Drow, Dirigibles, Duels and Drunkenness

I didn’t get a chance to write a session review for Monday’s session, mostly because I was piloting a starship around the galaxy blasting Klingons with lasers – the game isn’t an RPG per se, but it’s a pretty good game about space ships and lasers.

We start the session off with Babagya tottering away screaming “I’ll get you, my pretties!” and our heroes looking a bit worse for wear. They had been heading to Babagya’s old home, Muidercrag, to see if they might learn something more about the Big B’s history, and while she was headed straight north, they crew decided to steer their chicken-hut north east and investigate the village.

The village is a burnt out husk of what was once a thriving little community. Parts of the town have been burned to cinders, while others stand mostly whole, but the whole place is completely unlivable. Give any ghost town twenty years to grow over, and shit starts falling down, plants start growing up where there shouldn’t be plants, and the whole place goes to pot. Memphis occasionally catches a glimpse of Muidercrag as it once was, complete with dwarven citizens and animals and the like. They decide to get down into the city and see if they can figure out what’s going on with that, when the sun falls behind the mountains and the whole place comes alive, with building standing as they once were, dwarven citizens, sights, smells, tastes, the works.

A little girl tugs on Skull’s sleeve and asks for her help. Skull is right freaked out by this, and it turns out the little girl is actually a manifestation of Babagya-as-she-once-was. She explains that she’s going to kill them all, and gives each of them a doll representation of themselves.

When the sun comes up and the village returns to it’s natural, burnt-down state, they decide to leave the village, meeting Francois on the way out. He’s bringing some of the gear to start making the wall that will surround Muidercrag, tells them a bit more about the history of the place and how experiences like the party’s own are why they’re walling the place off. It’s a cursed place.

Also, there is a message for Skull, from her mother. Seems she wants Skull to come home, and it’s rather urgent.

As home is in the direction Babagya went, the whole crew heads north to the Spine of the World. The spine is a long expanse of arid land between two enormous cliff-faces that drop off into the world-ocean. On either sides of the spine, reaching impossibly high into the air, are the Cage Pillars. These huge stone cliffs are where the dragons are born. There are cities and towns along the Spine, and a network of roads. Far in the distance, smoke is rising from the captial city.

The chicken-hut is stopped by a patrol of a drow sheriff and his deputies and searched. They don’t seem to believe that Skull is who she says she is, understanding Mathilde of the Draconia Family to be dead over twenty years ago, about the time Skull ran away from home. They quickly search the chicken-hut, not taking anything for fear that whatever they take will dissolve a few hours later, and let the party pass. A few minutes later, they’re stopped by another patrol, and go through much of the same process. This time, though, the patrol is actually a group of polymorphed turtle-minions, who attack the party and are quickly put down.

Reaching the capital, they find the place overrun with turtle-minions, and two colossi are rampaging through the streets! The palace is empty, save for a few looters, who tell Skull that her mother is in fact at the farmhouse. They party moves south, avoiding the colossi for the time being, as Babagya cackles at them from the roof of the palace.

They come across a small hut in the middle of a poorly-tended farm. A single drow sits on a rocking chair with a crossbow in his lap and a piece of straw sticking out of his mouth.

“Good to see you again, Princess,” he says as Skull moves past him into the house. There’s a trapdoor that leads down into the basement, and the stairs are impossibly long, hundreds of flights to the bottom. When they reach the bottom, it leads to one of the colossus platforms the party is used to fighting the monsters on, a huge cliff-face built to house a single massive colossus. Skull’s mother and her step-father, an enormous black dragon, are conferring there with a few drow generals.

Drow magic on the spine is, by necessity, dragon magic. That Skull is a storm sorcerer has always been a point of consternation between her and her mother, but today, she is needed for exactly that talent. One of the colossi destroying the drow capital city has some strange control over wind and rain and lightening, and to get close enough to rid the streets of turtle-minions, they drow army needs to fly in on airships. They need Skull to “turn the colossus off,” for a while, giving them a window to get in and take the little zombie bastards down.

When the streets are clear, the party is the only group in the world with experience taking down colossi, so those will be the responsibility of Skull and her crew. Skull is infuriated.

“Did anyone even try to fight the colossi as they were stomping on people?”

“You noticed they were stomping on people?” her mother countered. “That’s what happened when they tried to fight.”

The party is given access to three airships, while Bruk Hearteater goes with Garuush, the dragon, to recruit the aid of more dragons as needed. Memphis and Bruce keep the colossi occupied while Skull tries to take down the storm colossus’ powers over the weather, and though the fight is close, they manage to build a window for the drow fleet to get in and kick some ass.

They rest for a while, as a horde of dragons and airships take out the easier foes. Garuush suggests that he could, with some help and some time, make the chicken-hut fly, and gets to work on that. The party goes to take care of some colossi.

The fight was very different than the other colossus fights they’ve done so far. These foes are, individually, less powerful than a single colossus would be, but taken together the fight is quite a bit tougher. There are still a few turtle minions around, and they’re pretty effective at fucking with people’s shit. And each colossus is still a pretty nasty foe. There are some huge stunts done by both colossi, though the best move of the day is when one of them burrowed down into the earth and exploded out from a building to grab one of the airships in mid-flight.

Halfway through the fight, Bruk and Garuush swoop down to help, and though Garuush is hardly an expert fighter, their help is welcome. Skull and her step-father have a touching family moment, where she accepts him as her “Dad,” and they take the last colossus down together.

Then, drunkenness. The party was pretty close to levelling up, so we decided to do some carousing for experience points. While most of the players get away with just enough experience to level up, Skull goes well above and beyond, and wakes up on the altar of a local temple, with a horde of Babagya’s cultists working dark magicks upon her body… and her soul…