Our heroes, the De Facto Explorers, are on their way home from a roundabout series of adventures in the ultra-modern KIA Academy. War is in the air, and the participants are still largely unknown. The party has stopped off in Fair-Town, to rest a day or two before the last stretch of their journey back to RiverBend.
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Sneaky Pete: A mutated weasel scout. Pete's telepathy and night vision take a backseat when he whips out his electrical powers.
Sonny Helianthus: a nearly 10' tall sentient sunflower artifact examiner with trusted Restorationist ties. Knowledgeable, but not a good one with device repairs or upgrades. Just went out of his comfort zone to rescue Lathar from becoming a human sacrifice to "The Beast."
Slitheran Wurmtail (aka Squiggles): a mutated earthworm scout, in impromptu power armor, looking for trouble, and finding it often. He has been subject to genetic testing and developed super-human strength, a more human body, and a thick coat of shaggy white hair.
Lathar Bracken: A pure-strain human from River Bend. He's got the muscle, the face, and a mount for most encounters. Lathar's trusty beast of burden, No Name, travels wherever he does. No Name has recently been fitted for a artillery device of the Ancients that chucks spears further than any human. Looking for trouble in all the right places. Former jousting champion of Fair-Town. He had fallen in love with Elona, the leader of the blue-skinned Kirothians, until he was ceremoniously dumped by her once they reached Fair-Town.
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With everyone accounted for in the Ye New Leaping Happy Eagle, the Explorers slept well, and had all their members ready for the day at breakfast.
Sneaky Pete broke out his mandolin and jammed with a few locals by the hearth. His new and proper instrument was a vast improvement.
The journey to Riverbend was quiet... and quite muddy. Squiggles was in heaven. There were a few hearty souls heading to Fair-Town, but they passed no one heading upriver.
Once back in Riverbend, Sonny obtained an audience with Justinian with the Restorationists and filled him in on the breaking news in K.I.A. Academy. Justinian expressed worry, but not all-out panic. Pete tried to add all of Lathar's side-quests to the worries, but Sonny had him hold back. "There's enough on their plate with the possible invasion, don't complicate things for them."
Everyone was hungry, so the next stop was Lathar's mom's house. They walked in the front door, the lone keg of mead being used as an end table, but the lighting was different. The side window had been replaced with an elaborate stained glass window or a familiar friend:
Lathar's mom was in the kitchen, working on another piece of stained glass.
Lathar's Mom: "Lathar, you're back? You don't look good at all. Let me feed you.... I bet Sonny's mom doesn't have to complain, he's growing like a weed."
Sonny: "Mrs Lathar's Mom, I've told you before, that's a racial slur."
Lathar: "Okay, Mom, what's up with the window."
Lathar's Mom: "After Chambray, I figured the nicest thing would be to make the window for him"
Lathar: "
What happened to Chambray?"
Lathar's Mom pointed outside" "Look for yourself,"
Peering outside, the whole crew saw the peacock, wandering the backyard, with a tin-can on stuck over his head....
Lathar's Mom: "Your animal's dumb, honey."
Next was a visit to the Leaping Drunken Keg, to see Squiggles daughter, Sophie the Keg, and see if they had money for the keg of mead the explorers had sold them.
As they neared the Keg, Squiggles could see his child, Buster, physically tossed out of the building, drunk and obviously beaten up. Despite the worm's pleadings, Squiggles ignored him.
Sophie the Keg was behind the bar, polishing glasses. "Manchi, you got so oooooold...."
Sophie tried to fill Squiggles in with the whereabouts of his kids. Buster was a drunk, Soprano marched out of town in the middle of the winter, and the rest never came along to the Keg.
Squiggles warned his favorite worm of the impending war. The only solution he offered was to run away, with the offspring found unacceptable.
Moving onto the trading post, they found the shelves bare, and an ornery worm, Squiggles' son Grocer, moving crates of items they do have in stock. Grocer was quite indignant that Squiggles had returned, and Squiggles was amused that his child got tattoos.
Finding out the fates of some of his other children, Squiggles thought it right and proper to have a family dinner out at Farmer Yulius' farm.
The best news that came out of that day was that the White Hand had spent the coldest part of the winter in Riverbend, so the Explorers finally be one-hundred percent for the first time in weeks.
The Explorers separated, Pete off to work on his tree house, Lathar back to his mom's, while Sonny and Squiggles did venture out to Farmer Yulius'. Heading out to old shed they had both considered home, neither of them noticed the noises coming out of the shed. Inside were a bunch of his fat, lazy children: Speedy, Fatso, and Twitchy
"Sonny!!!!!!"
These three worms were all unemployed and still "living at home". The very British-sounding Twitchy was the most enthused for family dinner.
On Sunday, many of the townsfolk join the the Wurmtail family with their dinner. All twelve of the children remaining in town made an appearance. There was an airing of grievances, feats of strength, and even one of them brought a pole to dance around. The House of Squiggles was together once again.
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| Fatso, Speedy, Grocer, and Twitchy. |
The end of the dinner was interrupted by the appearance of the three individuals emerging out of the tree line. All three, one male, two female, looked human and seemed more confused than disheveled.
GM Notes: There's a lot going on in Gamma World right now, but one point that might be getting overlooked in the actual play is Sonny's height. Sentient plants in fourth edition height is equal to one meter per five points of CON. Plants also gain +1 CON (to the stat) per level gained, so all sentient plants grow over the the course of the campaign.
At the start of the campaign, Sonny was the tallest, gangliest of the De Facto Explorers, similar to actor Stephen Merchant. Since then, the characters have advanced considerably and now Sonny towers over even the biggest humans on the planet.
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| Sonny vs a puny human. |
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