COS II Session 16

Session 16 thumbnail, featuring an eye shadow palette

## Starring...

* The Barovian Freedom Fighters
	+ Red, deboned
	+ Xadriel Maverran, party parent
	+ Tokili, armed and dangerous again
	+ Stone, the same as ever
	+ Galia Trey, also devoted to Bahamut, remember?
	+ Twiggy, enemy of recycling
	+ +2 shortsword, gunning for employee of the month

* ERA001, haunted
* ERA002, hanging out with the best possible influences
* The Dreamer, working magic (but not miracles)

## Shopping Trip

Riding the high of whatever they did last session, the Barovian Freedom Fighters set out to explore the technological marvels of Intellia. Tokili, Xadriel, and Stone independently decide to speak to ERA001; meanwhile Red, Twiggy, and Al set out to find the Dreamer.

Tokili asks ERA for directions to these universal recycling machines that convert raw and processed materials into credits. He finds out that Intellia is actually a giant floating island casting shade upon a lower-lying region known as the "Underside", and the recycling depots are down there. As he sets off for the Underside, Stone and Xadriel enter the lab to ask about the Tachyon engine. ERA explains that the engine is housed in the heavily-guarded energy lab, there is no legal way to obtain it, a thief could utilize the lab's platform train to make off with it, and pretty please avoid killing any of the scientists. With all that weighing on their minds, the two head to the Expo.

Tokili finds multiple ways off of the floating city—a rickety staircase, an elevator with a small fee, and a slightly more expensive platform train route—before simply jumping off the edge and turning into a bird to fly down. On the ground he finds a recycling depot, which looks like a technologically marvellous dumpster. After a brief conversation with the voice-activated dumpster, Tokili decides to scam the machine by casting *creation* to dump a massive cube of adamantine into the bin. He receives 500 credits and bolts back up to the top side of Intellia.

Red, Twiggy, and Al take the platform train to meet the Dreamer. They disembark to the sight of a cheerfully-coloured carnival tent instead of the pure chrome buildings that make up the rest of Intellia. Two mind-reading guards stand outside and decide the Freedom Fighters' surface thoughts are just good enough to let them inside, after all, what are they gonna do? Kill God?

In the spacial anomaly of the tent, the Dreamer appears as a portly human man in green-and-purple jester's garb. Their appearance does not stay the same for long as they shift and morph into the forms of their visitors during conversation, calling them "new inspiration". Red asks to be at least temporarily freed from his curse, giving up his wings and his unique palate for dirt, which the Dreamer allows. Twiggy says something. Eventually, the trio are kicked out after Al asks too many questions despite the Dreamer requesting "no more questions".

Stone and Xadriel, now joined by Galia, browse the Expo for a bit. They find a variety of perfectly legal experimental technology, including but not limited to:

* bracers that create platforms in the air
* a lava lamp that helps keep you alive
* a "multitool" that's shaped like a gun and functions like a gun
* a cash clip that *reduces* your net worth

While Stone is considering purchasing the multitool, Tokili bursts into the expo hall and snags it right out from under her nose, buying a menagerie of specialized ammunition for it as well. Suddenly having credits to spare, Stone buys a pair of platform bracers. Meanwhile, Galia chooses to buy a lava lamp after someone told her it was nanobots in a jar (by the time she figured it out they had already skipped town). With that sad development, the four of them head off to see the Dreamer.

The two halves of the Barovian Freedom Fighters brush past each other at the train station—Al heading to the expo, Twiggy and Red deciding to try their luck with the recycling machine, and Xadriel, Tokili, Stone, and Galia making their way to the Dreamer.

Xadriel and Galia have no trouble at all getting past the mind-reading guards outside the Dreamer's tent. Stone and Tokili have to make wisdom saves to come off as normal, but are let inside. Tokili is instantly nearly blinded by his constantly-running *detect magic* and Stone recognizes the Dreamer as taking the form of Gadof Blinsky. The Dreamer does their "mimicking the party" shtick again, to far less fanfare, before getting to the questions and requests section. Stone asks where her god went and finds out that ~~Leira~~ Tiamat is not coming back—what *is* coming back in a whole new way is ERA001 as Tokili pulls out her mangled corpse. The Dreamer reforms ERA001's charred husk into ERA002, who has absolutely no brains whatsoever. The present Freedom Fighters decide that all this is really nice, but they'd rather have money, and head to a recycling centre. Tokili, being wanted by the recycling authorities, heads home instead.

At the Expo, Al finds the only item that the rest of the party hasn't purchased—a colourful cap with a propeller on top. Al is strong and dexterous enough to hold on to and control the hat during flight, but is disappointed by its 15 ft. height limit and slow speed. Still, it's the only Expo invention he can afford after his exorbitant bus fare spending, so he buys it.

At the recycling machine, Twiggy puts in a seed, then a bit of his skin. He repeats this for the next ten minutes, not caring that the machine is sentient and is growing unfathomably annoyed by these actions. He is mere moments away from destroying the machine for not giving him a better deal on his seed when Red makes an appearance, followed by Xadriel, Stone, Galia, and ERA002. They all take turns chucking their rusty old CoS 1 weapons, old currency, and the same seed Twiggy has been putting in and taking out for twenty minutes into the glorified dumpster before Twiggy himself steps into the machine. After the machine values him at 4 credits, Twiggy throws dirt on the machine and creates ten gallons of water right on top of it. The machine is relieved that it no longer has to deal with this eternal suffering as it fries. The party speed-walks away, back to the Intellia Science Centre, to try and dump ERA002 on ERA001.

ERA001 is confronted by her upgraded counterpart, ERA002, to which she responds, "I'm not quite sure what to do with that. I feel it was meant to help you on your journey." (translation: get that thing out of my lab, what do I look like? a babysitter?) Thus, the party brings her back to the house.

Al visits the Dreamer once again, attempting to con them into giving him an army of flesh puppet clones (but not in an evil necromancer way; in a lawful good righteous way). The Dreamer tries to explain that they can't really do that and also have no real reason to do that and what the actual fuck are you talking about. Al continues to try and plead for his wish to be granted for ten minutes before the Dreamer kicks him out.

Everyone decides that they'd best steal a Tachyon while working off a good night's sleep, and so the party retires to ERA's house.

## Remember When Long Rests Were Just Time Skips?

Xadriel elects to teach ERA002 some basic Common by making a children's book; the party gives terrible suggestions as to what to put in it. After Xadriel's lesson, Stone teaches ERA a vitally important spell for any functional member of society—*disguise self*. This takes an hour, and by the end of it ERA has expended several spell slots simply messing around with it.

Stone morbidly gives Apples her last will and testament in preparation for conversation with Tokili. She takes a deep breath and heads downstairs, finding Tokili has turned the basement into what looks like a cave. Stone tries to get him to join her multi-level marketing scam, because his membership would legally allow her to tell him the truth. He tells her to fuck off.

After everyone falls asleep, Al dreams that he is in a temple of Bahamut. There, he finds an old man claiming to be Bahamut himself, who offers to lay out the rules of being a cleric of Bahamut. His wise tenets include "stop jumping out windows", "don't kill people", and "stop causing chaos for no reason whatsoever". Bahamut also tells him to follow the command of Tokili, as he is connected to Bahamut. Lastly, Bahamut will be communicating with him via the *+2 shortsword* from now on, so make sure to listen to that!!!!!!!! After the impromptu sermon, Bahamut tells Al to leave, to which he responds by doing cartwheels until dream abruptly ends.

## Shopping Trip (Reprise)

The party wakes, as per usual. Al decides to share his dream with Tokili, but conveniently leaves out the part where Tokili can tell him to do whatever he wants and he can't deny it. In order to get out of conversation, Tokili remembers getting the address of a black market weapon shop and proposes arming up before making an attempt on the Tachyon engine. The party agrees, however, they disagree on the method of transportation. Most of the party spares 3 credits for an elevator trip, but Al jumps (info needed) feet down to the Underside and breaks his skeleton. ~~The *+2 shortsword*~~ Bahamut asks him "what the fuck weren't you listening". Al apologizes and promises "okay no chaos starting NOW".

The party, in various states of injury, follow Tokili down a dark alleyway, with a red door sticking out like a sore thumb.

## Developments

* The party has purchased the following Expo technologies:
	+ Tokili: Multitool (and assorted canisters)
	+ Stone: Platform bracers
	+ Galia: Nanobots
	+ Alucard: Propeller hat
* Red has been un-cursed (for now).
* Alucard is taking orders directly from Bahamut (😊).
* ERA002 has been created.
	+ ERA002 is travelling with the Barovian Freedom Fighters.
	+ ERA002 is having a blast.