Purple Runner: Directors Cut (Part 5)

Things got accelerated big time last night in our adventures in the Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence. Like, to the point that it turned the session into the second last session of the campaign as I can't realistically stretch out what's left over two more sessions. 

We left last week with the gang taking over the Sons of Satan (or trying to). Karys turned into a velociraptor and let Ivy ride her into the "Busted Throttle" club house after Lyrica cleared the fighting that was going on in there with a swarm of locusts. After a less than impressive display of strength (Karys nibbled one of the Sons while Ivy shot the ceiling trying to dual wield two plasma rifles), Lost managed to persuade the Sons to have a meeting to discuss how he should be the new leader.

It was reasoned that as Lost had Black Willy's cock he should now be the new boss but the Sons begun to grow restless at this idea so Karys defaulted to casting Summon. This time a large pink balloon with beautiful crystalline claws and a thick rubbery shell came into creation with an auto-hitting psionic attack that also cast Polymorph Other on hit, as well as a few spells at hand. Karys also failed the control roll (again).

Some tactical withdrawals later followed by the boarding of doors and windows saw the gang outside safely, leaving the monster inside to kill off the Sons and something else it transpired when they heard a monstrous roar from further in the clubhouse.

They decided to retire to the bar for now till they worked out their next step and this is where things got a bit screwy. Karys drifted off to sleep and had a dream where she appeared to be in someone else's body, reviewing the characters on numerous screens. There were several people in black asking her what her orders were so Karys responded, "Hit the red button!" before then panicking about what she had done.

As she slipped back into the "real world", a random night encounter roll caused the players to find themselves in an alternate realm where strange men in red hooded robes arrived to sacrifice the players to the Crimson Emperor. After some bickering, Karys turned Ivy into a bow and arrow which caused a dimensional rip and led to them now finding themselves on a derelict spaceship heading towards Earth.

Karys tried polymorphing Ivy again to see if she could tear another hole in reality, this time turning her into a bra (and wearing her). This failed to create a rip in reality, but the nature of her chaotic magic caused the spell to be extra potent.

Lost pipped up that he was sure everything would be ok which resulted in him finding a handy teleporter device. Earlier in proceedings they had come across a pyramid so they decided that they'd try and teleport inside there. They tried first with Karys (still wearing Ivy); it worked but then Lost tried to bring her back at which point Karys failed the Save Vs Death roll so Ivy was brought back in her human form but covered in Karys's blood and guts.

As the seriousness of this sunk in, they decided it made more sense to teleport to the button and reset time again. They sent Randall ahead who also failed his roll, resulting in Randall being spread over the landscape. The rest of the party followed though and thankfully survived the roll so they reset time once more (bringing back Randall and Karys) and immediately made their way back to the button - they had a plan this time.

They reasoned that the current Tenants who were running the islands should be spoken to but they had to find a way of getting an audience with them - good idea. They tried this by tampering with button to break the simulator - maybe not so good.

After some fiddling, Lost hit the button once more but this time when they woke up they realised that there were a few subtle differences and one major difference - there was no one else around. No life forms, no Putrescence, nothing. They tried retracing their steps back to the shattered dome and found nothing still. Just when they felt most lost, Amazing Larry showed up and explained that they had successfully broken the loop, the simulation hung before it could load anything else up. No time was passing, nothing was happening.

This was the point that I knew we were accelerating to an end-game; the players had decided they wanted to meet the Tenants and really fuck things up. Reality was up for grabs and the players were going for it. Larry showed them how to get underneath the islands to the control rooms and after some tampering they popped the Tenants into their current reality.

The Tenants were less than happy to see the characters, explaining how they had been screwing up their plans. Apparently the Tenants' home world was hurtling towards disaster and they had sacrificed an entire nation's first born to the Dark Gods in order to use the Islands. The Islands essentially made a great Chaos simulator and by introducing the elements that were ravaging their own planet they hoped to be able to come up with a solution. The problem however was that the players had been resetting the simulation every few days, despite the tenants attempts to assassinate them.

An idea was formed though. It took a few days but using Ultra Net they managed to recreate a smaller version of what simulated the islands - this meant the Tenants could return to their home world and hopefully turn their whole reality into something that could be reset before disaster struck till they could figure out a solution. It was ropey as hell but I let it slide.

This left the players alone once more while they decided what their next step was. The tenants had mentioned the Dark Gods were the ones really in charge and Amazing Larry explained he could set up a portal for them using the magical stones around the islands. They were tooled up, they had a mission, and it seemed like fun.

Next week, the series finale, the characters will face the Dark Gods.

(Picture of Karys with her floating eyes courtesy of +Kathryn Jenkins!)