Attendees:
ENEMIES: Chimera, Death Rats, Cockatrice, Cancerous Plants, The-Patrin-That-Should-Not-Be!
(Mark)
The next plane we enter is DEATH WORLD. It's a gray and barren rocky world, where all the life there is in a perpetual state of winding down into nothingness.
Normally we would all be assailed by death rats, but this is circumvented by Stings' ability to conceal the group as they camp. Instead, Truthspinner manages to find some while foraging and while he transforms and flies away from them before they can act, they decide to follow his scent back toward camp. So Truthspinner flies back and warns them of pending evil.
They donn't seem to be much trouble for the scorpion, despite the rats' desire to suck the life force from us.
We also fought some cockatrice (2) and looted from them a couple poison feathers for later use.
(And now a sideline about religion: Seems we've been around so long and have done so many amazing things that we might possibly be revered as gods by our own people. Yet at the same time our goal was to keep the culture of Caithness in tact. Stings actively discourages worship of himself--after all, ninja should be felt and not heard of. Defender things worship should remain focused on the "one true god". Truthspinner does nothing to discourage this, especially when he gains an extra Willpower per night, the ability to bless pepole by touch, and to make minor +1 type weapons by blessing them. JT not only likes these abilities, he encourages it. Outwardly he says no, but his eyes say yes, yes.
Some time later, from out of nowhere comes a patrin. He is the local who shepards groups like ours through this area. He challenges us to name our contest! I believe it was Jade Tiger who selected CHESS, and then proceded to stalemate him, to the Patrin's annoyance. ("You can tie? Stupid game!")
He's nice to us though and shows us his underground lair, and helps us put our folks up for the night. Eventually he leads us via a pretty cool mode of transportation (a big whirlwind) in several groups to the big patrin of the region. This guy is menacing, but seemingly more approachable than Leviathan was. We do the usual meet-n-greet with the local patrin, and we are allowed to set up temporary shop in the region, which is the safest on this world.
During that year of crafting we made two "cornucopia" that produce food--one for the locals and one for us. But in that time we are approached for a job. Seems there is a Chimera in the area, and for some reason they want US to get rid of it, rather than handling it themselves. We agree and set out.
I should mention that some of us have been having dreams since arriving here. Jade Tiger and Truthspinner are beginning to remember past lives, to a limited degree.
We find the Chimera's lair. She's Ekitna (sp?), and her lair consists of some gorgons at the front entrance disguised as helpless prisoners (We don't find out what they are until our attempt to leave, because Stings gets us past most things.)
Our first true encounter with anything in the lair is when we open a door and a horrible, horrible basilisk tries to turn us to stone without even seeing us. Fortunately we're all fine for now. We set up position and then when Stings blows open the door we assault it. It's the usual schtick (Truthspinner tries to chain wrap it. JT paws it like catnip, Stings sushi-izes it, and the Shellinator uses his might turtle ninja powers.
Upon contacting the Chimera we know exactly why we were sent; Seems she is the missing individual from our original circle (Remember, Jeff & Michele's characterrs were from a different world than ours). She welcomes us with open tentacles. Seems the chaos has turned her into a bit of a Shoggoth, all tentacles and mouths.
It's reach is pretty tremendous and it lashes out and tags DotR as he stands at the door, smacking him down painfully. The rest of us finally move in and it seems she's got tons of "Ox Body Technique", meaning she's got lots of -2 health levels, and thus when she gets to -2 she stays there for quite a while. Discretion being the better part of story continuation, she flees by submerging herself into the mud in which she'd sat. This is her means of escape, as it leads to an outside exit, but there's no way for us to know that and none of us were willing to jump into the mud and find out (We'd figured she was diving to have time to recover).
After a discussion of how to chase her down and a brief attempt to contact our friend with the speedy whirlwind travel (so he can carries us to the exit gate--which is where we surmise she is headed), we have to give up chase.
On the way out we had to contend with the three "slaves" up front who were actually disguised Medusae. Mostly we dealt with them in our injured state by getting the F out. We came back later and got them. And we picked up another minion; This one is my hanger on, a three eyed chaos-tainted fellow who is good at sorcery and whom I can use in my crafting.
We tell the senior patrin that we failed and he takes the news well.
The next world is CANCER WORLD. It's the opposite of the other world. Instead of winding down into chaos, this one is roiling with life. And each and every thing grows back. Cut down a tree, watch it grow back in anywhere from seconds to hours. Wildlife is often overgrown as well.
We meet this world's major patrin: Queen of Fangs. Power corrupts; Absolute power corrupts absolutely; or more succinctly put POWER = CRAZY.
Queen of Fangs is reportedly ape-like, though we never see her ape form, we just see her beastman children. She's got a 6 Appearance, APP-related excellencies and charms, and the realm's resident patrin generally seem to linger around hoping to be noticed by her (THUS we have no mentor in this realm; If you spend game ending experience here, you gotta use the "no mentor" chart). She offers to teach sorceries, because it turns out she's the one who taught our first mentor HIS magic. So she's purty smart.
We all reasonably enough fear her. After all she's got patrin who she's simply gotten bored of and banned from her lair. They mill about outside trying to get a glimpse of her. So none of us wanted to hang out there long.
From the "Good thing the Tiger wasn't there" department: Seems they eat babies. Get in muh belly! We theoretically burned WP not to do something about it. Can't imagine what you'd do.
Queen of Fangs tells us about the coming of the Chimera and how she arrived 3 years earlier (which is about the right time frame). In the interim she's created an army of children. QoF tells us where to find her and we're off!
This lair was much more truncated, as Mark wanted to cut to the climax. We find her in her lair and she has grown enormous! She welcomes us and extends the invitation to "become one" with her. We answer with a swift and decisive assault.
Her mental pulses, happening every 3 clicks, are bad enough, but for the most part we can resist those. Physically she has some trouble connecting with us, though she comes close a few times. Finally, the turtle and the spider do NONE... ZERO... ZILCH... We do less than damage to her. Fortunately, Stings did the usual smackination and sent tentacles flailing to the far ends of the room.