Odd Carcosa - Session 2 - Close Encounter of the Third Kind

(test) Ran some more Odd Carcosa today!

Our Heroes
Morkoth, Blue Cleric of Oryx
Big Eye, White Fighter & his Companion, Log Breaker
Matthew Rattigan, Earth Man Engineer
& Turak, Yellow Sorcerer Man

What Happened
After a week in the gruesome* Citadel of the Ocean of Mercy, the party is invited to go out and get themselves useful again by bringing back some kind of power core for the OoM's hidden super-weapon (it's in the basement), and is joined by a man from another planet (Matthew) and a yellow, mysterious man in tattered rags and futuristic pajamas. They decide to seek the domed city of Turak where they should meet a man named Alaxiron, who knows where to find other Star Men, as they should probably have power cores for the OoM.

The Ocean of Mercy, telling the party to GTFO

And to get there, they must first cross the misty mountains of Thaggasoth.

• On the first day, they saw a massive spire shooting strange waves of light into the atmosphere, peopled with near a hundred bone men wielding high tech weaponry and mounting strange crustacean monsters. They decided to cautiously avoid the area.

• The second day was calm, with 2D white noise clouds in the sky and dinosaurs in the distance.

• On the third day, they reached the mountains proper and ambushed a trio of misshapen, pale green frog-like beings - amphibious ones. When killed, they burst into gory, malodorous bits and tainted Rattigan with their vile stench. One was kept alive for interrogation, which yielded the following:

1. His people have been on the planet since even before the reign of the Serpent Men.
2. Some Space Men are hiding in the Darkness Beneath Carcosa, the Great Underground.
3. One such entrance lies to the north, near the Mutated Forest.

• On the fourth day, they saw a black tower and a flying saucer! Rushing to follow it, they found a hidden village at the bottom of a crater in the mountains. There, all the inhabitants of the village (Primitive Orange Men) were holding hands together in a circle surrounding the green light of the saucer. One little grey man (STAR MAN!) slowly hovered down and looked around until he found what he wanted: Morkoth. He raised him into the air by merely thinking about it and brought him, and himself, back up into the saucer. The party jumped after them and found that the green light made them so light that they could indeed follow.

• Up in the spaceship, one of the star men (actually a star woman) asked who they were, and acknowledging them as servants of the Elder Gods and thus, enemies of their enemies, they offered (well, more like space geas'd) the party knowledge and technology in exchange for a certain artifact that they shall recover in an ancient city of Primordial Ones.

We stopped there so that I can actually prepare said City. Next time, they'll be beamed down near said city so that they can go and find the artifact the Star Men are looking for: the Primordial Jelly.
Any characters joining in on this session will have been plagued by strange vivid dreams of grey beings and pastoral switzerland lately, and wake up among the party, sharing their strange creole and immediate goal (though no compulsion controls them, and they don't get no cyberware either).

The Star Men


Referee Stuff
Some more re-reading of Bastionland blog and thinking back to earlier Into the Odd games make me think that I don't really care that much for OD&D bits after all. I'm keeping them for this campaign because it doesn't actually take anything away from the game, but I think I'll do without in future games using that system. I have embraced the quickness of combat as a good thing. It does work for "combat as war", and it's fine if there are no "fair" fights, as such. Also tried the Ganging Up rule again and it's really not my thing, at least not in online games where we can't just see everyone rolling dice and have to keep track of stuff. Doesn't really seem to change much. Also started to hand out bigger XP for hexploration and overall doing shit because this is going to be a short campaign so why not have people grow in power in a quick way.

* it's actually made of virtrified corpses and skeletons of men mixed with some kind of transparent plastic-feeling super hard material.

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