1st of Lastmonth, Year 1V39 {One-Vee Thirty-Nine}
We picked back up with the Company firmly resolved to get out of town. They settled on pursuing the Rumor they had heard last downtime turn about the lost bounty-killer, Breezy Pete. They began their investigation by seeking out the hostel waiter Crucius, the last to have seen the man. They caught his eye during the brunch rush and he was soon able to meet them by the dumpsters on his smoke break to chat.
Crucius was a spacy dirtbag chef type (literally just the guy from The Bear) decked out in dusty space goth regalia. It turned out Crucius and a few other staff at the Hostel had actually thrown together a small reward for anyone who was able to bring back their boy Breezy Pete, totaling to 5,000cp.
The Company learned that Pete ran a small bounty-killing outfit and was a friendly regular at the Hostel known for his flashy personal style. Crucius served him the last morning he was seen at Scarlet Town - about a month ago - and could tell something was up for a few reasons:
- Breezy Pete was riding out alone, with no sign of his crew.
- He looked like shit, unshaven and wearing dirty clothes.
- When asked about his quarry, Pete said he wasn't hunting a bounty at all, but riding up Rat Creek on personal business, 'to settle the score with that old dread prophet.'
- He had a strange emerald spear strapped to his back instead of his usual gunslinging gear.
The party resolved to follow his trail.
Before departing they did some more shopping. Hipsap bought Gemini a new polearm to replace the one stolen from them, and the party resolved to procure a mule and some supplies for traveling in the wilderness. They stopped by a stable-garage and were wowed by
an iron mule that was on display: a boxy, plodding, four-legged automaton said to possess some degree of sentience, capable of carrying a solid load but clumsy and nauseating to ride. They took it at its asking price and the referee indulged in
rolling on the d100 Mules table. As the stablehand gave Gemini the keys, he told them the iron mule was named Mischief, and that she was actually quite an accomplished swimmer so long as you plugged up her ears proper. The party also purchased a canoe should it become necessary to traverse Rat Creek, then departed east with the morning sun overhead, following the hoofprints of their quarry.
[ REFEREE'S NOTE - At this point I was attempting to use some kludgy UVG-derived days-based pointcrawling system for overland travel that involved me handwaving just about everything in the interest of preserving a feeling of grandiosity. After this session I realized that wasn't going to cut the mustard for the type of game I wanted deadSun -MAXIMAL- to be, at least in this corner of the world.
I had given the players a map of the region including a few major points of interest and someone mentioned 'hey, if we go to Rat Creek, we'll be halfway to the village of Hog!' I realized that there was no way I could accommodate traveling between multiple points of interests with the way I was doing things and something had to change.
I resolved to chalk up and key a hex map, which I did in the two weeks between this session and the next. I was also excited to use Errant's Travel Turn procedures since they interlock with everything else in a satisfying way. I am just gonna let Ultraviolet Grasslands be its own thing in the setting, Violet City is out there in the world and if they wanna go beyond there we can shift gears and run the caravan pointcrawl game.]
3rd of Lastmonth, Year 4V39
The party arrived at the terminus of Rat Creek after three days of traveling across dry, parched, red cactus land. Rat Creek feeds into a small swampy pool called, you guessed it, Rat Pond. Mutant rats large and small dabbled in the murk and muck. The Company observed that the bounty-killer's tracks continued along the creek upstream. Hipsap used her Communicate Dimensions spell to glimpse a ghostly echo of the past, in which she saw a silhouetted man riding a mighty cyborg stallion like the devil, stopping to camp only when his steed passed out beneath him. Kestrel saw a glint of metal in the water, and drew closer, discovering that much of the creekbed was composed of rusted clumps of dozens and dozens of swords, seemingly carried downstream by the current.
The party grew interested in Rat Pond's ecology and resolved to discover the source of the swarming vermin. Kestrel's Survival proficiency lent a hand in identifying that they all seemed to be swarming around a central location in the deep, but the pond's scummy waters were too clouded to make it out clearly. A rope was tied to Hipsap who dove to the bottom. In the darkness her hand found the hilt of a blade. Hoisting it up to the surface it was revealed to be another scummy longsword, but the blade of this one was composed of the fused corpses of dozens of mutant rats. Hipsap delighted in uncovering an object that clearly held latent sorcery within, a grimoire. 'To learn this sorcery,' the blade told her psychically, 'you must carry a grain of sand on the tip of your finger for a week entire.' She stuck some sand under her fingernails and called it a day. The Company continued following the tracks North, riding a while before stopping to make camp.
That night Gemini took watch while the others slept and heard a strange rattling noise from a nearby copse of willows. They investigated and found a phalanx of skeletal warriors, seemingly on alert. They awoke the rest of the party who made short work of the skeletons with polearm and maleficence, then returned to sleep.
4th of Lastmonth, Year 1V39
The next morning they set out further upstream and found a cliff with a trickling waterfall - the Source of Rat Creek. Here the shores were piled high with discarded swords, and the party spied a cave-like entrance behind the waterfall from which the swords seemed to be spilling. They entered the cave and struck a torch, treading carefully to avoid falling onto a discarded blade. From deeper within they heard the echoes of pumped-up screaming, like people working out really hard. Continuing deeper they found themselves in a high-ceilinged, cathedral-like room, where four squat duck-like mutants swung swords through the air, screaming. At the far end of the chamber a gigantic statue stood with offerings laid at its feet. Tunnels continued to the east and west.
The Company was quickly accosted by the duck mutants. One turned to address them and they saw that it had blood caked around its bill and teeth filed to a point. The ducks asked if the party were 'reinforcements in their war against the fish men.' The Company responded affirmatively. The spokesmutant gave them each a potion of water-breathing and directed them to the flooded tunnels to the west. The Company agreed to 'bring them the head of the queen' and continued west.
Next they found an underwater grotto-like chamber filled with kelp and oysters. After some time observing it they saw a giant octopus with a sword strapped to its back tending to the underwater garden that flitted out of a hidden tunnel in the grotto's depths. Sign language communication was established with the octopus. What's Going On? they asked. I Don't Know, it replied. I Just Work Here. Boss Lady Is Down There. They thanked the octopus and went to meet the Boss Lady.
The Boss Lady was a strange mermaid woman with a coral throne on an island amid a black cove in the chamber beyond. She jumped at the opportunity to host company, seemingly bored; her merfolk color guard prepared kelp tea. The Company asked her if she had seen any sign of Breezy Pete; she said she had, but that such information was valuable, and her people were at war and in great need. If the Company was willing to 'crush the egg of the vile duck men' she would be willing to part with such valuable information.
As the session started to wind down the party grew bewildered at the state of the conflict within the caves and had no confidence in the queen honoring her end of the bargain. They politely excused themselves and departed from the cave, hoping to gain some more information about their quarry next time.
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