#tfj log

[itsbenedict]

Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 22

Two? You Are Like A Little Baby. Watch This:

A conwoman disguised as a noble and the delegation of university students studying her have arrived in the jungle city of Thunderbrush, ruled by ancient dryads and organized crime. Will they manage to stay uninvolved in shady conspiracies? (No.)

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Last time, the party finally ran into the Ashtray butts they came to investigate- and it seemed like they were there to scrape a bunch of death essence/thanergy/black mana out of some big room-sized magic spell array, and box it up for unknown purposes. After scaring the everloving piss out of some of their noncombatants, the party moved to go take on Zeego, the group's terrifying tiger-man muscle. So it's time for an epic boss fight, right?

Well. Maybe.

After Ember and Scrap-King flee topside, the party sees Miriko and Curly Fry standing at the entrance to the west hallway. Miriko's holding up a shimmering barrier to protect the two of them and Oyobi, who's firing arrows down a dark hallway at an ongoing melee between Orluthe (as the ALPHA DOOMHOUND) and Zeego.

The party prepares to deal with this. Orluthe fails a strength check to throw Zeego off, Oliver prints a pneuma-sword, Miriko takes down the barrier, Looseleaf readies to fire off Soul Rend, and--

--Saelhen rolls double twenties on an attempt to throw a knife and stun Zeego. Yes, on the heels of Oliver rolling double twenties to investigate the spirit array powering the death field. What Oliver got out of that was a new skill for scribing spirit magic arrays. What Saelhen gets out of this is...

Saelhen didn't know she knew how to do that. Something in her just knew, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Ha ha! That's weird! Weird that she knows how to do that somehow!

Everyone is pretty alarmed by Saelhen paralyzing this guy with a single nerve strike- particularly Miriko, who begins to suspect that Saelhen is secretly affiliated with the Thorns, Thunderbrush's premier shadowy cabal of assassins.

Looseleaf runs to treat Orluthe, who was down to 6HP before the rest of the party even got to the fight. Zeego was going to be a pretty fucking scary boss fight! But now he's completely immobilized.

The party moves to cleanup step, and starts healing and restraining the fatally injured foes- plus interrogating them a bit. Zeego had a couple halfling goons with him (the players never asked, but the goons did have names- Hearth, Mason, and Roland deWisp), who mostly died. The party's able to heal them just fine, though- thanks to the field here creating necromantic tethers on people, they don't need a cleric to perform a resurrection. Just grab the hanging soul and use it to heal normally!

Unfortunately, none of them know that much about the purpose of the mission. They turn to interrogating Zeego, instead.

What follows is some discussion of the politics of Thunderbrush. Tonnera Mighty, notably, is a giant tree that towers over the entire city, which means she casts a shadow. This is bad for growing crops inside city limits, and because the jungle is an untamed nightmare of dangerous wildlife that must be constantly fended off by a fortified wall, inside city limits is really the only game in town for agriculture. It's hard to feed a populous city that way! Tonnera can shift her boughs a bit to give specific areas more light, but you need to be well-connected (like Oliver's family) to have the sunlight privileges necessary for agriculture.

What this means is that there's some social stratification to the basic means of feeding yourself, here. You either need to own a fishing boat and a place to store it (and risk your life fending off aquatic monsters), own land on the productive floodplain to the north (and get sunlight favors from Tonnera), or attempt to farm in the Stump-held territory to the south, outside Tonnera's shadow (and contend with inter-mafia turf wars). Growing cycles for crops on the Jewel are considerably shorter and more productive than those on Earth, which means it's possible to sustain a city's population on less farmland than residential land, but Thunderbrush is still a place running up against its carrying capacity.

There are also other concerns with Tonnera- a high-profile incident forty years ago where she apparently massacred a student protest, dubiously in self-defense, and an "accident" where a young girl belonging to a politically vocal family was killed in a scheduled building demolition.

Zeego believes that "fire will set us free", and that destroying Tonnera will solve all of their problems. There's a few issues with that, though- chief among them that there's a whole second city in her branches. It's not clear he's thought this through all the way.

Zeego also mentions that Red, the infernal teenager, is technically "in charge" of this mission, and might know more about how the black mana relates to the overarching goal- but also threatens the party that they'll be in serious trouble with "the boss" if they hurt his kid.

Vayen and Lydia went after Red! Uh-oh!

The party heads down that third hallway, resurrect another goon, and and find...

Looseleaf cheerfully explains the situation vis-a-vis killing all their friends and resurrecting them with necromancy, and offers to sit down and talk things out. It goes swell!

They let the kid out from Vayen's fucked-up tentacle trap, and try to have a civil conversation, but they're not having it. They do let on that they know something important about the plan that the rest of the butts don't know, but getting it out of them... it's not going well. There's a long conversation attempting to reason with Red and Zeego, but the fact of the matter is that they're a couple of angry anarchist teens who see the party as a bunch of bootlickers who can't be reasoned with.

Saelhen, realizing this, decides to take another approach. She signals to the team that she should be left alone to interrogate Red, and the party obliges. Looseleaf has an inkling of what Saelhen's planning, and plays it up.

Saelhen, finally alone with Red, starts signing in Thieves' Cant- pretending to drop the mask.

Her cover story is that she's been coerced into service. Her name is Sumiko Doe, just recently resurrected by a mysterious bug necromancer and her posse of miscellaneous scary elven freaks (plus Oliver and a werewolf). She brags about how easy it was to trick them into thinking she was on their side- which she had to do, because of how scary this evil necromancer is.

Red eats this up, excited to have a kindred spirit and an ally who can help them get out of this jam. They ask if she's "with the bird". Saelhen rolls a mixed failure trying to read into this, and just gets...

Yeah, Red is spilling. And recruiting! Wants "Sumiko" to join the Ashtray, now that her gang is dead. Even volunteers some useful information- apparently they're planning to replace Tonnera, take control of her through someone else. That's what the death essence is for.

Unfortunately, that's all they know as far as details- but their dad, Will-O, should know more, if Sumiko wants to escape and come with them back to base.

They rejoin the party, considering how best to engineer this "escape" back to Will-O to get information...

...when Lydia comes up the stairs nearby. And says there's a bomb.

A bomb?!

Yeah, a bomb. A really big bomb, downstairs. And everyone needs to run for their lives right now or they'll all explode and die.

Saelhen is skeptical, and rolls Something's Fishy.

Oh boy! Well that's a problem for next session, huh?

#twofaced jewel #tfj log

[itsbenedict]

Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 20

Dredge the Lost

A conwoman disguised as a noble and the delegation of university students studying her have arrived in the jungle city of Thunderbrush, ruled by ancient dryads and organized crime. Will they manage to stay uninvolved in shady conspiracies? (No.)

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Last time, the party made it through a moderately deadly wasteland of zombie parasite bugs and magical spirit deathification... into the corpse of Dead Jane, a mysterious ghost dryad mafia donna who's been killing everything within over a hundred meters of her for 102 years. Surely searching this place for criminals will be less dangerous!

They first find themselves in a hallway which has been pretty thoroughly stripped down. They aren't the first people to acquire magical protection and try to loot the place, and there's not much to find in this first floor. All that's left are things too broken to be worth stealing, like some smashed firefly lamps or furniture. A quick once-over doesn't reveal all that much, so they turn to Miriko for more information.

Not getting much from that, they check out the rooftop.

Rooftop's also pretty bare- looks like it was a garden, a hundred years ago before everything died and the place was looted.

Still nothing of value up here, so the party start getting serious. Earlier, they spotted a staircase in the floor going down, which was covered in a heavy iron grille with a padlock. Guessing that a place that was still locked after a hundred years wouldn't have been looted, they give it a shot- Saelhen popping the lock, and the party's physical fighters straining to lift the heavy and rusted grille.

On their way down, they hear a CLUNK from upstairs.

They go up to investigate, but don't see anything- the grille's still open, and they're not trapped or anything. They suspect they might be being followed, but they proceed back downstairs anyway. And at the same point on the stairs... the CLUNK again.

This time, Saelhen goes up to investigate alone, hoping to stealthily catch their pursuer off-guard. She again finds nothing... until Orluthe takes a couple steps back down the stairs, and she nearly gets pushed over by some large invisible rectangular floating object.

A little investigation later, involving a splash of ink from an inkwell and some risky climbing, they discover... hey, this is their garden box! The one they got from that vampire gardener, all the way 24 sessions ago. Apparently the way the "shrinking" works is that the "shrunken" box is an illusory projection, linked to the real box which normally floats in the air above, invisibly, just out of sight. (Since... spatiomancy no longer exists, and I needed to justify the existence of a shrinking garden box.) Mystery solved, they proceed into the basement level, leaving the box to clunk against the stairwell invisibly in a futile effort to follow behind.

Through a closed door, they find themselves in an armory, well-stocked with all sorts of conventional weapons. Anything made with wood is dried out and brittle, and anything made of metal is rusted, but it's all intact- as are, apparently, some corpses!

Looseleaf botches the roll to scan them with spirit magic, so Saelhen attempts a more manual autopsy by cutting them open. And she finds that... these corpses are infested with revenant bugs, but those bugs died somehow, leaving the bodies mostly untouched except on the inside. Gross!

After Oliver takes a pneuma blueprint of one of the armory's shields, they proceed deeper via a secret passage Oliver finds hidden under a rack of axes.

Inside is... a secret treasure room! Full of boxes of gold! Each box of gold has a label a name attached, each with the surname "Doe", followed by an amount and a brief description of the source. Some just say "won", others mention names of victims or descriptions of grifts. Each is signed off underneath by the same "Curly Fry Doe".

The party divvies up the old blood money, collectively 2400 gold. Not a bad haul!

They leave the secret room and head into what seems to be an old meeting room, with filing cabinets and a table covered in maps. There's a conure avian slumped over the table, differentiated from the other corpses by a weird distortion effect surrounding her.

Saelhen pops the file cabinets, and goes through some of these ancient documents, protected from rot by the death field, and finds a bunch of records on all the inhabitants of Jane's corpse. Names to put to the dead faces!

Looseleaf inspects the maps, which seem to describe a number of contradictory battle plans- some sort of big attack was being planned when everyone died, but it doesn't seem like they could agree on a target. She consults Miriko about them, trying to see what she can glean about who the Does- Jane's gang- were in conflict with.

The result is... the field seems very weak, being almost out of mana. It's projecting just enough of a field to protect her corpse from revenant bugs, leaving it nearly pristine- only barely different from an alive person.

All the other corpses are full of dead revenant bugs, and are of little interest, so Saelhen goes ahead and looks up this avian woman in the personnel records- a fairly new member with an exemplary combat assessment, fast-tracked to the Antler Division. One Lydia Glye, with a rough sketch matching the corpse.

Oh, sure! Why not do that last thing? They've recently learned some necromancy, after all! They carefully apply their knowledge and reel in whatever's on the other end of that tether- until it comes into contact with the body, which tries to eject it immediately. Luckily, they're holding tight enough to keep the cord from snapping- and they try again, after healing the body with Orluthe's divine magic. This time...

Lydia Glye freaks out, because from her perspective she was having a normal conversation with her gang and then suddenly everyone in the room was dead except for a bunch of strangers who appeared out of nowhere. They attempt to speedrun the exposition, which kind of overwhelms and confuses her for a bit- but she believes them, once she tries knocking on the wall and finds her boss, the dryad, isn't responding. Doesn't stop her from holding a knife up at them with practiced precision- she's ready to kill anyone at any moment if she decides she doesn't like what they're saying.

Saelhen rolls Something's Fishy to try to get a read on her motives, crits, and gets the sense that... she's not lying about being confused by all this, or being alarmed that everyone's dead... but she's also hiding something. She's worried they'll notice she's faking... something, but Saelhen has no idea what, even on a crit. She's worried this whole setup might be a trap to out her.

Lydia notices one of the nearby corpses has been cut open, and the party has to explain the whole revenant bugs situation- and Lydia, not quite trusting them, performs some sort of field autopsy on her own, to verify. Which... is not something normal that mafia thugs do! She's got some sort of medical knowledge she's not explaining.

Lydia claims she doesn't know anything about that necromantic tether on her, which Saelhen is pretty sure is true- but she does know that all of Jane's mages were busy working on some sort of secret project called the "cervix" deeper down, which she managed to learn about by tricking them into being a little more loose-lipped. It seems like she'd been doing some snooping on her own gang, prior to dying. Hm...

Also she doesn't like puns.

Lydia: "I'm holding a knife," she repeats. "I'm going to keep holding a knife." "It would be really dumb to murder someone over this." "So I shouldn't do it." Looseleaf: [I have come up with several ovary-themed puns that I refuse to make.]

Introductions are made all around once Lydia calms down, and she gives them a fake name- Erin Doe- which Saelhen immediately recognizes because she already read the dossier. (Oyobi also gives a fake name, which translates to "crotch fart", because she thinks that's funny.) Still, they agree to work together to try to find the cause of the death curse and put a stop to it. It takes some convincing to get her to let Looseleaf touch her to heal her, though.

They then proceed deeper, and find a sealed records room, which Lydia kicks down the door to. Inside, they find a corpse that Saelhen is able to identify as Curly Fry Doe, the quartermaster who originally wrote those dossier files. Her body is also intact, since the bugs couldn't get at it... and she also has the necromantic tether attached, which means the party can go ahead and pull her soul back into her body.

There's a crit 1 on the necromancy roll. At the last moment, the tether snaps- and they only have a moment to do something before the soul on the other end falls out of reach.

Looseleaf spends Luck on this last hail mary- and rolls a full success, allowing her to precisely euthanize the rat, ride its death-ejection, grab what's left of the tether, and bungee-jump into the Thanatic Sea after Curly Fry's soul.

Looseleaf returns triumphantly, with Curly Fry in tow.

With another poor innocent mafia henchman rescued, the session closes. Next time: the party finally runs into those suspicious Ashtray people they actually came in here to find!

#tfj log #twofaced jewel

[itsbenedict]

Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 19

Let's Get Zombies Out Of The Way

A conwoman disguised as a noble and the delegation of university students studying her have arrived in the jungle city of Thunderbrush, ruled by ancient dryads and organized crime. Will they manage to stay uninvolved in shady conspiracies? (No.)

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Last time, the party made some preparations for a trip to Dead Jane's territory, a circle of land centered on a long-since-incommunicado ghost dryad who emits a field of magical murder radiation that kills everything in like a hundred meter radius. Why are they doing this? They got a hot tip from an evil vampire who works for a gang of shady mafia information brokers that said some people from a conspiracy would be there. This is a good enough reason to go on a deadly adventure!

Anyway the magical murder radiation doesn't technically kill everything, and the things it doesn't kill might also kill them, so they've got a few issues getting inside.

First things first is getting there- though it's not as difficult as their prep makes it out to be. They've got to pass through three Stumps' territories- the Green Hats, the Oaken Casket, and the Gentle Chains- but for the most part, this isn't a real obstacle. This wooded area is still part of the city, with a lot of these trees having buildings built into or on top of them, and the Stumps really only care about defending their territory from rival gangs. Civilians like the party are mostly ignored, except by the various oversized spiders and other unpleasant jungle fauna that occupy these woods. There's a risk of getting jumped, but the party's stealth more than suffices to cover the distance.

After securing a safe route, the stealthy and invisible members of the party call in their backup- mainly Orluthe and his clanky armor and heavy backpack. While they wait, Saelhen proffers AMAZING DEALS.

Saelhen happens to have right here... a jar of honey! A jar of honey containing a weird prickly vine (weird, where'd she get that from? hasn't come up before...) and a good deal of extremely deadly neurotoxin pilfered from some of the evil stuff that bit her in her bracer dimension and extracted by Looseleaf.

The deer moves with an unnatural gait- its legs don't move in sync with each other. It's like it's playing QWOP with its own body. It's pretty horrific, but not as horrific as the bevy of deer puns that happen during this brief combat encounter:

Saelhen: [I suppose it's time to get to the hart of the matter.] [Though I suppose we won't need to rack our brains for this encounter.] Oliver: [You could also stop with the puns, doe.] Saelhen: [Oyobi, I'm happy to give you free rein here, dear.] Oyobi: [Don't worry- I can... h'antler.] [Uh, him.] Saelhen: [Boo.] [Hiss.] [Pathetic.] [I no longer trust you to do incredible violence.] Oliver: [You're the one who didn't want to part with the poison without making a buck first.]

As they're dealing with this thing, Miriko shows up (she wasn't initially with the group) and helpfully informs them that this is a revenant.

Revenants are the victims of revenant bugs- colonies of tiny flat bugs that slip beneath the tissues of corpses and use them to try and kill more living things to lay offspring in and infest. They use silk strands and incredible teamwork to animate their hosts, acting as a sort of auxiliary musculoskeletal system! Nature is amazing!

Saelhen decapitates the thing with knives, which makes a zombie deer a whole lot less threatening.

With that out of the way, it's time to actually enter the zone- and as soon as Looseleaf takes her first step inside, she feels like she's dying. She can't point to specific damage being done- she just feels sick. She's queasy and her head hurts and it feels like she hasn't eaten in days.

On using her spirit magic... she's able to determine that what's happening is that her spirit has been turned into a corpse, and her body is just taking a while to catch up. There's a spiritual force being exerted on it, just like her own magic.

She's able to manually make repairs to her spirit, since the actual difference, physically, between being alive and being a corpse... not that big. The cells of her body are being screwed with just enough to make them nonfunctional, and she can put them back easily enough.

But having to constantly re-heal herself and all her teammates in this place would be a giant pain in the ass- so she tries employing her own spiritual force to push back against this effect and stop it from affecting her in the first place.

She rolls a crit fail versus the effect's crit success.

The force of it doesn't seem to be pushing as quickly as Looseleaf can, but she can't just completely repel it- she has to let it do its thing and correct the damage as it occurs. What this means is... she has to constantly heal everyone, and nobody can stray too far from Looseleaf (or Orluthe, who has divine healing available), or else they'll just run out of HP. Ouch.

A side effect of this, though, is that Looseleaf and Saelhen get to make a sort of knowledge check about another tree that might know spirit magic:

Hm! Dryads can do that, huh? That's! Concerning!

This has some pretty grim implications for how much they can trust Evelyn, one of the few ghost dryads who isn't running a crime empire- but they've got a job to do here. They've reached Dead Jane proper- and there's a bunch more revenants to contend with.

It's time for combat! We've got two revenant panthers, three revenant halflings, and a GIANT revenant spider perched up on the staircase that's been carved into one of Dead Jane's roots.

Saelhen opens by throwing knives and slicing off a revenant panther's dessicated legs, immobilizing the nearest one and functionally taking it out. Oliver pursues the same general idea, dumping a bunch of pneumantic goo on the other panther to keep it from moving temporarily (until the goo evaporates into pneuma, anyway). Big cats are definitely more dangerous than humans as zombies, right? Take them out first and don't give them a chance to attack! And don't provoke that giant spid-

Oyobi has other ideas, because she loves nothing more than Leeroy Jenkinsing at the biggest baddest monster available. She splits from the group and charges the thing to slash at its face.

Miriko uses Mirage Coordinator, which basically just means watching the battlefield and granting teammates free dodge attempts. Orluthe chops at the nearest human, and cleaves it from its neck to its waist... which doesn't kill it, because those were not the parts necessary for locomotion. It's about to counterattack... but then Vayen does something unexpected: Helping At All. He fries it with lightning.

On the enemy turn, the giant spider is about to punish Oyobi for her hubris, right?

ha ha ha no she rolls a crit success on dodge

The spider does have a second attack, though, albeit a lot less dangerous- it tramples her and pins her to the floor under its weight. Everyone takes damage from the death miasma, and then...

Well, Saelhen throws some knives, and Iska-via-Orluthe throws a divine fireball, and the spider is reduced to half health. Which... triggers a special ability!

Luckily, Oliver has the perfect solution to a swarm of tiny monster bugs: an AoE attack! His pneumantic pressure bombs make short work of the swarm of baby spiders, at the cost of dealing a little damage to Oyobi, too. He can't do that and keep up his stealth spell though, failing the roll to maintain it.

The party continues throwing damage at this spider while Oyobi tries to extricate herself, because this thing still won't fucking die aaaaaaa, but it's not enough to take it out.

not that oyobi doesn't KEEP MAKING EVERY SINGLE DODGE EVERY TIME SHE GETS ATTACKED THOUGH. the only way she's going to get hurt is if the party's least helpful party member does something about it!

The spider is finished off, and somehow Oyobi still hasn't lost all her hit points from that.

Oyobi shakily gets to her feet and limps over to Looseleaf, brushing a smoldering hair out of her eye. "Roomie," she says, "I'm invincible." Then she falls down.

The remaining halfling revenants didn't seem to aggro the party throughout all that- and the party's able to mop them up pretty effectively. Looting the corpses... they find unfamiliar antler tattoos on their necks, but the only actual loot is an ostentatious gold necklace with a picture of a cottage embossed on it. Oliver feels a vague tingle putting it on, which is scary, so he has Looseleaf scan it.

With a success... it turns out this thing was supposed to be a protective amulet of some kind, but it's apparently been damaged. Currently it's doing nothing but slowly leaking mana from its battery all over the wearer.

Oliver attempts to repair it... and fails the roll. But... there's a Luck mechanic in my new system, see. You can spend Luck before a roll for free to boost it by 10, or you can spend it after the roll to get the same boost but take a Karma, which lets me sabotage later rolls. He takes two to boost his repair attempt to a full success. So... now he has a magic amulet he can turn on to grant himself +1 Armor, which is a big deal when a baseline basic attack usually does 2. It's a little awkward, though, since it's not permeable to air and doesn't let you breathe- you have to activate it when you're expecting to get hit and hold your breath.

...Unfortunately, the amulet repels physical blows, and doesn't do jack shit against the magic death field, which is probably part of why it was found being worn by a shambling corpse. Whoops!

Still, they've made it to Dead Jane in one piece, more or less- next time, they'll be exploring the ruins of a 102-year-old mafia hideout in search of loot, magical lore, and criminal conspirators.

#tfj log #twofaced jewel

[itsbenedict]

Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 18

To Foil a Grave Heist

A conwoman disguised as a noble and the delegation of university students studying her have arrived in the jungle city of Thunderbrush, ruled by ancient dryads and organized crime. Will they manage to stay uninvolved in shady conspiracies? (No.)

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Last time, the party went to investigate the crime scene where Zzaiya's divine-energy-jamming orb thingy was stolen... but the investigation was inconclusive. And there are more pressing matters: a conspiracy is afoot between various ghost dryad mafia families, one of whom has been sent by the heads of the conspiracy to do... something, inside Dead Jane's territory.

Who's Dead Jane? Well, she's dead. Like, more dead than ghost dryads usually are. Like a lot more dead. Miriko will fill the party in on the details back at the boat.

Dead Jane used to be a ghost dryad like the rest... until one day, about a hundred years ago, she began emitting an instant-death kill field that killed everyone in her territory, including her entire gang and apparently her even though she was a ghost already.

Over time, the kill field has weakened, such that it's possible to venture inside briefly if you've got protection or a supply of magical healing on hand, but it's still a wasteland of unrotting ruins, populated by "revenant bugs" which form colonies and turn preserved corpses into zombies.

Will-O's gang, the Ashtray, has been sending people into Dead Jane's territory for reasons unknown to Miriko, apparently pursuant to some project that's made even this gaggle of belligerent teenagers call a truce with the other gangs. The same truce that involves sending slavers to attack the university. She doesn't know what they're doing down there, but the potential danger involved if they get their hands on whatever originally produced Jane's kill field... it can't be ignored.

It's a reasonable assumption- Miriko is assuming Will-O has access to a cleric who can provide some sort of divine protection against the effect.

Looseleaf asks a sensible question: how do we know that Dead Jane is actually dead?

Miriko doesn't have any maps of the interior, since the layout of a place where no one lives hasn't been a priority for her gang of information brokers- but she knows the epicenter of this effect is a couple dozen meters underground, and it's pretty typical for Stumps to have extensive underground root complexes. It's going to be a dungeon crawl.

Looseleaf assumes that the hardest part of this expedition will be crossing the gang-controlled territory between them and Dead Jane, but Miriko attempts to assuage these worries and steps on a bit of a landmine in the process.

"did you bring a lawful good kid to our secret crime war meeting??? what were you THINKING?!?"

Oliver isn't happy about the implications here, due to really hating the mafia, but Looseleaf assures him that Miriko isn't from one of the really bad ones, and while he presses X to doubt, he's willing to put that conversation aside for the moment while they have a common goal. But he and Looseleaf are definitely going to have a long conversation about this, later! Definitely! Nothing will get in the way of that!

The conversation turns to the nature of their opponent, here- who are the Ashtray, and what can they expect to be up against?

The party isn't too worried about the level of opposition they'll face, then- how dangerous could the most expendable people from an anarchist commune really be?

In putting together a team... well, there's no reason not to bring everyone. Orluthe, Oyobi, Oliver- even Vayen, creepily, offers his services, mysteriously changing his previously-stingy tune at some point. And the plan is to get moving as soon as possible- there's apparently a concert coming up during which the gangs are planning something, and they want this dealt with by then.

As Vayen opens up to helping with the mission, Oliver opts to push his luck- Vayen's very good at invisibility magic, and he'd like him to tutor him in it, to upgrade his skill. Vayen... is less interested in tutoring for free, and the best they can haggle him down to is 50 gold an hour, which is more than even a rich college student can casually throw around.

Vayen also floats the idea that Oliver's teachers should have taught him this stuff already- it's basic epistomancy- but that they must not trust their students with invisibility. Deliberately keeping them weak. It's a bit of a conspiracy theory, and Oliver (and the rest of the party, why not) rolls Read Into It to see if it's plausible, or if Vayen is just making shit up to troll them.

Hm. An ulterior motive for helping out with... a quest to stop a conspiracy whose immediate consequence is a truce that keeps the local gangs from pointless infighting? ...Naaah.

Anyway, back to specific tactics:

Looseleaf: "How many people can you keep invisibility up simultaneously on, Vayen?" Vayen: "...Without exhausting myself? One for each hand, for maybe an hour each before my mana shifted too much." "On a good day." "I'm better with myself. I know how I move." Saelhen: "...they're linked to your hands?" Vayen: "No. I need to maintain contact." Saelhen: "Ah. And we couldn't, for example, buy you something nice that exposes your shoulders or forearms, and 'hitch a ride', so to speak?" Vayen: "If I practiced channeling mana through my feet, perhaps I could raise it to four, for some sort of deranged invisible cheerleader pyramid formation." Oyobi: "I'm down for that!" Oyobi says. "I'll be on top!" Saelhen: "Someone write the cheerleader thing down." Oliver: "Wondering if I could just... use conduits." Vayen sighs. "Why is everyone stupid." Looseleaf: "It's entertaining!" Saelhen lifts a hand to conceal her smile. "My! Such honesty!" "Would you mind terribly if I said it was rather refreshing?"

As they discuss invisibility logistics, Looseleaf mentions to Vayen that she can use her spirit magic to stabilize his mana as he casts. Which he tells her is impossible, because you can't manipulate someone else's mana, period.

Except it's clearly not impossible, because that's apparently how Evelyn's magic lifeforce-draining membership tattoos work. Does that mean... she can use spirit magic, too?

On learning about this, Vayen excuses himself for unknown reasons, and naturally Saelhen turns invisible and begins stalking him.

Unfortunately, it seems like he's not speaking to anyone- just writing something, behind a closed door. She was quick enough to wedge an invisible knife in and keep it from closing, so she's able to peep...

After he finishes, he leaves the compartment, and Saelhen rolls a 49 to dodge some yo-yo tricks he subsequently does to ensure the coast is clear of invisible pursuers that he fucking knows are almost certainly on this boat because he's been adventuring with Saelhen for like forty sessions. False confidence achieved, he... holds his black paper up to the sky, pointing it at the moon, and wiggles it around at different angles. Weird!

Meanwhile, Oliver and Looseleaf are practicing this mana-stabilization technique Looseleaf proposed. They get some new moves out of it, which mainly amount to getting bigger number on magic as long as they're in physical contact and combo-casting. Notably, they can pool their Necromancy skill together this way, and get a large bonus on rolls for manipulating death essence. Probably going to come in handy when venturing into a necromantic death zone!

Next time: the dungeon crawl begins! I bet nothing will go wrong in the necromantic death zone!

#tfj log #twofaced jewel #17 was earlier today if you missed it

[itsbenedict]

Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 17

A Locked-Room Mystery

A conwoman disguised as a noble and the delegation of university students studying her have arrived in the jungle city of Thunderbrush, ruled by ancient dryads and organized crime. Will they manage to stay uninvolved in shady conspiracies? (No.)

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Last time, the party had just returned from a harrowing mafia-fighting vampire-surgerying misadventure in Welcoming Trails, and received intel that a slaver gang is planning to attack the university in a matter of days. This is a problem!

But before they can deal with the problem... they've got an urgent call from Zzaiya, the waspfolk girl who's been helping with their research into Saelhen's magic bracer. Apparently, one of the divine artifacts they used while studying the bracer has gone missing- stolen by some sort of master thief! They've got to get to the bottom of this theft!

The first thing to check, when something goes missing, is to determine whether it was actually stolen, not just lost or misplaced- but there's ample evidence of that.

This was left on the tripod device in the corner where the divine artifact- an "isolation sphere", used to disable other divine artifacts and otherwise jam divine power- had been left. So it definitely seems like the place was broken into.

Oddly, the note was accompanied by Zzaiya's stolen keys, which is a weirdly considerate gesture for a thief with a grudge. Looseleaf opts to inspect this note with her spirit magic, picking up on emotional impressions. With a crit success, she gets...

So that's suggestive: the culprit had to have done this the morning of the Big Game- sometime after Zzaiya left with Looseleaf to head to the stadium, and before the game itself started. That might help narrow it down!

With that, the party takes a look at the actual crime scene, pictured up top. And, uh, here again, too, why not:

To recap the structure: the "lab" is a corner of the Artificing department workshop floor, sectioned off by six formerly-rolling wooden partitions that've been nailed into the floor by iron spikes. A canvas "roof" is anchored to the corner, and stapled to the top of these wooden partitions. It's not especially difficult to break into via the roof by undoing the staples, but it doesn't appear that this has happened.

Zzaiya explains her security measures:

Ball bearings scattered in front of the door, an idea Saelhen suggested, to determine whether the culprit used the door

A magic one-way barrier surrounding her desk, which lets things in but not out, to trap the culprit

Custom-scented flypaper strips hung up from the ceiling, to maybe pick up hair samples and mark the culprit

Translucent white gauze wrapped around all the artifact storage shelves to...

Saelhen pokes the gauze, and there's a bright flash- apparently this is photogauze, an enchanted film which automatically takes a flash photo of whatever comes in contact with it once it's been activated. The idea was to capture a photograph of the culprit as they attempted to break into the artifact storage shelves- but the only photograph it seems to have taken was one of a somewhat started white rat- likely the same rat currently trapped inside the blue bubble.

None of these security measures seem to have been especially efficacious. The barrier and the gauze only caught a rat, the flypaper strips don't seem to have been touched, and the ball bearings- though they reveal that the door was used- don't tell them much about the culprit. The only thing taken was the sphere from the corner, which wasn't protected by gauze.

The party's first suspicion is that the small white rat is the culprit, somehow- controlled by magic, or a Peter Pettigrew-type shapeshifting disguise. Their first move is to get Zzaiya to lower the barrier, and then snatch the rat before it can escape.

It never stood a chance. Saelhen nabs it, and Looseleaf spirit-reads it. As it happens... this is one of their rats. The ones from their box of lab rats for necromancy research, which they got from the Zoology department. A couple had gone missing- and now they know where this one ended up.

Apart from its origin, though, there's no hint of magic applied to the rat. If it weren't for having been suspiciously stolen from the party, it could well be written off as ordinary vermin caught up in a security system.

Looseleaf then opts to scan the partition walls with her spirit magic, to determine if they were compromised somehow. Sure, the culprit clearly used the door- but why not check to be sure?

She discovers something odds on the partition nearest the left wall. While most of them are ordinary wood, this one seems to have a large patch of... some sort of spongy material in the center, like it's rotted away. And this material seems to have been concealed, by some sort of gooey brown paint. The material seems... somehow familiar, but Looseleaf with a 9 on the dice can't place it.

Looseleaf and Oliver then check the ceiling, after Oliver takes a pneumantic scan of the spongy stuff for reference. The "ceiling" seems to have been pulled away from the wall a bit, its staples having been pulled out and the canvas sagging somewhat, like something heavy was on top of it earlier.

-

That's about all the evidence they're going to find- so they move on to discussing possible culprits.

The obvious first candidate is Vayen, who- around the time Zzaiya's keys were stolen- had turned invisible and snuck into the lab to eavesdrop on her and Looseleaf. (To little avail, since they'd conducted their conversation via telepathy.) But it seems clear he didn't steal the keys- he was in the room when they used their Locate Object wand, and the keys were more than 1000 feet away at the time. And since the keys were stolen, the lab couldn't be locked, so anyone could've used the door. He's suspicious as always, but nothing directly incriminates him.

Privately, Looseleaf asks Zzaiya if any of her colleagues in the Project might've done this. Zzaiya doesn't think so- there's a limited number of them who even know of her lab here, and none of them would've needed to steal the sphere. She'd have just let them use it!

They then turn to Evelyn- who technically has a part of her body in this room at all times. The large sink/basin on the right side of the room is made of her! Evelyn, though, wasn't watching the room last night- something would've needed to happen to draw her attention, like someone calling her name. She's not a night watchman!

And she also has no idea what the spongy stuff is.

The next thing to look into is... the source of the rat. It seems clear that the rat was involved in the culprit's scheme somehow, and the rat was stolen from the party's dorm room. There's a limited number of people who even have access to that- the party, Miriko, Oliver, and Evelyn herself. Evelyn, they're fairly confident is uninvolved, just from good Speech rolls when questioning her.

While it doesn't occur during this session, it happens in the next one: the party interrogates its NPC allies. Vayen, Orluthe, Oyobi, and Miriko... by a combination of high Speech rolls and Looseleaf's spirit magic, they establish confidently that none of them are lying when they say they didn't steal any of the party's rats.

So.

Players, and those reading along with the recaps: the culprit of this crime can be determined from the information available. At time of writing, the party has not solved this theft. Have you?

#tfj log #twofaced jewel #Are You Smarter Than A Moth Grader?

[itsbenedict]

Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 16

People Learning At School (normal)

A conwoman disguised as a noble and the delegation of university students studying her have arrived in the jungle city of Thunderbrush, ruled by ancient dryads and organized crime. Will they manage to stay uninvolved in shady conspiracies? (No.)

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Last time, after wrapping up a magic surgery, the players took a little time to have some long-overdue conversations with each other and acquired some information on the ghost dryad mafia conspiracy. After a good night's sleep troubled-by-scorpion-nightmares night's sleep, the party (sans Saelhen, still sleeping off a tiring day and some scorpion nightmares because Farn couldn't make it that day) decides to get started on Doing Something about the ghost dryad mafia conspiracy.

The next day, Oliver heads back to his dorm room at Thunderbrush Metropolitan University to warn the university's ghost dryad, Evelyn, about the impending planned attack on the school Miriko uncovered.

Saves effort projecting a whole form!

Oliver decides to elide the source of his information, here, and subtly remixes the truth. Rather than hearing about this planned attack from Miriko's information-gathering, he claims that the party overheard the Sounds they encountered talking about the attack.

Evelyn has a few suspicions, but not that Oliver is lying to her. Rather... she's not sure why the Sounds would attack Looseleaf and Saelhen. They don't make a habit of attacking outsiders, which indicates that those two might be caught up in sinister mafia business that they're lying to Oliver about.

Oliver suggests they evacuate the school, in preparation for the attack, but Evelyn disagrees- she thinks the school is the safest place for them. It's already got a fence, and she can mobilize Long-Arms and the Twelve Black Saint Councillor-Generals.

Look, Long-Arms is a notorious drama queen and Evelyn is enough of a drama-lady-in-waiting to indulge his antics. It wouldn't be an anime if there weren't an implausibly powerful sinister student council!

...What's that, you say? It's not an anime? Okay. Point.

Oliver is once again assigned to tail the party, and figure out why they might be being targeted by the Sounds. Surely they're sheltering some sort of sinister secrets! Suspicious, certainly!

Before getting back to that, though, Oliver takes a brief detour to visit his friend Goldie Lightharvest and warn her about the impending attack. You might remember Goldie as the girl in charge of the Giant Crystal Scorpion research project, who was very upset with the party for inexplicably disappearing the subject of her thesis and refusing to explain. Oliver has to head down to the Zoology department to locate her.

On the way in, Oliver has to contend with a security measure- a sort of metal-detector apparatus, which- rather than detecting metal- detects pneuma, the intangible vapor that pneumancers like Oliver use to summon objects with magic. Not keen on checking his magic at the door, Oliver instead attempts to smuggle in a mass of pneuma by transmuting it into a dense solid cube.

Duly warned, Oliver heads down and encounters the head of Zoology, Dr. Ondere Groove- who doesn't do much besides direct him to where Goldie is cleaning up the shattered specimen tank. She complains a bit about her circumstances.

He warns her about the impending attack, but she's kind of at a loss for what to do. Not like she has a giant crystal attack scorpion she could use to defend the school or anything. He just exhorts her to stay safe, and that's that.

...Except she does invite him to a concert being put on on Saturday, two days from now. Apparently "Radiance", a super popular globe-touring musical act, is supposed to be putting on a "surprise" concert. And the venue... is the Oaken Casket, a Stump gang whose thing is trafficking booze and illicit substances. They throw huge parties with live music twice a month which are often frequented by the campus's party animals and music enthusiasts.

And they're one of the groups named by Miriko as being in on the same conspiracy intended to target the students. Hm.

Meanwhile... Looseleaf's studying up with that fun book she got from the library!

She pokes at it a bit with her spirit magic, trying to figure out what its deal is.

Looseleaf's roll to perform the necromancy exercises from the book goes poorly- she doesn't really have a strong foundation in the Epistomancy necessary to understand the rune diagrams, so all she can really accomplish is push around the goo a bit.

She dials Oliver on the telepathy she has, and invites him to come study necromancy! But Oliver's a little busy at the moment- he's gone to the Artificing department to get his hands on some blast shields. Artificing's penchant for explosive mad science means they've got plenty on hand, and he has a spell to scan and download blueprints- so why not have those on demand?

Oh, and a sword! Why not print a sword, too? Always good to have a sword.

Looseleaf heads over to Artificing to meet Oliver, and finds him at a workbench with a sword for some reason. It's not going well- but then he sees Oyobi's sword, which is cooler and better, and tries scribing a blueprint for that. Oyobi is slightly concerned about her sword potentially diminishing in coolness due to Nerd Interference, but her fears prove ungrounded after a good roll.

Looseleaf takes Oliver back to the yacht, the Two-Faced Jewel, to experiment with doing necromancy on the death essence they collected from Cabana Jim's.

Orluthe and Vayen are also there, chatting about something on the deck. Looseleaf notifies them about the crazy recent happenings- and the impending ghost dryad gang war situation. Vayen, uncharacteristically, is excited about what is being discussed by the party!

He is not happy about the constant gang infighting coming to a halt so everyone can work together towards a common goal, for some reason. He thinks that's terrible! And offers his help unraveling this diabolical conspiracy! Greaaaat! Fantastic! Thanks, Vayen!

Anyway, Oliver... also rolls like crap trying to get the hang of necromancy. He has the epistomantic background to understand the runes, but his control of his mana flow is a lot shakier compared to Looseleaf, who can basically cheat by using spirit magic to keep her own mana stable. Manipulating this stuff is no easy feat for either of them- but maybe working together, they can combine their strengths and master-

It's the isolation sphere!

The what?

The divine artifact of Lepichon that generates a jamming field that blocks other divine energy from reaching divine artifacts! The one she basically used as a lab instrument in magic item diagnostics! After finding her keys missing, she'd set up her lab with a bunch of booby traps to catch a potential thief, but somehow they evaded them all and stole the one artifact she didn't think to specially protect!

Next time: the party is going to INVESTIGATE THE SCENE OF A CRIME! Always exciting!

#tfj log #twofaced jewel

[itsbenedict]

Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 15

Never Call It Piss Magic Again

A conwoman disguised as a noble and the delegation of university students studying her have arrived in the jungle city of Thunderbrush, ruled by ancient dryads and organized crime. Will they manage to stay uninvolved in shady conspiracies? (No.)

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Last time, the players extricated themselves from an awkward situation with some ghost dryad mafia protection racketeers, and hurried off to the local brothel to go cure a vampire of her vampirosity. They did a bang-up job of it, despite some close calls- and now it's time for them to decompress after a job well-done.

Also grapple with the nightmarish implications of Saelhen's powers. And drive Looseleaf to the brink of a complete mental breakdown vis-a-vis backstory trauma. And receive extremely troubling news about the Stump conspiracy's agenda. And have nightmares.

So, first order of business: the party needs to flirt with some NPCs. Saelhen manages to apologize for all the craziness that's been going on during this sports-watching date... while also being the smoothest operator in the world somehow. This prompts...

After some further ruthless ladykilling, Zzaiya flees the scene in a fit of embarrassment, unable to process the idea of someone being romantically interested in her. Allegedly, her house is nearby.

Meanwhile, Oliver is trying to put the moves on the recently-shirtless Sam Sweethoney...

...but runs into a brick wall of total obliviousness. Sam Sweethoney is seemingly incapable of realizing that anyone is ever being serious about anything, and takes incoming flirtation as a hilarious joke that he's in on.

While Oliver is striking out with the world's densest shirtless halfling tattoo artist, Looseleaf and Saelhen try to have a serious conversation about... all that shit that just happened.

The thing is... Saelhen's invested a great deal of emotional attachment into this thing that lets her turn invisible- for reasons that she'd prefer not be discussed in mixed company.

While they're in the middle of discussing how dangerous their personal magic powers are, and whether it's ethically permissible to use them at all... Oliver shows up, very curious about Looseleaf's magic powers.

Looseleaf is set on edge by this question.

Oliver is surprised about the apparent deadliness of teaching spirit magic- and has a billion follow-up questions, none of which please Looseleaf to hear.

Oliver keeps pressing... and Looseleaf explodes.

Looseleaf: "I don't fucking know, okay? I'm not a specialist in this! I was supposed to be an anthropologist before everything happened and now I am a mage wielding a near-extinct line of magic because nobody else can do it and so I have to figure out how to do all the things that THEY were supposed to be responsible for doing!" "I don't know! I'm relearning this from scratch! You want answers but I don't have any!" "Nobody has answers anymore!" By the end of it Looseleaf's speech is seeming… weirdly discongruous and jilted, each syllable coming out jerky and staccato. "You know what, you want it so badly, maybe you can actually learn and then I can go do other things with my worthless life-" Oliver Highhollow-Selby: Oliver is stepping backwards and looking scared/worried/horrified as Looseleaf is basically suddenly unraveling. Saelhen du Fishercrown: "Okay, well, it appears that question time might be over, pleasure to meet you, Mr. Highhollow, I think we are going to get something in your stomach, dear heart, and perhaps a nice bath and — save everything else for later, yes? Sounds good?"

Oliver tries to apologize and calm her down, but it doesn't go well.

Saelhen diplomatically defuses the situation, drawing attention to her own role in today's debacle to reduce tensions. Looseleaf apologizes to Oliver for her outburst, an olive branch is proffered... and then Looseleaf remembers she needs to change the subject.

Right! That situation! Looseleaf still doesn't divulge how she knows this, but Oliver's on the back foot and kind of has to trust her about this. He intends to report in to Evelyn at his nearest opportunity.

Still- it's getting late, and they happen to be at a place that is technically an inn (and brothel and live music venue and bar and grill and lesser temple of Karou), and the Sweethoneys are happy to put the party up for the night. But first... dinner! Vampire surgery is hungry work.

At the bar, they meet Dall, who's beyond relieved that her girlfriend is alive despite the odds. She treats them to drinks, and- after Looseleaf invoices her to the tune of two hundred gold- begins explaining the Iron Section incident that led to this whole vampire issue.

The Iron Section, Dall explains, was a mining division. Specifically the iron mining division, as the name implies. Dall tells you, with increasingly slurred speech, about the Iron Section incident. They had a mineshaft that was going deeper than usual- the kind of dig that risks unearthing monsters. As a result, the mineshaft was completely sealed off, and the workforce quarantined to the dig site for the duration of the expedition- until the entire shaft was cleared out and warded and declared safe. This isn't that unusual for dwarven mining companies- it's akin to going out on a lobster boat for a while, you get paid handsomely for the long and arduous multi-day work shift. The dig site was sealed off to ensure no one would come or go, besides the iron carts- and because of this, there wasn't much oversight, besides the foreman in charge and his subordinate management. Which means when the foreman somehow became a vampire- and was the first to become a vampire- there was no one above him to countermand his orders. Gelly had explained to her- the foreman cared about his workers, he didn't want them to die, so he didn't feed on them to the point of exsanguination- but when a vampire feeds on you without killing you, you get thralls. And he wasn't as heartless as Cabana Jim- when his thralls hungered, he didn't starve them half to death to keep them compliant. He fed them. And so it proceeded until the entire Iron Section was vampirized- and then they were out of blood. And so they got increasingly hungry and desperate and left the quarantine mine, in a sudden attack on the surface. This got the attention of the Ecumene of Harmony, led by bishop Celeste Yonder. The ecumene led a cleanup crew and killed them all.

Yeesh.

The party asks a few questions about the monster issue- which Dall isn't super knowledgeable about. Apparently if you dig deep enough, monsters can just spawn in the depths, in any sufficiently large hollow space deep underground. There's ways to block this from happening, but Dall can't quite remember what kind of magic is involved.

Afterwards, they hit the hay. Looseleaf, through a soul link, detects that Oyobi is coincidentally also in this establishment, upstairs in a private room with someone. Weird.

Looseleaf also takes some time to contact Miriko Watchwood via telepathy. Apparently, Miriko has "disposed of" Jess Chainer- by which she means, locking her up in a cell underneath the ghost dryad Ana, to have her life force fed upon. Miriko's met back up with her employer, and everything seems hunky-dory for her... but Looseleaf detects a wrong note.

Like... shouldn't Miriko be mad at her boss? The one who knew she was enslaved at Cabana Jim's, and used that as an opportunity to extract information from rich tourists instead of, say, rescuing her?

Miriko denies this.

Looseleaf gets a crit roll on Something's Fishy.

Trauma aside, the party tucks in for a good night's sleep.

Looseleaf has a dream.

Looseleaf has this same dream for the next few nights- each time a bit less obscured and difficult to remember. There is a last time that she has this dream, later on- at which point it is fully revealed. She's yet to discuss it with anyone, though.

Saelhen, by contrast, has this same dream, revealed from the very first time- but she can't remember it when she jolts awake in panic.

:) :) :)

Next time. Looseleaf and Oliver go to school and have a nice time and learn some things! That's all! Don't worry!

#tfj log #twofaced jewel #i love it when my players write my horror for me

[itsbenedict]

Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 14

Spirit Center: Under the Moth

A conwoman disguised as a noble and the delegation of university students studying her have arrived in the jungle city of Thunderbrush, ruled by ancient dryads and organized crime. Will they manage to stay uninvolved in shady conspiracies? (No.)

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Last time, the party answered the request of Dall Odegir, whose girlfriend somehow ended up a vampire, and who desperately needs Looseleaf's help (as advertised in the newspaper!) to cure her. Unfortunately, their house call was interrupted by a visit from some ghost dryad mafia goons come to shake Dall down for extra protection money- and the ensuing confrontation got way out of hand when Saelhen accidentally summoned toothy hellmonsters.

With the hellmonsters subdued, though, they're still left in a pretty awkward situation- and still have a vampire to treat.

Oh, right. They convinced the goons that they belonged to a rival mafia and were enslaving people. That, uh... Looseleaf figures the best solution to that little nightmare is to just come clean.

“Actually, uh, we sort of, made that up,” Looseleaf says. “We thought you looked like the type who’d be scared if we said we had protection from one of the other gangs, because gods know this place doesn’t have actual cops or anything. And then that didn’t work so, uh, we went invisible and doubled-down on trying to scare you off. Sssssssorry, but, look, more importantly, which of you needs healing.” “I mean, if you think about it, all we actually did was drop an alchemical smokebomb and then hide and shout spooky things at you. We really thought that you would be a superstitious lot that would run away if we were sufficiently spooky at you!” “…That obviously didn’t work, though. So, um, backup plan, will you agree to, uh, not beat me up, if I heal you.” “I’m literally just a university student, gods.”

It takes a Luck point on some convincing to get them to believe her, and she has to profess ignorance about where the nightmare tooth-dogs came from, but she gets through, and starts providing healing to the injured.

(One of the "injured" is the stone guy they called Radish, who passed out despite sustaining no apparent injuries. She spirit-reads him, and discovers his biology is unusual- he's just a weird sinewy endoskeleton running through solid rock. He's not hurt- he just seems to be totally exhausted and out of energy, despite not doing anything particularly tiring. One of the goons expresses confusion- "we ain't been underground that long!")

With the rest of the injured treated, though, the problem is... the mafia guys are still keen on doing their shakedown. The presence of witnesses and bystanders makes them keen to forgive and forget the attempted deception, but they still want their Dall's money.

(They ominously imply that they need the money for some major operation they're planning- one that should depose Tonnera Mighty for good! Hm.)

Oliver attempts to intervene with some cutting words, throwing his weight around as the son of the Mighty's chief medical officer- but it turns out that's not actually that much weight and one of the scarier ones chases him out with an axe. The bystanders aren't much help either- these sorts of shakedowns are routine, and they actually encourage Dall to surrender, not wanting to piss off the ghost dryad who rules this part of town and make trouble for them.

Looseleaf has a tactic for getting rid of these guys for the time being- her healing, which she just did to a bunch of them including their leader, is temporary. She's using her technique where she uses a copy of her own flesh to quickly patch wounds in combat for temp HP- but the body rejects that kind of thing quickly, so she emphasizes that they need to get to a real cleric, fast.

(Looseleaf could totally just do a better job healing and fix them for real, but why would she tell them that?)

The goons reluctantly clear out, fearing for their lives for the time being, but will eventually return. In the meantime... Oliver dumps some pneumancy-generated slime on Wide-Smile, their leader, just to annoy him out of spite. Thanks to a 1 on the roll, this causes him to, uh, trip down the hole left by his bomb blast earlier, injuring him further. Which is... absolutely not the party's problem! Fuck 'im!

Shortly thereafter, the party's backup arrives, a bit too late to be useful. It's Miriko Watchwood, and...

...Jess Chainer, that product-pusher for the Gentle Chains who they encountered on first arriving in Thunderbrush. This is alarming- but Miriko claims to have her "under control", not-so-subtly implying that she's got her under vampiric domination. She was going to bring her back to the Watchwood to be "disposed of", but she got the distress call in the middle of taking care of that, so she's just got this mind-whammied slaver hanging around. Troubling.

Dall shooes all the bystanders out of her forge (one asks if she wants them to report the monsters to "the Downmores", whoever they are), and Saelhen gets to work disguising Gelly's vampiric traits so she can be smuggled out to a cleric's place. She asks what the penalty to the roll to disguise her would be.

Huh. Has she been using a lot of makeup lately? Weird. Oliver is able to supplement this with pneumantically-conjured concealer, though.

Looseleaf and Saelhen introduce Miriko to Oliver... sort of. It's very difficult to do this and explain where her information is coming from without mentioning that she's a vampire working for a ghost dryad mafia, which are things Oliver is not a fan of.

Miriko opts to give her report to Looseleaf privately, via telepathy. Apparently... Fallen, dryad of the Sounds (those guys they just chased off) is planning some major attack on Tonnera in the near future.

The other thing Miriko tells them about is that the Ashtray- one of the dryad gangs known to be involved in this conspiracy- is sending people to explore Dead Jane.

Dead Jane is a ghost dryad who, about a hundred years ago, died. It's not clear how, exactly, but her corpse began emitting some sort of murder-radiation that killed everything in a radius around her territory. The strength of the magical kill-field has waned over time- and now, apparently, the Ashtray- a bunch of anarchist punk kids, mainly- have been roped into doing dungeon-crawls into Dead Jane's magically radioactive corpse for some reason.

There's also more bad news:

Fair enough! Reasonable decision!

Miriko emphasizes that this conspiracy seems to be largely built on blackmail and manipulation, which annoys her because blackmail and manipulation are supposed to be her gang's thing. The various parts of the conspiracy may or may not know anything about why they're doing what their doing, or the conspiracy's true goals. Getting to the bottom of this is going to be tricky.

(Meanwhile, Saelhen asks Gelly to take a look at the scrapes she got on her neck from the hellmonsters. Is that a good idea?)

Saelhen is very lucky Gelly kept making her restraint rolls, is what I'll say. This could have very easily not been fun a fun and flirty joke scene, and been something more difficult.

Anyway- they need to move quickly. Gelly is close to the point of no return for healing, and it turns out Dall's plan to get blood from people to feed her and wean her off... backfired pretty bad. Blood is what accelerates the transformation, and things are almost unrecoverable. They're going to need an experienced cleric- and Orluthe isn't going to suffice. Channeling Iska in combat is a very different thing from doing magic surgery.

Luckily, Oliver has a contact he can use, here! He knows a cleric of Karou, god of Joy, who's willing to work discreetly. The friend's mom's a cleric, too, and runs a place called Underbush Experiences, a bar slash music venue slash hotel slash brothel slash temple where discretion is necessary to stay in business.

They make their way across town to the place, keeping Gelly disguised and out of sight when possible. Eventually, they arrive, and meet Sam Sweethoney, Oliver's favorite tattoo artist.

(If you want to get a permanent tattoo done, you gotta have it done by a cleric, so that a god can deliberately make one that's magically very difficult for other gods to heal away.)

Sam refers the party to his mom, Saralee Sweethoney, just inside. They enter, and she is... not decent. She's doing some sort of naked meditation in a fountain under a huge mural of Karou, and doesn't seem fazed at all by Oliver walking in with a bunch of strangers.

Looseleaf explains their predicament to Saralee, and- somewhat alarmed- she begins channeling Karou to handle the situation.

Karou, upon seeing Looseleaf... has a sort of strange reaction. His projected face flickers and wavers, and he mutters "That's what it is..." to himself.

This illustrates... a couple salient things about gods. Firstly... when being channeled, they don't remember every single piece of knowledge that belongs to the god as a whole- just what their host knows, plus a little package of essential information and divine magic skill.

But... he's been consistently recognizing the party on sight, when they've met him, which is very strange. A god going in to be channeled has a very limited amount of essential information they can bring with them- and for some reason, who Looseleaf and Saelhen are is a piece of information he's opted to include every time someone here channels him, just in case.

That's got implications.

But he's happy to help with the vampirism thing, which previously had been pretty friggin' difficult. Even gods can't reliably cure it! Having some help would be great.

(Meanwhile... in Thieves' Cant, in this setting a sign language, Saelhen covertly signs something to Karou.)

Y'know, I forget if that went anywhere! Farn, you should let me know what you were thinking with that.

It's surgery time! The party helps get Gelly strapped down, which has both her and Dall looking kind of nervous. This is a novel and extremely risky medical treatment, and Gelly could easily die!

That's right- it's time for the SURGERY SYSTEM!

The way this works is... Looseleaf, with the aid and advice of her friends, has to figure out- from scratch- how to cleanse a near-complete vampiric infection, by making Spirit rolls to get information and make changes. With Karou supporting this and performing general healing, they have a certain amount of insurance against making mistakes and endangering Gelly's life- specifically, they had an unknown number (secretly, six, and more secretly, seven) of fuckups in the tank before Gelly bit it.

The consequence of this bad roll is... I present an accurate picture of what's going on, and two possible approaches, one of which is productive and one of which is guaranteed to be disastrous. It's up to them to figure out which is which by reasoning it out.

The problem is...

There's a resource the party declines to tap, here- the goblin sitting outside is getting a tattoo indicating membership in the Thorns, a dryad gang of incredibly elite assassins. Since gods handle most healing, anatomy is a skill limited mainly to people trying to break someone's anatomy effectively, and he could have useful expertise. They don't take the risk of making that contact, though- it could be the guy is a fraud getting a tattoo to intimidate people.

Should've gone with your gut, Looseleaf!

She expunges the vampiric parasite from Gelly's blood, leaving... not all that much blood left, really. But they have Karou healing, so her blood supply recharges pretty quickly! They clean out her infected blood, replace it with fresh blood, and... now her vampire-infected circulatory system is full of fresh blood.

Saelhen twigs to the problem immediately:

Strike 1/6.

They consider completely stopping her heart and killing bloodflow to the body, but decide this would be near-immediately fatal to the patient. Rather than do anything drastic to starve the parasite of blood, they're just going to up their game and fix individual organs faster than the parasite can reproduce and reinfect them.

Strike 2/6.

Off to a bad start with the game-upping- and you can only spend Luck after the roll if you take a Karma, too. Which they do- taking it to a mixed success. They repair the liver and kidneys, which act as a filter on the blood, keeping it clean while accelerating the liver and kidneys' reinfection rate. But it takes some extra time... and I use that Karma against them immediately.

Gelly drops a vampiric mind-whammy on her girlfriend, and all of a sudden there's a combat in the middle of this delicate surgery. Oliver thinks fast and neutralizes her immediately, restraining her with a glob of invisible pneumantic glue. Dall's freaking out, but they're able to continue. Looseleaf's next target- to prevent any further vampiric domination- is the brain, and luckily this time she nails it.

Gelly falls unconscious, and they move on to the digestive tract, which is a major contributor to the metabolism and reinfection of the blood. It's a mixed failure- she slows the reinfection rate, but that's still Strike 3/6.

Trying again, with a crit on the die, she figures out how to tell the organs as a whole to at least stop eating, while successfully fixing the digestive system. Reinfection has stopped, and Gelly's temporarily stable- but there's still a lot of work to do, and time to screw it up.

Next, she goes for the heart and lungs, trying to complete the purification of the circulatory system. A mixed success means she accidentally stops the heart briefly, Strike 4/6- but Karou's able to stretch and restart it, making the procedure a success. What's left?

The bones, and bone marrow. Again, a threat to the blood, and this one pretty hardy.

She can't seem to get this stuff out of the bones- it's stuck in there too tight, the blood vessels into the bones too narrow for the parasite to pass through quickly even if it's trying to leave. Strike 5/6.

No more time to fuck around! The whole party needs to contribute!

They get to work- Oliver tries and fails to construct a scalpel out of pneuma, so Saelhen gets to work with her trusty knives. With an astounding 20/19 critical success, she's able to make clear, precise incisions, and Zzaiya doesn't even have to roll to open holes with her thermomantic laser. They're able to clean the bones out, no problem.

Only problem is... they just opened a bunch of holes in her and laser-drilled a bunch of holes in her bones. Karou needs to stretch again, taking them to Strike 6/6. Saralee Sweethoney is at her limit- but they're close to the finish line, and...

Well, I said there were six strikes, but there were actually seven. Sam Sweethoney might not be very experiences, but he is a cleric of Karou, too, with exactly one additional charge of healing insurance left, and he's just outside!

With two Karous on the scene, pushing themselves to the absolute limit, Looseleaf manages a final success.

Bones seal up, incisions close, and muscles re-knit as Karou repairs the remainder of the damage. You manage to force out all the vampire gunk, and Gelly… is breathing. You've done it.

Whew! That came right down to the wire! But the operation is complete, and the party's earned a considerable chunk of change from Dall.

...but before Karou leaves entirely, he has something a little ominous to say.

...Huh. That's... probably fine.

Next time: the party has some long-overdue talks with each other, learns about this "Iron Section" incident that vampirized Gelly in the first place, and starts making preparations to look into the situation with Dead Jane.

#tfj log #twofaced jewel

[itsbenedict]

Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 12a-13

Blood, Sweat, and Tears, and... Teeth?

A conwoman disguised as a noble and the delegation of university students studying her have arrived in the jungle city of Thunderbrush, ruled by ancient dryads and organized crime. Will they manage to stay uninvolved in shady conspiracies? (No.)

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Last time, we met Oliver Highhollow-Selby, @hzapping's PC. He's a half-and-halfling magic student from Thunderbrush Metropolitan University with a knack for scanning and copying objects with pneumancy, and he's been tasked by Evelyn (the school's ghost dryad shadow ruler) with spying on the party's highly concerning magical research.

Shortly after meeting Oliver, the party was accosted by a dwarf with some kind of Problem, who ran here in a hurry looking for "LuSleeve", from the newspaper headline. What's she want?

The dwarf- one Dall Odegir- manages to gasp out that she needs Looseleaf's help with a vampire problem. She can cure those, right? She's gotta be able to cure those. She promises the party money, and drinks, and whatever else they want right now please just come to her house right now it's an emergency.

Looseleaf is excited to put her new skills to work- but the others take a little more convincing. Oliver's a little worried about- hey, sorry, what, there's a vampire? There's a medical emergency involving a vampire? That sounds pretty dangerous! Dall has to really assure him and Zzaiya that everything will be fine and there's definitely no risk involved.

(Note: later on in this session, someone is going to scream "AAAAAAAAAAAA MY BLOOOOOOD", if that helps.)

The party follows Dall to Welcoming Trails, a huge chasm in the middle of the city. It's lined with dense scaffolding and tunnel homes, forming practically a third city perpendicular to the normal one. It belches smoke from various smokestacks connected to mineshafts and forges deep underground, which rises up to Tonnera Mighty's canopy.

The party boards a rapid-transit system built into the chasm's scaffolding- high-speed carriages on tracks, propelled by coal-burning "combustion engines". This system lines the outermost layer of the scaffolding, with the middle layer reserved for foot traffic and the wallmost layer lined with shops and residences.

This being the usual transit system for the city's dwarves, it's surely a smooth and well-engineered ride and hey would everyone like to roll Stamina to not yartz?

This thing is a fucking rollercoaster, powered by a shaking, smoking furnace and speeding down rickety rails. It seems insanely perilous, and everyone but Saelhen gets off feeling a little green. Oliver uses his pneumancy abilities to 3D-print a bucket to heave into. Saelhen holds Zzaiya tight, being a real smooth operator and freezing her with embarrassment.

...Looseleaf notices that Zzaiya's body language is very similar to mothfolk body language, despite waspfolk ostensibly being different species who as far as she knows haven't had any contact with the moths. That's a little odd.

So... the rollercoaster passes into a large tunnel, and into a huge cave system that appears to run beneath the city. It's not just the chasm- Welcoming Trails is huge, underneath, intersecting with and supporting Tonnera's root system. But as they progress, Tonnera's roots disappear and are replaced with a different, more withered-looking root system.

Dall lives in a bad part of town, see. It's the territory of the Sounds, the gang led by the ghost dryad Fallen. But she assures the party she's paid up on her protection fees, so... it'll be fine!

She leads them into a building with a big sign reading "BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS - Historic Handforge", with a smaller sign advertising a new promotion- "Stained With Valor- forge your blood into custom pieces to commemorate your courage!"

Dall heads into the back of the forge, where she's dug out some sort of messy and sooty residential chambers lit by an odd hole in the ceiling that intermittently goes dark. She finds a knob of rock way in the back, and opens up a secret passage to a pitch-black room.

Sorry! All that's inside is a cute bedroom, which is decorated with floral-print hangings and is substantially cleaner than the rest of the residence. Inside is...

Dall introduces her girlfriend Gelly, who's been having some trouble with a recent vampiric infection. She's been trying to taper off blood, but it's not working- she just keeps getting hungrier, and the grift with the Stained With Valor promotion is starting to dry up. The situation is apparently connected to something called the "Iron Section" incident, but before she can explain in detail...

Well, first, Looseleaf rolls to spirit-read Gelly, who it turns out is in pretty bad shape. It's clear that she's not completely a full vampire yet, insofar as a full vampire has completely had all their tissues replaced and isn't just infecting the blood, but she's more than halfway there. Dall's tapering-off strategy doesn't seem to have been effective- the more blood she's been taking in, the more the infection has spread. It's not to the point of full replacement, but it's really deep in there in her vital organs. Telling it all to rip itself out and report to the stomach to be vomited out... would probably kill her. This is probably going to require a conjunction of spirit healing and divine healing to fix up the infected organs, and even then it'd be pretty risky and difficult.

Second, they get a telepathic ping from Miriko Watchwood, their other vampire "friend" who works for the local information brokers/blackmail ring. She's apparently made contact with her boss, and wants to report in.

Third, there's a heavy knock on the door.

The ghost dryad mafia are here to squeeze Dall for more protection money! Fantastic! Saelhen is eager to offer her services as a negotiator.

Step one of negotiations: make the other party look foolish by opening the door and timing it just right so they attempt to knock on empty air.

Step one of negotiations takes a Speed roll to time it, and the result is a mixed crit- a 20 and a 1 on the two dice. So... she very successfully opens the door at exactly the right time, but rather than knock on empty air, the huge rock golem type person on the other side knocks directly on her face for 2 damage.

(Also on the other side are five other people- a half-orc dwarf with a broadsword, a wiry human woman with an axe, a sleepy-looking halfling with a machete, a jittery, nervous-looking goblin in rags- and a goblin in a slightly-tattered waistcoat, who seems to be the one in charge and does all the talking.)

Saelhen has... a plan, here. Is it a good plan? Well, the plan is to pretend to be affiliated with the slaver gang, claim to have already kidnapped Dall Odegir so they should probably leave since there's no one to shake down, and start a gang war.

Here is a selection of problems with this idea:

The party had some unreliable information re: which gangs were selling slaves, and have implied that they're affiliated with a completely different non-slaving ghost dryad mafia

Even if it worked, the jig would be up as soon as Dall went back to work operating her forge and clearly being non-kidnapped

The racketeers here- while their bread and butter is shaking down defenseless people for protection money- do against all odds consider themselves heroic anarchist freedom fighters, and they've just been given an opportunity to actually do some of the protection they're ostensibly being paid for

The first targets in the gang war they've started happen to be in this very room.

Saelhen immediately turns invisible and drops invisible ball bearings all over the floor! Bet Dall's going to be real appreciative of that later!

Oliver... also turns invisible! Not the fancy divine artifact way, but the standard epistomantic way- an enchantment that turns you into a visual blind spot people can't perceive. Before they can move, he slips through the doorway and out behind them, and conjures an invisible wall in the doorway with pneumancy, to buy the others a bit of time to react.

That leaves... Looseleaf and Zzaiya, both fully visible, and both fully squishy wizards who were not planning on being in a fight for their lives with a squad of mafia enforcers ten seconds ago. Thanks, Saelhen!

They do what they can, here- Looseleaf and Zzaiya both have spells that can go through the invisible wall (which Oliver made conductive), and do some damage to the encroaching gangsters- but it's not enough to take any of them down or even meaningfully slow them.

But then: half the enemy team charges into the room, and immediately slips and falls on the invisible ball bearings all over the place. Never let it be said Saelhen du Fishercrown didn't have a plan!

There is one other complication, though- the huge rock golem guy, Radish, tries to fit through the doorway... and gets stuck, totally blocking it off. So there's now no escape... right?

Well, there's a secret room in the back, here. And as long as they don't see them go in, they can disappear without a trace until the gangsters leave! Which they can do, because Looseleaf still has a bottle of the complimentary magical darkness from Cabana Jim's resort, which she can use to black out the whole room! And... they're gonna be a bit theatrical about it, first.

It's a pretty effective tactic! They all pile into a cramped and dark room with a starving vampire, for safety. They didn't see the rolls I was making for Gelly's self-control in that situation, but luckily it all worked out.

In the cold light of day- or, uh, the kind of muggy darkness of so-far-underground-it-doesn't-really-matter-whether-it's-day- they realize that Saelhen's deception might not be working in their favor. They can hear the Sounds outside, trashing Dall's room in search of some secret hiding place or escape hatch. Their big golem is still stuck in the door, so they're pretty sure the party can't have left through there- which means there's a decent chance they get found, if their blind thrashing in the darkness eventually becomes a thorough search. And... this conflict really doesn't need to be happening, does it?

Oliver, though, has an idea- he's outside, and he's got a secret technique.

See, there's a few key physical facts about pneuma, the intangible vapor-like stuff that blows around the world to be turned into objects by pneumancy:

Physicalized pneumantic objects block the intangible form of pnuema- it's not intangible to those.

Under normal circumstances, pneuma is fairly incompressible.

When turned into a gas, pneuma is sort of 1:1 in terms of volume- but there's a compression ratio for turning it into liquids or solids. A solid pneuma pellet, if "released" and turned back into pneuma when the flow of mana stops, expands to about fifty times its size.

Oliver exploits these properties to construct a pressure bomb- a hollow shell of pneuma-solid around a pellet payload. The pellet inside is cut off from mana when the shell is complete, and when it does, it attempts to expand rapidly- exerting a force on the pneuma-solid walls surrounding it. This force shatters the bomb and sends shrapnel everywhere in a wave of concussive force.

So... he detonates one of his invisible bombs outside the forge, which does some damage to the scaffolding and distracts the gangsters inside.

Problem with that is... Radish is still stuck in the doorway. Until they can get him out, the ones trapped inside, distracted though they may be, aren't leaving the room.

Saelhen has a new plan, then. She needs to make them think, for sure, that they really did escape, so they'll focus on getting Radish unstuck and chasing them. The first part of this plan is using Saelhen's impersonation abilities to just say that- but the problem is, they need to silence whoever they're impersonating, so they don't immediately contradict her.

So she has an idea.

Wow! Great plan! I bet there are no consequences for this! Except, um, maybe the part where if she rolls a mixed success on the Deep stuff, she has to roll a d100 on a consequence table.

So, one thing that happens is that Saelhen feels the goblin convulse, and something warm and wet splatters her dress. His audio snaps back into reality, and he SCREAMS BLOODY MURDER.

EVERYTHING IS VERY BAD NOW. Something has foot-long fangs stuck in this goblin's body and is shaking him around like a ragdoll, there's screaming, no one can see what's going on or move properly because there's invisible ball bearings all over the floor, these gangsters think the party are slavers and want them dead, and something outside has exploded and witnesses are starting to gather.

Oliver leaps into action, calling for help and warning people about monsters. A bunch of bystanders- not guards or anything, but dwarves around here tend to have pickaxes and armor and can take care of themselves- start to head into the forge.

Dall bursts out of the hidden room and brings a hammer down on one of the monsters (by roughly pure luck- it's pitch black, she just sort of doesn't care which of the people in that room she hits with a hammer at this point)- and it explodes into acrid goop. For how terrifying these things are, they're not all that sturdy.

Meanwhile, the people outside manage to dislodge Radish from the door, and the magical darkness begins to spill out of the room and into the forge, dissipating a bit.

You know what else spills out of the room and into the forge? A hideous beast that seems to be made mostly of teeth, with no visible head but several headlike protruberances whose teeth are gnashing and chomping wildly! It immediately sinks its teeth into the closest person to the doorway who isn't made of rocks, which would be Wide-Smile, the goblin in charge of this shakedown.

Saelhen tries stabbing this thing and running! It turns out... to not exactly be made of teeth. The "teeth" making up its body are sharp at the tips, but the walls are soft and pop easily, into some sort of acrid goop, so the knives do some damage. Aaaaand attract its attention, so it wheels on Saelhen.

Oliver summons a club made of pneuma-solid and brains this thing, and the impact sends bits of toothpoint flying and causing a chain reaction that makes the whole damn thing detonate into nasty goop, leaving behind only a strange skeleton of twisted muscle fibers twitching pathetically on the floor.

The combat is over, now- the monsters are gone, and there are too many witnesses for the gangsters to just go ham. But the situation is far from resolved- and next time, the party will have to clean up their mess and actually do the job they came here to do. They've still got a vampire who needs curing!

#tfj log #twofaced jewel

[itsbenedict]

Two-Faced Jewel: Season 1 Recap

Sometimes I post session logs from Two-Faced Jewel, a formerly-D&D tabletop campaign I've been running for my friends @eternalfarnham and Zero. There's like a lot of them now, though! Maybe you thought they were interesting but didn't want to catch up on 20-odd longposts of someone going on about his D&D game. Wouldn't blame you! So I'm gonna do you a solid and compress the entire first "season" of the campaign into one cliffsnotes summary, so when I start posting the second season you can just pick up on the middle. Here goes!

This is Looseleaf! She is a magic moth, and she's going to school!

This is Saelhen! She is half-elf, half-crime, and she wants to steal from school!

School has a magic arm thing! Saelhen pretends to be a Fancy Lass Indeed, and gets the school to give her the magic arm thing!

But uh-oh! Now it's stuck, and she can't flog the magic sleeve for Loads of Money! Also, the school thinks someone should follow her around to study the magic sleeve, so now Looseleaf is following her! This is bad news for crime!

The magic sleeve says "go over there", so they Go Over There, and…

…oops! It opened a hole and made infinite bats from nightmare hell! Maybe this magic sleeve is bad news.

The school says "pshaaaaaaw, naaaah, it's fiiiiine", and when the sleeve says "now go over here!" the school sends them to do that again! Cool plan!

Problem is, this time "go over there" means "go really far away to a dangerous jungle", so Looseleaf and Saelhen need help! Let's meet help!

This is Orluthe! He has a halberd and is friends with God! Or, one of the gods! But secretly, he's not friends with that one! He's friends with a different one! Chicanery is afoot!

This is Oyobi! She has a bow and arrow and is friends with Looseleaf! But secretly, she's RUDE. Elf rude! It's like an invisible kind of rude only elves know about.

So they leave town to follow the sleeve and go over-

-Oh, hey. Uh… this guy's coming too, I guess! School says so! His name is Vayen, and he's friends with [NOBODY]! But secretly, he's, uh… he's secretly… he's definitely secretly something. I guess… that's fine…

So they go follow the arrow!

On the way, they stop by a town! The town's feuding with another town, because of murders!

Luckily, Looseleaf is magic! Her magic is really special, and she uses it to solve the crime! Turns out, this guy living in a torture wizard's evil torture tower did it! Huh! How 'bout that!

The guy tells them that a scary dragon was forcing him to do it, though, so the real problem is the dragon. But how are they gonna stop a dragon?! That's way out of their pay grade. They're gonna go call the fantasy cops instead.

So they go to another town, and they go grab a pack of high-level dragon-slaying adventurers, and have those guys do it. Very sensible!

(By the way: those guys apparently work for a shadowy conspiracy that's trying to hide from the gods themselves. So did the torture wizard! So does Looseleaf's long-lost sister, apparently! That's- that probably isn't relevant! It's fine! That plot can wait!

They go back to town, which has some monster problems to solve, and while the adventurers fight the dragon, the party… kidnaps a child! Rescues a child? She has a complicated relationship with her mom, which is definitely grounds to invisibly sneak her out of town to go adventuring with strangers! Yeah! Sure!

The party, plus a child, move on with their main quest- which means they all have to get on a boat! No, not this fancy boat- this other one. The fancy boat is way too fancy. They can't afford something like that! A different boat will be fine.

Guess what? The different boat gets attacked by a bazillion sea monsters! Including a dragon!

Luckily, they make friends with the dragon, who's really interested in the magic sleeve for some reason. This is yet another thing that's probably fine!

Finally, they reach Fantasy Bahamas Las Vegas, and it's time for a vacation while they wait for the ferry to their destination! They split up and stay at different resorts.

The next morning, oh crap! Fantasy Jimmy Buffett killed the other resort guy! At least, that's what the cops think, so Fantasy Jimmy Buffett hires them to investigate and prove his innocence!

Turns out, Fantasy Jimmy Buffett didn't do it! They prove that super good, by proving that he's a vampire and all his staff are enslaved vampire thralls and one of them did it to frame him as revenge for the slavery thing! Congratulations, Vampire Jimmy Buffett! You are innocent, and also, toast.

Now that Jimmy Buffett is dead, there are definitely no more problems ever- WHOOPS all those vampire thralls are now no longer under orders to not eat the guests. Oops. Better do something about that.

While fixing the vampire situation, they meet Miriko, vampire middle management, who turns over a new leaf and helps them wrangle the thralls and gives them all of Jimmy Buffett's stuff, under definitely no duress at all. The party offering to smuggle her off of the island to evade punishment for vampire crimes had nothing to do with it.

The little girl they kidnapped wants to go to the fashion school on the island, though, so… Saelhen pays for that! All kidnappings well that end well! It's very expensive, but they have all of Jimmy Buffett's stuff now, which includes a lot of money. And would you look at that! All of Jimmy Buffett's stuff ALSO includes that very fancy boat from before! So… now the party has that!

They re-christen their new boat the Two-Faced Jewel, after its secret smuggling hold and definitely not to squeeze in a title drop- and now, they're off to the very dangerous jungle!

Next: adventures in the ghost dryad mafia jungle city, Thunderbrush!

#twofaced jewel #tfj log

[itsbenedict]

Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 12a

Oliver Highhollow-Selby

A conwoman disguised as a noble and the delegation of university students studying her have arrived in the jungle city of Thunderbrush, ruled by ancient dryads and organized crime. Will they manage to stay uninvolved in shady conspiracies? (No.)

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Last time, with Saelhen cheering her on, Looseleaf devised a cunning strategy that led the Blacksky Iron Hounds to victory over their rivals the Thunderbrush Darts in a tense and unorthodox semifinal match!

But... someone was watching their performance, and has questions.

In Blackout year 241, Otto Rangarre Counter-Auditor Selby, Most Trusted Provider of the Interecumenical Administration of Thunderbrush, was facing a downturn in fortunes.

Before, he had been a great man. His family had long been trusted to operate a vast rice plantation in the fertile plains north of the Mighty, and their botanical expertise made them local experts on fresh produce- they could near-infallibly predict the longevity of food, and they were trusted to stamp produce labels with precise expiration dates. "Selby: R-4-243" stamped on a bag of rice was a guarantee that that rice would, if kept dry, not spoil until the fourth day of the Rainy season in Blackout 243.

But now, the IAT had dwindled to nothing- their authority supplanted by Tonnera Mighty, arboreal tyrant, and her cronies in the church and the new city guard. His vast fields of rice withered in her literal shadow, as her branches grew thicker with the hovels of a thousand squatting birds pretending at civilization. He'd been forced to sell acre after acre of productive riverbank land to the stinking fishermen spilling out from the city- just to stay afloat! The Selby estate was dying.

Otto Selby was a proud man, but even the proud can surrender to an enemy who has them by the throat. It was becoming more obvious by the day that the only way to hold onto power in Thunderbrush- without selling one's soul to the criminal syndicates of the zombies to the south- was to become a close personal friend of the tyrant whose roots were slowly strangling the city.

But Otto Selby was not a charming man- so this duty fell to his daughter, Grace. He'd spied an opportunity for the girl- one of the upstart craftsmen working for the Mighty, her personal doctor slash architect slash mad scientist. One Basil Highhollow, the Mighty's darling- a handsome chap, if a bit short, and conveniently to his daughter's tastes.

He directed her to seduce, and soon the two were wed- the falling fortunes of the Selby clan bound to the rising fortunes of the Highhollows. Content that he had saved the Selby family from wretched ignominy, and that there were no problems whatsoever with the relationship he had arranged, Otto Rangarre Counter-Auditor Selby passed away peacefully in his sleep at the wheel of his schooner, crashing into a pier and drowning before the birth of his grandson.

Some years later, his grandson, Oliver Highhollow-Selby, sat in the stands of a Jewelwide Academic Warball Society game, eyeing the foreign students who'd just trounced his school's team with a curious look.

Thunderbrush Metropolitan University's chief student coordinator, Evelyn the ghost dryad, likes to keep up mutually beneficial relationships with the student body. Trading favors and privileges, in exchange for odd jobs or the odd bit of lifeforce. Keen-eyed Oliver is one of her favorites, if a bit too volatile for her Student Council.

According to Evelyn, there's a group of students from Blacksky who arrived at TMU under mysterious circumstances. An academic exchange program, kept secret from her by TMU headmaster Grizzly Goodcrest and Blacksky's provost Hamori Los. Her student council president, the ever-paranoid Long-Arms, doesn't trust them- and even though the boy has once again cried wolf, Evelyn suspects there may indeed be wolves among the sheep.

So... wouldn't Oliver like to gather a little information on these student interlopers? The ones studying necromancy, and disappearing giant scorpions with a divine artifact?

The exchange students are chatting in the stands with that weird secretive wasp girl from the Artificing department, who was cheering really loudly for Blacksky for some reason. They're making some sort of small talk, until something juicy comes up:

Looseleaf: “Anyways, Zzaiya, I also wanted to ask you about- you mentioned that the artifact-reading thingy you used on the bracer was probably powered by Lepichon’s power or something, right?” Zzaiya: "Oh- uh, right. It doesn't have a sigil, so it's hard to be sure, but it seems like her domain- it destroys and scatters the, uh… we're not entirely sure what it is, the… substance? Connection? There's a measurable something that seems to be the conduit for divine energy to the artifact." Looseleaf: “Right, I was wondering, do you know any place I could go to get more knowledge about Lepichon?” “Like, what her sigil is, any other knowledge about her, especially historical-domain knowledge…” Oliver Highhollow-Selby: Oliver comes near them and attempts to just overhear the conversation without looking too suspicious, planning to perhaps insert himself if an opening appears. Zzaiya: "The isolation sphere dissipates that something in a way that's extremely similar to other Lepichon-aspect relics." "And, er- zzz, more knowledge about... that's difficult. I could show you the other Lepichon relics in our collection, but that's like... two other ones. There are no known clerics of Lepichon, so information is scarce."

Oliver manages to stay on the outskirts of this conversation, rolling Be Sneaky pretty well and successfully eavesdropping for a bit. The students are asking questions about Lepichon- Dustsweeper, Goddess of Ruin, apparently involved in necromancy?! What's all this about?

Oliver opts to insert himself into the conversation, complimenting their performance on the Warball field, and awkwardly changing the subject to Lepichon. He's, uh, heard rumors about her! Students discussing it! In what context? Uhhhhhhhhh

Yeah, he doesn't lie too well. They can tell he's got ulterior motives right away- and he spills the beans pretty quick, confessing that Evelyn sent him to spy on them. Which they take... surprisingly well! Apparently, they don't have any secrets to hide, and they're happy to just let him spy. Why not?

He then opts to push his luck a bit. He's got a spell, see- a sort of scanning spell, which uses epistomancy to scribe blueprints of objects. The exchange students see no problem with letting him use unfamiliar magic on their divine artifact!

...But he doesn't get much. As far as his homemade scanning spell can tell, this thing is just solid stone- he doesn't get any picture of the internals, nor can he get an image of the part of it that's in contact with "Lady Noeru de la Surplus's" arm. Still, he can...

...well, he can use a form of arcane magic called "pneumancy", a branch concerned mainly with the "summoning" of physical objects. The world of the Jewel is suffused with an intangible gaseous substance called "pneuma", which floats around in clouds and clumps and has its own invisible, immaterial weather systems. Pneumancers are capable of harnessing this ghost-matter and magically coercing it into a simulacrum of regular matter- imparting properties like solidity, weight, visibility, friction, and other useful attributes.

Oliver is very talented in his field, and has developed a fairly unique technique which his particular mana is well-suited to. After using his epistomantic scanning spell to scribe a blueprint of an object, he can then use pneumancy to reproduce the object, essentially copying and pasting real things. His copies are temporary magical constructs that require mana to sustain, and can't necessarily copy exotic or magical properties- but he has a toolbox of blueprints for all kinds of useful things in his spellbook.

So now, Oliver can print off a replica of Lady Noeru's bracer- minus its magical properties like projecting a glowing arrow or sending stuff to the shadow realm. Huh!

He does so, and... Lady Noeru does something odd. She touches it, and then... makes it disappear. The replica bracer goes to the Deep, and Oliver's mana starts going haywire- like it's simultaneously closeby and far away, physically straining him. Freaking out a bit, he lets go, and the replica bracer poofs into pneuma.

There are a thousand things wrong with this- not least among them "teleportation hasn't been possible for 273 years, what the fuck"- and Oliver kind of freaks out about this at them.

Oliver, rattled and in ask-ALL-the-questions mode, starts asking directly about Looseleaf's recent foray into necromancy.

Looseleaf: “I was doing an experiment involving using my unique magic to inspect rat souls and I thought ‘hey wouldn’t it be interesting if I sedated one and then killed it to see the process of the soul detaching from the body first-hand’ and it turns out when you do that what happens is you also go to hell with it.” “I managed to come back though!” “That has been the story of my exciting venture into the thanatic sea.” “…Gods that makes me sound like a mad wizard doesn’t it.” Oliver Highhollow-Selby: Oliver looks at you with an expression that's a mix of shocked and 'you're not making any sense'-tier confused. Looseleaf: “I swear I’m not! I’m very nice and friendly!” “Zzaiya tell him I’m a good person,” Looseleaf pleads. Benedict (GM): Zzaiya's been kind of agog for the last few minutes. "I- you- sorry, you did what?"

Zzaiya and Oliver both start to kind of panic about these really quite fucked-up revelations- and Lady Noeru attempts to defuse the situation by inviting everyone out for drinks. Quite unsuccessfully, to be honest- so when another distraction rears its head, it's a welcome thing.

A muscled and bedraggled woman, identifiable as a dwarf by her (currently bare) beard-hanging studs, runs up to Looseleaf, out of breath. She gasps out something about fixing something, trying to recover from what has clearly been a prolonged sprint.

That's right! She's Lusleeve! And next time, we'll see what she wants from her! And Oliver- our third PC, played by @hzapping- will be tagging along!

#tfj log #twofaced jewel

[itsbenedict]

THE BIG GAME: BLACKSKY IRON HOUNDS vs THUNDERBRUSH DARTS

Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 10+11

(team logos by Jessica Ninness)

A conwoman disguised as a noble and the delegation of university students studying her have arrived in the jungle city of Thunderbrush, ruled by ancient dryads and organized crime. Will they manage to stay uninvolved in shady conspiracies COLLEGIATE SPORTS COMPETITIONS? (HELL NO!!!)

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Looseleaf, a mothfolk student from Blacksky University, has somehow found herself the last hope for a delegation of home team Warball players, poisoned by nefarious agents at Thunderbrush Metropolitan University, home of their perennial rivals the Darts. The Big Game- the semifinals match of the Jewelwide Academic Warball Society's (or JAWS's) annual tournament- is on, and this soft and bookish ball of floof has been tapped as a replacement player! How will she handle contact sports?!?!

Well, luckily she's not alone- there's the unpoisoned members of the team, and also her roommate Oyobi, who's a huge jock and watches Warball all the time. Saelhen... isn't technically a student at Blacksky, and moreover as far as Looseleaf knows she's still in bed, sleeping off a scorpion fight and necromancy stuff.

Saelhen goes and collects Zzaiya, the waspfolk artificer who's been taking a look at her bracer. Zzaiya was kind of hoping Saelhen would forget about their date and not cause her to attend a Warball game which she knows barely anything about, but nope!

Meanwhile, in preparation for the game, Looseleaf inspects her Warball focus- a stick that you channel your mana through to cast regulation fake-magic that targets hit points rather that hitting people. She rolls to figure it out and develop a few toy spells, since her spirit magic isn't regulation and is thus off-limits for a game of Warball. She works out a temporary blind spell, a standard AoE bomb, and a weight-reducing motumancy enchantment that gives a target a free move action.

With that... it's time to take the field!

The field is asymmetrical- the players' starting locations each have a flag in a regulation position, but one side of the field features walled fortifications while the other is bare. It's odd that the opposing team- the home team- set up the field this way, since the away team gets to pick which side they start on. Rather than overthink it, the Iron Hounds take the fortified starting position, risking some sort of trap for a potential tactical advantage.

The opposing team seems to have brought some large wooden rolling walls as equipment, though, ensuring they have fortifications of their own- mobile ones, unknown to the enemy ahead of time. Is that cheating? Apparently not!

What is definitely cheating, at least on the meta level, is abusing Oyobi's Colossus Slayer ability (which gives her double damage against things with more than twice her max HP, intended to represent a specialty in slaying giant monsters) in conjunction with the fact that max HP in Warball can be freely reassigned. A whole six hitpoints puts her below the threshold for most enemy combatants- and carrying the Warball itself, that's doubled again. Four times base 3 damage, and Oyobi can delete players from the game in one or two shots, as long as she can hit them past cover... and hey, she also has Hunter's Mark to get past cover!

nah it's fine probably.

The game starts, and Oyobi takes a shot at the clown, on the principle that allowing a scary clown to live any longer than absolutely necessary is folly. It only does six damage, though, meaning it has 12 HP tops. One more shot should do it!

Bud Chestplate (the tank), Flint Ironstag (the flanker) and Buff Drinklots (the healer) all head forward, hoping to draw enemy fire and form a second defensive line behind Bud's shield. Oyobi should be safe behind cover, right?

Next is the enemy sniper's turn.

Oh, shit. Well, Oyobi takes a hit here, losing half her HP in a single shot! Unfortunate symmetry! Seems like they designed these fortifications around the idea that their sniper could pierce them- which means the healer needs to get back to Oyobi ASAP, or she could go down on the next turn.

(Some other things happen between all this- the enemy healer heals Blast Hardcheese (the clown goblin), but leaves cover to do so and takes an opportunity attack from the Iron Hounds' sniper, Smash Lampjaw. And the clown does some kind of crazy space-twisting merry-go-round thing, making him harder to hit. And he chucks a Devilsknife at Oyobi, but misses and hits wall.)

Back to the players- the enemy interceptor's outside of cover, and Oyobi goes ahead and takes the shot. With a crit, and a couple followups from the team's other ranged attackers, Slate Slabrock eats dirt in one turn! The enemy's one player down before even getting close! The crowd erupts in outrage!

The enemy, seeing how busted this tactic is, decides to switch it up and imitate them! Their captain hands the Warball off to Bolt Vanderhuge, and he takes to the sky for a 6-damage shot on Oyobi to take her out in one hit!

Which she dodges.

The enemy moves up, hoping to close the distance and interfere before Oyobi can pick any more of them off- but no such luck. Bud Chestplate drops her massive heavy tower shield on Punt Speedchunk when he gets too close, and a combination of followup attacks means he goes down like a Punt Speedchump. And Oyobi manages a trickshot at Bolt behind cover, knocking him down real low. The enemy is hurting!

Bolt tries to take another shot at Oyobi to put a stop to this insane cheese strat, but thanks to Saelhen in the stands telepathically relaying a warning, Oyobi's able to fully succeed on a dodge- and by enough that I can't spend Karma to force her to get hit. Once again, she avoids consequences for her actions. And then... tries to take another shot at Bolt behind cover, using that Hunter's Mark ability to try and make a trickshot. But she's got -1 to the Naturalism skill she uses for that, so it's probably not going to-

She destroys the enemy cover entirely, and the rest of the team destroys another one, charging in to punish the enemy's healer for getting exposed. There's a brutal melee, Bolt is only alive thanks to doubled HP from the Warball, and the Iron Hounds are practically unscathed!

This then changes.

The enemy realizes that they're not going to get past the enemy lines and get at Oyobi anytime soon- but the Iron Hounds' captain, Bud Chestplate, has sacrificed her shield to attack, given up her extra Warball durability to empower Oyobi, and charged right into the middle of melee. They've got a perfect opportunity to dogpile her, and win the game by knocking out the enemy captain!

Bolt fires a bolt at Bud for 8, Blast Hardcheese sets everyone on fire, and Dart uses a leash-grappling-hook move to close the distance to Bolt and give him new cover, whacking Bud with a solid punch en route. And then... Blast Hardcheese pulls out his ultimate attack- "THIS IS IT, BOISENGIRLS!", charging up a giant spirit bomb fireball. Bobson Dugnutt, the enemy Sword, charges in and unleashes a barrage of baseball bat strikes to knock away Flint Ironstag and disrupt the enemy's ability to defend Bud.

But... despite all that, Bud's still rocking like 90 max HP, and she doesn't even get halfway down. Looseleaf's improvised blinding attack kept the worst of the damage away, and now they've exposed themselves significantly.

Looseleaf is wary of Blast Hardcheese's giant spirit bomb attack, which might make up the difference on that damage- she dives in, using up all her actions to speed up the team and get Bud out of the range of the effect and behind her abandoned shield, since- logically, the enemy wouldn't have waited until now to use the bomb if they could use it while the shield was up. She gets everyone into cover before the bomb comes down. Oyobi, meanwhile, knocks out the enemy healer with a well-placed shot.

Two bad things then happen.

That's the enemy's specialty- unsurpassed mobility, circumventing defenses!

BYE BYE!

The magic bomb comes down, and the team takes massive damage- Bud's hurting, the healer is on death's door, and Looseleaf's armor flashes and locks up- she's down.

But... also, so is Blast Hardcheese, caught in his own final chaos. And with four Darts down, they get to field their reserve player.

The reserve player- some huge guy in concealing armor- charges straight into the middle of the battlefield with all his movement, so he hasn't done anything just yet. And now it's the players' turn! Oyobi takes a shot at Bobson Dugnutt, whose Seventh Inning Stretch stance is no longer active. Flint Ironstag follows up by knocking him prone, and then...

Buff Drinklots, the healer who has a joke one-damage slap attack for emergencies, takes out the enemy's DPS specialist.

On the enemy turn... Dart Inocencio, the enemy captain, has made it past the Iron Hounds' formation, and over to Oyobi, who's about to feel the pain. Or... she would feel the pain, if she didn't KEEP FUCKING DODGING EVERY ATTACK SOMEHOW.

...except then Bolt takes his turn, and he finally lands a six-damage hit on Oyobi and takes her out instantly. Whuh-oh. Bye-bye, Iron Hounds' DPS!

Bud pins the Darts' mysterious reserve player under her shield, totally negating their whole bit. The party's got three options left for how to win this game:

Take out both Bolt and the reserve player

Take out Dart Inocencio, who's a tank and has taken no damage

Take out Bolt and escort his Warball back to the flag

And they have three ways to lose:

Buff, Flint, Reef, and Smash all get taken out

Bud gets taken out

Dart claims Oyobi's Warball and gets back to his flag

Smash Lampjaw takes away that last option from the enemy, grabbing Oyobi's warball and forcing them to take him out before they can grab the Warball and move. And meanwhile, the reserve player is trapped and somehow unable to lift the weight off them, leaving Bolt...

All alone, out of cover, with four Iron Hounds nearby.

The rest of the fight is a foregone conclusion. Bolt gets mobbed and goes down, they claim the Warball, and Smash Lampjaw tenaciously holds on to the very end, keeping Dart from rejoining the game at the cost of most of his HP. With their sniper down, the reservist trapped, and Dart occupied, Bud Chestplate and the rest of the Blacksky Iron Hounds run the ball down the field to the flag for the win!

Zzaiya, despite being a Thunderbrush student, is cheering wildly with Saelhen, putting her lung-capacity lessons to use. They're... about the only people cheering, since the home team crowd is furious.

Next time: the aftermath of the Big Game, and a new face joining the party!

#twofaced jewel #tfj log

[itsbenedict]

Two-Faced Jewel: New game system

After getting particularly frustrated with a few bogged-down combats during the vampire resort dungeon, we eventually decided: D&D wasn't the system for us. Rather than shop around for a new fantasy RPG, though, I just decided to indulge in our group's common hobby and... come up with a game system from scratch, tailored to meet the needs of the game as it was being played.

The main functionality I wanted the system to have:

Continuous advancement, so it's easy to give the players rewards as the game progresses

Combat optimized for speed while retaining meaningful battlefield tactics

Rules for social encounters that are largely optional and interface smoothly with and enhance freeform roleplaying

Here's what I came up with to address each of these criteria:

Rolls and stats

To address the first point, I decided to have the basic roll for the game be 2d20, using PBTA-ish move resolution mechanics with much bigger numbers than usual. With bigger numbers on the rolls, it's a lot easier to hand out stat increases and situational bonuses that can accurately represent big and small advantages while overall reducing variance. With 2d6, even a +1 to something is a huge shift to the likely outcomes, so you have to be really precious about your balance and avoid throwing plusses and minuses around willy-nilly. With 2d20, I can be a little more loose with handing out character advancement even in sessions where not much happens.

A roll in this system is 2d20 plus some stat or combination of stats. The outcome table generally looks like this:

10 or less: You fail at the thing.

11-20: You fail at the thing, but get some tangential benefit from the attempt.

21-30: You succeed at the thing, but suffer some complication.

31+: You succeed at the thing.

Additionally, since we have d20s and crits are fun, a 1 or a 20 on either die amplifies the negative side of the roll or the positive side of the roll respectively. Double 1s is a catastrophe that totally upends the situation, and double 20s is a spectacular success beyond what ought to be possible. 20 and 1 will generally cause some sort of chaos. Plus, we've got a Luck and Karma system for when players really need a roll to succeed and are willing to pay a price.

(We're about to trial an adjustment to this where we reduce all the stats by 1 and make the thresholds 9-, 10-19, 20-29, and 30+ just for legibility. Probably should've started that way.)

Speaking of stats- the core stats are:

Strength, which is attack strongness and muscle and is basically everyone's dump stat in this game since we don't do a ton of combat

Stamina, which affects max HP and other Constitution type stuff, general endurance and grit

Speed, which encompasses dexterity and is used for stealth and dodging

Cunning, which you'll notice I relabeled Smarts on the character cards because I realized every other stat started with S and I almost had a pattern

and Speech, which is social expression and insight.

On top of that, most players have a sixth stat for something unique about them- Looseleaf's spirit magic, Saelhen's evil magic bracer, Orluthe's cleric abilities, Oyobi's total lack of wilderness survival skills. It started with just the one, but since then we haven't been shy about tacking on new stats as players encounter new magic abilities they're unfamiliar with. Everyone's got at least eight stats, at this point.

Notably: unless it's tied to an ability that depends on it, we don't have stats for knowledge types. Originally I wanted to go all-out with knowledge stats and different types of perception, but what's actually way easier is: if you, the GM, want the players to know something, Just Tell Them, and if you don't, then don't. NPC party members are a great excuse to have someone notice a thing that the party wasn't trying to notice, if you needed that to happen!

Advancement is something we're still trying to figure out. Originally I had a big list of things where it was like... okay, end of session you pick one stat to advance, but it can't just be any stat. If you fulfill one of these Strength conditions, like doing strenuous physical exercise or hitting someone in a fight, you're eligible to up Strength at end of session. In practice though, that sort of forced minmaxing in Speech and Cunning since most sessions were just roleplay, and sometimes no conditions were being fulfilled at all. So we switched to "okay, to be eligible for a stat, you need to decide during play to give yourself -10 on a roll for that stat", but that had similar problems re:uneven advancement based on who rolled what and when. We still don't have anything that really works well.

Combat

There's two main things that exist to streamline combat: one is, the map is zone-based, where you're either in the same zone as an opponent or you're not. The move action, which just costs 1/3 AP unless there's a specific obstacle you need to roll to circumvent, moves you from one zone to any other known unobstructed zone, or create a new one if you go somewhere not accounted for in the map. Ranged attacks can hit stuff not in your zone, melee attacks you need to be in the zone for. No fussing around with movement ranges or AoO, no breaking down how to get from point A to point B- either you can Just Go There or you need to bypass an obstacle first. Saves so much time.

But you know what saves even more time?

You don't make attack rolls. You have one or more Basic Attacks, which are just... you have a weapon, or some spell you're practiced with, and on your turn if all you want to do is Use Weapon On Badguy, then you just spend 2/3 AP and do that, and inflict the damage your attack does on the enemy you're attacking. There's no tension in deciding whether or not you succeed at Hit Goblin With Sword, a thing you've done a hundred times before. If you don't know what you want to do with your turn in combat, you can almost always just spend 3/3 AP to take the default action of Walk Up To Enemy And Hit Them.

There are exceptions, though- two of them. The exceptions are Armor and Evasive, which represent enemies where doing damage just by hitting them is actually in question. Armor is flat damage reduction, and while you're free to hit an armored enemy for not-as-much-damage normally, you can opt to take a risk and make a roll to Smash Through or Find A Weak Point, rolling dice to risk failure to gain extra damage. Evasive X enemies you need to roll Hit Home (2d20 + Speed - X) to land a hit on, or find a way to temporarily neutralize their evasion. Players can also take the Dodge action to temporarily give themselves Evasive [Speed] for the next attack. This gives me a way to represent armored knights or zippy flying enemies when necessary, while keeping combat fast by default.

Players have various skills and extra moves they can do besides Basic Attacks and the optional modifier rolls, and those form the backbone of the strategic depth. Ways to buff themselves, place obstacles and cover on the field, support their allies, or mess with the action economy. These are all custom-built for each PC and often require rolls, which requires some trust in the GM to balance.

Social Encounters

These form the bulk of play sessions in this game, just by dint of what the players tend to like to do. And... most of the time, there's no special rules for these. The only interface with the rules here is that you've got a few special moves for when you want to use your stats to get an edge.

Through Your Teeth is the lying move, which adds Cunning and Speech minus a penalty for the plausibility of your lie and the target's relative savvy. Oftentimes I just don't even require a roll here- I tend to only bring it up when the player is saying something that actually does have some kind of inconsistency with the target's observed reality, which they need to be careful to conceal.

Something's Fishy is the opposite, which just rolls raw Cunning to try and make the equivalent of an Insight check. The thing I love about this is that I will never ask the players to roll Something's Fishy. But! You can roll it whenever you want, on any social interaction, to check if someone's lying to you, with no penalty even on a full fail. The best times are when you have an NPC lie and the player doesn't even think to check. Always delicious.

Find the Right Words is the equivalent of a persuasion check, but I hate when the dice say that something has succeeded at persuading someone or failed to persuade someone irrespective of the words that actually got said, thanks to nebulous Charisma. Instead, the player rolls this before attempting to persuade someone. I'll paste the whole outcome table here:

10-: You don’t really have a read on them, and they might perceive that you’re being a little manipulative here.

11-20: You’re not sure exactly what they do want to hear from you, but you do know what they don’t want to hear, to avoid the worst outcome.

21-30: You pick up on some hint towards their motivations and goals for the interaction.

31+: You’re pretty sure you can read them like a book, and you’re told more or less exactly what it is they want to hear, modulo deliberately hidden intentions.

It's more people-reading than persuasion- ultimately, it's up to the player to say the words that will persuade the target. Rolling just gives them a chance to pick up on things that they might not have figured out just from play, and give them an edge in the interaction. It's also a great opportunity to drop nuggets of characterization that wouldn't necessarily come across just in dialogue.

-

That's pretty much all there is to it, minus the details of some boring functional Basic Moves, advancement triggers, and combat keywords. If you're interested in those details, you can check out the google doc here.

#tfj log #twofaced jewel

[itsbenedict]

Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 6

How Do I Exclude My Scorpions?

A conwoman disguised as a noble and the delegation of university students studying her have arrived in the jungle city of Thunderbrush, ruled by ancient dryads and organized crime. Will they manage to stay uninvolved in shady conspiracies? (No.)

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Last time, Looseleaf very successfully mimicked her sister's appearance, which failed to fool her co-conspirator in the secret society- but it's fine, they had a nice talk anyway. Oh and the co-conspirator got robbed, but not by Looseleaf, and it's a big mystery!

After that, Looseleaf went back and met up with Saelhen and Oyobi and got some skewers, while Oyobi told them all about the rules and regulations and meta of the venerable sport of Warball. (I'm gonna make a post for that but it's gotta wait because I'm doing a thing that won't be done until later.) In the meantime, we soldier on, to... get some literal lab rats from the Zoology department, which surely couldn't turn into a disaster.

...I'm sorry, they what?

Uh, we'll get to that. First, they have to get there- and there's something in the way. It's not the huge, expensive, and anachronistic metal walls in the way, or the exterior stone wall, or the leather-armor-clad guards manning the gate. Those things they could just walk right past, because they're visiting students and the security isn't to keep people out.

No, the thing in the way is a goblin and two halflings, clad in ostentatious black-and-yellow robes, all glaring menacingly. The party, undaunted, walks right up.

Long-Arms, Student Council President of Thunderbrush Metropolitan University, has no patience for these interlopers.

Saelhen's approach here is to pretend like the Headmaster told them that the Student Council would be generously showing them around town, and acting oblivious to any hostility. Long-Arms insists he will NOT be showing them to tea.

Looseleaf has as little patience for this guy as he does for her, and attempts to just walk right past them. She asks the actual guards where to go to get lab rats, and they helpfully give her directions, likewise ignoring the Student Council. She heads straight inside, much to the consternation of Long-Arms, still being thoroughly fucked-with by Saelhen's false politesse.

Saelhen attempts to flick a ball bearing at one of the bombs to knock it away, but accidentally sets it off instead. Still, this disorients the Student Council just long enough for Saelhen to turn invisible and slip inside, losing the Council in the process.

They pass through a magic security checkpoint of some sort, which... goes off, when Saelhen invisibly goes through. The guard is flummoxed, though- he writes it off as a false positive, since none of his detection magic seems to be picking up on Saelhen's form of invisibility.

(While invisible, Saelhen hears... sounds, in the distance somewhere. Almost like whalesong. Deep, reverberating moans. Heard by no one else.)

The party meets back up and heads to the office of Ondere Groove, head of the Zoology department.

Their job is to be a bureaucratic obstacle, but they're not interested in being a bureaucratic obstacle- they do some creative accounting to deal with the party's unusual situation as guests, and get some requisition forms for them to sign before sending them on their way. It's pretty painless- Blacksky University is apparently on the hook for the "losses" of the rats, but it's not the party's problem.

They head down to the basement, where the feed room is. Getting down there is a little more of an ordeal- Saelhen has to shake a Student Council tail by tripping them up with ball bearings, and there's a guard posted at a heavy locked trapdoor who has to run them by the rules of the ZOOLOGY STORAGE area. Long and short of it: don't let anything escape with you when you leave.

They head down a super deep stairwell, into a long corridor lined with huge glass windows opening into... holding cells? Terrariums?

There's a bunch of containment units for various monsters. Packs of wolf-sized feathered reptiles, a fifteen-foot-tall wooden marionette covered in wriggling runes, living distortions that look like jellyfish, a t-rex bobbledragon, a subtly-swaying silken cocoon, a collection of rocks stacking themselves on each other, and- to Looseleaf's considerable consternation, considering her species and an associated phobia- a giant spider.

The most notable specimen, though, is a few windows down, as they head down the hallway. And... this has gotta be a thing that's been in a video game, I bet I can google images it...

Okay, yep, cool, Monster Hunter done already did it so I don't gotta draw anything. Huge crystal scorpion!

Up on a catwalk inside the cell, holding a bundle of rags, is a terrified halfling girl, who seems deeply alarmed by the scorpion that she was surely already aware was in the room.

The scorpion seems to be targeting Saelhen in particular, for some reason. Looseleaf, assuming she'll be safe, attempts to use spirit magic to reinforce the glass... but fails. And Saelhen attempts to dance mesmerizingly to direct its strikes at less weakened parts of the glass... and also fails. Uh-oh.

The glass shatters, and combat begins!

Looseleaf starts by jumping up on its tail, the one place it can't sting. From there, she tries to improvise and restrain it with spirit magic- and, uh, fails again. She does, however, pick up on how most of the scorpion's body isn't part of the organism- there's some sort of shriveled internal musculature that's arranged some actual rocks into the shape of a scorpion.

Meanwhile, Saelhen attempts to keep the thing occupied. It's laser-focused on her, so she focuses on dodging, and expertly avoids its crystal hammerblows while occasionally tossing knives into cracks in its stone armor created by Oyobi's wild blows.

Saelhen du Fishercrown: "Are you even trying, gigantic scorpion?" Benedict (GM): It screeches a horrible grinding chalkboard noise. Saelhen du Fishercrown: "I will thank you not to speak of my mother that way."

Then... Looseleaf tries something. She has a thing called "Painread", a trick she learned by studying the torture wizard's notes, which allows her to simultaneously attack and learn the target's HP.

So, how does she advance Deep? Well... that connection she established...

Then it's Saelhen's turn to have a truly fantastic idea.

Normally, it's very difficult to send things to the other side. The other side wants to spit things back out. Things from this world don't belong there, and it takes the bracer's magic to keep them even partially submerged. There's resistance.

Benedict (GM): This thing? There is no resistance at all. It's smooth as silk, sinking into the other place with you. You've taken it back to where it's supposed to be. And it is screaming in terror. Do you want to stick around to see what happens to it, or head back?

The things on the other side swarm and devour the scorpion alive as it screams in panic and agony.

And meanwhile, in the material plane, the monsters in the nearby cages seem agitated, drawn to the same call, trying to push through the walls. Everyone is panicking about this, and the scorpion's disappearance.

Saelhen stays to watch for a bit- but it seems like the things that are eating the scorpion have started to notice her, and something takes a bite out of her leg. She pulls the plug and returns to the material plane- and the scorpion doesn't come with her. Looseleaf immediately treats the bite wound- which was full of nasty neurotoxin, and could've been fatal. Saelhen opts to store the extracted neurotoxin in a jar of honey.

The aftermath is pretty messy, but doesn't take too much remarking on. The Student Council shows up, demanding that they account for the disappearance of university property, and they stonewall 'em pretty hard. They get the box of one dozen rats they came for, no problem. As they leave, they go through security- and Evelyn shows up and verifies that Saelhen hasn't stolen the scorpion or anything. Long-Arms, cowed by his boss, is totally miserable.

The only real issue is- the girl in the enclosure earlier accosts them. Goldie Lightharvest, zoology student, was in charge of handling that specimen- it was her big term project, and now it's just gone? Where'd it go?

Saelhen stays pretty vague about this. She mentions she "sent it back where it came from" and provides no further useful details, much to Goldie's frustration.

This doesn't satisfy her, though, and it seems like she might be back later to make some trouble for the party for robbing her of her important zoology project.

Next time, though: it's time to do some science with lab rats to explore the limits of the bracer's abilities, spirit magic, and... uh, necromancy? Maybe???

-------

...That night: Looseleaf has a nightmare.

██████ hiding. ██████ seen ████ ███████ ██ ████████ ████ ████████. It's █ ███████ out there. ███ saw █ ████████ ████ ██ ████ ███████ █ ███ ████ ███ ████ █████, only ██ ██ ███ ████ ██ █ █████████ ████ ██ ██████, █████ ██████ ███ torn ██ ██████ ██ █ █████ ██ ████ ██████ ████-█████████- ███ █████ ██████ feeding █████████████████ ██ ██ ████ █ ████████ ████████ ████ ████ ████ ██████ █████ ███ ████ █████████ ████. ███████ ███ ██ ███ ██ safe ████. ███, hiding ██ ███ █████ █████ ███ █████ ███ ████████, ████ ██ ███ ████ ███ devoured ██ ████████ ███ █████ ████ █████. ████ ████ ████ ███ ███ longer ████ ███ ███ ████████. Time ██ █ ███████ ███ ██████ ███ ████ ████████ ██ ever █████████. ██████ █████ refuge ██ ███ █████ ██ ██ ████████ █████████, █████████ ██ ████ ███ ████████ ████ ██ slowly █████ ███ ██████ █████████ ████ ████ ███ ███ ██ feed. ███ ███ move ████ quickly ██████ ██ ███████ ███ █████ ████ ███ █████████, ███████ ████ ████████ ██ ███ █████ ███ ███████ ███████. ████ ██ ███ safest █████ ███ ████ ████ █████. ███ ███ █████ ██ █████████ ██ ███████ faster, ███ ████ ████ hiding █████ ████ ██ ██████ ██ safe. ██████ ████ ██ ██████ ███ ████ █████████ ████ ██ hide. ███ █████ ██ nowhere ██ hide, nowhere ██████ ███ ██████ ██ █████ █████. ██████ ████ ████████ █████████. You █████ ███ ████ ██ ████. ██████ █████ █ crack ██ ███ ███████ ██ ███ █████ █████ ███ ███- █████████ ███ tiny ████-█████████ █████████ enter, ███ █████ ██████ ████. █████████ █████ ███ ████ ███ ███████ ██████ eat ████. █████████ █████ ███ ████ ██████ ████ █████ ████ ██ safe. █████ ████████ nothing ██████ ████ ██ ██ devour ███ █████████, you feel █████████. ████ ████ ██ ████ ████ hiding █████. ███████ ███ █████ ██ ███ ██████ ██████████ ███, ███ █████ ██ run ██████ ███ open █████ ███████ ███ crack ██ ███ ███████, ████████ ███ ███ ██ ███ █████. ███████████, ███ ███ set upon ██ ████████ ███████. ████ ████████ ███ ███ ████ █████ █████, ███ fail ██ █████████ ██. ████ ██ ███ ████ eyes, ███ exposed █████ ██ ███, ███ ████ ████ ███████. ███ lose ███████ ██ ████ ██ ████ ███ ████ ███ safety. ██████ saved ██ █ ██████████ ████ ████ ██████ ████ ████- ███ grabs ███ ██████ ███ █████ ███ ████ ███ air, ██████████ █████ ██████ ████████ ████ █████ ███ ███████ █████ ██ agony ███████ ████ tiny █████. You ████ ██ choice ███ ██ █████, ███████ ████ ████ weapon ████ ███ ████ ████ ██ ████ █████ ██ ███ ███ ██████. ██ ███████ ███ █████ ███, ███ ██████ ███ ███ hit ██████ ████ █ █████ ████ ██████ █ █████ ███ weaknesses ██ ████ █████, ██████ ███ close ██ ███ █████ ██ ███ ███████. ███ █████ ██ ███ ████ ██ quickly ██ ███ ███, ████████ ███ ██████ █████████ ██ █████ exposed █████ █████ ████ ███ ██████-like ██████ ██ ████ ███████ █████. ███ reach ███ █████, ███ ███ █████ inside, ████████ ███ ███ ████████████ pain ██ ███ ████ ██████ ████████ ████ injuries. ███ █████ ███████ ███ █████, ██ and ██ and ██ and ██ and ██ and ███ ████ ████████ crushed. ███ ███ █████ ███████ ██ ███ █████ ██ █████████ ████████████ ████████. ██ ████████ ██ ███████ ███ ██████ ██ ████ █████ ███ █████████ ██ ███ ███ ████ ██ ██████████████ ████████ ███████. ███ ███ ██████ ██, ███████. ██ ███ ██ ███ ██ ███████ ████ ██████, ██ ███ ████████ ███████ ███ ████ ████ ███ ███████ ███ ██ ███ ███████. ██████ ██ ████ ███ ██ █████, ███ ████, ███████ ███ ███████████ ████████ ████ ██ ███ ██ ███- █████ █████████ ████ ██████ ██ ██████ ███. █████ ██ █████████ ██████ █████ ████ ██████. ███ █████ ████ ████ ██ ████ ██ ██. ████ ████ ███ ██████████████ ███████ █████ ██ ███ █████████ ██████████, ███ ████████. ██ ████ █████ ████████. ██████████ ████████.

███ ██ ███████ hurt. ███████, ██ ███████ hurt. ██ ██ ███ █████ █████ ██████ ████ ████ ██ ████ ████ ████ ██████ hurt. ███ ████ ███████ ██, ███████ ██████████ ████ ██ ███ █████ ██ █████ ████ ████ █████- ████ █████. ██ ██████ ███ ████ ███████ ██. ███████ ███████ ██ ████ ███████ ████ █████ ██ ████████ ███ hurt ███. ███ ████, ███ ████ ███ ████████ ██████ ███ █████, ███ ██████ ████ ████ ███. ██████ ████ █████████ ██ █ ██████, ███ ██████ ███████ ██ ███ ███- ███ ███ ███ ████ ████████ ██ █ █████ █████. ███████ ██ ███ █████ █████ ██ ██████ ██ ███ ███. ███ █████ ██ ██ ███ ███, ████████ ████ ███ ████████ ███████ ████████, ███ ██ ███████ hurt ███. ███ ████ ██ ████ ███ ████ ███ ████████ ██ █████ █████████. ███ █████ ████. ███ █████ ███ ████? ███████ hurts. ███████, ██████████, ███████ ██████ ███ ██ ███ ██ ███ ███ ███ ██ ████ ████████ ██████ ██ hurt ███. Panic █████ ████████ ████... ████? ███████. ███████ ███████ ██ ████ █████ ████. ██████ █████ ██████ ███ █████ ███████ ███ panic. ██ ███ ███. ███ █████ ████ ███ ████. ███ █████ █████ ██████ ████ ██ █████, █████ █████████ ██████ ██████ ███ ███ █████ hurt ███, ███ ███ ███ █████ ███ ████████ ███ █████ hurt. ███ █████ ████ ████ "heaven" ██, ███ ███ ██ ████ ████ ██████ ██ ███ ████ ████████ █████ ███ █████ ██. ██ █████████████- █ █████ █████ ███████ hurts.

███ █████ █████████ ████████ ███ ███ ████ ██ ██ ██ █████ ███ ██████ ███- ███ ████ █████. ████ ████ ███ ████ ███ █████ █████ ██ ███████ █████ ████ ███████ ████. ███ ███ █████ ███ ██ ███████. ███ █████ ██ ███ ██████- ███ ██████████, █████████ ████ █████ ███ ███ ████ ████ █████ ███████ ████ ██████ ██ ████ ██. ██ █████ ██ █████. ███ █████ panic, ██████ ████ ████ ████ ███ hurt. ███ █████ █ ████ ████ ████ ██ ████ █████. ███ █████ ██ █████��� ███ ████ ██ ████ ██████- ███ █████ ██ ███████ ███ panic ███ pain. ████ ███ ████ ███. ██ █████ hurt ███ ███████- ███ ███████ ███████ ████ ████████ ████████. ███ ████ █ █████ ████████ ██████████ ███. ██ ███ █ ████ ██ ███ ███. ███ ███ ███ ███ █████ ████ ████ █████. ██ █████ ██ ████ ███ ████ █████. ████ found you. ███ █████ ███ ██ ██ ████. ███ ██████ ████ ███ ███ ████ ███████, ███ █████ ████ ███ ███ ████ weapon. ███ ██████ and ██████ and ██████ and ██████ and ████ and ████ and ████ and ████. ████ too ████. ██████ █████ too ████. ███ ██████ panicking ██████. █████████, ███ ███ █████ ████ ██ ███████, hurts. ███ ██████. ███ ████ ███ █████ ████████ ██████ ███ █████████ ███ ███ ███ ███ ██████ ███ ██ ██ ███ ████.

███ ████ █████.

██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ███ █████ ████████ ██████ and ██████ and ██████.

██████████! ████, ███████ ███ █████ ████ ████ ██ ████ ███████ ████████████? ███████ ███ █████ ██ ████████ ███ ██████? ████ ██ ██ █████! ██ █████! ██ ██████! ███ ████ ███ ███ ██ ██████ ██!

███ ██████ ██████ ██ ██ ███ ███ ████ ████████ ████████. ███ ████-█████████, ███ ██████, ███ █████████ ████. ███ ███████ ██ █████ ██████ surround ███ drown ███. ███ ████ ███████ ██ hide.

███ ████ ████, ████? ████ ███ ████████. ████ ████ █ ████, █████ ███?

███ █████ ████████ █████ ███████ ███ ████ ███ ██████████, ███ e █ e █y █ █ █ n █ HURTS

She wakes up shaking, unable to remember the source of the panic wracking her body.

#twofaced jewel #tfj log

[itsbenedict]

Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 9

Get Hype For Warball!

A conwoman disguised as a noble and the delegation of university students studying her have arrived in the jungle city of Thunderbrush, ruled by ancient dryads and organized crime. Will they manage to stay uninvolved in shady conspiracies? (No.)

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Last time, the party followed up their experimentation with a spot of good old-fashioned book-learnin', at the local library. What they found was a vandalized and censored book of necromancy, and had to answer some pointed questions from the chief student advisor on their choice of research subject.

The next day... is the day of the Big Game.

That morning, Looseleaf is the first to wake up. Saelhen's a late sleeper- it'll be a couple hours before she gets out of bed and joins the fun, lying there in bed doing nothing whatsoever. W̡ei͏r͝d!̷

Looseleaf starts off the day with a spot of research- using her spirit sight to "see" through the ink censoring the pages of the necromancy textbook. It becomes clear that what's being censored isn't so much... the resource used by necromancy, so much as how that resource is handled. The ecumenes- the church/government hybrids that run much of society- are the ones who typically handle necrotic energy/thanergy/death essence/black mana.

Black mana is, apparently, used by the churches for resurrection rituals. It's no secret that the gods can raise the dead- but they're very cagey about the process and the restrictions that exist on that process, and what Looseleaf is discovering is that it requires a supply of necrotic energy to perform- which the gods can't just produce on their own, for some reason.

Looseleaf puts her studies aside for now- what's left is practical exercises, and Saelhen has been declared Chief Looseleaf Safety Officer and is currently no longer conscious.

Instead, she decides to get ready for the Big Game! She telepathically messages Oyobi- and Zzaiya, their waspfolk friend whose keys got stole earlier. Zzaiya seems to have been hoping they'd forget the invitation to watch the Big Game together, but acquiesces to being dragged to this sporting event/large social gathering, as her social anxiety vis-a-vis seeming rude outweighs her introversion.

En route...

Sounds like the Blacksky team is having some trouble with sabotage, despite the heavily-warded door and security magic around the locker room! Looseleaf's first instinct is to telepathically contact Orluthe via the soul-linked coin she provided him... only to immediately notice that Orluthe is like, right there, thirty feet away.

Looseleaf relays the situation she overheard to them- apparently, someone's slipped laxatives to some of the players, and they're doubled over and unable to play.

Oyobi, apparently, has been unsuccessfully trying to woo the team's Sword, Reef Blastbody, for some time- and she was considering trying to impress him by concocting an excuse to join the Warball team and show him her moves. Seems like someone got the exact same idea, for some reason, and decided to cause drama.

(Players reading this! You can probably solve this mystery, now! The culprit needed to be a student from Blacksky University to get past the wards, had the opportunity and means to eavesdrop on Oyobi's joke, and likes to pull pranks and cause lots of interpersonal drama for questionable reasons! Perhaps a potential culprit leaps to mind?)

Looseleaf and Oyobi announce themselves- and the team, friends of Oyobi's, let them in in a hurry.

From left to right:

Bud Chestplate, team Tank and team leader. She's huge and friendly and wields a giant shield the size of a parking space.

Flint Ironstag, team Flanker. He's hotheaded and easily pumped up by the first idea anyone suggests.

Buff Drinklots, team Healer. She's crabby and speaks in an utterly impenetrable dwarven accent.

Smash Lampjaw, team Sniper. He's dutiful and speaks in a differently-impenetrable word salad full of made-up vocabulary.

Reef Blastbody, team Sword. He's paranoid and condescending and has magical water powers.

Butch Deadlift (the team Interceptor) and Koboshi Gyuuniku (an elvish name which translates to Fist Beefmeat, the team Tankbuster) have been poisoned and are totally incapacitated, right before the Big Game!

Luckily, the only requirement for participation is that the members of the Blacksky team by Blacksky students... so Oyobi volunteers herself and Looseleaf as replacement Warball players!

...But Reef is having none of it. He's the paranoid sort, and thinks it's way too suspicious that two of their players get poisoned and then two more players just happen to show up to fill in! What were even the odds that they'd be here in the first place? He doesn't trust this for a second!

I... may or may not have written up the Warball exposition by the time I post this, but basically: to fill in as party mage, in a sport where everyone uses special armor and nonlethal weapons, she can't use actual deadly magic on the field. She needs to at least see the tools she'll have at her disposal to figure out if her magical talents are at all applicable to the job at hand.

Luckily, it turns out Looseleaf's spirit abilities mean she can scan and figure out the workings of this wand pretty easily!

...But she does have one other idea, which is just using her unique magic healing to just fix the laxatives problem. Which she goes to try, but, uh... the team's coach, Dry Forest Ablaze, objects immediately when it turns out she's not actually a cleric. Alternative healing methods, on his athletes? Right before the semifinals?! They'd get disqualified in a heartbeat! Experimental magical performance enhancing right before a game?

And Reef points out that the room's soundproofing isn't working, either, and this must be the trap! Disqualify the other team by catching them doping right before a game! It's a honeypot!

No, it's going to have to be done the old-fashioned way- so the team starts going over strategy. First off: taking inventory of the team's abilities!

This, plus...

And Oyobi, whose character sheet is pretty much as it is normally. Which was my first mistake, because I assumed Saelhen would be playing (rather than Farn temporarily playing Oyobi during combat), and didn't consider the impact of her abilities on the game balance.

See... they come up with a pretty hilarious cheese strat. Here are some facts:

Oyobi has an ability that's a holdover from D&D- the Colossus Slayer ranger ability, which in this system lets her do double damage to things that are more than twice her max HP.

Holding the Warball doubles your HP and damage.

She also has Hunter's Mark, which in this system lets her ignore evasion and cover with her arrow shots if she can get it off.

In Warball, player HP can be freely reassigned from a pool of 120 total hit points for the team, since it represents abstract "hit points" in magic game armor and not physical durability.

The captain has a huge-ass shield that serves as portable cover.

So the strategy is as follows: assign Oyobi exactly enough hit points to have at most half of the recommended minimum in the current meta, turning on her damage-doubler against every opposing player. Somehow. Don't ask how that works diegetically. Then, give her the Warball- usually held by the tank/captain to improve their survivability and prevent it being captured by the other team- to double her damage again. With two damage doublers on, use Hunter's Mark to negate enemy cover and defenses, and then hit the weak point for massive damage to oneshot the whole enemy team one by one before they can even close the distance, while having the rest of the team focus on defending the DPS.

Does this... work? Find out next time!

#twofaced jewel #tfj log

[itsbenedict]

Two-Faced Jewel: Thunderbrush 8

Necromancy Book Necromancy

A conwoman disguised as a noble and the delegation of university students studying her have arrived in the jungle city of Thunderbrush, ruled by ancient dryads and organized crime. Will they manage to stay uninvolved in shady conspiracies? (No.)

Story so far | Session log index | Previous session

Last time, the party did some rat-murder-related science on their boat, and sort of accidentally died-ish, plunged into the afterlife, and met a goddess. Identifying her as Lepichon, the next step is obvious: going to the library and doing actual research! What will they think of next?!

Before heading off to the library (and before finishing the giant pile of fruit Oyobi bought at the market while they were having a heart-to-heart last session), Looseleaf puts Orluthe on the telepathic call. Where's he been? She can sense he's somewhere on the TMU campus, but... he seems kind of alarmed to be contacted. He's kind of a nervous wreck by default, but he seems especially anxious at the current moment, and unsubtly tries to deflect conversation about what he's up to. They manage to get him to admit he's "preparing" for the Big Game somehow, but he's cagey on the details.

They suggest some ways to help, but...

Yeah, this sounds like a guy who's okay and has everything under control.

Further questioning suggests he may be trying to find some way to sneak into the away team lockers, where his team- the Blacksky Iron Hounds- will be cloistered in preparation for the big Warball match. He doesn't want the party to interfere, though- he's got a secret identity, and if they notice that the people who came into town with Orluthe happen to be helping out the Doomhound, they might put two and two together.

Options for subterfuge are floated:

Orluthe seems disinclined to risk this sort of thing, shutting down the party's offers to help and citing the risk that they could get in trouble.

A quick gossip session in Thieves' Cant later, the subject of Oyobi's bone theory is dismissed, and the party gets a move on to the library.

The university library isn't much of an obstacle- Looseleaf's an academic, there's no reason to have her roll to find the books she's looking for. The theology books do mention this Lepichon they're looking for, but...

Lepichon, Dustsweeper, Goddess of Ruin, is fairly enigmatic as gods go. She's notable for having no known clerics- for whatever reason, nobody's been able to match and channel her. You do, however, find references to her involvement in the practice of necromancy.

Further reference material is unavailable in the public stacks- but luckily, Looseleaf made that Faustian bargain earlier- Evelyn got to leech off her lifeforce overnight, in exchange for privileged access to various university facilities. With the official stamp of ghost dryad soul siphoning, it's no trouble to get access to the locked and restricted stacks that contain On The Practice of Necromancy, by Kokuzora Hibiko.

This thing's been censored and vandalized to hell and back! It's practically unreadable- everything that contains concrete details on how to do necromancy has been redacted, with the remainder being a series of warnings and cautionary tales vis-a-vis how you should not do necromancy. It's not especially enlightening! Something, something, sacrifices to Lepichon, maybe...

Looseleaf rolls a critical success on using spirit to read the book and figure out what happened to it.

So someone in a large room with a lot of busy people moving papers around non-secretly redacted a bunch of information from this book- but not as much as they'd like, with Looseleaf's senses on the job. She can't read it all just yet (manually parsing out letterforms using spirit senses one by one is a slow way to read), but those secrets will give themselves up.

While they're poring over this... Evelyn, who the bookshelves here are made out of, noclips out of the bookshelf and starts asking pointed questions about why Looseleaf is researching necromancy.

Looseleaf: Looseleaf flinches a bit, not expecting Evelyn to show up so immediately. "I mean... is that a bad thing?" "Like seriously I mean. I have no idea if that's, like, something I shouldn't admit to." "Is necromancy super bad or whatever? I don't quite know you folk's complete value systems yet." Benedict (GM): She smiles. "Oh, I wouldn't know. I've never associated myself with necromancy, you know. Never met a necromancer in my life."

Saelhen, wisely, rolls Something's Fishy to doubt this assertion. She rolls high.

Very weird! They're not able to wheedle much else out of her- and apparently, as she actually hasn't been involved with necromancy, she's a dead-end as far as finding out more about Lepichon goes. If they want to know more, she suggests talking to the ghost dryad Sycamori, who she seems to think is involved- and that Wilkin, who works down at the Temple of Andra/post office, has some sort of contact there.

They do take the opportunity, though, to ask about setting up an interview with the school's agriculture department- they've got to find someone who can take care of the Gardener! Evelyn gives them some contact details for Geoff Harvester, the head of that department, for them to set up a meeting at a later date.

After all this heavy-duty researchin', it's about time to turn in for the night... and tomorrow? Tomorrow is THE BIG GAME.

#twofaced jewel #tfj log #bit of a shorter one since it was a bit of a shorter session