The Creepy Crawl Chronicles - Session 25

Just drink your tea and don’t say anything about her surgery scars.

Attendants:
Greed – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Rael – Lvl 6 Thief/Werewolf
Ritzy – Lvl 5 Homanculus
Arongoth of Hogendaus – Lvl 4 Cleric

Henching:
Vlad Draculastein – Lvl 4 Dampyr

Monsters Mashed:
1 Ghoul – Cut down with Greed’s awesome sword of undead slaying before its scabrous brethren nearly TPK’d you all.
               47 EXP/4.5 players = 10 EXP apiece

Arongoth attained the second mandrake root and ate it. Is now an ambulatory plant with green, mottled, potato like skin and other unknown effects.

Party nearly TPK’d by ghouls (frikkin’ ghouls) and rescued by Alexi Von Himmel and his wonder dog Rex before being eaten.

Have struck a deal with Deiter Von Himmel to obtain some troll blood in exchange for reduced rates for homanculous upgrades.

That's Doctor Von Himmel, I didn't get my degree just to be called Baron.

 Commentary:

This is the session where the weirdness of the campaign began to gain some real momentum. 

The party sought out the other mandrake root that they knew about from Bark Eatin' Ted's woodsy wisdom, and found it in a patch of greenishghoul, which is a sickly whitish green plant known for attracting the undead. (I got that herb list for Rael's wolwelf cure from Abulafia btw. Best use of a random table I've ever done.) Which it had, in the form of a pack of frikkin' ghouls. 

Well, ghouls are pretty nasty, even for a bunch of 4th. to 5th. level characters, so the party came really close to getting TPK'd. Claw/claw/bite plus paralysis and a lot of blown saving throw rolls often makes for a bad time. Frikkin' ghouls... 

But lo! Galumphing through the woods astride his faithful reindeer Snowflake was Alexi Von Himmel, adventurer, nobleman, and gentleman hunter, with his amazing hunting hound Rex (a german shepherd with a human arm grafted to his back armed with a flintlock pistol, a gift from his elder brother). Between Alexi's hurtling hand axes and his dog being a crack shot, the ghouls were sent packing and the party was saved. 

One tangential historical note, Alexi was a character my brother created and played in a kinda gothic 2nd. Edition D&D game back when we were sharing an apartment in Cleveland while going to school at the Cleveland Institute of Art. I'd say back in 1993-1994, if I'm doing my math right. He was cossack inspired, and we were using the A Mighty Fortress campaign sourcebook. 

We'd decided between us that the Von Himmels were an Addams Family style clan of aristocratic oddballs and misfits. In a lot of ways that old campaign was the buried corpse that the deep roots of the flowerbed of bizarre that was the Creepy Crawl campaign drew it's nourishment from. I brought the Von Himmel family back in a big way for this game, and the rescue from Alexi was my golden opportunity to slot them into the campaign.

Von Himmel invited the party back to his family estate, an imposing castle in the next valley over from Ghoulardia Pass. There they were introduced to his elder brother, Dieter Von Himmel, the greatest mad scientist in all the land, and Deiter's lovely wife Hyacinth, a velociraptor in a dress with a barely noticable surgery scar running across her cranium under her blonde wig. (A result of a tragic trip abroad that the Von Himmels decline to discuss. The poor dear gets so upset and starts lacerating the throw pillows... and the servants...)

Over tea, I got to introduce one of the campaign's best patrons, and also gave the homanculus characters something to strive for. When they found out that Dr. Von Himmel could do any kinda modifications their artificial little hearts desired, if the price was right, right then and there they knew what their goal in life was gonna be: earning enough bling to pimp out their chassis.

I tried dangling the troll blood discount thing in front of them to get them to go back to the cave where they'd gotten the mountainroot morels, but they didn't bite on that. Their adventures were soon to take them further afield. 

Finally, Arongoth got himself back up to 5th. level after eating the second mandrake root, but it had started to... change him. 

It never came up in play, but in addition to his plant like complexion, he was also capable of regrowing severed limbs. (Although the process would be rather... fraught, in many disturbing and inconvenient ways...) 

And he wasn't done yet. This... change made him wonder what would happen were he to acquire more mandrake and consume it without needing to replenish his levels.

Like I said, here's where it really starts to get really, really weird, and I'm lovin' it. 

Tune in on Wednesday, group, as we proceed.