Memories of Muck and Filth (UVP - Campaign 1 - Session 3)

PCs:

Bron - Goetic; wielder of a Pale iron dagger

Naiya - Weaver; wielder of Lust, Alleyways, and The Tower

Balenor Castafiel - Vance; brooker of no frivolous haircuts

As the party descended through the cellar door into the bowels of a titan, Naiya and Bron caught each other's eyes. This was not the first time they had been in a dungeon. Once, far away to the East back in Satyrine...

Cue flashback!

Every few years The Alone (the ocean on Satyrine's western coast) vomits a particular obscenity onto Satyrine's shores. A floating trash island known as "The Garbage Barge". Several miles wide and several more deep, this veritable iceberg of filth exists in a somewhat symbiotic relationship with our dear tortured City of Notions (Satyrine). The Garbage Barge will take away anything undesired, however unwieldy or strange. Bought a new property and the existing building on the lot is haunted? Why pay through the nose for professional de-ghosting when you can just throw the whole damn house away and start fresh? The second function of the Barge is to provide jobs to the city's poorest. Work prospects in the city can be slim in the best of times, and among certain residents the stink that presages the arrival of the Barge several days out is a herald of salvation. The Barge is always looking for more trash divers to help keep it running and sift through the refuse for the good stuff, the stuff that might be someone else's treasure.

The Barge is also a massive civic nuisance that has been lowering coastal property values for years. Did I mention it smells? Typically it stops a mile or so off shore, but it doesn't exactly have... well steering, and sometimes it rams right into the coast. It usually gets a pass for this as the district it sidles up to ends up being the Hollows, a destitute district with no political clout. However... this year's arrival was not typical. The Barge rammed right into the coast, and did so much farther South than usual, near Zardim. Zardim is a nice district. A mercantile district. An upper middle class district. A bohemian district full of trendy seaside restaurants and artist's studios. To make matters worse, the Barge was having one of its... problems.

Sometimes trash is dangerous. A few decades ago someone threw out a whole lake, dam included. The lake was infested with a strange, rampant slime mold that gave off volatile gas. The lake was encased in a massive, stadium sized concrete capsule and dumped deep in the Barge. The capsule was outfitted with a pump rig to draw out the gas into a massive flare at the top whenever the levels got to high. Except the pump has been broken for about a week, and two barge worker teams have already gone down there and not come back. So now the city has a trash island embedded with the equivalent of a hydrogen bomb sitting on the coast of one of its favorite districts.

This qualifies as a vislae problem.

Bron wasn't sure what he did to get trash bomb defusal duty, but saddling first degrees with shitty assignments was practically an Order sponsored pastime among Goetics. The briefing was simple. 

"Trash Barge's here but it's in the wrong spot. Apparently it's also going to blow up in about 24 hours. Go make sure that doesn't happen. Try and get the names of any spiritual entities involved. Oh, and due to the post Second War ecumenical vislae accountability agreements, there's a Weaver here who will be accompanying you on this assignment. You remember Naiya?"

Bron and Naiya were both issued Maker crafted hazmat medallions to protect them from the stink, and caught a cab down to Zardim. The district was practically abandoned; it's hard to attract restaurant patrons when your restaurant is in the shadow of a nomadic landfill. Naiya helped herself to the bar of an eatery right by the Barge called "The Scintillating Shell" that had apparently been vacated in a hurry since the staff forgot to lock up. She sipped a cocktail as they took in the fetid magnitude of the Barge and tried to decide if they even wanted to do this job.

A figure approached them from farther down along the boardwalk.

"Greetings fellow vislae. Balenor Castafiel, Postulant."

Bron let out a long sigh. The cavalry had arrived. Of course the Vances had sent someone; the Paresaad wouldn't miss a chance to turn a civic emergency into a PR opportunity. They even furnished him with a rare map of the Barge. Naiya noticed the strained look on the Vance's face. Apparently while he had a map, he had not been given protection from the stink. She ribbed him a bit.

"How wonderful that a real professional showed up! Now you can go in there and fix this whole situation while we, erm, guard this bar!"

Bron was all for ribbing the Vance, but as much as he'd like to make the Vance do the dirty work, he (unlike Naiya) had superiors to impress, and they would not be happy if a Vance got all the credit.

"Naiya my friend, don't you think there might be some interesting treasure down there? One man's trash and all that?"

But Naiya was two rums in and would not be swayed from her Weaver given right to flout responsibility. She gave her hazmat medallion to Balenor in a sign of indifference.

"I don't need trinkets to keep my composure. You boys run along and fix the gas lake or whatever."

And so the Goetic/Vance duo headed aboard the Barge. They wandered into a shanty town of homes for barge workers who were permanent residences, and after navigating some anti-vislae suspicion, they managed to find a barge worker named Tocker who "warn't afraid a no wizard bidness". He agreed to lead them down to the gas lake. The fastest way down was through "the subway", a pneumatic tube system that some rogue mage had inflated with a souped up enlarge spell until it spidered through most of the Barge's infrastructure. The crammed into a claustrophobic capsule and rocketed down into the depths of the titanic trash heap.

They arrived at Great Gas Lake station to find... Naiya slouched up against a wall waiting for them. Bubbles of filth sporadically popped into existence around her head and burst to spill their brackish contents on the ground. Apparently some sort of weave to keep the stink away from her.

"I got bored" she shrugged. "Plus that bar ran out of rum. Figured I'd save you two from ballsing this job up."

Tocker grinned from ear to ear.

"Well I didna know you'd have a lady wizard with ya!"

Naiya flashed him a "do you really want to spend the rest of your life as a newt" look.

Before they cracked open the airlock and headed into the pressurized interior of the entombed lake, Bron decided to summon some aid. He was picking up a strong spiritual presence from within the lake capsule that aligned with the Nightside of Green. Something was festering in there. He tried to summon a similar entity and ended up staring at a gelatinous copy of himself. A human sized slime mold. A colloquy commenced. The entity would perform tasks beyond the scope of its forte. The Goetic would give up his hazmat medallion. Bron tried his luck at some advanced bargaining and managed to convince the slime entity to accept the medallion after they were done dealing with the gas lake. Turns out slime molds don't have a strong conception of time.

And so they entered the pressurized heart of the Barge.

They passed through the tiny airlock in pairs: first Naiya and Balenor, then Bron and his slime summons, then Tocker pouting about being unable to score a moment to talk to Naiya alone in the airlock. Each trip through the airlock took several minutes as the antiquated systems tried to acclimate them to the pressurized interior environment. On the other side they found themselves standing on the shell of a dead dam. Balenor lit up the gloom with the heatless glow of a torchlight cantrip cast on his Testament of Suns. The floating searchlight revealed a monstrous tangle of machinery at the center of the lake, and large pools of sickly looking orange goo everywhere. The air was thick and oppressively hot. Above them, a catwalk arced from the dam to the pump structure at the center. At around the midpoint of the catwalk, there looked to be a body hanging upside down, tangled up in some cables. It seemed the previous work crews had not fared well.

The vislae set right to business investigating things. Balenor used a Pull spell to clear slime off the pier, and Bron experimented with slicing off a small bit of it and feeding it to his slime man summons. The slime man grew bigger, and rejoiced at the tiny victory over the much bigger rival slime colony. Assimilation was growth. Naiya's keen Weaver insights led to discovering tracks: bootprints seemingly acid etched into the concrete of the dam leading from the sluice controls to the edge of the dam... and right down the side to the water's edge.

No time to investigate that though. The vislae pressed on across the pier to the machine core at the center of the lake. Inside there was strangely glowing wiring, obviously detached from the fuse box attached to the pump controls. Balenor reached out towards the wiring, only to have the glowing wiring suddenly animate like a viper and lash out at him!

And that's where the memory ended! Did Balenor survive? Did the vislae prevent the Barge from exploding? Is present day Naiya thinking about how the last time she descended into a dark pit with Bron it turned out to be gross and devoid of treasure? Most likely!

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Balenor was voted MVP for efficiently clearing the slime from the pier. I got some feedback from Bron's player about the colloquy procedure and how it felt good to be able to try and tweak the terms a little bit if desired. Settle with what you got, or make a save to bend the terms in your favor a bit. I like that and I'll probably keep it.

Overall I thought the session was a success. It was cool to have only two returning players and still be able to have some interesting fiction take place. It also felt really good to be on a short IRL time budget but not rush the session at all. We just went along at a leisurely pace, soaking up the details and the building dramatic tension, and cut the session when our time ran out. It was just a memory after all. The details about what happened next could be filled in by players later at narratively relevant moments if desired. Or we could return to roleplay it if we ever have this same group of players again.

Other meta notes:

Turns out UVP is decent for one shots but I'm still working on how to quickly bring players up to speed on important setting details since the setting has a lot going on. Balenor was a premade character with a different name that I handed to the player since they wanted to get into the action right away. They changed the name to Balenor, asked a few questions about how to embody a Vance, and we got rolling very fast. I'll work on whipping up premade characters for the other Orders as well since a Vance was all I had on hand this time.

The adventure material for this session was taken from the wonderful zine "You Got A Job On The Garbage Barge" by Amanda Lee Franck, and the maps above are her illustrations. It is a mini setting book that is absolutely bursting with character, and I had a great time slotting it into my campaign for an instant trash themed adventure. I encourage you to pick up your own copy here:
https://amandalee.itch.io/you-got-a-job-on-the-garbage-barge