Thursday, February 13, 2014

Numenera: Disenchanted Tales - Session 6

Numenera: Disenchanted Tales - Session 6

A Chilly Reunion

Elsa, a Graceful Nano who Wears a Sheen of Ice
Anna, a Swift Jack who Entertains
Merida, a Rugged Glaive who Carries a Quiver

Summary

A billion years beyond “once upon a time” the Three Princesses of Nihliesh were entering the Temple of the CREW L.A. D-VII, which was on the western edge of the Island of the Lost Module.  Carefully Elsa moved into the first chamber, which had been unveiled when Merida used her mace to elegantly shatter the front door.  The floor was soft and spongy, with the appearance of plastic, but the give of foam.  On the opposing end was a small raised floor, to the left and right of which were passages to the east and west.  Sensing the possibility of a trap, Merida fired an arrow across the room and sure enough a glass panel dropped down the center of the room, cutting the characters off from the facility's corridors.  Anna figured out that she could possibly squeeze her slight figure below the glass wall, since the floor was so squishy, and immediately began doing so, when two winter-pelted margr's appeared from the western hallway.  Anna had to think quickly before she was discovered!

[GM's note:  This was our first GM Intrusion, which was rather traumatic for Anna's player, Evie, who is only 7.  Evie is of the firm belief that GM Intrusions are "unfair"]

Using her Chameleon Cloak artifact Anna was virtually invisible to the dimwitted goat-men, and while the grotesque pair was distracted by the other two princesses the party's jack deftly lifted the satchels from each of the margr's.  Anna searched the satchels to find an oddity (a musical instrument that only made terrible noises) and a remote control for the glass wall, which the margr's were searching for at that very minute but couldn't find.  Realizing that they couldn't do anything about Merida and Elsa, the margr's ran off to figure out their next course of action.  Anna activated the glass wall shortly thereafter, and the three chased down the margr's and sent them off to their graves.  And then CREW L.A. D-VII started to call to the party.

The artificial intelligence called out to the three princesses, beckoning them to come further into the temple.  Along with the voice of the construct, Anna was able to make out the voice of Olaf, whimpering pitifully within the chambers.  Well Merida had enough of her friend's suffering, so the glaive set out to put things right once and for all.  Down a short escalator Merida traveled, into a large circular chamber.  The chamber, over fifty feet across, contained a pair of mechanical arms that could span beyond the room, a machine with a large viewing screen (a device that seemed to contain CREW L.A. D-VII's synthetic voice), and a rack that held poor Olaf.  The young cryo-mutant had many pieces of his skin pulled from his body, ripped by the arms which were then adorning themselves in poor Olaf's flesh.  At the center of the room was a patch of snowy ground, out of which grew a single beautiful frozen flower, slightly alit by the sun that poured into the chamber from a large gap in the structure above.

Merida was dead-set on taking her great sword to the arms, but as she bolted into the room one arm narrowly missed her body, allowing the other to close in and spray her with a powdery mist that disoriented the rugged glaive.  Anna tried to distract CREW L.A. D-VII's arms to no avail, using that god-awful musical instrument and flailing about the chamber.  Elsa had a bit more luck with a ray emitter cypher, that severely scorched a mechanical arm… but it was obvious that it would take a lot more to disable one of the claws!  With her cypher expended, Elsa started using her powers over cold and ice, but the arms were both able to dodge these, while landing a vicious blow on the nano.  Luckily Anna was nearby with a rejuvenating cypher to heal her sister.  While the sibling princesses were having some luck dealing with the arms, Merida was having a terrible time.  She was unable to land a sword blow, and was still woozy from the debilitating gas.  She pulled her reality spike from her backpack, with the plan of "spiking" one of the arms in mid-air, but she couldn't land a shot with her eyes all a blur.  But the tides were about to turn!  Just when it seemed like fate was turning against them, Elsa, bolstered by her last cypher which increased her psychic capacity, let out a huge blast of frigid gale-forced winds that completely froze and then shattered an arm and claw.  While the other mechanical arm reeled, almost as if in pain, Merida struck true with the reality spike, locking it in place.

Once the arms were dealt with, Merida quickly freed their friend Olaf.  Elsa, using her skills with Numenera dismantled CREW L.A. D-VII's processing unit, raiding it for cyphers, and then joined the rest of the troupe at the center of the room.  Olaf still wanted to take the flower at the center of the room home, but didn't know how he'd keep it cold on the long journey back to Nihliesh.  Well for Elsa this was no problem at all!

It took the party less than three days to gallop back to Nihliesh on the backs of their three snow lopers.  Although they were said to leave Captain Remy and Poppins behind in Squibbon, they were excited to help make their friend Olaf's dreams come true.  When they finally returned to the great walking city, the three princesses were surprised at their cryo-mutant friend's anxiousness.  Olaf was almost ready to greet his love Bel, and to woo her one final time before giving up and letting the Lattimor Steab carry her off into the sunset.  What Olaf needed more than anything was the proper words to say to the beautiful Bel, and this was where Anna came in.  The jack whispered just the right words in the ear of her dear friend, and a mere moments later Olaf handed the frozen flower to Bel and said "You shall be my true love, and we shall be married… for life!"  With these words Bel decided that Steab was nothing to her, and that Olaf was her true love.  So Bel and the cryo-mutant Olaf would live happily ever after…

… while the Three Princesses of Nihliesh would go on to find even greater adventure!

Quotes:

"I'll do whatever they want me to do…" - A pouting Evie's polled the other two players as a response to the obviously unfair GM Intrusion.

- "Evie's gonna roll a 20!" - Carrie
- "I bet I will!" - Evie
- *roll*
- "Twenty!" - Evie… my kids are psychic now.

"He has that axe-y thing, right?" - Mommy was very interested in how her margr opponent was equipped.

"Dalmations don't exist in Numenera… only flesh!" - Mommy's explanation to the children as to why the arms of CREW L.A. D-VII were tearing at poor Olaf.

"If this doesn't happen, people on Twitter are going to be so upset!" - Carrie put a lot of pressure on Evie's roll to put the right words in Olaf's mouth before he spoke to Bel about his love.



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