Session 3: Schnappi and the Gay Nazis

 

The Return of Hans Speidel 
(the medals read "For the War Against France" "For the War Against England")

Another week, another expedition into the world of Arkheologorodok. Spartak spent most of the week at the Party Headquarters/Nightclub of the New National Bolshevik Party of Eurasia, getting to know everyone, "learning" their esoteric principles, getting fed LSD, and dancing the night away. Dr Galidikas has spent his week writing up plans for some experimental surgery, and Aleksandr has been conducting his own investigations. 

 

Early in the day, Aleksandr gets a call from Artyom, the teenage subway employee they met at the Excavators of the Underground Earth. He's in a bit of a bind, because he needs to get to work, but his father has trapped him in the bathroom, demanding money for booze. Aleksandr wastes no time getting to the boy's apartment, and after invoking the power of the Holy Lady of Death to command the fat drunk to cease strangling the boy, he instructs both the drunk father and the junkie mother that Artyom is now under his protection. Fairly confident that the proper amount of fear has been instilled in these two, Aleksandr leaves with Artyom, who thanks him before running off to work.

The party sans Gavril re-assembles in Professor Semenov's VAZ-2109, now an essential part of the party's logistics, and head towards the Silent Homes to complete Slava's job of deploying surveillance devices. Before going in, Aleksandr asks Semenov is he can ask around the medical school about a nurse named Anya Dmitrieva while Dr Galidikas gets Spartak to sign some consent forms.

Following Slava's directions, the party make their way past a rusted maintenance door covered in graffiti and descend into a large concrete room with corridors in all four cardinal directions. Making their way west down a well dug passage way lit by bare lightbulbs, the party finally enters into the Southern Frontier. Aleksandr opens a makeshift wooden door to the west and is greeted by a bear trap closing on his leg. A less than auspicious start to the expedition. 

After making sure the room was clear of any other traps, the party opts to take the southwestern passage over the narrow northeastern one out of respect for Spartak's body type (the Esoteric Enterprises book takes into account that there are plenty of passages in the Underground not actually intended for human use, and considering Spartak is a massive ape-man, I treat all passages that qualify as a tight squeeze as impassable for him). 

Opting to let Spartak take the lead, Aleksandr conjures up his Unseen Servant to take up his lantern and lead it around the corner of the curving corridor. Twas a good thing to because it alerted them to the cave bear before they entered the room. Aleksandr invokes the name of Santa Muerte as he successfully castes Shield onto Spartak, raising his AC to 17. This would make him nigh invincible, but for some reason the monsters in my games have a penchant for rolling nat 20s. Thankfully that was for only one of the bear's claws and it rolled a paltry 1 for damage. 

It was now that we were really able to witness the combat monster that Spartak is as he kills a fucking bear in two hits with his mosin-nagant gun club. (I've opted to use Throne of Salt's alternate rules for the Spook class which allow for up to four starting powers for a Spook, which is less unbalanced than it sounds. With the monstrous trait Unnatural Strength plus his already good roll for his Strength stat, Spartak gets +3 damage to his melee attacks. Since his club does d10, he actually has the potential to do more damage than a shotgun [d12 damage]and boy does it fucking show.)  

After bashing the bear's head until it's nothing more than a fine pulp in front of a speechless party, Spartak takes half it's jaw to use as a knife and Dr Galidikas recovers its pancreas for resale in the international traditional Chinese medicine market.

Making their way past the bear corpse, the party then entered a large, earthen room whose only notable feature was a massive human spine sticking out of the floor and stretching the entire North/South length of the room. Professor Semenov and Dr Galidikas were immediately fascinated, and were able to confirm on closer inspection that not only was this indeed a human spine, but that it was still attached to buried skeletal structure. Making note of this, the players then loot a dead end brick chamber to the southwest before moving on to the northeast. 

"Introduction" by Boris Kustodiev, Vampire Magazine, 1905

After sloshing though a half flooded tunnel, the party emerges into a filthy room with a floor covered in newspaper and detritus with a stereotypical wooden chest in the corner. Being savvy, Aleksandr decides to summon his Unseen Servant to inspect the chest, which immediately causes it to sprout arms and legs and go on the attack. After trying to grapple the ape-man, Spartak crushes the thing's torso with a single blow. After Dr Galidikas quickly hacks off the mimic's spindly limbs, the group ventures to the west into the sewers, Aleksandr's lamp floating ahead of them.

Much like how the entrance into the first chamber of the Underground Frontier was a less than auspicious start, the entrance into the Sewer could in fact be described as a cluster fuck. Seeing an albino alligator in the shallow water of the chamber, Spartak quickly finds a pair of gator jaws grappling his legs and his grit and flesh both reduced to zero. The doctor and the professor prove to be terrible shots, but Aleksandr is able to coax the gator into releasing Spartak's leg by offering some tasty mimic limbs for effortless eating. Professor Semenov then finally manages to shoot something with the AKM recovered from the Silo, forcing Schnappi to flee north through a crawlspace. The party was safe, for the moment, but alligators have long memories. 

Krokodil Magazine, Issue 1, 1922

After quickly leaving the scene of the fight of their lives, the party quickly crosses a room filled with glittering spores and covered in white mycelium, once again reminding the players that the gas mask is literally an essential item and that every member should buy one already. They then take a moment to rest in a junction area to recover grit and for Dr Galidikas to heal Spartak's wounds. Mercifully, nothing emerges from the dark to interrupt this brief respite. (I really do enjoy the wandering monster system, it adds some great tension and an element of surprise without making for over-populated dungeons.)

With their wounds healed, the party decides to investigate what is behind door # 1 (actually the door is labeled "Maintenance" but seeing as it's the only door they've seen in the sewer, it is still technically door #1) and find the corpses of two city utility workers. Inspecting their bodies, Dr Galidikas discovers the two men seemed to have suffocated by some sort of fluid that filled their lungs and leaked out their mouths. Before he can investigate further, the dead begin to rise. Galidikas swiftly flees screaming the others should do the same, memories of Schanppi vivid in his mind, but because unlike him the rest of the party aren't cowards, they engage, with Aleksandr and Spartak making short work of the shambling corpses. 

It is at this point the party decide to deploy the first of Slava's surveillance devices in the junction area. They have one more to deploy in this area, somewhere towards the north, near the Gay Nazis's gang stronghold. Making their way north, they come upon a partially filled cistern, with passages to the North and West leading from the flooded area. Deciding to plant the device at the sewer's northern most extremity, the party enters the water. It's not long before Professor Semenov feels a tentacle try and grab his leg. The party is once again in combat, this time with a territorial sewer octopus. The gang flays about ineffectually in the water while the octopus, with its eight slap attacks, manages to accomplish very little other than terrifying the players. Deciding enough is enough, Spartak grabs two of its tentacles, spins around, and shot-puts the octopus out of the water. Having not anticipated this turn of events, the octopus elects to fuck off and retreats south.

Do Not Dive in Unfamiliar Waters 
1987

With the octopus driven off, the party advances north, necessitating Semenov casting Shrink on Spartak so they can pass through the narrow tunnel (it really was great luck that I rolled a minor grimoire on their first loot table, and even greater luck that one of the three spells I rolled was Shrink). The players immediately realized their mistake when I wordlessly changed the music and then had that realization confirmed when flood lights flashed on and a loud cry of "HALT' was heard. They went too damn far and now they were at the gates of the Gay Reich.

The Gay Nazis, while not friendly, were not immediately hostile. The same could not be said for the Stalinist Ape-man, however, and combat quickly ensued. While neither cluster fuck like Schnappi or a crushing success like the bear, the party manage to dispatch the zwei Soldaten and flee back to the sewer before reinforcements could arrive.

Arriving back to the cistern, the party places the second surveillance devices while Spartak realizes that the western passage leads to a secure entrance to the Neo-Nazbols nightclub, who, contrary to one would expect, do not like the Gay Nazis. But then again, no one likes the Gay Nazis. The party then quickly makes their way south to the Landfill pit, of which they're in no mood to explore, and so hide the third device in the entrance room before quickly making their way back, planting the fourth device in the underground frontier on the way out. 

After a quick change of clothes and washing some of the stink of the sewer off them in a small public restroom, the party make their way in Semeov's VAZ to the Hanger to collect their payment of $1000 from Slava, as well as to sell some of their loot at Ahmed's Wholesale. 

They find Slava at Mayami Import's club, located inside a massive Tu-95. There they are pointed towards Slava's suite and receive a brief-case full of their money, but before they can leave, someone throws a grenade into the room. They dive for cover as it explodes into a room filling cloud of cocaine. Slava laughs, saying it's one of the gang's favorite party tricks, as the two main commodities they smuggle are cocaine and explosives. Everyone except Dr Galidikas fails their save vs poisons rolls and feel the full effects of a lot of coke. 

Aleksandr is particularly impressed with the quality of Mayami Import's product, considering they're on the Steppe and this stuff matches if not exceeds what he could get when he was in Mexico. He asks Slava how they're able to get so much of such quality, but Slava laughs and says "trade secret." 

Professor Semonov, wide eyed and beard turned white from cocaine, bids the party adieu and immediately drives to work (it is roughly midnight at the point) and starts writing for 36 hours, as he now plans to get the university to sign off on the excavation of the massive skeleton they discovered. 

Spartak, taking a real like to this new, not sweet sugar, decides he must share it with his friends over at Party Headquarters before the buses stop running. On his way topside, the arms dealing Texan Tankie, Comrade Cowboy (his real name is Antoine) waves him over, saying he's worked on the perfect gun for Spartak, and after trading in a bloody makarov pistol lifted off a dead Gay Nazi, Spartak becomes the proud owner of an Obrez sawn-off rifle with the the trigger guard removed.

Final Thoughts:

I'm really having a lot of fun with this campaign, even if the system is kinda wonky. This was by far the most combat intensive session yet, and yet the first one in which no one got a broken arm. Mellon's house rules about XP have really sped up advancement, but not in not in a way that feels too fast. I'm also very excited about his hustles and crew rules. They're now in play, because Dr Galidikas has reached level 3, and he's conceived of the darkest of hustles. 

I've been worrying that I've not been providing Professor Semenov with enough hooks, especially considering how detailed his character's specific interest and goals are, so I'm very thankful he took interest in the giant spine. I'm very excited about the fact that they're actually now claiming territory in the Underground, which is going to provide me with a lot of material. To think, all this came from one of the room results from the procedural generation mechanics in the book. I've really come to appreciate just what a great resource tables like that are when it comes to these things. 

I definitely understand the general consensus about the Mystic class being the inferior class to the Occultist, but I have to say that the classes weaknesses are really mollified but Mellon's homerules for chargen and if the character rolled a good charisma score. A 5 in 6 chance to caste plus the fact you can caste as often as you want makes the class not just viable, but a decent alternative to the Occultist. 

One of the home-rules we started developing this session also relates to spells. It's still in a bit nebulous state, but we've decided for certain uses of certain spells, namely using an unseen servant to hold a lamp, to instead use rooms explored instead of turns as a measure for its duration. Still working out the actual details and implications for this.