#RPGaDay2025 - Day 18 - Sign

Day 18 of #RPGaDay and the word of the day is "Sign."

I've been a lower common denominator type of guys with year's prompts, so I go back to my current Gamma World and talk about the "Toll of the Invisible Air-Lords".  Here's the important part of the Actual Play excerpt that will post on Tuesday, October 28, 2025.  

Our heroes, the De Facto Explorers,  had a successful visit to Fair-Town, a post-apocalyptic town whose model of survival is badly recreating a Renaissance Fair.  

Lathar "The Barbarian" Bracken had defended his title as Joust Champion and had a lover's spat with his fiancée, Thunnelda.   Ten-foot tall mutant sunflower Sonny Helianthus had acquired more knowledge.  Mutant weasel Sneaky Pete was in the deepest throes of his addiction to yellow curry.  Finally,  Slitheran Wurmtail (aka Squiggles), a 6-foot tall earthworm in shaggy white fur, had spent their extended weekend "continuing the worm races" in a series of events I neither wish to comment on, or try to imagine.  

Two-thirds of the way back home, they encountered a new sign to the side of the road, in  paint, "Pay the invisible toll or else!

Nightcafe

Sonny flicks an "invisible domar" near the sign, and a pile of small stones hit his roots. 

Sonny couldn't find a source of the thrown rocks, but he and everyone else could hear a disembodied voice snarling, "No freebies!  Pay up or face the wrath of the Air Lords."

Pete powered up his telepathy and could feel at least two entities thinking.

"If they can't see us, do we really exist?"

Sonny and Pete had a lengthy conversation with these so-called "Air Lords"  outside of Pete's telepathy, no one could detect anything. Even Pete and Squiggles using their scout abilities couldn't find tracks in the area.

The conversations grew louder among their invisible group.  "How much do we collect for the toll?  We should have written it down..."

"We're invisible air lords, how would we be able to read it?  Heck, where are half of us?  Where's Greg???"

Lathar whispered something into Thunnelda's ear, and she quickly dashed over to the sign.

"Do you have cheese for a toll??  Wait!  Do we like cheese?  Why won't they pay a toll"

Sonny and Pete continued marching down the road, the recipient of many vocal curses from these invisible "Air Lords."

Meanwhile, Lathar and Squiggles conferred away from the sign and decide to make an offering for the toll.  Taking a shovel, they placed some hard tack atop the shovel blade laid it near the sign.  

Lathar:  "If we did have some cheese, this could be a charcutier board"   Like magic, the shovel and food seemed to vanish.  

"You may pass, as well as the one poking around our sign, a boon upon your families!!!!  Now, somebody find Greg"

A silly aside to mix up my normal journey by map (it is Gamma World... something good or malign, should happen).  This is one of my attempts at AI artwork with words that came out close enough on the first try.