Mediums and Messages

November Mausritter - Session 4

Unknown artist. Pavlova from Davis Dainty Dishes. 1947.

This post continues my ongoing micro-campaign of Mausritter by Isaac Williams. As ever, I'll endeavor to keep this spoiler-free for the players, but if you are planning to ever play The Estate adventure collection, steer clear. Despite the series' title, this is still ongoing.

To the Garden

This week, our party consists of:

After a few days in Brickport, the party discussed which of their current goals to follow up on. In no particular order, they were:

  1. Rescue Milaster Burley from the tower of Murrelet the Wizard.
  2. Go to Big Stump to look for Honest Edward, the wandering merchant.
  3. Investigate the garden shed for the source of the Bone Gang's chemical deliveries.
  4. Rally a warband to battle the Chapel of Eternal Peace.

Eventually they decided to head to Big Stump, visiting the garden on their way north. The trip to the garden was uneventful enough and they soon found the rickety old shed and slipped under its door.

Inside they found a drain in the concrete floor that emitted a sweet chemical fragrance and a sickly green glow. Mauster Rogers scouted ahead, finding the drain etched with ladder rungs. The bottom opened onto a channel full of a thick, neon liquid. From the bottom of the ladder he found graffiti of a two-headed rat as well as two tunnel exits into other subterranean rooms.

The party debated just blowing up the goo with their powder keg (thinking it must be the source of the chemicals used by the Chapel of Eternal Peace to brainwash mice) versus going down to find out what was going on here. Eventually they decided to explore first. Rogers used a cooking pan to collect some of the green goop. Horatio led the way into the glowing green halls.

Lab Rats

Heading east, they found another goo pit - this one with a fishbone rapier sticking out of the center. Horatio used his hook to pull it to shore, but pulled a horrifying ooze with a rat skull floating inside out as well. When Adolphus tried to pull the rapier out of it, it attacked!

Rosemary split the ooze in half with her axe and Horatio slapped the head part back into the pit. Rogers tried communicating with it, but it seemed unaware. Adolphus finally freed the rapier from the bottom as Rosemary shoveled it back into the pit.

Unfortunately, Rosemary got some ooze on her in the process. The chemicals made her weirdly gelatinous, able to squeeze through narrow gaps. The party decided that wasn't enough to stop them from exploring.

Following another passage south, they entered a garden room where lamps filled with ooze hung over ceramic pots growing human-scale plants. Cutting into a cucumber revealed that inside they were translucent and wept a liquid that look like the Chapel's brainwashing juice. Horatio took a slice for future study.

In another pot, the party found a purple and green marble. They experimented with planting it and dropping it in goo, but it didn't do anything.

As they did so, they heard approaching voices and three rats wearing lab gear and goggles emerged. The rats demanded to know who they were and Mauster Rogers confidently lied that they were Bone Gang members. The lab rats weren't sure, but said they'd take them to see their boss. The party asked about Rosemary's sliming and they said she'd be fine if she got some vigorous exercise and worked off the condition.

The rats led the party past a cage with a moth cocoon, then through to a room filled with beakers, test tubes, and a human-scale textbook. Perched on the book reading was Two-Skulls, a two-headed rat. The two heads seemed independent but had to take turns speaking.

The party claimed to be defectors from the Bone Gang, but the more suspicious head wasn't buying it. Two-Skulls demanded another human book in exchange for membership. During the conversation, they revealed that the lab rats despised magic (thinking it too limited) and that only Two-Skulls could actually read human text. Adolphus asked why they even worked with the Bone Gang, to which they responded they needed the muscle since there were so few lab rats.

Satisfied, the party agreed to be ushered back to the surface.

To the Tower

The party briefly discussed seeking out a human book from the house or blowing up the lab rat facility, but decided to focus on rescuing Milaster first. They headed to Murrelet's tower with a brief layover in Brickport.

On the edge of the garden they were accosted by a band of Bone Gang rats. They showed their "Two-Knives Passport" to get by. Adolphus traded the rats a couple pips for some information. The Bone Gang had been ousted from their former hideout in the sewer by a giant snake. They had tried to use "the Spell of Undeath" to battle the snake, but something had gone wrong. The friendly rats advised not taking any jobs to recover the spell.

The Wizard's Apprentices

The tower was much as they left it, a suit of human armor leaned in a disused corner of the garage. At the entrance, Rogers tried to pawn off a chunk of mushroom as a magical artifact worthy of tribute, but the cockroach guards saw through it. Rosemary quickly offered the fancy marble from the lab rat grow room and they were allowed entrance.

Inside the party followed stairs up the armor's leg and into the cuirass, where two of Murrelet's apprentices were sifting through piles of baubles. The party asked one apprentice if he had seen Milaster. He said yes, but he was one of the lesser apprentices who worked "down below". With that information, the party split up - Rosemary and Adolphus to meet the wizard and Horatio and Rogers to the other leg to look for Milaster.

Rosemary and Adolphus found the wizard in his workshop in the helmet. The brusque mouse inspected their marble and found it non-magical. Enough for a question, but not to solicit his services. They asked about Milaster's whereabouts. Murrelet didn't really know his apprentices' names, but when pressed he revealed the mouse had come seeking information about his missing sister and had was now working off his debt.

Horatio and Rogers snuck down the armor's left leg and found themselves above a wooden hatch guarded by a cockroach around the knee. Horatio successfully convince the guard that they had been sent by Murrilet to see Milaster and were allowed in. Below, they found twelve mice in an ensorcelled sleep, among them Milaster!

The trick would be getting him out and breaking the spell. Horatio and Rogers pried up the floorboards to see if they could go out through the statue's foot, but found the boot full of bones. Around this time, Rosemary and Adolphus rejoined them, having gotten little from the wizard accept the knowledge that Milaster's sleep was fulfilling some magical purpose.

Adolphus used his disguise kit to make Horatio look like Milaster. They discussed having Horatio talk to the other apprentices or sneak past Murrelet disguised as one of his pupils.

Rosemary dropped a torch into the bones, only to have them swirl and envelop the light source. As they did, they revealed an elaborate chest. The party tied the tunics of the sleeping mice into a makeshift rope and used Horatio's hook to fish the chest up to their level. Opening it revealed 1,500 pips and a magically alive tongue, wrapped in linen. The party divvied this up, pocketing all but 70 pips they couldn't carry.

Horatio suggested using the cucumber slice dripping with mellowing juice to drug the wizard. The party decided this was their best bet and prepared to put the plan into motion.

GM Notes

Wow, another session where the party got a ton done! I'm liking how compact the travel rules are. They feel more like a loading screen between scenes than a whole elaborate procedure.

This session was really shaped by rolling for reactions. We did a little proper dungeon crawling in the lab rats' lair, but reaction rolls consistently came up "confused" or "talkative", so that's how folks greeted them. It continues the games' themes of being more about investigating and faction play than combat.

One thing I'm noting is how many of The Estates' sub components rely on the same tropes. Each area has a cult with a powerful leader holding minions in thrall. The party keeps being led to the leader for an interview, then having to either con or barter their way out. It's become a bit of a gag that Mauster Rogers just wants to join every cult.

I'm spinning The Estate into the kind of game I like, but I'm increasingly inclined to agree with the recent RTFM episode about it - there is a big gulf in quality of both the level design and the presentation of information. That said, I still appreciate the provocation of using someone else's encounter list and room key.

I think I'm starting to get more of a handle on Into the Odd combat. Every round the creature needs to do something wildly interesting. Combat should end round 2-ish or else its going to get very lethal. I also found myself appreciating Mausritter's "roll once" initiative system that more or less amounts to those who win the die roll getting an extra turn.

Now that the party is getting into the thick of things, we're seeing more loot and thus more XP. Still, no character has hit the threshold for Level 2, though that's partially thanks to the rotating ensemble of players.

#Mausritter #session reports