Adventure Log 003: Journey Beneath the Planet Volturnus

[cybersavant]

Skur Vonn aims for the open maw and fires his laser pistol

[shaidar]

Bertie

Horrified, Bertie points at the creature

"Run Jeeves, before it eats you!"

[Pulpatoon]

Kallina finds herself pressed down by a great, blubbery weight. The flesh folds around her, clammy and grasping, like a hundred gripping hands. She tries to wriggle against what feels like a weight of tons. But despite her struggles, she doesn’t feel like she is making progress, like a nightmare of being trapped in darkness, held fast by invisible webs. In fact, she thinks she had almost exactly this nightmare, once. But now it is real! Now it is happening! She must escape before she is crushed! Before she runs out of air! Before… she loses… consciousness…

Skur Vonn fires a laser blast right into the monster’s open mouth. It rolls its bulbous eyes towards him, slavering and spitting, “Iä! Shub-Niggurath! Iä! Shub-Niggurath!” Skur Vonn sees a red glow, behind the rubbery head of the giant, briefly lighting the cavern’s ceiling.

Jeeves swivels his head to follow Bertie’s flight from the cave and calls after her, “I gather that Mr. Vonn is firing at some threat above us, but I cannot see it. Did it attack Ms. of Fury? Is that why she is contorting herself so on the cave floor? Shouldn't we assist her?”

Bertie, despite the panic and confusion, notes that she is beginning to develop a headache. The kind of specific ache that comes with psychic exertion. WHich makes no sense, because she isn’t in telepathic communication with anyone.

The giant Ul-Mor looms over Skur Vonn. Hot, fetid breath washes over him as it roars and lunges forward, trying to swallow him whole!

---

Ongoing Tallies
Food and Water: OOOO
Lights: XXOO
Discovered by the Pirates: OOO

PCs
Kallina: unconscious
Bertie: OOOO
Skur Vonn: OOOO

NPCs
Jeeves: OOO

What do you do?
Next Update: TBD

[shaidar]

Bertie tries to calm herself

"I'm not sure this is real. I think it's some kind of psychic attack, or maybe to do with these spores."

She tries to wipe the spores from her face, and send her mind out to try and make contact.

[Rex]

Kallina

Kallina attempts to focus her thoughts and calm herself. Must not panic, must not panic, calm and focused.

[cybersavant]

Skur Vonn sidesteps to doge the creature. Jeeves, what do you see?"

[Pulpatoon]

Asked what he sees, Jeeves replies, “I observe the three of you are in a high state of agitation. Mr. Vonn has discharged his weapon, Ms. of Furie has lapsed into unconsciousness after suffering some manner of fit, and Ms. Wilberforce appears to be engaged what behavioral scientists refer to as the ‘fight or flight’ instinct. I have extended my sense to the utmost, however, and I cannot detect the reason for your alarm.”

While delivering this report, Jeeves has fished out a medpack and wheeled into the direction of the tentacle that crashed down on top of Kallina. Without pause, he plunges into the purple flesh of the giant Ul-Mor, disappearing from view.

Meanwhile, the Ul-Mor has reached Skur-Vonn, opened its fanged maw wide, and swallowed him whole!

---

Ongoing Tallies
Food and Water: OOOO
Lights: XXOO
Discovered by the Pirates: OOO

PCs
Kallina: unconscious
Bertie: OOOO
Skur Vonn: ????

NPCs
Jeeves: OOO

What do you do?
Next Update: Wednesday!

[Rex]

Kallina

Out.

[cybersavant]

Skur Vonn rambles through his thoughts. Jeeves sees nothing, so nothing is here. It's just in our minds. Something is tricking us. Leaving us for easy pickings. In his mind he repeats to himself, it's not real. This isn't happening. There's nothing here.

[shaidar]

Bertie

More convinced that this might be some kind of shared delusion, she redoubles her efforts to make mental contact with the creature to try and prove (or disprove) it's existence.

[Pulpatoon]

Bertie attempts to contact the giant Ul-Mor, but finds nothing… or rather, and echo or even a reflection, like a glittery mirror made of a thousand shiny motes, each reflecting a small part of her image. Somewhere beyond this, she senses Kallina, unconscious but still maintaining the calmness of a disciplined mind, and Skur Vonn, who, even as he is being tossed around by a monstrous tongue inside the mouth of the monster, is desperately chanting to himself a denial that any of this is real.

This is strange, because Bertie’s limited telepathy has never allowed her to sense more than one instance of sentience at a time, and has never allowed her read thoughts beyond what someone might intentionally broadcast to her.

I’ll roll on Bertie’s behalf: Advantaged Roll [_3d6k2]=(6+6)=12

And suddenly it all clicks into place for Bertie! The spores! They’re all covered in spores! They must be acting as some sort of low-level psychic network, linking the three of them together… or, rather linking their subconscious minds together. And there the stress of their ongoing state of emergency found resonance with each other, amplifying in the echo chamber of their anxieties, building a shared signal out images from the recent past and childhood horror stories until… until they were all sharing this nightmare hallucination.

Grabbing a sanitation fold from her pack, she wipes away as much of the spores from herself as she can. With each wipe, the giant Ul-Mor becomes less distinct and the fear loosens its grip. She can see now that Jeeves is tending to Kallina, reviving her with a mild stimulant.

Skur Vonn feels stronger and more confident in his denials with each repetition until he realizes that the massive tongue whipping at his face is his own arm, and that he is rolling around on the cave floor, unharmed.

The party quickly recovers now that the fungal link has been severed. Jeeves helps everyone clean themselves, their clothes, and equipment from the spores.

---

Ongoing Tallies
Food and Water: OOOO
Lights: XXOO
Discovered by the Pirates: OOO

PCs
Kallina: (O)OOOO
Bertie: OOOO
Skur Vonn: OOOO

NPCs
Jeeves: OOO

What do you do?
Next Update: Friday!

[cybersavant]

Skur Vonn looks around, then at the others. "We should press on as much as we can. Jeeves, keep an eye out in case we get more spores. We were lucky we didn't attack each other."

[Rex]

Kallina

Out

[shaidar]

Bertie tries to find some suitable small containers in the med-kit (or elsewhere) that might be used to take some samples of the pollen.

She then turns her attention to rousing Kallina.

[Pulpatoon]

The party collects themselves and continues on, winding through tunnels and lava tubes, exploring side passages and dead ends. You encounter some more native fauna—large herbivores with broad, flat snouts that subsist by scrapping algae off the wet cavern walls. You take some recordings and readings, dubbing the creatures “shovelmouths” and move on.

As you continue, the air begins to get warmer and drier, and is sometimes accompanied by the smell of sulfur and other gasses. The tree-sized fungi thrive in such caves as have room for them to grow. Fortunately, Bertie was able to take a sample and get some good readings on the spores, and does not detect any ahead.

Towards the end of day, you round a narrow bend and see a large cavern ahead. A fiery, red glow illuminates it, and you feel intense heat. As you move on, your passage opens on to a narrow ledge overlooking a vast lake of molten rock.

---

Lake of Fire.png (1.39 MiB) Viewed 1122 times

---

Pillars of crystal rise out of the lake to the height of your ledge, which is nearly 30 meters above the fiery surface. Near the middle of the lake two or more of these crystals are fused at the top, forming narrow bridges. Many stalactites hang to within 3 meters of the crystal tops. Some of these stalactites are huge and well-anchored; others appear thinner and shakily attached. As you watch, one of the thin stalactites falls from the ceiling into the lake below. While you study the scene, you notice that jets of flaming gasses and molten rock stream out of the lake, splashing against the crystal pillars and even the ceiling of the cavern.

There doesn’t appear to be any safe way across the lake, for your ledgeruns only part way around the lake. On the other side, you can see a similar ledge, with a passage leading away from the lake. The distance between the two ledges appears to be about 200 meters.

Just standing here and surveying the scene, the heat is nearly unbearable, and the smoke and ash makes breathing difficult.

Jeeves says, “It grieves me to report that this does not appear to be a spore-induced hallucination.”

---

Please provide a general survival roll to see how each of you are doing with conserving food, water, and lights.

Then, you’ll need a plan for crossing the Lake of Fire, and any attendant rolls.
Map:

Lake of Fire.pdf

(308.33 KiB) Downloaded 32 times

Ongoing Tallies
Food and Water: OOOO
Lights: XXOO
Discovered by the Pirates: OOO

PCs
Kallina: (O)OOOO
Bertie: OOOO
Skur Vonn: OOOO

NPCs
Jeeves: OOO

Actions!
Next Update: Monday

[Rex]

Kallina

Survival [_2d6]=(4+6)=10 A/D [1d6]=3

Has Survival skill.

Are we at the top or the bottom ledge in the map?
What do the dashed lines indicate?

[shaidar]

Bertie

Survival roll (no skill) while I have a think

Roll: [_2d6]=(1+5)=6, dis/advantage[1d6]=5

[cybersavant]

Skur Vonn puts on his sensorpack air filter mask
survival
then walks to end of the ledge to look over the crystal bridges. Jeeves may have trouble crossing these. Does anyone have rope?"

He'll do some computations in his head for jumping from crystal to crystal where there re no links. "What does the scanner show? Did we miss a passage?"

[Rex]

Kallina

"I have a rope in a can."

[shaidar]

Bertie

"I'll carry Jeeves if I need to. I'm more worried about surviving the heat as we cross."

Bertie decides that it's worth the drain on the battery and activates the scanner, looking for hints to an optimal route, avoiding the worst of the heat or a way they could avoid the lava completely (i.e.did we miss a passageway) :

Roll: [_2d6]=(2+2)=4, dis/advantage[1d6]=6
Advantage from skills, +2 from educated = 10