So close and yet...

This week we had four PCs ready to adventure: Jenni (lvl 1 Florida Man's Hot Cousin), Sheela (lvl 1 Hot Cousin), Torcs (lvl 1 Gladigator), and Marty Schaefer (lvl 1 Geckoman Trapper).  They were looking to make some MONEY!

They already had some cash cuz last week Torcs won a high stakes battle against an ogre in the arena.  I didn't tell you about this cuz I got busy but it was a classic case of killing the big bad in a single shot type thing.  I was down on myself cuz i was worried the brosr would excommunicate me for taking to easy on my PCs...sad face emoji...I wonder if I can redeem myself?

So the party went and bought a wagon with a team of draft horses, hired a lvl 1 fighter "Prisco", loaded up "Anne the Brain in a Jar" and set out toward the ruins of orlando thinking Anne could take them to some left over treasure and they could search for clues about some missing people around the area (a rumor they came across during downtime).  Well they were only an hour outside of town when they encountered a Griffin slowly circling them. (i actually rolled a random encounter and got a "flyer", i decided it'd be the griffin that Ted encountered on this same route a week ago.)

So our plucky party lured the griffin away from the cart and decided they wanted to capture the thing.  Here we go! Marty (geckoman) due to his great climbing and dex bonuses lassoed the griffin as it made a pass...he rolled to climb atop this things back and caused it to crash into a tree!  Marty was chuckin some serious dice!  The party managed to lash the griffin to a tree and knocked it out! I was genuinely surprised at the party's ability to do this.  It was amazing!  They quickly realized they didn't have a follow up plan.  They needed a vet, a way to load the horse sized animal into their wagon, and then furthermore were gonna need someone with animal training.

Torcs and Sheela rode back to town.  After a couple hours they were introduced to the 1 guy in town who might be able to help them.  This man is a known trainer of exotic animals named Joe.  He is excellent with exotic animals and agreed to help for a small fortune. So Joe the exotic animal trainer, Torcs, and Sheela went back and lo and behold, they got themselves a griffin.  Now, it'd need to be trained by Joe before they could be sure it wouldn't eat the party the moment they untied it and that meant handing the thing over to Joe for training which meant traveling several days to Joe's exotic animal ranch and possibly cult temple just outside Tampa.

They made the trek almost without incident.  The PCs were taken for their last nickels by a group of pixies charging tolls along the way.  Joe refused to pay since he was doing the group a favor anyway.  After dropping off the griffin at Joe's the penniless PCs headed back to Kissimmee but took what would turn to be a fateful detour back to the junkyard from session 2 where they had left all those copper coins just lyin around.

When they got to the junkyard they didn't immediately encounter any enemies and began looking around.  They found the corpses of a bunch of humanoid bugmen and a giant, horse sized cockroach! Gross! The balroach - it is called - had been dead just as long as the other corpses.  The PCs began looking around and peeked into one of the garages...out ran a living, horse sized cockroach! Double Gross!  So gross in fact that the party had to all save vs paralysis, which by some miracle they all did as lvl 1 characters.  But I knew they were in for it as this thing has an AC of 8 and I was right.  The party's fatal error was that they tried to slug it out with this thing even after discovering that their attack rolls of 16 weren't hitting.  Somehow, they still got this thing down to only a couple hp but, as we know, once things start to go south, it can be near impossible to recover.  Marty, Prisco, Torcs, and Sheela all fell in consecutive rounds leaving poor old Jenni to run around like an idiot for a few rounds before she too was gobbled up.  THere it is...TPK.

The consequences were actually pretty bad.  Not only did they lose 4 PCs, they lost their Brain in a Jar Anne, AND now no one else knows about the griffin sitting over at Joe the exotic animal trainer's.  Sad day.  What happens now?  Does Joe inherit the griffin? Is Brain in a Jar Anne lost to history?  Was all the money gone from the junkyard? What were all these bug corpses? We shall see..

Epilogue:

This session actually took place back in October as life has overcome certain events for the players who are working at getting back together.  Yeah, yeah, I can hear you now, "uh oh...another campaign bites the dust".  Have we learned nothing and are going to continue to doubt Florida? I for one have learned my lesson on that number...

Also, because its always a thing...did the Judge stack the deck against the PCs with a too powerful of monster? Of course not.  What I can say is that the appearance of this monster was the result of the logical actions of a particular faction (for which I do not currently have a patron, so it was me) having an encounter in the world with another faction which I just played out.  The result of that was that there were some roach corpses and one of these balroaches inhabiting the junkyard now.

Look, I watch and get inspired by Joy of Wargaming's "how to solo war game" same as the next guy...so I do that too, just in my own campaign world when it seems appropriate.

Dead and not comin back:

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+Valentino (lvl 1 Venturer): henchman to Ted.  Died in the Citrus Bowl after getting paralyzed and smashed to a pulp. Body not recovered. (Ses. 3)

+Margaret (lvl 1 Venturer): henchman to Ted.  Died in the Citrus Bowl.  Got top of her head chopped off by a skeleton. Body not recovered. (Ses. 3)  

+Jenni (lvl1 Florida Man's Hot Cousin): PC, got ate by a cockroach at the junkyard (Ses 4)

+Sheela (lvl1 Florida Man's Hot Cousin): PC, got ate by a cockroach at the junkyard (Ses 4)

+Marty Shaefer (lvl1 Geckoman Trapper): PC, got ate by a cockroach at the junkyard (Ses 4)

+Torcs (lvl Gladigator): PC, got ate by a cockroach at the junkyard (Ses 4)

+Priso (lvl 1 Fighter): henchman to Torcs, got ate by a cockroach at the junkyard (Ses 4)