combat one by one, striking them and throwing them off the bridge into the black goat's pit below. Bruce waited for the Grangers to blunder into the carnivorous plants, then opened up with his flamethrower. He almost died when they returned fire, but the Druids kept up the pressure with a hail of offensive magic. The tide turned when the Archdruid turned into a bear and leapt into the fray, killing several of the farmers turned meat cultists. McCaffrey fell back into the fungus room and triggered the sleeping puffballs, incapacitating several of the attacking fighters and delaying their advance while Bruce worked his way around behind them in a long flank. The battle ended with a surprise spurt from Bruce's flamethrower into the rear of the surviving farmers, incinerating them. Not once did the Grangers falter or try to save themselves. Their minds knew only the meat god in the sink, and his will was the destruction of the Druids.

The druids lost one woman, who was gunned down after she fell off the bridge in the smoke bomb scuffle. They considered this an acceptable loss, in exchange for sacrificing the one surviving meat cultist that the Archdruid had pinned in her bear claws. The mercenaries took the wallets and guns from the dead Grangers, ending up with a big sack of rifles they could barely carry. With a smile on their face, freshly looted smartphones in their pockets, $1,000 of peyote wrapped in waterproof leaves, and the mission objective in their possession, the soldiers of fortune set off back into the dungeon, intent on returning through the vault painting, through the gallery and back to the Seekers' lair.

The mercenaries went back to the cistern. They heard the sound of an argument from the tunnel to the south. Something about PPE and staying suited up. McCaffrey didn't know this tunnel was full of dangerous vampires because he hadn't ever seen the cistern before. He decided to enter the burned, sticky tunnel and see if he could help.

The walls of the scorched sewer chamber were coated with a strange resin. There were two bloated, hairless men in HAZMAT suits, carrying flamethrowers and shotguns. McCaffrey introduced himself as a newcomer to the underworld. They told him they knew about a shortcut that would take him back to the surface. He noticed they had fangs. He turned to run away and one tackled him. The other brandished his flamethrower, but couldn't fire without hitting his partner. Bruce brandished his flamethrower, but couldn't fire without hitting his partner. Sensing an impasse, McCaffrey pushed off the vampire and ran back into the cistern, while the night creatures shouted for reinforcements. The highwaymen fled into the safety of the underworld bank, abandoning the sack of looted guns to escape faster.

The painting they wanted to crawl through into the occult gallery had been sold to the suits, right after they left. Their exit was compromised and they were stuck in the vault, with an uncertain path back to the surface. They thought about going back to the cistern, but a quick flashlight sweep through the glass doors revealed it was filling up with armed vampires. They asked a vault attendant if there were any other exits. There was always the entrance to the sewer cluster North of the vault cafe, which connected to the rest of the dungeon. From there they could chart a path through to the dungeon druids, and use the secret exit they'd mentioned to get back to the surface.

The mercenaries crept through the sewers as quickly as they could, skirting a few thankfully-empty monster nests and entering a limestone cave system. They charted a circuitous but likewise creature-free path through the cave system, encountering nothing of interest save a room full of giant fossil chelicerates, which sat dead in the rock and didn't even come to life and attack them. Their path led them into a historic tomb, where they accidentally released a vengeful wight from behind a warded door by taking the hinges off with a shotgun blast. Lucky for them, she had no interest in revenge on them, and tore past them into the unknown depths of the crypt. They dithered over smashing open a barrow to get a jeweled skull, smashed open the barrow to get the jeweled skull, didn't face any consequences, and pushed onward, back into the botanic gardens.

(There are several results throughout the book that have corpses with treasure, some of them curse you and some are totally harmless)

The druids' secret exit was the hollow trunk of an ancient tree, which spiraled upward and emerged in a closed wing of the passenger rail station. They climbed out a window and sat on the roof as the sun set.

The lesson? Be ready to push the metaplot aside and just offer the players something fun to do. Give them just enough context to know where they're going and what's going on in the world, and let them figure out the rest themselves.

The combat encounter with the Grangers dragged a little because of how many NPCs I used. My instinct is always to toss all a faction's low level goons into the line of fire, since that's logically who they'd send in the first wave. But a lot of NPCs means a lot of die rolls, stats to track and HP to chew through. A smaller number of more powerful foes is easier to run, although it also tilts the balance back toward the players since the enemies no longer have the advantage of action economy from their numbers.

I'm probably a couple sessions away from closing Cow Town down, but I'm more optimistic about a conclusion both the players and I will enjoy.