Author: John Aegard

Thursday night is Planarch / Dungeon World night!

Three sessions in and our campaign is no longer frontless.  The Fleshblenders are settling in as a heavy front and the party is intimately wrapped up in them.

The FBs are very interested in the body-switching magic mishap from last session so they hire the body-switched characters (the Bard and the Wizard) as research subjects.  The gig pays J250 for a week.  This is better, safer and easier money than the PCs will ever make freebooting.  They get pampered with massages and steam baths and soft-handed ogrish chiropractic adjustments in between examinations and interviews.  In the languid environment, the long-running sexual tension between the B and the W explodes!

Then their relationship turns to shit when the Bard decides unilaterally to pay the Fleshblenders to cure the Wizard’s body’s necromantic curse of unending hunger.  +1 XP for hitting his Chaotic alignment trigger!  Alas, the Bard rolls the nasty nine on Defy Danger to escape surgical complications.  The cure works.  It permanently and totally cures the Wizard’s body’s hunger.  Her body is now powered by death energy and need not eat ever again.  In fact, her body must not eat. It will get very sick if she tries. 

The Wizard, who is a sensual sort, is not happy at this.

Later, the Wizard learns that the Fleshblenders consider their anti-aging transplants to be extremely crude.  They are eager to discover another means of prolonging life.  Instead of stealing mere body parts, they would like to outright steal bodies using one-way mind transference.  It’s a downer for the PCs but at least they got free chiropractic out of it.

Insane DW/Planarch session tonight.

First, house rule!  We decide that the “invoke your right of blood and tradition” requirement for the heritage moves can be satisfied by doing a camera monologue describing what it’s like to be one of your people.

Onto the AP:

* The Ink Pudding-heritage Bard cleverly uses his ink blood to mark part of the party’s path through the Labyrinth but pushes too hard and faints.  When spiderlings attack, the Wizard uses her Telepathy to mind-yell him awake.  She rolls a 2.  GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY.  The telepathy goes awry and they switch bodies! 

* “Should we take the bond ‘_____ has switched bodies with me?'” the Wizard’s player asks.

* The party’s guide gets eaten by a giant, cowardly puppeteer spider.  They kill the spider and retrieve the guide’s magic navigation spectacles from its gullet.  The Thief steals some of its monofilament silk for a garrote.

But the navigation glasses are out of charges!  The body-switched Wizard and Bard collaborate on a ritual to recharge them.  “You can recharge the battery in one rations’ worth of time if you use the death energy that’s coming off the spider” I say.  “Or you can do it in three or four rations each if you use a safer source of ambient magic.” 

* Death energy all the way!  They both completely botch their necromantic Defy Danger rolls.  The body-switched duo watch as their own bodies are twisted by the netherworld.  The ink-pudding bard’s body turns chalk white.  The rubenesque wizard’s body is suddenly emaciated and cursed with hunger that can’t be satiated.  She’ll be eating double rations until she gets that figured out.  However, the glasses are charged and are eager to guide them out of the labyrinth.

* During the necromantic ritual, an old minotaur Gentle Brother prisoner happens by.  Glad for the opportunity to be guided out of the maze, he holds his nose at the necromancy and joins them.  But the glasses, charged with netherworld power, can see the death spirits hovering around the Gentle Brother.  The Paladin gets wind of this and insists on Laying On Hands, even though the minotaur does not want to be healed.  He rolls a mixed success and cures the minotaur’s angina — but brings it on himself.  He can barely climb stairs now without doubling over in pain.  The stubborn minotaur, angry at the Paladin’s foolish generousity, carries the Paladin out of the Labyrinth.

* They make it back to Ditchwater Manor, where they find their stuff piled in the street.  It’s been there since the morning, but no one wanted it.  They didn’t pay their rent in advance.  However the Fleshblender inkeeper is still happy to do business with them.  He offers an “infusion procedure” to restore the emaciated Wizard’s appearance, at the low, low cost of only J500.  That’s way more than she can afford, but maybe they can pay for the wizard’s cosmetic surgery with some grave robbing…