Carcosa! – Session One – Charlie's RPG Musings

It’s been several months since I ran my August Carcosa sessions, and although it was a short experiment, I consider it to be a successful one. Thanks for joining me, if you were one of my players! I just wish we could’ve had more sessions. I’m in the thick of grad school now (looking down the barrel of Final Exams in about a month in fact), and it was a good choice to suspend the campaign, since it would’ve required quite a bit of now extremely scarce free time to plan ahead of the party as they cavorted through the alien landscape. I’ve even had this post sitting in the queue for months, with the idea that “I’ll finish it when I get some time,” but I think I need to face the reality that writing some Session Reports might not be a good use of my time right now! So, without further ado, I present as far as my recollections got…

Incomplete Draft of First Session Report…

At last, I brought Carcosa to the (virtual) table! It didn’t take long to learn that if you give a Sorcerer Summon, they’ll crack it out at the literal first opportunity. Case in point: an eyeball demon that dubbed itself “The Consuming Watcher” was summoned before any opposition was encountered by the party, for the purpose of (I think?) opening a recalcitrant door? But, of course, such hijinks are exactly why I opted to give the Sorcerers a “loaded Chekov’s gun”— that eyeball demon has set a price, and expects to be paid on time, otherwise…

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, the Dramatis Personae:

The Party

Lily, playing an as-yet unnamed Yellow Sorcerer
MacKenzie, playing a swashbuckling Orange Fighter
Daniel, as The Rememberer of Words, a Blue Sorcerer
Adam, as Haldorf, Jale Fighter
Ray, as the Brown Fighter Morden, the Inapproachable Speaker of Splendor, wielding two axes, resplendent in his plate armor

As per the scenario set-up, the party and their random assortment of equipment awaken in a trashed sci-fi room, surrounded by people still sealed into goo-filled stasis pods that have been scattered about. Some of these have broken open like eggs, and the party members emerged from these. In other cases, the occupants of the pods are evidently dead, or otherwise catatonic (for now). Also of note, there are two dead space aliens in this room, killed by crushing trauma as stasis pods and equipment containers tumbled around the room for some reason.

Some time was spent conducting an impromptu Alien Autopsy, to assess their internal organ structure for any potentially useful information for future encounters. Observing the nature of the doors of the room, which all seemed to be operated by use of a hand-scanner pad of sorts, several alien hands were removed from their previous owners for the purposes of operating these mechanisms. One alien was also roughly decapitated, so that its head could be poked around corners & some-such, in hopes of possibly reassuring any living former colleagues that it was a Fellow Space Alien approaching, and there was No Need to Be Alarmed. The whereabouts of this head, collected by Morden, are currently unknown.

After investigating what seemed to be an elevator shaft of some sort, and discovering upward access to be blocked by what seemed to be the underside of a lift, some consideration was given to the lower level doors. At this point, The Remember of Words, one of the party’s novice sorcerers, decided to Summon some manner of extra planer entity to solve the issue of… the doors? But, after making the proper invocations, and paying the blood price, a randomly contacted Eyeball Demon manifested in the room. It wasn’t under Words’ control… but it also, fortunately, seemed amenable to parlay. “MY PRICE IS FIFTEEN SOULS,” it declared. While Words determined that the entity required payment in the form of fifteen souls within one hour, Morden set to work decanting and dispatching one of the catatonic pod people in one of the intact cylinders. “FOURTEEN SOULS REMAIN,” intoned the Eyeball Demon, who later named itself The Consuming Watcher.

Emboldened by the presence (or perhaps motivated by terror) of the Consuming Watcher, the party decided to explore further, selecting a door somewhat adjacent to the elevator area. This room was filled with large jars of what seemed to be colored liquid. All colors of the rainbow were present, and on closer inspection, the liquid seemed somewhat viscous, with small, almost imperceptible motes and bubbles suspended in it. Morden confidently plunged his hand into a jar of brown liquid…

…and immediately felt searing pain as the caustic material started to dissolve his flesh, and cling to his arm. The jar was filled with slime (or more specifically Brown Slime)! A chaotic scene developed as the Yellow Sorcerer immediately cut herself to smear blood on her dagger in hopes of Summoning an Entity from Beyond! Haldorf attempted to scrape the slime from Morden’s arm with his pole arm, but to little success. Morden himself was yelling “Burn it off! Burn it off!” while preparing himself to chop his own arm off if necessary, but fortunately the Remember of Words had a few torches on hand, and was able to light one and hastily apply it the attacking slime. The Orange Fighter had a torch as well, and between the two of them, the slime was somewhat easily scorched away and controlled.