Session 20: About Voon's Goons...

Since the Bros have now done a one-way Plane Shift to the afterlife, let's check in with Voon's goons to see how they're doing. When we last left them in Session 17, Voon had enough of Bloody Brogallo's reckless battles and decided to put some serious distance between himself and the Bros. We headed west and continued for several months, ultimately settling in the western city of Averdivock. 

Voon as a L9 fighter is thinking that it would be nice to take over a castle for his own and start carving out his own little empire. Extorting peasants and merchants for "military protection" is far more appealing that watching your comrades getting eaten by hydras, after all and Averdivock is well known for having all the creature comforts any respectable gentleman could want. He sends the Hench-bros out on recon while he starts making a list of the more interesting brothels in the city...and the richer caravan routes.

A week later, the Hench-bros return with a map of the environs, including a well maintained nearby castle occupied by a large group of bandits. Voon decides to try to convince the bandits to join him on a caravan raid and then turn on them after they've been weakened by the irritating caravan mercenary guards.

Voon's Goons make a slow and obvious march towards the bandit keep and approach under a flag of parley. The bandit leader, naturally suspicious but impressed by the balls on this "batshit crazy" fighter, agrees to the parley and hears what Voon has to say. 

Voon informs the bandits about the large caravan that is on the way to the city and that it's too heavily protected for him to plunder on his own. He knows a location where their combined forces could hit the caravan out of view of the Averdivock authorities and easily take the plunder to the nearby city of Ashtel for easy liquidation. A reaction roll of 72%/15% means that the bandit leader is suspicious but goes along with the plan as his greed wins over his black heart.

The combined group surprises the caravan and quickly dispatches the guards and takes the merchants captive. Voon executes his planned betrayal...and it does not go well.

Voon's mercenaries are wiped out to a man. His henchmen all fail morale and surrender to the bandit lord. A rare natural 100 on the reaction roll means the Primo Bandito decides he likes the way they fought and accepts them into the band. As for Voon? Well...as a famous man once said "I'll keep the money and you can have the rope."

Thus ends the saga of Voon de Goon.

Session 19: The Quick and the Dead

 

It's been a while since we've journeyed with the Bros and they're in pretty dire financial straits. Since I'm doing a BrOSR solo campaign, I'm using 1:1 time and that means the clock has been running during my unanticipated prolonged absence. I set up a spreadsheet some time ago to track expenses and update as the calendar ticked by so I didn't have to worry about tracking minutiae during downtime or extended breaks and the results are in!

As a refresher, Blastikus started rehabbing and expanding the Obsidian Tower to make it a base of operations for his future endeavors. This required an outlay of 207,909gp to rebuild and refortify the Citadel as well as to recruit sufficient mercenaries to man it against the numerous enemies the Bros have acquired over the past few years.

My real world hiatus has meant I haven't been able to send out the Bros since last summer and I was hilariously surprised when I looked at the spreadsheet and saw old Blastikus was 30,810gp in the hole due to the classic accounting challenge of "expenses > income". Time to hit the road for loot if we ever expect Blasty to level up again!

I roll on the Rumor Table and come up with The City of zul Korizik. This is pretty cool since Blastikus had previously sent the Hench-orcs to scout it, so I randomly generate the dungeon and we're off to the races.

The journey to the city is uneventful and the Bros leave the Brocenaries on the surface while they make their way below. The first few rooms are empty, but the Bros quickly stumble upon a rival adventuring party of 9 characters and fall upon them in a greed fueled bloodlust.

They win surprise and the first round of melee, quickly dispatching 4 mook henchmen and injuring two of the leaders. The remaining NPCs put up another round of resistance before horribly failing a morale check and surrendering in the hopes of ransoming themselves.

Some skillful interrogation by the Bros causes the L7 druid and L11 Magic-user to reveal that they were investigating new reports of Chaos infestation seeping upwards from the lower levels. The Bros decide to investigate further and leave the captives in the hands of the Brocenaries while they resume the delve. They proceed downwards to level 2 where they encounter a pack of giant scorpions, resulting in the death of Krall due to the poison stingers of the beasts. The Bros collectively shrug their shoulders and press on where they run into a pair of Stone Giant scouts who confirm the druid's story and let the party know that the western part of the dungeon level seems to be a strong source of the Chaos emanations that their own shaman have detected.

Parting on relatively good terms from the giants, the party makes their way westwards and ultimately meet group of 7 Blue Slaad. This ill-fated encounter ends with the complete elimination of the Bros...in 3 rounds of combat. 

Damn.

21 months of blood, sweat, and tears in the pursuit of glory, empire and fame brought crashing down in the depths of an ancient corrupted city...in under 3 minutes. New chapters have been written in the Book of the Dead

This is why AD&D fucking rules.

There's no delusional power fantasies of insecure mentally ill societal rejects pondering over "well what would my character do?" fucking garbage. Just raw, unfiltered brutality reminding you that there is no "story" to your character, just the hard reality of bad luck and poor choices cruelly teaching you the consequences of your actions. 

Go ahead and cry your eyes out, you fucking weakling. Crom hears you and cares not. Cthulhu can't tell you apart from the bacteria that cover your meatbag skin suit. Your mewling protestations of "that's not fair!" are worth less than a flea's fart in the wind to the Knight of Swords.

Weep quietly, you loser. Step aside for the next delusional wannabe hero that thinks HIS story will be different and superior to YOUR story. Until, of course, he meets his end in the dark, covered in his own excrement as the rats feast on his still beating heart.

I am going to kinda miss Blastikus, though...