The Luau of Death

Last night we played in Justin's Vaults of Ur game on G+.  Our cast consisted of myself as Thidrek the Sleestak, Jeremy as Ripper the Orc, Dean as Elder Karl the Cleric (Dean, you need a blog), and Alexei as Maya the Elf.  My buddy Steve, of the old Ebisu Group and now the 3d6 blog, came to observe a bit, but since he was at the in-laws', and was maybe having connection problems, he didn't stay long.

Steve, I hope you liked what you saw, even though it was mostly just the pre-game firing of projectiles at feces.

We opened the game the next morning after our last session.  Ripper came to the Hive after his carousing with Oogliata's Amazonian Orc Legion, and we hashed out plans to deal with the Red Men/mercenaries.

After much debating - MUCH debating - Thidrek's plan of a pre-emptive strike on the mercenaries in the wee hours of the morning was shot down.  We decided to go out into the ruins in case the mercs did come out, so we could ambush them.  And if they didn't come out, we would return with stories of how we totally looted the hell house they told us to go to, and that there was more treasure waiting - and that we'd invite them to our celebratory feast where there would be plenty of wine, women, and exotic lotus powders (the Luau of Death).  We figured one or the other of those stories would lure them out.

So we camped in the ruins.  And waited. 

Some lizard men approached.  Ripper and Elder Karl presented themselves, and the lizardmen attacked.  We managed to defeat them, but Elder Karl went into negative hit points.  With some Hive healing goop, we brought him around, but he was weakened from being so close to death.  We heard fighting to the south, back toward the Hive, and when we investigated we found some Spiked Circle thugs fighting some Red Men.  We intervened.  Elder Karl used his stone hand to good effect, crushing lots of the Spiked Circle guys with stones.  We also managed to capture one of them.

The Red Men wanted the captive, but we insisted that he was our prisoner, and took him to Forager.  We interrogated him, and learned that the fresco images we'd seen under the Hive, of portents in the sky, demons and diseased men fighting heroes in Ur, etc. is connected to their demon lord, Harkon.  The Spiked Circle are capturing people for use in sacrifices to provide souls for Harkon's return.

We took our prisoner up into the heights of the Hive to the "great minds above."  They turned out to be super-intelligent spiders (sorta like Aranea from the Isle of Dread).  They read the prisoner's mind while we poked through their collected stuff.  Maya found some spell books, and got a sleep spell and maybe one more.  Thidrek and Elder Karl looked out the window, and saw some places of interest for future adventures.  Ripper got a new bug claw axe, similar to Forager's, and Maya took a new spear to replace the one she broke fighting the lizard men.  Oh, and one of the spiders kept asking Thidrek if it could dissect him, as they'd never met a Sleestak before.  I declined their offer.  Maybe next time.

Anyway, the brain probe left the goon in a poor state, but we learned that just before the attack, three Spiked Circle members went into some sort of tunnel.  Seems important.  We're sure they're up to no good.

So we've still got the mercs to deal with, Forager's political power play to assist in, and Spiked Circle shenanigans to figure out as well.  Who knows when we'll ever get our new headquarters sorted out, and get a chance to explore the Observatory we spotted north of the Zoo, or make our way towards the Golden Pyramid in the center of the city.

I've gotta say, though, the sandbox game can really pay off in a good way when things like this happen.  We're all really enjoying the story that's developing, and our characters are evolving as it happens.