Maze of the Blue Medusa (Actual Play Report) - Session 3

A continuation of this post. It should be noted that we wrapped this campaign after Session 16, and I only took detailed notes for the first four sessions. That said...

THE HEROES (level 3)

Fitzy, Air Genasi Sorcerer/Fighter.
Teka, Human Fighter.
Jezebel, Human Fighter. Courageous and unflinching.
Moonblossom Honeywine, Wild Elf Bard. Impulse control issues.
Crimsonbeard, Dwarf Rogue. Weird and gross.

A number of players were missing so their heroes just sorta “ghosted,” like if this is game a movie/tv series, the absent characters still show up on camera, but they don’t have any dialogue in this episode and they get a reaction shot at most. They’ll rejoin the story on an appropriate story beat.

SESSION 3

Our heroes (plus Crimsonbeard), still reeling from their fight with the lizard-man negamancer and his primate thralls, gather their wits and set off deeper into the maze.

They find a room with a glowy orange pentagrammatic ward on the floor, a table, a vase, and a note stuffed in the vase. Fitzy uses levitate on Crimsonbeard, who does a mid-air Michael Phelps and backstrokes his way through the air to the vase. He grabs the note, and everyone stands around for a while as he reads lurid love poems that just go on too long. They enter the room, muck with the pentagram, get some orange dust on their boots, and keep pushing.

Another room. A fancy rose in a vase on a table. Detect magic says it’s magical, but nobody rolls high Arcana so it’s just a rose, whatever, who cares. [Perhaps amusingly, this rose will be the last thing they steal on their way out of the Maze]. The door on the far end brings them face-to-face with a band of five Oku (random encounter).

They don’t immediately start stabbing the Oku this time. [Fewer PCs and less wine at the table, I’m guessing]. They get into a discussion; the Oku are searching for a lost treasure – the jewelry of Chronia Torn (I said “nipple tassels” for some reason, so OK, it’s canon now that Chronia has some fantastically expensive nipple tassels) – and they could use some helpers. Of course, the Oku are only rational for a fraction of the conversation, so planning this heist turns into an absurdist farce pretty quickly. Moonblossom, true to form, gets bored and opens another door.

She finds an enchanted hourglass. As the sands fall, it plays beautiful music (I think someone had swapped out our usual soundtrack for some chillstep, so I just cranked the volume and said, “This is what you hear.” And it fit!) Moonblossom snatches it, examines it, and Crimsonbeard figures out how to carry it just-so, because it’s huge and fragile and expensive, and the enchantment is limited.  Fitzy says, “Let’s bring it to Lady Capelli!” and honestly, it’s a good idea.

They finish plotting with the Oku – the bird-men go north and leave a contact, Yarrow, in the room with the rose. They muck around in the campsite-hallway some more: They find some hypno discs, some crazy books – lot of neat stuff but it’s not relevant, not yet, so I’ll just say it’s pretty groovy and let it be.

Then it’s back across the freaky white room where 94% of Session 2 took place, past the screeching shell and the Escher stairs, and there they are, standing in the dragon-lady’s presence. Lady Capelli is surprised to see them. She’s lost in thought and they startle her out of it. Moonblossom leads with her rendition of The Hourglass Song, and Crimsonbeard emphasizes that it’s not the actual song, just a tribute. Then his player starts blasting Tenacious D over the chillstep, and it goes on way too long, and Moonblossom botches the perform check to impress Lady Capelli anyway so it all works out, actually. A practical Teka has noticed that nobody brought rations: She asks Lady Capelli for some food and water in exchange for completing the task, and Lady Capelli obliges. She draws a picnic spread on the walls in her own blood, then speaks a few bone-shaking words of power, and bam, three days’ worth of hardtack, pemmican, lard, and Chardonnay for the entire party. Lady Capelli is unimpressed with their opinions regarding the music but, pleasantly distracted and seeking to distract herself further from her task of destroying the library, she gives the heroes another job: She wants art, and it had better be an ironic commentary on the music they just brought her.

The party asks her some decent questions this time and learns some of the history of the Maze, the Selenium Isles, the Oku, the Reptile Empire, the Triarchy, and the Medusa. Nothing deep, just surface level stuff really, but enough to have some actual context for the maze and start putting together some edge-pieces. Lady Capelli is being helpful, but astute heroes understand she is not to be trusted…

We check the clock – we’ve gone way late – and decide to wrap the session here.

The closest I'm going to get to a pic of Lady Capilli without drawing something myself
or wasting the whole afternoon. By Reverie-drawingly @ Deviantart.

DM NOTES

Lots of exploration and a good flow of events. Nobody even noticed that we didn’t have a fight until I mentioned it while I was cleaning up. A smaller group was a more focused group. I’ve also gone unintentionally light on the random encounters to this point, so I’m going to open next session with some lost, bloodthirsty Orchid-Men and see how it goes.