Ben Green @bengreen@tabletop.social

Aside from the ladder descending from the trapdoor to the roof, there are stairs descending to S.4 and a door leading to a barracks with 6 beds, a kitchen, and a latrine. This encounter downstairs is ongoing and there are audible shouts. If the party doesn't go downstairs and engage, the ooze will slowly kill the scientists and then curl up around the generator. 48/*

S.4.2 - Inside the Power Station - Upstairs

A trashed electroplasmic laboratory. Sparking wires dangle from the ceiling, smoking alchemical mixtures give off acrid odors, wild, mutated animals thrash in their damaged cages, provoked into agitation by the party's entrance they'll immediately start trying to break out anew and will soon succeed. The animals aren't especially dangerous themselves, but there's a variety of hazards throughout the place. 47/*

@scottnicholson 100% My parents were educators, and when I was little I found the titles "punished by rewards" and "discipline & punish" really threatening, so I'd periodically hide them around the house to stop my parents from reading them. They already had, and I didn't know the books were actually right up my alley.

Because the other sites are designed as a dopamine engine and this isn't nearly as much, I find it harder to keep most of my social media activity here. It's a weird way that my neurobiology exploits have been turned against me.

I got to play a few rounds of Mr Jack: Pocket with a friend the other day. I really like the game and it was always close, but the Investigators won 3/3. Do folks agree that Jack is generally harder to win with?

I wanted to add some rooms without doing a reading just because I felt like I already had so much to go on that these other rooms were just extensions of what we already have.

In particular, I'd like to add an upstairs to the Power Station, where there's a trashed laboratory complete with busted cages of animals that had been exposed to the same stuff that had infected that first Guildmember the party ran into. Also I want to add the Alchemist's Lab and bunk house inside of the Guild House 46/*

S.6 - The Ridgeline

The ridgeline provides an excellent view of everything and in particular, let's the players see down into the lake. From this high angle they can see that something huge and amorphous is moving around in the depths. The dam - and thus the lake - is new, and so is this creature. It's the coagulating leyline energies that will turn into something if left to grow. 45/*

NOTE: I thought the Guild House was S.6 and labeled that encounter wrong.

So far we've got

S.1 - Entering the valley: moderate 1
S.2 - Lookout
S.3 - Outside the Power Station
S.4 - Inside the Power Station
S.5 - The Guild House

Tonight, I'm adding a quick one. I drew an Ace of Diamonds and a Queen of Hearts. This simple drawing reminded me of something I said back in S.2 and S.3 but never followed up on. Players have the option to climb up the ridgeline and pass over the Power Station entirely and come down into the Lake behind it. 44/*

S.6 - Guild Garden - Severe 1

4 Gardenbots
2 Elite Apothecaries

If the fight moves into the building, there are bubbling beakers and cauldrons and whatnot that can be tipped over for an action, splashing one adjacent space (DC 15 basic Reflex). Roll a random effect from level 1 alchemical items and apply its effect on a failed save or half as much on a successful one. The Apothecaries roll before deciding which space to send it.

Without a chaperone or - even worse - if they destroyed the dam, then there'll be unfriendliness and a hard social encounter to avoid a fight, or immediate combat. The gardening robots are obedient to commands from the Guild members, but aren't built for combat, but the few people have mutagens and other consumables and - if the fight happens inside - dangerous alchemy in progress that can get tipped over and react wildly. 42/*

If the PCs had helped the folks at the Power Station and built up some goodwill... this makes me realize the final version of this should use the Reputation subsystem so players can end up working for the Guild - which is incompatible with helping the town because they need the dam destroyed and for the Guild to stop poisoning them. But I digress.... If the PCs come in peace with a chaperone, they can get some information and perhaps even some consumables. 41/*

We have a fairly well controlled situation, with only the Kd in Chaos across from the Ks and mediated by the Kc. So perhaps there are constructs doing much of the gardening work with only a few Guild members overseeing the process. The constructs might be small spidery creatures with garden tool appendages and crystal eyes. The Kh in Order in the undercurrent can represent that not all of what's being grown here is food. There are reagents, mutagenics, and medicines too. 40/*

Since the predominant suit is hearts, we're going to be looking at the other end of the lake where a spring flows up from the depths issuing from a cave and there a Guild house has been built with a farm to produce food and whatnot for the guild members working here.

Hearts tells us that living things is what this area is about, and perhaps that simply means that the farm is center of our attention. 39/*

So I drew my next reading and got overwhelmed because it felt like too much for what I was expecting to do. But tonight I remembered that just because a reading has a lot going on doesn't mean I have to make it especially dangerous or high stakes. I calmed myself down and resolved to keep on keeping on. Let's take a see.

The origin of the term "freelance" was a knight who was not in service to a lord. Literally a "free lance".

I feel like I could go a few directions from here so in this drawing we'll say that a spade = descent from the power station, diamond = dam, heart/clubs = the spring and guild house there

Here's the ooze they're fighting! Lots of chaotic energy here between it having a healing aura, dealing acid, electricity, and negative damage, engulfing, stunning, and paralyzing people, and becoming quickened when it gets zapped by the power station.