I ran two ticketed events at Gencon 2026. All the players did a great job and we finished both sessions early, a little over two hours in a three hour slot.
Traveling mountebanks Bartoc the Orc, Mary Hakkapeliitta the Alchemist, Lorikeet "Larry the Mage" Hakkapeliita, and Tansy Hakkapeliitta the Thief woke at their camp site to find Salamandra "Sherry the Mage" Hakkapeliitta, missing. In her place were a set of webbed footprints leading into a fissure in the nearby rock face that definitely wasn't there last night. Sherry was Larry's wife, Mary and Tansy's mother and Bartoc's mother in law. Mary recognized the footprints as newt tracks and decided to pursue her missing parent into the freshly opened cave before the beasts ate her.
The family negotiated traps and monsters on their way through the cave, avoiding acid sprayers and picking fights with the newts. They defeated the big bruiser by shoving him into a pit and chased off the others when they detached their tails. Mary bottled purple fungus from the dining room and tossed it to stun monsters. Bartoc shrugged off spells and damage. Tansy stabbed unaware combatants and plucked the sacrificial rat out of the newt mage's hand before he could cast a spell of a thousand torments. They rescued Sherry from the newt cookpot and her husband Larry simplified the escort quest by stuffing his wife into a mirror he enchanted. They shoved the largest newt into a pit of soporific fungus and ran for the exit, using Mary's rust monster oil to dissolve a hastily erected barricade and catch the newts on their flank. They tamed the raptors to avoid being swarmed and fought their way out of the cave against the shaman and his surviving minions.
Tansy hopped out of the mirror and went into the wagon to get dressed while her family held off the beasts. She emerged as the last of the newts retreated, clad in her Harem of the Djinni Potentate costume and ready for a trip to the steam baths in the lowest level of the caves.
DUNE 2D20: WHALEFALL
Bene Gesserit Sister Wilhelmina fell. Her shuttle down to Giedi Prime exploded in flight and her sealed capsule fell out of the sky, stuttering descent barely slowed by the sporadic activations of the emergency suspensors. The suspensors failed entirely and the capsule fell the rest of the way. She was ready for the impact but an unsecured object left by the flight crew struck her in the throat, crushing her hyoid bone at the most inappropriate time. She was at no risk of suffocating thanks to her excellent physical control, but the injury prevented her from using the Voice.
The first thing she noticed was the stink, like a thousand animals being melted in a giant vat. She calculated that the shuttle must have been flying over the megafarms outside Harko. She levered the door open and was confronted with the reeking whalefields of House Texoco, confirming her suspicions. Cetaceans dangled from enormous derricks, penetrated with tubes that siphoned precious bodily fluids through pipelines to an enormous tryworks in the distance. The rendering plant sent up enormous clouds of foul smelling smoke, mingling with the sooty sky that reflected sunlight from all angles like a greasy mirror.
Chaak Tlaxxon, son of the Jaeger Katl Tlaxxon, his sister Lefty the Mentat, and the Jaeger's Spymaster Vagar watched the falling star from a sniper tower overlooking the whalefields. Vagar called it in to Brine, Captain of the Guard. Brine promised the militia would ventilate the escape pod with bullets, killing anyone inside so that they wouldn't be tortured to death by their overlords in House Texoco. Chaak immediately dragged his entourage into his hotrodded grain hauler and swooped down to the crash site, heading off the massacre.
The first thing she noticed was the stink, like a thousand animals being melted in a giant vat. She calculated that the shuttle must have been flying over the megafarms outside Harko. She levered the door open and was confronted with the reeking whalefields of House Texoco, confirming her suspicions. Cetaceans dangled from enormous derricks, penetrated with tubes that siphoned precious bodily fluids through pipelines to an enormous tryworks in the distance. The rendering plant sent up enormous clouds of foul smelling smoke, mingling with the sooty sky that reflected sunlight from all angles like a greasy mirror.
Chaak Tlaxxon, son of the Jaeger Katl Tlaxxon, his sister Lefty the Mentat, and the Jaeger's Spymaster Vagar watched the falling star from a sniper tower overlooking the whalefields. Vagar called it in to Brine, Captain of the Guard. Brine promised the militia would ventilate the escape pod with bullets, killing anyone inside so that they wouldn't be tortured to death by their overlords in House Texoco. Chaak immediately dragged his entourage into his hotrodded grain hauler and swooped down to the crash site, heading off the massacre.
Wilhelmina convinced the Jaeger's kids and their spymaster to help her escape, offering whatever they desired if they saved her from the Harkonnens. They took off in the hauler and hid in the forest preserve, avoiding detection by Katl Texoco and his minions as they flew overhead in their much fancier aircar. The Revered Speaker of House Texoco and his suspensor-riflemen interrogated the pyon laborers, torturing anyone who tried to hide the Bene Gesserit's presence. Vagar shot a message to his smuggler contacts, who snuck across the razormetl fence into the whalefields and killed anyone who looked like they might talk. The gang procured coveralls and a cibus hood for Wilhelmina, disguising her as a whaler. Chaak commandeered a maintenance cart and they took off toward the bridge. The plan was to get a ride at the transit hub and make a run for the spaceport at Harko.
Katl stopped them at the bridge. He landed his aircar and brought out his personal spotter and his bone-armored riflemen. He didn't know that a Bene Gesserit landed, nobody saw anything and he was worried an invisible assassin was stalking the fields. Chaak didn't know anything about that, so Katl demanded the use of his pyon servant. Vagar couldn't distract him with bribes, but the disguised Wilhelmina pretended she was afraid of torture, then used her shigawire to strangle Katl when the others distracted him. A fight broke out. Wilhelmina used Katl as a hostage to stop the riflemen from shooting her. Spotter fed them coordinates for a precision shot but wasn't fast enough to stop Chaak from piling on, allowing Wilhelmina to slice the Revered Speaker's head clean off. Lefty slid the explosives from her assassination bag under the aircar and sent the shielded soldiers flying every which way before they could get off a shot. Chaak tried to drive the maintenance cart between the burning aircar and the whale oil pipe. He crashed and went flying through the windshield, starting a fire in the process. The others picked him up and they limped toward the spaceport.
The Texoco House Guards interpreted this as a rebellion and a war broke out between them and the Tlaxxon Militia. Vagar talked his way past the zamburachiks guarding the transit hub but the gang ran right into a party of Hackpoles from house Grindhvalur. Their leader Priestlake saw the death of the Revered Speaker and launched an attack on House Texoco's holding. He wanted to kill the Jaeger's family to cement his victory but Vagar convinced him that they would abdicate and escape to Tupile. He almost killed Vagar as a consolation prize but Chaak talked him out of it. The terms of his surrender included his servants who would accompany him into exile. The Warpriest stabbed Chaak in the hand to blood his fogwood armor and allowed the group to board a rocket powered groundcar for the spaceport.
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