It Must be Bunnies
May. 22nd, 2010 02:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothLast night we started playing on a GURPS game I was somehow convinced to run. They, um, well, they got out of the city. Barely.
In the middle of the dark side of the moon of Pan, where the sun hasn't been seen in 50 years, since the end of the war against the Woodlanders, is the City of Darkness, ruled by the Lord of Darkness -- the last bastion of Satyr civilization on the moon they once ruled.
For a city of darkness, it's very brightly lit. It's a city of parties, and drunkenness, and magic, and more drunken revelry... a million people huddled in a multi-level complex built around sky-scraping towers of stone, the largest of which is the Lord of Darkness' citadel. Outside the city walls, and past a short safe area inside the range of the city's seige weapons, is the dark wilderness where monsters roam.
Most Satyrs are content to let the monsters stay out there in the dark where they don't have to see them or think about them, but a few are stupid. Sorry, ADVENTUROUS. Armitage was one such, a bunny-satyr enchanter known for dangerous wild effects that often made his wares too dangerous to use... but occasionally, resulted in something that couldn't have been made on purpose, like the 'item' he leased to the miner cats under the city, that made him a very rich enchanter that no one in their right mind would buy from.
There was even an adventure to be had! Every so often, the darkness enfolding the moon of Pan would be broken by a 'falling star' -- usually, a ship of some sort destroyed by its passage throughh the dense aerial forest that kept the dark side of the moon in darkness. One of them was out there now, lit up by a spotlight of sorts from the hole it had torn in the canopy, up in the mountains where no one could get to it easily except for birds, who couldn't generally carry much.
His quest for companions turned up an eclectic bunch. The horse-satyr Carnelian (although he, or maybe she, refused to even tell him that much) claimed a vast array of skills, none of which she (or maybe he) actually possessed. Gamble (who didn't remember her name, although she was willing to go by whatever Armitage wanted to call her) wasn't a person at all, instead a magical construct designed for, well, currently outfitted for combat, anyway. And the necromancer -- sorry, the HEALER -- appeared to be your ordinary... um... human? Almost? With semi-functional wings, and cat-ears? Maybe she was a human who'd screwed up with an Upgrade powerup, or a visit to the Temple of the Father? She was a healer, though, and everyone (except Carnelian) agreed that you needed a healer if you were going to go adventuring.
No one wanted to sign Armitage's contract, though. He offered to pay for their equipment anyway, as well as the food and party supplies they'd need for a trip through the deadly, monster-infested wilderness. Gamble got some powder and shot for her gun, the healer got some blue powerups for emergency mana restoration, and Armitage spent some money on random interesting alchemy items for his own use while he was there...
After nearly killing and then saving some kids who were all jumping off a bridge (while a friend below waited to catch them with magic), and dealing with a bucket of starving crazed weasels (Armitage won the weasel-catching contest by using a beast-summoning item), they were finally ready to leave the city, in Armitage's brand sparkling new Autowagon, a horseless coach capable of travelling at truly unsafe speeds.
Armitage's familiar met them at the gate, in the shape of a horse, and after offering to let all the non-ambiguously female party members 'ride' him, challenged Armitage to a race. It was a close thing, since the wagon was only a little faster than a horse running all out and had to stick to the road, and in the end the horse won by a nose! And then turned into a coyote and decided to ride the rest of the way, because he was kind of tired after running half a kilometer full out.
Carnelian had somehow acquired one of the bucket-weasels -- who seemed to be an off-world weasel, and therefore non-intelligent -- and the familiar turned into a weasel to 'court' it, chasing it into a drawer, from which sounds of fighting or something could be heard for a while.
They travelled on through the darkness for a while, until Armitage spotted a trap up ahead, and stopped the autowagon. The terrain to either side was a bit too rough to off-road without clearing away some brush and stumps first, and the road itself had a glowing magical section -- obviously a trap -- and a hidden set of spikes buried at the far end -- even more obviously a trap. The healer spotted bunnies to either side of the road, lying in wait. Yes, it was a trap.
But the bunnies weren't about to attack them while they were still in the wagon, and they weren't about to drive it into the trap on purpose. After a few minutes of staring at each other and pretending that they didn't know the others were there, one of the bunnies limped out into the road, crying for help and begging for a rescue from the pack of wolves chasing him.
The party wasn't fooled. Carnelian pretended to be, though, and cast a Flash spell to blind all the rabbits, under the pretense of miscasting a light spell. That was enough to send them running, for the moment. Armitage disarmed the spike trap, by setting it off safely, but the spikes were blocking the road and there was that stupid magical trap, which turned out to be a glue patch -- they'd have to get out and clear the brush.
While they were doing that, the bunnies came back, spotted once again by the healer and Armitage... at least until the mage-bunny started setting the warrior-bunnies on fire. Everyone saw that. And heard the ululating war cries the bunnies started making, trying to spook the party.
The healer wasn't fooled -- this was obviously a diversion. So she turned and started searching for signs of other bunnies sneaking up from behind, while Gamble and Carnelian readied their weapons and Armitage... shot at the mage with a Rain of Acid arrow.
So the bunnies attacked! This proved to be a mistake. Two of them were killed almost instantly by Carnelian and Gamble, and the others were parried before they could detonate their flaming armor spells by giving those two a great big hug. Armitage impaled the mage-bunny when it tried to run off with a wall of force arrow, knocking it unconscious as a side effect of trapping it inside, and the surviving warrior-bunnies ran off, flaming tails between their flaming legs.
Meanwhile, the healer finally noticed the rogue-bunnies sneaking into the cart through the ballista mount on top, and followed them inside, where she surprised them by turning into a ghost and possessing one of the ones ransacking the drawers. Armitage heard the fighting inside, and turned on his lightning armor for maximum intimidation, which sent the non-possessed bunnies running with whatever they could carry (which ended up being 'not much', they'd only had a few seconds to search). The healer un-possessed the bunny, leaving it asleep, and reformed into physical form before anyone in the party was the wiser.
Between the possession letting the healer read her victim's memories, and Armitage's interrogation of the bunny-mage after they healed him back to consciousness [which took some doing since he was at -19 out of 5 hp], they discovered that the bunnies were bandits who robbed travellers using their little glue-patch trap thing. There was a warren of about 60-70 of them a mile off the road, with various looted treasure inside... but it was all bunny-scale, so not much of a dungeon crawl for a satyr-sized party. So Armitage made a note of the location, in case they passed that way again with some method of shrinking themselves down to size.
last session, different campaign | next session
In the middle of the dark side of the moon of Pan, where the sun hasn't been seen in 50 years, since the end of the war against the Woodlanders, is the City of Darkness, ruled by the Lord of Darkness -- the last bastion of Satyr civilization on the moon they once ruled.
For a city of darkness, it's very brightly lit. It's a city of parties, and drunkenness, and magic, and more drunken revelry... a million people huddled in a multi-level complex built around sky-scraping towers of stone, the largest of which is the Lord of Darkness' citadel. Outside the city walls, and past a short safe area inside the range of the city's seige weapons, is the dark wilderness where monsters roam.
Most Satyrs are content to let the monsters stay out there in the dark where they don't have to see them or think about them, but a few are stupid. Sorry, ADVENTUROUS. Armitage was one such, a bunny-satyr enchanter known for dangerous wild effects that often made his wares too dangerous to use... but occasionally, resulted in something that couldn't have been made on purpose, like the 'item' he leased to the miner cats under the city, that made him a very rich enchanter that no one in their right mind would buy from.
There was even an adventure to be had! Every so often, the darkness enfolding the moon of Pan would be broken by a 'falling star' -- usually, a ship of some sort destroyed by its passage throughh the dense aerial forest that kept the dark side of the moon in darkness. One of them was out there now, lit up by a spotlight of sorts from the hole it had torn in the canopy, up in the mountains where no one could get to it easily except for birds, who couldn't generally carry much.
His quest for companions turned up an eclectic bunch. The horse-satyr Carnelian (although he, or maybe she, refused to even tell him that much) claimed a vast array of skills, none of which she (or maybe he) actually possessed. Gamble (who didn't remember her name, although she was willing to go by whatever Armitage wanted to call her) wasn't a person at all, instead a magical construct designed for, well, currently outfitted for combat, anyway. And the necromancer -- sorry, the HEALER -- appeared to be your ordinary... um... human? Almost? With semi-functional wings, and cat-ears? Maybe she was a human who'd screwed up with an Upgrade powerup, or a visit to the Temple of the Father? She was a healer, though, and everyone (except Carnelian) agreed that you needed a healer if you were going to go adventuring.
No one wanted to sign Armitage's contract, though. He offered to pay for their equipment anyway, as well as the food and party supplies they'd need for a trip through the deadly, monster-infested wilderness. Gamble got some powder and shot for her gun, the healer got some blue powerups for emergency mana restoration, and Armitage spent some money on random interesting alchemy items for his own use while he was there...
After nearly killing and then saving some kids who were all jumping off a bridge (while a friend below waited to catch them with magic), and dealing with a bucket of starving crazed weasels (Armitage won the weasel-catching contest by using a beast-summoning item), they were finally ready to leave the city, in Armitage's brand sparkling new Autowagon, a horseless coach capable of travelling at truly unsafe speeds.
Armitage's familiar met them at the gate, in the shape of a horse, and after offering to let all the non-ambiguously female party members 'ride' him, challenged Armitage to a race. It was a close thing, since the wagon was only a little faster than a horse running all out and had to stick to the road, and in the end the horse won by a nose! And then turned into a coyote and decided to ride the rest of the way, because he was kind of tired after running half a kilometer full out.
Carnelian had somehow acquired one of the bucket-weasels -- who seemed to be an off-world weasel, and therefore non-intelligent -- and the familiar turned into a weasel to 'court' it, chasing it into a drawer, from which sounds of fighting or something could be heard for a while.
They travelled on through the darkness for a while, until Armitage spotted a trap up ahead, and stopped the autowagon. The terrain to either side was a bit too rough to off-road without clearing away some brush and stumps first, and the road itself had a glowing magical section -- obviously a trap -- and a hidden set of spikes buried at the far end -- even more obviously a trap. The healer spotted bunnies to either side of the road, lying in wait. Yes, it was a trap.
But the bunnies weren't about to attack them while they were still in the wagon, and they weren't about to drive it into the trap on purpose. After a few minutes of staring at each other and pretending that they didn't know the others were there, one of the bunnies limped out into the road, crying for help and begging for a rescue from the pack of wolves chasing him.
The party wasn't fooled. Carnelian pretended to be, though, and cast a Flash spell to blind all the rabbits, under the pretense of miscasting a light spell. That was enough to send them running, for the moment. Armitage disarmed the spike trap, by setting it off safely, but the spikes were blocking the road and there was that stupid magical trap, which turned out to be a glue patch -- they'd have to get out and clear the brush.
While they were doing that, the bunnies came back, spotted once again by the healer and Armitage... at least until the mage-bunny started setting the warrior-bunnies on fire. Everyone saw that. And heard the ululating war cries the bunnies started making, trying to spook the party.
The healer wasn't fooled -- this was obviously a diversion. So she turned and started searching for signs of other bunnies sneaking up from behind, while Gamble and Carnelian readied their weapons and Armitage... shot at the mage with a Rain of Acid arrow.
So the bunnies attacked! This proved to be a mistake. Two of them were killed almost instantly by Carnelian and Gamble, and the others were parried before they could detonate their flaming armor spells by giving those two a great big hug. Armitage impaled the mage-bunny when it tried to run off with a wall of force arrow, knocking it unconscious as a side effect of trapping it inside, and the surviving warrior-bunnies ran off, flaming tails between their flaming legs.
Meanwhile, the healer finally noticed the rogue-bunnies sneaking into the cart through the ballista mount on top, and followed them inside, where she surprised them by turning into a ghost and possessing one of the ones ransacking the drawers. Armitage heard the fighting inside, and turned on his lightning armor for maximum intimidation, which sent the non-possessed bunnies running with whatever they could carry (which ended up being 'not much', they'd only had a few seconds to search). The healer un-possessed the bunny, leaving it asleep, and reformed into physical form before anyone in the party was the wiser.
Between the possession letting the healer read her victim's memories, and Armitage's interrogation of the bunny-mage after they healed him back to consciousness [which took some doing since he was at -19 out of 5 hp], they discovered that the bunnies were bandits who robbed travellers using their little glue-patch trap thing. There was a warren of about 60-70 of them a mile off the road, with various looted treasure inside... but it was all bunny-scale, so not much of a dungeon crawl for a satyr-sized party. So Armitage made a note of the location, in case they passed that way again with some method of shrinking themselves down to size.
last session, different campaign | next session
