DCC #4

In our fourth session the PCs make their way deeper into the war wizard's tomb, discovering a strange shallow pool of water. The floor of the pool is dotted with small gems arranged in the pattern of the night sky they saw outside. A shattered robot lies in the pool. Brave (or stupid?) Jo Bobbius climbs into the pool to test the gems and discovers the robot's bronze spear. Messing around with it he gets lucky and figures out the spear can issue a blast of energy to strike distant targets.

Soon a procession of weird men of metal come into the room. In the lead are two broken and busted up robots. They are followed by what can only be described as men half of metal and half of flesh. The PCs realize suddenly that they are looking at their former allies...now dead...now walking around again!

A few of the re-animated have a flash of awareness and memory upon seeing the faces of their allies. They shake off the strange magic working to assimilate them into the robot matrix. Battle ensues as the other bots realize what has happened.

The PCs are victorious against the bots and in the end Ammet, Aiken, and Arble rejoin the party...albeit with robot parts. Can the day get any stranger for these poor schmucks?

A door is opened and down they go to discover weird treasures. Oryx, opening an arcane looking book, is blinded by it. His father Voss, considering Oryx to be a weakling, essentially abandons his son for dead. Only a fool would let himself get blinded. And where is the booze around here?

They discover an army of over 60 robots standing in silence in the lower chamber. Leading them is a giant figure similar to the war wizard's statue upstairs that burned so many of them to a crisp! Previous battles with bots demonstrated that water causes them serious harm. And wait...what is that sparkling on the ceiling? The gems from the pool above!

Voss shoves his blind son into the room in anger, then rushes up the stairs to pluck the gems from the floor, hoping to flood the chamber with water. The robots awaken! They begin to ambulate.

The team rush up to help with the gems, poking and prying at them furiously. Soon they have removed dozens and the floor begins to crack. They run, though it is too late for Voss, Einstenius, Wandius, and Calliope. They fall through the floor helplessly to their doom.

The flood of water takes it toll on the ancient robots and they begin to pop and crack and explode. The army is defeated! And Voss, tough old bastard that he is, climbs out of the wreckage and up upon the throne of the war wizard at the head of the room...there is the crystal ball Hella Nor sent them to fetch!

Upstairs the team faces a few robots that made it out of the pool and defeat them with surprise and force.

Voss rubs the ball and Hella Nor's face appears in it.

"Nice work, losers. But see I only need to bring out the guy holding the ball. Why would I waste energy on the rest of you?"

Oh no. But wait, these poor bastards can offer something surely. They agree to help Hella with a future project and she then whisks them all out of the tomb and plops them down on the roof of the Four Winds Bar in the great city of Seapath...a place as alien to them as anything can be.

What will become of these disparate bandits? What of their fields of corn back home? What is home? Hella said their home city was a sham, an illusion, a "city in a bottle"...what does that mean?

No time to think about it. That crazy devil girl will return in a few months and expects them to do something even crazier. Best get ready...