[Actual Play] The World of Tomorrow, Session 12: I’m going deeper underground / there’s too much panic in this town

Back to dungeoneering!

 

• Psamtek, the psionic Grey pilot (Halfling 4)
• Keteus, the dark prophet or something (Magic-User 4 with Space Age Sorcery spells)
• Ugazum, the gladiator (Fighter 3)
• Phireus, priest of the Mountain Mother (Cleric 4)
• + Rex, riverboat captain (Fighter 3, NPC follower)

 

The party waited for the next anti-light phase, then moved out. Rex led them up the south ziggurat. They just barely avoided a Black Sun paladin patrol and reached the top platform. Here, nestled between a bricolage of latter-era habitats, they found a large round concrete platform and a small concrete building (which looked like the creepy abandoned building where Demi Moore picks up her doses in The Substance). They forced the door, cleaned out some rubble, then forced another door (its code lock without power) and found an elevator. This too was without power, so they opened a hatch in its floor, climbed down and managed to reach the ladder in the side of the shaft.

The descent was LONG, at least 500’. At one point, they disturbed a flock of small flying creatures, and Ugazum fell off the ladder. Keteus saved him with a Wand of Flying (they had picked this up back in the Spire of Iron & Crystal, an ivory wind with wings carved into it, they thought it might be for flight, but weren’t sure…).

At the bottom of the shaft, they dropped into a concrete-walled complex. In the first room, they flipped a switch and restored auxiliary power (small red lights along the corridors and door keypads online), but decided not to bring on full power just yet.

They explored the west-bound corridor and ran into a closed door marked “Workshop”. They tried 1312 (ACAB!) at the keypad to no effect.

They turned around and took the stairs at the intersection. At the upper level, the north-bound corridor was closed off with yellow-black “Danger!” tape, so they went east to another door.

They examined the keypad to see if any of the buttons were particularly worn: yes, 1, 2 and 4.

[For the keypads, I generated the codes by rolling 4d10, one for each digit. For this door, I rolled 1412 :D So I handwaved it that if they put in 1312 again, it would be close enough]

They entered the room, a storage area for tools, equipment, spare parts, etc. The north wall of the place had caved in, opening into a moldy underground tunnel.

Psamtek picked up some weird psychic vibrations from one of the crates. He managed to commune with a hive-mind. They opened the crate and found a formicarium with psionic ants! They decided to leave them be for now and marched into the moldy tunnel.

This natural passage soon intersected another built feature, a wide tunnel with a monorail in the middle.

Looking north-west, the party noticed a short, stocky person in a mask and a jumpsuit, similar to the one they’d found in the beginning of the campaign. They called out, but the person fled.

The party gave chase and entered a large domed hall with a railway turntable. There were several tunnels leading into different directions, and a train car in the middle.

They ran after the mysterious stranger, who seemed to have gone into the south-bound tunnel. All the walls were covered in large graffiti. Another train car blocked the tunnel (and it was visible that along the sides the tunnel was also intentionally blocked with debris to form a barricade/gate). The party entered the train car through the back door. The windows of the car were all painted over or covered with cardboard chunks.

They exited the door at the other end of the train and found themselves in a rectangular hall. The train car serving as a sort of gate into this area, half of it stuck in the tunnel, half of it reaching into the middle of the room.

The stranger was nowhere to be seen at first, but then they noticed them back at the barricade. There were three garage doors which suddenly started to rise, revealing giant monstrous mutants!

The stranger climbed up on the top of the train car.

The party won initiative and they retreated into the car. Psamtek used his Precog ability to predict that the obvious fact that the mutants are going to attack them, and that they were somehow controlled or set off by the stranger.

Two of the bulbous mutants, a two- and a single-headed one, roared and ran towards the entrance of the train car. The fighters opened fire with their hi tec riffles. They kept on retreating. The mutants tear through the seats, but couldn’t quite catch up yet. They were also sometimes “glitching out”, pausing for seconds.

The party retreated back into the tunnel.

Psamtek climbed up the car from this side, and noticed that the passage wasn’t completely blocked on the top. He saw the stranger kneeling on the roof of the train, operating a small hand-held device.

The giant mutants came charging out of the train car, only slightly damaged and slowed by the barrage. Then they started regenerating their wounds!

Psamtek fired at the stranger and killed him…

One of the mutants glitched out and stopped.

The two-headed one continued to fight.

Psamtek picked-up the device and randomly started mashing buttons, and got lucky – the two-headed mutant also stopped in its tracks.

Everybody climbed up on top of the train, searched the dead stranger. With his mask removed, he was revealed to be a wrinkled humanoid with a single eye in the middle of his forehead. The mask turned out to be a cyclopic night-vision device.

The party decided to learn more about the controller, hoping to use the giant mutants for their own battles.

 

Ugazum advanced to level 4!

To be continued!