Against the Ropes - Crossroads Campaign Session 1

Jones caught up with me a few days later at Kintaro's Emporium. He had just a barrel of bullets there which I usually came through to look for functional ammunition. It's sort of like heading down to the game shop and filtering through their Magic singles for the cards you needed for a deck. Fortunately for me, I had always opted for the most simple gun to maintain and load while I lived on Earth, and there's usually enough bullets for my revolver that I can last quite a while. If a cult is building up, though, I might need to start looking into smithing my own ammo.

Apparently, we were going to make a play for the Catacombs. I asked who "we" was and he was a bit vague on the answer, but I still hadn't found the box Petrilly wanted me to find and putting a stop to eldritch abominations is, sort of, my calling. So I gathered up the harmonica and the revolver and went out with him.


We turned out to be something like ninety other people being teleported in from outside by a bunch of devas. Payment to be a magic item and egress from Nowhere. They had us brute forcing the labyrinth with the devas promising to evac as needed. Being a bit nervous about the likelihood of people getting themselves killed, I opted to let on about the map the dog had put in my head, but they didn't seem that trusting of it. To be honest, I don't blame them at all.

Kelmar was a large tigerfolk who seemed a bit out of place. Rather like me this seemed to be his first rodeo and he was looking about with a cautious expression that indicated he wasn't certain what to make of this whole thing. He also didn't seem all that understanding of what exactly a demigoddess or even a god was. Which was a bit odd for most of the people I met, but he certainly wasn't the first person in Nowhere to come from a place that didn't have gods or celestials. I'd had a similar bit of culture shock the first time I realized their people other than Christians back on Earth. He spent a lot of his time tracking down herbs and making poultices.

Wyndelly is a gnome woman with an interest in guns to put most Americans to shame. She was especially interested to get a look at my bullets and gun to see how they managed to operate without any magic. I get the feeling she was a bit disappointed that I wasn't an expert of any sort, but I did mention some of the firearms back on Earth. She seemed especially, disturbingly interested when I mentioned automatic firearms. I'd worry about introducing the concept to the world around me, but that same world also had magic that put the magic of my world to shame and easily competed with firearms for sheer destructive force.

Rhea is a noble of some sort and the leader of our group. When I say she's a noble, I actually mean that in the fullest possible sense of the word. She isn't like my family of noble-in-name only hereditary rich folk. In fact, she's something you don't often see in Nowhere, a fully functional and operating paladin. Usually, the best you get in Nowhere is an ex-paladin, though there are a handful of them around that are searching for something.

Then we come to Ex-Allifers, who reminds me of the proto-fascist malcontents back home. He seemed to refuse to even acknowledge me, though I was in a half-elf guise at the time to better go unnoticed, and he insisted on referring to Kelmar as "it". The only one of our group that he showed any sort of respect was Rhea. This, unfortunately, was supposed to be the man who was assigned to be our healer.


Going down into the labyrinth, the Catacombs, it was almost impossible for me to hold back the feeling of familiarity that came over me once I was in the halls. It became a bit obvious that the map in my head was at least partially accurate. Unfortunately, the map didn't tell me anything about the hazards and the first room I led us too was populated by a sort of tentacle monster.

Fortunately, this one didn't have any sort of hentai proclivities. The bad news was that it seemed to be hungry and immediately set about grabbing the lot of us and dragging us in for a nip. A fair-sized chunk was ripped out of me and I suspected that my adventure was going to be short lived until the cleric managed to heal me up. So I awoke to find most of the party wrapped up and pulled in with a magical glowing hammer flying around and smashing at Ex-Allifers' direction.

The creature had almost rock-hard skin and deflected bullets from both myself and Wyndelly as it kept us restrained and focused on escape. It was easy enough to distract with a few choice insults, however, indicating that it had something of an intellect. We were able to whittle it down with sword and bullet, though finally it was the flame from one of the cleric's spells that took the beast down.

We decided to take a half-hour to rest and recover after that. I let my harmonica add to the restful atmosphere as we discussed how to take the explorations further.

Character Journal