Session V, Part II

The party hurries down from the arrow tower to meet the Reverend Mother Guinan's group, who are talking with the Keep's command staff.  The atmosphere is deadly serious, and any disputes are shelved for the duration.

Miners at Messr Dimon’s gold mine recently unearthed a nest of Chryssalids, intelligent insects who made a deal with demons for additional magical powers:

In terms of B2, the gold mine is the reskinned version of the Caves of Chaos.  In the original, PCs are murderhobos who break into the homes of the natives, kill the poor buggers and take their stuff.  In this version, I instead wanted to give the PCs a chance to be Big Damn Heroes.

Inspired by Necroscope's excellent Let's Play of "X-Com: UFO Defense" and by theRadBrad's excellent Let's Play of "Alien: Isolation", I decided to do a mash up horror dungeon crawl.

Here, the Chryssalids are a cross between Chryssalids from “X-Com” and Xenomorphs from “Aliens”.  In addition to being lethal silent predators, these insects have human-level intelligence, demon-gifted arcane powers and their leaders are magic-users.  Also, after embryo implantation, the embryo will mind control the host until birth of the new Chryssalid, which kills the host.  The corpse is then typically raised as a zombie to serve their new insect overlords.

"Sweet buttery Jesus!"


Additionally, Chryssalids are usually found with their allies: scarab beetles,

gray oozes, and Hell Goats:

[OOC] K says, "Hey, I remember these guys from our last campaign!  They were the worst!"

[As DM] I say, "In addition to their ferocious head butt attacks, Hell Goats now can shoot laser beams from their eyes."

The grim warrior introduces herself as Vasquez, an Iberian Roman mercenary working for L’eau Noire.

After the Chryssalid outbreak, mine security was unable to contain the problem and Messr Dimon’s company soon lost control of the mine.  An elite L’eau Noire team led Vasquez went in for a bug hunt but failed, too.  She was the only one to escape.  Now, with hundreds of hostages for hosts, zombie army fodder and human sacrifices, the Chryssalids are trying to open a magic portal for their demon allies with ritual magic.

The Reverend Mother Guinan says this is a potential End of Days-type situation.


To prevent the Chryssalids from creating the portal, Reverend Mother Guinan and Reverend Mother Nina will work together to cast a ritual counterspell, but this will take hours, and their counterspell may not go off before the Chryssalids' portal opener, so a team needs to go into the mines to try to stop the Chryssalids directly and save the remaining miners, if possible.

[OOC] K asks, "So, if we run away and become pirates, how long until the Apocalypse catches up with us?"

[As DM] I say, "Maybe a couple years?"

Reluctantly, the PCs decide to be Big Damn Heroes.  In addition to the party, Vasquez, Lieutenant Phùng (a mage), and some veteran legionnaires from the Keep are going.

[As DM] I ask, "So how many legionnaires do you want to bring?"

[OOC] S asks, "Um, how about all of them?"

A dozen veteran legionnaires end up going on the mission.  

[OOC] S asks, "Wait a minute, can we bring Colonel Thứ năm too?"

[As DM] I say, "As garrison commander, the Colonel's job is to oversee the entire operation, not lead this particular mission."

[OOC] S says, "Come on!  I've got all these skills I can use to convince him, right?"

[As DM] I say, "…No, sorry."


Reverend Mother Guinan is also able to offer more assistance: she casts Greater Sacrament (this is a home brewed spell) on the party and, for the duration of the mission, each target’s level increases by 2 (e.g., Zakalwe is temporarily 4th level), all actions involving self-sacrifice get a +2 bonus, and each target regenerates 1 hp per turn.

Reverend Mother Guinan also gives the party a Wand of Passwall (3 charges), 6 Holy Hand Grenades (which do 1d6 damage within a 30' radius normally, 5d6 to abominations, no damage if the target is Blessed and heal 1d6 hp to recipients of Greater Sacrament),

and 3 jars of Greek fire.

[OOC] K says, "Zakalwe will carry all the jars of Greek fire."

[As DM] I say, "You do realize that Greek fire is an open battlefield weapon meant to be used against massed troops, ships and the like?  Here, one jar does 5d6 damage for 1d6 rounds.  What if all three jars break open?"

[OOC] K says, "I'll be really careful."