Pirates of the Mesozoic
Jump to navigation Jump to searchA team of cryptid hunters are transported into a world of Aztecs, dinosaurs, pirates, and UFOs.
Setting
A team of cryptid hunters are transported into a strange alien world, where they encounter Aztecs, cowboys, dinosaurs, pirates, and UFOs. Along the way, they are merged with alternate versions of themselves from other times, other places. How will they survive in this weird new world? And will they ever get home?
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Game Sessions
2019-05-28
A team of cryptid hunters in their outside broadcast vehicle are transported to a strange new world, inhabited by pirates, dinosaurs, murderous machines, and cowboys.
After narrowly escaping being killed by a prehistoric crinoid and a genuine dinosaur, they meet Sam Winston, who invites them to accompany him to Tranquility -- the closest thing to civilization within a day's travel. Leaving the broadcast truck behind (it's sitting in about eight feet of water), they start the trek to Tranquility.
YouTube recording of game session
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2019-06-04
The gang reaches the town of Tranquility, where they meet Barthan the provisioner, Tandy the bartender, Doctor Su, and Sheriff Hood. They start making themselves at home, while becoming aware that their memories are more complicated than they used to be. They attract the attention of Jakob, one of Edgelord's gang, but they embarrass him and then send him on his way...
YouTube recording of game session
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2019-06-11
The gang heads out into the wilds to try and find Emmet, who has gone missing. They discover that he has been abducted by ant people. Along the way, John Erlang gets in touch with his inner Chinese deity, and Michael is nearly eaten by crocobats.
YouTube recording of game session
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2019-06-18
The gang rescues Emmet -- along with two Aztecs and a Roman legionary named Marcus -- from the ant people. The Aztecs take off as soon as the group is safely away from the ant people nest, but Marcus accompanies therm back to Tranquility. They are hailed as heroes!
Later that day, they interrupt a "trial" -- Edgelord and his gang have tied Sam Winston to a post outside the newspaper office, and intend to whip him for "trading with the enemy" -- the Zhou Dynasty Chinese town of Wangguo. A brief scuffle ensues, as the good guys take down Edgelord's gang with ease. Edgelord himself proves to be more of a problem, but eventually they deal with him, and are hailed as heroes (again).
YouTube recording of game session
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2019-06-25
The Smith Gang (which is how the townsfolk have started referring to the PCs) settle into their lives in Tranquility. Captain Harrows builds a couple of robots, which then start building better robots. Doctor Anna kills and drags back a Parasaurolophus and uses it to make soap. Isko plays piano at the Red Dog Saloon. Michael works on making bullets, while teaching his new apprentice Jack the basics of blacksmithing. John Erlang flies on his cloud to reconnoiter the local area, finding cities of Aztecs, robots, and pirates. John Erlang also introduces himself to the Zhou city of Wangguo. He has tea with General Hu, the governor of Wangguo, and Moshu Shi, a Taoist magician.
Later, Sheriff Hood asks them to look over the belongings that Edgelord left behind: a phone and a tablet (both solar powered), a chest full of gold and silver, a pistol, and a small vial of blue liquid that they eventually identify as a nanite swarm that can temporarily make someone invisible.
While investigating the phone, they discover that Edgelord had been corresponding with someone calling themselves the Black Spider. It appears that the Black Spider has sinister designs on the town of Tranquility.
YouTube recording of game session
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2019-07-02
The Smith Gang makes contact with the Black Spider, and learns that the Black Spider works for someone called the Hag of Crag Keep. The Hag of Crag Keep apparently has designs on the town of Tranquility -- she wants the Thinking Machine. This may be connected to black knights which attempted to take control of the town's main source of fresh water. The Black Spider does not have a description of the Thinking Machine -- all they have is a riddle.
I can be played but I'm not a game
I have keys but I don't have any locks
I have hammers but I don't have any nails
I have pedals but I'm not a bicycle
I can be tuned but I'm not a radio
The gang finds the Thinking Machine, which is a player piano (constructed in the Martian city of Schiaparelli in 2417) located in the Red Dog Saloon. They name it Georgie and promise to play it.
Later, a Tyrannosaurus rex attacks the town, but the Smith Gang drives it away.
YouTube recording of game session
Fun facts about Tranquility!
The town of Tranquility, New Mexico was once located mid-way between El Paso and Tuscon. It was home to over a thousand good people, and a handful of people who were not quite so good. In 1873, during a freak storm, the town was transported to the Outland. That was nearly ten years ago. The town now has around 300 residents -- most of the original population died during the first few months after the town's appearance in Outland.
Tranquility has a relatively diverse population:
- around 60% (~180) white Americans (some of whom can speak Spanish, and a handful of whom can speak Athabascan)
- around 15% (~45) black Americans (some of whom can speak Spanish, and a handful of whom can speak Athabascan)
- around 15% (~45) Mexicans (all of whom can speak English in addition to Spanish, and a handful of whom can speak Athabascan)
- around 5% (~15) Native Americans (primarily Apache, most of whom can speak English in addition to Athabascan -- the native language of most of the town's Native American inhabitants)
- around 5% (~15) Chinese people (most of whom can speak English in addition to the Taishanese dialect of Chinese)
2019-07-09
General Hu arrives at Tranquility with a platoon of soldiers. The Smith Gang is asked by General Hu to find and retrieve an item that was stolen from Wongguo by some criminals from Tranquility. They track down Carlos and Jakob, destroying a stone golem the thieves had somehow summoned and killing Carlos in the gunfight. Jakob is taken back to Wongguo, where he will face one of the Five Punishments.
YouTube recording of game session
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2019-07-16
The Smith Gang heads back to Tranquility. Captain Harrows is making progress. His first generation robots have built second generation robots, which have completed the water purification plant. This is good news, because there are now dozens of dread guards blocking access to the town's well (which is located about five miles west of town), and they are lead by a dread guard commander. Captain Harrows constructs an explosive device which takes out all of the dread guard, and Isko makes short work of the dread guard commander.
In the sky far above the town, the Hag of Crag Keep uses her vroom broom for some skywriting... SURRENDER THE THINKING MACHINE. John Erlang flies up and attacks the vroom broom, damaging it and causing the Hag of Crag Keep to lose control momentarily. However, she regains control and flies away (discretion being the better part of valor).
YouTube recording of game session
2019-07-23
The Smith Gang heads north to find and rescue townsfolk who have been kidnapped by the Tenochca (the Aztecs of Chicomoztoc). Will the gang reach the townsfolk before the Tenochca sacrifice them?
YouTube recording of game session
2019-07-30
The Smith Gang returns to Tranquility with their rescued friends, only to discover that the Hag Of Crag Keep has poisoned the town's grain with ergot! Hundreds of people are desperately ill. Fortunately, Isko (with the aid of Doctor Su) is able to heal them, and no one dies.
The Smith Gang has had enough -- it's time to take the fight to the Hag Of Crag Keep. Captain Harrows and his automata construct a land vehicle out of the remains of the mobile broadcast van, and the team heads north. They pass the Valley Of The Floating Mesas, see many strange sights, and reach the edge of the Haunted Forest. Far in the distance, they can see their destination: Crag Keep.
The land machine can't make it through the Haunted Forest, and the harpies circling Crag Keep would make flying there unwise. They decide to stop at a small inn: the House Of The Dragon. The wreaths of garlic in the windows give them some pause -- and then they are attacked by scores of Utahraptors! The battle is a pitched one, and the land machine is damaged, but they make it inside the inn to safety. The innkeeper welcomes them warmly.
"Welcome to my house! Enter freely. Go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring."
YouTube recording of game session
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2019-09-10
As the innkeeper's staff cleans up the mess from the battle, and Isko treats the gang's wounds, they notice something strange. The dead dinosaurs are not dinosaurs at all: they are horseflies, each about the size of a loaf of bread. More than that, they have a brain-like growth where their eyes should be. Michael does a quick dissection, and determines that the insects have been taken over by some kind of fungal parasite.
A group of people from a futuristic frontier settlement take refuge in the inn, and ask the gang for help. A band of cyber-orcs ("cyborcs!" exclaims Captain Harrows) has been attacking the settlement's livestock. The gang mounts up on the land machine and heads to the nearby settlement, Northwood's Rest.
The gang quickly determines that the livestock raids are the work of the same fungal-infected horseflies that attacked them at the House Of The Dragon -- and that everyone who has come in contact with them is infected!
YouTube recording of game session
2019-09-17
The Smith Gang tracks down the source of the psychotropic parasitic fungus-infected horseflies. It's a crashed spaceship! And it appears to have been in a collision with a different spaceship. They deal with the fungus, but first they have to destroy a fungal giant, which may have once been Joshua MacGregor.
They also make diplomatic overtures to a band of cyborg orcs.
YouTube recording of game session
2019-09-24
The Smith Gang arranges a truce between the cyber-orcs and the futuristic settlers (with the support of the respected settler Olaf MacGregor), then heads into the Haunted Forest. They encounter some strange apparitions (including some friendly but immobile mushrooms), but manage to avoid any real danger until they encounter Gutwrench, a four meter tall abomination made out of corpses and toxic alchemy. Gutwrench is no match for our heroes, however, and they reach the edge of the Haunted Forest. Ahead of them stretches a winding stone causeway. Far beyond rises the spectre of Crag Keep....
YouTube recording of game session
2019-10-01
The Smith Gang moves forward onto the causeway to Crag Keep. Along the way, they encounter several patrols of dread guard, but dispatch them without much difficulty. They encounter a few squads of dread guard commanders, as well, but even those are no match for the gang.
Halfway to the keep, they find a town in which everyone has been turned to stone. Investigation reveals a metal-and-crystal obelisk at the edge of the town, which pulses with a strange energy. Erring on the side of caution, they destroy it, ending the threat it poses to anyone else who enters the town. For the townsfolk already turned to stone, alas, nothing can be done.
At last, they reach the drawbridge to Crag Keep. It is a huge structure, built to resemble a fanged mouth, windows like malevolent eyes above it. On guard are two more of the hag's skeleton guards: the dread guard doorkeepers! Fast talking by Captain Harrows sends them to retrieve the Hag Of Crag Keep, and the gang enters uncontested.
However, Crag Keep is enormous. Since they know which room Georgie the player piano is being held in (from the outside), the decide to fly up to it, instead of trying to find a way to it from the inside. They land, where they find Georgie -- and a trap! Orson the Vulture is prepared for them, and cancels all of their powers!
... except those of Michael, who uses a Viking Jedi mind trick to get Orson to release them. He does. Michael then compels Orson to tell them if he can be trusted. He can't. So Isko kills him (narrowly beating out Erlang, who was planning to do the same thing).
The question now is... how do they get Georgie, who is chained to the floor with massive chains, out of here?
YouTube recording of game session
2019-10-15
At long last, the Smith gang faces the Hag Of Crag Keep! After a brief battle, the Hag herself sues for parley, and the Smith Gang accedes. They negotiate for a bit, but eventually she agrees to release Georgie the AI player piano if the Smith Gang retrieves the Eye Of Odin for her.
Map and drawing of the Eye of Odin in hand, they head back to Tranquility to return Georgie, and then head into the Madlands to seek the Eye Of Odin.
After traveling for a few days, they find the Eye Of Odin in a ruined hospital. They discover that the Eye Of Odin is actually an ultra-advanced holographic display unit. The gang proceeds to disassemble it and prepare it for transport --if they can get it out of the hospital.
YouTube recording of game session
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2019-10-23
(This game takes place in the middle of the 2019-10-15 game, before the gang left Tranquility to find the Eye Of Odin.)
The Smith gang packs up their hovercraft and heads into the mountains to rescue an ankylosaur from lizard people. Along the way, they meet a goblin inventor named Grimbles Cogknob, destroy a crop of mind-controlling flowers, kill a few lizard people, trap the lizard people (at least temporarily) in a hidden valley, and foil the plans of an evil wizard.
Captain Harrows gets a spunky 12-year-old assistant tinkerer named Tye (a nickname; her name is Ottilie Harrington). Michael gets several samples of a plant which has tubers that are high in sucrose and flowers that produce a pollen which enslaves the will.
YouTube recording of game session
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2019-10-28
The Smith Gang drops Tye off in Tranquility, then goes to get the Eye Of Odin from a ruined high tech hospital (fighting weird medical monstrosities and genetically mutated ghouls along the way). They then return to Tranquility, swap out some gear, and go to deliver the Eye Of Odin to the Hag Of Crag Keep. They haved a relatively pleasant dinner, during which the gang learns a bit more about the Hag and her theories about Outland.
YouTube recording of game session
2019-11-06
The Smith Gang encounters an old enemy -- Edgelord. A couple of years have gone by for him, and he's not the same man (he looks like a bearded Tarzan now). After he left Tranquility, he was captured by Aztecs, and forced to murder people (or die himself as a sacrifice) every single morning. Just when he was thinking about letting the Aztecs kill him, one of his caretakers, an Aztec priestess named Mokta rescued him. They have been living in the jungle since them. He seems genuinely contrite about his behaviour in Tranquility, and all agree to let bygones be bygones.
When they get back to Tranquility, they find out it is under attack by giant (cat sized) termites, but the Smith Gang makes short work of them. With the help of Roberta Warren, a recently-arrived electrician (and her line truck), the gang establishes an electrical fence around the town to discourage future giant termite invasions.
They then head east to find the Pashupatastra. The Hag of Crag Keep has offered to turn a town full of petrified people back to being not-petrified, if the gang finds the Pashupatastra and brings it back to her.
O thou of mighty arms, that weapon (Pashupatastra) is superior to the Brahma, the Narayana, the Indra, the Agneya, and the Varuna weapons. Verily, it is capable of neutralizing every other weapon in the universe. It was with that weapon that the illustrious Mahadeva had in days of yore, burnt and consumed in a moment the triple city of the Asuras. With the greatest ease, Mahadeva, using that single arrow, achieved that feat. That weapon, shot by Mahadeva's arms, can, without doubt consume in half the time taken up by a twinkling of the eyes the entire universe with all its mobile and immobile creatures. In the universe there is no being including even Brahma, Vishnu and the deities, that are incapable of being slain by that weapon.
-- Kisari Mohan Ganguli's translation of Mahabharat
YouTube recording of game session
2019-11-12
The Smith Gang reaches the Madlands, in search of the Pashupatastra. They encounter a towering crystal structure, which is both a temple and a starship -- and home to the Arachne and their gods (?), the Spirits. They tell the gang that the Pashupatastra was stolen a year and a half ago, and taken south.
The gang heads south, where the landscape turns to massive orange buttes and winding canyons, which eventually lead to a sea. Near the sea, they find a cruise ship impaled on a butte. They later learn that this is the Carnival Star, shipwrecked here over 50 generations ago.
The gang arrives just in time to repel an attack by raiders on winged rats.
YouTube recording of game session
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2019-11-19
The Smith Gang heads into the catacombs of the raiders, and rescues the prisoners from the Carnival Star. The prisoners have been subjected to some kind of weird science life-transfer using the Pashupatastra, leaving them wizened and about half the size they used to be. The Raiders apparently used the prisoners they abducted to preserve and extend their own lives.
The Smith Gang kills about a quarter of the raiders, and claims the Pashupatastra. They also capture one of the raiders. Michael sifts through the raider's memories, and discover that as far as he knows, the raiders do not know how to reverse the life-draining effect -- but the wizard from whom the raiders stole the Pashupatastra might!
Still debating what to do next, the gang packs up the survivors of the Carnival Star and heads toward Tranquility...
YouTube recording of game session
2019-11-26
The Smith Gang heads back to the Shivanna -- the towering crystal temple/starship of the Arachne and the Spirits. They ask the Spirits if they can use the Pashupatastra to heal the humans, but the Spirits say that this is not their concern.
Having little recourse, the gang goes to Tranquility, drops off the life-drained, "raisin-ified" humans, then heads back to find the wizard that the raiders stole the Pashupatastra from.
They find his tower, and break into it. It is both high tech and somewhat ruined. Confronting the wizard Salazar, he makes it plain that he can help the humans, but he has no desire to do so. A fight ensures, and Salazar flees, but not before Michael finds the super-science formula to restore the raisin-ified Carnival Star humans from Salazar's memory.
Before they leave, the gang attacks the base of Salazar's tower, knocking it over into the sea.
YouTube recording of game session
2019-12-03
The Smith gang heads out into the Madlands to the ruined hospital, using the advanced medical technology there to synthesize the super-science formula that Michael had gleaned from the mind of the wizard Salazar.
On returning to Tranquility, Tye shares her map of the time dilation, and her theory that it is related to the gold obelisks scattered around the Outlands. To which the Smith Gang replies, "... what obelisks?" It turns out that people with multiple personas (like the Smith Gang and the Hag of Crag Keep) don't notice the obelisks unless someone else points them out. The obelisks appear to be advanced technological artifacts that somehow preserve the peculiar world of the Outland.
YouTube recording of game session
2019-12-17
The Smith Gang uses the Pashupatastra and the super-science formula to de-raisin-ize the victims of the raiders. The passengers and the town of Tranquility throw a huge party, and by popular acclaim, they are all sworn in as deputies of Sheriff Rose. The party goes well into the night.
The next day, the Smith Gang all go about their business, until Captain Harrows notices that Tye is missing. They track her down hundreds of kilometers away, driving her modified locomotive. But Tye appears to have been replaced with a mechanical simulacrum (complete with a simple song and dance routine)!
I'm a mechanical girl
From a mechanical world
I follow directions, whatever I'm told
I never get hot and I never get cold
I never have lived so I never grow old
That's because I'm a mechanical girl
I'm a mechanical girl
From a mechanical world
I do as I'm ordered and never ask why
I never can laugh and I never can cry
I never have lived so I never shall die
That's because I'm a-- 'cause I'm a-- 'cause I'm a-- 'cause I'm a--
'cause I'm a mechanical girl
The gang accompanies Mechanical Tye to Crag Keep, where they confront the Hag. However, their confrontation is interrupted by the arrival of the wizard Salazar's death ship (complete with theme music).
A fierce battle ensues.
Epilogue
The Smith Gang and the Hag have an uneasy truce. She reverses the spell on Tye, as well as the spell she used to turn the nearby townsfolk to stone. She also agrees to allow Amelia Earhart to store the Pashupatastra in her Curtiss P-40 Warhawk for safe keeping... for now.
YouTube recording of game session
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Useful Links
- 10 Special North American Dinosaurs
- 23 Exceptional Prehistoric Creatures
- China, 500–1000 A.D.
- Chinese name generator
- Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period
- Mandarin Chinese Pinyin Pronunciation Guide
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