Sunday, January 22, 2023

What's behind the creepy door (besides dog poop)?

• We go through the creepy door and into the Far Dreaming
  • ...and find ourselves in a creepy carnival tent made of bones and senew
  • We look like creepy, Lovecraftian versions of our seemings
• There are no people around that we can see
• There is a pile of bags of dog poop that are slowly getting eaten away into dream stuff
• Agnes tells us (through writing because she can't speak) that she's certain this is the Bonelord's Hall, and the Bonelord went missing during the Shattering (e.g. the time of the Black Plague)
  • It was a carnival and menagerie but as carnivals faded in popularity people stopped coming here
  • The Bonelord hunted monsters (Agnes surmises nightmares, in particular)
• Blaze, Moira, and I go jump on the merry go round, which is still functional
  • From there we see a building with a sign labeled "Hall of History"
  • I hop off and tell Agnes about it
• The Hall of History is full of various exhibits in little alcoves with signs, each lit by some different method
  • Almost all of the exhibits are weapons, some from fictional characters, some from real people
  • Moira thinks they're basically the equivalent of chimerical movie props / replicas
  • As we get to the back of the hall, there are items of more unknown provenance with the plaques attributing many to trophies the Bonelord collected
    • Amongst those are two display where the items are missing:
      • "The Bone Lord's Key"
      • "Learnean Crossbow" which creates it's own poisoned quarrels
  • My curiosity gets the better of me and I try on Hern's antlered crown
    • It's way too big and nothing seems to happen
    • Agnes leaves and proceeds up the midway
• We rejoin Agnes at a barricade of trash that is blocking off the midway
  • Blaze goes into ferret mode and slips through the cracks
  • Blaze makes a passage through the barricade with Wayfare
• We round a corner and see a figure with spindly, marionette-like limbs; fingers ending in hollow bone pipes. His mouth has no lips, just exposed teeth and a vibrating membrane that produces eerie music when he breaths. Wears a band uniform with too many buttons, none fastened correctly.
  • When he notices us, he waves and starts playing a brighter tune that feels like a welcoming
  • His name is Pennywhistle Pritchard
• Then a pot-bellied goblin approaches welcoming us to the Bonelord's Hall, and he rattles as he walks
  • Rattletrap Midge is a squat, pot-bellied goblin-like thing with limbs too long for his body. Whenever he moves, something rattles inside him—bones? tokens? loose teeth? His carnival smock hangs off him like it’s designed for a child’s corpse. His fingers look more like jointed sticks than flesh.
  • He asks if we've seen any large creatures, and if so if that would be a problem
    • We tell him no and ask if he needs help, to which he mentions Master Bell (the ringmaster) would normally decide that, but he hasn't been around in a while
    • He brings us to Bramblewood
• Sir Alastor Bramblewood, a grotesquely exaggerated British “explorer”: massive square jaw, jutting tusk-like teeth, pith helmet fused to his cranium, and arms corded with sinew like twisted tree roots. Wears an old safari jacket, but it’s clearly made of flayed hide and bone plates. Carries an impossibly large elephant gun carved from femurs.
  • He confirms there are monsters that have gotten loose
    • Galloper Grin - giant horse that can run through things
    • Benny the hog headed boy
    • Old Skinbreast - vulture man, can't find
    • Miss Moluskine - squid lady
    • Miss Mawsula - reptile woman
  • He tells us the Keeper of the Hall of History disappeared on Halloween, which is also when other things went wrong
  • He agrees that we can have the Bonelord's Key if we find it in exchange for helping with the loose monsters
  • He mentions Madame Rotswana, their fortune teller
• We got into her tent, which is made of skin
  • Madame Rotswana is a hunched crone with translucent skin stretched too tight, revealing a roadmap of twitching veins. Her eyes appear milky, but pupils drift across them like floating insects. Her fortune-tent is lit by candles embedded in skulls.
  • She reads the palms of various of us, and I ask her who's going to win the Manchester City vs Arsenal match later this week
    • She says "The arsenal will be empty" (in reality Man City wins 1-0)
    • She asks me what week I think it is, and mentions that it's possible time could be moving differently here than back home
  • She tells us the key went first, and then the maestro took the crossbow to hunt whoever took the key
    • Maestro Verrin Bell is the ringmaster
  • She mentions Gremory, who is supposed to be manning the western barricade, and says he might know more
• Bramblewood mentions that Gravelgut should be manning the central barricade and we shouldn't mistake him for a monster; he's just big
• We head west to look for the western barricade and Gremory
  • We come across an area of games and a tall, rail-thin figure with a spine that bends in two unnatural angles, like someone folded him wrong. His lips stretch nearly to his ears, split in places, exposing rows of tiny yellow teeth. His nose is a soft cartilage nub; his eyes are huge, watery, and hungry. His striped vest looks painted onto his skin—because it might be.
    • This is Crooked-Lipped Callahan
    • Blaze, after a couple failed attempts, wins a ball toss game and gets a creepy stuffed bear whose chest is frayed open and the insides have been painted with guts and bones
• We continue along and spot Tall Tale Gremory
  • He's a hunched ghoul with a neck that cranes up like a periscope when he talks, allowing his gaunt head to loom over patrons. His mouth opens too wide and too long, as though hinged like a serpent’s. His patched carnival coat sports dozens of pockets full of... something moving.
  • I ask him for a tale of the Bonelord's missing key
    • He says they found it beneath the Bonelord's throne, and thought it must be important
    • He tells us he was a hero of the War of Trees, a mighty hunter who slew many fomorians
    • He says he was the first redcap and even though they didn't like him, he agreed to help the Tuatha when the War of Trees kicked off
  • Not sure if anything he is telling us is true or not, but it could be?
  • He says Maestro Bell doesn't talk, but the last time he saw him, which was a couple weeks ago, he waved at him with a bone crossbow and looked to be going off on a hunt
    • The crossbow is evidently "only good for hunting snakes"
    • He figures he was probably hunting Miss Mawsula, because she's a reptile woman
    • Bell was going up the central midway
  • Gremory shows us the "secret" way through the western barricade
• We find our way to the midway and hear a suckling, whining noise mixed with snorts
  • It's Bellow-Bound Benny, the hog headed boy
    • Eight feet tall, covered in sparse bristles and patches of stretched pink skin. Human-like torso and limbs, but an enormous boar’s head—stitched onto the body with visible, ancient sutures. His arms end in thick, clublike hands with cracked nails. Saliva drips constantly, sizzling on bone floors.
  • He charges at Blaze who dodges out of the way
  • I try and calm him with a feeling of a mother's love using Flicker-Flies
  • Aoife uses Dictum to get him to stop, but he spends willpower to keep attacking and she gets a glimpse of a black lion's head urging him on to attack
  • Agnes uses Autumn Eyes and sees the black lion as well as something behind it that may just be watching everything here, but can't tell what
  • We knock him out
• We drag the unconscious Benny up the midway in search of the enclosures or Gravelgut and find our way in the main hall where it looks like the enclosures are
  • We spot a man in one of the enclosures with a crossbow outside of it that looks as if he dropped it in a scramble to get into the enclosure
    • He silently gestures a warning and points upwards
    • It's Maestro Verrin Bell, the most “human” figure in the Hall at first glance—until one notices his elongated arms, the absence of a nose, and his hollow, lantern-like eyes. His ringmaster coat is stitched from mismatched hides, some scaled, some furred, some suspiciously human. His top hat seems to writhe slightly, as if something beneath it stretches to be free.
    • Agnes recognizes the crossbow as the one from our vision
• At which point a snake woman drops from the rafters
  • It's Miss Mawsula, the snake woman, who has a key around her neck and she hisses out "show me the door!"
    • A serpentine, elongated torso—half reptile, half woman. Human arms (far too long), but alligator claws instead of hands. Her head shifts between human and reptilian depending on light angle. Jaw splits vertically and horizontally, like a blooming flower of teeth.
  • She's joined by two others
    • Galloper Grin, a massive draft horse body made of stitched hide and exposed tendons, its head emitting a constant plume of black dream-smoke. Its hooves are split and clawed, like something trying to be both horse and predator.
    • Old Skinbreast, a towering humanoid bird—twelve feet tall when fully upright—but hunched like a carrion ghoul. Covered in ragged, rusty-colored feathers that fall out and regrow constantly. Head is pure vulture skull, beak cracked and serrated. Fingers end in talons like curved daggers.
• Combat ensues!
  • I cast Oakenshield on all of us, granting 5 extra bruised health levels to everyone in the party
  • Moira downs a bird's eye chili, and then spits fire, casting Engulf on all three of them, but it fizzles
  • We drop Mawsula in a barrage of attacks and as she drops she looks up to the sky and says "Stheno, why?"
    • Is that the one orchestrating all the snake stuff?
  • We clean the other two up
• We recover the key, which will get us out and back to the courtyard
• We release Maestro Bell who leads us to a concession stand when we ask if there are any bodies of water where the lone remaining monster, Miss Moluskine the squid girl, could be hiding
  • We find her in the well of the soda fountain
    • She has a bulbous cephalopod body lifts itself on dozens of tiny, muscular tendrils. Above it rises a torso of a woman—but skin slick, mottled, and faintly bioluminescent. Instead of hair, a writhing crown of tentacles hisses like snakes. She drips slime that dissolves bone.
• Agnes tells Bell that the whole hall is being watched, and they should kill it if they can
• On our way out we spot Gravelgut, who is seven feet tall, impossibly wide, with muscles that look melted—sliding under the skin like sacks of wet clay. His face is barely a face: jutting brow, huge lower jaw, drooping cheeks like half-set plaster. Wears a striped strongman leotard stretched to tearing.
• Agnes does recall the Stheno is a gorgon in Greek mythology
  • Aoife wonders if that could be the Face in the Stone