The Night Comes Home (Threads of Fate, Session VI Recap)

This was a strange short Session, I almost cancelled since I only had 2 of my regular players but decided to try anyways. I'm glad I did. Here's the blurb I posted on the event page:

Business is good at the Pink Pearl, the whores are well fed, the Johns happy, and the owner's purses are stuffed. Life is good. What could go wrong?

The Cast

Aki Ashina, Fighter 2:

A young woman hailing from the far eastern lands of Japan. Wears a eyepatch, speaks kinda fluent english and is looking for something or someone...

Axel Hubble. Fighter 1:
A man on a search to find his long lost sister Mildred Hubble...

The Night Comes Home...

• About a month has passed since Vespero was killed. The decapitated vampire spawn was staked for good measure and buried in a shallow grave. Later on the grave was found empty when checked...
• The Pink Pearl has flowered into a profit and life for our intrepid adventurers become routine and easy. This should be the end of the campaign right? Ha, were it so easy.
• Two weeks ago the owners received a package at their doorstep one morning. Richards, a cautious man took the package and burned it before opening. (Ref Notes: What could it have been?)
• Otto was furious his employer Vespero was murdered and took a one time 10% of the total profits and left the party to retire in his homeland. (Ref Notes: Also my games are apparently too sacreligious so there's that.) The party is surprisingly fine with this considering they killed Vespero for even susesting 10%.
• On this night Richards is out on business advertising. 
• On this night McCleary is out on opium business.
• On this night Mildred Hubble's brother Axel finally finds the last place his sister was seen, the Pink Pearl. Hubble was expecting a intriguing mystery to find out what happened to her but instead Madam Aki tells him his sister was killed by a man who is now also dead. Mystery solved. Not knowing what do now next he decides to work at the Pink Pearl.
• On this night the guards tell Aki someone, strange is coming up the road. 
• Aki and Hubble look out on the porch and see a strange sight. A person, tall enough to loom over the 6 foot wall around the brothel, dressed in flowing black robe with a large circular black hat approaching the Brothel.
• It arrives near the front and is stopped by the very spooked guards.
• It stands almost 7 1/2 feet and wears the face of an older woman with milky white eyes with a pulled back grin much like the Hellraiser Cenobites.
• "Hello, I am The Night and I come here in search of my colleague Vespero." she says with the voice of a woman.
• Aki plays dumb and says that Vespero left sometime ago. "I see" she says. She then pulls a map and shows it to Aki. The map has a strange line that slithers like a snake going from London to Nonsbeck. "I know Vespero is here, may I come in?" Aki hesitates but relents. The Night shrinks to about 5 1/2 feet and enters the premise.
• The madam puts her new guest upstairs in one of the rooms and offers her "company" The Night declines and instead asks for sugar water.
• Afterwards, Aki takes Hubble into the doctor's office and explains the situation. She also realizes that Vespero is indeed still here at the brothel when she looks at the ground and sees his ashes scattered all over the floor. She and Hubble frantically scoop Vespero into a cheap vase and plan to escape into the nearby woods to throw his ashes into a stream. "That should get rid of her" Hubble says.
• Aki & Hubble sneak away on horseback and ride into the night...
• While riding they see a black shadow besides them. Nobody looks up.
• They get to the stream and just when they're about to throw Vespero in it, they're stopped by their stalker, the Night.
• "Tell me what happened, the truth and you may live." she says very villany.
• They tell their story and the Night tells them that she now holds all of Vespero's contracts including theirs. However unlike Vespero she does not care money and instead craves knowledge and new experiences. Instead of their brothel profit, they must complete the tasks she asks. (Ref Notes: Yes I gave them a quest-giver but to be fair they did want to go on adventurers again...) Aki & Hubble contemplate killing dis ol bitty too but eventually decide not to, how bad could her tasks be?
• They sign their names on a new contract and The Night flies off into the dark skies above.

And that was it for this Session. What devious quest will The Night send the group on and how will the rest of the party react to the news? Find out next time and thanks for reading!

Read Session VII & VIII here!

Growing Pains (Threads of Fate, Session V Recap)

Session V of my ongoing Lamentations of the Flame Princess Campaign. Start with Session I here.

The party's newly christened Pink Pearl is finally open for business. I was worried about how I was gonna fill out this Session with material but luckily improvising is one of my stronger skills and I think everyone had some laughs. Alright with that said, Brothel Simulator is officially starting...now.

The Cast

Aki Ashina, Fighter 1:

A young woman hailing from the far eastern lands of Japan. Wears a eyepatch, speaks broken english and is looking for something or someone...

Cillian McCleary, Specialist 1:

Irishman in a hostile land.

Mildred Hubble, Magic-User 1: 

A horny 12 year old girl from a very secretive school for young spellcasters.

Richard Islands, Fighter 1:
Ex-soldier, now poor mercenary. Looking for work.

Downtime Activities

A month passes before opening night and the party finishes work on their brothel called the Pink Pearl. During this month they completed the following tasks:

1. Built a small wall around the brothel.
2. Furnished the Brothel.
3. Hired two guards
4. Spent some coin on advertising.
5. Built a opium den.
6. Made some deals with the local farmers for deals on food.

The night before the brothel opens the party receives a letter from their business partner Vespero saying he'll arrive on opening night with a rich potential client. The party is skeptical of this.

Opening Night

• Aki claims the title of Madam of the Pink Pearl and prepares the working girls for opening night.
• The guards posted at the gate tells the party their first guest is coming up the road in a beautiful black carriage pulled by two pales horses. Ominous enough?
• OH YEAH, Otto's player didn't join us this game so we had his character out of town running business errands. 
• The carriage pulls up to the Pink Pearl the horses neigh and whine before coming to a stop. The driver dressed in expensive clothes for the time tips his hat and drops down from the drivers's seat and opens the carriage door for his passenger.
• Out steps a beautiful woman dressed in a large white flowing dress of obvious Eastern European descent with strawberry blonde hair. She smiles at Aki who steps out from the porch to greet her. They exchange pleasantries and step inside. The woman never says her name and the party doesn't ask for some reason...
• They sit their guest in the parlor and bring her cheap wine Richards & Hubble managed to cobble together at the last minute. The women are brought out before the client. 
• The Noble woman chooses the best looking one and they are escorted to a room upstairs.
• Meanwhile, 3 men are pulled from some bushes by the guards and brought to Aki, they say they heard there was an opium den here and wanted to partake. McCleary who is in charge of the den is introduced to the men and he takes them upstairs. Much opium is consumed.
• The party discuses their new client and start to ask some questions, such as payment, which wasn't given...
• A while passes and they go up to the room to check in. They knock, no response. They knock, again and the client replies with a low "Yes?" We just wanted to make sure everything was alright..."  Aki asks, "oh yes, everything is fine. I was just about to head out." the client says.
• A minute passes and Aki opens the door to find the client just finishing to get dressed and the prostitute on the bed, pale and breathing slowly. The woman passes Aki who goes to the girls side to check her. Hubble and Richards stop the highborn woman at the door. "Oh you want your pay of course" she says. "I'll have my man servant bring it form my carriage." Aki sees the prostitute is slow to respond to stimulus and asks the client what she did. "Oh, how embarrassing, shes just exhausted is all." She begins to leave and the party watches her seem to almost glide down the stairs, though that must be a illusion from her flowing dress...
• Richard meets the manservant outside who has pulled a small chest from the carriage. He opens it and finds a wealth of silver coins. He counts it out and finds it to be 500sp. The manservant helps his mistress back into the carriage but not before she thanks Richards for her time here. The manservant slides into the driver's seat of the carriage and stirs the horses to move with a loud "Yah-Yah" and down the road they go, into the dark of night.
• The party seems confused for a moment before Aki reamerges with the girl in her arms. "She needs to see the Doctor" she says.
• They bring the girl to Girnnot and place her on the table in the center of the room. The doctor demands privacy for his examination. 
• Meanwhile the guards inform the owners that more guests have arrived. A standard white carriage pulls up with Vespero in the driver's seat, the party greets him and tell him that they just met his rich client and were paid quite well. Vespero tilts his head in a mockery of confusion and says "Interesting but I drove the client out here myself tonight, I'm afraid I don't know who you dealt with." (Ref Notes: lol)
• Vespero introduces a Fat Noble man whose name I have since forgotten. Its not that important anyway, he just buys one of the girl's time and offers to buy Aki's as well for a shitload of coin. Aki refuses. 
• Meanwhile McCleary and the three men are dancing in clouds of opium.
• Girnnot takes Aki into the doctor's quarters and recants that the girl has lost a lot of blood and will not survive the night and proceeds to shows two small puncture wounds on the girl's inner thigh. 
• Vespero sits in the parlor with Richards and Hubble to discuss future business. (Ref Notes: Let me remind you that Otto made the deal with Vespero for 15% of all profits in exchange for Vespero brining clients, which he has. The party is not happy with this deal.) Richards offers to buyout Vespero's stake, which he refuses. Richards then offers to sell Vespero a vampire. Vespero says he's not interested but would like to see it.
• Richards, Aki, Hubble and Vespero pile into the doctor's quarters to "examine the vampire" the real reason being the party wants to kill Vespero. Vespero examines the girl and again says he isn't interested. Hubble attempts to sneak behind Vespero in a small room and fails her stealth check. Vespero sees this pulls a  pistol from under his sleeve and shoots Hubble point blank, killing her. Initiative is rolled, the party wins and swiftly snuffs out the antiquarian. (Ref notes: *sighs*)
• Vespero's body bursts into greenish flames and begins to spread. Suddenly the girl on the table convulses then floats two feet into the air, wakes with a sickening grin and laugh then lunges at Aki. Initiative is rolled again and after two rounds the vampire spawn lays decapitated.The two swiftly try and put the fire out and barely manage to contain it before it spreads.
• The Noble comes down satisfied and asks where Vespero has gone, the party tells him that he had sudden important business to attend to and that the Pink Pearl will have his nobleness driven back to London. After a reaction roll check, he agrees.
• McCleary comes to after his drug laden dream and robs the three men and has them thrown out on to the road.

And that was pretty much it for this Session. Thanks for reading, let me know what you think in the comments. Also R.I.P Mildred Hubble, she who never cast a spell despite being a M-U.

Read Session VI here!

The Bawdy House of Nonsbeck (Threads of Fate, Session IV & 4.5 Recap)

Session IV of my ongoing Lamentations of the Flame Princess Campaign. Start with Session I here. The party is dead set on starting up this brothel. They bought some prostitutes in London and now journey back to Nonsbeck to start up their new business. Yes I'm super behind on these recaps, life(laziness) happens.

The Cast

Aki Ashina, Fighter 1:

A young woman hailing from the far eastern lands of Japan. Wears a eyepatch, speaks broken english and is looking for something or someone...

Otto Kuchin, Fighter 1:

Nobleman's son, turned sellsword, turned monster hunter. From Prussia.

Mildred Hubble, Magic-User 1: 

A horny 12 year old girl from a very secretive school for young spellcasters.

Richard Islands, Fighter 1:
Ex-soldier, now poor mercenary. Looking for work.

On the Road Again...

The Party buys a wagon & two horses and make their way back to Nonsbeck with the *sighs* merchandise. It’ll take 3 days from London. A suggestion is made by one of the more rational characters to hire some more experienced prostitutes before they leave but decide the girls are, “good enough”.

On the second night some of the younger children attempt to flee into some nearby woods but are subsequently caught and tied up. (Ref Notes: These retainers have low as shit loyalty scores, I hope the party isn't betrayed...)

The night before arriving in Nonsbeck the party is ambushed by the "possessed" girl they saved from the basement of other Nonsbeck's nunery. She has two bandit looking men with her and she yells "That's them misters, they have lots of treasure!" then runs off down the road. A quick combat encounter ensures and thanks to some good cover choices the bandits are quickly dispatched without damage taken. The party agrees to kill the girl should they see her again.

Work, Work, Work...

As they come up the road they hear the familiar sound of hammer against metal coming from the local blacksmith. The following is a quick recounting of what they did, this session was mostly brothel prepping so meh to me trying to narrate it.

• The party splits up with one half taking the girls to the brothel & the others to dawdle in town.
• They go to the church to see if they can hire a cleric to heal the prostitutes of any future diseases from work.
• Some roleplay with the residents of Nonsbeck, the Blacksmith's apprentice, the innkeepers, the farmers...etc, etc. (Ref notes: I'm writing this months later so the details are hazy. Yes I'm lazy)
• They meet Deacon Girnot and he agrees to come work for them as a healer.
• Otto arrives at the brothel and begins inspecting the women. The younger kids are trained for  kitchen work and the women are inspected for diseases. They discover one of women is biologically male. Her name is Luca and Aki immediately takes her as her retainer and trains her in the way of the blade. The others are fine with this.
• Otto begins work on a wall around the brothel.
• Deacon Girnot is given a small office in the brothel and confesses that he stole a colleague's spellbook and is on the run. He's also not a cleric but Magic-User with only one minor heal spell. The party say they will protect him if he does his medical duties of cleansing the whores. He takes the offer. 
• I tell the players it'll take the players a month of work and expenses to get the brothel up and  running. 
• Aki & Luca exchange knowledge over the course of the month. Aki finally learns English & Luca learns how to fight.
• Mccleary gets in touch with some old contacts and begins work on an opium den for the brothel.

Session 4.5 was a small play-by-post I ran between Session IV & V. Richards, Hubble, and Luca plan to go to Norwich to find a musician and hire some experienced prostitutes for the newly christened brothel the Pink Pearl.

• 2 days travel to Norwich, no random encounters rolled.
• They stop at an inn called the Golden Goose to rest for the first night of travel.
• They meet Olga, a Prussian immigrant whom the party immediately gets attached to.
• Richards offers to do some work for Olga and she has him wash the dishes in the back. There's at least 3 turns worth.
• The others see a man with cloak obscuring his face sitting towards the back of the inn by candle light....
• Hubble & Luca approaches him and essentially asks him what his deal is.
• The man smiles and says he's a traveler from the far east, and calls himself the King of Games
• He offers to play a game for some coin and Luca aggress much to the dismay of Richards in the back.
• Eventually Luca loses more coin than they all have combined and the Gambler says that unfortunately he must take his leave but must be paid first. Richard finally finishes those dishes but intervenes too late.
• Seeing they don't have enough coin, the Gambler offers to settle the debt by taking Luca's name. She agrees and signs it away. Suddenly the rest of the party can't remember her name. The Gambler folds up the name, nonchalantly puts it away and takes his leave.
• Richards chastises No Name, now called Nanachi. They party thanks Olga for the meal and rooms and turns in for the night.
• The party arrives at Norwich.
• Experienced prostitutes are hired.
• A very good musician is found and hired called Beatritx de Dia.
• Satisfied the party returns to Nonsbeck, again no random encounters occur. 

I finally got to test my Gambler monster and the players finally get to work on building their brothel, THE PINK PEARL. I'm not sure how I feel about running a business simulator but that's what the players want and I'm sure there are plenty of ways to mess with them to entertain me. Thanks again for reading!

Read Session V here!

The Bad Book...

Thanks to the generosity of fellow LotFP fan Mattplaysgames(discord), I am now the proud owner of the infamous RopeCon Bad Book, a busted up copy of a Red & Pleasant Land. Since the vid has been taken down for some reason I'm not aware of(probably drama-bomb related) this copy of a R&PL was stomped on by the Raggi and sold for charity at GenCon. I just wanted to write this up for memories and thank Matt again. Also the LotFP community is the best, it's probably the only OSR place I really feel a part of. 

Also that promo condom!

Giulia Tofana, Our Lady of Poison, Saint of Widows.

"Husband problems eh, I got just the thing.."

Giulia Tofana a.k.a Tofania was a prolific poisoner who lived during the early to mid 17th century in southern Italy. It's estimated she killed 600 people with her signature poison the "Manna di San Nicola" or Mana of St.Nicholas. This "mana' was a mixture of arsenic, lead, and belladonna. The finished product was odorless, tasteless and easily slipped into the victim's drinks and meals. The poison was also undetectable in the bloodstream during post mortem investigation. Tofanna sold her poison by hiding them in various cosmetic items(make-up powder) and selling them to unhappy wives looking to become happy widows. Unsurprisingly with the way women were treated then, business was good. Eventually Tofana, her daughter Girolama Spera and her followers would be apprehended, tortured and executed for their crimes in 1659. Giulia Tofana's name would live on in infamy and her poison would become known today as Aqua Tofana, named after it's creator.

Tofana screams Lamentations NPC so I stated up her, her daughter, followers and the poison. I took some artistic liberties with their characters since other than the mass killings, not a lot is known,

Giulia Tofana, Armor 13, Move 120′, 2nd Level Specialist, 8 hp, Dagger 1d4 damage , Morale 10. Fancy clothes, case of aqua tofana(12 vials), gold pendant with onyx jewel worth 150sp, 2 silver rings worth 50sp each, 3gp. Charisma 17(+2), Intelligence 14(+1) 4-in-6 Sleight of Hand, 4-in-6 Tinkering, speaks Italian, Sicilian, & Latin.

Goals: 

Help women elevate themselves, live independently, help daughter.

Persona: 

Highly charismatic, quick witted, loves to sell her wares. Will try and bring downtrodden women into her employment.

Appearance:

  Fancy period clothes, tied light brunette hair, olive skin, emerald green eyes. Average height & build.

Secret(s):

Her daughter Girolama was adopted after Giulia killed her real mother. Giulia is sterile.

Girolama Spera, Armor 12, Move 120′, 1st level Specialist, 5 hp, Dagger 1d4 , Morale 9. Fancy clothes, vial of aqua tofana, diamond necklace worth 200sp, 1 gold ring worth 75sp, 1gp. Intelligence 16(+2), 5-in-6 Tinkering, speaks Italian, Sicilian & English.

Goals: 

Perfect the family poison, have children to pass recipe to.

Persona: 

Very intelligent and well spoken would rather focus on her work than socialise. Loves gallows humor though.

Appearance:

  Fancy period clothes, short brown hair, olive skin, earth brown eyes. Short, thicc.

Secret(s):

Knows she's adopted. Doesn't know Giulia killed her real mother though.

Tofana's Followers, Armor 12, Move 120′, 0-level Fighters, 2 hp, Pistol 1d8, Dagger 1d4 damage, Morale 9. Vial of aqua tofana, 1d10sp. Speaks Italian, Sicilian & English

Most of Tofana's Followers are young women who have been lifted out of poverty, unhappy marriages or worse. They are fiercely loyal to both Giulia and her daughter Girolama but at the end of the day are just people, and people make mistakes.

Giulia can be found traveling from town to town in southern Italy selling her "cosmetics" with 1d4+1 followers. Her daughter Girolama stays back at their apothecary in Milan with two assistants brewing the poison and selling various medicines & remedies as a front.

Aqua Tofana, 1 vial costs 25sp and contains 4 doses.

Aqua Tofana is an undetectable poison. The poison kills after 4 doses and is usually administered slowly to mask the poison as a sickness. NPCs do not get saving throws. PCs who pass their saving throws will begin fighting off the poison after 3 days of bed rest. Unless another does is given before then. 4 doses at once is lethal and character must make a Saving Throw vs Poison or die. The cause of death will be obvious.

1st dose Symptoms- Appears as a nasty cold, -1 to all dice rolls.

2nd dose Symptoms- Health decline, cold worsens. -3 to future Poison Saving throws.

3rd dose Symptoms- Bedridden, verge of death. Will fail the next poison saving throw for Aqua Tofana.

4th dose- Death

Conclusion

My sources were this & this. I wrote this up because LotFP needs more mundane stuff to amplify the weirdness. People can be monsters too and some are born from circumstance. Also one my players asked where he could buy some poison.

Kids on Spikes, some words

This is PG-13 LotFP

The whole outrage culture on the internet is getting pretty stale at this point. Some guy posted that the OSR SCENE IS DEAD because of the above art(said guy has since taken down his post for some reason). I just have to ask; If you don't like something why take the time out of your busy life to shit on it? I know it's hard but maybe just move on and make something or if your creatively bankrupt, support those that make something you DO like. There are alot of games out there and not alot of time, enjoy life and kids on spikes.

BTW I like the Kids on Spikes art, I also like Stranger Things. Satire is a thing people.

Death by Bees & Chocolate

I played in a great Blood in the Chocolate one-shot today run by the always cool Getrealroleplaying. The pics above are the character sheets for my boi Medley O'Hare(R.I.P). Medley died deliciously after drowning in a scalding chocolate river running from some bees. Good times, and yes I ate the first weird candy I came across. Gots to.

Draugr & Draculas, BUY IT!

I’m a sucker for DIY stuff, especially zines and especially zines made for LotFP, and guess what I picked up recently? Say hello to Draugr & Draculas, a one-shot zine written by Joshua LH Burnett(BernietheFlumph).

If you want the TL;DR review its good, damn good and you should go out and buy it cause everything in this zine oozes awesomeness.

The Longer, still short review.

I’m not the best at reviews, I prefer to just tell people what I like about things rather than spew a bunch of pointless negatives. SO, I wrote a list of reasons why you should buy this zine instead of a traditional review.

• As the title implies, Draugr & Draculas is vampire themed. Which means if you need a big bad vampire like Dracula this is the zine for you. Burnett even gives us different possible Dracula origin stories, very cool.
• Lore & stats for the undead Draugr as well as a playable Draugr class.
• We get stats, art and a write-up for one of the most prolific female serial killers in history, Elisabeth Bathory. Also a new spell point magic system using blood.
• Dracula’s Castle, complete with a sweet map and loaded with flavor like his three brides and Burnett’s own take on horror icons like the Invisible Man, The Wolfman and more! It's also stacked full of encounters & treasure.
• A new class called the Vampire Hunter who are very reminiscent of the Belmonts from Castlevania series.
• Vampire rules and stats of course.
• The layout is simple and clean and the text is bigger for easy reading. 
• Cool new magic items.
• Want to sell your soul to the devil for power? Draugr & Draculas has you covered.
• A brand new deadly dungeon called the Pagan’s Well. I remember reading Burnett’s recaps regarding the well earlier in the year and I can’t wait to run this one.
• The art, the written material is pretty dark so I like the lighter tone the art gives. Also I grew up watching Cartoon Network during the 90’s. Toons for life.
• It was written with LotFP in mind. As you all know I’m a Lamentations fanboy and I gobble up any homebrew stuff anyone makes. An automatic buy for me.(Also come back to us Joshua, we have milk and cookies.)

Draugr & Draculas is a hell of a fun read, pick a physical copy up before their gone!

You can pick up the PDF here.

&

The physical copy here.