Campaigns/GK-Austin 10-3-19/Anamsis

Alpha
The party (Sirona, Selena, Slapjack, Tarla, CHA-53, Kinder, Gerases, D'Hang) pops out and finds themselves on Anamsis, at the Alpha gate in the Capital City of the county Dellani. They briefly observe the anachronistic city, as if it was a city in a high-fantasy novel, suddenly thrust into the dieselpunk era using various Technika. Guards approach, check their ID (to which only Tarla and Kinder had any) and sent them to a nearly warehouse where customs was being done, since they were missing the new stamp (cuz terrorists, duh).

While waiting, they observe a Dyr attack, the Gate was encased in an electrostatic targeting field, that when broken, unleashed the lightning attacks from the Fortress on the side of Dellani's volcanic (dormant?) mountain. Guards, tanks, mecha nearby all put rounds and cannon shells into it too, to lesser effect.

The party is taken in, found exactly what each member is lacking for paperwork, then the paperwork was filled out. They were taken to a holding room (and all equipment sent to a separate locker room by orderlies, some with KappaGang affiliation) with a guard who huffed something in a small blue vial and went to sleep. This is how, explained D'hang, the guards communicate with The Mad King Tyrain, who lays upon The Memory Mattress.

Slapjack grabbing the paperwork from the unconscious guard, Tarla "corrected" it, and D'hang used his gang connections to get the paperwork finalized. As the guard came to, Slapjack tried to drug him (without OD'ing him) and the guards distress defeated the effort -

The guard came to screaming and stumbling "Its Them! The Prophecy!!", and the orderlie with their "corrected" documents kick the cart into the room before he ran. D'hang activated the Blink in his Fathers jacket, now in storage, and the party was reunited with their equipment.

Kinder wiped the inventory database to prevent anyone knowing they had been there, and intentionally triggered a data breach across tow, - temporary overriding the prophesy alarm.

The crew escaped, took entirely too long to hide on a roof, sleep, till daybreak, then as they reluctantly made the 3 day journey on foot to Beta, happening upon a nicely timed Dyr attack. They managed to sneak to the Gate, and haul ass and escape directly to Beta before the guards could respond.

Beta
The party (Sirona, Selena, Slapjack, Tarla, CHA-53, Kinder, D'Hang)  stumbled out into Crusterow, and proceeded to follow D'hang to his old apartment to raid his dads stuff.

BetaGang(tm) had the house tagged and as their territory. Here we discover than awhile D'hang believes he was gone a couple days, that the apt had been vacant months. A well timed ruse "Hey look, you gets can *score*!..." gets the BetaGang to leave while they check the vacant (like, everything's gone) apt, and then Boombox on a Corncob lured them away from a door the second time.

They get a tip that The Collectors are the ones who cleared out the apt. The Collectors are a cadre of Kobolds living in a massive acreage junkyard of their own bizarre design.

While Slapjack can speak Kobold, Kinder stumbles off the the electronics section and tears an "Upcycled harmonic technotron" free. We will know more about that after downtime.

The Kobold eventually confirm they have the contents of the apt, but are under no obligation to hand those items over to the party. However, in exchange for some Unicorn Bones (legit), they will release these items.

The party heads South towards a Unicorn Shrine, and attempt to camp with the craziest hobo available. "Mr. Beans", is very upset at the interlopers trying to steal his beans. He demands, as a veteran of 2 foreign wars, to include when the Etruscans gave him brain bugs, that the party leaves. Instead a deal is stuck that for 20 gold, this gentleman will go get his teeth fixed (literally, all of them) and the party will guard his beans and hovel.

The commotion was not ignored, and the next morning many indigents hail a patrol and point them towards the party. While Tarla and CHA-53 attempt to persuade the guards to the fact they made a wholesome transaction - Slapjack and Kinder carjack the fucking 1930's dieselpunk mobster-looking tankcar.

A solid -2 later (the campaigns first) has Slapjack locked inside steering, Kinder hanging onto the rear bumper for dear life, and the car hauling ass full speed *in reverse*... Maybe 1/2 a mile later the gain full control of the bizarre wayward machine, run down the guards (they ducked in time, but broke their radio) and picked up the crew.

Wanted once again, they book ASAP back to the Beta gate, and Jump to Epsilon!

Epsilon
The party (Slapjack, Tarla, Kinder) drives through The Gate and runs down a trio of Murloks the guards appeared to be fighting, the Gate sat near the edge of town, backed by the ocean. After receiving a standing ovation and a very cursory check of their credentials, they park the car and go inside Martigans; The pub, inn, courthouse, every restaurant, sports centre, dock authority,etc..

The sprawling complex was every building, mishmashed together with a wild criss-crossing series of pulley, carts, stairs, etc.. to navigate the place.

Tarla briefly says hi to Kappa, then begins to ply a business down on his luck to join Leurc Corp. He agrees, and they find that the Murlok attacks put him out of business and that city govt out refuses and even blocks attempts to deal with the threat. The crew discovers that an artifact "The Doober" is the cause of the Murlok aggression.

Once Capt. Necktie becomes Leurc Corp (property) associate, he is further plied into taking the party to Murlok island to recover the Doober.

Near the end of the one day journey, a group of Murloks attack. This fuels Slapjacks suspicions further of Capt Neckties wrongdoings.

Once left on the island by Capt Necktie, the party discovers a lone Murlok and decide to kill it, but instead blow off its leg and leave it howling and squirming away pitifully. Kinder nails an empathy roll and manages to befriend the semi-verbal creature, and discover Gilly, the slice-lusty sentient Axe ex*guillotine can communicate with the Murloks.

As they commute with the Murloks they discover that the Doober in fact as driven them mad with visions and specters, and one Murlok has become overpowered and enforces the Doober's evil will. Slapjack sneaks in and find a massive size 6 Murlok, confirming the story.

The party goes to kill it, but it tries to run. In a twist, Gilly leads the Murlok revolt, and gleefully tastes the beasts massive neck.

Slapjack rolls the Doober in the lead blanket, they head back to Martigans and all is well....

.... except when a Merfolk in disguise gets too close to Slapjack in the center of Martigans. Slapjack removes the Doober from the lead blanket and literally every disguised Merfolk goes batshit murderous and the entire city erupts into a raucous bar-fight, thus confirming suspicions of a massive conspiracy afterall.

Slapjack returns the Doober under the lead, and the party gets their car and hauls ass to Lambda.

Lambda
The party (Slapjack, Tarla, Kinder) emerged in the centre of a split town, the Dellani 'haves' and the native townspeople of Martok 'have nots'. As Slapjack rolls down the wondow and tries to hear what the Dellani guard (and anti-riot soldiers) are yelling, (from the Dellani side, into the Martok side) a local religious figure identifies the party as part of the prophesy to kill King Tyrain.

The party is ushered into town, and they hide their car in a shopkeep's garage, as they learn about to locals. Kinder distributes multiple ears to the insurgents as they discover that Dellani opened fire on the crowd and killed many of the townspeople. A dirigible hovered above, shouting threats, pleas, and warning to get the party delivered to them.

Slapjack nails a single shoot from his (lightning/beam) pistol, igniting the dirigible which provoked the immediate response of being shelled *by Dellani forces* to prevent the warships capture. Before anything could get too interesting though, its core erupted, and the increment weather began raining down radioactive water.

The party hid with the shopkeep and asked like a million questions. They discovered: They help the shopkeep reinforce the shield spell, stave off Flood Pirates, and are even offered to take over the shop itself, as this mans lifespan is waning.
 * A book containing Tiber's mythology, written by Sir Bartholomew Belton Barlow.
 * The shopkeep is actually a Dragon maintaining his book/info horde from a once vibrant and diverse planet.
 * The Etruscans nuked Martok when they first got here, but the weapon was disabled mid flight.. by a Dragon...  named Martok...
 * There's exists a book titled "The Ultimate Guide to Throwing a Garden Party" that contains the method to enslave a Fae, but the shopkeep had never seen it.
 * ... a bunch of other cool stuff.

They say they will think about and, and see if anyone else wants their character to become and NPC and seriously knowledgeable ally. The storms wane, and they head out to discover the the Flood Pirates stole their car and were washed away.

The party decides cars are for losers, instead of investigating downstream, and Jumps to Mu.

Mu
The party (Sirona, Selena, Slapjack, Kinder, D'Hang) lands in a massive icy cavern, Gate at the center, and one icy tunnel leading away. The ice itself seemed illuminated by the sun, in slow moving iridescent patterns.

They head down the path, head mostly in a straight line, but return to the Gate Room, which now has 2 tunnels. Kinder discovers the Technotron can convert matter as well as energy, and Selena discovers, via True Sight, that we aren't *only* on the Planet Anamsis under a translucent glacier, but *also* at the ass end of the Winter Court in Arcadia.

Using corns as breadcrumbs, the part stumbles into some heat slugs eating a block of ice with someone in it. After they kill the slugs, they discover Battle Princess trapt in the ice! They manage to release her and her new Hound of the Underworld, Dumuzi.

Next they bump into a bunch of Etruscans. Most are frozen corpses, but 3 remain. Selena goes Unnoticed and Channels their ghosts while the party receives a very cold welcome - at first. The lonesome Etruscans breaks the ice and warm up tot he party, lamenting this terrible assignment and their dead friends. And they are trapped here without The Artifact. It changes frozen water into liquid water, without heat to state change.

The 3 Etruscans, emboldened by their new friends, go down one tunnel while the party goes down the other.

"Etruscans". BP says as they pass, as both a greeting and a warning.

The party stumbles into a massive opening full of partially destroyed items in a massive frozen over hoarders scenario - and 2 Ice Trolls. The party collectively takes one, BP takes the other, and even having her actually make rolls using a sane stat spread, she kills her Troll at the same time as the 5 of them. Badass.

They discover all sorts of items here, mostly covered in frozen troll pee. Kinder rescues and Etruscan radio, probably left by a corpse. Kinder tries a quick "Too Much of a Same Thing" on some body parts, gets dead slop.

The party is discovered by the Etruscans tunneling their way out. The make it back tot he Gate Room with all the frozen corpses. The Etruscans stop at the gate, instead of returning home, realize: They set the Gate to blander mode, toss the Artifact in, and then themselves.
 * Nobody can have this cursed Artifact
 * They can never go home without it

Slapjack takes as many dogtag-like items from the frozen stack of bodies, then the party leaves to sleep of this quest at Martigans (Epsilon) before heading to Zeta.

Epsilon 2
The party (Sirona, Selena, Slapjack, Tarla, Kinder, D'Hang) step into Martigans to an uneasy scene. The townsfolk remember the offworlders coming and wrecking their govt. They are happy to be liberated, but a lot of good people died too, and the *heroes* ran away from the chaos the wrought.

They go to get rooms, and Tarla gets a few drinks. Battle Princess, despite leaving before them, arrived after, and went to her own room. The bellhop forwards a receipts containing BP's room number.

After being too drunk to navigate Martigans, Tarla find BP's room. They talk I guess. I didn't ask.

The next morning, refreshed, the party goes to Zeta.

Zeta
The party (Sirona, Selena, Slapjack, Tarla, Kinder, D'Hang) arrives in an Etruscan processing facility, and are all reluctantly branded via stickers and light/radiation. The Etruscans are a bit weirded out that the kid has one, but they all know about the infamous KappaCon - held only once, by the Etruscans, at the convention centre. Once released, the party is admitted into the city proper, inside a massive underground vault... The party heads for the convention centre, tries to enter, but the centre is in use by a military delegation.

They are found by a bureaucrat who offers free room and board while they are debriefed from Mu. While leaving out certain details (aka. The Artifact was found and the soldier died destroying it) they were propositioned into another quest - deep under the Etruscan fallout city.

...and they take it. Once down there, they find the remains of an ancient Commonwealth utopian super-city, and are harangued by "flats", extra-dimensional monsters that are trying to break into this reality.

The Doober vibrates in their presence, and D'hang finds some parallels between this and a KappaMan comic, which had interestingly debuted during KappaCon those years ago.

They all find a derelict bus protected by an energy shield, a dead Etruscans, most of which had been cannibalized by their peers. Surrounded by flats, the party eventually decides to try and enhance the device. The effect dispels the flats for a fairly large radius, and the party escapes.

They take rest and debrief with the Etruscans, who promptly say "Do more work now, or leave.." and the party leaves for Iota...

Iota:
The party (Sirona, Selena, Slapjack, Tarla, Kinder, D'Hang) lands in Quentovictus, and decide to hunt of the KappaMan comic books. A pair of guards, one Dellani, one Elven is Quentovictus garb; The Elf mentions a troublemaker that specificzes in various drawn works, most vile, but mundane comic are Squirmwoods fare too.

The party visits Squirmwood and nearly falls into the child trafficker ring, except Squirmwood insists hes wants something else. He offers reproductions of the entire KappaMan series after some negotiation, for 3 items: The party heads off to Lambda in search of these items:
 * 1) A 3d holoscan of the last queen of Dellani
 * 2) The Etruscan kama-sutra
 * 3) A yard or few of self-cleaning linen.

Lambda 2:
The party (Sirona, Selena, Slapjack, Tarla, Kinder, D'Hang) arrives during a radioactive rain storm, and finds shelter with the old dragon shopkeep. The shopkeep mentions that he has the book (Item 2), but as he is ended his tenure as shopkeep, the new keeper should decide the books fate. Sirona promises to become the shopkeep after The Mad King Tyrain is defeated, and loans herself her book. (As an aside, the party is gonna leave it here till they wanna deliver.)

The old keeper mentions that a Dellani archivist may have the scan (Beta) and the only one with self cleaning linen are the Etruscans, as its methods of production are a mystery. It is decided to first head to Zeta to negotiate the acquisitions of some fabric.

Zeta 2:
The party (Sirona, Selena, Slapjack, Tarla, Kinder, D'Hang) arrives at Zeta and after an uncomfortably long pause, their bureaucrat/case worker arrives and attempts/insists they head down tot he undercity and acquire more mysterious items. The bureaucrat apologizes for the total inability to share the fabric, but an uneasy arrangement is made where he'd try again depending on what treasure the party returned with. Jawesome.

Zeta 3:
After an undocumented trip to Martigans to recoup, the party (Sirona, Selena, Slapjack, Tarla) heads down into the depths.

They find a scummy streams barely in inch deep, with mushrooms growing along is banks. They follow the stream thru a very tight space in a collapsed parking garage, then into a deadend - the scummy stream slides under a wall they cant easily breach, despite Slapjacks intense barrage of kicks. When they try to go around, they find a mutant birb with chitinous spidery tentacles instead of wings. They party gear up to fight, but the creature is scared off by a distant roar of some other monster...

The roar echoes and reverb thru the ruins in the distance.

Tarla tries her sword, and ofc the great sword shatters and crumbles chunks of wall until the hole is large effort for the arty to get through.

As the follow the stream, they run into another monster... The clayturtlebear is startled by the party, and shits a mushroom.. then takes off. As it moans, the roars increase, and get louder.

The stream flows into a storm drain to places unknown, and the party decide to track the clayturtlebear. As the round the final corner, they discover a massive clayturtlebear, 7 size 5,4,3 children. Many other moans echo the mama's; The party is surrounded.

A baby clayturtlebear comically topples from a 3+ story window, and Tarla grabs it and runs!

Slapjack and Selena have a brief fight with a chasing clayturtlebear, but manage to hobble it and rejoin the party.

Sirona puts up an Elemental Barrier [Crystal], but it is defeated as they transit the very tight space in the parking garage.

Thankfully, they make it back to the spoopy ski-lift and are dragged back up to the Etruscan vault-city. Their handler is absolutely thrilled with the live specimen, and handed the party the cloth - ofc, it was requisitioned to be destroyed for defects, but hey, its more than enough for Squirmwood to soil.

The party then decides to head to Beta.

Beta 2:
The party (Sirona, Selena, Slapjack, Tarla, Kinder) arrives at the Beta gate where they are questioned about a certain carjacking (but the windows were tinted), and Tarla questioned them and their audacity for questioning her right back. They made it North to the Mr Beans' hovel, and he offered the party a place to stay thru his fancy new teeth. But not before they were harassed by hobo bandits. Shivs and clubs dont stand up to Lighting Guns and Greats Swords, so they backed off after asking for (and receiving?) a bribe.

Mr Beans also explained, in psychobabble, what The Doober was. (Finally, Doober is [Void + Water] Elemental Esper; Entrances Water|Void based creatures with visions and spectres, proportionally upsetting to how evil/unethical they are.)

They head farther north in the morning, and make it to Walt Exotic's Unicorn Park and Entertainment Centre. Kinder makes an otherwise innocuous Observation roll, nails a critical success, and can now observe *everything* shady about this park: There's no unicorns, just sad maimed horses. All the rides are unkempt and unsafe. The merch is fake and toxic, etc..

Kinder is so fixed on how viscerally dismaying this park is, that his wonderment & exuberance turns to righteous fury. Slapjack barely got thru his first round of questioning of a Park Manager before every piece of electronics in the park went haywire.

Slapjack, at the same time, pulled the Doober on the Manager, causing a tourist-but-also-covert-evil-mermaid to lose her entire shit and try to murder him (lol, clap clap w the zap zap and she was done). Sirona couldn't even keep up, and blasted "The Unicorn Shrine" with her corruptive blast ... it melted away like paper mache and they discover the real shrine underneath.

While Kinder was sabotaging literally every technical system in the park, Slapjack discovers the long dead Unicorn on a magic shrine, runed/trapped against grave robbers. Sirona went down there, and it responded to her, making her promise to get vengeance on the evil Fae, Leslie. As if this entire arc wasn't that already. Agreed, they party raided those bones, skins, horseshoes, etc.. and gtfo'd.

While doing damage control, the owner said "I'm never gonna financially recover from this...".

The party is put up in some apartments at Tam's. As if a small village inn slowly grew into a massive housing complex, riddled with cut corners and strange otherworldly residents.

In the middle of the night, everyone's door got knocked on. Almost everyone poked out, and was like "wtf?". Kinder pops true sight and sees some spectral flowers growing, from their doors, to down the hall; Their blooms were like the Gates meniscus. And old lady neighbor insisted of offering some of her solely lacking instant coffee.

Kinder doublecast Freestyle Magicka and got the flowers so everyone could see them - they followed the trail down the hall... With the old lady toddling slowly behind like "Oooh pretty flowers".

They get to the MP room and find the backwall of the stage *is a Gate*. They debate going in, but then the old lady comes in. Kinder puts on some tinny Freestyle Magicka music and Slapjack dances her....  Well, the "unwanted" kindness to a goddamn Fae had her drop the disguise, showing her long fiery hair and green blazing eyes (I wrote that before our conversation, Moe) and just be like "Ey yo, the plots over here", and she went in the Gate.

The party followed.

Gamma:
The party (Sirona, Selena, Slapjack, Tarla, Kinder, D'Hang) arrives, finding that this Gate is somehow missing, and instead is a massive Fairy Ring surrounded by a difficult to pass forest in all directions...  And they also find D'hang had been here waiting for them the whole time!

After they feed and water him, they proceed to discuss how to get thru the forest - Kinder semi-accidentally launches some corruption into the grove, that spreads in roughly one direction. They defeat the corruption by *burning it*, but luckily they at least now have a trail to follow. Selena announces that damn near everything in this forest is magical, hence why the strange effects going forward.

They discover D'hangs newfound obsession with eating snails, as relayed during his story of an urban myth, "Porthos, The Most Delicious Snail". Kinder joins in this delicacy, to find that in fact, the snails in this forest are mad delicious. And totally not psychedelic.

The party runs into a gigantic (size 6) snail, making a sad snail noises, as it cannot cross the trail they burnt without getting all that gunk in its 'foot'. The party tactically decides to keep the kid tf away from the snail, and he believes that's the famed Porthos.. and wants to eat it. Sirona nails a critical success on the wizbiz for psychokinesis and glides the snail to the other side.

Moving on, the party runs into a river, the trail ends. Kinder has the river flow thru the technotron, but nothing comes out the other end. One easy psychokinesis float across and they meet a regular bun who wants to interview them for his podcast.

The party discovers that the bun had also walked with the Fae from before, and was able to get her interview by agreeing to do a task. The party grills the bun for deets, but alas, its all answered in his podcast. Finally, he reveals what the task was... As the forest opens to a clearing, the party stands before the Council of Unicorns and Friends. To be judged. The bun, closed in his task, gtfo's.

Sirona, and by extension the party, is put on trial for murdering the Unicorn in Gunners Present .. and is protected, by that same extension, by her affiliation with Leurc Corp.

Long dialogue aside, the party agrees to do a few extra chores before they do the quest they were already on before being told to by the Unicorns anyways: But the party is amicable to this, and are permitted to leave. They are also told "don't come back here", aka Gamma, and they the Unicorns will drop the hammer on Dellani when the party needs it. "Don't call us, we'll call you." style...
 * Disable Etruscans Lavos-class doomsday device (Nu), and encourage the Etruscans to leave Anamsis beforehand
 * Destroy "The Iron Heart" - its an abomination. (Delta)
 * Destroy "The Doober" - oh lol wait
 * Collapse the tunnels into the Undercity (Nu and Zeta)
 * Kill the Wyld Fae guarding (Mu).
 * Kidnap a certain shopkeep from Martok and bring him here. (Lambda)
 * Slay the Lord of St. Leandergrad (Eta)

Beta 4
The party (Sirona, Selena, Slapjack, Tarla, Kinder, D'Hang) returns to their apartments at Tam's roughly the same moment in time they left.

The next day, they decide to get a hold of both the Archivist and the Geologist, both live in the massive complex somewhere. They manage to doxx both NPCs though, and first chat up the Archivist.

He wants a unicorn bone in exchange for the 3D holoscans of the late Queen. He says to deliver the bone to his house, then he will send the scans. Instead, Tarla goes Unnoticed and stalks the room. She is applauded for her valiant stillness, and the archivist digitally transfers the footage to a disposable thumb drive. She grabs 7 extras, for Kinder.

The Geologist is just a really lonely old guy, who loves telling stories.. so he tricks 7 strangers to come over to gamekastle to play a ttrpg with... oh wait no. He got the party over, and may have been confused thinking he was related to some of them, but he gladly tells all sorts of stories about things he discovered that needed repair because the underbelly of the castle is totes not structurally sound. The party gladly listens to the stories, learns a myriad number of ways to breach the fortress without dying, and gets 3XP each at the end of the session.

Kinder had upgraded the complexes arcade during the archivists negotiations, and the next morning a kid was thrilled to meet our local celebrity... His dad was driving south, and the party got a ride down to The Collectors...

They met up with the kobolds and arranged the purchases of D'hangs dads effects. Kinder found a piece of spaceship with pieces intact... The party decides to help out, making a ruckus, distracting the kobolds, and letting Kinder pull out the backup processing unit / routing relay to the ships 'life' sensors, to possibly be turned into a handheld version later.

With all this swag, the party saunters into the Beta Gate, headed for Lambda.

Lambda 3
...

There's a gap here ..
That I'll havta fill in later

Nu 2
The party (Sirona, Selena, Slapjack, Tarla, Kondu, D'Hang) goes back to Nu to try and scare off the Etruscans and also neutralize the Etruscan nuclear stockpile.

Tarla, through her amazing charisma and trickery, was able to convince one of the guards that they had a love child many years ago. Which was D'hang. The kid went along with it and the "mother and son" duo convinced the guard and he was crying over the revelation. There might have also been a mention of a threesome with Slapjack back then. But who's to say? Anyway, the rest of the group enchanted a poorly drawn piece of art to claim as D'hang's work. The idea was that it would be slipped into the other room and the group could blink in past the doors into the Control Room. This somehow worked. But then the other guard started to realize an error and was about to attack when Tarla hit his face a little too hard with her fist. And then D'hang horribly murdered his fake father figure. That part was disturbing. . . Anyway the group then blink into the Control Room.

3 Etruscans chew a molar and die instantly, but apparently the suicide tooth was made by the lowest bidder, and one Etruscan nerd lived. Slapjack manages to get the comms working, and threatens both the Commandant on the base, and then eavesdrop and he calls inter-planetary dispatch and they call for full evacuation, followed by total nuclear remote detonation!

Kondu manages to eavesdrop the Etruscan homeworld coords, and Slapjack fires all but one of the weapons into the Gates to their homeworld. Poetic justice, taste of their own medicine style. One nuke goes into a long high orbit, and will land on the Dellani Capital during the attack - making a ton of extra ruckus so the party can kill The Mad King and steal The Memory Mattress to find D'hangs father and Bea and whatever else.

Next the party went to ....

Delta
Slapjack got all up in dat ass and it xploded. And everyone else watched.