"Control
is a coveted possession. The mesmerists and skeptics all seem to want
it; at any rate, they want to consider themselves rational and
self-possessed enough not to fall under anyone else’s. During this
brief, strange moment, mesmerizing another person - or seeing someone
get mesmerized, or denouncing mesmerists as charlatans - became a way of
stockpiling control for one's own use. At whose expense? Unidentified,
enslaved West Indian laborers planters tried to mesmerize; female
factory workers."
"Mesmerists made gains in America not
by denying that they exploited credulous subjects but by advertising
that they had found a new technique for doing precisely that. Once
calling people 'credulous' emerged as a way to justify singling them out
as test subjects, mesmerists could compete over experimenting with, and
hoping to control, the credulity of others. They became businesslike
experts in the profitable arts of human manipulation. Two of mesmerism’s
early adopters were plantation owners and factory managers."
"The valorization of the realm of a culture’s ghosts and phantasms as a significant and rich field of social production rather than a mirage to be dispelled. The valorization of a culture’s detritus and trivia as well as its strange and marginal practices."
"A general Gothic dialectic is born of a series of cultural contradictions that echo the structural contradictions of capitalist relations and production. These contradictions find expression in the mediated cultural superstructure. The material convulsions of capital constantly create new spaces for semi-autonomous social and cultural relations - only to tear them asunder. Each of these is a trauma to the social unconscious."
"The initial impetus for the Gothic in art and literature stemmed from the marginalization of medieval forms by bourgeois relations and industrialization. The Gothic castle and the abbey stood in ruins, projecting both a nostalgia and fear of the past - things that were lost but also alien and threatening to modern life. This dynamic is the cultural echo of combined and uneven development. The hard fought autonomy of the small businessman is destroyed as capital is consolidated in larger units. 'Self-made men' are proletarianized - as far fewer proletarians become 'self-made men.' In the process thousands of little gothic worlds are created. In the shells of factories, in the empty union halls, in the empty mansions of declassed small capitalists, in the photographs of failed revolutions and in the broadsheets of all but forgotten sects."
"Sarah Winchester had inherited a vast fortune off of guns. She built her house with shifts of 16 carpenters who were paid three times the going rate and worked 24 hours a day, every day, from 1886 until Sarah’s death in 1922. Winchester wove and unwove eternally. She built, demolished and rebuilt. Winchester hastily sketched designs on napkins or brown paper for carpenters to build additions, towers, cupolas or rooms that made no sense and had no purpose, sometimes only to be plastered over the next day."
"Her building is a ghost story of the American gun. Winchester became terrified that her misfortunes, especially the death of her husband and one-month old daughter, were cosmic retribution from all the spirits killed by Winchester rifles. A medium told her that she would be haunted by the ghosts of Winchester rifle victims unless she built, non-stop - perhaps at ghosts' direction, for their pleasure, or perhaps as a way to elude them. Haunted by conscience over her gun blood fortune and seeking either protection or absolution, Winchester lived in almost complete solitude, in a mansion designed to be haunted."
"About half of all marriages end up in ruins. A few start out that way. For some couples, abandoned buildings - train stations, warehouses and century-old churches, often found in declining or deindustrialized cities - are proving the perfect haunting aesthetic for their weddings."
"Logistically one of the biggest issues is that a lot of these buildings don’t really have addresses anymore. Ruins also change or sometimes disappear altogether."
"This method of gazing at such areas of a city doesn’t always examine the larger social and economic forces taking place in cities. Still, the forlorn sense of isolation sparks curiosity for some couples, along with a desire to bring former functions back to abandoned structures, even temporarily, as a way to honor them."
"The world’s rich are increasingly investing in expensive stuff, and 'freeports' are becoming their repositories of choice. Their attractions are similar to those offered by offshore financial centres: security and confidentiality, not much scrutiny, the ability for owners to hide behind nominees, and an array of tax advantages. Because of the confidentiality, the value of goods stashed in freeports is unknowable. Though much of what lies within is perfectly legitimate, the protection offered from prying eyes ensures that they appeal to kleptocrats and tax-dodgers as well as plutocrats. The goods they stash in the freeports range from paintings, fine wine and precious metals to tapestries and even classic cars."
"The early freeports were drab warehouses. But as the contents have grown glitzier, so have the premises themselves. The idea is to turn freeports into places the end-customer wants to be seen in, the best alternative to owning your own museum. The newest facilities are dotted with private showrooms, where art can be shown to potential buyers. The wealthy are increasingly using freeports as a place where they can rub shoulders and trade fine objects with each other. It is not uncommon for a painting to be swapped for, say, a sculpture and some cases of wine, with all the goods remaining in the freeport after the deal and merely being shifted between the storage rooms of the buyer’s and seller’s handling agents."
Raku Chihuly - dragonborn guid artisan, 4th level battlesmith artificer - played by Emily Willibald Honrblower - halfling noble, 4th level college of lore bard - played by Steve Nehryx - centaur outlander, 4th level brute fighter - played by Corey Demic - minotaur entertainer, 4th level oath of the dragonlord paladin - played by Ben Crow - tabaxi acolyte of Nuula, 3rd level swashbuckler rogue - played by Lindsey Owyn Lavashield - hill dwarf hermit, 2nd level circle of the moon druid - played by Eli
After they defeated the masters of Castle Cragmaw, the adventurers returned to the village of Alpenshire to enjoy some well-earned rest. Travelers reported that the mountain trails were currently free of bandits. All goblin sightings showed them heading deeper into the Grosseberg mountain range. Black Iris received a number of mysterious overnight deliveries, and her storehouses were soon almost overflowing with merchandise.
For several weeks, the group members trained in their abilities and began spending some of their treasure. Raku turned the frog statue she'd found into a figurine of wondrous power, able to turn into a living frog and deliver messages. Willibald cobbled himself a pair of boots of elven kind, which would help him scout ahead of the party more stealthily. After being introduced by Raku, Nehryx was able to commission the artisan's guild to enchant his mighty greatsword to make it a weapon +1. Demic commissioned the guild as well, but he had them make a statue of his revered Dragon Goddess so that he could begin consecrating a shrine. Crow and Owyn spent time at the temple for the Nature Goddess they both revered.
All the same, they began to feel a bit of wanderlust. Willibald still longed to show up the Brandybuck family, who he believed may have sabotaged his vineyard. Nehryx and Demic enjoyed their status as local heroes, but longed to venture back into the mountains. Together, the party agreed to investigate a the legendary Under-Mountain in heart of the mountain range. The map they'd retrieved from Castle Cragmaw seemed to show one path there. The party convinced Black Iris to let them use some of her secret smuggling trails for extra security. Owyn Lavashield also located some fellow dwarves in Alpenshire, and persuaded them to write him a letter of introduction that he could use to let the party stay in any of the dwarven mining villages that dot the Grosseberg mountains.
For two more weeks, the group traveled the mountains, sticking the Black Iris's smuggling trails when they could, staying the night in dwarven mining towns when one was available. Their last stay was in Dworfsborro, only a half day from the fabled Under-Mountain. The next day they arrived at the entrance to the ancient dungeon. It appeared to be just a simple mining elevator. At the bottom they found themselves in a room filled with loose sand and broken shields. On one wall, written in blood, they saw a dwarven warning that a Mad Mage waited somewhere beyond a place called the Pillar Forest.
There seemed to be only one exit from this first room, a dog-legged passageway that eventually led to a wider hall. This hall ran to the west, and its walls were decorated with bas relief images of demons. The skeleton of a birdman lay in the middle of the hall, pointing at one of the demons. The group felt suspicious of whatever might have killed the bird creature. Demic investigated the skeleton but saw no obvious signs of what killed it. Checking the wall the creature was pointing at, he thought he could make out some loose stonework. Nehryx helped ram a shoulder against the wall, and a secret doorway opened!
Beyond the secret door, a curving and roughly dug tunnel led into a strangely slanted room. It was as though it had been build on a different floorplan (and a different definition of "down") - and it was half full of fetid water that smelled like sewage. While the others held back, brave Nehryx waded in, and was attacked by a blob of grey protoplasm, the same color as the dirty water. The ooze lashed at Nehryx with its tentacles, but with support from his friends who used arrows and magic from the doorway, the monster was quickly defeated. Acid from the ooze sizzled against Nehryx's new sword, but couldn't harm its fine magical craftsmanship. Pleased with his purchase, he wiped the blade clean.
After the excitement was over, Nehryx spotted an alcove with a statue in it. Demic investigated and discovered a statue of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The statue was carved of black stone. One arm had broken off, and it was covered in melted wax and other stains. It had a screw on head that could be removed so that candles could be placed inside, allowing light to spill out of the Creature's eyes and mouth. Demic thought this was really cool, so he placed the rather heavy statue in his backpack, determined to use its special feature as a template for some additional decorations devoted to his dragon goddess.
After really thoroughly checking the room for additional secrets, ("There's got to be more to this place! It's too weird to just be standalone!"), they returned to the hall with the demon carvings on the walls. At the end of the hall, they descended down a double-wide staircase into an octagonal room filled with many pillars. The group theorized this might be the so-called "Pillar Forest" the graffiti near the entrance had mentioned. Several party members felt an unnerving sense that someone might be nearby, or might have snuck away just as they were entering. They spent awhile spreading out across the room to look behind every pillar to make sure no one could surprise them. They saw the skeleton of an enormous constrictor snake coiled around one pillar - and Demic smashed it with a rock. Owyn also found more bloody dwarven graffiti, this time warning of "certain death" down the south exit.
Besides the way the party had entered, the room had three other exits, all of them up a staircase, making this room a low-point within this part of the dungeon. Willibald climbed each staircase to peek ahead. He saw a short dead-end passage to the north, a hall lined with alcoves to the west, and a very long passageway to the south.
Gains
100 XP (grey ooze)
Creature of the Black Lagoon statue (no monetary value)
Session 8
Raku Willibald Nehryx Demic Crow
Taking stock of their options, the party agreed to avoid the passageway that was marked as "certain death". They felt curious about the alcoves and decided to investigate, but immediately felt worried about what might be hidden just out of sight. A single burnt out torch lying in the middle of the hall increased their anxiety. Willibald use a mage hand to float a lighted torch down the hall, and light seemed to reflect back from within the alcoves - mirrors! Raku decided to detect magic and saw that a couple of the mirrors were magical, and based on their placement, she thought one of the mirrors at the end of the hall might be magic as well.
As the group debated what to do about this situation, three giant centipedes entered the hall crawling on the ceiling and rapidly approached them! The centipedes seemed especially drawn to the smell of sewage clinging to Demic's and Nehryx's fur. Unfortunately for the insects, their chosen meals were quite capable of defending themselves. The party quickly dispatched one of the creatures and the other two began to scuttle away, but another was slain before it could escape. Demic and Nehryx both thought the creatures might possess some kind of poison, but since they'd withstood its effects, they weren't entirely sure what it would do to someone affected by it.
Still worried about the possible effects of the magical mirrors, Demic led the group the rest of the way down the hall. As he passed the final two mirrors, he looked in one and saw a distorted, funhouse reflection of himself that pointed behind him, he turned to see a similar reflection in the other mirror, then turned again - the distorted reflection was standing in the hall with him! Nehryx charged the rest of the length of the hall to help his friend. He wiped out the mysterious mirror creature in a single cut, but a mirror Nehryx hopped out to confront him too. Willibald magically shattered one of the mirrors. Crow ran past, hoping the spell might be broken too, but a semi-transparent and very angry mirror Crow appeared as well! Fortunately, with Nehryx's help, both reflections were quickly defeated. Willibald went up and down the hall shattering all the non-magical mirrors. He discovered that the other magical mirrors that Raku had identified were simply illusions, with no mirror present at all! Behind one, he found a bronze mask depicting the face of the Mad Mage. Raku carefully broke the remaining magical mirror without allowing herself to be reflected, then collected the magical glass for future study.
Past the hall, passages branched off to the north and south. Willibald scouted ahead, and thought that the northern passage had only a single dead-end room, while the southern branch led to a complex of several rooms. Entering into the rooms to the south, the group met a half-dozen goblins who were amusing themselves with a human skeleton they'd turned into a crude marionette. The skeleton looked very old, and a broken shield in the corner identified its bearer as "NIM - RATH".
The goblins were impressed that the party had fought their way through the "bad mirrors", and learned that the goblins never used that hall. Upon further questioning, the goblins told a sad tale of how they used to have a good life up on the surface, but a series of tragedies had chased them down into the Under-Mountain, where they still had no relief from their troubles. Once they had a simple life, living in a cave, robbing travelers, led by a bugbear boss. Then someone came in and killed their boss, flooded their cave, and stole back all spoils of their banditry. "It's probably that darned Black Iris," one of the goblins opined, "she never gives us no peace!" The survivors of that disaster had moved into a castle with some of their friends ... until one day someone massacred and entire dining hall full of goblins, and again, killed their newest bugbear boss.
The party members exchanged meaningful glaces with one another. "Gee, that's so sad." So now the goblins had resolved to leave the cruel surface world behind, but they were troubled again by a group of Draculas living to the north, who gave them all kind of hassle down here as well. The party felt alarmed by the report of Draculas, and took pity on the poor goblins, who at this point just wanted to live in peace far away from humans. Willibald and Raku used some simple illusions to create a disco ball, flashing lights, and ambient music playing "The Hustle". The goblins danced to celebrate their newly forged friendship, and got their skeleton puppet to disco dance, chanting "Nim-rath, nim-rath, nim-rath!" in time to the music.
Eventually, the goblins took the party to meet their newest bugbear bosses, who were also pleased to hear that someone else was going to kill the Draculas and save them the trouble. The bugbears agreed to deliver "big treasure" and to avoid bothering the town of Dworfsborro if the party was successful in clearing out the area to the north. The speed and apparent generosity of the bugbears' agreement may have struck some as inherently suspicious.
The goblins meanwhile were enthusiastically and unreservedly excited about this new alliance. They explained the layout of their group's "turf", which included several more rooms south of the Pillar Forest. The party worked out that the Draculas were somewhere to the north of that. But wait, how did the goblins get to and from the Pillar Forest if they never used the mirrored hallway? What about the sign warning of "certain death" to the south? The goblins couldn't contain their laughter - "hahaha! I can't believe you guys fell for that!"
Eventually, the goblins took the group to an empty room where they could camp for the night. It was the dead-end room Willibald had identified earlier. The floor was littered with trash, burnt torches, empty potion bottles, empty wine bottles of Chateau Brandybuck. In the distance, the party could hear the goblins disco-ing long into the night.
Gains
1200 XP (two carrion crawlers 450/each, three shadows 100/each)
bronze mask of the Mad Mage (50 gp)
sample of broken magical glass .
. . Session 9
Willibald Nehryx
The next day, the rest of the party stayed behind to disco with the goblins, while Willibald and Nehryx planned to scout out the so-called "Draculas". Based on the legends and folksongs Willibald had heard, and backed up by Demic's religious knowledge, vampires were believed to be incredibly powerful and dangerous, possibly moreso than the goblins seemed to think. The party was suspicious that something might not be as it seemed.
Willibald and Nehryx asked the bugbear bosses for their bravest goblin warrior to accompany them on their scouting mission, but the bosses were not entirely receptive to this request. "Ha! No. Tell you what, we'll give you our most expendable goblin." They were introduced to Pincushion, a goblin who sounded suspiciously like Don Knotts. When asked how he got his name, Pincushion explained that on several occasions, he'd somehow managed to shoot himself in his own butt. "Now they only let me have this one arrow..."
Nehryx and Willibald encouraged Pincushion to scout head as they went back through the Pillar Forest and into the northern hall. "Hot dog! I'm the leader, I'm leading the way!" Their first stop was a room just on the edge of Dracula territory. Listening at the door, Willibald heard voices coming from inside, so they steeled themselves for a fight. The room proved to be deserted though, and the voices were coming from narrow air shafts in the ceiling. Who knew where else in the dungeon those connected to? They also spotted some eye holes cut into the south wall. Peering through showed a view of the hall with the bas relief demons - in fact, the eye holes were probably positioned to be one of the demon's eyes.
The most interesting feature of the room though was a glowing sword nailed halfway through an upturned wooden table. The table itself was smeared with dried blood, and a skeletal forearm lay on the floor beneath. Nehryx held back the excitable Pincushion while Willibald investigated. He used mage hand to try to dislodge the sword from the table. It released easily, almost as if it wanted to be held, and flew toward Willibald's outstretched hand. He managed to dodge just in time, and the glowing blade clattered across the floor behind him. Willibald heard a scraping sound as the sword dragged itself across the floor toward him. He ducked behind the table, and the sword flung itself into the wood so hard it actually stabbed him coming through the other side! Deeply suspicious of the sword's apparent eagerness, Willibald offered the weapon to Pincushion, who felt no doubt or concern whatsoever. "Oh boy!' he exclaimed, waving the sword wildly from side to side, like a toddler with a sparkler, "My very own sword! Look out world, here comes Pincushion!"
A quick test revealed that it was impossible for Pincushion to let go of the sword, although the redoubtable goblin didn't see this as a drawback. "Set it down? I'm never lettin' this baby out of my sight! Hiyah! Ha! Take that!" Nehryx further spun the advantages of a blade that no enemy could ever knock from one's hands, while both he and Willibald kept a safe distance from Pincushion's enthusiastic practice swinging.
Past this room, the northern passageway branched again, with routes going east and west. Deciding to take the much longer passage to the west, Nehryx, Willibald, and Pincushion arrived in a room with black bone-covered pillars, its floor covered in the bones of goblins and some kind of beaked snake-like creature. Two large floating brains with nasty beaks of their own and dozes of wafting tentacles floated out of ambush positions and approached the two friends and their erstwhile sidekick. Pincushion rushed forward, eager to try out his new weapon, and was summarily decapitated by one of the floating brains, which crunched noisily on his skull. Nehryx had much better success with his greatsword, and Willibald used a combination of crossbow and magic to dispatch the other.
When they returned to the goblin hideout, Raku had just finished teaching the goblins to limbo under a rope.
Gains
1650 XP (cursed sword 4th level "medium" encounter 250, two grell 700/each)
Losses
Pincushion the goblin
Session 10
Raku Willibald Nehryx Demic Crow Owyn
After Nehryx and Willibald's scouting mission, the group was certain they knew the way to the territory controlled by the alleged "Draculas" and they were eager to learn more about the supposed monsters. After bidding a fond farewell to their disco friends, the party passed through the Pillar Forest and went north, then east, into a new region of the dungeon. At the end of the passageway, they found an alcove with more eye holes, and they realized they'd found a secret door into the entry chamber. Though there was no way to open it from the side of the mining elevator, they had discovered yet another hidden connector.
Backtracking slightly, they took a northern branching passage, and opened a door into room with three graffiti-covered statues ... and a crowd of vampires?! Half a dozen of the vampires were average human sized, obviously wearing white greasepaint, and simple black bandit's outfits that had been modified to look a bit like tuxedos. Another was a much larger man dressed much the same, and two were absolutely flawless images of Dracula! The smaller "vampires" brandished knives at the party. "Blah, blah!" they shouted, "I vant to suck your blood!" One seemed confused, ("I like to eat the peanut butter first!"), but he was quickly silenced by the others. "Blah!"
Nehryx rushed the crowd of smaller vampires, and rapidly struck down two of them. The others tried to run, but Nehryx managed to grab one before he could get away. The other party members concentrated on the surprisingly convincing Draculas, who unnervingly seemed to heal every injury only moments after it was dealt. One of these fled away too, but the party finally defeated the other. As it fell, it turned into a grey humanoid with fluid, clay-like skin. Another doppelganger, like they'd encountered at Castle Cragmaw! Now that it was dead, they could see that their attacks had injured it, but it had been using its shapechanging abilities to conceal the damage.
They questioned their prisoner, who admitted his name was Tony, and that he was not really a vampire. He belonged to a gang that used to be called the Jets, until their leader, Benny, met an actress and agreed to her plan to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies by disguising themselves as vampires. Tony was not altogether sold on this plan, ("I mean, it used to be, when you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way ... but now we're supposed to just give that up?"), but thought it was working pretty well against the goblins. Tony was also not enamored with the actress, Victoria, who in addition to leading the bandits into the Under-Mountain and rebranding their image, had also started building "a really gross flesh monster" in her dressing room.
Tony was able to explain a bit of the layout of the gang's territory. To the west were a small number of hangout rooms. To the north were a couple of hidden chambers they sometimes used for ambushes, ("plus there's an honest to goodness vampire coffin in there! it's just empty though"), and further north, a throne room where Victoria was likely to be found. Beyond that, Tony knew about a hallway filled with statues that led into a larger room controlled by a trio of lions with human faces.
With this information, and a tied-up Tony bringing up the rear, the group headed west into the vampire gang's hangout rooms. They found the surviving gang members hiding behind an overturned card table. Benny leapt out to fight the party, but was clearly outmatched, and then Willibald suggested that he surrender. Confronted with both the logic of his situation and Willibald's magical persuasion, Benny readily agreed and encouraged the other bandits to give themselves up. He helpfully offered to turn over his accumulated loot to the party, and agreed to hurry to Dworfsborro to turn himself in to the appropriate authorities. Before jogging off, Benny also confirmed the layout of the other section of the gang's turf, and again warned the party of the danger posed by Victoria and her "gross flesh zombie thing". The party debated what to do with the other bandits, but didn't feel able to take custody of a group of prisoners at the moment, and worried that they'd just escape, and possibly lead Benny astray, if they tried asking them to go to Dworfsborro. In the end, they released Tony and the other three bandits, on the promise that the Jets give up stealing.
Gains
1300 XP (doppelganger 700, six bandits 25/each, bandit captain 450)
21 gp in surrendered bandit pocket change
96 gp in bandit treasure (2 gp in copper, 9 gp in silver, 85 gp in gold)
dwarven rune ring (25 gp, given to Owyn)
Session 11
Raku Willibald Nehryx Demic Crow Owyn
As Benny jogged off toward Dworfsborro and the remaining bandits dispersed, the party returned to the room with the three graffitied statues and headed north, following the directions provided by their informants. In the northern passage, they spotted a pair of hidden doors.
Pressing his ear to the wall, Willibald heard someone banging around inside. The group burst in through both doors, and saw a giant, picture-perfect Frankenstein's Monster. Could this be Victoria's creature?! Their multiple attacks quickly subdued the monster. Upon death, it was revealed to be the other doppelganger from before. It's body showed both its previous injuries and the newest wounds.
Surveying the room, they saw that this was a bandit hideout, filled with bedrolls. In a side room, they found an ancient wooden coffin on a stone plinth. This must be the vampire coffin! Nehryx, Demic, and Owyn investigated the coffin by tapping on it and then using several magical senses. Eventually Owyn opened the lid and found it empty. The bottom of the coffin was covered in dirt, with a single vial of holy water inside.
Following a westward passage, they arrived at a more ornate looking doorway. Perhaps this was the throne room? Inside, they found large throne room. They had enetered just beside the large throne; made entirely of bone. In the middle of the room, they saw a small dragon skeleton surrounded by broken crystal or glass. Raku and Demic were both unsettled by the disrespectful treatment of a dragon's remains, and vowed to carry it back to Dworfsborro after they finished with the bandits. They saw another door just on the other side of the throne, and two more at the far side of the room. The group decided to check the nearest doorway.
Inisde, they found Victoria's dressing room! The walls were covered with posters of Victoria from various plays she'd appeared in. They saw her dressing table, costume trunk, changing screen, and of course, the woman herself, and her giant horrible flesh monster. Victoria was dressed in a much better version of the other bandits' costumes. The monster was an awful stitched together mess of various scraps of skin. "Blah blah!" intoned Victoria, "Who dares invade my sanctum? Blah! Get them, Frankie! Destroy them, my pet!"
For a few rounds, Victoria taunted the party as they struggled against her terrible creation ... until Demic channeled his deity to roar like a dragon, terrifying the woman. "Oh god, we're all doomed! He's gonna go crazy! I can't control him! He's going berserk for sure!" Ordinarily, she would have fled the room, but she was too afraid of Demic to try to run past him, and so just scrabbled backward against the wall. "Please! I surrender! Just take me in! Don't let him kill me!" Owyn changed shape to become a dire wolf and kept her cornered while the others fought. The monster, Frankie, did not end up going berserk, and eventually, the party managed to put down the horrible creature.
With Victoria in manacles, the group checked the side room and retrieved the remaining five bandits. The bandits volunteered to give up their life of crime, but the party tied their hands and prepared to lead them back to Dworfsborro to face dwarven law.
They also gathered the bones, realizing as they did that this was a wyvern, an animal that was related to dragons but lacked their noble intelligence. The broken glass appeared to be the remains of a display case that probably hung from the ceiling. Demic thought that he could begin consecrating a grotto to his Dragon Goddess in Dworfsborro, and this skeleton could be respectfully interred there.
When the party and their prisoners arrived in Dworfsborro, they found that Benny had turned himself in, and the group received a reward from the dwarven authorities for the capture of the seven gang members.
Gains
3075 XP (doppelganger 700, bandit captain 450, flesh golem 1800, five bandits 25/each)
22 gp surrendered bandit pocket change
1025 gp reward for captured bandits
Notes
Before the start of session 7 up there, I went ahead and totaled up everyone's experience and treasure from their previous adventures. The totals below don't include any cash that Nehryx and Demic made by selling used goblin weapons, and also doesn't include any deductions for purchases of armor, healing potions, and the like. I did go ahead and subtract out the cost of their magic items though - 500 gp each for Raku and Willibald to craft their own, 1000 gp for Nehryx to commission one, and 750 gp for Demic to commission his statue.
Raku - 3350 xp, 621 gp, figurine of wondrous power (same power as silver falcon)
Willibald - 4200 xp, 900 gp, boots of elven kind
Nehryx - 4200 xp, 400 gp, greatsword +1
Demic - 3225 xp, 650 gp, statue of dragon goddess
Crow - 2975 xp, 1275 gp
Owyn - 1850 xp, 996 gp
The party also started out collectively owning 3 healing potions that they'd found as treasure and not used, a scroll of revivify, and a scroll of silence. I think at the start of the next session I'll encourage them to officially divvy those up so that someone has responsibility for tracking when they get used up.
By my count, each party member got 194 gp from this adventure (1164 ÷ 6), Demic got a broken statue and co-ownership of a wyvern skeleton, Willibald got a brone mask, Owyn got a dwarven ring and a vial of holy water, and Raku got some magic glass and is the other owner of the skeleton.
So by the end of all of this, everyone's experience and cash are higher:
Raku - 9025 xp, 815 gp
Willibald - 11525 xp, 1094 gp
Nehryx - 11525 xp, 594 gp
Demic - 8900 xp, 844 gp
Crow - 8650 xp, 1469 gp
Owyn - 6325 xp, 1190 gp
In Dungeon Crawl Classics, an attack roll of natural 20 is always a critical hit. An attack roll of natural 1 is always a fumble.
As they level up, characters gain an extra action dice that they can use to make attacks. The extra dice starts at d14, then improves to d16, and then d20. It's impossible to crit with a d14 or d16. The chance of a fumble is higher, but not as much as you might expect (from 5% with a d20 to around 6% with a d16 and 7% with a d14).
Those aren't the only non-standard dice types in DCC though. There's also d24 and d30. When should you get a critical hit with them?
The rules don't specifically say. All giants in DCC use d24 attack dice, and crit on any roll of 20 or higher. (This gives them about a 21% chance of a critical hit on each attack!) But that's a special ability that's explicitly called out in every giant's monster stats. So I don't think player characters should get the exact same benefit from rolling a d24.
On the other hand, I don't think players should only be limited to critting on a roll of 24 on a d24 or 30 on a d30. The chance of a fumble on those dice goes down (to around 4% and 3%, respectively) but I think the chance of a critical hit should go up. The fun of rolling a larger dice should be accompanied by the fun of a better chance at critting. So how do we accomplish that?
My suggestion is this. When a player rolls a d24 attack dice, they score a critical hit on a natural 20 and a natural 24. So they improve from a 1-in-20 chance to 1-in-12, or around 8%. When a player rolls a d30 attack dice, they crit on a natural 20, 24, or 30. Their chance increases to 1-in-10, or 10%.
If you're using the rules for fleeting luck, I would be happy to say you earn a temporary point of Luck on any roll of 20, 24, or 30 as well.
What about warriors? In DCC warriors and dwarves can spend a point of Luck to convert a fumble into an ordinary miss. Warriors also get an increased critical range. At 1st level, a warrior scores a critical hit on any natural 19 or 20. This improves to 18, 19, 20 at 5th level and to 17, 18, 19, 20 at 9th. Along the way, their chances of critting go from 10% to 15% to 20% on each attack.
How should this interact with the larger dice types? I would say that a warrior still gets their expanded crit range, and the
extra chance from using the larger dice, but doesn't get to expand
their range any further. So a 1st level warrior rolling a d30 gets a critical hit on a 19, 20, 24, and 30, but not on a 23 or a 29. Their chance of critting improves to around 13%, but not to 20%.
The reason is more clear at higher levels. If we allowed a 9th level warrior to increase their crit range on each new dice, then on a d30, they'd score a critical hit on any roll from 17-24, and again from 27-30, a 40% chance of a crit! This would make rolling a 25 or 26 weirdly disappointing. It would also take away some of the fun of critical hits, which is that they're unpredictable. You never want to expect crits so regularly that you become disappointed when you don't get one. I like critical hits, and for me, having them happen almost half the time would ruin one of the things I like about them.
In a class I took on museum studies, we read Tangible Things, a companion volume to a Harvard University museum exposition of the same name. The purpose of the both the book and the original exhibit is to showcase objects that potentially cross the traditional classificatory boundaries that define the different types of museums, archives, and libraries.
For example, a tortoise shell that's both a zoological specimen and, because it's been carved with graffiti, a historical document from the 19th century whaling industry.
The attention to systems of classification was interesting, but my favorite parts of the book were the 16 profiles of chosen objects. And my favorite of those was the story of the Galapagos Tortoise shell.
The Galapagos Islands are named for the tortoises, and not, as I had assumed, the other way around.
The priamry human inhabitants of the Galapagos Islands were various kinds of sailors. English pirates used the islands as a base for launching raids on Spanish cargo ships starting in the 17th century. In the late 18th century, the pirates were mostly replaced by British whalers, and after the war of 1812, American whalers were the most common 19th century visitors.
They all loved eating tortoises, apparently considering tortoise meat to be one of the most delicious culinary delicacies available anywhere on earth. It wasn't just their favorite thing to eat while sailing. It was their favorite thing to eat, period.
Charles Darwin at tortoise meat, but was apparently unmoved by its flavor.
Sailors carried "small" 75 pound tortoises back to their boats by wearing them as backpacks. Larger tortoises had oars put underneath them and were carried back like a palanquin atop the shoulders of porters, or a coffin being borne by pallbearers.
It was routine for ships to bring hundreds of tortoises aboard on a single visit. They may have removed as many as ten-thousand tortoises per year during the peak of the whaling trade.
Tortoises that were too large to carry were turned into walking signboards by sailors who cut graffiti into their shells, like messages carved on treetrunks.
Herman Melville hunted tortoises while whaling, and wrote a novel about tortoise hunting. Somehow he lost the novel, he rewrote it as a short story, which was published as "The Encantadas".
"The Encantadas" or "The Enchanted Isles" is what sailors used to call the Galapagos. The currents running between the islands are variable, and mist is common, creating the illusion of haunted islands that appear and disappear, or rearrange their locations between visits.
More than going to hell, sailors who had been to the Galapagos feared being reincarnated ... as tortoises.
Later in his life, Melville reported being haunted by guilt over tortoise hunting, and being unable to stop himself from imaging tortoises following him wherever he went. The ones he saw in nature, in parks and gardens, mostly made him sad, but he was terrified of the ghostly visions of tortoises he saw emerging from the shadows at parties in rich people's houses.
"Such is the vividness of my memory, or the magic of my fancy, that often in scenes of social merriment, and especially at revels held by candle-light in old-fashioned mansions, so that shadows were thrown into the further recesses of an angular and spacious room, making them put on a look of haunted undergrowth of lonely woods, I have drawn the attention of my comrades by my fixed gaze and sudden change of air, as I have seemed to see, slowly emerging from those imagined solitudes, and heavily crawling along the floor, the ghost of a gigantic tortoise."
