dungeons-and-denizens

[dungeons-and-denizens]

03 - STRINGS AND SUNS

The air of the violet streets crackled with static as a portal from the void ripples open before the party, Jude stepping out before them, still thoroughly roughed up from their previous encounter. 

The party fusses over their wounded companions, and Sarah insists on visiting the Black Queen to offer her a proper apology after the royal had stood up from a large pool of blood, looking more or less unharmed, both arms intact, and brandishing a dagger at the group guardedly, before sheathing the small blade and slinking off into her castle.

Obviously, the party had their reservations about visiting the woman they had just tried to kill, but Jude and Katrina both pointed out to the party that the dersite they just saw was not, in fact, their Black Queen, but rather Snowman. Still unperturbed by the news, Sarah heads off to the castle, disregarding the party’s discomfort. They follow her with reluctance, and hold a tense but otherwise placid conversation with Snowman. She expresses her distaste for the events that occurred in her palace because of the party’s actions, and tells them that if they would like to avoid taking Jack’s place in her prison, then they were to find a group called “The Midnight Crew” and their base of operations for her.

When they left, Jude takes a moment to call Emile, where he was informed that their forge had been vaporized by a laser cannon-- specifically, the one residing in the dungeons of Walls and Wastrels. The call was ended rather abruptly because the Gaian was understandably preoccupied with other matters, and the party continues on to take a shuttle back to the Land of Strings and Shade.

On their way back to the portal leading to the manor, the party encounters three very muscled and amphibious underlings, all flexing rather aggressively at the clearly weary group. Unfaltering, Freddy charges forward and begins to challenge them to a lift-battle, lifting his rather heavy fist weapons at them. Slightly taken aback, one of them rises to the challenge, wrenching the weapons from his hands and lifting them even faster. Several party members decide to allow the ridiculousness to unfold, instead choosing to slink past the enemies while they were preoccupied with Freddy’s impromptu workout session. The moisture in the air was palpable as the Seer screamed at them, “SWEAT THAT SADNESS!!” and the swole frog liches groaned and warbled incomprehensibly in response. On the side, Axel manages to pull aside one of the more gentlemanly of the robust creatures, and strikes up a pleasant conversation regarding the puppet shows recently. He manages to obtain a phone number from the underling, and for some reason no one questions why underlings have cell phones, or how Axel managed to understand its clicks and chattering well enough to have a coherent conversation. As Freddy’s workout session reaches its pheromonal high, the lich he had engaged in a lift-off with finally collapses under its own sweat, tears, and raw mangrit. Freddy, also, decides to ask for this exhausted individual’s phone number, and invites it to stop by the manor so they can work out sometime again.

Upon successful evasion of battle and their return to Moonlight Town, the party promptly retires to their rooms and rest up. Jude takes a brief moment to check on his captive held in Gogh’s painting dimension, and seeing that Doze and Gogh are in the middle of what appears to be a riveting game of Go-Fish, leave them be. Several hours later, once the party has recovered, everyone regroups in the grand lobby. The party decides to head to the Land of Clocks and Noise, since that is the one planet where they have discovered the location of the Quest Bed, and figured it was high time they find out what the stone slab was for.

Trekking up the large spire, everyone gathers around the red rock bed and waits for Mark to fall asleep. Growing impatient, the party urges Jude to use his Maid of Void powers to force him to fall asleep, and with Mark’s permission, he does so. The spell only lasts for 6 seconds, unfortunately. He manages to see a glimpse of bright green fire, before he wakes up once more. There’s some discussion and accusation of Jude “planning things” behind the party’s back, much to the redhead’s confusion, but Freddy’s eagerness gets the best of him and he uses his Seer abilities to see the method of activating the Quest Beds. Disturbed by the vision he was shown, he storms off while shouting vaguely about Mark dying. Confused and concerned, the party looks back at the Quest Bed with trepidation, and Sarah walks up to it, attempting to slam her fists into its surface. Mark manages to stop her, and she explains that if the Quest Bed is going to get them killed, then she’s going to destroy it. Viktor, at this point, also approaches the red slab, his palm hovering over its surface- silently threatening with his Doom powers. At this point, Freddy returns to the peak, and resolves to just use his Seer powers once more to find out what the Quest Bed’s purpose is. He sees a vision of the silhouettes of Jude and Joe, floating before a great Green Sun, and a machine between them, and then two versions of Mark, one normal and one wearing Prospitian pajamas, being fused into one and glowing. Freddy questions Jude about the Green Sun again, and Sarah joins in, admitting that she saw something similar in the clouds of Skaia during her last visit to Prospit, which Jude admits to knowing about but insisting he’s not plotting anything behind anybody’s backs, and that they’re the ones being mistrustful of him. Reluctantly, they yield, and Freddy proceeds to inform the party that dying on the Beds give you superpowers (making you “really frickin’ swole”), which made the situation more tense as a few people (namely, Freddy and Viktor), considered testing it out. Jude places himself between Mark and his Quest Bed, and the rest of the party, and says in no uncertain terms that if anyone even thinks about threatening Mark’s life, then the Quest Bed is getting sent to the Furthest Ring. Jude’s palm rested firmly on the surface of the stone slab, and Mark asks that he just go ahead and transport it there until they know more about the Quest Beds. Agreeing, Jude does as asked, and the Bed and its four poles sink slowly into a dark portal formed under it, as it disappears into the quiet of the Void.

The source of tension now banished, the party collectively decide to say “fuck the Quest Beds” and instead go to the Land of Strings and Shade in order to explore more dungeons. They head straight to one of the rocky spires in the distance, but along the way large ghostly puppets come floating after them, hastening their entry to the cave. Once inside, they notice a plethora of interesting and slightly primitive wall paintings. They depict the Denizen, Typheus, high above the horizon, and then being broken into several pieces, followed by a painting of the large cloth puppets that haunt the landscape, and the Denizen absent from the sky.

To the party’s dismay, one of the faces of the puppets peels itself away from the wall, revealing a disguised enemy as several smaller cloth puppets emerge from the shadow, scuffling across the stone floor, and combat begins. Things quickly take a turn for the worse when several party members are seized with terror from the larger creature’s screech, and Sarah focuses on attacking the enemies rather than healing. The puppet rears its cloth covering up, revealing several tens of sewing needles suspended inside it, before they surge all at once, stabbing ruthlessly into Viktor, knocking him unconscious. The needles stick out of his collapsed body, and the puppet begins to twitch and jump erratically, tugging the strings and pulling Viktor to stand on his feet, facing the party with a blank expression as he was manipulated. The party all converge on the puppet in order to free their friend from its grasp, and once it’s dealt with, Viktor falls to the floor again. Jude rushes over to force a potion down his throat, bringing him back to consciousness.

After the fight, Sarah announces that she’s tired of being treated like a glorified health potion, and refuses to heal the party during combat until they show her more respect. Freddy, unperturbed, rushes into the next room, starting yet another round of strife as the party is ambushed trying to catch up with him. Several cloth-covered creatures descend from the ceiling, this time each with two hooks dangling on the ends of their sheets. The party is quickly overwhelmed as they were unable to properly recover from the last battle. Jude and Mark work together to make up for Sarah’s lack of healing by use portals to reposition dying allies out of combat as both Sarah and Viktor fell to dangerously low health, and rewinding hard hitting attacks. Freddy manages to scare off one of the creatures and after thoroughly styling on one of the enemies through a series of smooth dodges and Sick Burns, Jude takes down one of the puppets as well. Mark and Axel work together to finish off two more while Sarah and Viktor carefully take down the fifth.

Close calls managed, the party make their tired way back to the Manor, unable to complete the dungeon in their current state. As they leave the Land of Strings and Shade, they see the creepy sight of several puppets dancing in a formation around the spire of the dungeon they just left.

====> CONTINUE THE STORY AT SUMMARY #4: THE PRICE OF KNOWLEDGE. ( COMING SOON ! )

#sessionSummary #sorry this is so late lol

[dungeons-and-denizens]

(image courtesy of starshipsally)

02 - JAILBREAK

The party returns to their manor after an eventful day of archeological discovery and monster-fighting. Upon arrival, however, they are immediately faced with an unfamiliar prospitian sitting casually in their lobby. 

She introduces herself as Katrina Aldmeri, but tells them little else of why she’s there or what she wants. Unable to get more out of her, they go about their usual business around the manor. DD arrives soon after, and when the party asks him if Katrina can be trusted, he tells them definitely not, but if they need to get behind locked doors, then there’s nobody better for the job. Hearing this, and after a brief yet wily conversation with the prospitian woman, Jude strikes up a tentative camaraderie with Katrina, as he can relate quite well to her work in the shadows, being a Void player.

After some deliberation, the party hatches a plan to infiltrate Derse to finally get Jack Noir out of prison, as he had intentionally gotten arrested to foil the party’s objective to exile him. Having enlisted the help of DD and Katrina, the party sans Freddy head off to Derse to begin the mission. Freddy requested some time to speak with his grandfather, and that it would be brief, promising to catch up with the party as soon as he finished.

DD ferries them over to Derse and the plan is set in motion. He drops off Jude and Katrina along the jail tower that Jack is being held in. The two shadowy members of the group set off scaling the building while the rest of the party is deposited on the nearby bridge, where they are to cause a distraction that would allow Katrina and Jude to sneak past the guards easily. As soon as everyone exits DD’s cab and his car speeds off into the darkness, the prison guards immediately aggress the group on the bridge.

Despite Sarah’s request to keep the mission casualty-free, Abigail’s flail launches a dersite guard over the edge of the bridge. Sarah leaps off the bridge after him, distressed beyond logic. However, the disturbance has sufficiently drawn the attention of all of the nearby security, and all eyes are on the chaos unfolding on the platform.

Meanwhile, Jude and Katrina have successfully scaled the tower up to the first parapet, and sneak past the guard with little issue. Having realized that Jack would be held in the topmost cell, they continue their brisk climb up the tower and soon reach the second parapet, which connects to the bridge hosting the party’s commotion. Despite a few brief slips, the two manage to slip past the guards again with more or less success.

On their way up the last stretch of the tower, a green and white explosion erupts from the other side of the bridge. A silhouette stands-- or floats, rather-- shadowed by the light, and with a burst of green flames several nearby dersites are flung off of the bridge as rubble rains down on the streets below. When the smoke clears, Freddy hovers slightly above the violet cobblestone-- before rushing into another cluster of guards and shoving them over the edge as well with another pulse of electric green energy. The telltale sparks and crackles of Doc Scratch’s power courses around him, as the party stares dumbfounded at this newest development.

The now destructive force that Freddy has become completely tips the tide into the party’s favor despite the large troop of guards that came to contain the situation. Given that everyone was sufficiently distracted, Katrina and Jude had no issue climbing over the last parapet and tipping over the two guards leaning too far forward over the edge. With security out of the way, Katrina gets to lockpicking the solid iron door that separates them from the only cell on this level of the jail tower.

It slides open with a clink and they quietly swing open the door. A hulking giant of a dersite stands turned away from them, arguing with his prisoner-- Jack Noir. With a nod of understanding toward each other, Katrina darts behind the iron door, and Jude stands directly in the center of the doorway, where he taunts the large guard.

However, Jude’s taunts didn’t go as he planned, and instead of charging at him like the two thieves had hoped, the large guard instead pulls out a massive spiked flail and whips it at the unfortunately defenseless Jude. He opens up a portal, redirecting the spiked head of the weapon to smash into the skull of the prison guard, before closing the portal and severing the chain holding the weapon together. Immediately as the portal closed, though, the large dersite guard slammed full force into the unsuspecting Jude who wasn’t expecting a charge immediately afterwards.

As he’s pinned between a parapet and a dersite, he glances over to Katrina, who, after deliberating briefly, decides Jude could find his own way in, and runs into the room with Jack’s cell, swinging the large door shut and locking it. Jude looks over the edge of the wall, where he sees that down below, a new enemy has entered the fray.

The slim, elegant, dark figure of the Black Queen stands before Freddy, a sinister blade in one hand as she surveys the damage. “I suppose the Doctor isn’t on my side after all,” She laments aloud, “even after he gave me such a lovely gift.” as she slides a gold band with six orbs onto her carapaced finger.

The transformation begins immediately as scales begin to grow off of her body, and a reptilian snout stretches out from her face. Leathery wings unfurl from her back as she lifts up into the air, now a terrifying mix between a cross Black Queen and a dragon.

Mark and Freddy charge the obsidian royal, making an immediate attempt to remove the ring from her body. Despite several blows to her arm, most of them glance off the armor-like surface of her scales. Earlier on, Abigail and Axel had leapt off of the bridge after Sarah and to escape the oncoming rush of personnel headed their way, leaving only Viktor, Freddy, and Mark on the bridge to fight the Black Queen. Raising her hand, the Red Miles stretched out over the crumbling bridge, piercing Freddy and Mark in several places as they clashed against the Queen. Viktor uses his Doom abilities in order to cause the bridge to erode in the near future, preventing any more guards from joining their now chaotic battle. Mark and Freddy make another attempt at cutting through the Black Queen’s arm, and manage to take a chunk off of her shoulder.

However, the green energy pulsing around Freddy begins to weaken and fade as his time runs short, and the power of the Green Sun begins to ebb away. With a malevolent gleam in her eyes, the Queen unleashes a torrent of flames in the direction of the Time and Light players, finishing off Freddy and knocking him to unconsciousness. Viktor’s spell then takes effect as the bridge cracks and collapses, sending the three party members standing on it plummeting downwards.

Meanwhile, Jude takes advantage of being in close quarters with the guard, and pickpockets the keys off of the dersite’s belt while he’s pinned, before using a small portal only large enough for the Void player to fit through to teleport himself back inside of the room with Jack’s cell, where Katrina waits. Jude and Katrina make swift work of breaking out Jack, demanding that he drop the makeshift pike he had crafted, before creating an opening in the cell wall for the three of them to climb into the waiting passenger cabin of DD’s limousine. Jude hesitates, and instead takes a moment to call Emile, asking if he should leave the area or attempt to grab the ring. After a distressed response from the Gaian, he decides that he’d look a lot cooler going for the ring, as he’s warned by several different people to not die (he makes no promises). Swinging the door of the car shut and waving DD and Katrina away, he uses a portal to bring himself down to the base of the tower, where the bridge has just collapsed.

As he arrives, the ring on the Queen’s hand begins to glow once more. The scales covering her carapace shake and shudder as they extend outwards from her body, sharpening to deadly points as sharp blades and knives blossom across every available inch of her form. To the party’s collective dread, it becomes clear that the Queen has only reached stage two of her prototyped form, and that the immense strength she showed earlier was a mere fraction of the pain about to be served up.

With a cheeky declaration of “hashtag worth”, Jude uses a portal to launch himself directly on top of the bladed Queen’s arm, the sharp edges digging into his arms and chest and cutting deep gashes into his body, dealing heavy damage. In a moment of pure disregard for self-preservation, he spawns a guillotine around the two of them in mid air, lined up directly with the Queen’s shoulder. Through incredible luck, the large, heavy blade of the medieval structure came plummeting downwards onto the two of them, managing to avoid damaging Jude as it crunches into the Black Queen’s thickly armored shoulder.

But, the arm does not sever.

The force of the impact, combined with the blood streaming from Jude’s wounds, makes it impossible for him to maintain his hold on the Queen, and he slips off of her, unable to retrieve the ring. The blade of the guillotine, still lodged deeply into the arm of the Queen, finally manages to rip through the last bit of muscle and carapace keeping the arm intact, and severs it from the dersite royal, sending the Queen, her sundered arm (with the ring still on its finger), and the executory contraption plummeting to the ground below.

With a loud thunk, three bodies land in the cab of DD’s limousine. Viktor, the unconscious Freddy, and the now-unconscious Mark (who had attempted to use his Time powers to see if he could circumvent the conservation of momentum, and subsequently sent himself falling faster into DD’s car, knocking himself out on impact), all slam into the floor of the passenger cabin. Shortly after, a black severed arm falls in after them, a gold band glimmering on its finger. All eyes lock onto the ring, and the air between the 3 conscious passengers goes tense as they realize what is about to happen. Jack, Viktor, and Katrina all dive for the arm.

Jack makes it first, with a craze in his eyes as he leaps onto the floor and swipes up the arm before the other two make it. Katrina quickly turns and leaps at the dersite, but instead of going for him like he was expecting, she deftly slides the ring off of the limb Jack has clutched to his chest, and immediately puts it onto her middle finger, flipping off Jack as she jumps out of the limo and transforms into a scaly dragon-prospitian. The furious dersite snarls at her as she flies away from the car, cursing her vehemently as she disappears from view.

Viktor uses his last potion in order to resuscitate the nearly-dead Freddy, and together they tell DD to take Jack to the Veil and take care of the exiling, and grab the unconscious Mark, leaping out of the car after Katrina, and the dark limousine speeds off. The impact of the three of them hitting the violet cobblestone damages Mark further, causing him to nearly perish, but as they are now on the streets below, Sarah (who has been healing fallen dersites the whole fight) rushes over and manages to drag him back from the brink of death. All of the party except for Jude has made it more or less safely to the ground.

Jude, seeing that their new prospitian ally has gained wings, cries out desperately for her to catch him, as hitting the ground would definitely knock him out, and probably kill him. Katrina tries to catch him with her new found powers of flight, but, being unaccustomed to using her wings, overshoots the catch and he plummets past her. In a last ditch effort, she throws the rope down towards him, which he manages to catch. His shoulder dislocates from the force of it, but manages to maintain his grip on their tenuous link. He calls up to her, asking her to lift him up to her to ease the stress on his damaged arm, and the two of them each pull the rope until Jude is being held in Katrina’s arms. He babbles at her an endless stream of “thank you”’s as she begins to lower the two of them to the ground below.

While the prospitian woman is preoccupied, Jude takes the opportunity to slip the ring off of her finger, since she can’t avoid it while holding onto the red-headed thief at the same time. He slides it free from her hand, and shoves himself away from her, sending her falling 30 feet to the ground, and teleporting himself to the Furthest Ring, the ring safely in his hands.

Jude coughs roughly into his phone, informing Emile that his risk was, in fact, “worth it”, when he hears a voice behind him.

“Give me the ring.” Baldur holds his hand out, expression serious.

Hesitant, Jude says into his phone “Emile...should I? Do you trust him?” but when no reply comes back, he looks down to see that the signal has been lost. Or rather, voided. “He doesn’t know you’re here, does he.” Jude tightens his grip on the ring in his palm.

Baldur only shakes his head at Jude, before once again restating his demand.

“Give me the ring, Jude.”

====> CONTINUE THE STORY AT SUMMARY #3: STRINGS AND SUNS !

#sessionSummary

[dungeons-and-denizens]

01 - RECAPITULATE

Our story begins with 8 young adults standing in each of their respective bedrooms! Today is the day that these brazen youths will begin their journey. 

Our cast of characters is as follows!

Jude Butler, dexterousChallenger [DC], Maid of Space, Male, 17.

Axel North, idiosyncraticVentriloquist [IV], Thief of Breath, Male, 16.

Freddy Mercurino, buffTats [BT], Seer of Light, Male, 20.

Joseph Jackson, harmoniousHierophant [HH], ??? of Hope, Male, 22.

Mark Aemu, slySwordsman [SS], Rogue of Time, Male, 26.

Sarah Mathers, floralPhalanx [FP], Heir of Life, Female, 19.

Abigail Kaur, lydianSledge [LS], Witch of Heart, Female, 19.

Viktor Zhang, obstinateZealot [OZ], Knight of Doom, Male, 20.

They do all of the shenanigans all coming-of-age heroes must do in order to enter the game, and upon successful avoidance of the humanity-ending meteors, find themselves within the Medium. They lay in a circle, each of them having fallen square on their rumpus as they were dropped into the Incipisphere. The party finds themselves on a dull, featureless and gray planet, which they come to call “Moonlight Town”. The few consorts that scuttle by inform them of their roles in this game- the Lords, as our heroes are referred to, and guide our party towards a large and withering manor.

They come to learn that this manor will be the party’s base of operations for the rest of the game, as none of their houses have been transported to the Medium, as one would normally assume. Not only this, but 7 stone tablets stand firm in a semicircle in the courtyard, each bearing a symbol of one of the players. A tall and slender dersite soon greets the party, calling himself the Draconian Delegate. He’s going to be their chauffeur, he informs them. At least until the portals out in the yard are activated, which will allow our heroes to travel to the 7 planets faster than any flying cab could take them.

Intermittently between their travels through the planets, the party ventures to the Veil several times in order to complete necessary tasks such as ectobiological reproduction and exiling certain carapacians. The party also became connected to a distant session played by 6 characters after accidentally turning on a monitor they discovered while searching for shortcuts. They call themselves “The Gaians” (and our party was thus dubbed “The Earthlings”) and consist of 4 trolls and 2 humans.

Emile, chosenRedeemer [CR], Male, Bard of Light, Human.

Baldur, posthumousParadigm [PP], Male, Knight of Void, Troll.

Vedant, allegiantSymphony [AS], Male, Prince of Space, Troll.

Baskha, abyssimusAngel [AA], Male, Page of Blood, Troll.

Arlyyn, temporalTerraformer [TT], Female, Witch of Time, Troll.

Reno, benignArtisan [BA], Female, Seer of Hope, Human.

Later, when the party find themselves on the Land of Traps and Abyss, they soon come to discover that deep under the massive ocean that covers the planet, are a number of casinos run by strange green creatures with numbers on their hats. After hatching a plan to rob one of the establishments (and doing so with arguable success), it is revealed to the party by Emile that Jude is not what he seems to be: rather than a Maid of Space, the events of the heist made it apparent to all that his powers worked in quite the opposite way; Jude Butler is the Maid of Void. This also explains why there had only been 7 portals and 7 planets: Jude’s did not exist.

The party’s journey then led them to the Land of Walls and Wastrels, where they encountered the underlings in organized society. Ruled over by a strange skeletal creature who called himself “Charon”, the party reluctantly undertakes a mission from him: retrieve a weapon from the dungeon below his castle. The dungeon, formally known as Olievert, saps the party’s magic while they are within its walls, preventing them from using their abilities. They discover that the whole dungeon is in fact a large facility dedicated to the maintenance and firing of a large energy cannon- the gun that Charon desired- and it’s pointed directly at Skaia. After a fierce battle against an enemy that bears a striking resemblance to Charon but calls himself “The Boatman”, the party rushes to the control panel and barely manages to divert the beam into the Furthest Ring in time.

Crisis averted, the party explores the remaining planets and connects all 7 portals back to their home base, Moonlight Town. Upon the 7th portal’s activation, an 8th appears in the center of the courtyard leading to Skaia itself.

The party, having realized that Moonlight Town is in fact, Jude’s planet, decide to explore its newly formed terrain next. They soon come across an interesting dungeon which contains several murals of what looks like other sessions. First, they see a session with 8 planets and 8 players. In the next room over, is a carving of 6 planets and 6 players, with a glowing pool of water in the center of the room, and a carving of an hourglass at the base of it. Another room displays a session with 4 players, and when the room is “activated”, the domed roof lights up with 12 constellations, and the silhouettes of the 4 figures lights up with their respective aspects: Breath, Light, Space, and Time. Further exploration leads them to discover a session showing 12 players, and their planets, with all of these are clearly silhouettes clearly representing trolls. They discover another session of 12 trolls, and another session of 4 humans, but said session lacked both a time and space player, instead the players representing Void, Hope, Life, and Heart, and the planets having no Skaia at the center of its mural. They continue exploring the facility and also find several carvings of what appears to be pool balls, as well as depictions of large tentacles and cracks. The hourglass motif shows up again in later murals and they come across a stone slab with two cylindrical pockets, the exact size of the hourglass that is currently in Joe’s possession. After thorough documentation of the dungeon, and an agreement to return when they better understand what stories the carvings tell, the party heads back to the Manor.

====> CONTINUE THE STORY AT SUMMARY #2: JAILBREAK.

#sessionSummary #note to self: this contains sessions 1 thru 13

[dungeons-and-denizens]

Welcome to Dungeons & Denizens!

Hello!

Dungeons & Denizens is a modified D&D 5e campaign that takes place in the Homestuck universe! Our story features 8 players who use teamwork and the power of friendship to overcome various adversities!

Not actually, though. Nope, our session is just as riddled with drama and convoluted time shenanigans as any other game of SBURB, so if you like that kind of thing, then please enjoy!

We stream every Sunday evening at 5PM Central Time on Twitch.TV. In case you miss a stream though, we also post session summaries right here on this tumblr blog! The campaign is run by a group of youtubers known as Normal Mode! If you like our sense of humor, check out the channel HERE!

This tumblr is intended as an informational hub for Dungeons & Denizens. It will have pages about each of our characters as well as posts detailing the shenanigans we get up to each session! We hope you enjoy!

#status #about