INTO THE ODD sessions 3 & 4: Tower of the Stargazer, sorta
SOURCES for these sessions: The Tower of the Stargazer, an adventure module by James Raggi for the great game Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and "With Thine Eye Beheld," a short scenario by Clint Krause from his zine Vacant Ritual Assembly #2.
SESSION 3:
Players were Dan as Picklow Creed, Chris as Chips Parfait, Olivia as Lady Felora Tumble, and introducing Aaron, who rolled up his PC Ilmer, an ex-butler with low abilities and 1 hit point (he was therefore rocking armor, a rifle, and an arcanum!). Due to low survival potential, Aaron also generated a companion, Katsin Parfait (Chips' sister), an oyster-shucker with better abilities and HP.
Our intrepid band of adventurers made it back to Hopesend by boat, having survived the Iron Coral.
They proceeded to the tavern where they met up again with Corenlius Pentreath, who was quite interested in their treasures, and he gave them some stake money. He offered to employ them back in Bastion, and then he and Humphrey went to catch their ship back to bastion. He explained that it was roughly 500 shillings per passenger back to the city, or the group could venture overland and have some more treasure-hunting adventures on the way.
In the meantime, he shared a rumor about a mysterious tower south of Hopesend in the forest, which was being continually struck by lightning. Everybody was afraid to go near there, but legend was that it used to be run by the mysterious Cult of Sorg. Pentreath introduced Ilmer and Katsin into the party, and the group also decided to hire local lad Flopsy as their lantern-boy.
Pentreath said goodbye and the party mingled in the tavern, meeting a woman named Kara with a star locket around her neck, which she said was her grandmother's, and that it was precious to her. Felora befriended her. She works as an artist and complained that the Cult of Sorg was active in the town, and that they wanted to steal her locket. She would not part with it under any circumstances.
In the morning, the party set out with their mule for the tower. Kara saw them and beckoned Felora over. Clutching her locket, she said she had a strange dream, in which a voice said "tell Felora, beware of the crows." This caused much anxiety among the party which was great fun.
They traveled to the tower hex down in the Southern forest, all the while seeing lightning in the distance. They found a wide circular patch of blasted earth. Lightning struck the earth around the tower constantly. There were stairs up to the tower door. They saw a body off to the side, and Mumble the psychic mutt went to investigate. It was the corpse of Del Lorenzo, famous thief, apparently fallen from the top of the tower. They stole some of his stuff and proceeded to the tower door, hoping not to get struck by lightning (no one did, luckily). I had them roll d100, or d20 if they were carrying metal objects such as armor or poles, and on a 1 they would be fricasseed for insta-death. This caused some fun jitters as they bolted up the stairs for the door.
They avoided a trap at the front door by knocking the large knockers, and the door opened. They explored the first floor of the tower, looting some wine bottles, one of which they drank and found to be of high quality. Chips Parfait decided to make a run for the mule, to evacuate the wine and fine china from the kitchen. In his race to avoid lightning, he tripped and smashed the china. But the wine was saved and stashed on the mule as Chips dashed back to the group.
They reassembled and explored some more, finding a hidden trap door down to a basement level. It was beneath some fake boxes next to a statue of a medusa embracing a king. They found a room filled with boxes containing bizarre body parts, and then opened a door into a bizarre laboratory.
In the lab, there was a semi-dissected human body and a microscope with vials of blood. Picklow messed with the blood and it came to life, attacking them, but they destroyed it. They found an entrance to a magical elevator shaft, and found that they could call the device with a dial and travel to any of 5 levels in the tower including apparently 2 basement levels...
Next they investigated an alcove containing magical mirrors. Looking in them required a saving throw and then would result in either a boon or bane. The boons were decent, such as ability score boosts, a magic mirror, and the ability to "peep behind the curtain" and ask for the solution to one puzzle or mystery in the game. The banes were generally horrible such as advanced aging, ability score loss, fighting your own reflection, and being trapped in the mirror forever. So of course they all tried it, and generally got OK results due to the more forgiving "save" system of ItO as compared to D&D or LotFP... Ilmer fought himself and barely survived and Felora aged a few years losing some ability points. Chips got the "answer to one question" thing!
They continued ignoring the body and went into a room to the south, filled with prison cells. Several undead freaks came out screaming "free me!!!" and Picklow almost single-handedly wasted them in combat while the rest of the party cowered in fear. In another cell, they discovered a skeleton chained to the wall with 15 arms. This was very disturbing to them, and Chips decided to use his boon to ask for the solution to this mystery. Well, since in the module it specifically says that this shit is just there to mess with the PCs and has no real explanation, I had to make something up on the spot. Chips got a vision of the wizard Calcidius, a priest in the afore-mentioned Cult of Sorg, who was working to summon the coming of Sorg to this world. This skeleton was the remains of a failed Sorg summoning. What they though would be their anti-Messiah was a 15-armed mindless mutant who had to be locked away and died eating his own poop.
In another cell, there was an un-rotten dead body which Picklow glanced at and then ignored. I provoked him, saying "don't you even want to poke it?" Which he did of course, triggering the brain slug, a monster/trap. He failed every roll and the thing went up his nose into his brain. As written, once lodged in the brain it causes no pain but instant and unavoidable death in 1d4 days... I felt bad for prodding him, so we created a fun scenario where he required emergency transnasal neurosurgery on the lab tables, and Katsin used her oyster-shucking equipment to remove the slug and then used their magic mirror thing to cauterize the wound. Picklow took some strength damage, but was able to continue on without having to worry about dropping dead randomly.
SESSION 4:
Players were Chris as Chips Parfait, Olivia as Lady Felora Tumble, and Aaron as Ilmer and Katsin Parfait. Dan was not available so we decided that his PC, Picklow Creed, was recovering from the brain slug and just dragging himself along in a daze as a non-combatant NPC this session.
The party began by going back to the elevator shaft and decided to go down to basement level 2. They found a treasure room with 10 large chest against the far wall, and a complicated puzzle of force fields and levers in the way. They took some damage, and were struggling to figure it out. The players didn't seem to be enjoying the puzzle too much, but they persisted and solved it, allowing them access to all the chest, filled with coins and some other assorted prizes.
At that point, they decided to try to grab the treasure and just leave the tower without exploring the upper levels. But soon they realized that they didn't know exactly how to get the heavy chests out. They had come down a rickety trapdoor stair to the basement... They took the elevator but it didn't have a stop on the ground floor, so they went to the floor above and began exploring. They found stairs going up and down, and chose to load all the chests up to the second floor, and then take them down the stairs and out the front door. There was plenty of dice rolling as they made breaks for the mule and back, avoiding lightning with their treasures in tow (d20 for with a chest, d100 for the run back to the tower). But amazingly, everyone made it.
It was getting late, and they didn't think they could make it back to town, so they decided to bury the treasure (which greatly pleased NPC sea-captain Sanford, who had all kinds of ideas about treasure maps). They wandered to a secluded hex and found a graveyard, burying all the chests under a grave marked "Simon MacCorkindale." They camped for the night but on Felora's watch a young girl approached out of the woods. She was a beautiful, if dirty, child, but as she drew closer it became apparent that she had only one eye and the other was a scarred mess. Her name was Scrapegrace, and she was hungry. She made friends with Mumbles the mutt and Felora, and ate some jerky.
She mentioned that her poppa worshiped the God-clops, and that this all this land belonged to the Behelden Clan. She mentioned that she and her brother Truffle had watched the party burying something. As morning drew near, a strange whoop was heard from the woods, and she ran off before the other awoke.
The party decided they should dig up the treasure and head back, lest the clan come and steal it. As they were laboring, they were ambushed by stealthy hillbilly clansmen and children, including Papa Behelden and Hunter, a huge bald mutated looking brute who captured Pickow and held him with a knife at his throat. All the clan were missing one eye. Papa warned that allthe land and everyone on it belonged to the God-clops, and that he was taking Picklow back to their camp. Chips ripped off his eye patch revealing that he also had one eye, and he claimed that he also followed the God-clops. This confused the Behelden clan, who insisted that he come to them to worship alongside the clan. If the party wanted Picklow back, they'd have to negotiate with Mama, the leader of the Clan and prophet of the Clops.
Terrified, the party headed north for the safety of Hopesend to recover. They traveled through two wilderness hexes and had encounters. The hex had a watering hole, which was keyed for TWO random encounters interacting with one another. Haha, fun. I rolled "two idiots hunting monsters with meat on a stick" and "ape man, driven by curiosity, communicates with sign language." This turned into a very fun spontaneous scene as Ilmer convinced the hunters to leave the apeman alone, and they huffed off swearing vengeance. Ilmer's arcanum is a translation gizmo in the form of a book, and he began to communicate with the apeman, who I described as looking like Ben Stiller. The apeman was actually a hyper-intelligent alien blob, here experiencing carbonic lifeforms on this planet. He warned of his ship mates who had gone mad with power and were traveling in large metal robots. The conversation went on and on and led to some fun improvisational storytelling all-around.
The next hex contained an abandoned research lab. Inside there was a lobotomized drone man, naked, who didn't like the way Ilmer approached him. He punched him in the face and killed him with one blow, smashing through his head completely. All players were fine with that and Katsin the companion stepped into the spotlight as a main PC, taking some of Ilmer's awesome equipment and dispatching the enemy.
The party recovered some vials of a centiped-derived poison from the lab, and then high-tailed it back to town to take a short rest and regroup before heading out on a rescue mission for Picklow at the camp of the Behelden Clan, worshipers of the God-clops...
Total time for the 2 sessions: about 6 hours.
Confirmed Kills:
- RIP Ilmer (punched through the face by a lobotmized weirdo).
- Serious wounding to Picklow via brain slug and surgical extraction, followed by kidnapping and hillbilly captivity.
Treasure recovered:
- Over 10,000 shillings in coin, plus a few other baubles.
Tower levels left unexplored:
- At least three...
SESSION 3:
Players were Dan as Picklow Creed, Chris as Chips Parfait, Olivia as Lady Felora Tumble, and introducing Aaron, who rolled up his PC Ilmer, an ex-butler with low abilities and 1 hit point (he was therefore rocking armor, a rifle, and an arcanum!). Due to low survival potential, Aaron also generated a companion, Katsin Parfait (Chips' sister), an oyster-shucker with better abilities and HP.
Our intrepid band of adventurers made it back to Hopesend by boat, having survived the Iron Coral.
They proceeded to the tavern where they met up again with Corenlius Pentreath, who was quite interested in their treasures, and he gave them some stake money. He offered to employ them back in Bastion, and then he and Humphrey went to catch their ship back to bastion. He explained that it was roughly 500 shillings per passenger back to the city, or the group could venture overland and have some more treasure-hunting adventures on the way.
In the meantime, he shared a rumor about a mysterious tower south of Hopesend in the forest, which was being continually struck by lightning. Everybody was afraid to go near there, but legend was that it used to be run by the mysterious Cult of Sorg. Pentreath introduced Ilmer and Katsin into the party, and the group also decided to hire local lad Flopsy as their lantern-boy.
Pentreath said goodbye and the party mingled in the tavern, meeting a woman named Kara with a star locket around her neck, which she said was her grandmother's, and that it was precious to her. Felora befriended her. She works as an artist and complained that the Cult of Sorg was active in the town, and that they wanted to steal her locket. She would not part with it under any circumstances.
In the morning, the party set out with their mule for the tower. Kara saw them and beckoned Felora over. Clutching her locket, she said she had a strange dream, in which a voice said "tell Felora, beware of the crows." This caused much anxiety among the party which was great fun.
They traveled to the tower hex down in the Southern forest, all the while seeing lightning in the distance. They found a wide circular patch of blasted earth. Lightning struck the earth around the tower constantly. There were stairs up to the tower door. They saw a body off to the side, and Mumble the psychic mutt went to investigate. It was the corpse of Del Lorenzo, famous thief, apparently fallen from the top of the tower. They stole some of his stuff and proceeded to the tower door, hoping not to get struck by lightning (no one did, luckily). I had them roll d100, or d20 if they were carrying metal objects such as armor or poles, and on a 1 they would be fricasseed for insta-death. This caused some fun jitters as they bolted up the stairs for the door.
They avoided a trap at the front door by knocking the large knockers, and the door opened. They explored the first floor of the tower, looting some wine bottles, one of which they drank and found to be of high quality. Chips Parfait decided to make a run for the mule, to evacuate the wine and fine china from the kitchen. In his race to avoid lightning, he tripped and smashed the china. But the wine was saved and stashed on the mule as Chips dashed back to the group.
They reassembled and explored some more, finding a hidden trap door down to a basement level. It was beneath some fake boxes next to a statue of a medusa embracing a king. They found a room filled with boxes containing bizarre body parts, and then opened a door into a bizarre laboratory.
In the lab, there was a semi-dissected human body and a microscope with vials of blood. Picklow messed with the blood and it came to life, attacking them, but they destroyed it. They found an entrance to a magical elevator shaft, and found that they could call the device with a dial and travel to any of 5 levels in the tower including apparently 2 basement levels...
Next they investigated an alcove containing magical mirrors. Looking in them required a saving throw and then would result in either a boon or bane. The boons were decent, such as ability score boosts, a magic mirror, and the ability to "peep behind the curtain" and ask for the solution to one puzzle or mystery in the game. The banes were generally horrible such as advanced aging, ability score loss, fighting your own reflection, and being trapped in the mirror forever. So of course they all tried it, and generally got OK results due to the more forgiving "save" system of ItO as compared to D&D or LotFP... Ilmer fought himself and barely survived and Felora aged a few years losing some ability points. Chips got the "answer to one question" thing!
They continued ignoring the body and went into a room to the south, filled with prison cells. Several undead freaks came out screaming "free me!!!" and Picklow almost single-handedly wasted them in combat while the rest of the party cowered in fear. In another cell, they discovered a skeleton chained to the wall with 15 arms. This was very disturbing to them, and Chips decided to use his boon to ask for the solution to this mystery. Well, since in the module it specifically says that this shit is just there to mess with the PCs and has no real explanation, I had to make something up on the spot. Chips got a vision of the wizard Calcidius, a priest in the afore-mentioned Cult of Sorg, who was working to summon the coming of Sorg to this world. This skeleton was the remains of a failed Sorg summoning. What they though would be their anti-Messiah was a 15-armed mindless mutant who had to be locked away and died eating his own poop.
In another cell, there was an un-rotten dead body which Picklow glanced at and then ignored. I provoked him, saying "don't you even want to poke it?" Which he did of course, triggering the brain slug, a monster/trap. He failed every roll and the thing went up his nose into his brain. As written, once lodged in the brain it causes no pain but instant and unavoidable death in 1d4 days... I felt bad for prodding him, so we created a fun scenario where he required emergency transnasal neurosurgery on the lab tables, and Katsin used her oyster-shucking equipment to remove the slug and then used their magic mirror thing to cauterize the wound. Picklow took some strength damage, but was able to continue on without having to worry about dropping dead randomly.
SESSION 4:
Players were Chris as Chips Parfait, Olivia as Lady Felora Tumble, and Aaron as Ilmer and Katsin Parfait. Dan was not available so we decided that his PC, Picklow Creed, was recovering from the brain slug and just dragging himself along in a daze as a non-combatant NPC this session.
The party began by going back to the elevator shaft and decided to go down to basement level 2. They found a treasure room with 10 large chest against the far wall, and a complicated puzzle of force fields and levers in the way. They took some damage, and were struggling to figure it out. The players didn't seem to be enjoying the puzzle too much, but they persisted and solved it, allowing them access to all the chest, filled with coins and some other assorted prizes.
At that point, they decided to try to grab the treasure and just leave the tower without exploring the upper levels. But soon they realized that they didn't know exactly how to get the heavy chests out. They had come down a rickety trapdoor stair to the basement... They took the elevator but it didn't have a stop on the ground floor, so they went to the floor above and began exploring. They found stairs going up and down, and chose to load all the chests up to the second floor, and then take them down the stairs and out the front door. There was plenty of dice rolling as they made breaks for the mule and back, avoiding lightning with their treasures in tow (d20 for with a chest, d100 for the run back to the tower). But amazingly, everyone made it.
It was getting late, and they didn't think they could make it back to town, so they decided to bury the treasure (which greatly pleased NPC sea-captain Sanford, who had all kinds of ideas about treasure maps). They wandered to a secluded hex and found a graveyard, burying all the chests under a grave marked "Simon MacCorkindale." They camped for the night but on Felora's watch a young girl approached out of the woods. She was a beautiful, if dirty, child, but as she drew closer it became apparent that she had only one eye and the other was a scarred mess. Her name was Scrapegrace, and she was hungry. She made friends with Mumbles the mutt and Felora, and ate some jerky.
She mentioned that her poppa worshiped the God-clops, and that this all this land belonged to the Behelden Clan. She mentioned that she and her brother Truffle had watched the party burying something. As morning drew near, a strange whoop was heard from the woods, and she ran off before the other awoke.
The party decided they should dig up the treasure and head back, lest the clan come and steal it. As they were laboring, they were ambushed by stealthy hillbilly clansmen and children, including Papa Behelden and Hunter, a huge bald mutated looking brute who captured Pickow and held him with a knife at his throat. All the clan were missing one eye. Papa warned that allthe land and everyone on it belonged to the God-clops, and that he was taking Picklow back to their camp. Chips ripped off his eye patch revealing that he also had one eye, and he claimed that he also followed the God-clops. This confused the Behelden clan, who insisted that he come to them to worship alongside the clan. If the party wanted Picklow back, they'd have to negotiate with Mama, the leader of the Clan and prophet of the Clops.
Terrified, the party headed north for the safety of Hopesend to recover. They traveled through two wilderness hexes and had encounters. The hex had a watering hole, which was keyed for TWO random encounters interacting with one another. Haha, fun. I rolled "two idiots hunting monsters with meat on a stick" and "ape man, driven by curiosity, communicates with sign language." This turned into a very fun spontaneous scene as Ilmer convinced the hunters to leave the apeman alone, and they huffed off swearing vengeance. Ilmer's arcanum is a translation gizmo in the form of a book, and he began to communicate with the apeman, who I described as looking like Ben Stiller. The apeman was actually a hyper-intelligent alien blob, here experiencing carbonic lifeforms on this planet. He warned of his ship mates who had gone mad with power and were traveling in large metal robots. The conversation went on and on and led to some fun improvisational storytelling all-around.
The next hex contained an abandoned research lab. Inside there was a lobotomized drone man, naked, who didn't like the way Ilmer approached him. He punched him in the face and killed him with one blow, smashing through his head completely. All players were fine with that and Katsin the companion stepped into the spotlight as a main PC, taking some of Ilmer's awesome equipment and dispatching the enemy.
The party recovered some vials of a centiped-derived poison from the lab, and then high-tailed it back to town to take a short rest and regroup before heading out on a rescue mission for Picklow at the camp of the Behelden Clan, worshipers of the God-clops...
Confirmed Kills:
- RIP Ilmer (punched through the face by a lobotmized weirdo).
- Serious wounding to Picklow via brain slug and surgical extraction, followed by kidnapping and hillbilly captivity.
Treasure recovered:
- Over 10,000 shillings in coin, plus a few other baubles.
Tower levels left unexplored:
- At least three...
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