Mystic Machina Session 2-3

Karl's Steampunk Sandbox was put on hold for a while, but we got back into it with a long action packed session.

I'm playing Luis Crystland of the Royal Army, a Gunmage who was discharged from the force after he and his whole squad were massacred by lizardmen in the harsh jungles. He's a green haired solider looking for adventure and treasure now that he has no job. He was inspired by a dream Jung had, combined with one of my favorite games, Valkeria Chronicles, as well as the general Vietnam War Vet vibes. One of his signature moves is using Burning Hands through his gun (yes, he can do that with the archetype, it's awesome) and create a mini-flamethrower. I'm planning on him being a triple-class (Ranger-Wizard-Gunslinger) who focuses on using a musket and horse companion.

The other member of the party, besides the Druid Alastrine (played by jung) is Kegan the Teifling Rouge. Kara beforehand had done text-chat campaigns with me [which we still use to RP between sessions] as well as playing the villain in Cyber Suicide.

In the first session he used the flamethrower to torch a group of roped men hiding under the sewers in the Bronze city of Nexus in the Country of Losac (Inspired by our Homestuck land names). From them we recovered a strange black trident that almost killed a druid who was with us as well as a marked map that Luis (knowing of pirates) thought to be treasure markers.

We quickly left for one of the X marks on the map after getting the trident purified by the priest so that it turned grey. It was so powerful that even Luis could not identify it with his magical knowledge.

We entered the nearby town of Sranti on the way to icy northern lands (where one of the X's was) after about half a day and were surprised by a gigantic spider bothering someone in town. We headed off for the nearby black tower that was designed in a very gothic style.

Inside we found there were three floors, a library, a small alchemy lab, but not much more besides a group of wolves that the druid tamed (including a dire wolf that I tied to my wagon). I found three spell books in the tower, but could only really use one of them (the other two focused on illusion and necromancy, both schools that I'm opposed to as a gunmage). We slept through the night in the tower, a bit annoyed by a Ghost Noise created by the room upstairs. When we tried to get to the third floor we were attacked by a female Half-Orc Knight named Canan who worked as a Witchguard.

Luis went to the third floor and met the uppity witch named Lydia, at that moment a lizard man assassin came to attack us but the wolves (including a summoned celestial wolf) helped us to fight him off.

By the end of it all, I arranged to stay in the tower for two weeks to study spells and learn more arcane knowledge (we all leveled from the fights). I then used the last 4 days and 2 extra days using the downtime rules to gather a group of mercs as the locals said there is a bounty for giants nearby. Next session we are going to get some loot for that and then move on to the Icy North!

The next session was fairly simple enough, we got two crits and killed a cyclops, the end. Kidding aside, it was rather boring since we did in fact kill it in one hit and the traveling is somewhat uninteresting (we meet random people along the way, though they don't do anything relevant).

Numenera: The Purple Horror (Session 3)

So the desert expedition started off fairly well. Nel ended up taking about 5 damage (over the 5 hours of travel) from the heat because he was rather unaccustomed to the desert compared to the other travelers. Caiden, the Knight, moved around in his heavy armor with almost no effort.

The knight was a bit negative about following the group, but decided to help them due to his humanitarian nature. At some point in the adventure I'm planning on giving him an official rank within the knights of his home kingdom of Ancuan in the Blue Legion.

Raz knew they needed to find a mount quickly. He rode into Presca on a giant ant-like creature, but the town guards killed it. So him and Nel worked quickly to find some tracks.

What happened next changed everything: Dustin (playing Nel) rolled a 100 on my Encounter Chart.

What will they find? An Adult Blue Dragon.

Nel found these massive claw marks leading up a sand dune that disappeared and then re-appeared on the sandy plain below...moving towards a gigantic stone cave that covered in sand that reached out from the desert like a gigantic head. After two more hours of walking the party rested underneath the shade of the cave and then investigated the dark hallow insides.

Using his scanning abilities, Nick managed to see a gigantic creature that was about 20ft. wide with huge claws, a crowned head and even a horn. It was surrounded with electromagnetic energy. I told him it seemed like it would be a level 9 creature upon scanning (which would be impossible to fight), but for the sake of playability I reduced it to a level 6 later on (which would still be very difficult, but not impossible to fight).

Raz, using his double stealth specialization and several lucky rolls, managed to sneak by the dragon in an amazingly epic Lord of the Rings style moment. He even compared the shard (oddity) in his pocket to the dragon's scales and noted that they had a similar color but the metal blueish shard was more smooth and metallic than the scales. The dragon throughout constantly breathed in wisps of electric energy every time he would breathe of be near the PCs, and It was a really fun effect to describe. Imagine breathing out little bits of energy instead of oxygen, the warm electric feeling it would be like near your face if you were close, like sparks in the air. In this case, Raz saw its face illuminated by its electric snoring as it slept.

He snuck behind and found a junk pile of around 25 shins in assorted junk and scrap along with a rounded metal ball with a handle behind it. Later he discovered it was a stun blaster and took it for himself. Raz then snuck out of the cave and, since I wasn't going to let this end...they all got a bit of exp right after Raz said "I got it, I got a thing from inside there!"

Behind them they heard a deep voice as the beast slithered out from the cave and rose to its back legs, it towered over all of them and covered them in shadow with its massive wings. "You took a thing?!" it repeated Raz's words angrily and combat proceeded soon after Nel was pushed backward by it like an ant after trying to offer it a sacrifice.

Nick went first Stabbing it in the leg with his knife and letting the disrupting nodule (which still has about 15 hours of battery life) blast apart one of its legs. It screeched in pain as it was stunned, its scales falling apart and littering the sand. Caiden went next and much like in Monster Hunter (the game series), he slashed his heavy sword into the dragon's wing, tearing it apart with a burst of blood.

Raz saw that it was in pain and tried to stop the fight  before anyone got hurt, rolling a 20 to calm the situation down. He promised to help the dragon if they could make a deal. This was where the negotiating began. The party spent about 30 minutes to an hour conversing with the dragon, who was named Gretiem the Gentle Minded. This is what took up most of the session, and it was a blast.

Nick used up two of his telepathy tattoos, sticking one unto Raz. However, Raz was trained in the art of Mental Defense (as a special Trick of the Trade) for certain reasons beyond just keeping secrets. This way, he could hear Nick, but Nick could not hear him. The dragon also had the ability to force himself into someone's mind to deliver telepathic one-way messages, which Raz could not counter.

Many secrets were unveiled throughout the dealings, such as:
-Nel smelling of "The Dust of the Land Beyond Dreams" and sees great potential in him.
-Raz's name, as he had told the group his name was Arch. The dragon believed the truth was valuable and demanded honesty after finding out Raz was a liar.
-The Dragon recognizes some of the group's cyphers from the abandoned building, calling them "experiments of the people from beyond the moon. (though he whispered this, two of the party picked it out)"
-The dragon mistrusts Caiden and can sense that he is tainted by dark forces, warning the party of this. Caiden says "So, you fear me?" and the dragon does not respond, indicating that he is in fact afraid of the demonically powered warrior who bloodied his wing.
-Nick "Smells of Sin" indicating that he has had a troubled past.

The outcomes of the deal were as follows:
-Nel would become the apprentice of the dragon in exchange for his co-operation. He confuses this for a sexual relationship, being a slave. In exchange, the dragon will fly them to Aian overnight.

-Nel traded her video monitor oddity so that Raz could keep the Stun Blaster Artifact that the dragon hoarded (he has no concept of the value of the items).

-In order to use his home for shelter, the party must gain his trust by "Speaking the truth, and telling no lies" for the night, sharing their backstories with each other and the dragon.

As a group we agreed to meet earlier than normal and have a smaller group-RP session to play out the night in the dragon's cave. While I did not record the audio logs for this adventure, it was still one of the best experiences I've had in RPGs. Playing out and describing the dragon was very fun, and the players were put in a very dangerous position while also feeling very powerful. I loved every moment.

For the next blog, I still need to make notes on Mystic Machina (Karl's steampunk game that got pulled out of hiatus for a cool second session).

Out of Character stuff for numenera is going interestingly too.

Tom is considering how he should play out Nick's character, as he hasn't been able to really be focused on personality wise. He even told me he might just kill Nick and change characters.

Raz continues to be a neat addition, getting really lucky rolls and making great dialogue. I'm still working with Aleena to flesh out who this mysterious man is and figure out his full backstory.

Nel is growing more powerful as this dragon recognizes that there is more to him, and I have some awesome things planed to showcase this. The first dream was the first taste of many cool things to come.

Caiden, played by Karl, has been put out of the spotlight for the most part, but had some great comeback lines in character to what the dragon was saying. He is the strongest member of the party, able to tear through almost anything. The real development will come when he is first injured or stressed, then the demon will be unleashed.

Tears of the Blade Session 6: Tears of Blood

So my friend Courtney M. showed up played her unnamed sorceress for this game, and it was kind of interesting. she didn't do much besides stand around and watch the other guys fight and use some minor spells, but the others became interested once her hands turned into demonic claws.

Maldrogan and Walgre killed off the dwarf party looking for them (the barbarian had to be raised in between) and then tracked down the bandit captain who killed their previous characters and finished him off as he went to sell the other people's loot in the market. After this, the mysterious sorcerous fled the scene and was not heard from again.

Once the two adventures realized that the dwarves had a huge store of gold underneath the castle, they immediately moved to take it. The remaining bandits rushed in and attacked them. There were 16 of them along with the bandit king, and they put up a good fight. While the minions did little besides slow down the group, the bandit king held his distance and did damage with his crossbow.

Eventually they lost track of the bandit king and mowed down his troops. However, the man himself was nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly, Maldrogan sees his friend get stabbed through the back with a rapier that appears out of nowhere. The magus charged, but the acrobatic man flipped over him and stabbed him several times as well. The bandit king made off with the loot, including:
-Maldrogan's Flaming Longsword
-Agile Breastplate (To replace Studded Leather)
-Belt of Giant Strength
-Maldrogan's and Zantas's Spellbooks
-Potion of Bear's Endurance
-Potion of Cat's Grace
-6 Potions of Cure Serious Wounds
-Masterwork Dwarven Battleaxe

From selling the rest of the gear, the bandit king also has war funds equal to about 4,000 gp personal cash + his treasures in the Castle.

But until they have to deal with him, we decided to switch to basic dnd (I've been wanting to play the B series for a while). The sad thing is that I could not get the players to agree to play dungeon world or burning wheel, so we had to agree to Basic. We already have the new characters gearing up for another adventure, so I hope it's still a fun time.

We delayed the game a week due to Family Weekend (both me and Courtney are visiting our parents), so the next game is November 2nd. Jared already made a thief, Courtney is keeping the same character, and jung is playing a cleric of some kind.

Numenera: The Purple Horror (Session 2)

This session was fun for a lot of reasons, and it'll probably become obvious why I'm having so much fun as the post continues. This time, I had a guest star appear in the campaign who really stole the show...and at the last minute Karl finally decided to join the campaign. I met Aleena while waiting for one of my classes in the hallway, and I was happy to introduce a fellow writer to her first TRPG.

Set in the Desert of Milave, in a renegade village named Presca.

The Party:
Aleena playing Raziel Nyx Archer (Going under the guise of Doctor Arch):
The Stealthy Jack who Sells Information (works the back streets).
-If I could give him a secondary focus at this point, it would be "Impersonates a Doctor" :D.

Dustin playing Nel (Full name unknown):
The Charming Jack who Crafts Illusions. A crossgendered slave who has been sold to a bar owner.

Matt (aka Tom Nook) playing an Obsessive Nano who Wields Power with Precision. He has been put together with mechanical parts and even has arm-repulsers like Iron Man.

Karl playing Caiden a Strong Willed Glaive who Bears a Demon. He is a knight from a local castle known for training psychotic knights.

Known NPCs
Seth: The mutant snake-man who runs the Bar/restruant known as the Slying Geko. The bar is peaceful most of the time, and alcoholic drinks are outlawed in Presca. Seth is a clever, selfish, and downright ruthless criminal who speaks in a slithery accent. He secretly deals in drugs and other illegal substances.

Sarkon: A plain soft spoken man of average build who has a grey longsword. He is trained as a chef and a hunter and works for Seth.

Drainus: The local Aeon Priest of the community, looks young compared to the older people in the town and uses advanced communication and hologram numenera.

The session started with Nel using her oddity for the first time. They are a pair of pink earbuds that made Nel feel drowsy when wearing them. Though he had never fallen asleep while wearing them he decided to do so after a horribly tough day (Session 1). This took him through a very violent and vivid dream that went very far in explaining his fear of needles. The slave had been injected with various drugs and chemicals early in his life, and it was highly traumatizing. The Physical pain felt in the dream was translated into Mental damage.

After waking up, Nel decided to wait for Nick, who was seeking treatment from a doctor that Drainus had called over from Aian. The doctor was originally going to be a random NPC, but Aleena had a wonderful idea on how to introduce Raz to the group. Basically, "off screen" (without any rolls either), the Jack intercepted the communication from the priest and took advantage of the situation. He knocked out the doctor and dumped the body into the nearby river before stealing his notes and studying up on the symptoms that Nick had (Yay for flex skills!).

When Raz arrived, Nick was able to roll a nat 20 right away to discover that this "Doctor Arch" was obviously not a doctor with his slouched posture, smirking grin, and general way of speaking. Despite not being legitimate, Raz was able to figure out that Nick was infected with a Xenovirus (alien virus) as well as Radiation Poisoning from the Cyphers he was holding unto.

Raz offered to trade one of the cyphers (consumable flame, that he was able to identify, earning 1 XP) for the information on the disease, and he never even gave Nick any actual information! When Raz took a blood sample, Nick noticed the blood sample device was similar to his own oddity that he found outside the abandoned building. He injected into himself and the light inside the device turned red (1 XP). The blood sample also reviled that the virus is turning their blood purple as well as their skin!

In anger and confusion, Nick threw the device at the fake doctor "What does this mean!?"
One GM intrusion later (2 XP), and the device was broken on the floor. Raz scooped it up along with the flame vial. The duo entered the bar so that Nick could get the job from Seth and so that the "doctor" could check on Nel.

Sarkon and the others were sent on a mission to recover poison from a herd of Desert Culova that roamed the desert, and soon they were ambushed by a group of giant sandy colored spiders.

The knight in the distance saw this, using his Danger Sense to his advantage, and charged into the fray. The others reacting quickly tried to figure out what to do.

Nel managed to get an 18 and cloak both him and Raz inside of an illusion of a sand dune. This effectively made both of them invisible.

Meanwhile: Sarkon, Caiden, and Nick slashed and blasted at these things at close range. Nick's first hit was another very high number and he managed to topple one of the spiders over with the blast.

Sarkon wasn't as helpful in the fight, but he was mostly there to be escorted and give minor support.

Caiden was ripping through the monsters with his demonic heavy sword, not taking a single bit of damage while he cleaved bits of them in half.

Nick proved he could be fairly awesome in combat and used his Onslaught blasts to literally blow most of these guys away.

 Raz pulled out a secret weapon of his, an alien blaster that he fired twice directly at the huge towering spiders. The best part was that he fired it while cloaked so nobody even knows he possesses that weapon.

Sarkon gathered up the poison from the spiders, and Nick was able to figure out his other oddity (1 XP) since it was basically a highly concentrated version of the same poison. This is a cool way to use combat, use the chaos of combat to discover new things about what you have and the world.

Raz urged the party to head to Aian to try to research a cure for the disease that is turning both Nel's and Nick's skin purple. Sarkon mentioned that Seth wouldn't like to hear this, but he headed back to Presca with the poison and to inform Seth. Caiden offers to help them, seeing that they are desperately in need and very ill.

The newly formed party now sets off in a long journey across the desert that could quickly get them killed before they even reach their destination! The group is low on food and water, and the city is fairly far away. To add to the tension, Raz does inform Nick that he only has about 6 days to live...
And even worse, unless the group finds something along the way, they are pretty much going to die.

Next time! Starvation, Struggle, and Hexcrawling! :D
I'm also running the next part of Tears of the Blade today with another female guest. It's great making new friends in college :).

Cyber Suicide Session 6/12 [Fate Core]

I fused together both of my Fate Sessions, a science fiction death game with my modern-fantasy mixed influence game. The Current Party is:

Akio Drake, the new king of England from the original B timeline who uses excalibur alongside a time machine and his ninja-pirate skills.

Catherine Yamada, former super heroine from the new B timeline now trained in martial arts as well as a famous soccer player for the Japanese world cup team. She works under Akio as his companion (doctor who style), but harbors a crush for him still.

Fray Yamada, A clone of Catherine's scientist father from the D timeline that has the mutant power to control time. His genes were used to create the time machine. He is a talented hacker who is also deadly with the two daggers that he uses.

Richard "Bolt" Bolton (aka. Dick), an archer from the D timeline who has control over electricity as his mutant power. He fights to protect his family and seeks to escape the death game.

Wolf (aka. Morph), A genetically enhanced and intelligent dire wolf with unstable gene mutations. He cannot speak but often finds other ways of communicating. He also has extremely sharp senses.


The battle with Asterisk, the robotic cult leader and last member of the death game, continues. The heroes can hardly scratch his metallic armor even with their powers fully awakened. Bolt shut off the electricity and forced most of the party to fight in darkness (although they each had ways around this). Fray used his backup battery (Aspect: Always have a backup) and triggered Asterisk's stunt of prepared explosives against him, doing a fair bit of damage in the explosion. Bolt shot an arrow at the exposed arm to destroy it, but Asterisk was still going strong. The robot could not be stopped with force so Frey stopped time and escaped, doing damage to himself as he reeled from the backlash of the power.

Fray, with the police outside, had no choice but to turn himself in. Once the trio was jailed, they discovered that Asterisk was the one who set up the death game in the first place in order to defeat the heroes. With that, he left Frey with an archaic computer and left. Wolf's new mutant tentacles were used to take out two guards and sap their health so he could recover quicker.

Bolt couldn't do much but sit there, his arm still bandaged and burned from the initial explosion that Asterisk had prepared right next to him.

Frey had the D.E.M.O.N program transmitted to his brain so he could fix and copy the code, as well as send the computer back (to where kazuya would use it). At that moment, Akio showed up in the time machine and broke the prisoners free, sending them all back to 1700-B so they could chase the computer.

Edit: I decided to Post the next sessions 7-8 as one post since it is a two-parter.
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I also went to my local game store today and played a cleric-based 5th edition one shot, we all played clerics under different domains and me and max (who is my friend who played with me as Amira, and drove me there.) kicked some butt! I also picked up the new monster manual, just for completeness.

Death and Dwarves (Tears of the Blade) Sessions 3-5

So, as the third session began, our "heroes" journeyed to the third level of the castle. The ground floor is considered the first level, and they explored the dwarven hold on the second level. I don't really feel right calling them heroes, because as I saw it...one is a selfish but daring thief. The other is a rebellious warrior who fought against an evil prince, and the third is a wizard who loves getting drunk. They first defeated a giant spider, who was able to do little more than tie up Aria (the barmaid) before it was killed.

They then proceeded into another set of rooms that turned out to be the base of the Black Spear Gang. All of the small time bandits were pretty much killed besides two of them who only survived by hiding. The leader of these level 2 warriors happened to be a 7th level evil ranger who, wearing a black cloak and hood, finished off the party almost by himself. Aria was captured and the party was killed. Asgall the warrior did have a badass moment, using his critical to shove the other bandits in front of the ranger's deadly arrows and help thin the numbers.

We restarted the campaign using new level 3 characters. Jarred decided to become a barbarian who uses two axes. Jung revised an old Magus character named Maldrogan who uses a flaming sword and necromancy (this is very archetypal of jung's characters). The duo were on their way to visit Greyhelm when they heard a cow mooing in pain from the barn. The barbarian rushed in, but he was two late as he literally saw the cow get ripped in half by two acid spitting burrowing ant creatures (2 ankhegs).

I picked these two monsters randomly, but they were really interesting to play out, very cool monsters. They grabbed the barbarian using their pincers and impaling him, not to mention spewing acid on his body. He had around 30+ HP and was taking the damage like a boss! It was so cool to imagine him shrug off these horrifying wounds. The duo defeated them with a bit of effort and noticed the holes they created. They burrowed up from the earth. Part of the tunnel opened out in another direction downwards and formed a sort of vein leading to another tunnel.
Here they found quite a bit of gold and a masterwork dwarven axe that the barbarian found (in dwarven it had the name of Arch-cutter written on it, but if it was written in german it would be Messerkreuz).

As the pair continued down, they found themselves in the dwarven barracks where the past characters slept, going about 20ft. underground near the outside of town. Once there they tried to steal from the dwarves bar. The bottles crashed to the floor and woke some of the guards. In total they fought around 26 dwarven guards and a lieutenant who was supposed to be 11th level, but was adjusted to around half strength.
 Around 60% of the dwarves fled, and the berserking barbarian culled most of them. By the end of the battle only 11 dwarves survived along with their leader who was away at the time.

They recovered much loot, gaining about 3,500+ gp from selling rare dwarven items and getting to level 4.

The barbarian recovered a Belt of Giant Strength (going up to 18 STR)

The necromantic magus aquired a potion that glows like the sun, and a potion that smells of giant sweat (both unidentified) as well as other various potions and a magical cape that he could not identify so he put it away.

The party rested in an elvish tavern, but they should not be so ready to relax as they have a full squad of bandits and dwarves after their heads.