Gnomes: The Fount of Awesome
or The Joy of "Haste Level 21".
habnabitmkiii : Hi.Bryce : konban wa
habnabitmkiii : Finally we can talk.
Bryce : Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no giant robot, for a gnome is with me. His foresight and brilliant magenta bolts - they comfort me.
- Biptetk the Rogue 23:8
habnabitmkiii : More RPG fun?
Bryce : Yeah. This one was pretty serious, went well - still, some funny stuff happened. So, the party got their spaceship fixed, remember?
habnabitmkiii : Yes.
Bryce : And they went to La Hu, planet of 126-hour days, decaying industrial ruins, and Hentcherp the Great Sage Who is Full of Himself. Except people don't call him that to his face.
habnabitmkiii : And this was actually part of the plot?
Bryce : Yes. Finally... Olivia, the NPC-of-destiny, clone of the late Empress Miho I, psionist of respectable skill and daughter of the bad guy's former leader, etc etc, actually suggested going there. (How can she be a clone and his daughter? Adopted. I figure you guess that on your own but eh)
habnabitmkiii : You mentioned it earlier.
Bryce : Ah. I'd forgotten. Anyhow they get there and find the place locked up. Takes them a few minutes to get let in to the waiting room, where the receptionist invites them to have a seat. Of course they can't wait, and start poking around; a few successful perception checks later they've discovered a number of unusual things, such as the fact that the receptionist is wearing her shirt inside out.
When questioned, she claimed hesitatingly that it was the fashion on La Hu. (This of course led to a few minutes of Grandpa Simpson impressions and references... )
habnabitmkiii : Hahaha.
Bryce : "We used to wear our shirts inside out, because it was the fashion at the time... and in my day we called a gnome a hum-dinger, because..." or somesuch
Anyway, Space Gnome turned her robe inside out. When in Rome...
The concerns of the party were not molified, however, especially as they ended up waiting for several minutes. (Oh, no, just because he's the most powerful and wise sage in the sector doesn't mean that you can wait longer than for a typical doctor's appointment...)
They eventually discovered (with the help of the space rats) a body hastily hidden underneith one of the tables in the room. The "receptionist", when confronted, tried to run away, but one of the Trengar (big lizard aliens) caught her and used her stun power to subdue the "receptionist".
Bryce : They took her shirt off, and discovered that it was inside out to hide the military insignia on it. Dun dun dun.
habnabitmkiii : So, what is the government in the present of your game, then? Not the same Empire?
Bryce : There are several organized armed forces. The Pangalactic Imperium has the Imperial Army, but each planet has its own militia. Each planet has a planetary government, which is subservient to the Emperor and the Pangalactic Parliament. (And no doubt many local commercial, religious or more secretive forces to an extent.)
This arrangement allows non-uniformity in the planetary governments the players encounter. The Empire doesn't care that much about what the individual planets do, so long as taxes are paid, levies are met, and the citizens are not being herded into extermination camps and recycled to make pet food, or other things that would cause a great outcry.
So Gnomistan is a theocracy, Borkngor is a democracy, La Hu a (de facto) plutocracy, etc. Does that answer your question or did I misunderstand?
habnabitmkiii : Well, I'm just wondering what's so sinister about the military insignia.
Bryce : Ah, ah. Well, the fact that the real receptionist (the body looked like a receptionist) was murdered, the military person had been evasive about the whole thing, and hiding her identity was sinister.
Perhaps they were overreacting but you'd no doubt agree that it is a little suspicious?
habnabitmkiii : Ah.
habnabitmkiii : Well, no, I would agree. I just thought there was some other reason.
Bryce : Well, in any case it didn't take long for there to be another reason. After tying up the pseudo-receptionist, they started plundering^Wsearching the sage's building. They eventually came to a big impressive doorway of ostentation +3, and saw beyond it...
Paddur!
That's right, the leader of the AOE who became the leader by murdering the previous one, Olivia's father Antoine Pelt. Paddur was having a nice little conversation with his old master, Hentcherp, great sage of La Hu.
And by nice little conversation I actually mean he was gloating over his schemes and trechery. Recall that in their previous encounter, Paddur had attempted to chase the party to their deaths over a cliff using an illusion of a giant, fire-breathing gnome head.
habnabitmkiii : I don't think I heard about it.
Bryce : Hmm. I'll have to post it sometime. Anyway, our intrepid adventurers enter the audiance chamber and confront the fiend:
"Wasn't your head a lot bigger the last time we saw you?"
Bryce : ...
habnabitmkiii : Hahaha.
Bryce : Paddur suggested that the party turn over "the clone" (Olivia) and that if that happened everything would be all fine and dandy. (Yeah... right.) The party began with the usual battle cries: "I wield my awesome sword!" "I haste myself!" "I use psishield!" "I use my haste imprint!" "I hide behind the pillar!" etc.
They quickly discovered the need for a change in tactics: The bad guys had taken the precaution (against the Sage Hentcherp mainly, but also against Olivia, who's coming with the party had been foreseen) of bringing with them psionic-disruptor thingies.
There were five of said thingies, redundant, and taking the form of tall staffs with glowing electronic energy projectors on the top. Very cool if ordinary torch lamps are too plain for you and you fear evil wizards. Two birds, one stone.
Despite their lack of major haste and psionic buffs, the party did a respectable job of holding their own against the 18 or so AOE soldiers in the audiance chamber.
The bad guys were mainly out to get Olivia, alive, which did make things somewhat easier as they were afraid to accidentally kill her in area-of-effect attacks.
Also, the psionic disruption prevented Paddur from using his powers as well, so the players made no attempt to take out the disruptors. Soon, a wall of corpses - some human, some big combat robot - began to accumulate. They used it for cover while exchanging fire and the occasional grenade with the enemies.
Josh saw a Vulpinian among the enemies, unarmed. He addressed the fox-man in his native language, and discovered that he was a reluctant assistant of the bad guys. So naturally Josh tossed him a weapon and invited him to join in.
The Vulpinian was reluctant, but at Josh's prodding he eventually attacked the bad guys. They killed him in about two rounds.
habnabitmkiii : did his Vulpinian-hating character die a while ago?
Bryce : That was the other "problem" player. Josh has always had a soft spot for the furries. Most of his characters are either part Vulpinian or have some background involving Vulpinians or Dramidia (their homeworld).
Anyhow, the space rats were sent into combat with promises of free alcohol. "For loot! For fun! For beer!"
habnabitmkiii : Midway through or at the beginning?
Bryce : Not long after the battle started. The rats made a good effort of jumping on adversaries faces and gnawing the throats of the wounded to finish them (before riffling through their pockets) , but most of them got picked off, stepped on, swated, caught in grenade blasts, etc. They lost at least one to friendly fire - "Look, this group is advancing close together! Let's throw the grenade there. Well, one of our rats is there, but he'll see it and get out in time."
He didn't. Fur everywhere, but they didn't care that much.
As the majority of the party engaged in combat from the safety of the corpse wall, Olivia got seperated from the others and was encircled by the AOE forces, who were, after all, trying to capture her.
At the same time, Space Gnome apparently decided that she needed no psionics to be awesome, and ran into battle. Space Gnome was wrong. Got knocked out and would have been killed if her player hadn't lucked out and rolled a 20 for regaining consciousness.
Thereafter somewhat more prudent, Space Gnome nonetheless snuck through the battle and got to the other side to confront Paddur himself.
Lightsaber clashed against personal shield as the two gnomes battled. Space Gnome clearly very much wanted Paddur to die. As evidence, I present this:
Every time I began a sentence of the form: "Okay... this AOE soldier shoots--" the sentence would be completed expectantly by him with "--Paddur?"
habnabitmkiii : Hahaha.
Bryce : For every "Your shot misses--" -> "-- and hits Paddur?" No matter how magical a bullet would be required for the ricochet.
Even totally unreleated random stuff. I mean, if I'd said a pigeon defecated on his spaceship twenty kilometers away it would be suspected of causing Paddur to die from some kind of sympathetic magic. When I began saying what Paddur was doing on his turn, "Paddur does X", I would be occasionally cut of f at "Paddur --" and have my sentence finished "drops dead?"
habnabitmkiii : Hah!
Bryce : So anyway I was getting slightly irritated about it, but thankfully he picked up on that and he started doing it less. Still, revenge would be mine.
habnabitmkiii : Sadly, no more friendly fire?
Bryce : Despite their usual lack of misgivings about friendly fire, no. This was actually a fairly good day with respect collateral damage. I recall one incident where they repeatedly fireballed Josh on the premise that they could always resurrect him later anyway.
habnabitmkiii : Hahaha!
Bryce : Heh... I think that was my favorite session ever :) But it's another story. So, this whole complete-my-sentences-with-something-involving-Paddur's-improbable-death thing went on for, well, pretty much the whole battle.
Space Gnome duked it out with Paddur. I had stupidly neglected to give Paddur any kind of decent weapon, so he employed heavily the "run away from the person with a lightsaber and a murderous fury" technique.
Meanwhile, Paddur's troops pressed forward in the large audiance chamber, as Hentcherp looked on staidly at the melee before him. Olivia was stunned by the AOE people, which I don't think most of the players noticed, and the battle started going against the PCs. They decided to retreat.
They apparently thought that the Paddur-vs-Valana (Space Gnome's actual name) thing was a Gnome Thing that they should stay out of. Olivia, they forgot about entirely, I think. Josh was rendered unconscious trying to save Olivia. They left him as well...
habnabitmkiii : So what happened to Olivia?
Bryce : Paddur's troops picked her up. Being goal-focused, as soon as she was stunned and collected, Paddur signaled a retreat and gave the command that sent shivers down the spines of the players: "Deactivate field!"
habnabitmkiii : Ahahahah.
Bryce : Paddur's mighty psionic powers blew a hole in th e side of the building and the AOE troops started retreating through it (with Olivia) just as the players who had retreated were realizing that they were a few Adventurers short of a party.
Space Gnome quickly applied her psionic buffs, haste, etc. I'm sure that there is some kind of magical-girl-transformation-sequence thing when that happens but the issue has never come up.
Paddur, not being stupid, also hasted himself. Space Gnome has Level 21 Haste and 3 natural AP (actions per turn), and Paddur was hasted to an equivalent degree. So, basically, these gnomes were going much faster than everyone else - to such a degree that they went back-and-forth taking actions about ten times for every one action the rest of the characters took. I'm sure it would have been something interesting to see if it were real.
As Space Gnome and Paddur had their epic gnome fight, the Sage Hentcherp - self-serving arrogant little green @#(*&@@! - calmly used his awesome powers to create a corridor of shimmering magenta light from his oracular dias to the exit.
The rest of the party, coming back to save Olivia, forgot about it and walked right into the thing. In the future, it was decided, the battle map was to have representations of all painful energy shields.
Bryce : Meanwhile, the Gnome Fight continued with increased ferocity. Space Gnome has bought so much telekinesis skill with XP that she can basically fly.
habnabitmkiii : Wow, nice.
Bryce : Paddur was also quite talented. There was lots of hopping around, swinging lightsabers, and using telekinesis to pull people infront of you as a human shield.
Eventually, Space Gnome leaped up into the air for a great attack on Paddur, with his failing energy shield, but the wily psionist responded by pulling a clod of people including Olivia, himself, and several of his soldiers out the hole. Space Gnome fumbled and lost her lightsaber, but by the time she got back to near the ground she'd pulled out a dagger in her inventory and planted it in the skull of the one remaining live bad guy who was in the building near the hole. Always have a backup, I guess. I can't say it wasn't prudent.
Anyway the fight started going badly for Paddur. He lost an arm, and Josh - who had woken up- joined him.
habnabitmkiii : Er. Why?
Bryce : Because he loves Olivia. Well, that, and the fact that Hentcherp's wonderful magenta shield tunnel was preventing him from retreating. (Or rejoining the others)
habnabitmkiii : Wait, are you saying that he joined Paddur?
Bryce : Hentcherp? No. Hentcherp and Paddur were enemies. Hentcherp however only cares about Hentcherp, so since Paddur was leaving anyway he did nothing to stop it, and instead created a nice energy shield tunnel between himself and the exit, to ensure his unimpeded egress. Besides keeping stray blaster bolts and AOE soldiers out, though, this tunnel also seperated Josh, Olivia and Space Gnome from the rest of the party.
habnabitmkiii : I mean Josh.
Bryce : Oh. Confound my ambiguous pronoun reference. Josh joined Space Gnome in the fight against Paddur. Sorry.
habnabitmkiii : Ahh.
Bryce : So, as "someone" later said, "Gnome on Gnome action was replaced by Gnome on Human action. Wait, no, that doesn't sound right."
Paddur's fortunes improved slightly as his spaceship arrived outside (he'd called it previously). He started to use his telekinetic powers to pull himself and Olivia towards the ship. Josh and Space Gnome tried to prevent this.
This was probably the most... interesting part. Let's start by saying that Olivia was unconscious, but she's going to feel sore in the morning.
habnabitmkiii : Hah.
Bryce : Both parties tried to pull her back to them. Olivia went back and forth between them with the roll of the dice. "Er, this isn't going to make her explode, is it?" Space Gnome asked. "No, but she might get pulled asunder," I cautioned. This seemed to affect their actions not a whit, as for the next twenty turns or so she was the rope in a psionic tug-of-war.
I guess with cyborg technology being what it is these days, they'd of been satisfied with getting the top half.
Anyway, at some point someone rolled low and got her robe instead, but persisted in pulling it off. There were some speculations about other articles of clothing being lost as well but that didn't happen.
Finally, Josh said that he would grip a specific body part. _This could be bad in so many ways..._
habnabitmkiii : Oh boy.
Bryce : "I grab her around the middle." _Thank goodness._ Okay, so that wasn't so bad. Logical, even, if you think about it.
(some dice are rolled) "You do so."
"Can I see her belly button?"
"Um..." (confused pause) "Er, no. She's wearing a shirt." (dumb answer, I know, but it caught me off guard.)
"Oh."
I really didn't see that coming, but then "I didn't see that coming" is a state of mind I've learned to appreciate a lot since starting GMing.
habnabitmkiii : Especially with your players.
Bryce : Yeah. I think it's all players, though, not just mine. The Players and the GM have such different vantage points that some moments like that are inevitable.
Anyway I decided to make things more interesting by letting them get a grip on Paddur by mistake and not know it; in his weaked state he was unable to prevent them from pulling his leg off. My game was a bit off at that point, but I wanted to change the status quo before Captain Idiot decided to see if Olivia was ticklish or something.
Bryce : Meanwhile... in another thread... ("Can we switch to our thread?" "YES YES good idea!")
habnabitmkiii : Hahahah.
Bryce : One of the party members (who still hadn't un-retreated) stood on top of the roof of the Sage's building. Looking down, he saw a hobo.
The hobo was a spleen flayer, our non-infringing parody of a mind-flayer in space. The player asked him if he was hungry. "Yeah, I haven't had a spleen in a week!"
"Well, come in here! There's a whole bunch of corpses with fresh spleens!"
"Wow! Okay!" The half-crazed-with-hunger hobo took up the fire escape and went down the escape hole in the roof.
Where he was at once confronted by the squad of giant robots arriving (a bit late) to reenforce the AOE troops in the audiance chamber.
"Hah, forgot about those?"
"Yeah... "
"Did you just send that poor hobo to his death?"
"Maybe..."
That hobo had a terrible run of luck. The got maimed by a giant robot, and, a few moments later was blown to bits by a plasma canon shot from Paddur's ship. (Which missed Josh and hit the building.)
Paddur was losing again, but his buddies in the ship are helping him more successfully now. Psionists in the ship are trying to aid him in winning the tug of war, and the ship is shooting at Josh and Space Gnome on the ground.
Finally, Olivia woke up, suspended in the air between Paddur and Space Gnome/Josh on the ground, being pulled on in various directions in a manner which was no doubt rather unconfortable.
Remember how I said that I would have my little "revenge" on Space Gnome for that earlier "and Paddur dies" irritation? Now I had it...
"Okay, and Olivia uses Energy Bolt XII on Paddur..." (computation mumblings here..) "He is bisected by the blast. His lifeless corpse falls to the ground."
Ah, the kill-stealing NPC... the GM's right-hand-of-vengence.
habnabitmkiii : Ahahaha.
Bryce : Anyway, Olivia was lowered safely to the ground (although not, I imagine, gently), and Space Gnome - now no longer fearing the possibility that Paddur could counter-effect offensive psionics - used a power called Flaming Death on the interior of the spaceship.
He had it at such an amazingly high level (so that's where your XP went...) that the space ship quickly turned to a hollow burnt-out shell with some carbonized remains at the helm. The ship started collapsing over them. The players ran away and back into the building through the hole as the flaming ship collapsed over Paddur's body and whatever else was in the alley.
Hentcherp defeated the returning squad of giant robots because they were in his way and because some players had to go but insisted on "finishing the battle", while the Rogue Biptetk followed behind him. (Inspiring the introductory "psalm".)
And thus the party was reunited for their next adventure.
There was one survivor of the bad guys. Josh was instructed to g o interrogate him. That lasted about thirty seconds. The bad guy opened with an apparent lie, so Josh offed him with a sword.
Moral of the story: When Cosmic Forces of Good and Evil Collide, it's always the hobos that suffer the most.
habnabitmkiii : What about the Vulpinians?
Bryce : Okay, them to. And the rats. And Olivia. An d possibly all the nameless AOE grunts the players dispatched without a second thought...
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