Friday, June 15, 2012

This Was Their First Day In Vornheim

From Jack on G+
"
Had the greatest Dungeon Crawl Classics session in existence with Matt R and twins who hadn't played RPG's before. I have to write this whole thing out.

It started at the Beuracradome, which is a public arena where the big political players fight to decide the laws of Vornheim. Whenever someone disagrees with your policy, you both elect champions to fight - good arguments give bonuses to your champion's AC and Damage. Whoever wins forms the precedent.

The party had been refused some sweet armour by the church of Tittivallia so they were afire with righteous anger about the status quo. (The party elf needed a suit to stop the city's fatally iron-rich smog, but the church was using all their salvation suits against the flesh plague). The party warrior jumps down into the arena unannounced and starts laying into the leaders of Vornheim about their petty feuds, using the greatest speech. When they ask him his name he goes "I am... the Common Man!" (Actual name: Stoner).

The peasant audience goes wild, the nobles get furious. The regent challenges him with a breach of court and goes into the depths of the Beuracradome to get a frost giant champion that would crush him. Luckily, the party thief shadows him and sabotages the elevator to trap him in the Frost Giant's room. When the regent doesn't show, he forfeits and Stoner can get on to the argument proper.

He starts up an even better tirade against the church of Vorn- challenging him out for not helping Tittivallia fight the Flesh Plague. "We cannot sacrifice resources -" spits the Vorn Pope, and he answers "Is not sacrifice sacred in the eyes of Vorn? Do you consider yourself... ABOVE HIM?!" The peasant crowd's idolizing him like a folk hero now (His 0-level occupation was astrologer, too, so this guy is seriously some kind of warrior-poet).

The Pope is screaming "My champion is Vorn! We will see who is sacred in his eyes!" and Stoner strikes a pose and yells "My champion is... The people of Vornheim!"

Suddenly the whole place goes silent. The announcer stammers "Our next challenge... the great god Vorn VS. the People of Vornheim!" Sudden torrential red rain starts up and the ground starts moving and a giant iron face is barely visible moving down through the rain and everyone starts screaming.

So Sodom and Gomorrah is happening, and the PC's decide the best way to stop it is to go up to very top of the city and bargain with Vorn. Vornheim has two giant towers that look like massive outstretched hands in the middle of the city - the Palace Massive (with the Beuracradome) and the Eminent Cathedral (With the church of Vorn).

The thief (Cray the Slave) goes up the Eminent cathedral, and fights through all the crisis-of-faith shit and throws a bunch of worshippers out of stained-glass windows and the Sister Superior's slit her wrists and he rescues a bunch of nuns and all the gaudy trappings of the corrupt church and brings them to the top of the Spire of Unspeakable Hogs.

For the Elf, the rusty rain is like burning acid, so he breaks into the box of a Elf Noble to steal his airtight Salvation Suit. He finds the noble calling "Attack! Vornheim is weak!" into a crystal and wrestles him down and steals all his clothes. He tries to reactivate the communicator and call off the invasion, but fails a magic check and breaks it.

Stoner climbs up the Palace Massive. He gets the Popess of Tittivallia to make a fleshy corpse-bridge part-way up, then ditches his plate armor so it won't slow him down and climbs up into the regents quarters in his undies. There he finds seven mirrors, each with a different side of himself (most going "OH SHIT WHAT DID WE DO?"), and the clothes of Wise Lord Thrawl, the missing ruler of Vornheim. He puts the clothes on and gets to the top.

At the top of both the spires Stoner and Cray stand in front of the hollow eyes of Vorn and make the greatest speech yet. Cray goes good cop, getting the nuns to pray, burning the gold and tapestries and going "There is not a single unbeliever left in this city." Stoner goes bad cop, like the church was terrible and Vorn was called down for petty reasons on a people who have never done anything but try and serve him. They finish and the great iron head bends down like a nod and draws back into the red haze. The rain stops, all the water floods out to stain the ground red twenty miles in every direction. The eminent cathedral shudders and twists to become totally filled with iron.

Now the city is flooded, the Flesh plague is worse than before, the elves are marching in to attack. The regent is encased in ice, the pope and almost everyone in the church of Vorn is encased in iron, and "The Common Man" was last seen standing on the top of the palace, turning back Vorn, dressed in the clothes of the missing ruler of Vornheim.

And that's how my PC's reached level 2.
"


Note to the twins:
Yes, fighting God at first level on your first day playing is atypical.



_

12 comments:

  1. That is a hell of an opening scene.

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  2. Very nice. Reeks a bit like something MiƩville might have dreamt up...

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    1. Definetly totally cool. I like when things like that happen emerging from actual play.

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  3. So, what do they do next time to top that?

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    1. Fucked if I know, man. I thought they were just going to steal from people. I had a nice "Stealing from people on the docks" adventure all made up, and I figured then maybe they'd graduate to stealing from people in the marketplace. Now I have to make stuff for rebuilding a city and fighting off an invasion.

      I've started making the elves, though. I figure they're basically insects, and they live in a massive floating ice shard honeycombed with tunnels bored out by frost serpents.

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    2. Well, that sounds pretty awesome. I'd want to go there, if I were playing in that game. I dunno if it tops Actual Manifestation Of Divinities, but I bet it could.

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  5. NO THEY'RE DOING IT WRONG THEIR FUN IS BADWRONG AND NOT THE WAY VORNHEIM IS MEANT TO BE PLAYED WON'T ANYONE THINK OF THE SAAAAAAAAD ELVES?

    Also, wow, maybe the best actual play report I've ever ever seen. And by wow I mean HOLY FUCK KUDOS SIR.

    And by HOLY FUCK KUDOS SIR I mean WE ARE NOT WORTHY.

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  6. Um, I normally hate it when people say "that was epic," but I think this literally qualifies as "epic."

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