This session was played on August 12, 2010, featuring Pritchard Hood, Vassily, Karel, Quantus, the halfling Zeke, the rotund warrior Farkas Fulmont, and Richard Loubeau.
In which the C team augments their numbers, and persuades Vassily to follow them to his demise in service of some impoverished religious fanatics.
General Summary of the Cama-Zotz Episodes:
[provided by naked samurai, the DM of these two sessions]
What's the dealio? After finding the smashed stills, killing gnome-mummies and bat-cultists, after scraping gold leaf off maps on the floor and demolishing giant crocodile-pinatas, the party located the location of Cama-zotz, hidden behind an uncompleted wall-sized door in what was supposedly to become the throne room. They realized, much to their chagrin, that the bat-god avatar has entered and exited his lair from an entirely different point.
With the help of a massive crab rocking in the waters in a hidden cavern, calling himself Kikkla-kuk, they managed to defeat the evil of the budding temple. But not without some harm — Pritchard Hood was overtaken by the evil raging in his obsidian dagger and believed himself, for a time, to be a priest of Cama-zotz. Still, the townspeople, such as they were, had been saved. The bodies of Agnes and Barnard, the one-time adulterous lovers, were laid to rest. The gnomes and other cultists were freed from their deathly onus.
It seems Cama-Zotz, a god of dripping, fanged evil in an unknown, warmer part of the world, had sent an avatar floating into Glantri. There, it buried itself into unpopulated hills and slowly gained enough power, through blood sacrifice and bondage, to dig out portions of its temple. The temple was unfinished by the time the company discovered it. There is no telling how powerful Cama-Zotz could have become once it was fully completed. Even the Hippoblas - the great friend of the bat-god - was only a shell of itself. Not literally — its sewn-together hides and snake innards were not as strong as could be imagined. Even so, he was a difficult foe. Even an impossible one for a lower level party.
Fortune had sent them a friend, however. The lawful natures of the land where Cama-Zotz came from had learned of his secret maneuvers and sent out helpers to stop him. What if he gained followers in distant lands, sending their mighty souls to unbalance their own delicate pyramids of power? He must be stopped.
A monk was able to find the hidden, inchoate temple, but was brutally beaten to death, left where the party found him, trampled flat by the passage of workers. In his pouch had been three soft shell eggs, possessed by the spirit of one of the lawful minor gods, Kikkla-kuk the Crab. Two were smashed to pieces, but one escaped to an unknown area in the caverns where he bided his time and grew.
Kikkla-kuk asked the party to partake of his powers. Farkas weilded his large claw to great effect - smacking it against bat-hide and driving it into the blind bat eye. And all had eaten of the uncooked crab flesh, making them nauseous but giving them the power to strike a burgeoning, if very weak, god-spore. When Quantus was knocked unconscious by a brutal blow, his wounds filled up with crab flesh; it remains to be seen how long term this would be.
Losses & Loot
The party defeated 5 bat cultists, 3 giant centipedes, 2 cave locusts, 7 gnome mummies, 1 Agnes mummy, ate a Crab demigod, and killed the avatar of the bat god.
They suffered the loss of Vassily, killed by a gnome mummy.
They obtained a 1 pair gold earrings, a bone mace, a bone breastplate and armored bone skirt inscribed with clerical incantations in a foreign tongue, a green stone jaguar statue, 2 blowguns, 2 silver goblets of Glantrian make and likewise 2 gold plates, 3 carved bone cylinder seals, 1 large polished conch shell, 2 fancy paper lampshades, 2 apothecarial urns with what appear to be powdered human organs (one labeled with a heart design, one a brain design), a pile of scraped gold leaf, and 680g and 350s in coin.
For creatures defeated and wealth acquired, each party member received 492 xp and a share of 364 gp.