Masters of Carcosa - Session 12

My Carcosa-style recap of this session was as follows:

The Bone Man sorcerer, The Dominant Reflection (AC 16, MV 90’, HD 4, Chaotic) has taken over the abandoned Space Alien outpost, along with a sizeable group of Bone Men cultists. They worship the long dead Snake Men.

I had been teasing Bone Men cultists operating between the party’s home town of Invak, and the merchant town to the South, Jahar, for a few sessions. The Space Alien outpost was between the two towns, and was also home to secret village of Bone Men. It was time to finally scope out what was going on!

I had fun seeing this long running thread from [the start of the game][s1] finally lead somewhere. As I have mentioned earlier, the Bone Man the party freed from a cell in the very first session was actually a dirt bag sorcerer, the Dominant Reflection, imprisoned by the rest of Bone Men that lived in the outpost. While the players were wandering Carcosa, he was gathering up a crew of cultists, who then took over the outpost, making it their base of operation.

The players some how managed to steam roll their way through the outpost, building up a posse as they freed captives. The session concluded with them saving the town. One of the more He-Man sessions in the game. In the commotion the Dominant Reflection escaped! There is chatter in the comments about what happened off camera, whether it was cheesy or not to let the character escape. I thought not, and the players agreed.

The players convince the town’s leader to come back with them to Invak in the post game discussion. We would sometimes play out things like that in post game chat between sessions.

This would end up being the midpoint of the campaign, though I didn’t know it at the time. Kind of fitting we looped back to where we started.

Players:

• Dion: Asha-Rea, Ulfire Women Fighter
• Brendan: Missave Rage, Yellow Women Fighter 
• Gus: Normangina, Yellow Woman Fighter
• Chris P: Bone Crone, Bone Women Sorcerer
• Eric Boyd: Orange Julia, Orange Women Fighter

Recap:

• The party travels from Jahar North towards the “abandoned” space alien outpost.
• They see that it is guarded by two Bone Men, so they venture in via the radioactive wastes.
• The large centre room is filled with 9 bone men, reviewing maps and papers on large tables. The characters surprise the group, and kill a few before they can even retaliate. A few manage to flee to the basement.
• A long drawn out fight takes place on the main floor. Bone Men from various rooms join in. The party also encounter Bone Men from the original tribe that were living here, who join them in trying to shake off these cultists.
• The characters make their way to the basement, making quick work of two guards below.
• Moving forward they make their way to where they believe they will find the leader of the cult.
• More cultists are killed, and tribesman recruited, as the party marches forward.
• In the middle of the battle, the The Dominant Reflection looks to have made a break for it, his “throne room” sits empty.
• The party continue to travel around the basement in search of the sorcerer, but only encounter other former members of the Bone Men tribe, whom they free.
• By the time the party makes it back up to the top floor, and out the front door, the sorcerer looks to have fled.
• The party rest in the Space Alien Outpost, where they are heralded as heroes.

Notes:

• The Queen of Autumn was not amongst any of the people killed or freed. The leader of the Bone Men believes she escaped when the Sorcerer originally returned with his band of cultists to take over the ‘town’.
• The leader of the town, the Prince of Bone, gives your characters a 500 GP blood red ruby from the vault you passed when you first entered the basement.
• The Prince of Bone reveals that while they have no power over the Spherical Hunter Killer robot, they quickly learned that it can not “see” Bone Men. It completely ignores them. They also confirm your suspicion that it only hunts at night. They leave it alone.
• The Prince of Bone reveals that the sorcerer was previously imprisoned by the Bone Men here, because he was crazy-ass-crazy. They don’t know how he escaped, though they think it probably happened around the time Gus and Eric were previously here. He doesn’t put two and two together, because he’s so happy to be free. (You will recall you freed a naked Bone Man from a cell and fed him, before letting him run off into the wastes.)
• As before, the Prince of Bone asks that you not reveal to anyone the location of the town.

Treasure:

• The heads of 23 bone men cultists, whose bounty will be collected in Invak. (100GP per cultist killed or 2300 GP once you return to Invak)
• 500 GP gem
• 173 GP in random coinage from the 23 dead cultists.
• One laser gun (Brendan’s character has it)

Comments:

• Brendan S (2015-07-21 04:28): For my records: Laser gun has 9 charges.
• Ramanan S (2015-07-21 04:28): The leader had several rounds on you guys and ran around and back up the stairs. I don’t think you guys would have been able to catch him and his (now small) crew. How would you have handled pursuit like that? (He was the other 6 I rolled for initiative when you guys were fighting in the basement hall way.)
• Ramanan S (2015-07-21 04:30): You guys also managed to kill most of the bone men, which seems crazy. Whenever I read these old TSR modules with giant mobs of monsters I’m always at a loss for how it won’t just turn into a shit show.
• Eric Boyd (2015-07-21 04:32): Yeah, that’s tracking, not a chase per se, and you’ve let the party get away in craters and badlands enough times that I’d call this a fair call. We should’ve sent some of the freed captives back around to keep watch…
• Ramanan S (2015-07-21 04:47): On the one hand it seems lame to save my NPC, but on the other it seemed dumb to have him just wait for you guys when it was probably clear the tide was turning.

• Gus L (2015-07-21 06:05): I’d say this leader needs a talking to.  The city to the South of some non-bone men know where his people are, the sorcerer who kicked his ass last time knows where his people are.  The slavers will undoubtedly soon know where they are.

  We won’t come back and save him next time he gets taken over by a sorcerer - we’ll just bring the town guards and Invakians to kill everyone.  Everyone.  They won’t be a nuisance to trade anymore.  The major power in the area - the one we nominally work for/with is boneman - he needs to bring his people into Invak, and set up a life there - they should be welcoming.  We can help arrange that. If not, since he was a dude in a cell recently Normagina will encourage the other survivors to come with us to to Invak and let the crazy leader and the crazy sorcerer fight it out before we come back and murder the winners/survivors with Invak’s militia in a few months.

  This should  not really be a choice for them, small communities get slaughtered, mutated or taken over by nuts.  They are not even a small community now - time to join up with someone bigger.

  Also mumble mumble something about strategic hamlets.

• Ramanan S (2015-08-07 04:57): Alright!

  You can convince this fellow that staying here is a dumb idea. The group is still very suspicious of outsiders, but since you have shown up and saved them from cult-stupidness they are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.

  The leader and 5 of his followers are going to search for “The Queen of Autumn”, the women who escorted Gus L and Eric Boyd back to Invak during that first session. Everyone else will come with you. (I’ll look up numbers.)

  Also I realise I made a mistake with the people you were freeing from the cells. Not everyone is a Bone Man. Some people are captives from the region. They will also come back with you to Invak. I need to double check my notes for where people are from.

  This dungeon is basically cleared except for the central locked section in the basement. (The doors to the North when you go down the stairs.) The bone men have also not entered the area, lacking the appropriate pass key. They assume it’s where the power comes from. There is a strange symbol that they say means power embossed on the door.

  I should give you guys XP for messing up the cultist faction as well.

• Eric Boyd (2015-08-07 04:59): Do any of our assorted key cards open the basement?
• Ramanan S (2015-08-07 05:16): Sadly no. It’s the same sort of metal sliding door you see throughout, just locked. You can try and bust it open if you are so inclined. The Bone Men are superstitious about it, but won’t interfere if you want to mess with it.