Salt Bay - once a mining town, now a coastal tourist village. Sit your cliffside resort with a glass of wine and watch container ships fight their way across the whirling bay to Coal City down the coast. Quiet, scenic and expensive.
That ain’t you. You drifted into town with the wrong crowd. The kind that hangs around the Love Shack behind the dive shop at one in the morning, sweating gin and eying the staircase in the back. The one that leads into the undercity.
You’ve heard stories about what’s down there. Buried gardens of killer kudzu, infested with urban druids. Old rotting houses full of giant spiders. Gutters of meat that squirms like it’s still alive. Moving sculptures that really stretch the definition of “art”. It all looks like dollar signs when you’re an occult criminal with a pistol in your hand and ten dollars in your pocket.
I had three players, all new to the game. I made a simplified version of the character creation rules that incorporated my houserules and removed the need to laboriously copy down skills and saving throws from the book. After about fifteen minutes, we emerged with the following characters:
- Sploon, Devoted Slave of the Parasite God (Mystic, Lvl 1)
- Frank "The Wall" Turner (Bodyguard, Lvl 1)
- Dweezil the Clever (Criminal, Lvl 1)
- I've got a line to a collector who wants art from the underground gallery to the North.
- Druid drugs are always a hot commodity. They've got a secret grove somewhere under the West side.
- Couple guys went exploring on the East side, past the fairy enclave. Ones that came back said there's a buried mansion, full of spiders and treasure.
- Guy in the underground frontier pays good money for "dungeon meat". What's dungeon meat? Anything, once you kill it.
- Neighborhood Association isn't too happy about the abattoir re-opening. They'd pay big money to shut it down
(Finding out about the hatch let the hoodlums skip slogging through the undercity and enter directly on top of the spider nest).
It was the middle of the night when they rolled up on the power station. The gate was open and nobody was watching it. There was a single quonset hut with a single line worker, staring at a computer screen with headphones on, and a concrete structure that led underground. Dweezil got the lock off the bunker without making a fuss, and the gang snuck inside. There were a lot of technological looking rooms that nobody understood, probably related to providing power to the city. There was also a locker room with a bunch of padlocked containers and a very secure floor hatch.
The footpads realized the cabinets were probably full of HAZMAT suits and flamethrowers. Neither Sploon nor Dweezil could open them. The group opened the hatch and descended into the unknown depths below.
The large concrete staircase led down into a maintenance room. It was of modern construction, with pipes and cables on the walls leading to machines. The walls were scorched, as if covered in gasoline and set on fire. There were tunnels knocked through the rock wall, which led into an older wooden structure.
The first room the gang investigated was an old parlour. The wood was rotten and dry, the room piled with old furniture and containers. There were webs draped haphazardly across the heap. The team pushed forward, into a dining room where four figures sat at a table set for dinner. Frank thought at first that the figures were mummified corpses, then noticed that they twitched occasionally, like something inside their silk skin was "alive". The group decided against looting any of the paintings or silverware from the room, and skirted carefully around the edges to avoid attracting the attention of the diners. The next room was a crossroads, with passages in all directions. That bothered the team less than the strange silken tunnel to the North, which led out across an impossibly vast void, stretching out until it became a single point of light in the dark. They had no desire to cross over into a realm of pure spiders, and decided instead to scout a hallway that led into an old workshop.
The place had been converted into a warren of blind corners and tight passages by stacking cabinets and furniture and nailing it together, and Frank immediately noticed there was a bear trap in the entrance. Dweezil moved the bear trap out of the way, and something inside the maze knocked an object off a shelf. Frank made sure his shotgun had a round chambered, and entered the warren to find whoever was lurking inside. His keen perception failed to detect the were-spider hiding in an alcove, who grabbed Sploon from the back of the line with a jet of webbing. He took the mystic hostage, holding a knife to his throat, but didn't immediately kill him.
(Sploon's Charisma bonus turned the reaction roll from instantly-hostile to suspicious, saving him from a surprise attack and likely-instant death).
The were-spider told him it didn't appreciate people breaking into its home with guns drawn. Sploon explained that it was all a misunderstanding - he didn't know there were people down here, he thought it was all just dumb animals. The spider described a rich ecology of intelligent beings, including lovable arachnophiles and that piece of shit tarantula next door. Sploon offered to get rid of the tarantula, if the were-spider wanted him dead. The spider offered a reward, and warned them not to wander into his den next time without announcing themselves first. Then he led them through the maze, to the tunnel into the Tarantula's lair.
The crooks climbed the almost-vertical passage and found themselves in front of a door. Not rotten and disused like the rest of the ruined manse, but lacqured and well-maintained. With a dragonfly skull door-knocker. They debated knocking politely or trying to pick the lock, and almost opened it with a slug from Frank's shotgun, but settled on crowbarring it open instead.
Inside, the room was lit by a lamp in the center, which illuminated a little "island" of chairs, couches, nightstands and coffee tables. The furniture was archaic but very tasteful. There were several other doors leading out of the room, and a hidden one whose outline they could just make out. Dweezil flicked on his NVGs and spotted a vaguely humanoid tarantula on the ceiling, watching the door intently. After a moment, it scuttled down and took up position above the door they were lurking at, ready to drop down on top of them.
(Spiders have poor eyesight, but they weren't exactly subtle crowbarring the door open. The tarantula knew something was coming through, but couldn't see what in the dark tunnel outside the room).
Dweezil decided to go loud, and dove through the door, attempting a John Woo style maneuver where he would turn and fire into the spider as he landed. Instead, the spider landed on him, biting him with its powerful chelicerae and lifting him off the ground. The bite poisoned his blood, permanently ennervating him.
(Dweezil's meager HP was erased by a single spider bite, and the Horrible Wounds table for poison damage said that he could no longer recover Grit by resting an exploration turn)
Frank winged the spider with a shotgun slug, and Sploon successfully cast Bleeding Curse on it. The wounded arachnid scuttled into the hidden room, pulling the hatch shut behind it. Dweezil struggled free of its fangs, trying to reason with it unsuccessfully. The other gangsters flung the hatch open and the tarantula sprayed everyone with urticating hairs. Dweezil and Sploon were stunned by the painful itching and rashes, but Frank's superior constitution allowed him to ignore the effects. He fired a single thundering round into the tarantula's cepholothorax. The slug shattered its carapace, sending pressurized ichor spewing out the manifold gaps that sprang open. The tarantula hit the floor dead.
(If the tarantula had got even a single action to spare, he could have bit the grappled Dweezil for D8 automatic damage and probably killed him. But the players kept up the pressure and he had to spend every turn fighting back and responding to them, instead of confirming the kill)
The hidden chamber was a taxidermy lab. The victims on display were beautiful humans, assorted fairies, and the skeleton of a butterfly creature with magnnificent wings. A grotesque collection, but quite valuable. A knock came on the door. A woman's voice was audible from the other side, asking the tarantula if he was ok. Dweezil skillfully imitated the deceased chelicerate, telling her not to worry, and he'd catch up with her later. She turned to leave, and Dweezil peered through the keyhole. From behind, she looked human, until she lifted a hand to brush one of her pedipalps absently.
(They rolled a random encounter due to making so much noise shooting. I was going to roll on the wandering monster table, but one of the players specifically said "ah there's no way this guy could have a girlfriend" so I skipped the table and picked an arachnophile)
Sploon healed Dweezil's flesh wounds as best he could, at cost of future sacrifices owed to Voorm the Parasite God. The group rested a moment to restore their vigor (with the exception of Dweezil, who had to be content with his Flesh points alone due to the blood poisoning). Then they chose which items from the collection they were going to keep. The taxidermy exhibits were valuable if they could find a buyer macabre enough, but too heavy to haul all of them out. The furniture and carpet in the other room were also worth money, but similarly bulky. Dweezil settled on taking the wings off the dead butterfly, while Frank rolled up the carpet and took the liquor and fine cheeses out of the Tarantula's cabinets. He couldn't have eaten them with his mouthparts, meaning they must have been for entertaining guests. Dweezil stuffed some tarantula chunks in his bag, in case they ran into the dungeon butcher spoken of in the rumors they'd heard.
The were-spider was surprised they survived, and moreso that they did the job. He gave them a lovely carriage clock from his collection of occult trash, and told them to get the hell out the way they came. As they left, Frank peeked through a gap in one of the shelves and noticed a group of comatose human victims, wrapped in silk. The were-spider was saving them for later. He counted himself lucky that they hadn't antagonized the guy further.
The team seriously debated stealing the paintings from the dining room, even filled as it was with walking (or sitting) swarms. They sent Dweezil to grab the paintings off the wall while they waited at the entrance, ready to run at the first sign of danger. Dweezil pretended that the paintings were stuck to the walls and then left with the rest of the group, not eager to test the swarms' running speed.
Back in the parlour, the squad debated searching the containers for more treasure before leaving. They noticed a very large brown recluse spider under the heaped junk, lurking in the rotted wood as such spiders were wont to do. Sploon cast Bleeding Curse on it and it ran out of the room, trailing ichor. A search of the containers uncovered an old wooden trench club, studded with nails and dripping with minor magic power. A nice find to cap off their search of the area.
They weren't accosted on their ascent back to the surface. They tried to open the cabinets again with the magic club, in hopes of securing a couple flamethrowers to flip on the underworld weapons market, but succeeded only in making a bunch of clanging noises. They left the way they came in, out the front door of the bunker, and wandered off into the night, to find someone willing to purchase their ill gotten gains.
(I diced to see if any other power station workers had showed up, but nobody did)
The players' map from the Roll20
We broke with about an hour to spare in the timeslot - the convention was to break early, to give people a break if they've got another game coming up. Plus we'd hit a good stopping point. I probably could have squeezed in the visit to the dungeon butcher if I absolutely had to. The Criminal and Mystic had enough XP to level under my times-five dollars for experience rules, while the Bodyguard was just shy.
I had a lot of fun running this game. With the benefit of about twenty sessions of experience, I was able to present a streamlined version of the Esoteric Enterprises experience that sidelined a lot of the game's flaws and put the most interesting stuff forward. It wasn't flawless, though. I tried to present lots of options for dealing with challenges, but the game's irritating skill system still ended up acting as a roadblock to some of the players' plans. They expressed dismay when they realized how many different resolution mechanics the game had, which is a normal reaction that any sane person has to Esoteric Enterprises. Even so, they did a great job sinking into their characters. There are times when I get annoyed at players having long arguments, because it feels like dithering, and there are times where I enjoy listening to them discuss things because it feels like real people having a fun conversation. This was one of the fun conversation times.
I might try to fit another EE game in as a pickup in the next couple days of the convention. There's enough content left that I can use the same pitch and prompts - they only explored a tenth of the undercity today.
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