The final episode finds the remnants of our party in the prow of the crashed Rogue Mistress trying to assess exactly what has just happened and how best to move forward.
Having got to the ship before the others Kennard earnestly asks Storrian where Yaddish and Korrs are. Storrian gives him the terrible news that they came to a violent end at the ‘hands’ of the Earth Elementals.
What follows is a quick regroup of the party and some agreements that they must stick together regardless of personal aims. Kennard takes a bronze piece out and scores 2 lines in the coin to represent the 2 fallen soldiers.
The glowing image of the scantily clad woman is insistently beckoning them further up the strange metal corridor. It is at this point that they start to see how the corridor is finely crafted with no visible seams in the metal whatsoever.
They follow her further up the corridor for a few minutes, passing what looks like oval doors set into the walls. It is after a few minutes of travelling through this dark vessel with only the spectral light of the floating woman to illuminate the way that a couple of them pick up on some sounds from further down the corridor. Storrian in particular hears some noises in detail that he has heard many times before (REF NOTE – Rodders rolled a critical success on the Listen roll). He identifies the specific type of demon, imps, and the sound of them scratching against metal. He then takes a deep sniff with his new pig like snout and confirms his theory.
As they approach the source of the noise, they see 2 imp-like creatures with red skin, razor like teeth and claws and pointed ears. They stand approximately 4 feet tall and are currently doing their damndest to get through one of the doors by continually attacking it.
The party gather themselves ready for a fight and slowly approach them. Kennard, having made it clear that up to this point, he has not been hurt or even tired out once (REF NOTE TO SELF – Must try harder) so volunteers himself up front with Cran just to the side of him leaving Storrian and Derek to cover the rear.
The small demons turn with a snarl and pounce at the group with unnerving speed (REF NOTE – They have a DEX of 21!). The Imps manage to attempt to scrape Kennard’s face off but are unsuccessful. Between Kennard and Cran, they manage to hack them to pieces with axe and sword respectively, painting the walls with red flesh and black ichor!
Once the dust has settled, the glowing spirit woman gestures at the door that they were scraping revealing a figure lying in a pool of its own blood.
Once the party are sure that the immediate danger has passed they go into the chamber to investigate the fallen figure. What they find is far from normal but that is no surprise given the circumstances. The figure is some sort of hybrid of a humanoid toad! Maybe a demon? It still lives and as Kennard and Storrian both look it over, they find that it lives but has been clinging on to life for some time and does not have long left.
They sit it up against the wall of the chamber. It speaks! The language is unintelligible and the confusion on the party’s faces is met by a look of frustration on the creature’s face. It says something else in yet another language nobody recognises. It would appear that the 3rd time is the charm as this time it uses the common tongue and they all hear it say “What about this?” to which they all respond.
The creature says that his name is Plunk and that he is a member of the crew of this vessel. He pleads with them for help as it looks like he will not be able to do what needs to be done. He tells them that the Rogue Mistress is a prison vessel that was transporting prisoners when she crashed here. The prisoners had escaped and managed to kill most of the crew. The captain (who he refers to as Ramirez) was left on the bridge and he was sent to make repairs when he was attacked by the demons and cornered in this room. He doesn’t really know how long he has been here.
The party are confused by this. How can one ‘man’ repair a ship this size on his own? As they ponder this, Plunk produces a cone shaped red jewel that he describes as an SRPC (Ship Repair Paradigm Crystal) which means nothing to our heroes. He tells them that this crystal needs to be inserted into a glowing hole in the bowels of the ship. He refers to it as ‘The Engine Room’ but as he sees the confusion on the faces of the gang he quickly changes that to “The place that makes the ship move”. Kennard asks inquisitively if he means the oarsmen chamber and Plunk smiles and agrees.
He is however equally concerned that he has left the Captain for too long and that if she dies then all is lost anyway. Plunk says –
“I know that I do not have the right to ask this of you but I must ask 2 things of you. The ship must be repaired but Captain Ramirez must also be saved if possible. These things are of equal import. I would ask that some of you take the crystal to the ‘oarsmen room’ while the others then go to the bridge to check on the Captain. Orpheus (apparently the name of the spirit lady) will be able to take you to the bridge and the oarsmen room is at the far end of this corridor and the last door on the right”
REF NOTE – The players drop out of a character for a brief moment as they easily see through my attempt to split the party up and discuss this openly stating how foolish that would be. Ben (Kennard) quickly points out that this discussion should really be in character.
The group are at odds as to whether they should split up and many pros and cons are thrown around. Storrian however, impulsive as he is, decides that as he has the crystal, he is going to the oarsmen room. Cran decides that he is not letting the crystal out of his sight. What this results in is Cran and Storrian setting off down the dark corridor mid debate. Kennard and Derek look at each other, shrug and decide to follow Orpheus toward the bridge in the hope of finding whatever happened to Captain Ramirez. Before he leaves, Kennard ensures that Plunk suffers no longer and gives him the gift of a swift death.
Cran and Storrian feel their way through the dark corridor now that Orpheus is no longer with them. The corridor is deceptively long and as such they take some time to get to the end of it. When they do, they see an open portal to a huge cavernous room. They see a small ledge with the top of a steel ladder bending over it and going down out of sight. They are very surprised to see however that it goes down into water. The whole chamber resembles a large and deep lake! There is some light in this chamber thankfully and while they both peer into the dark water to try and see the glowing circle that they have been told to insert the crystal into, Cran sees a large dark shape moving along what he assumes to be the bottom.
Meanwhile, Derek and Kennard are also experiencing the chaotic topography of the Rogue Mistress. As they are led through the ship to the bridge, they see many strange sights. There appears to be constantly shifting borders with what can only be described as ‘other places’. It is likened to how drops of mercury move on a surface with the size and shape changing and moving but in this example, the mercury is patches of elsewhere. They see huge open forests under red and black skies with horned creatures roaming; a huge cliff-face with many naked beings chained to it being plucked off for food by what looks like a Chaos god; A great ice plain with a boat made of ebony cutting through it.
Orpheus, despite getting less substantial and bright, still manages to help them avoid the other inhabitants of the craft. Demonic creatures seemingly wandering the ship unmolested. Eventually they reach the bridge and with one last wave of her flickering ephemeral hand, Orpheus opens the door and blinks out of existence.
Inside the bridge, the group see what look like solid tables full of dials and levers scattered through the room. Straight ahead of them they can see windows that show the lopsided countryside outside. Most disturbing of all, they see the figure of a once beautiful woman slumped against a wall with 3 thick ‘ropes’ jammed into crusty wounds in her head!
Meanwhile, back in the engine room, Cran and Storrian decide that the best way forward is to dive straight in and try to find the glowing aperture. They both do so but Storrian appears to be a much more proficient swimmer (REF NOTE – Despite having a lower Swim Skill percentage, Rodders rolls a critical and will proceed to do so again shortly after while Ceirun has a very difficult time with failing his rolls!).
Storrian, begins to make great progress swimming deeper and deeper into the cavernous hall while Cran has very little joy at all. Storrian is about halfway down when they both see it – A huge squid, grey in pallor with a disturbingly ferocious maw. It appears to somehow sense Storrian and starts to make its way towards him with an inevitable slow advance.
Storrian, suddenly starts to feel threatened and begins to take in water! He thinks fast and remembers some of his training regarding the natural world. If he swims directly at the creature it may not be able to see him any more due to the positioning of the eyes. He doesn’t have much choice as going back to the surface will just mean they will never repair the ship so he decides to press forward with his plan. He swims as fast as he can directly towards the creature and gently comes to a rest on its domed head.
IT WORKS! Storrian is able to skirt unnoticed along the side of the confused beast. It continues upwards now seeing Cran while Storrian continues into the dark depths, out of sight.
Cran is still struggling and now, seeing the beast coming up towards him decides to retreat back to the surface to catch his breath and get out of potential danger. (REF NOTE – This system has a points system to manage the alignments of each character. Cran is a Law Priest and the way of Law is that of the singular arrow, always pointing forward and never going back. Due to retreating and also potentially leaving Storrian to a watery death and thus endangering everyone on the ship, I award him a D10 of Chaos points – He rolls a maximum 10 and this is the beginning of a slip for Cran…)
Meanwhile, Kennard and Derek enter the bridge to closer examine the body slumped against the wall. She was definitely once beautiful but now seems ‘drained’. A quick once over reveals that she is physically ‘dead’ but it would appear that somehow her brain still works. Kennard is feeling at a loss at this point and calls upon the Grey Lords for guidance. He closes his eyes and then suddenly he is no longer on the Rogue Mistress. In fact, he senses that he is no longer in the Young Kingdoms at all! He is in a clearing that seems to be completely symmetrical. Two figures stand equidistant from him on both sides. They speak with 2 tones at the precise same time – “YOU MUST STOP THE ZENTITY. IT WILL LEAVE NOTHING FOR ANY GODS TO GOVERN. WE CANNOT INTERVENE IN ANY WAY WITHOUT TIPPING THE SCALES. IT MUST BE YOUR CHOICE. YOUR ACTIONS. THE WEAPON IS IN FRONT OF YOU. A SACRIFICE MUST BE MADE”. Then he is back in the Young Kingdoms.
Kennard touches her hand and stares into her eyes and is all at once overwhelmed by the psychic surge directly into his mind!
She is Captain Ramirez, the skipper of the Rogue Mistress. The Mistress travels across different planes of existence and is sometimes used as a prison ship. He sees the Mistress subdue a huge cat-like demon with bright yellow cats eyes using the ship’s weapons only to see it then get bound into a cell in the bowels of the ship. He knows that the creature’s name is the Zentity!
He then sees the vessel travelling across the multiverse when something goes wrong and they crash. They crash here in the Southern Wastes. The crash is a bad one and all of the prisoners escape including the Zentity itself. The crew are all killed barring Plunk, the alien Navigator and her but time is running out. They hatch a plan. Plunk must take the SRPC to the engine room to restore power and get control of the plane shifts but he will have no chance if the ship is not brought under control somehow. She decides that she will be the one to plug herself into the RM’s psychic control module as this will buy Plunk some time to install the SRPC. The downside is that it will be fatal for her.
Once plugged in, she can divert enough power for some basic systems to operate (Lighting, doors, Orpheus etc) but she soon realises that Plunk will not be able to make it alone. She uses the psychic module to send visions out. She even manages to send one past the wastes to the fat King (he interpreted this as a vision from the gods) which resulted in the party coming here. Unfortunately, the Zentity identifies the 2 strongest people here and manages to take them over in order to use them to escape the Wastes. It influences them by giving them ‘gifts’. Palanthus was given a hammer and Trevellich was given a ‘Queen of the Hive statuette’.
Kennard falls back away from her as the visions violently leave. While this has been happening, Derek is alerted to Palanthus smashing through the mist into the clearing and marching meaningfully towards the ship. This is followed shortly by Trevellich Maw and his army (REF NOTE – The original plot had Trevellich marching through towards the Young Kingdoms and not part of the end scene but due to Yaddish calling out to him with a lucky roll last session, here he is).
The Zentity must know that it is in danger as it appears to be influencing greater control over the 2 powerful agents as they are not attacking each other. They are marching meaningfully towards the Rogue Mistress. It is likely that they are here to manage the ‘infestation’ of interlopers!
Back in the engine room, Storrian continues swimming towards the floor of the chamber looking for the glowing circle. He has been underwater for close to a minute now and is slowly running out of air (REF NOTE – The mechanism is a diminishing set of CON rolls and every fail means a D3 of direct damage to represent the lungs taking on water). He swims to the bottom and sees the glowing circle. He takes on more water and is in danger of blacking out which would mean certain death! (REF NOTE – At a certain low point of hit points a Con times 5 roll is made to stay concious and this decreases each round that passes. He rolls under it and stays concious but this was a potentially fatal roll if he failed it).
Cran, probably realising that he is slipping towards Chaos if he continues to abandon Storrian gets back in and prepares to attempt to swim past the creature but fails again to make any headway in the water. The squid approaches, its beak and claws snapping in the water.
Down below, Storrian manages to get the crystal out and as he feels more water coming into his lungs, inserts it into the hole!
The instant this happens, a wave emanates from the crystal leaving clear air in its wake! It spreads outwards and Storrian takes a huge desperate gulp of air and collapses on his back, panting and watching the very strange sight of the growing bubble of normality effectively pushing the water back to whatever plane of existence it leaked through from. The bubble catches up with the creature and it too is sent back from wherever it came.
Cran is confused at this point and suddenly realises that the water that is currently somehow keeping him afloat will soon be gone leaving him over 100ft in mid air. He swiftly swims back to the ledge but luckily, he wasn’t that far away due to his terrible swimming skills. He gets to the ledge and is left clinging to it as the bubble expands to cover the whole of the ship.
Back at the bridge, Kennard and Derek suddenly see that the ship rights itself and lights burst into life all the way across the ‘tables’ here.
Kennard decides he must get to the oarsmen room and speak to the others and sets off in a rush leaving Derek to guard the bridge. Kennard gets to the engine room and tells the others that they must take the power back out. After some brief conversation, Cran is making his way down to the floor of the engine room to remove the crystal while Kennard makes his way back to the bridge with Storrian following behind.
Derek manages to get the door of the bridge closed but he has had to force it and worries that it will not be as secure as it should be. He begins to try various levers and dials in a desperate act to be lucky enough to do something but nothing happens. He is toying with the idea of plugging himself in but doesn’t want to take the plunge. (REF NOTE – Both Benedikt and Leon are realising at this point that IF someone takes this course of action then it will mean death and neither of them as players want to lose their characters. This is totally natural and EXACTLY the sort of moral dilemmas that I like to play with in these games).
Kennard is making his way back to the chamber as quickly as possible and hears the sound of the buzzing wings that he recognises as the footsoldiers of Trevellich Maw. It comes speeding around the corner at him and attacks! In a very unlikely set of circumstances, it misses the attack badly and he misses his counter attack badly resulting in the creature hitting him against the wall but flying over his shoulder (REF NOTE – They both rolled critical fumbles!).
By the time Kennard reaches the bridge, Trevellich and Palanthus are attacking the door of the bridge and it looks like it won’t be long before they are through.
The creature that missed Kennard flies straight past a nimble Storrian and is heading straight for Cran. It reaches the top of the chamber and begins to swoop at Cran. Cran is running as fast as he can to get to the crystal and remove it but is just not fast enough! (REF NOTE – At this point Ceirun’s Law alignment points are diminished and his Chaos points are increased through chaotic actions that there is only one point difference. I present him with a moral choice that will have greater consequences…). He feels the Chaos gods close to him. A voice in his head whispers to him telling him he can get there in time if he will leave Law and come to them.
He accepts and in a flash he is there in time to remove the crystal! The bug creature smashes to the floor of the chamber as all the power leaves the ship once more and Cran Liret transitions to Chaos for ever more. His soul now belonging to a certain Chaos Lord who will become more apparent in the future!
Kennard tries to reason with the lords but they are disinterested in this and are about to order their men to kill him. Suddenly the ship lurches again as the power is gone. Kennard uses this distraction to his advantage and calls upon every ounce of his ability to coerce and slowly the 2 agents begin to fight against the bindings. Suddenly the hammer and the idol shatter! Palanthus, Trevellich and their respective troops scream in agony as the Zentity’s hold on them slips away. They begin to transform back to the humans that they once were!
Sensing that things are desperate, the Zentity forms physically out in the clearing! It is a huge cat-like being. Translucent like mist but with two solid yellow cat’s eyes as big as boulders set into its feral skull! It roars and begins to draw everything around it into itself. First the colour and then the substance eventually leaving patches of nothingness similar to a painting with a section ‘rubbed out’.
Inside the bridge, Derek is starting to realise that his choices are few and the hourglass of his life appears to be nearing the last grains of sand. He too calls to the grey lords for guidance (REF NOTE – This is far from an easy thing to achieve btw. The player must roll under his/her current alignment score which is generally pretty low – Leon rolls a critical success). He gets the exact same vision that Storrian did but this time, he knows what must be done.
Cran knows that things are better now and re-inserts the crystal. Trevellich and Palanthus are utterly outraged at the manipulation that has taken place and leave the ship with the sole purpose of hurting this thing despite how futile that may be.
With resignation, Derek makes the choice to join with the ship. He takes 2 of the 3 ‘metal ropes’ out of the head of Ramirez in each hand. They apopear to have very sharp points. Storrian, who is now back on the bridge, takes the 3rd one.
They drive them painfully into Dereks head and he becomes – A CHAOS ENGINEER!
In an instant, Derek is no more. He is now one with the ship and his mind is full of so much information that it is almost overloaded. His body, like that of Ramirez, cannot handle it and collapses to the floor of the bridge but his mind is now ‘aware’ of every part of the ship. He has located the prison cell that the Zentity can be held in and knows that it is made with Law enchantments but requires a Chos binding to lock it.
The plan is formed but Derek knows that they must be quick as his simple life-form will not be able to support this arrangement for long before his life energy is fully used up.
Derek restarts Orpheus but this time in the form of a Chaos Butterfly. He directs Storrian to get to the cell telling him that Orpheus will lead the way. He must be ready to bind the door closed when the time is right.
Cran and Kennard leave the ship in order to assist the attack on the physical form of the Zentity. Trevellich, Palanthus and their troops are dwindling in the attack but they are weakening it and more importantly, distracting it from the Rogue Mistress.
Captain Derek lifts the impossible craft from it’s crash-site. The crystal has repaired it fully so it does so with the grace of a ballerina that metaphorically dances through the air. He brings the many gun turrets to bear on the creature. Captain Derek calculates that the Rogue Mistress will be 95% accurate in weakening the physical state of the Zentity if he destroys the troops fighting it too. This is too important to risk and he lets loose with all guns. the sheer impact of the explosions destroy the 2 Lords and the troops but the Zentity is hugely wounded and reforms to an ethereal state.
Storrian prays to the Lords of Chaos and attempts to take the weakened Zentity on in a battle of wills (REF NOTE – POW Vs POW roll and the odds are only slightly against him).
He does so and is successful! The Zentity is sucked screeching back to its cell and with a slam, the metal door closes and the symbols of both Law and Chaos glow for a second and are gone!
All is quiet for the first time in a long time.
There is much discussion about ways to save Derek but it is soon realised that the Zentity must be taken far away from here. Preferably to a place where even if it escapes it cannot harm anyone else. Everyone else leaves the ship and Darak (REF NOTE – I think his sacrifice deserves that I use his proper name at this stage) jets off with his vessel to a plane far away from life, taking the Zentity away with him.
Storrian finds the doll of Yaddish outside the craft with the demon still bound in it. A gift from the Lords of Chaos?
THE END (of season 1)
Epilogue –
The Southern Wastes were dealt heavy damage by Trevellich Maw and his men when they marched northwards due to the actions of Yaddish the accursed and his deal. They will have to spend a lot of time rebuilding what was destroyed. The party from the Young Kingdoms have elected to stay here so they will no doubt be expected to help with these reparations.
Nature abhors a vacuum and as such, the hive and the tower appear to have inherited new occupants. The other prisoners who were on the Rogue Mistress have moved in and they begin their plans for the future of the southern wastes.
As the party walk away from the scene and the credits roll, the camera zooms in on the belt of Storrian where he has the doll of Yaddish and the eyes of the doll appear as little yellow disks of cats eyes and a huge cheshire cat grin appears underneath…
Stormbringer – Season 2 – The Agents of Entropy – Coming soon (ish) to The Great Escapism Games Club
Cruising for a Musing 