Numenera - The Devil's Spine - Session 12

Once Upon a Time in the Ninth World

Welcome to our group's campaign log for The Devil's Spine, a mega-adventure by +Monte Cook for the Numenera campaign setting.  

Originally this was going to be a pure and simple campaign log.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Just a record for me and my friends to keep track of what was going on in the game.  But I've decided that, as we progress through the adventure, I'd do some commentary and/or reviews on different parts of the adventure.  So... SPOILERS!

Oh, and if you are expecting this adventure series to look anything like how The Devil's Spine is supposed to look, I apologize now. 

Seriously, all we do is go off the rails.

#ScrewTheRails

Characters

• Belmodan, a Resourceful Seeker who Wields a Whip, played by +andrew lyon 
• Keane, a Rebellious Glaive who Likes to Break Things, played by +Craig McCullough 
• PL4T0, an Artificially Intelligent Jack who Resides in Silicon, played by +Marc Plourde
• Nero, a Mad Nano who Travels Through Time, played by +David Howard 
• Rooster Bladesmyth, a Slick Jack who Collects Bounties, played by +Reece Carter 

Previously on The Devil's Spine

• Session 1:  Breaking and Entering
• Session 2:  Giving the Pinky
• Session 3:  Trapped in a Box
• Session 4:  When It's Love
• Session 5:  Graduates of the Perucchini School of Gaming Excellence
• Session 6:  PL3T1
• Session 7:  Unjumping the Shark
• Session 8:  West of Weird
• Session 9: Attack of the Cypherids
• Session 10: Peril in the Pit
• Session 11: It's Been a While

Session 12: Happy Anniversary!

Dude, it's been a year since we started this campaign? Holy crap!

You know, the downside to our games where there is a lot of talky-talky, and not might fighty-fighty is that writing these things out is typically a big, long ordeal. So I'm not writing it all out here. Sorry! We have festive holiday things to do tonight (I think a Disney special is on ABC?) and +Jennifer Walls will be super pissed at me if I'm still down here blogging at 9pm. So I've got thirty-eight minutes to get this all done.

Ready?

Okay, here goes:

I think it's fair to say that some serious party dynamics changed when Rooster Bladesmyth, the bounty hunter from the 1870's, joined the rest of the party during the last session. Fast forward a billion years, and Rooster pretty much started calling the shots in the party... and interestingly enough, the rest of the group was cool with it. Sure, there was some friction with PL4T0, but I really think that "Rooster's Tales of the Ninth World" should be some kind of series.

Maybe on Netflix.

Anyway, the last part of The Devil's Spine, the portion of the adventure where the party would need to find the Gharolan that would help get those blasted parasites off their backs, is called "The Other Side of the Maelstrom." The party needed to cross the Cloudcrystal Skyfields and make their way to the coastal village of Harmuth, where they would find Cagyn. Way back at the beginning of this quest Devola told the party that Cagyn would know how to find some Gharolan. 

Boo yah.

En route to the village, the party came across a small blue-skinned family of former nobles who now bought and traded seskii puppies. Rooster wanted a new dog, so he traded some silver dollars for a seskii puppy that he named Buddy. The party then found out that the family had in their possession the tiny sailor they had sold back when they were last in Uxphon. The dude was not a fan of PL4T0, and after purchase the little guy did his best to get away from the group.

During one of their many spats, PL4T0 slapped Rooster with the little action-figure sized sailor, breaking his back. The party then went into surgery mode, using the Impossible Blade and Nero's medical expertise. The tiny sailor was healed!

The little guy eventually ended up with Rooster, and the two were partners. He said his name was Squinty Miles. 

Because this game is crazy, I made Squinty Miles into an artifact:

• Level 4, whenever Squinty whistles, the person carrying him gains a +1 bonus to recovery rolls. No depletion, but Squinty Miles needs to be fed regularly. 

Like I said... crazy.

When the party entered Harmuth, they found all kinds of happenings going on. News of storms, complaints of robberies, missing children, and an upcoming Festival of the Fish. The team made their way to a small eatery called The Jewel Box, where they dined on super-fresh fish and shellfish, and partook in some strong beverages. The bartender gave them some info about Cagyn, and offered to let them tag along with her delivery lad who would be taking the eccentric scientist food later. 

Cagyn was naked when the party found him, standing in the middle of the Bion Bay holding a box in the water. Some weird ear tentacles on either side of his head were connected to the box. After some introductions, Cagyn told the party that he'd love to help them with their parasites, but the Gharolan they sought was out in the middle of the sea, and his Tracker Ring artifact would be needed to find it. Unfortunately, that ring was missing!

There had been news of a ring thief earlier at the Jewel Box.

This sounded like work for an experienced bounty hunter! Rooster led the party over to Constable Eltre's place and offered to take on the Case of the Missing Rings. The party learned some important clues:

1. The thief liked rings.
2. The thief was able to snatch up to five rings at once without disturbing the victim.
3. The thief was invisible (or practically so). 
4. The thief left behind some mucous on the victim.
5. The thief was striking from below.

Rooster set up a sting operation, that revealed the culprit to be a furry toad creature, that quickly snatched up Squinty Miles! After cutting Squinty from the inside of the toad, Rooster sent the tiny sailor into the small tunnel that the toad-thief struck from. At the end of the tunnel, Squinty discovered all the rings, and the party used Lockjaw McGraw's beard cypher to retrieve them (dangled on the end of Belmodan's whip).

Once back at Cagyn's place, the party traded their gravity belt for the Tracker Ring, and made plans to set off into the sea.

Quotes

Reece - "I don't know why Rooster wants to follow you." 
Marc - "Because we're awesome." 
Reece - "That's definitely not it." 

"Is that a sailor in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?" - Marc

"Ya'll dip?" - Rooster to the rest of the party.

Father/Daughter MCCRPG - Hive of the Overmind - Part 2

All These Mutants

How did Judge Evie and I end up with all these mutation wielding player characters? 

If you were to take a look at +Marc Plourde's Mutant Crawl Classics campaign and compare it with the one that I'm co-GM'ing with Judge Evie, you'd think that we used two completely different character generation tables. Here's the comparison of character classes:

Marc's Campaign: 

• 1 Shaman (me, Cypher the Shaman of ACHROMA)
• 1 Rover
• 1 Healer
• 1 Plantient (now dead)

Me and Judge Evie's Campaign:

• 3 Mutants
• 1 Manimal
• 1 Shaman
• 1 Rover
• 1 Healer

So with Marc's game, there's barely ever a mutation getting used. Andy's plantient had multiple limbs, so he rolled that up early before we started. But in our game, every PC is lobbing mutation powers every fifteen seconds. Ella's character Wallace is particularly dangerous with her ability to completely take control over the minds of others (with Assimilation). The only downside to all of the mutations getting used was that the print copy of MCCRPG still isn't out, so I'm stuck with having to look everything up on my iPad. Oh well, we had a great game!

In case you are interested, I'll list out all of the mutations for each character later in this post.

Judge Evie was slowed down a bit during this game. She has an ankle injury, so she was stuck having to sit down, and spent much of the time taking lots of notes (so that she could write the recap) when she wasn't trying to kill player characters with terrible fumble results. But we still had an incredible time continuing +Julian Bernick's insect-laden 0-level funnel, Hive of the Overmind!

Want to know what happened last session? Here's the link: 

• Hive of the Overmind - Part 1

The Initiates of the Dolphinquisition

• Carrie
• Era - Shaman
• Ryan
• Ranno - Manimal/Toad (Symbiotic Touch, Absorption)
• Alex
• Guthric - Rover
• Ella
• Wallace - Mutant (Gas Generation, Multiple Body Parts, Plasticity, Assimilation, Heightened Intelligence)
• Nick
• Dominic - Mutant (Extra Senses, Singularity, Light Generation, Force Field Generation, Time Sense)
• Evan
• Colossus - Mutant (Claws, Radiation Generation, Shorter, Death Field Generation, Mental Shield)
• Alex (Fry Guy)
• Nicky P. - Healer

Hive of the Overmind - Part 2

Recap by Guest Blogger, Evie Walls

At this point everyone was still in the hive, and they were all trying to get out of there. With Colossus only being four feet tall and Wallace having a head growing out of his chest, you can tell the party is doing great! Colossus takes the lead while the party walks down a long hallway.

Colossus meets an ant dude and says "how's it going?" 

The ant dude shot back "get back to work!"

Ranno started laughing in a scary voice. The party slowly backed away while Ranno met another ant dude and then got SPIT TALKED. 

Dun, dun, DUNNAH!

Ranno survived the spit talking though.

[Judge James' Note: "Spit Talked" was Judge Evie's idea of a fumble result. The PC, while talking with a drone, got some mind controlling saliva spit into their mouth.]

On the other hand, Dominic got controlled by a drone and started digging at a wall all because of a spit talker. Wallace tried to save Dominic by putting a fake memory into the ant man's mind. The memory was of Dominic being its boss! The ant man then describes the Overmind and the Queen to the party: "It's one of us with a TV above it." 

The party then goes to speak with the Overmind.  

At first the Overmind controlled Queen blasted the part with saliva, which ended up getting Dominic mind controlled again. But then Wallace used assimilation (and Ella rolled really high) and the queen fell under the mutant's control. 

The party found a death ray pistol and an android head. The android head (X-52) told it's new master Nicky P. that they should take it to the chambers below the hive. Wallace used the queen's memory to unlock the doorway behind the chamber. 

In the lower levels the party finds a room full of artifacts. In this chamber Nicky P. finds a six-pack of beer, and the rest of the party finds some additional gear. 

In anther chamber the party finds an android laying on the ground with a pistol. The android gets into an argument with Nicky P.'s android head. The android head screams out "KILL HIM!" Colossus wants to do this, but Nicky P. calmly works everything out. The android on the ground is allowed to destroy the android head. 

The legless android is named Y-4. Nicky P. befriends him, fixes his legs (fist bump), and finds out that the Overmind is keeping a rebellious android named Speculatron behind the door in the room. Y-4 makes a deal with Nicky P: agree to leave the hive without harming the Overmind, and the party will be given access to some incredible tech.

Y-4 takes everyone to a Nano Goo chamber. Some of the mutants try going into the goo, but it almost kills Dominic. Wallace gains a new mutation (heightened intelligence) and Era finds out that it doesn't work on pure strain humans. 

Y-4 then takes the party to the final chamber, containing a small robotic ant creature. 

"Halt! I am the Overmind!" it says.

The Overmind says that if the party leaves they will be given a Drill Tank that will take them into the center of the Earth if they want. Yay!

All eyes were on Nicky P. because he was on the side of the Overmind now. Nicky P. and Colossus give the Overmind a beer, and agree to leave. While leaving, Colossus starts to think up a plan to betray the Overmind and take over. There is a quick vote, and four of the characters try to over throw the Overmind. 

The Overmind fires dart missiles at those who try to betray him, putting three to sleep. But he kills Colossus. The androids allow Nicky P. to take the sleeping characters and leave in the drill. But Colossus is then brought back to life, and his arms and legs are removed. He is transformed into a living battery to keep the Speculatron chamber powered forever.

Well we can say bye to him! Peace out!

Poor Colossus, forever transformed into a living battery to keep the Speculatron trapped.

Campaign Crematorium 

• Colossus - Turned into living battery by the Overmind after attempting to plot against him.