7 session play report of the UVG campaign

I’ve been very lazy with my current Ultraviolet Grasslands campaign, which means I haven’t really been keeping very good notes. We’ve been playing a pilgrimage-esque game where the party is heading to the Black City, most with the hope of getting some dream fulfilled. Originally this was meant to be five sessions; it’ll probably be done in around eleven or twelve, god willing. We’ve been using Macchiato Monsters as I’ve been wanting to test it out, and whenever I write my campaign reflections I’ll talk about my thoughts on it.

ERC-MRE: A Vome on a mission to finally die.
BR3T: A robot in the shape of a bird, particularly one of those water drinkers that bob up and down, who is trying to find its creator.
Sally Goodman: A Dhampir lawyer who failed out of law school.
Moz: A mouse who does magic and collects guns and other odd things.
Nine: A sorcerer of some sort who turns people blue and rips souls out of their bodies. Didn’t join until the second session and wasn’t named until the fourth, as this player’s first character was quickly discarded.
Greg: A golem sent from the future to kill the Grand Observer before he fizzles out of time. His original purpose was to care for children. This character doesn’t show up until about session four, as that’s when the player joined.

The party starts by getting a loan and supplies for their first caravan from a Porcelain Prince named Hard Liquor 5-Body. They give up different things as collateral, and Sally does not have to take a full loan due to having an inheritance partly made up of counterfeit dollars. Moz meets a strange man who seems to know him. The man gives him the location of another piece of his treasure map (he started with one via the item tables we rolled on in character creation). ERC-MRE has a bounty for a criminal named Celeste, accused of the most heinous crime in the Grasslands: murdering her entire caravan. After some schmoozing around, buying trade supplies, and learning about their first discovery, the Last Chair Salon, they set out on the road towards the Steppe of the Lime Nomads.

On the way, they visit the Last Chair Salon and find it in the midst of being destroyed by giant rotting tentacles. Meeting the proprietress, Marsa, they agree to deal with the situation, which they learn has been caused by a squid cult that rents the basement occasionally for meetings.

The battle is short, with Moz using his spell Duct Tape to hold down a few of the tentacles long enough to get into the basement. They see the creature’s eye and a bunch of dead or dying cultists. They save one, who tells them that the creature, their god, can be banished by destroying the scroll beneath it. After a combination of fighting and puking acid on the scroll (somehow both ERC-MRE and BR3T have the ability to puke acid—ERC-MRE through a spell), they defeat the creature. Marsa makes good on her promises and gives them Violet City Coffee and some drugs to sell or use for quick healing.

On the road, they meet a pair of Limey Nomad scouts, which I actually rolled last session before I read the area’s description. They wound up talking like sailors and being green. After the party shows them some of the goods, mostly the coffee, the scouts give them directions to the city of the nomads. Along the way, they come across a piss-yellow pool of water, which seems to be extremely deep. ERC-MRE sees something that he believes can only be treasure all the way at the bottom with his ultraviolet vision. Sally and BR3T go down on duct-tape rope magically produced by Moz, since they both can breathe underwater. Turns out that ERC was right, and they get a plethora of interesting treasure—the most notable being a cybernetic sword arm, which ERC soon integrates into himself.

Then they notice something big, yet unseen by either group. Importantly, it also seems to be deadly. After a struggle to reach the surface in good time and a well-timed discombobulation ability from BR3T, the divers reach the surface unharmed. They then meet some of the nomads who worship the pool. Understandably, the nomads freak out that long-sacrificed treasures have been disturbed and taken out. To make amends, Nine throws a treasure of his god—a skull of the Blue God—into the spring as an offering.

The caravan finally makes it into the city. They take a week to search for their bounty, Celeste, and do some trading, which nets them a healthy sum. After locating Celeste at an abandoned house on the edge of the city, they decide that it’s time to go after her.

The area is quiet and nobody answers the door. The party breaks it down and is promptly attacked by an invisible thing. Nine turns it blue to make it visible, and they realize it is some sort of dog-demon. They battle the now blue demon until it flees and then enter the house. A laser flies past their heads as their quarry threatens them. After magic and a broken wall courtesy of BR3T, they subdue Celeste. She seems to have gone mad, until a soul escapes her body—visible only to Nine. After hearing Celeste’s story, they believe that the real culprit behind her dead caravan fellows was an Ultra, a body-hopping spirit whose existence is unconfirmed. Making a deal with Celeste, they fake turning her bounty in to the local Violet City Outpost by using Moz’s new clone spell to make a fake version of her that lasts only a few hours and turning her blue, letting her escape from the city. The bargain was simple: Celeste would create invisible demons to replace their donkeys as beasts of burden (making travel quicker), and in exchange they would protect her and take her to the Black City.

The caravan travels to the Porcelain Citadel, home of the Porcelain Princes. Before reaching it, they meet Greg the Golem, walking among a herd of giant dust rats. After recruiting him and arriving at the Citadel, they take a week to trade and buy supplies. They get the opportunity to clear Celeste’s name by letting the Porcelain Princes run some experiments on her, seeing as how the Princes and the Ultras use related techniques to live forever. During that week, another group of bounty hunters led by an infamous mercenary named Sentenna arrives, looking for Celeste and the rest of the party. Though the party quickly outs themselves, they learn that Sentenna is preparing to ambush them when they leave, because the defense golems that surround the Citadel destroy any who commit violence within Citadel limits. A tense week goes by, and the Princes find enough evidence to prove Celeste’s innocence.

Now free, the caravan heads south and comes across another bounty they picked up back in the Nomad City. In a cave littered with the remains of another group of bounty hunters, Kujo the Dogman hides. He has the robotic head of a dog and the body of a Greek god, as well as a giant gun. After speaking with Kujo, they realize that he was infected by Vome data and did not intentionally commit the crime for which he was charged: parricide. They leave, though Kujo promises to find them again for more “playtime.”

The caravan heads to the Last Serai, which they know is a great place to sell the rest of their drugs. Quickly moving on toward the Death-Facing Passage, they come across the Final Embassy, run by the Last Satraps. BR3T sneakily discovers that the Satraps maintain their immortality by “saving” copies of their bodies, which can be used to rehouse their souls. They leave, not wanting to pay the fee needed to join the Satrap cult. In the Death-Facing Passage, they avoid looking at the face of the tower to which they must walk. The caravan is ambushed by a giant faceless electric snake, which they dispatch in gruesome fashion, dropping boulders on it and rotting it from the inside.

Arriving at the tower, Moz uses a clone of himself to see just how dangerous it is. The clone dies instantly. Out of food supplies, they head toward an Exposed Pueblo City, finding only piles of salt, flickering ghosts, and cool sunglasses. Moz finds the other piece of the map he needs, which points him to the South-Facing Passage.

The caravan heads to the Grass Colossus, coming across a quarterling merchant who sells them some interesting trinkets before arriving at the settlement. After buying food from the local yokels, they are invited to a dinner and to stay for a celebration at which the giant Grass Colossus in the city will dance. The party quickly catches on that this setup is a little suspicious and doesn’t eat the food provided—except for Nine, who falls asleep. He and Sally (whose player was absent, so we decided she was suffering from sun sickness) get kidnapped. The rest of the party finds them at the celebration, before an altar and tied together with other outsiders, all destined for sacrifice.

Springing into action, the party disrupts the ceremony (after a few sacrifices that cause the Colossus to start swaying). Moz duct-tapes its mouth, preventing it from drinking more sacrificial magic. BR3T uses its new Wind-Up ability to give ERC-MRE more power, with which he uses a motorcycle he already integrated to speed toward the Colossus and begin climbing it. In the chaos, Nine and Sally escape using Nine’s rot ability, rotting the ropes and preparing for battle.

The battle is quite quick, with Sally and Greg dispatching many guardsmen while Nine and Moz use magic to deal with the shamans in charge of the ritual. Moz kills his shaman target by growing the organisms within the shaman’s lungs after she uses the spell Absorb Purple Haze, which causes strange bird-like creatures to burst from her chest. BR3T sets the Colossus on fire, which causes it to fall toward a house where the locals’ children were being kept safe. Greg springs into action, using his programming to help the children escape, quickly assisted by Moz, who uses his duct-tape ability to suspend the Colossus for a few seconds. Sally attempts to befriend the bird-like creatures, which they now learn to be Moon Birds. They are not friendly and devour her body out of existence. Nine manages to grab Sally’s soul just in time to bottle it.

The caravan travels to the Alpine Meadows, a town in the South-Facing Passage, to find a body for Sally, and all but Moz test out different strategies. The winning idea is BR3T’s, who posts flyers asking for people who no longer want to use their bodies. A woman comes along who uses the opportunity as a way of committing suicide, and Nine places Sally’s soul into this new body. It’s not a perfect match, and the body will hold for a limited amount of time, after which Sally will inevitably become an Ultra. She figures that she might be able to wish for her old body back at the Black City.

The caravan finally goes looking for the treasure on Moz’s map. It leads to a nondescript black box, about room-sized. Opening it, they free the same man who Moz met back in Violet City, though the man has never met him before. He reveals himself to be an immortal traveling backward in time from the end of the universe. After some chatting, he gives the party a floppy disk with the spell Reverse Time, which can only be used once and will make the caster also travel backward in time like the time traveler. He also takes the map parts from Moz to make sure past Moz finds them in the same way.

The caravan begins traveling to the Serpent’s Stone. They come across a group of Great Folk on bone-work steeds. After a tense standoff and accidentally revealing that Celeste can make invisible demons, they head their separate ways—except the Great Folk come back and attack at night. The caravan narrowly gets away as Nine uses the soul of the shaman he defeated last session to cast the spell Grow Grass, which traps the Great Folk enough to let the caravan escape.

Entering the area called the Serpent Stone Marker, the caravan comes across a giant mass of grass that slowly approaches them, devouring entire herds of creatures along the way. Though it is slower than them, Nine uses all of his strength to take this creature’s soul as well, though his bottle seems to be an unstable holding place for it. They see a giant boulder in the distance and head toward it, hoping to find a place to buy supplies. Along the way, ERC-MRE steps on a rainbow serpent that bites him and shows him the chaos of the future; he sees a heroic death. After sleeping next to a strange marker that gives them various dreams (all of which have strange effects), they arrive at the boulder, which they discover to be a living Lophotroche that houses a polybody rebel cult who have escaped from the Porcelain Princes and now act as a semi-hivemind. They trade food and find out that the grass creature whose soul they captured is actually a minor god, which the cult will not buy for obvious reasons. Instead, they offer the party a corpse of one of their own (for a heavy fee), which might hold the soul better than the bottle, at least for a time. Nine succeeds in the soul transfer, and the body moves on. BR3T begins praying to the Grass God, who seems to take a liking to it.

On the way to the Moon-Facing Ford, the caravan is swept away by a flash flood (the misfortunes table is brutal). Though they survive, they lose a bunch of days and wash up in a newly formed lake. At the lake, they fight off two crocotters—a strange combination of a crocodile and an otter. BR3T seems to have convinced the Grass God that it is a follower and starts to grow grass on its body.