FF/ASW: The Golden Spiral, Episode 105

Cast

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

Summary

We haven't had a chance to play for the past 2-3 weeks now due to a combination of the holidays, work, life, and shoddy internet, so what follows is best as I can recall (which means I've certainly gotten some details wrong).

Anywho, after cleaning out the high priest's room, the party then took out a pair of snail knights guarding a nearby pit. Presuming that something bad was lurking down there, they knocked back a few slime potions (regain Wounds but take a Dexterity penalty for an hour) before hopping in.

The tunnel wound about before bringing them to the chamber of a glowing, cat-sized snail, perched high above them upon a chitinous spire. Before it could ask what they were doing, or someone could ask who or what it was, Hordac rushed forward and tried slicing it apart with his weaponized limbs, but the snail grew two tiny arms and deflected his attack with a golden barrier.

It followed this up by vomiting forth a surprisingly wide and powerful torrent of caustic slime. Waive and Asheal ducked behind a wall to avoid it--to varying degrees of success--and the snail emerged from its shell and stretched into the shape of a slim female scion. She was completely nude, and her long black hair did little to tastefully conceal various parts of her: this gave everyone but Iodes pause, who urged the party to destroy her.

She introduced herself as Ostona, the progeny of the First Snail and potential god (the cult was working on it). She promised to reward the party if they surrendered the celestial salt spear, and for some time the party debated whether to spare her, give her the spear, kill Iodes, or continue with their mission as more-or-less instructed. They ultimately opted to just kill her, mostly because Waive and Hordac wanted to get paid, and they figured that she might be lying anyway.

The spire Ostona was standing out turned out to be a titan whelk, which burst from the ground and tried devouring Iodes, while Ostona fought Hordac by growing spikes out of her arms and flailing at him with them. When it was clear that Ostona had the upper hand, Waive tossed the salt spear to Hordac. This terrified Ostona, but when she attemped to flee ran into Asheal.

They wrestled about on the ground, and soon after shredding most of Asheal's clothing Hordac was able to slay the titan whelk and rush to her aid: he impaled Ostona from behind with the spear while she had Asheal pinned to the ground. Her piercing shriek was abruptly silenced as her body dissolved into slime, which dribbled upon Asheal's now sparsely clothed body, and from what I can recall the session ended on that very classy note.

Design & Development

If you play Dungeon World, you can pick up The Golden Spiral here. We'll be doing a FrankenFourth version when the game is actually done (a starter set-esque "black book" is nearly complete).

The plan is to wrap up this adventure (the party hasn't fully explored the dungeon or even looted Ostona's room, though they're free to just grab what they can and run), and then have someone else try running a game so I can play. I think Melissa will be up next: curious how she runs the game, but if nothing else it will give me a chance to play Mister Tock, a kytheran chronomancer.

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!

Hot on the heels of The Blackguard, The Troll is out! The Rogue is up next: we should have an alpha draft ready soon.

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).