OSRIC Game Play Journal: You're Getting Very Sleepy...Now Give Us Your Potions!

Yet again another short session, I still haven’t gotten it together to jumpstart the LL game, but at least we put in a couple of hours tonight. There was a power outage (car accident or something, who knows) and we stopped at that point.

I’d been looking forward to playing again because I’d been thinking of having Dennis the Gnome Illusionist hypnotize Ouze, the mysterious NPC mystic and adventurer. I remembered mentioning to the DM a month or so ago the horror movie “The Stuff”, and was surprised he’d never heard of it. It seems like the kind of pulpy horror film he’d enjoy and he agreed when I described the plot. Now back in the game, I had to wonder if he’d gotten around to seeing it and if this strange amber ichor that came out of both the paladin’s assassin and the crazy bear was somehow an allusion or just inspired by the film. That combined with the NPC’s name “Ouze” (Ooze?) got me all paranoid, and that’s when my little plan got hatched.

Dennis (INT 17, WIS 7) conspired with Gladric and Anrid, and had Benedict the Cleric (the lone good alignment character in the party, as far as we know) ride off with Demerarg and Vadco on horseback to do a quick recon of the tower a half mile away from camp or so. During their brief time away, the idea was to nonchalantly approach Ouze from the front and rear at the same time, with Dennis out of striking range but close enough to cast his hypnotism spell and Anrid almost right behind him should he make his save and become hostile.

“Ouze’s eyes appear to lose focus as you finish casting your spell.” Great, success! Now what? There was a little too much discussion about what was acceptable to suggest or attempt to glean from him and how to go about it, but basically he was hypnotized to see the remaining party members as "his best friends". If he had any ill intentions towards his fellow party members, he seemed confused by questioning about this. He was asked if he knew anything about the amber ichor and he seemed confused and genuinely perplexed about the stuff himself. Finally, feeling the hypnotism spell’s power waning, he was asked if he “was hiding any helpful potions from the rest of the party” to which he responded that he had no potions. At that we had to let him awake, and all safely retreated a short distance from him and engaged in trivial camp pursuits lest it appear that we had just been leering over him.

Crap! No further to solving the amber ooze mystery, but at least we can reasonably conclude that Ouze is not conspiring against any of us. After he awoke, Dennis tried to engage him in some idle chit chat about his family and other trivialities and Ouze became a little defensive and excused himself to go meditate. Ha, if he only knew. Anrid congratulated Dennis on his spell-casting, and the three began to consider when and how they might use it against Demerarg, the female magic user, should the need arise. They’re not exactly evil, these three, just neutral and very chaotic.

The tower recon was largely uneventful other than discovering a number of ruinous small structures in a semi-circle near the back of it. The tower itself was described as being composed of volcanic like black rock, and that there seemed to be a kind of humming or vibration the closer one got to it, perhaps emanating from the stone itself. The recon party had kept just out of short bow or light crossbow range of the structures and tower itself, so not a lot of detail was made out.