Tuesday, October 8, 2019

DunjonCorp: Highfell Edition

On the 6th hour of the 6th day of the New Year, in the Principality of Brine, in the salt-scraping ramshackle village known as Endtown, our lowly townies played admirably by the DunjonCorp team sat. They sat and drank and lamented about the poor financial prospects. IF ONLY they concurred, IF ONLY THIS PLACE WAS NOT SO BORING

IF ONLY I HAD NO SALT IN MY NOSE

IF ONLY MY BLOOD PRESSURE WERE NOT SO HIGH

IF ONLY I COULD PAY OFF THESE EXORBITANT LOANS

Ahh, but what good is wishing into a tankard of ale-brine? is what my dear grandmother always told me as she drank her ale-brine

...and as if in answer to their innermost and verbalized prayers, Jojen the Cantankerous, a minor noble from distant Threshhold and a budding sorcerer offered the every patron of the bar the princely sum of let us say 5 GP a week to accompany him and his handlers (Chivas and Gorp) to Highfell in the mountains to the north, there to loot and explore in the name of civilization and commerce and magistotheurgetical science

And so they departed, aglow with the prospects of new livelihood but as soon as they stepped a-blinking into the sunny late afternoon there was a clap of thunder and a distant mushroom cloud and THERE! above the Great Salt Reach a spinning, wobbly, not-at-all plummeting chunk of Highfell has saved them the trouble of commuting by hanging there mysteriously in the air, lit from within and without by strange energies, shimmering hazily, defying reason and good sense

There she hangs and Jojen and his crew stood aplomb in wonder, mostly dumbstruck

There’pon with a giant CRACK! a chunk of the (mountain?castle?dungeon?) separated from the grander piece and DID to Endtown’s dismay begin a lazy descent to Aereth. On a trajectory with the very Mayor's crummy house from which the party observed the phenomena! At this point, a flock of Luftbaboons peeled away from the battle and made its way to the town and harassed the party who took some losses, of course, but nothing unsettling (it was Keith whose PC's died owing to random chance and it seems suspicious that maybe I do not like his PCs but such is not the case)

The party barked orders to the Mayor - evacuate the townspeople! And so it went - some calculations and they determined that 3 or 4 hours until touchdown and probably destruction of the town. A few hardy souls and the Salt Mercantile Guild guards stayed behind to assist with maintaining order.

The trusty spyglass revealed that a smallish battle between some cloaked figures was afoot on the parapets and crenellations - and ominously large parts of the ruin tumbled to the earth below (ripe for looting!). Enacting a foolish plan, the party and some carpenters felled some trees and lashed them together to make a climbable pole to reach ALMOST to the height of the bottom of the floating chunk. The party stopped on the way to sift the wreckage below and some spurious artifacts (a catsuit made of spider silk, a painting of a clown on black velvet, and something else which my mind does not recall)

The conniving rutabega farmer (Ashley's) latched on to the wires and ducts jutting from below and so the party climbed up, reduced by half owing to falls - Boris the soldier (Eli's!) was lost as was his gear. Even the rutabega farmer fell heroically and embedded herself forever into the salt flats.

They managed to alight on what I now name Cattohnus' Chunk, since it were determined that the tower nearby was his/hers/its, and also they looted an ancient statue of Arcantyl's female aspect of its fist-sized rubies for eyes. Keith has a thing for playing femmes fatales with quick fingers and avarice,. The rest of the party took cover from acid rain - this time weak enough but who knows, with all this purple lightning around, what might happen?

Knocking on the Wizard Cattohnus' door, they were greeted by a stone man more than 20 feet tall, and the muscular scribe (Keith's PC) left a calling brick, which presumed to describe their appointment. But there was some wait - an extradimensional one, at that, and during the wait a flock of Luftbaboons alighted around the party and harassed them, the biggest one even counting coup on the scribe who deftly boxed the winged mandrill's ears much to the amazement of the creatures who responded better to the violence than any gesture of friendship.

Bortak the Lieutenant Luftbaboon explained they were somewhat unnerved by the sudden disappearance and reappearance of their territory high in the sky and offered to take the party back to the ground... No sooner said than done and we approached the wrapping-up point...

Selling their loot, the party (6 zero-level humies) have accumulated enough XP for first level which is to say 250+100 after shares allotted. A tenuous relationship with a small band of flying primates, and it seems to the inhabitants of their grotty little agri-salt village that the party are heroes

Cattohnus' Chunk, instead of hurtling to the Aereth and smashing up Endtown, settled very gently and now only perpetually THREATENS to obliviate Endtown. Who knows, aside from a big stone butler, what horrors live within it? And what has escaped onto the ground to threaten the countryside?

TUNE IN TO WATCH

Thursday, September 26, 2019

Ideas for Squads/Conversions

I picked up a couple of Reaper things since for a while I was walking around with a few Wolfmother songs in my brain. I got a Female Efreet since I couldn't find a nature giantess for Colossal Girl. And I made a thief for myself from kitbashed bits n pieces (Imperial stuff, I guess, and a couple of things from the Frostgrave cultist set) for "Joker and The Thief" and up in the air about a Joker character from say Knight Games or else maybe just a classical harlequin or something...

Anyway, it got me thinking - playing around with my 3d printer has just about killed my need to buy 40k stuff, since effectively I could print, in a long time I suppose, whatever 40k figs or terrain or might want. I was sort of thinking about doing some vehicles but, probably, I will never again play 40k. I just don't have the taste for Grimdark anymore. Too much real fascism in my country these days for the bullshit fake small-f-fascism of the Imperium to appeal to me. And, I reflect, I have rarely had a good time playing 40k. I have had a good time HANGING OUT and playing 40k also, but it's not the 40k that was fun about those times. In fact, 40k is only my jam at about 500-1000 points and for that, I'd rather be playing Necromunda, and for that, I'd probably rather be playing something fast and sensible like Frostgrave. I dig the "desperate troops and last stands" of 40k more than the lantern-jawed-Ubermenschen they've become. I mean, you won't see any tubby SM getting blown away by pirate orky weirdboys, these days. Too serious by half again, wot

If GW wanted to kill it for me, they'd introduce some solo style rules for when I'm bored and tired but can't sleep. I KNOW I KNOW, I said that a new Necromunda would sell it to me, but they took all the wry irony and self-awareness out (no shit I find the tedious I JUST WANT TO PLAY NO POLITICS of the s/Necromunda to be piteous in the extreme)

I don't know.

Ideas for conversions - Miyazaki. I mean, have you seen the Temekulans? They were Spess Mureens before there were any. Just need a rounded conical helmet and cloaks and BOOM. I'm struck, now, by how much I was influenced in my late childhood by Excalibur, Knight Riders, and Warriors of The Wind. It's probably down to Miyazaki that I even like 40k!

Also, Stardew Valley - I just literally saw a Pig Cart painted up on reddit at lunch. The backstory of the wars that is hinted at in the game is fascinating to me.

I been reading a lot of Gang War NYC, and Last Days (made a review here, once, and it sits better with me the more I read it) and seems to me that a good thing would be side-plot cards for just about any game you might think of. I think the most interesting situations in 40k arose for me when we used Mysterious Objectives

Anyway, just getting this out of my noodle since I'm bored

I also got a couple of Blackwolf the Wizard's troops (including Necron 99) coming from my buddy Brian, who works the booth for Wee Wolf minis. He may BE Wee Wolf minis, but that's like saying Peter Parker may be Batman...

So I picked up some savage orc thugs from ebay and I will edo those up like Scortch-colored emutants. Need some viking style elves as opponents, but I got a lot of stuff on the back burner these days.

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