Greyhame Mountain Dungeon Expedition 26

Orcs have returned to the caverns of the Glimmervaults ...
the Goblin King and the Lord of Werewolves have renewed their ancient alliance in the dungeons beneath the Howling Tower ...
the secret treasury of the Bronding Kings is said to lie hidden behind the Brokenbrand falls, haunted by enchanting naiads ...
Jaer the Windlord looks down on the world below from the Eyries of the Eagles atop the Greyhame Mountain itself ...
and the Stars themselves are singing an eerie, eldritch song, night after night ...


29 March's roster:
Lead (cleric 4)
Baby-Face (thief 5)
Valor Justice (Elf 1)
Little Bob (travelling-man 4)
Aethelwulf (paladin 4)
Blackleaf (Elf 4)
Koko (woman-ape 2)
and a coterie of hirelings and dogs


To the Howling Tower, to deal with the Goblin King and his meddling with Star-Things!

On the second night out, the characters came across a pair of wolves, unconscious and lying in the woods, with a strange and shimmering silver cord rising from each up into the night sky toward the singing Stars. The party was baffled. Baby-Face suggested that the stars were sucking information out of them, but who knows?

Aethelwulf decided to put one out of its ... misery isn't quite the right word. Still, he slew one with his sword; the silver cord snapped as soon as the body was slain.

After that, Koko attempted to use her ring of animal control on the "surviving" wolf, to no avail; Blackleaf tried to read any thoughts in it with her amulet of ESP, but detected nothing within--not even an animal intelligence. It seemed the bodies were mere shells, alive in the barest sense of the word, and Aethelwulf killed the second one.

Then the party made camp, and I telegraphed that something was coming by asking for a watch schedule. Alas, but I have only just introduced actual encounters that require a watch schedule in the wilderness; I should probably request one as a matter of course when setting out from town.

Anyway, four watches were set over the course of the night, and I rolled the first watch, which Lead and Blackleaf had taken. So as they stayed up to watch over their comrades, Blackleaf suddenly felt as if some kind of insect were crawling over her back--and yet nothing was there!

The invisible thing's attack failed against Blackleaf. Hands attempting to find it failed to touch anything, but the swordpoint of a magic sword carefully pressed into the area around the weird crawling feelings resulted in contact with some kind of invisible presence. Those individuals who were wakened and had magic weapons proceeded to attack the invisible thing; despite penalties to their attacks, they managed to hit the thing and avoid hitting Blackleaf until finally whatever it was seemed to fall off; searching the ground with magical swordpoints finally revealed something on the ground that didn't seem to be moving around. The thing was dead? They couldn't see it or touch to really ascertain ... so they went back to their regular watch schedule.

Nothing further happened.

Arriving on the ridge atop which stands the Howling Tower, fronted by its two pyres of goblin and ogre corpses, the players agreed to enter through the insect tunnels on the north side of the ridge, which lead directly into the first dungeon level and bypass the Tower itself. Lead left his mule Sparkly outside (mules don't fit in the tunnels), guarded by Baby Face's hirelings Thorn and Cadmus.

The party made their way through the first dungeon level seeking for the stairs down to the second level. They encountered what seemed to be a mobile puddle of water as a wandering monster, but easily destroyed the ooze with an overwhelming number of attacks.

Descending to the second dungeon level, the party headed south. They passed through the room that contained the star pool, which has once been seen to contain a Cthulu-ish tentacular horror; but it seemed empty of anything but stars at the moment. Passing to the south, the party found a door that opened into a chamber with three statues in the NE, SE, and SW corners. One was of a beautiful, seductive Elf-maiden, one of Anglamorath the Dragon, and the last of Astora Queen of Stars in full regalia.

Through the eastern door of that chamber, the party found a north-south corridor that they followed south. They ultimately walked into a chamber which was a goblin-barracks containing more than a dozen goblins. A sleep spell incapacitated many, and the others were slaughtered. The party killed two, but tied up four of the sleeping goblins (amusingly, my notes read "sleeping orcs", a Tolkienian slip); questioning those left alive, they learned from the poor creatures that "the Goblin King can be found through the western corridor and down the stair," while "treasure could be found north with the webs and the snakes."

Leaving the goblins behind, the party went west through further corridors. They ran into a party of goblins and one wolf as wandering monsters. My notes are sparse; I believe that what happened was that the goblins were driven back into another room, which contained other goblins. But ultimately, the party encountered a party of goblins including three that seemed less crooked than their fellows, all of whom began casting spells when the party moved to the attack.

One of the goblin magic-users doused the party's lights so that all was darkness. One of them threw a web spell, incapacitating most of the party (I think initiative was simultaneous, though, because I remember dogs and frontline fighters getting into melee); the last of the goblins cast a sleep spell which dropped all the frontline dogs except Panzer, Little Bob's orc mastiff.

A short melee round ensued; meanwhile, for the webbed party, Lead the cleric lit a torch and set the web alight. So it burned up (in one round; in retrospect it takes two rounds in the rules, but whatever), causing 1-6 damage to all those stuck within. This fire damage killed the hirelings Clara and Ilana of Blackleaf, but the rest of the party was thus freed.

Beyond that, the combat was short--one of the goblins got off a second douse lights spell, but the characters lit another torch; and another one managed to get off a mirror image, which allowed him alone to survive the combat. After all the other goblins were slain, this last fellow was finally subdued and tied up. He directed the party to the Goblin King's inverse-tower in return for his life, and also let drop a mention that the captured children were turned into goblins by the King by being spun up in spider-silk; and then he was left behind by the party. Meanwhile, some characters were looting the room--they found a good deal of gold, a magic helm, a magic shield, a potion, a scroll, a bow, and a spear (much of it loot from the dead goblin-magic-users).

Through another short corridor, the party finally opened a door onto a long spiral stair down into the darkness. It seems to lead down to dungeon levels three and four, but our time was short ... behind a door on the landing, Blackleaf detected the thoughts of scared children. The door was forced open, and the party found a group of five scared and emaciated children.

Our time was short, so the party ushered the children out of the dungeon. The only thing of note on the way out was that passing through the room with the three statues, the party found the statues changed into images of horrid hags, and as the party passed through, they were all subjected to a kind of curse.

Nothing else happened on the way back to town. Local high-level cleric Lailith (who won't adventure in Greyhame until the other characters are closer in level) agreed to lift the curses for 1000 gold altogether. And with his share of the wealth, Baby Face paid off the last 1600 gold of his debt to the Thieves' Guild.

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Remembrance for the Fallen:
Clara and Ilana (normal women), Marlo and a number of dogs, Gram, Dorcas, Frida, and Johann Haybaler (normal hirelings), Hauka and Wilmerand (weasels), Blade and Boar (boarhounds), Hubert the Peacock and Lysimmachus (normal men), a nameless mastiff, Livy (normal man), Orkie (orc mastiff), Fang (boarhound), Droopy and Snoopy (mastiffs), Dream Destroyer (ghosthound), Arrow (pack dog), Freyja (normal woman), a nameless cur, Hot Dog and Cross (mastiffs), Orion II (lion dog), Bacon (boarhound), Tore (half-orc fighter 1/cleric 1), Jimmy the Snitch (dog), Orion (lion dog), Harambe (man-ape 1)

and for those Enchanted away:
Dol (fyrdman hireling)

Play Report from Jeff Rients' Vaults of Vyzor 3

Got another chance to play in Jeff's game in the Vaults of Vyzor on 8 December. I suggested I could play another character than Laurantha if we wanted to avoid the geas to enter the Azure Vaults, which suggestion was endorsed, and so I rolled up a level 1 cleric, Kat Eumeleia, devotee of the Cult of the Beautiful Life ...

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Down at the (newly rebuilt Drooling Thoul?), Kat Eumeleia, newly arrived cleric following the Star Goddess, was seen carousing raucously with several orc floozies after her first expeditions into the Citrine and Verdant Vaults. Over the course of the night, she composed this pastiche of one of the religious hymns of her cults, singing it as well as she could without the advantage of autotuning magic (this is written to fit generally into the melody of Kesha's song “Rainbow”):

'Descended down into Citrine halls
looking for an orc brothel
and once there
couldn't help but stare
Walls covered with red velvet drapes
orc ladies with the leering faces
we had no coin
but I brought some wine

Trading swigs with the orcs, we
made some friends as we partied
with our charms,
won over even the madame!
Learned that not all there were happy
working girls, they were trapped, yeah,
so we brought them all
out of that brothel

We had a party
down in the dungeon, yeah!
With hard-A
drinking wine and dancin'
So seize your freedom now, girls
And come and dance away from here
tonight

Yes, Mario had some fun
with a couple of orcish doms
while they played
we had it made
And Emma found an Elf-lass
hiding back in the darkness
we sang, “Come on, girl,
come out to the world ...”

Saved them all from the darkness,
from a world cold and heartless
but back in the brothel
with dominatrixes from Hell
When Mario had ended,
they found the brothel abandoned
they sprouted horns!
demonic in form!

We had a party
down in the dungeon, yeah!
With hard-A
drinking wine and dancin'
So seize your freedom now, girls
And come and dance away from here
tonight

Emma sprang on one orcubus,
wrestling hard that seductress,
got an evil kiss
that left her listless
Yeah, our swords had no power
to defy them in that hour
so we fled
rather than end up dead!

We had a party
down in the dungeon, yeah!
With hard-A
drinking wine and dancin'
So seize your freedom now, girls
And come and dance away from here
tonight ...'

Asked by other patrons concerning further recollections of her expeditions into the vaults accompanying one Emma Brighteyes of the Jarrod Memorial Library and fighting-man Mario de Parma, she had more prosaic things to say:

'Yeah, we had a couple of gnome lasses with us--Babis was one, I don't remember the other's name--hired by Mario on his promise that they could get some orc-stabbing revenge down there. They weren't really sure what to make of the brothel, but don't worry; when Mario went off with those girls that ended up being orcubi, I took the gnomes under my wing and gave them some wine to take the edge off. But when those demon-babes revealed themselves, the poor gnomes almost got left behind in our haste to retreat. Only Emma's cool under duress allowed her to duck in and drag the two out under the demons' claws …

'Well, after we got out of the Citrine Vaults--and only barely ahead of the demons!--there was no way in Hell we were going back for the treasure we left behind. So we decided to try the Verdant Vaults--apparently some local Elf-chick here has some kind of a thing for bees, and there were supposed to be bees down in the Verdant Vaults ...

'And sure enough, we found them, and Emma used that Elf-chick's spell to charm the bees. We then used them to help us battle a few orcs fully intent on impaling a few helpless gnomes in some huge chamber that Emma said used to be a gnome-wrestling arena. The gnome lasses got their vengeance here--you can't imagine the glee with which they chopped off all six pairs of hands of the orcs we killed …'

Beyond this point, Kat, continuing to drink her wine, became semi-incomprehensible. She drunkenly proselytized the cult of the Star Goddess to the local women, going on about something called “the Beautiful Life” without explaining much … and then was later seen partying hard with Hilda, wife of Heinrik Gem-Eyes, alternately downing shots and goblets of wine, and then engaging in deep, seductive, philosophical conversations …

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Kat Eumeleia was rolled up using Jeff's "Insano-Libs Cleric Advancement" rules ... she almost advanced to level 2 during this last session, but alas, not quite. Naturally, with her being a cleric follower of Ke$ha, I will have more to say about the Cult of the Beautiful Life as time goes by ...

the Cult of the Beautiful Life -- Worshiping Ke$ha

I've been kicking this idea around in my head for a while, to create a religion using Kesha's lyrics as the sacred texts, but tonight on the drive back up from Boise, Kesha blaring from the CD player, some ideas finally clicked. So here goes ... (all the links except the last about the "Otter Bacchanalia" are links to Kesha's songs on YouTube)

The Star Goddess

On a certain summer night, when the moon is heavy with light, and the star winds blow and scatter their glimmerings in a great river of light across the sky, the clashing of timbrels and the cries of women in ekstasis will arise in the city. On this night, the central mystery of the Beautiful Life will once more be ritually played out atop the highest hill, in full view of the stars, as it is done every year, and ever has been, and ever shall be.

The women of the city who are members of the cult--they call themselves the Beautiful--will gather in the the market in answer to the cries and the clash of the timbrels. Others will come as well; Elves, as fellow star-children, will be found in their midst; hangers-on who know of the revelry to come, will wait nearby to follow the procession and join in the celebrations after the mystery ritual is complete; and some few men who have been selected to join in the ritual and the revelry, and who are already swaying, drunk from wine, will have already gathered in the square with the priestesses.

Thus assembled, the entire group will process forth through the city, led by priestesses raising the thyrsus-staves, accompanied by girls bearing jars of wine and of water, all chanting incantations to the Star Goddess and her lover, and banging their timbrels and drums. Any who are to be initiated that night go silently, draped in heavy black robes that hide their features, while those who are already initiated have painted themselves with vibrant colors, and adorned their wrists, arms, ankles and waists with silver and gold while their bodies are decked with robes and dresses of every hue.

"We R Who We R!" sings the procession, proclaiming to themselves and to the world their intent to live to the fullest, to fulfill their own desires, and to love themselves as they are. "Got that glitter on our eyes, stockings all ripped up the sides, looking sick and sexified! ... We're dancing like we're dumb, bodies going numb, we'll be forever young ..."

That, and "Take It Off", singing, "There's a place downtown where the freaks all come around, there's a hole in the wall, it's a dirty free for all ... When the dark of the night comes around, that's the time that the animal comes alive looking for something wild ..."

Singing all the way, the procession of the Beautiful march and dance and sway in wine-drunkenness out from the city, marching through half the night until they come to the place of their secret and sacred rites. This is a hill somewhere in the hinterlands, high enough to be close to the stars, and broad enough at its crest thereon to hold a wild revelry. In the days before, a great bonfire has been built up by the women of the cult; but it remains unlit yet, as the cult gathers atop the hill, and the hangers-on wait beneath the crest, afraid of the consequences of profaning the mysteries with uninitiated eyes. (For indeed, they have heard what happens to those who are too eager to join ... "Cannibal" -- "I eat boys up, breakfast and lunch, then when I'm thirsty, I'll drink their blood ... Carnivore, animal, I am a cannibal, I eat boys up, you better run")

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The first thing that must be done is the initiation of new members. Before the pyre is lit, in the darkness that represents the darkness of death whence the Star Goddess was born, and shall ever be born again and again until the end of all things, the initiates are brought forward in their black robes. The priestess sings to them ("Rainbow"), singing about needing to emerge from the darkness--"I used to live in the darkness, dress in black, act so heartless; but now I see that colors are everything; got kaleidoscopes in my hairdo, got back the stars in my eyes, too, and now I see the magic inside of me."

In the process of this chant, the priestess removes the black robes, until the initiates stand naked before the cult; then, as the pyre is lit, the Beautiful step forward to paint the initiates' skin with paints of red and blue and every hue, and to adorn them with silver and gold, and to wrap their bodies in brilliant robes, which will all stand forth in full color as the pyrelight climbs higher. The initiates are asked to recite the tenets of the Star Goddess and the Beautiful Life--the answers to these questions are found in a number of songs they would have learned back in the city, and sung to themselves to retain their mysteries.

The tenets are:

First, all that matters is the Beautiful Life--life should be a striving toward transcendence, especially through drinking, dancing, and sex, but really through any activity that fills a body with joy. ("All That Matters (The Beautiful Life")

Secondly, be an Animal and a Warrior--love yourself for who you are, not for who you "should" be (this is essentially a basic tenet of Chaos, so it should be obvious at this point that this is a Chaos cult)

Thirdly, the fulfillment of the Beautiful Life is to find and join with the Lover. There are entire myth and poetic cycles of the Star Goddess and her Lover, reincarnated over and over again through vast epochs, ever seeking each other out. This Lover is usually depicted as a man (or especially as a dragon when the Joy he/it represents is more metaphorical), but sometimes the sexes are reversed, and the Star Goddess is a kind of king over the stars, and her lover is the female moon, pregnant with light ... essentially, any imagery can stand in here; the point is that a soul is reincarnated over and over again until it can finally fulfill itself in the Beautiful Life ... "Past Lives" is the best articulation of this idea ("We were lovers in a past life, I can see it in your green eyes; maybe you were one of my wives in a long lost tribe ...")

Lastly, that fulfillment is in the return to the Stars (whence all souls are born) and thence the rebirth of the Star Goddess and another cycle of new souls seeking the Beautiful Life, best expressed in the song "Spaceship" ("I'm waiting for my spaceship to come back for me ... look up in the sky and there they'll be, I bet you'll think of me ...")

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Once the initiates have sufficiently expressed their understanding of these mysteries, they step back and join the rest of the Beautiful, and join them in two songs, one "Praying," a prayer that is a rejection of the dominance of the Lawful cults, which they see as constricting the ability of human souls to fulfill the Beautiful Life with all their emphasis on duties, self-restraint, marriage, etc. And then they sing a "Hymn" for themselves, which is a full exaltation in their own Beauty and perfectness as they are, and in their seeking for their own ultimate fulfillment.

And then, of course, they TAKE IT OFF! Wine flows, and is cast into the fire as a sacrifice to the Star Goddess, who looks down in gladness from the stars above; incense is burned, and cannabis and opium imbibed; clothes come off, the drums beat to the beat of the heart, bodies writhe, cries of ekstasis and enthusiasmus are raised to the stars and their eternal light. All inhibitions are forgot. All that occurs here is sanctioned by the Star Goddess; taboos are overturned; only excess is sacred.

It is this point at which the hangers-on ascend to the hilltop, to partake in the revelry, which continues until morning, or even well into the next day and evening. Naturally, there are consequences--legendary hang-overs; men and women dead or mad from wine-sickness; unintended pregnancies. But though Lawful authorities hate these revels, they fear to punish those who return, for fear of the anger of the Goddess and her maenads ... certain tyrants in the past have sought to quash the secret rites, and have then ended up in the midst of the revelries themselves, wine-mad, and finally torn limb from limb by the ekstatic Beautiful ...

A man being torn apart by bacchantes (Tiresias, actually)

This cult being Chaotic, it is entirely reasonable for non-initiated but Chaotic characters to act as hangers-on, to follow the procession out into the hills, and to wait until the mysteries are completed, but then to join in the wild revelry thereafter. I would treat this as carousing, but at double or triple the normal xp for the normal cost, and probably come up with a unique table to roll for failures ... sounds like a future blog post, anyway.

Chaotic women may, of course, also just join the cult as initiates. If they do so, they may attend the revelry, gain triple xp, and not suffer any mishaps (not the first time, at least ...)--and yes, this is a female-only cult. In the future, I may write a secondary male cult--or write up rules for male priests like those of Cybele who would castrate themselves--but for now, the Cult of the Beautiful is women-only.

And obviously, attending these rites in any matter as a non-Chaotic comes with consequences. A character neutral in regard to Law and Chaos who joins in the revelry must thereafter be considered Chaotic--they have fully engaged with the raw energy of Chaos, and though they may not be of the Beautiful, they are now aligned against the Lawful cults. As for Lawfuls to attend the revels and enjoy themselves, that is a serious breach of their own alignment, and they must seek atonement from some character of higher rank within the Lawful cults--and they gain no xp bonuses or alignment benefits from Lawfulness until they atone, as well as some other appropriate penalty, e.g. clerics losing their spells, or a curse laid upon a fighter by his god for his failure.

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Lastly, I should mention that there is another, rival cult, the House of Gog, whose members call themselves Monsters ... I have little to say concerning this cult at the moment ...

... and there are a couple lesser disciples of such Dionysian revelries and lyric poetry--Katherine of Perrin, and Cyris of Milyta--who are semi-Sapphic, and whose lyrics echo both cults (of the Beautiful Life, and of the House of Gog); and yet neither of which have quite the same following ...

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I'll probably be coming up with some kind of random table for things one might see/find at a bacchanal of the Cult of the Beautiful, probably along the lines of Jesse Goldshear's Otter Bacchanalia, which is great, and you should check it out! ... but piecing together the tenets of this Ke$ha cult has taken up too much space yet.