This is a writeup of Session 6 of Miranda Elkins’ Cuccagna campaign, where we exploring and plundering the mysteriously abandoned manse of the famous wizard Prospero the Blue. It was hastily written up for record keeping purposes during play and may make for poor reading. If this campaign sounds like fun to you, there are still spots available. Consider joining in!

Legend

  • Bold text: NPC or monster
  • Italics: Location or feature
  • Underline: Treasure

Characters

Player Characters

PC Class and level Player
Prospero the Violet Magic-User 1 A.
Wren the Weird & Purple Changeling 1 M.
Graciela the Good Cleric 1 B.
Petra Dwarf 1 KC
John Napkin Fighter 1 MCB

Hirelings brought along

Hireling Class / Type Employer
Dame Losaneta Fighter Prospero the Violet
2 porters   Wren
Açittus Fighter Graciela
Dragonus Thief Prospero the Violet

So before we even start

Graciela has been giving out alms which due to a roll on the uhhhh philanthropy table, the beggars have been getting creative and now all new hirelings for the next month will be missing one hand. This is new PC John Napkin’s first contact with Miranda’s games.

Meanwhile Prospero the Violet manages to learn Protection from Evil from a scroll he found. Now he won’t be harmed by evil!

Then we start

We return to the manse of Prospero the Blue. We start by looping back around to Caliban’s workshop, but listening at the door we hear a loud, heavy clinking which we attribute to the glass men. Wanting nothing to do with those guys, we bail.

Wren suggests we check out the nearby room where we previously encountered the glass men. There are exactly 6, just like last time, so maybe that’s not what’s happening?

Returning to the workshop, we peer in and see 3 more glass men. We argue for a while, Prospero remembers that protection from evil prevents all damage from constructed beings. I get too excited and accidentally say “protection from email”. Miranda tells me that’s the title of the session report.

Prospero casts protection from evil, slips into the workshop, and walks right past the furious glass men, grabbing a fancy sword and a book from the workstation. Immediately upon leaving Prospero casts hold portal on the door to the workshop and tells Dragonus he’s fired because what is the point of him now. Graciela hires him on the spot.

Upon examination, we determine the sword to be a thing of the old gods (so probably usable by changelings) and that the journal is indeed the one we were looking for, sought after by Prospero the Green.

Since the spell is still going we return to the theatre-looking room where the other 6 glass men are and pull the same stunt. Prospero strides across the room to check out the stage and examine the spotlights. He also looks around for a trap door on the stage under the furious but ineffectual pummeling of the glass men. Finding nothing, Prospero the Violet leaves. As he does, the glass men seem to give up, suggesting a degree of intelligence.

We get the crystal ball

Prospero the Violet urges everyone to hightail back to the crystal ball room to the south before the protection spell wears off.

We return to the room before the crystal ball room and remember that there is a pressure plate trap that triggers sleeping gas and net. Graciela asks Dragonus to go find the pressure plate. Dragonus says it’s fine and they probably haven’t even reset the trap yet before accidentally activating the trap, getting knocked out and netted. While the party wakes him and stands guard, Prospero rushes into the next room, nabs the crystal ball (now protected from its attacks), and comes back out.

Why not check out level 2

We head up the nearby stairs up to level 2 while I quietly torture myself wondering if up or down is more dangerous in this dungeon.

Level 2 has like a bunch of doors and stuff, it’s a dungeon I guess. The first one we check out has a bunch of shrieker mushroom so we don’t hang around that room.

A room with impeccable vibes

We check out another room which is very large and floor is lined with what look like thick glass manhole covers ringed with metal.1 Graciela looks down and sees that under one glass panel is a man with huge ears suspended in green muck.2 Another contains a similar-looking man but with horns instead of giant ears. A third contains what appears to be Blemmye. A fourth looks like a person whose face is warped into a Greek tragedy mask. We suspect this may be where Prospero the Blue grows his freaks. Miranda mentions these can be opened but shockingly no one takes her up on it.3

Exploring further we notice that one of the tanks appears to be broken open, a totally normal non scary discovery that does not at all remind me of this scene from FF7

a-good-energy.png

Wren detects the telltale draft of a secret door. Probing around, Graciela puts her foot through one of the glass panes revealing it to be an ~illusion~. I don’t really understand how the space works here but Graciela discovers a panel on the other side. She pushes on it, activating some mechanism and causing a door to open.

Hey guys we haven’t lost a hireling in a while

Beyond is a room lit by flickering torchlight. Graciela sends Dragonus to scout the room and he “slinks off in a cocksure posture.” Then he rounds a corner and exclaims “ah fuck!” before immediately being blasted with something that looks like a firework. Fs in chat for Dragonus.

Using a mirror, Petra peers around the same corner and spies 3 figures that look like this:

oh-cool-who-are-these-guys.png

They are standing around some object that looks “like something you’d see in the engine room of a midcentury battle ship”. Someone with a thick Averois accent challenges us to show ourselves. Wren pops in and casts sleep, putting the lie to whatever threat they were about to utter.

So clearly we empty their pockets

They have these things:

  • An herb called Gax's Quill, worth 500 gp and facilitating the transcription of spells. (Specifically the cost and transcription time are reduced as if the spell were one level lower.)
  • A pouch of platinum pieces
  • A wooden crate

We also take their robes. These suggest they might be Prospero the Blue’s apprentices, although perhaps not very high ranked ones.

The party inspects the machinery and determine it feeds into the goo pipes on level 1. I don’t really remember what was going on with that.

We spend a while being afraid of the crate. Finally Petra decides to be the person with courage and starts probing the crate with her 10-foot pole. Sliding it open, it is revealed to be full of small metal pucks slightly shinier than lead.

Being a dwarf, Petra recognizes the substance as "hot silver", which has magical properties because it is radioactive causes strange burns and illnesses from extended exposure. We estimate it to be worth about 500 gp.

We take the apprentices’ robes, using one to wrap up the pucks and the other two to protect the porters, who will haul the crate.

Vat antics

We go back to the room with the vats and inspect them further. Their contents include:

  • 2 Blemmyes, one of whom has a stunted head, plus a third thing that might be a partially formed Blemmye
  • 2 of what appears to be ordinary middle aged human men, at least from the waist up
  • 3 Big ears: 1 cyclopic, 2 with little horns and beards (a bit like satyrs)
  • Tragedy mask face guy
  • A torso and head with limbs ending in feet
  • Janus-faced guy
  • I think there are some more I missed.

Then we get sleepy and extract.

The haul

  • Per PC: 638 XP, 541 gp, 6 sp, 6 cp
  • Per hireling: 319 XP, 270 gp, and 8 sp, 3 cp

Deaths

  • Dragonus the Thief

Treasure

  • Gax’s quill (500 gp – claimed by Prospero the Violet)
  • Pouch of platinum (100, or 1000 gp worth)
  • Crystal ball (250)
  • Fancy sword (magical!! – claimed by Wren)
  • Prospero the Blue’s journal (claimed by Prospero the Violet)
  • Crate of plutonium hot silver (500)
  • 3 sets of robes (500 each)

Monsters Defeated

  • 3 apprentices
  • 9 glass men, sort of

New Friends and/or Enemies

  • I dunno how those blue robe guys are gonna feel about us
  • Glass men probably hate us now too

  1. Hold on a dang second are we in B1??? ↩

  2. Nope guess not. ↩

  3. Actually Miranda just confirmed out of character that yes this is B1. ↩