Two nights in Wampus County - Play reports

I played a couple games of Wampus County this weekend and they were very different.  The first a straight forward return to the lost city for Chauncy and the Second a romp in the woods with a gang of inbred Paul Bunyans, and featuring Bobo the Flying Monkey.  Below is a doodle featuring Bobo's adventures including: Bobo, Bobo in a tree, the Toy, Squatch, Squatch Inferno...(They were troll-squatches).

What Bobo the Monkey Saw.

SESSION VIII - Spacemen Zombies!

SESSION VIII

The secrets of the the obelisk are revealed, Lemon is paralyzed by the secrets of the universe while Huxley is haunted by his old life and ancient technology.  Finally great treasure is unearthed, but proves a dangerous burden rather than a boon.

Grimgrim – Fighting priest of the fierce God of Dooms, Monstcrom! (M) Cleric 1

Lemon Jackson – A wizard, who prefers to go without clothing, has strange yellow eyes and who tattoos himself with spells. (M) Magic User 1

Huxley McTeeth (Hux) – A gaucho with a past, clad in plains finery, possessed with in strength disproportionate to his years and small frame. (M) F1

“Eyestabs” Nell – A scary woman armed with many poison hat pins and a dead dwarf's crossbow(F) A1

Drusilla – Eleven lass of surpassing beauty(for a creepy eyed, fanged, and noseless monster), disturbingly unpleasant affect and taste for human babies - Pole arm and scimitar (F) Elf 1

The party again encamped in the shrine and reset their traps – expecting a counter attack by the cultists (and not realizing that the cultists were almost out of undead guards, scared and spending the night besieged by ghouls).

Grimgrim speaks to Jackal-mask when he appears and the god seems far less perturbed this time. He tells Grimgrim that his priest seems delayed, but to expect him in another day or two, though after the success of the day the party should have no problem with the remaining cultists, and if they kill them the next day his servants will reward them “beyond all imagining with riches from the ancients.” With a divine promise of wealth in mind the party gathers their equipment and quickly decamps.

Space Zombie - by Soren Bendt, 2010

In walking across the grounds the group is assailed by strange visions of ancient battle, the smell of ozone and burnt flesh are accompanied by explosions and the sounds of plasma discharges. Ghostly figures in fishbowl helmets dart through the fog just out of sight. 

The party is undeterred by these harmless phantoms and makes it to the smoke blacked steps. Bits of burnt zombie appear to have been scattered about and gnawed on in some kind of disgusting feast, but nothing moves. Inside the entry chamber things are even more messy, a strange corpse with blacked finger bones protruding from rotten hands lies on the floor surrounded by smashed skeletons and several splattered corpse fleas. The doors that the party left open are all closed and planks have been nailed across the door leading to the office.

The adventurers search carefully, and their caution is rewarded when Nell discovers that the door to the cloak room has a thin wire attached to it. After snipping the wire Hux kicks open the door and sees that the wire led to a wooden prop holding up a lit bowl of coals and that the floor has been covered in oil soaked rags. Lemon gingerly removes the coals and places the bowl in the vestibule while Nell checks the next door and finds it braced, but not apparently trapped. The band fears that Nell simply failed to detect something sinister, and even after listening at the door and hearing nothing (“well zombies waiting to jump us don't make any noise”) is afraid to press on.

The Obelisk - Contents of Graves and Sarcophagi

THE OBELISK - CONTENTS OF GRAVES TABLES

Within the Obelisk Grounds there are a great many graves and crypts that may be looted.  It takes 5 hrs for the average person to dig up a grave if equipped with a pick and shovel, but this is modified by the diggers Constitution bonus (-1 hour per point of bonus). Up to 2 people can dig up a grave at a time, but it will never take less than 1 hour.  Note that digging up a grave will result in earning the rage of Jackal-Mask Bonechewer and subject the party to attack by corpse fleas (immediately in some cases).

Most graves, even on the Obelisk Grounds are fundamentally boring and contain a cheap coffin (roll 1D10 below) and some bones. Every few will necessitate a roll on the tables below.  Graves closer to the Mausoleum and Shrine are more likely to have interesting contents.  All crypts within the Mausoleum will necessitate a roll on the tables below.  Roll 1D20 for contents and 1D20 for coffin if necessary.

A Special Tomb - Photo unaccredited

Meditations on the Bugbear

Bugbears – I have always loved the name bugbear, ever since one of them pretended to be friendly to my trusting 9yr old D&D player self and under the guise of offering me some kebab shoved a red hot skewer into my 2^nd level fighter's face. This was my first real experience with betrayal (and they say D&D doesn't teach kids anything). Much fun was had in the Cave of Chaos that day – my only regrets at the time were that the crazy fighter in the basement turned evils, and that I there weren't any baby bugbears to slay! Still, it's amazing, my initial impression of bugbear as potentially friendly cute creatures - something like a cheerful Chewbacca with a bee head - was destroyed almost as soon as it was formed.

The point of that touching tale, is that I have never known what a bugbear might look like (well as noted below there's that proto-soviet revolutionary kind I learned about in undergrad....) but the name was just so evocative! I think the image used in the 1^st Monster Manual is excellent (look it up), is pretty good, it also appears to have been cribbed from a revolutionary Russian zine of the 1905 – 1914 era. There's history in the monster, excellent history. Yet, despite it's storied nature, all I know about the damn things is as follows: Bugbears are betraying murderous bastards, bugbears have a lot of hp, bugbears are what goblins use to collect gambling debts, bugbear are hairy and likely smell, bugbears are dumb but make up for it in evil cunning, and Bugbears are fond of polearms.

The Bugbear, magazine mascot - Ivan Biliban, 1905

 Of course around Denethix the idea of a hairy giant goblin is not adequately bizarre. Plus I've always thought that a 'bugbear' should be at least one of those things – bug or bear. For a giant hairy goblin, it's possible that the hive minds have been breeding Sasquatches with their root servitor stock (are goblins purebred hive-mind stock, or are they the 'hiveminder' equivilent of Morlocks?), but I don't like that for bugbear. A bugbear is what a hivesquatch is not. I see a hivesquatch as having 6-10hd, AC 4 and being 12' tall – like a goblin hill giant. A terror that can't be made outside a lab and needs a whole sasquatch tribe's worth of pineal glads to grow in it's tube. Hivesquatches are what the oldest hive minds, backed by steam-powered reconstructed alien tech, pull out when they descend on human lands and need something to smash a few steel leviathans – hivesquatches may also be immune to magic and certainly only show up with 1d6 hundred goblins in support.

 

Bugbears though – this is a bugbear....