D&D Session Summary: Mayhem at the Orphanarium

Posted by Jen Gagne / Pixelscapes

I don’t usually post session summaries, but people on Twitter seemed amused by the commentary, so here you go…. the heavy-rotation anachronism starts after breakfast. Heh, heh, heh. I love DMing this game!

The Guild of Makers of Toys and Animated Curiosities

  • Aleph has offered to ask her Guild to send the message to Daggerford. She’s also eager to see her home, the Guild, again.
  • At the Guild, however, they aren’t directed to Doctor Wondersmith’s lab. Instead, the hallway bells lead them to another senior member of the Board of Makers….

Doctor Hubris von Glockenspiel

  • He is a pompous, rude gnome who declares he doesn’t have time to help them, he’s far too busy working on the next generation of his AutoHelper constructs (which look like 1950s-style robots).
  • He voluntold Aleph to take care of a customer service complaint he received earlier, “und den perhaps I vill be havink time to be sendink your message to Daggerford.”
  • The complaint is from a place called the Orphanarium, elsewhere in town. He insists the AutoHelpers are flawless and that it’s surely a case of user error.
  • He also says they should go check Doctor Wondersmith’s lab before leaving.

Jules

  • In Dr. W’s Lab, there is a boy Aleph doesn’t know. The boy spots Aleph and excitedly says, “You must be one of my sisters! I’m Jules, your brother.” She curtseys to him and he gives her a bow. She immediately accepts him without any question as her brother.
  • Jules says Dr. W took another sister, Mari, on a mission somewhere. Dr. W told Jules he should use the food service to sustain himself. So far, Jules has created a sandwich. There is no indication that this kid has ever left this room before, and he only mentions this one meal, so he has perhaps not been here for long (?!)
  • Daere suggests examining Jules to check if he has any health issues. Jules hops right up on the laboratory’s table for his exam. She uses Lay on Hands and discerns the boy has that unnatural blackened area (just like Aleph and Mari) except his is around his pancreas.
  • Aleph asks Jules about the manner of his Making. He says he doesn’t know yet, although Making the sandwich was enjoyable… but he wished for something sweeter. Daere theorizes that Jules’s manner of making is related to digestion (hence his anatomy) and therefore, Aleph offers to get Jules a confectioner’s kit.

The tweeting birdcage

  • Jules also points out a small brass birdcage Dr. W. left for Aleph. Inside is a blue-feathered construct of a bird, and the outside of the cage has just one button which is labeled “TWEET.” She experiments with it and the bird’s eyes light up, but nothing else seems to happen.
  • However, some time later, the bird begins tweeting until Aleph pushes the button. Through the bird, Dr. Wondersmith has sent a message of “The desert is now empty and just as boring as it ever was. #backinblack #strangerthings #truestory #nature #boring” and the bird projects a picture of Mari looking out over a desolate expanse. (What is a “hashtag”?)
  • Wembly naturally wonders if the tweeting will be a problem for party stealth in the future….

The Kitchens

  • They pass through the Guild’s Kitchen (a dark and foreboding place), the Forgotten Kitchen (which hasn’t been cleaned lately), the Secret Kitchen (full of lab equipment), and finally to their destination, the Forbidden Kitchen (which is essentially the lab from Breaking Bad).
  • Everybody suits up in yellow hazmat suits, like the staff who are already there.
  • Aleph has some soft serve ice cream. First she accidentally takes some from the rightmost dispenser, but the staff tell her that’s the Forbidden one today, so she dumps that in the Hazmat bin and gets more from the left dispenser instead.
  • Inquiring after the caramel apple they’re brewing, Aleph asks the staff how it’s going since “we wouldn’t want a repeat of Thursday!” The staff reply, “Definitely not, the week was long enough already.” They laugh in creepy unison.
  • Finally a staffer helps them locate confectioner supplies for Jules and they send it up a pneumatic tube to Wondersmith’s lab.

The Orphanarium

  • At the Orphanarium, the proprietor Miss Hann (Carol Burnett) is outside. She’s exasperated that they took so long to bother showing up. She says these AutoHelpers, which Doctor Hubris gave her as a tax write-off and she used to replace all her human staff, are going crazy instead of doing their chores.
  • She doesn’t seem to particularly care about the actual kids. Bishop asks how many kids there are and she shrugs and says, “Who knows, a bunch. I have it written down somewhere.” She locked the door when she got here to keep the situation contained and sent a messenger to Hubris.
  • Wembly shimmies up to look in one of the tiny, high windows and sees an office with three kids hiding behind the desk and shelf. He taps on the window, and a girl looks up, then she casts Minor Ilusion to spell out “HELP.”
  • Aleph is busy taking selfies using her new tweeting bird.
  • Dr. Wondersmith tweets a photo of a battle axe with the short message, “#lifehacks”
  • Miss Hann is too slow with the keys so Wembly picks the lock and the party heads inside.
  • For an orphanage, this place is really fancy. The kids are well-dressed and clean, and the decor is ostentatious. But, the kids are in a panic.

AutoHelper mayhem

  • These AutoHelpers are overfeeding the fish, chasing children while saying “HIDE AND SEEK,” breaking things while trying to clean them, etc. It’s chaos and the kids are terrified. As soon as the party tries to intervene, though, the AutoHelpers all shift into an aggressive mode while emitting “GUARD. GUARD. GUARD.”
  • Fight scene! Daere smites. Bishop uses his new crossbow. Wembly has his green glass willowleaf dagger and swings on the chandelier. Toots wades in the fish pond and swats AutoHelpers.
  • As for Aleph, she uses a Hypnotic Pattern to mesmerize three of the AutoHelpers — and one of the girls — with this text from her book:
    • 10 PRINT HELLO WORLD
    • 20 GOTO 10
  • The affected AutoHelpers all start emitting long ticker-tape paper strips that say “HELLO WORLD” over and over. Their area rapidly becomes difficult terrain.
  • The girl starts writing on the wall until her friend shakes her out of it. Then the girls cleans her graffiti using Prestidigitation.
  • Daere successfully smites the AutoHelper Plus (a black-lacquered advanced model, similar to the one Doctor Hubris was working on earlier) and after that, the AutoHelpers are easier to defeat.
  • Sometimes the AutoHelpers attack, but other times they try to clean the Orphanarium or even help the party — combing their hair, offering band-aids, etc.
  • Aleph tweets to Wondersmith asking how to switch the rampaging AutoHelpers off. Dr. W. tweets a vague message about, “The desert may be boring, but it’s a great place to #unwind.” (Cue Sleight of Hand rolls all around to unwind the disabled AutoHelpers.)

Aftermath at the Orphanarium

  • The party goes through the Orphanarium to check on the kids. Bishop scares some of them with his own mechanized appearance.
  • The kids are doing pretty well considering, just some scraped knees and bruises, which Daere heals.
  • Miss Hann is dismayed by the mess and demands that the Guild pay for all this, Aleph assures her Doctor Hubris will surely do so. The Guild will send some LIFTR units over to collect these AutoHelpers.
  • That means Miss Hann will have to hire human staff again. She’s really annoyed, that costs money. She says she’ll have to hit up some of their rich donors.
  • Daere asks one little boy, Tony, about how he got here. He said he was in the Fields Ward tent area and people from the Orphanarium were offering urchins bowls of soup if they could “show them a trick.” Miss Hann decided his trick was good enough and then he got to live here. Living here has been great, until the AutoHelpers got here. Daere gives Tony her name and address in case he or his friends ever need help.

Back to the Guild, confronting Doctor Hubris

  • Aleph says it isn’t her place to question a member of the Board of Makers, but would fully support anyone else who might. She’s clearly concerned about the “wrongness of Making” of these malfunctioning AutoHelpers, but seems duty-bound.
  • Everyone seems unhappy with Doctor Hubris von Glockenspiel, but it’s Daere who argues most. She demands to know why he would make them capable of harming people. He smugly claims, “How else can they serve as guards if they can’t hurt people.”
  • Daere hauls off and slaps him!
  • The Doctor is enraged. All the AutoHelpers in his lab turn to look at Daere, and so does a giant unidentifiable piece of equipment hanging from the ceiling. Whatever it is, it’s pointing right at her in rather threatening manner. Hubris demands that the party leave, immediately, and claims he’s being generous.
  • Aleph gets brave enough to remind him he promised to send a message to Daggerford — then they’ll go.
  • He snatches the piece of paper from her and says he’ll send it, especially if it means they’ll leave.
  • After they leave, Daere has slapper’s remorse. Usually she tries so hard to get along with people and not make waves…
  • Aleph is frustrated and upset. She doesn’t know why the Guild would keep a Maker like Hubris around. At the same time, she just doesn’t feel like she should criticize someone with such rank in the Guild: “He’s not just a member of the Board of Makers… he’s also part of the Secret Council of Seven, the Double-Secret Council, the Blind Council of Twelve, maybe even the Twelve Council of Nine.”

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