Fleshing out Portown After a Trip to the Coast

I really think that there is a place on the Zenopus Archives where he talks about how Port Town was based on some Coastal town in Northern California. I have now been to such a town, Mendocino California.  I wandered the coast looking for places where smugglers would meet. late at night and trade goods away from the eyes of the law.  Of course there were sea caves but there were also small islets that only existed when the tide was low.

Near the deepest part of the Cove you can see a cave entrance. These were up and down the coast. It's easy to imagine them being deep and leading to an underground smuggler's lair. Or imagine the water washing all the way under the graveyard and taking the bodies away. The lost souls are washed out to sea. They become angry and crawl to shore reanimated by a hatred for the living.

Perhaps not far away enough for meeting at night to exchange contraband but there were numerous islets like this ready to plunge beneath the sea when the tied came in.

Of Course there were also arches and sea caves were giant crabs or whatever could hide out. I am thinking sirens that call out to lost children. There was also a colony of bees living in the rocks. They were not as exciting as sirens but they were real and I had to avoid them to get to the outcropping I wanted to get to.

Clearly the home of a giant lobster who feeds on the kelp in the bay

Come closer child let me sing to you.

Also you could have an encounter with some seabirds that lead you to some treasure in their nest like a locket.

There was this spooky tree with dead limbs covered in moss or something. I would put this in the graveyard in Portown and have smugglers meet here to negotiate with ghouls on moonless nights.

Finally people had carved skulls and faces into the sandstone on the cliff. I could imagine a hidden sandstone altar carved in a hard to reach place or just that the citizens of Portown carve the faces of their sailors that die at sea into the sides of the cliffs. Imagine a sandstone relief to those lost at sea stretching all the way back to the founding of Portown. What clues and secrets would be embedded there?

Night's Dark Terror Sessions 9 &10: Tower of the Abusive Narcissist

Imagine spending the better part of a session listening to the cleric talk to some stupid wolves that have nothing to do with anything. That is what it is like to play D&D with me.

 

 Session 9: Talking to Wolves and killing a Cow.

I don’t feel like a lot happened this session because my character spent like half an hour talking to some wolves. That’s my bad. That one is definitely on me. The wolf conversation was largely fruitless

Then we went to Lake Titicaca where the bad guy is. He is a wizard and he wants this tapestry thing. We accidentally rescue the guy we were supposed to rescue. Or maybe that was what we were trying to do. I can’t remember.

This guy we were trying to rescue was all “go after the evil wizard and take his treasure!” we were all “Dude you look terrible, you have been tortured, get your priorities straight we are taking you home!”

We killed this guy. It was no big deal

Anyway we made a new goblin friend named Jithers. We killed a bunch of stuff in front of him. Including the hobgoblin who we were hoping would help us kill the rapey horse man. At first we were trying to get a job working in his posse but he wouldn’t let us join because he was racist.

Anyway Jithers had a lot of trauma related issues we hoped to work through in the next session.

Session 10: Raised by Narcissists

Jithers had a really hard go of it. Through our continued talks with Jithers  we were able to lay out the whole pattern of abuse. The evil wizard had classic Borderline Personality Disorder with serious narcissistic tendencies. Jithers had developed a really unhealthy attachment.

We told Jithers that he could come live on a horse farm and animal therapy. We offered him a way out but he just wasn’t ready to take it. I think this evil wizard character has been built up into an omnipotent godlike character in his mind to the point where Jithers cannot imagine himself as a separate distinct entity.

So, we left Jithers and took the guy we rescued, who was wondering why his homestead was now being marketed as a therapy retreat for goblins.

When we found our horses they were being dry humped by evil baboons. So we started humping those baboons back to establish alpha dominance. Long story short; it worked. As we humped the baboons into submission we gazed back to the evil wizards tower and saw Jithers gazing out the window at us. It was a really gut wrenching experience.

Just thinking about life after a hard day humping and being humped.

On an unrelated note, one of the other players couldn’t be there so he let someone else control your character. This is really dangerous not because your character will die but because when you get back your character will be into some weird stuff. Oso the fighters new thing is pissing on everything. He pissed on a baboon. HE pissed on the wizard’s tower. He pissed on the dead wizard. Spoiler: we kill the wizard.

Oso wrote a long letter to the evil wizard in his pee telling him that we had the thingy he was looking for and to come and get it. Then we went home to the goblin therapy horse farm and got ready. We did like an A-Team montage. There was this whole battle. Then the wizard came and it was scary for a bit but I guess he didn’t know fireball so we all lived. After he was dead Oso pissed on him and then we had to loot his body after it was covered in Oso’s urine. Oops.

I know it is gauche to bring you weird fetishes into the game but I swear we are not into pee stuff (that I know of) so it is ok. Besides, this is More Calvin and Hobbes bumper sticker peeing than sex peeing.