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TSED
2009-08-11, 02:46 PM
I used the GRECE to roll up a huge list of good encounters. I then broke them up by level-appropriateness (for example, a lovecraftian kaiju'd black hole or the like would not work well as a 1st level adventure).

I am breaking them up to be somewhat modular, almost... comic book styled.

I am also using a host of houserules. The following:


1) All skills are in-class skills.
2) Gestalt!
3) Modified 84 point buy. Start at 0, every stat must be 3 before racial modifiers, and increasing a stat turns it up by 1. This gives an average of 14 across all stats, well above the race's average.
4) No save-or-dies. They do ability damage instead of instant kill. (Petrification would cause dex damage, at 0 you become stone. Necromantic SoDs would cause con damage. Etc.)
5) You don't die at -10. You die at -50. You are disabled (ie '0 hp') from 0 hp to -conscore.
6) Probably a lot more that just slip my mind right now, but those are the big ones.


I encouraged my players to get really whacky with their character concepts. We have the following:

Captain Villain, the Villain for Villains! A lesser drow warlock//ninja. I let his first invocation be Summon Monster I, which WILL scale up as he gains levels, but slower than the SM line. It's pretty strong right now, though, first level and all. The player wants to be ready for anything, and, well... Just check out his inventory list:

1 Rapier
Leather Armour
Bell
1 sets of Caltrops
5 candles
50 business cards
Crowbar
Fishhook
Flint & Steel
Grappling Hook
10' Ladder
Manacles
Mirror, Small, Steel
3 pints of oil
50' Silk Rope
Sack (of all this stuff)
Signal Whistle
Iron Pot
VILLAINOUS CLOTHES
Civvy skivvies [disguise]
Hourglass

Mogman (name not final), the Moogle Pizza Delivery Specialist! A light cavalry variant scout // swordsage. Focused on Desert Winds. A delightful touch is the "Distracting Embers" maneuver summons a molten cheese elemental (same stats, different fluff!). Max ranks in craft (pizza). Rides a bike. Leather armour is a jacket with his pizza logo on the back. I basically took Raptorans, made them small, and moved a few things around (like the air spells at +1 became teleport, lost the EWP for a +4 on Sense Motive). Probably should have given him a + to cha, but whatevs.

D Sharp, aka Daryl. No one has called him D Sharp yet. Bard//Wilder, sitar bard. No where near the eccentricity of the other two, unfortunately.

There should be a fourth, who is moving away soon. Unfortunately, she couldn't make it. What a bummer. She'll catch the tail end of this one, I think.


GRECE results in the adventure so far:

Elderly Roaming Band Of Irate customers
Boisterous Enchanted Anime fan
Toilet-Feeding Steam-Powered Joggers
Unhallowed Maintenence Punks
Synchronized Pair Of Stomping Duck
Scared Techno- Yeti
Kamikaze Mutated Crusty old fisherman

I'll let you figure them out.

How I started off the adventure:


"Welcome to Sigil, the City of Doors. In the thousands of years since the Multiverse has existed, magic has solved many, many problems. You are in a golden era of prosperity that promises to last for the rest of time. Less than 0.005% of the population is involved with the production of goods; magic has done away with almost all manual labour. Almost everyone is instead engaged in service industry jobs. The mystery of the world has been solved, and you know exactly what level you are, what a saving throw is, and what feats are. So does basically everyone else who isn't a clueless prime from some backwater world."

"You are a recent graduate of HeroU, a rather prestigious school for the development of Superheroics. You knew some other guys and the lot of you decided to set up your own Private Hero Business. Yeah, sure, lots of people do it. It's kind of like being a private investigator, except you DO things instead of find things out. After all, you've got Gestalt levels. That's ridiculous. And your point buy, sheesh! That's like, 99.9th percentile of people. My goodness, no wonder HeroU has such a reputation. Anyways, moving on..."


"You've been in business for all of four hours. Your sign out front reads "Superheroes for Hire. Cheap! Licensed!" with "also, pizza! we deliver" written with crayon underneath. The sign has already seemed to win in a customer. He bursts in and says:

"Guys, you gotta help! You're my only hope!"

"I own an underground nightclub. No, not for dwarves or gnomes or that kind of thing. I mean for punks and goths and such. And my customers have stopped coming! I asked around - all my colleagues like me have experienced the EXACT SAME THING. We're going to go out of business if we don't find some new customers quick!"

Thankfully, oh so very thankfully, the heroes took the job.

What happen!:

The heroes started off by checking the back alleys. They found several booze bottles, and quickly concluded that this was a really dumb idea.

They set off instead for the nightclub of the owner, which was closed this early in the day (about one pm). Still, the owner let them in and look around. They asked a few questions, trying to come up with some ideas.

Captain Villain, the Villain for Villains tried to figure out some possible causes. He cased around for blood... and well, he found some old blood stains. He asked about them. Punk club. Of course there'd be blood.

His companions decide to help out. They question the owner - how did they stop coming? Rapidly dwindling numbers in the course of a week. Any kidnappings or anything? Nope. Oldguard etc. disappearing first? Young uns? Nope. Isn't some new club - that'd at best fracture the demographic, and all the other clubs have the same problem. Know any of their numbers? Yeah. Some punk by the name of Fred was one of the last ones to stop coming. Had to get him a cab home one of the days before, still have his address.

BINGO.

Got ahold of his address. Went to meet this 'Fred.'

His door had vomit all over it. The Anarchy Symbol made out of vomit, actually. They were hesitant about knocking, but eventually did.
"WHAAAAAT"
"Hey, Fred?"
"I SAID WHAAAAT"
"Why haven't you been to the **** Off Club lately?"
"CANT FIND MA TRENCHCOAT"
"Your... trenchcoat is missing?"
"YEAH CANT FIND MA TRENCHCOAAAAT"
"OH HEY GUYS CAN YOU HELP ME OUT WITH MY MOHAWK TOO I RAN OUT OF GLUE"

Captain Villain, knowing what the Anarchy Symbol actually means, just walks in. Fred screams and jumps into his bed.
"WHAT NO YOU CANT SEE ME WITHOUT MA TRENCHCOAT"
"We're not going to rob you or anything, we're just going to help you find your trenchcoat."
They search the place. They find a lot of liquor, a lot empty liquor bottles, and a lot of cigarettes. And a lot of trash. In some of the trash they find a ripped up trenchcoat.
"OH YEAH I FORGOT TO MENTION THAT I MEANT I WAS TRYING TO FIND A NEW ONE"

With nothing else they could do here, our heroes depart. Fred was drunk, he probably passed out again shortly after.

Daryl, using his incredible bardic knowledge check of 16, knew a tailer. He decides to investigate.
Said tailer is a sprite, and comments on how maaaahvellous Captain Villain is. He gives Daryl disgusted looks.
After a quick bout of questioning, our heroes uncover the following:
1) Ghastly, garish metal men (NOT metalheads) buy up all the trenchcoats whenever they arrive.
2) He makes designs, sends the designs to the fabrication factory. Gets his shipments on tuesdays.
3) He is happy as a pig in mud because he is making SO MUCH MONEY off of this. Thinking of expanding, even.



"Have you tried making them in gross colours no sane person would wear?"
"[i]Punks."



So. They're not sure what to do, and consider just going home and waiting until Tuesday.
Except as they are on their way to do so, they cross in front of an Anime Shop with a large, angry crowd of large, angry, smelly, half-naked persons. With hair like mohawks, suicide spikes, et al. Curious.
Mogman shows up "HEY GUYS what is up?"
"She murdered a guy! And he was one of our guys! THAT's BAAAARF... uh... BAD, man! BAD!"
"She murdered a guy?"
"YEAH! Just stabbed him! We want *hic* revenge!"
They go inside the door. (The punks are drunk. And there is a sign that they are having trouble deciphering... it says "OPEN")

And indeed, besides the very nervous looking clerk, there is a girl. In a trenchcoat.

"Hey. Where'd you get that trenchcoat?"
"I got it off some guy out there."
" 'Got it', eh?"
"Yeah! I was like 'HEY I HAVE BEEN SEARCHING EVERYWHERE FOR ONE OF THOSE! I need it for my cosplay!' and he was like 'no go away' and I was like "HOW MUCH?" and he was like 'it's not for sale' , like, and I was like,"
<A katana was pulled out from hammerspace, nigh-instantly>
" 'YAH!' and now I have this awesome trenchcoat!"
...
...
...
Daryl decided to speak up. "Uhh, who are you goin-"
Mogman: "NOOOOOO"
Captain Villain: "NOOOOOO"
< one hour later >
"...and that's why I think he is the best and cutest ninja punk EVER and I am going to hav- SQUEEE IS THAT A MOOGLE!?"


And, as luck would have it, as the moogle was being grappled (small size, stood no chance), a large precision of 'metal men' went past the shop. Some punk screamed "THEY'VE GOT TRENCHCOATS!"
The punks tried to give chase, but they smoke too much and quickly got exhausted (as in, the crowd barely moved).
Daryl began running after them.
Captain Villain, thinking fast, summoned a Fiendish Spider. The girl screamed so loud and ran away so fast that I rolled a d4 for damage to our poor mooglese hero. [3!]

Our heroes began chasing the steam powered joggers. A small number of them ran out and unleashed a rain of barrels upon the street. Captain Villain did not think of what to do quickly, and was bowled over for a couple points of damage. Daryl figured "all barrels explode!" and used Energy Ray to set one on fire. He now had a flaming barrel rolling down the street towards him. He retreated a bit. Mogman just hid behind a traffic light and let a barrel bounce off, then quickly biked up. Daryl ran towards the newfound opening and voila!

The barrels HAD definitely won the steamjoggers time, though. They were out on a busy street, and now the party had to dodge things like T-Rexes, low-flying saucers, horseless chariots, and even a rocket-narwhal. Or at least they would have if they didn't think to use the sidewalk, which allowed them to make up for some lost time.
The joggers turned a tight corner, and one set of joggers threw their bundle atop the other set, and blocked the doorway.

Mogman was riding a bike really fast to catch up. They suddenly stopped. Hello, domino effect. Daryl followed this up with an Electrical Ray. It barely hit and rolled a 1 for damage. The steamjoggers essentially ignored it.
Four out of eight remained standing. One tackled Mogman clear off his bike. One sailed clear into Captain Villain. One tried to tackle Daryl, but a readied Frost Ray definitely blew him back and away - max damage. Ouch. Captain Villain tried to pull off an eldritch blast, but failed the concentration check. Mogman utterly failed a grapple check (2 - 2 = autopinned, basically).

The steamjogger pinning Mogman tried to smack him, but failed. The steamjogger grappling Captain Villain tried to pin him, and the results were inconclusive. They both responded with a successful escape artist check, and then Captain Villain realised he could summon a celestial porpoise inside the water tank. I was in the middle of saying "no because there's not enough room" when I realised how friggin' AWESOME that'd be. Gave the steamjogger a saving throw - made it, unfortunately. 19. He had started summoning the porpoise too late and instead it flopped out of the steam valve, flopped about, and then vanished. Still, it flopped about on top of that steamjogger, which slowed him down in relation to his peers, which were running in.

They were going down a manhole. And down they went themselves - Mogman made a ride check to pull off a sweet trick to get down there, but all of a sudden... it was dark! REALLY dark! There was some light filtering down from random grates, but only Captain Villain could really, really see. Still, they chased after the jogger... UNTIL A GIANT SLUG POPPED OUT OF A SEWER GRATE OH MAN. It reached out and latched Daryl, poor bugger.
Captain Villain made his fingerguns to Eldritch Blast it. He actually surprised it (as he was running quietly in the fore, the slug missed him) and got his Sudden Strike in on it too.
Snake eyes.

Mogman's hit was much less inconsequential. Using Burning Blade, he lovingly stabbed it for around 12 points of damage. Since I was inspired my Captain Villain's drawing of the sewer grates of an old video game and didn't actually have any stats for the slug, I ruled it was well enough to down the thing. Daryl was both relieved and skeeved, because let's face it - ewwwwwwwwww.

They had lost the jogger, for sure. But as they walked, they saw torchlight up ahead! Hurray! IT WAS FRED!
"HEY GUYS I SAW THESE ROBOTS GO INTO THAT BIG SLIDEY DOOR"
He pressed a button on a control panel. A large, steel-esque door slid open and out marched two huge robotic constructs. They were in the style of the steamjoggers - random valves everywhere, steam billowing out. Only they were ducks. And they were moving together. Each had a shiny chrome label on their chest - 'CR7 Certified!'
"LICENSE AND REGISTRATION" they bellowed in electronic Donald-Duck-esque voices.
Not missing a beat, Captain Villain showed his Hero's License. And was promptly thrown backwards violently. Ouch.
"WROOOOONG"
"LICENSE AND REGISTRATION PLEASE."
Mogman tried to use his crayon to write 'License to steal all trenchcoats' on the wall, but didn't get it written in time. Luckily, he managed to dodge the 'thrown back violently' trip.
After also trying Mogman's pizzeria license, business cards, Daryl tried his musician's license. "ERROR: COUNTERFEIT LICENSE DETECTED. INITIATE STOMPING."
The ducks began stomping. Synchronized. Our heroes retreated into the hall, where the stomperducks were too large to follow. They fell back and began stomping, staring maliciously at the party.
Captain Villain tries to throw an Eldritch Blast or two at the Stomperducks. Nothing happens. Mogman shoots an arrow, which pings off their metal plating harmlessly.
A slight DM hint to get them thinking about how they arrived here - Fred on the control panel.
Control panel.
Mogman darts out, presses the button Fred hit, and darts back. He watches the door close.
Then Captain Villain gets brilliant.


Summon. [i]Monkey.

...

One round later, the stomperducks have stopped. They began chanting in their freakish voice "ERROR. ERROR. DESYNCHRONIZATION." Over and over and over again. Our heroes fled back into the sewer network, waiting for an explosion. Nothing came, except for more ERROR reports. Eventually, they braved in. The monkey opened the door, so the moogle just ran in biking.
There was a wall there. Ouch.


They immediately suspect Fred, and run back out to find him. And they find him, alright, passed out drunk as he was running away. Our heroes begin dragging him topside, when they find a large four-armed fish-man (a sahuagin, not that they knew) chowing down on that slug they killed.
"whoah man this is so good", "omnomnomnomnom", and the like are heard through the corridors. They decide to reroute and go around (which will not take that much time, really), but it spots them anyways. "oh man hey guys this is so good want some?"
"Uh... no thanks. Actually, we killed that thing."
"really guys wow here take this," followed by the four-armed fishman handing them a handful of copper coins so eroded most shops probably wouldn't accept them as legal tender. "hey guys so whatre you doin down here man"
"We're actually in search of these metal men-"
"oh man i HATE those guys you see those stomperducks theyre douches agh"
"We kind of broke those, too, actually."
"really man wow thats hard to believe i mean wow one second" The sahuagin disappeared for a few moments, dragging the slug behind it. It returned, sans slug. "wow man guys thats so cool i hate them so much"
"Why do you hate them so much?"
"man i used to live there right and theyre all 'hey get out' and im all 'naw' and theyre all 'hey get out' and im all 'dude naw' and then the engineer threw me out with his stomperducks bunch of douches"
"Engineer?!"
"yeah man he was like this douche who was all big and smelled like him" - while the sahuagin gestured to the passed out, sewage-coated, unwashed Fred, "but he cant see down here too great so i just keep boarding up all the exits to screw with him"
"So, could you maybe take us to him?"
"yeah man that is like the least i can do for you dudes"
After leading them through some twisty tunnels, he points. "yeah man he is like right over there dude i got some slugchow to get to bye"
Yep. Not even 20' around a corner was a huge beast of a thing, huddled in a corner. Its fur looks like it may have once been white, but it was definitely not now. Assorted pieces of its flesh were replaced with mechanical chunks and steamvalves.
"AAAAAAAA! AAAAAAAA! AAAAAAAA! Oh you're not monsters. Hi."
"You're an... intense... fellow," noted Captain Villain.
I, unfortunately, do not really remember this conversation, I got too into the character. This big ol' Scared Techno-Yeti basically screamed at any statement of a noun. Magic. Robots. Men. Metal. Anything.
The heroes tried to be understanding and non-threatening. They really should have pressed the fact that it was a blubbering mess. Daryl's mentioning of several things, such as trenchcoats, eventually led the yeti on to realise he's dealing with enemies of some sort here, and attacked.
Captain Villain pops out an Eldritch Blast on his mechanical eye. Different AC, and all that jazz. Max damage, Half damage to objects, though, so I ruled that the glass was broken and he was clutching at his eye and screaming, but light was still emanating from that machine.
Daryl threw a knife at the eye hoping to finish it off, but couldn't quite break the AC here. Touch AC is a lot easier to hit than normal AC, after all.
Mogman then charged, and did a nasty 3d6+2 damage plus made everyone make a will save or be dazzled (with a bonus to Mogman's teammates, afterall they've worked with him and he shouted about light and eyes and stuff). Everyone, including yeti, made it.
Yeti responded by clonking Mogman into unconsciousness by 1hp. He had been accumulating damage, and a decent roll on 2d6 bludgeoning won't help you stay up.
Captain Villain finished off the eye, and Daryl threw his last power point (for some reason neither of us thought to suggest wildsurging it) in the form of a frost ray. Crunch. Blind in the dark (Daryl was close and knew where he was flailing about before he fired the ray, a big help), the yeti charged. And slammed into a wall. KO'd! Unfortunately, he still clipped Daryl - against all odds, he managed to tag him. -2 health (see houserules as to why that's not a big deal).
Captain Villain searched the yeti and found a secret compartment while Daryl made sure Mogman was ok. Inside of it, he found a letter. He arbitrarily decided (as in, was arbitrarily decided for) that he cannot read this letter in the sewer.
Daryl took Mogman off to the free clinic. [This is fairly Tippyverse-esque, so free healing wouldn't be a problem with traps of CLW. Just gotta wait in line, show off some records so that they can trace you if a crime was involved, and bam.]

We decided to wrap it up here.

AstralFire
2009-08-11, 02:58 PM
I totally did not come in here to go 'GREECE'.

Honest.


Modified 84 point buy. Start at 0, every stat must be 3 before racial modifiers, and increasing a stat turns it up by 1. This gives an average of 14 across all stats, well above the race's average.

Wouldn't it be simpler to make it... 66 PB? >.>


"...and that's why I think he is the best and cutest ninja punk EVER and I am going to hav- SQUEEE IS THAT A MOOGLE!?"

So... Sigil is hosting Otakon this year? >.> <.<

TSED
2009-08-11, 03:05 PM
Nah. This point buy is really, really, really easy to figure out. No need to go "hmm what is 15 to 16 again?" and such. Plus, if you want dump stats, you can get mad dump stats.



And, it's Sigil. They've got EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING. Yes, even that. Plus, 'Boisterous Enchanted Anime Fan' was in the encounters and I had to put her somewhere. I think I did a fairly decent job of stringing everything together.

TSED
2009-08-21, 04:01 PM
We kind of rushed through this, as we had spent quite some time playing LittleBigPlanet instead of D&Ding (we were waiting for D-Sharp).
Our Heroes read the note. It was a cheque, signed by PIT Industries for "Installing A Loading / Deployment Botbay in the Sewers."
Also, tangently related, it was for about a month's rent.

Of course, they did the only logical thing - track down PIT Industries HQ. This wasn't too hard, a little time with the Yellow Pages and bam.
The office was relatively small; apparently PIT Industries had only recently moved into Sigil. There was a secretary there.
"So, we have this cheque..."
"Oh, thank you! We'll make sure this gets to the appropriate persona."
A quick dirty look around.
"Uh, well, uh. We also found some Stomperducks. They tried to stomp us?"
"Oh, probably! They're security, were you poking around somewhere you don't belong?"
Some nervous and unsure looks around.
And then, Our Heroes decided essentially simultaneously that they were HEROES and did not belong playing footsy with some secretary. Crazy Karpet (the mogman) burst through the door behind her.
"Hey, wait! Despite our open doors policy this is STILL a private company!"
Captain Villain was ready with his Hero License. He then followed.

And saw a large amount of steamjoggers. They were loading large boxes onto a train. They were also completely ignoring Our Heroes, so they just got onto the train. They found a little map - "Hey, neat, it shows the layout of the train!"
They were going through the train, and all of a sudden there was a GIANT BOX. It was labelled 'TRENCHCOATS' in a much bolder style than normal. Much larger than the ones in the other rooms, and it was in the middle of the walkway. Captain Villain gave it a cursory poke with his rapier. After a small amount of debate ("rapiers can have sharpened blades, too!" "No way, they're basically entirely stabbing weapons." "Early ones still had a slashing tip." "You're telling me Captain Villain is carrying around a primitive proto-rapier?" "... Uhh..." "Yeah." )
"Whatever. Dwig greataxes the box."
TRENCHCOATS!
As in, moving, fluttering, violent trenchcoats. (I was using Raggomuffyn stats from MM2, the weakest ones. I was also making it so that they were mindless and don't have the mind-control ability.)
Surprise round. Nothing interesting happened.
Next round. More trenchcoats come out - there's about eight of them now. Crazy Karpet Burning Blades the box, and sets it on fire. Four trenchcoats are directly adjacent to the box, they make a reflex save each. Two fail - poof, on fire. Which is kind of surprising, since they had a decent reflex save and it was only DC10, but hey, a 1 and a 3. Captain Villain uses his rapier to help aerate one of the burning ones (ie: stab), and Dwig... critical fumbles.

I use a critical fumble chart. Sunder own armour! The scale mail hangs on with just 1 hp.

Scary.


Captain Villain continues to deal with the coats, not much to see here. Provokes an attack of opportunity, confident in his AC to protect him. The coat rolls a natural 1 and rams into the burning box... One less coat to worry about. Dwig tries to cut one of the coats up, and gets a 7. Nope, not enough.
Crazy Karpet takes a swing and a miss at one of the assorted coats. Oh well. They return, and one of them hits. Ouch. He is down to 2hp. (Monsters love to roll well when attacking him, he's got decent AC but they always get in the 16-18 range for some reason).

So, moving on, the trenchcoats try to trip Crazy Karpet (and succeed!), as he's being hard to hit right now. Sleeves into the spokes, and down he goes.
And Dwig once again pulls out a natural one. Ouch. Just ouch. "Target is disarmed, you are tripped." Nothing to disarm, though, so... faceplant!

For Crazy Karpet, though, he was screwed and at 2hp. So I bent the rules and let him do a full round action to get up and tumble past the coats, while using his +10' move boost.

He gets to his bike on the other side of the coats, and gets ready to hop onto it next round.

CK and CV see Dwig lying down and essentially surrounded by flying, violent trenchcoats, and both enact a cunning plan - SUMMONS. Captain Villain summons a monkey on one, and CK uses Distracting Toppings (refluffed Distracting Embers; summons a melted cheese elemental instead of fire elemental with exact same stats) INSIDE the trenchcoat. Both struggle for the one round, obviously pre-occupied, so Dwig stands up. Another 1 on the AoO from one of the remaining trenchcoats, and it is now tied up with the other one. Our heroes book it out of the room, and slam the door.


So many natural 1s. SO MANY NATURAL ONES!

Unfortunately, Dwig had to leave now, as work in the morning required her to wake up earlyish. As in, forever. Moving 2 hours drive away for school. We'll miss her - she was creative, fun, and saved the party a lot. Oh, and she always showed up on time.


We weren't really in the mood to play now, so we went out and got some foods. Then we came back a couple hours later (restaurants, hurray).

They continue on. They see a stomperduck, but the steamvalves are not on. Captain Villain summons a dog into the room, who runs in, and... nothing happens. They follow cautiously, suspecting a trap. Nothing happens. They see a control panel, CV and CK look at eachother, shrug, and move on.
That's right, didn't even bother to look at the panel. Oh well.

I decided the next room of mooks just lets them pass because we were running pretty late and were all "whatevs." They WERE going to try to throw them out a window, but really, it was just to slow them down. So. They passed.

And walked into the CEO's personal office (at the head of the train).

A huge man with many mechanically replaced parts sat in a luxuriant chair behind a desk. A pair of steamjoggers were to his right, with a pair of goons to his left. A hulking brute of a machine stood near him, as well. "Please. Do come in."
CV: "Uhh."
CK: "Uhh."
D: "Uhh."

CEO: "Come now, how am I to do a proper machiavellian speech if you're just standing at my doorway? I insist, do come in."

So they warily step in.
CEO: "Much appreciated. You have brilliant, villainous plan much grief, you know. As you no doubt know, PIT Industries recently opened its Sigil division, and I, Houston Le Hugh, was set to be the executive of said branch."

...

H: "Yes, yes, laugh up my name. I'm sure yours are no less superfluous masterbatory."

...

H: "Ok, I admit, that WAS a poor word choice. Moving on. So, you no doubt noticed the lack of punks going to their precious counter-culture institutions. Soon, the buildings would be for sale - and at a dirt cheap price, because they are tainted by their reputation of punks and goths. I would snap them up at a pittance! And then I would sell the trenchcoats - at a lovely mark up, of course - and I would OWN the counter culture! The profits would be GLORIOUS!"
CK: "You'll never have OUR institution! My pizza shop won't fall to you!"
H: "Have you seen my salary?"
CV: "Wow, that whole plan's actually pretty brilliant."
H: "Ah ha! I see you are versed in the methods of villainy. We do have a few entry level positions, if you're interested."
OOC: CV debated to himself out loud on taking the offer. He decided "nah."
CV: "Hmmm..."
H: "No matter! Your hesitation shows loyalty to those buffoons you surround yourself with. Villains with loyalty to heroes never end well. Come, let us end this in a proper way!"

Cue Round 1:

CV throws an EB at one of the guards.
Steamjoggers charge! Both miss their target, Dwig.
Dwig returns fire, only metaphorically, because her greataxe isn't on fire. Hit, max damage.
"WOOOOOONG"
As the steamjogger crumples beneath her fury, they were amazed that she, you know, hit for 16 damage.
Houston gets up and draws a rapier.
Goons engage CV and CK.
Leaky tries to EB CV, but arcane spell failure! As the magic bubbles around him, the steam works overheat and all of his orifices over flow with a cloud of steam, accompanied by a metal-on-metal screech.


CV once again EBs, this time at the guard who is now adjacent to him, with a hip bump (all of his EBs are flashy gestures and has not yet repeated one) but misses this time.
Dwig: axe + othersteamjogger = DWONG. Steamjogger missed, poor thing.
CK bikes around a bit trying to build skirmish up, and spears the other guard... but misses!
Guards continue to miss.
Houston moves towards them. "Leaky, initiate MANEUVER TWO!"
Leaky moves a bit, and unleashes... grease! A cone of it, to be exact.

Next round, CV manages to 5' out of the grease. He is very unhappy that his clothes have been ruined. He summons a celestial firebeetle at one of the guards, using SMITE EVIL! Miss.
Houston charges at Dwig, and rolls a 1. "Switch places with target." Since he is now in the middle of the grease and was previously moving quite fast, I rule that he keeps going and rams into the wall. 1d4 nonlethal for.. 1.
Well, CK is stuck in the grease but he DOES have a spear. Pokes a guard. Takes it to -1, so... Yeah.
Dwig moves all of 10' to get to Leaky. WONG. Leaky goes down.
L: "Oh gods ow stop hitting me ow ow ow I don't even like this crummy job I just have it to pay for art school gods I wish I didn't even have this level of warlock ow ow frig do you have any idea how awkward pottery class is going to be today with this dent the size of my HEAD in my chassis? OW!"
Houston gets up. He has a standard action and nothing to do with it, so he moves next to CV so he can threaten him.



Next round, CV steps back and tries to finish the guard with another beetle. This one hits, but doesn't finish off the guard (who made his balance check in the grease).
So CK swims, waddles, and rolls the 5' he needed to longspear the guard. Burning Blade. Takes him out, too.
Just Houston, at almost full health, versus our three heroes.
Dwig moves in and gets a 20. With a great axe. With a minimum of 7 damage normally. With Houston normally having 20 hp. In case you forgot, greataxes are x3 critters.
So, uh, roll to confirm. Failure! ... Luck domain, reroll. Still failure.
Phewf.
Now, Houston has some of one of the half-golem templates. I forget which one specifically, but I do remember he goes berserk after taking damage.
So he drops his rapier and tries to SLAM Dwig. Aaaaand misses.

Next round, though, CV doesn't miss with his EB. And takes him out.

CV leaves a business card with every sentient (ie: non-steamjogger) there. 2 steamjoggers, Leaky, and Houston Le Hugh.
They dropped him off a nearby Harmonium station, explained the charges (illegal hostile take overs, attempted monopolies, etc.),

I conveniently forgot (no, really) that they were on a speeding train. Oh well. Next station or something? I don't know.



Things:
1) Holy cow I have never seen so many 1's. That trenchcoat fight was brutal. I even got 1s on the critical fumble chart (which is 2d20)
2) Kind of glad Dwig won't stick around in the party. She'd've outshown everyone else, at least for a while.
3) Leaky's a huge hit. Everyone loves Leaky. [Adamantine body, dex4, warlock 1. Grease cone is his invocation. I ruled that dex4 is enough of a flaw to count for a bonus feat in order to give him Skill Focus (Craft: Sculpture). CV even offered him a job, which he rejected because it wouldn't pay enough.)
4) How DID they get off that train?
5) This happened on Monday, but this adventure log was torture to write for some reason. I suspect it was all the combat happenings.

EDIT:: Oh yeah. GRECE results you saw:

Locomotive Trenchcoat-clad Douchewagon
Constantly Commode-Requiring Steam-Powered Construct-sidekick
Hoard-wearing Pit- Cyborg