This time I used a bunch of Burger King coupons and got 4 Whoppers, 2 Double Bacon Cheeseburgers, 1 set of chicken nuggets, 3 soft drinks and 5 sets of small french fries. (It is supposed to be one coupon per customer but they apparently overlooked that.)

Games are on Tuesdays sometime around 5:30PM at World's Best Comics, 9714 Warwick Blvd Newport News, Virginia 23601.

++++ PROLOGUE ++++

Players have taken an excursion in to Hell on the second layer of Dis and are currently in the Tower of Dis looking to steal the Holy Avenger Sword currently in the possession of Dispater the Arch-Devil (a.k.a Vorgaal'Lad in HackMaster). For the record we are using the Planescape module "Fires of Dis" with a modified plot. I'll use the old D&D canonical name of Dispater throughout.

++++ START OF SESSION ++++

Before starting play, the Player for Elefus had noted his character sheet was marked with "Too Much Honor". Which is a HackMaster rule that essentially earns him more hostile encounters and attracts any monster to attack him first whenever he is part of a group (the Party). This because he just reeks with high honor and it attracts monsters like flies to a pungent odor. I reminded him that happens because 1) he wears expensive honor, and that earns him a an Honor Point at a random 10% per day of wearing it, and 2) every time he heals anyone, he earns an Honor Points Both have been frequent of late. What he needs to do is be more of an jerk and lose some of that honor. Hence he became more willing to make deals with demons and devils also to use out of character knowledge more often at a negative 5 Honor Points each attempt.

PART 1.

When we last left the party they were in a triangular chamber with three prisoners bound to the walls by snakes. Two of which were from the Seven Heavens but the third was a demon from the Abyss that was shape-changed to look like the two good ones. The trick was to determine which one. The two good ones could not tell any lies but the evil one could. The party commiserated for nearly an hour without trying any sort of logic test to see which one was lying. They also thought about using a witch test, including a conversation about the speed of an unladen African Swallow, but as it was pointed out these were not witches. Finally Elefus decided to try one of his vials of Holy Water and sure enough, after applying to them all only when applied to one of the prisoners there was a definite hissing sound as if water was tossed onto a hot skillet.

Huang and Honda then cut away at the snakes holding the two good prisoners. Thus free the two reacquired their heavenly powers and offered the two that released them an all expense paid free trip to Heaven.

Huang & Honda pondered this for a moment. "Go to Heaven or stay here and help our friends? Hmmmm..." They decided to stay so poof, the two Angelic hosts disappeared back to their own plane of existence.

Shortly thereafter, the remaining prisoner, said "O.K. You got me."

Elefus cuts him a deal, saying I'll let you go, all you need to do is give me your True name and all you have to do is go out of here and since you Demons are at war with the Devils, other, go forth and kill some Devils.

"Deal!", said the Demon, "by the way my name is Zaxarus, call me if you need me."

(Per the first paragraph, making a deal with a Demon helped Elefus lose some Honor.)

Once released from his bonds, he changed into his true shape, a Demon Spawn (a.k.a. Cambion in D&D parlance) with a goatee, and teleported out, perchance to do as he agreed to.

Next item on the agenda, to pick another petal from the Flower of Holes and go to another room. Doing so they found themselves in a series of passageways with the hallways made up of bones. (Much like a scene from the old video game of Doom II.) From one of the hallways, came a distinctive laugh, "Whoo Hoo!" and "Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk." Turning round the corner they find a man holding a coin and a jagged bone who asks, "Have you seen my fish?"

Elefus responds with a resounding "No." To which the man responds with "Wise guy, eh?" with the accent of Curly from The Three Stooges.

After a short tete-a-tete, the party learns from him that they need to use all the petals from the Flower of Holes to get to "The Garden", where of course they can find: "More Flowers!" They also determined the guy was a little nuts, but adopted him anyway.

(As GM I could have played this nutcase a little longer but the Players had taken too long in the previous room - 90 minutes - and I wanted them to get through this.)

Pulling out another petal, they ended up in a room that collapsed on them like a deflated balloon. They had to stretch the walls far enough to place another petal on a flat surface and ...

They found themselves in a large room with a horned skull the size of a bull elephant with eye-sockets as big as tunnels. Looking at the top, they noticed the skull had a hinged lid and a large handle. Climbing up there, they easily defeated an gratuitous attack by a Large Scorpion. When they opened the lid they found "stuff" such as rocks, cloth, goblets, bones, various coin. A few rounds of searching they found Huang's stolen Light Sabre from a prior adventure and a pair of swords they determined to be magical. Since Rubbio only had red dragonhide boots, loincloth and a dagger, he took one of the swords and Huang took the rest. They also found a diary entitled, "Elf Like Me" and handed it off to Numrendir. They also found a sack of marbles and an Apollo 18 Moon Rock which they promptly destroyed.

Deciding they were done with the room they pulled another flower petal and leaped into the next room. It was full of loose chains, torture instruments, and two petitioners thus bound enjoying themselves tremendously saying, "Hit us again, please!"

However this was one of those trapped rooms were everyone had to make a saving throw just for being there. They all failed except for Elefus, meaning the rest of the party were now chained up just like the two they had just found. (Without the recent beatings.)

Short on spells and diminished in power due to being 8 or 9 levels removed from the plane of his gawd, Elefus pulls out a model S3 blaster (again a weapon from a prior adventure) and disintegrated the chains. Mindful to not disintegrate the parts holding people. Promising further pain and suffering to the two new supplicants he had just freed they all jumped into another portal opened by another Flower Petal. (Note the net effect was to drain another blaster battery.)

Next they found themselves in a 10 foot by 75 foot long hallway. After they got their act together, they could see a dim light at the other end. Going to the other end the simply saw their reflection in what appeared to be a mirror, except the reflection showed they had been beaten up. Then their reflection showed a Pit Fiend (devil type) appearing right behind them. (Of course when they turned around and looked behind them there was no Pit Fiend).

The reflective Pit Fiend then started talking to them in a definite Canadian accent and starts describing various forms of pain they're about to suffer, ending each sentence with "Eh, buddy?!", and reference to various acts performed on their Uncles. In the reflection he proceeds to tear the party apart. (Since it wasn't real, of course the two recently added party members from the previous room are sorely disappointed.)

Insulted, Huang got mad and kicked the mirror only to get his foot stuck in it as though it were tar instead of glass. It took all his strength to pull himself free. The party gives up and tosses another petal from the Flower of Holes and moved on again.

They found themselves back in the room of portals. (The first time there they were taken by the librarian cleaning crew, so this petal had not yet been used.) The party tried the light saber, two swords and the Elf diary to open a port to no effect. Huang tried his deck of souvenir cards just to see if the portals were consistent (or had not been changed) to open the portal to the Caina's Casino, and yes, it was still there in all its frozen glory.

Finding themselves without any more petals, like Curly said they were left with only the bud with one final inscription, a leaf. Applying that, they had one more hole to jump into.

The Party found itself on a wide smelly hill of soft brown substance next to an open field with a purple sky and rows of black flowers were growing to the horizon. Below them were two Pit Fiends tending the flowers, a translucent glowing tank, with thousands of glowing balls floating in a soup, and the cart of rejected souls that the party had sent to the tower (several sessions back).

Another Pit Fiend teleported next to the other two, said something and all three teleported out, leaving the party to its own devices. Making their way down the hill and wiping their feet when they got to the bottom they inspected the tank. It appears the rejected souls (that they had previously gone through the process and rejected during an inventory contract) were the necessary ingredients to make more Flowers. Next to the cart they found a long narrow thorn, a bowl of blood, and freshly finished flower with new symbols freshly inscribed.*

* The module's intent is that the party was supposed to inscribe its own symbols with the thorn and the blood but it was getting late and I wanted to speed things up. I had doubts whether the party could put two and two together to come up with that answer anyway.

Applying their new flower to the ground they entered a chamber containing a solid iron block with a woman's head sticking out of it. Attached to her head hilt-first there were a dozen short swords. It looked like a headdress except the swords were attached directly to her skull. The iron block was inscribed with arcane runes in an unknown language. The walls and floor was scarred with ruts radiating outward from the iron block. The woman's head apparently was alive as she was able to turn her head a little and follow them with her eyes.

The party tried talking to the woman's head, with no response.

Numrendir tried reading the runes with Read Magic and failed his saving throw die roll. (The effect of the failure was not revealed to the Party. But I gave the Player a choice, either he gets a GM's card from my deck, or he gets a random die roll from the GM's Guide. He chose the guide.) Numrendir failed again and got the card.

(Did I say there were a dozen swords?)

1) Elefus decided to pull out a sword from the lady's head. He passed his saving throw. The sword came out easily. However it left behind a bloody hole and he had to heal it.

2) Then Huang pulled out a sword out and passed his saving throw. Congratulations, he also got a sword and a blood streaming out of the woman's skull. Elefus decided to heal her again.

(I reminded Elefus Player this earned him an Honor Point every time he does this. So he decided to wait until all the swords were pulled.)

3) Honda pulled out a sword and failed her saving throw. Her skin turned translucent, (like the plastic model kit called the visible woman.)

4) Rubbio pulled out a sword and failed his saving throw. Or I should say, she failed her saving throw, we can now call her Rubbia. This led to certain party consternation as she was only wearing a loincloth and dragon boot at the time of the gender change.

5) Tujef pulled out a sword and passed his saving throw to no ill effect.

6) Numrendir pulled out a sword and passed his saving throw also.

7) Rubbia pulled out another sword and failed again. Her hair turned into writhing worms.

8) The crazy guy they picked up in the maze failed his saving throw and became mute to the Party's satisfaction.

9) Numrendir pulled out another sword and failed his throw. He now smelled like vinegar.

10) One of the two guys from the chained torture chamber pulled a sword and passed (I need to give these guys names, let's call them Hanz and Franz.)

11) Honda pulled out another sword and failed her saving throw to the same effect as Rubbio )now Rubbia). If you recall, Huang and Honda are married. Huang meet Hondo. However is OK these days.

12) Honda pulled out another sword and passed his saving throw.

Elefus does his healing on the skull.

(Why the Party didn't get the idea that any failed saving throw did something bad yet kept going, I can't explain.)


++++ OUT OF CHEESE ERROR ++++

BT







BBBB

++++ CHARACTER ROSTER ++++

PART 2.

CHARACTERS (Both PCs and NPCs)
Count Elefus, Human Male Abbot
Sir Huang - Superior Master Monk of the Stone Tiger Order
Dame Honda - Human Datai Samurai
Numrendir - Human Ensorceler
Slade Wilson - Dwarven Professional
Gargoyle - Elefus's sidekick.
Rubbio - Redeemed Thief
Curly - Crazy guy rescued from the maze.
Hanz - Unknown class, petitioner and masochist.
Franz - Unknown class, petitioner and masochist.

MISSING or CAPTURED CHARACTERS (PCs or NPCs)

Junkbot Jackson - Tracker/Adept
Gerry Castagere, Human Fingersmith, and ever loving devotee of Elefus
Fundisha - Half-Elf Swordsperson
Sir Weasel, Human Guild Soldier, Enchanter, & Champion (Stayed behind in Blackmoor).
Nine Pilgrim Henchmen of various levels. (Left back in Blackmoor with Weasel.)

BT







BBBB

++++ RECORD KEEPING ++++

PART 3.

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