FF/ASW: The Golden Spiral, Episode 101

Cast

• Asheal (level 3 ishim wizard)
• Hordac (level 3 tarchon battlemind)
• Waive (level 3 scion nomad)

Summary

The party was hired by a crumbling, literally-salty cthon named Kloros to venture to an island that he referred to as the Golden Spiral. Too old and damaged to do it himself, he needed them to locate a stone vessel filled with celestial salt. He gave them a radiant core, explaining that they would need to use it on the vessel in order to activate it, and once they did they would know what to do next.

Two-cycles later they arrived at the Golden Spiral. It was a barren island with a somewhat coiled shape, and a protrusion near the bottom suggested that it might be the fragment of a severely eroded god-corpse. The party left their ship some distance away, hopefully sufficiently concealed by silvery clouds, and drifted towards an opening in the protrusion.

The interior was dark, ridged, and glistened with slime. Waive and Asheal opted to drift; despite the slime it was still quicker for Hordac to walk. After a few minutes of drifting and plodding the tunnel curved sharply, and they found themselves standing before numerous tall, jagged spikes jutting forth from what was to their current orientation the floor.

Waive and Asheal drifted over the teeth, while Hordac slogged up the walls and onto the "ceiling". They didn't make it far before a strand of mucus struck Hordac and began dragging him towards the spikes, but before he was impaled he breathed forth a gout of flame, incinerating the strand and hopefully harming whatever was responsible.

Another strand shot out and struck Asheal. It managed to pull her into one of the spikes, but now that she was closer she saw what was responsible: a giant snail.

DUN DUN DUUUN

Waive teleported in and severed the snail's head, freeing Asheal. There were two snails left, and though she was able to incinerate one with her magic, the last one was able to snag-and-yank her into another spike, this time rendering her unconscious. Unable to use his breath weapon without harming his allies (and certainly killing Asheal), Hordac kicked off from the ceiling and ran the last one through.

While Waive administered a mending potion to Asheal, Hordac noticed that the scorched snail remains had an unexpectedly pleasant aroma. He gathered up all that he could and returned it to the ship: they'd either eat or sell it, maybe a bit of both, which was all fine by him.

Design & Development

I've been doing some snail art for Inktober, which will be used for this adventure when it comes time to publish it. Definitely doing it for Dungeon World and FrankenFourth (by default it will be for A Sundered World, with notes on how to use it in something not A Sundered World), maybe even Dungeons & Delvers and 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons (which was almost voted the system of choice).

I basically bullshitted together some characters, most of which were rendered pointless because everyone but Adam ended up changing their characters at the last minute and/or wanted different stuff: Shane went from tarchon shaman to battlemind (opting to focus on the tarchon breath weapon tree as opposed to battlemind stuff), which caused Melissa to bounce from ishim battlemind to invoker, at least up until she settled on an ishim wizard.

At least Melissa is trying out a blasty wizard, which is great because we haven't had much long-term playtesting with one.

Unlike the Age of Worms playtest, we're using armor in the 1-5 range. We're also going to try out different damage values because a few players were concerned that things dealt too much damage (like Maria McMy-Fighter-Deals-All-The-Damage). So far things are going well: Melissa got cronked out, but that's what I'd expect from even a 3rd-level wizard getting nearly impaled on bony spikes.

Adam wants to use lots of grenades, so he took the alchemy crafting skill in order to make them. Being 3rd-level and all I gave them 400 sp each to play with (assuming the rest went to pay for ship fuel and repairs, supplies, food, docking fees, etc); in addition to being able to make grenades more cheaply he'll also be able to brew potions on the cheap.

I'm working on a "black book" for FrankenFourth, which is going to include the rules and standard race and class selection that people are familiar with. It won't be free (it'll still have an actual production quality and art and such), but it will be cheap (prolly $5), and whatever you pay will get you a discount on the finished game should you want to pick it up (this way you won't pay an extra).

Announcements

If you're curious about FrankenFourth and/or Dungeons & Delvers, you can find public alpha documents here and here respectively.

A Sundered World: Player Fragments, the first supplement for A Sundered World, is finally out!

If you're looking for a class that lets you play almost any were-thing you want (plus a bunch of related extra content), then check out The Therianthrope. There's also The Dragon, a class that lets you play almost any dragon-ish thing you could think of.

By fan demand, we've mashed all of our 10+ Treasure volumes into one big magic item book, making it cheaper and more convenient to buy in print (which you can now do).