Session One
Its the dawn of a new day, the sun has begun to rise and illuminate a small town. The town is entirely absent of the usual lazy hustle of normal life. The birds don’t chirp, the cars don’t rush down the street, and the people who talk do in hushed tones.The town is empty, windows blown out, doors remain half open, it seems as though everything was left in a rush. The town is enveloped in a blanket… not of snow, but of flesh. Tendon-like structures connect the buildings together, cars are fused to the road beneath them. Even the wildlife doesn’t remain untouched. Trees are covered in spine like growths, the grass coated in a skin-like film. Everything has been affected by this mysterious mass. Nobody quite knows where it came from, it simply… appeared one day, originating from a small apartment building on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado. It soon consumed the city, the neighboring cities, the state… the country. Now its inescapable. The news didn’t know what to classify it as when it first showed up. Was it a natural disaster?A lifeform? A virus? Nobody could figure it out. All the scientists that tried to study it went mad and assimilated themselves into the massive being. It soon garnered a name… The Fleshmachine due to its strange ability to seamlessly communicate and fuse with Biological matter and technology. The quiet morning would usually be appreciated in the small community of Barnside, but this silence only leaves room to think about the disappearance of Cathrine, the community’s well-trusted doctor. She had wandered off mysteriously one night only to disappear without a trace. Many of the members of the community believe she had gone mad and ended up assimilating into the vast Fleshmachine, but that’s just hearsay… Barnside is set up around a large motel. Each of the residents live in a motel room, while the main plaza is the motel’s parking lot. Makeshift pillars hold up blankets and tarps to shade the area from the harsh desert sun. The plaza is filled with booths and stalls of people seeking to trade their wares. In the middle stands a large make-shift radio pillar to catch signals from across the mesa. A small terminal sits at the base of the pillar, equipped with a microphone, computer screen and static-y video feed that’s currently not in-use. The outskirts of the town are near uninhabited due to how taken over its become from the fleshy sprawl. Small electric fences line the motel and its surrounding buildings to hopefully deter the flesh from growing even further into the town. Seemingly out of nowhere, the people surrounding your group have gone quiet… The radio in the center of the commune sparks to life with signal. A garbled voice begins to come through a sea of static. You can hear it… every so faintly… “Hello-?” The voice is accompanied with sniffling and crying. It sounds familiar. The screen sparks to life with a static-filled feed. The camera is pointed up at a barely recognizable face. “Help-” “Inside-” “Ladle Rock-” A middle-aged woman rushes over to the computer screen before the signal abruptly cuts off, leaving the commune square in complete silence. There is a pause… The commune quickly erupts into quiet muttering. The woman turns around, facing everyone around her. She carries herself with a sense of authority, her face has a stern expression despite the sheer shock of finding out that Catherine is alive. The woman raises her hands, signaling everyone to quiet down. “Everyone please, calm down. We are all shocked to find out that Cathrine is alive, but we must navigate this situation with clear minds.” “If anyone wishes to volunteer to find her, time is of the essence, and I will repay you greatly if you manage to get her back alive.” She lowers her hands, taking a look at the shocked crowd. “I will leave it at that for now. Please, if you wish to find her, please visit Room 1.” Before anyone could begin to ask questions, the woman rushes off. Time is of the essence… Rainn and Bishop decide to go meet with the woman (Erin, the commune leader) in order to discuss finding Cathrine. Jax, Scraps and Seven are all listening in. Jax chimes in and offers to go with Bishop and Rainn to find Cathrine, so does Scraps. It takes a bit of convincing, but Seven offers to go as well. The party is given two options, the old hiking path and the wilderness around the Pillars of Heaven. The party ends up choosing the old hiking path, knowing that it's the faster route. The pathway quickly shows its age, as rocks have fallen onto the path, leaving the party unable to simply pass by. So, they choose to climb over the rocks rather than go around and risk stepping on the fleshy terrain. Rainn helps the few that have trouble up the rocks and they pass by without any incident. Once they pass over the rocks the party runs into a spot where the flesh has grown over the path, leaving only a couple of stones to hop across. Not willing to take this chance, Jax decides to pull out his eldritch cannon and burn the flesh away. The roll was a success. Jax burns the flesh away but.. not without consequence. The ground begins to stir, as something begins to grow out of the fleshy sprawl. An enemy known as the flayed.
The party rolls initiative and begin to fight The Flayed. Once the flayed reaches a low amount of HP, it calls in backup, a new flayed generates from the ground, letting out a fleshy screech before attacking the party. Quickly, Jax uses create bonfire to light the ground beneath the creature on fire, damaging it. Once this is done, Scraps comes in clutch, shooting the low hp flayed into the other, letting its body melt back into the flesh where it was birthed. The second flayed soon falls to the party, melting back into the ground. The party presses on, determined to bring back Cathrine. Mind you, through all of this Seven keeps brining up their god, Kariendon, pitching it to their party and trying to get people to join their commune. Once rounding a corner, the party spots a souvenir store, pleased at the sight of possible resources they enter the store but quickly find out that there is someone behind the back desk rummaging through things. Bishop looks at one of the anti-theft mirrors in the store and asseses the situation, throwing a rock at the desk in order to get the thing's attention. Quickly, something rises from behind the desk, hands up in surrender. They notice that they're missing a hand... and they're a robot! The party quickly establishes they mean no harm and so does the robot, They all introduce themselves and the robot reveals its name is Otis.
Otis explains that he lost his hand by getting into a fight with a crowhoard. Due to crowhoards loving shiny things, Otis was an easy target. Seven offers to help Otis, using chill touch to carterize the fleshy stump that's left from the crowhoard attack, this however damages him, but Otis doesn't seem to react. Rainn then heals Otis of this damage. The party definitely disagreed with this step taken by Seven, baffled how he came to thinking that was okay to do. Before leaving Otis tells the group not to hurt the crowhoards since he is studying them, he mentions a path out back of the store that is safe...ish for the travelers to take in order to retrieve his hand. The party must be careful traversing the basin path however, since there are still hazards out here. The group quickly comes across a sort of tar pit, it's full of a thick red goo. Bishop offers to pull down a nearby tree, creating a bridge for everyone to cross. it was a success! however Rainn didn't seem too pleased about the situation. The party reach the crowhoard nest... only to realize there are two! and the birds are home! One of the nests is perched atop a tree, while the other is within a cliff face. Half the party decides to distract, that being Rainn and Seven, while the other half of the party decides to try and climb up the tree and cliff in order to retrieve the hand. Rainn and Seven begin to distract the birds, forcing them to come down from their nests and swarm them.
Bishop climbs up the tree to find... no hand BUT there are plenty of shiny things stored within the nest. He gets an idea. What if he threw all of the shiny stuff on the floor to distract the birds... but this was not a success... a nat one roll! Bishop reaches to try and grab the shiny things from the nest but he loses his balance, falling to the ground and taking damage. Bishop quickly becomes enraged with the birds, targeting one and beginning to attack it, desregarding Otis's request. Rainn is attempting to pacify the birds while Seven is trying to attack them, also disregarding Otis' request. Bishop begins to ruthlessly attack one of the birds, landing a critical hit and using fury of blows. Bishop finishes off the creature by violently grabbing it, taking a huge bite out of the crow's neck, splattering blood all over his face and the ground. Soon after, Bishop shows extreme remorse, seeming shocked and saddened by what he'd just done. Rainn ends the fight with the second Crowhoard by putting it to sleep, pacifying the enemy. The group makes the decision to take the corpse of the Crowhoard back to Otis for study... but they quickly found out this was the wrong desicion. Otis, sitting atop the counter at the back of the store waves the group in before the corpse of the Crowhoard is placed upon his lap, Bishop crying as he does so. Otis lets out a gasp, pushing it off of him and expressing his horror to the group. A couple charisma checks later, Otis forgives the group, but it's clear this will not go unnoticed. Otis, still wanting to uphold the deal he made with the group he hands Rainn a crafting recipe for something called Salvage Serum. Now that it is nightfall, the group decides to stay with Otis for the night inside the souvenir store. Bishop, however does not decide to rest, instead deciding to bury the dead Crowhoard at the back of the building. In the dead of night, Bishop and the group begin to hear a distant howling, Scraps however does not wake up quite yet. Bishop can hear the howler approaching him, growling and snarling. It's one corner away from noticing him...
After a successful stealth check, Bishop sneaks away back into the store, reluctantly waking up Otis and informing him of the situation. Jax wakes Scraps up by throwing a bag of chips at him and they begin to barricade the doors. The group can hear the Howler dig up the corpse of the crowhoard, eating it. Soon after it turns its attention to the door, snarling. It sniffs under it, pawing at it with it's front hooves. It rams into the door a couple times, failing to knock it down before it whines, running back into the night.....