Party with the Furries

The town of Hope’s Heart throw a massive party, because - well, because we just murdered a murderer and now there will be less murders? Anyway, it’s also the night of the full moon and these fuzzy bastards know how to throw down. The younger ones went into a dungeon for some personal bondage play first, but we didn’t get invited to that part.

Not to be outdone, Cleetus revisits his money-maker from his college days and does the Full Monty for all the FMILFs. Rusty starts off running a drinking game, but he doesn’t make a tenth of what Cleetus pulls in in silver coins shoved somewhere. So he wanders back into the inn and builds a dishwasher.

The following morning, the townsfolk are badly hung over and Cleetus does the walk of shame in the wee hours. Once we are all up, and fully clothed again, the party heads off to the causeway to return to Ludendorf. We’re planning on catching up with Helena (Gustav’s daughter) to inform her of her father’s demise.

Causeway Battle Royale

At the causeway we bump into a larger version of Horus. The person in physically bigger, but their clothes are physically smaller. This is Adam, an 8 year old psychopath shoved into the flesh golem version of the Hulk. The party is appropriately deferential, but Ethan really wants this fight to go down, so initiative it is.

Rusty & Wit are first (26), Cletus is next (24), then Adam, then Louie and Raymond (22) and lastly Horus and Gary (18).

Wit was going to cast spells (Hold Monster) but he doesn’t have the reagents and we haven’t settled on his psychic spells yet. So he thinks eye beams are the next best thing, but apparently he has not yet figured out that they don’t work in Lamordia. How long have we been here? So he wastes his turn. Rusty takes too long thinking, so Cleetus jumps in and grapples Adam - surprisingly successfully. It’s a bit like Ant Man putting the Hulk in a sleeper hold, but if it works, right?

Rusty then joins in with a Firebolt to Adam’s face, which does pretty solid damage, but doesn’t seem to annoy him much. That honour goes to Louie, who makes an off-hand comment about how he expected Adam’s preferred method of smashing to be defenstrating his opponents. Adam really didn’t like that.

Horus then makes an attempt to diplomatically calm Adam down, and was surprisingly successful. Rusty honestly was not expecting that to work, but Horus gets Adam to the point where he isn’t going to hurt anyone in the party - not even the pyromaniac Rusty - except for Louie. He’s going to fuck Louie up. He starts by firing a lightning bolt out of his foot, and hitting Louie square in the face with it.

Cleetus continues to hold Adam down. Wit takes the lightning hit to get into melee range and tries to put Adam out with his stunning tentacles. He makes Adam burn through another Legendary Resistance, but that’s about all.

Rusty decides to separate the feuding parties by yeeting Louie into the ocean. This works. Adam calms down.

I’m melting!

Louie is less than calm. He was stunned (courtesy of that lightning bolt) when he went in to the water, but snapped out sharply. Ethan, with Jim’s willing complicity, decides that Louie is green, the wicked witch of the west is green, so salt water should absolutely fuck him up. One level of exhaustion straight off the bat, and that’s only because he rolled a one on d6. There was an 18% getting wet was going to straight up kill him, apparently. He needs to get out of the water, fast.

Getting straight out isn’t really an option, however. Adam is still at the shoreline, chatting to the rest of the party. Thankfully, there is a lighthouse quite close by that Louie swims around the back of and climbs out of the water. Then he rinses himself off with fresh water as fast as he can.

Meanwhile, the party (mainly Cleetus) are bullshitting like champions, saying the killing that fucker Fran was obviously required. He had it coming. His identical twin Louie should be around here somewhere, though. Louie hears this and quickly changes his clothes around to help with the deception, and re-introduces himself. Adam is convinced, and then heads off to join the furry party. Better late than never.

Off to University

The causeway opens up, and we walk across it to Ludendorf. As we approach the University, we realize that:

1. We aren’t allowed in; and
2. We have an outstanding task (deliver a poison to Whale End) that would provide us with University access.

So we keep walking. Whale End is on the other side of Lamordia. That’s only about 14 miles as the crow flies, according to the map. By the D&D 5E movement rules, we can stealth there in under a day. Traveling at normal speed, we’d be there for a late lunch.

Lamordia is not a large domain.

We’re off on an adventure!

We traverse the Forest of Rust almost without incident. We do spot Nolzur doing a spot of landscape painting, but just wave and continue on. Louie takes the opportunity to rehydrate himself in the fresh water river, and comes out unable to see, and silver. That’s weird.

Passing through the Old Towers, we come across the eponymous Old Towers. They are a set of 12 iron menhir, engraved with mystic symbols. Rusty can tell they are made from iron from Mordent, of all places. He has heard about something similar while he was chatting with Wit, so he called Wit over for some expert input. Are these menhir a form of Teleportation Circle? Wit says - not exactly. There are some similarities, but instead of transporting you somewhere else, they project your consciousness? Also, they appear to be activated by electricity.

Rusty wonders where on earth he put that Shocking Grasp cantrip device, then remembered he had given it to Horus. Horus didn’t have much use for the Firebolt device he was originally given, and the Shocking Grasp device can be used as a self healing device in a pinch. So we called Horus over and asked him to run out the jumper cables.

Walk this way

The party finds itself in a completely different place - they foyer of a finely maintained castle. We look around, and there is nobody there. From behind a voice says “Velcome, Masters!” Without turning around, Rusty says “Igor!” Then we turn around and see a patchwork hunchback. “I am Igor.” Rusty was right! He’s not exactly sure how, but he was!

Igor leads us to a huge hall. At one end is a massive pipe organ that inexplicably sounds like a piano. Louie is entranced and starts to ask if someone could play a bit of honky tonk - but having already pissed off one big bad today, he thinks better of it. Having completed his recital, a tall figure rises from the keyboard and turns to the party.

“Rusty! I didn’t expect to see you back. Have you found your parents yet?” Rusty remembers this guy, but apologises for not recalling his name. He informs the figure that his memories were stripped from him by a filthy mind flayer, and he has only recently started to recover them.

The man introduces himself as Count Strahd Von Zarovich. Rusty fixed his organ one time. They chat like old friends. Strahd mentions that he has seen Xalitith passing through, and that he is most likely to be found at whatever the center of highest learning there is in his local area. Good to know.

Also, there is a character called Rustinium wandering about who is the result of a soul-splitting experiment Strahd did that went wrong. Strahd is the evil clone, Rustinium is the good one. Nice bit of self-awareness there. Rustinium probably built the menhir we used to get here, which is appropriate because they were a bit Rusty.

Rusty is also quietly concerned about the similarity between Rustinium’s name and his own. Surely that is a coincidence.

Eventually Strahd says that the adventurers were approaching the gates to rescue his dinner guest Tatiana. He motions toward a woman sitting at the dining table, chained to her chair and gagged. Strahd says that he will be a bit busy soon, it was nice to catch up with old friends, and that he would see us out. Then he makes a pushing motion with his hands, and the party finds itself back on the hillside and the Old Towers again.

The party then spends a significant amount of time looking at Rusty very suspiciously. Especially Horus. That seemed a bit rich, Horus judging someone on superficial appearances, given the body he is currently inhabiting. Rusty doesn’t get what the problem is - you get to meet a lot of odd folk when you’re working as an appliance repair contractor.

Follow the leads

As we chat, we see four people approaching. They are walking robotically, and completely ignore the party, even as Rusty opens the crates they are carrying and starts rifling through the contents. We decide to follow them. They are showing all the signs of interference by Yitthalx, and maybe they’ll lead us to him. Or to something he cares about.

Not far along, there is a minor earthquake, then all the people talk in unison. It’s Yitthalx blathering on about something stupid and self-absorbed. We ignore him. He has all the people commit suicide in front of us. That’s irritating - now we have to carry the stuff. We loot the bodies:

• One crate worth of climbing gear.
• One crate worth of copper pipes, glass tubing, and other alchemical raw materials.
• One crate with a Flumph tentacle, a vial of some unidentified liquid, and a needle. It is not declared whether this is an IV or sewing needle.
• One crate full of radiation detectors. Louie lights them up like a Christmas tree.
• Personal papers for 4 people, and 12 Lamodes.

Wit carefully reviews the papers, and memorises the papers for the largest of the people.

As we’re clearing up, Horus finds a small doll, and notices a ghostly woman atop the hill. Ethan may or may not have watched “Wuthering Heights” for Valentines Day, but we’re stuck with a sad ghost woman now.

Heathcliff, it’s me…

Horus follows the ghostly woman - that only he can see - up the hill, and the rest of the party follows him. We find ourselves in Linkboy’s Lot, a massive junkyard, and confronted by a 4 year old girl on a pile of junk. Her name is Gertrude, and she asks Horus if he can see her Mum. He says he can, and offers to return her doll to her. She jumps off the pile of junk, and it collapses on the party, burying Horus, Rusty and Wit. Workers rush over to help dig us out. Gertrude whispers to Horus “Please play along with Ludmilla”, as 3 weirdos turn up and start to berate us, each other, and the workers for varying imagined infractions.

The female weirdo, who it transpires is Ludmilla, takes charge of us and marches us off to be incarcerated. Because nothing says dangerous invader like someone your own poor OH&S compliance nearly killed. We play along, though, and she takes us to a place we can be held, via the noisiest place in the lot, where she whispers conflicting information to us while shouting other nonsensical and aggressive things.

Eventually Rusty offers to hook us all up with telepathic communication, but Ludmilla doesn’t like that (Xalitith has been here too, apparently) and in any case, we have all the salient information. Here’s the lowdown:

• Ludmilla’s father is Sigmund, and he seems less than nice.
• Sigmund blames Gertrude for his wife Olga’s death, which made it sound like she died in childbirth, but keep reading.
• Olga is the ghost. She wanted to take the children away from Linkboy’s Lot, but Sigmund disagreed and killed her. Why is that Gertrude’s fault? No idea.
• They never found Olga’s body. Ludmilla thinks she is moving her remains every night so they cannot be found, and she cannot be put to rest.
• Norbert is Sigmund’s son, and he makes potions which we should not eat.
• Ulrich is another son of Sigmund, but he’s at least 50% machine by now. He makes the constructs, and particularly likes his Cadaver Collector (which we have been tasked to take back to Ludendorf by Dr Amelia).
• Carla is Sigmund’s daughter, and she runs the power for the junkyard.
• Ludmilla plans to leave tonight with Gertrude and Carla and is heading for Whale End, where Carla “knows” a guy who will hide them.
• If we are willing to help, we should wait until 2nd bell, then head to the east passage and damage the Cadaver Collector. If we damage it enough, Ulrich should come running and that will be enough of a distraction for the girls to escape.

We are left in the scraphouse, with a note and a lockpick left not at all suspiciously on the floor.

Jailbreak!

Rusty delicately picks up the crappy lockpick, and uses it to open the lock on the door. His own set of lockpicks are better, but he didn’t need any help picking this shitty lock, and honestly this whole place is filthy and Rusty is trying to keep everything as clean as he can.

2 bells ring, and a possessed doll climbs in through the window, points at the door, and hits the floor twice. We stare at it blankly. After a ridiculous amount of charades, it eventually grabs a burnt stick, and we find it is entirely literate. It writes its message on the floor - there are 2 guards outside the door.

Fine. Cleetus has proven his nigh-mythical skills at silently choking people out, but he needs 3 actions to do it (1 to grapple, one to drag them inside, and one to put the sleeper hold on). He can do 2 people at once (he has 2 arms) but we don’t want him to waste his action surge just yet, so Wit (who has by now figured out which of his spells are psychic) casts Haste on him. Neat as you like, 2 unconscious guards on the floor, tied up.

We stealthily make our way to the east passage, and look around in vain for the Cadaver Collector. It’s not here! There’s just a massive pile of junk with a few corpses in it - wait, I get it now.

The junk gets up.