Maps, informative pages, and other content for Pygmana, a homebrew D&D world.
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The player characters are transported to a haunted manor home somewhere unknown, with a creepy vibe. They explore a bit, discovering random bodies around the house, who turn out to be famous and wealthy men accused of serious crimes. They also discover a library full of books, one of which is open to a passage explaining that if a body sacrificed to a deity is consecrated before the soul has been collected by its assigned psychopomp, then that soul can be released to their god rather than being forced to the deity they have been sacrificed to, unless the soul has made some kind of agreement with someone else when they were alive.
They are interrupted after some time by the entry of Constance Hatchaway, who appears from the attic upstairs and demands to know what the characters are doing in their house. Constance is being possessed off and on by Paimon, the demon of Greed, who introduces herself as Uben’s parent and starts to interact with the characters directly. She makes two deals with them: One with Celia, and one with Briar. Constance is a Paimon cultist, and has been sacrificing these bodies to Paimon and receiving incredible wealth in return for her sacrifices. The bodies are consecrated, and Paimon loses out on some of the souls that were meant to be sacrificed to her by Constance. Lucifer seems to be entertained by this. The characters then wake up from this as though from a dream, except that Briar finds the comb in one of her pockets.
Deals:
Paimon gave Briar a comb to kill her stepfather with, in exchange for half of her stepfather’s money buried in the ground.
Celia bargained for assistance during her trip to Persephone’s realm to get back the soul of her beloved, in exchange for taking a few souls back with her.
Hacathra, who was floating in nothingness the entire time the party was gone, is discovered by Lucifer, who happened to be passing by. Lucifer performs some kind of scan on Hacathra, notes that there is something odd about her, and agrees to return Hacathra to her party in exchange for a lesser boon, which Uben then explains to her means that she owes Lucifer about a week of her time. Briar finds a baby monster and is struck by maternal instinct; must go back to town to buy a crib, register the baby for school, etc.
Lucifer appears in the cave and drops Hacathra off, and in a show of unusual graciousness turns off the poisonous gas for them. She then vanishes after booping Hacathra’s nose. The party, having defeated all of the drow and captured the one who was escaping, has some time to explore the caves. They find a strange machine with a device on the end that might fire a beam, made of brass and different metals. They also find a statue and altar to Lolth, on which is a prayer book open to a prayer for sacrifice, as well as a mural depicting a spider in the center of a web surrounded by dying members of every mortal race, and drow climbing ladders made of webs up toward the central spider. Espera scratches the mural, revealing some kind of possible door underneath it.
The party frees Nadine, who was in a cell located nearby the altar cavern, and her pink feather amulet that makes people talkative is returned to her. Ember loots the corpse of Vhurdaer, and finds minor treasure and a crystal amulet with a deep red feather inside that makes her feel incomplete without things. They then discover the treasure room, full of items stolen from families around the area, and the loot is divided up amongst the party. There is also a map of Pygmana with Xs in various places around the entire world. The drow is left behind in the treasure room, untied but with no way to haul herself up onto the surface.
The party (Uben and Briar) arrived at the mines, and climbed down into the lower parts of the dungeon where they found a room with an unclimbable glass wall and the door leading into the forbidden area of the mine at the top. Uben cast Ray of Frost onto the glass, which allowed ice to form onto the wall to create steps to climb up it; once at the top, they were able to get through the door.
Inside the forbidden zone, they found a large cavern through which a river ran into an underground lake, around which the caverns had formed. On exploring this cavern, the party was approached by 3 imps, who greeted Briar (at first) as they would a drow who was actually in charge of them and asked if Uben was a new sacrifice being brought for the machine. Briar said yes, and the imps led them into the next room, where Vhurdaer and a lackey were standing near the altar. Vhurdaer immediately recognized the party and attacked.
The party took some fierce blows from the imps at first, and then Celia– who up until that point had been struck with the curse of Papers and Paychecks– arrived at the cavern, and joined the fight. Between the three of them they destroyed the imps and got Vhurdaer at swordpoint. Celia allowed Vhurdaer to bargain for her life if she wanted to. Vhurdaer rejected the proposition, and was killed. Meanwhile, in the back of the room, the unnamed-so-far lackey pulled a lever, which caused some type of gas to begin to enter the room from vents in the walls and ceilings. She then turned and fled into a room on the other side of the cavern, and the party pursued her.
Briar and Espera catch up with the courier, attempt to steal the document, and wake him up a little. They talk and he agrees to give them the document, and Espera tells him to go back to her hometown and tell her parents that he sent her and perhaps they will give him a job in their restaurant. She gives him a special jar of smoked paprika so they will know he is truly who he says he is. With that, they return to town.
Meanwhile, in town, Celia and Uben have a conversation with Mordra about the state of the town, wherein Mordra informs them that she thinks any sabotage is good sabotage even if it doesn’t fix the town right away, and that she has reason to believe that Nadine has been brought down into the mines by the Drow, and that people who are brought down to the mines by the Drow after being arrested by them never make it out. They are simply never seen again. They also learn that the Grave Key, which supposedly is connected to a mysterious resistance group in Munich, is located somewhere in the Ammersee Graveyard.
Once the others return from their adventure with the courier, they learn that there are demons in the mines as indicated by specific demonic signs (lots of dead squirrels), and she draws them a map of the upper mine levels so they can make their way to the forbidden zones more easily.
The party escapes the Drow base and finds Khargol in the tavern. They update her on their operation inside the base, and she says that it's likely that there will be an investigation. They look at the disciplinary files that were picked up from the office; the name of the Drow authority who gave the disciplinary write ups are signed several times on these documents, and they discover that the higher ranked officers in Munich are displeased with this garrison. Specifically, they make reference to official Drow strategic procedure regarding not making excessive arrests or inflicting excessive punishment in the interest of maintaining control over the community that they are attempting to extract resources from.
They then discuss with her their next best steps, and she resolves to try to discover if there is a mole giving out information to the Drow about resistance meetings by giving different meeting times to different people and seeing when the Drow try to interrupt their meeting. The last thing she tells them is that there is a rumor of a resistance group in Munich that the group can ask for help.
The party enters the common area of the tavern and begin to strike up conversation with the people there. The bartender, a half elf Twink named Thebelar, indicates support for the group and tells Jean a little about himself and a man in Munich that he’s into named David, who works at a bar called the Three Legged Sow.
Uben strikes up a conversation with a group of three young people playing dominoes. Celia discovers a leather and hunting/fishing goods store, which has a standoffish proprietor, and she asks a little bit about the town. She buys a leather purse with a moonstone on it, and then draws a design in the road in Thieves’ Cant warning other thieves that something is going down in the town. The general mood in the tavern is tense and nervous as it becomes clear that nobody has seen any Drow inside it for hours.
Eventually, someone comes inside to tell the whole tavern that a courier was just seen leaving the town headed toward Munich. Espera and Briar hop onto the town goat and ride off after the courier, while the rest of the party remain in Ammersee.
The party meets by the light of the moon under an old oak tree by the shore of an enchanted lake. Khargol, the lead miner, tells them that the miners have been passively resisting the Drow attempts to mine lead and silver out of their mountain, and that they have been holding meetings organized by Nadine to organize their resistance, but that once the Drow figured out that these meetings were happening, they were using disruptions like releasing the goat to prevent them from having meetings. Hylliphis, the naiad of Ammersee, tells the party that the mining had led to pollution of her lake and that she would like it to stop.
After some consultation on the best way to solve the problem, the party decides to infiltrate the headquarters of the local Drow authority so that they may be able to find evidence that could allow them to appeal upwards to a higher authority in the Drow Empire. One party member bribes the guards at the front of the headquarters for 15 minutes of visitation time with Nadine. The rest of the party uses a hidden back entrance to enter the station, where they immediately knock out a guard and then make their way into the kitchen and barracks areas. One party member searches the kitchen and finds the alcohol rations, which they then break and pour over the latrine and place the guard in to make it look like they were passed out.
In the barracks, the party accidentally wakes up a sleeping drow and kills him, then throws his body into the latrine. They have a brief conversation with Nadine, who tells them that there’s an administrative office nearby, which they then search for documents related to disciplinary action. Finding such a file, the party then leaves the base.
Each of the characters arrives in Ammersee, a small mountain lead/silver mining town that is nearby a beautiful lake. At the base of the mountain is farming community that trades food in exchange for lead and silver from the mining town. When they arrive they find a rampaging giant goat named Bess, who has escaped from the fenced-in commons in the center of the town.
Ember went to the improvised ward set up by the local witch, Nadine, and offered to help heal the wounded, then made friends with an orc flower vendor named Zoran. Celia pickpocketed some Drow officials who were watching from the door of their nearby barracks, finding a silver ring. Briar discovered a golden bridle laying in the commons pen. (Tiefling's name) met a lowborn tiefling named Mordra and made friends with her.
Espera attempted to tackle the goat and was eventually successful when the goat was distracted by an apple. Celia took the opportunity to lasso the goat, and Hacathra was successful in slipping the bridle onto Bess, immediately rendering her docile.
In the aftermath, the characters assisted in the town cleanup and gathered information. Nadine gave a second golden bridle to Ember, and then was arrested by the Drow authority, who accused her of setting Bess loose herself, and she was taken into the Drow authority barracks.
Celia spoke to the head miner, an orc named Khargol, and covertly made plans to meet up with her at a tree by the lake at 2 AM. Hacathra overheard them and made her way to the same tree to lie in wait for them. Espera went to the witch's hut to investigate it.
The party gets a visit from Paimon, who says they need to go get a map of the unicorns from a house that had been lived in by a necromancer in fake Japan. Paimon was at a meeting during this. They go into the house, get some cursed objects, and get the map before fighting a large group of wights with their angel blades, before discovering that there might be some connection between the wights and the unicorn blood. At the end, they hear of a problem with some person attacking people.
The morning after the party, Decarabia comes back and gets a high five, Paimon gives faith a feather. They show Lucifer the shack they made for him, and Lucifer gives them a flashback of Lucifer breaking Paimon’s wing and Paimon begging for mercy as a toddler.
Faith asks God Almighty for holy water and concocts a plan to sell a lot of it.
Party started with Faith and Paimon leaving to get ready for the party, and the others leaving to make nice with Lucifer’s paladin Bertram. Faith and Paimon had a spa day and met the royal family and got a couples’ massage, and went to the execution, where Faith was annoying Lucifer and being a pain in the ass and Lucifer had to tell her to knock it off at least in public, and then gave a speech telling hell to leave this human alone and killed the demon who had kidnapped her before.
They went to the party in Lucifer’s palace, where they saw the cat and the mouse again, and Decarabia fucking Lucifer and making him call her Mommy etc, and Faith got secrets from the various angels as her party center, and she went and danced with Belial and they talked about their non-relationship and then she played truth or dare with some angels, meeting Marchosias in the process-- the angel of intelligence/demon of stupidity. Lucifer killed a kid under a dare, while his dare for her was to buy and torture a soul. Capitalism was explained to Faith, and Paimon let them know later that she wasn’t sure she wanted to go through with it, while Lucifer’s secret he told Faith was that he had a plan to make Paimon stronger.
Meanwhile, the others went to Davin to Paimon’s house and got angel blades- Blaze’s was from Agla, the angel of silence, and Mal’s was from Jefischa, the angel of patience. They tracked down Bertram and found his chambermaid, who pointed them to the tavern and they tipped her gold because she was bruised from being hit by him and she was confused about how such a terrible person could be a paladin of God. They went to the tavern, and persuaded him to get a room with them, and tempted him with all manner of earthly delights in exchange for his soul.
He sold his soul, they killed him, and Paimon took his soul. They then had a long discussion with Paimon about the morality of torturing him, and there was speculation from Paimon about what would happen if you unconditionally loved a soul instead of torturing it into a demon. Paimon and Faith came back drunk, and giggled a lot. Faith got an angel blade from the angel of grief.
Belphegor tells the party to come into the annex, where they find Lailah alive and very upset with Paimon. Paimon explained what the plan had been, which was to get more of the unicorn blood away from Lucifer, which had required them not know what had happened. Lailah punched her through a wall and drank all of her expensive liquor. They spend the entire session arguing with Paimon about what they should do next, and the angel radio chat for the treason plot is established, and then the party tell the unicorn rangers to close down the borders to the unicorns. Then Paimon brings them hellhound puppies. There was also an argument about Faith wanting to deal with/buy souls as a defense measure against Lucifer-- in particular buying the souls of the people in the town their school was in. Their plan right now is to go chat up the paladin of Lucifer to buy his soul. Then Lucifer invited them to a ball, and only Faith is going. Black and gold are Paimon’s colors, and they decide for Paimon to wear black while Faith wears gold.
The party finds out Lucifer killed Lailah and everyone at the orphanage.
They respond by seducing Gabriel for his sword, then summoning Lucifer and stabbing him. He survives because the sword is a fake. They then partied with some demons for a week until someone got pregnant since the death of the angel means the angels initiated their angelic fuckfest. Paimon showed up once that happened and said everything was fucked and they decided to try to go after Lucifer’s paladin since Paimon said it was likely he’d try to handle them. Information also came out that Lucifer probably took Lailah’s blood and could have unicorn blood by proxy. There were some theories that Lucifer was going to try to experiment on whoever the angel baby turned out to be.
Faith- human cleric (order), atheist, acolyte- athena
Blaze Karjon- Human warlock, criminal
Malthia- Water Genasi barbarian, hermit
Blaze became a warlock of Paimon through his guild as a promotion/honor, and was given an assignment to investigate a horrifying disease. He enlists the other two characters to help, found out it was being carried through heroin being sold by carnival workers, and lit the a wagon of the carnival on fire like the creepy prophet told them they would. Then they found out about the demon and summoned them and exorcised them.
Faith, being at this point an atheist, thought they were torturing the guy. She was fine with this however, and wrote down everything, including psychological comments about everyone around her.
Then there was Flora, a half orc/tiefling daughter of one of Blaze’s mob bosses who had been said to be kidnapped but had actually run away from her controlling mother. They told her it would be best to go back, but heavily hinted that she should study magic, which she did.
Then the party went to Lynn on orders from Paimon to Blaze to investigate the paladin that Lucifer had an interest in which he never did before. The other party members were getting suspicious about where the messages from Blaze’s boss were coming from, since Paimon had not yet revealed herself to be a demon yet.
Before the governor’s ball they went to an orphanage to find out about missing children, met Anna, and tracked down a kid and asked for info and told them about people taking off with kids.
Then they went to the governor’s ball. They were being honored by the city of Lynn for killing a sea serpent and were pretending to be paladins/heroes of God, but the party found out what they actually were at the governor’s ball and they went into a room with Blaze alone after hints were dropped. They have a conversation with them about killing children and the others were at the bottom of the stairs, and they offered drugs and talked about what lords they served, and then they invited Blaze out for carousing. Outside the party tripped one down the stairs, and the other was stabbed while asking what happened, and the paladin was gone so they followed and then Blaze prayed to Paimon and she appeared with her full evil queen dress and black carriage and everything and the paladin almost rain into her. She took off with the paladin and introduced herself to the rest of the party.
Then they went back to their rooms and she came back to explain herself– invited Mal to a meal and explained that she was the mob boss Blaze was taking orders, leading Mal to think she wasn’t a great person but that everything at least made sense. Faith didn’t want to talk to her at all.
Paimon went on her five day romantic vacation with Lucifer, and the party went on vacation. She didn’t have anything for them to do so they killed a bugbear, then to Mymbar to investigate reports of hauntings. They explored the school, exorcised a demon, and started taking over the school for their own. Then explored the town, and killed ghouls, then Faith started having an alcohol scheme to sell stuff from the town, which is how she talked to Paimon the first time.
They went into Oaken Gate and encountered a Gaston-like hunter and also vampire hunter who was tracking a hunter and they agreed to meet up later to fight vampires. They set up a post office in Mymbar and invited feds back there, and started posting flyers for their exorcism business. Faith went on a business meeting with Paimon and swept her off her feet unintentionally while getting trashed. Paimon brought her back, handed her back to the others.
Next, Faith told everyone about her scheme, and the others talk more honestly about Paimon, and here Mal is the only who doesn’t know about her true nature. Mal left, stressed out about capitalism and Paimon picked her up for lunch and explained everything and gave her the opportunity to leave, which she didn’t take. Mal was concerned but stayed and got a cool sword from her. Met Lurch for the first time and found out he was the first war profiteer. Crowley then sent flowers back with Mal for Faith, who did not get it.
Then they went vampire hunting with Carl. Then Karjon got imp blood for the blood mission which they got somewhere around here, and Paimon hung around and build the annex to the school and gave Faith a stationery set and the others had to explain to Faith the Paimon was interested in her, romantically.
Then there was the Jack the Ripper style murders, which turned out to be Zepar, demon of bigotry, and Blaze prayed Crowley to tell her what was going on and she went and got Belial, who then went to investigate, and the party disguised themselves as prostitutes and encountered Zepar in the bar and Faith tied his blue and silver ribbon to her wrist to get his attention which worked incredibly well and Zepar took her to murder her, and Belial showed up and started fighting with him, and told him to do his job and stop pissing around murdering people, and Zepar vanished and Faith mouthed off to Belial and tortured her, and vanished. They thought Paimon would be mad because she said she was working for her and they got super scared and Blaze lied to Paimon to protect Faith and she said that she wouldn’t hurt them if they agreed not to lie to her anymore.
Then when they went back Belphegor was waiting there to make sure they didn’t mouth off to angels anymore. Bel goes with them to hunt a owlbear, and they find out she’s the first thief and she has the first stolen object, a horn of wine that never runs out. They went back and she threw a party, and demons stayed there, and Decarabia was at the party, and they met her and Mammon the next day. Decarabia offered to teach Faith the angel sex dance, and she says no, and Decarabia soul scans her and they wig out about how they’re reincarnations of heroes of old.
Then Fadras came around from the old mob boss to spy on them, and they kill a troll while Faith and Crowley went on another date, and they figure out who he was and decide to flip him. The others kill the troll, then visit Flora for orc blood, who is now happily married, the party having cashed in a favor from King Valid to get her mom to back off from her. They went back at some point before this because the mob boss was threatening war for her daughter and the party got her to get married to her girlfriend and got her mom to back off through Crowley.
After they visit Flora and get orc blood they go back, Paimon flips Fadras. Paimon taked Faith on yet another date to see Judge Gargroth, a Judge Judy like demon, and tours her palace while the others were at home and Lucifer showed up and questioned them as an owl, and tortured them a little, asked a bunch of questions about Faith and who they were, told them about the dying unicorn, and then they prayed to Paimon and she came and got rid of Lucifer and then came back with him in tow and forced him to apologize to them the next day. Then Belphegor teaches Faith some angel binding stuff and they talked about how she wrote they angel vivisection book and how Lailah hasn’t been the same since then and Paimon won’t forgive her for what she did to her. Then they talked to Valefor and Belial and they agreed to exchange info on Lucifer for info on unicorns, and he told them unicorn info and how they had hairs and it was fucking up angel graces and similar and every angel wants unicorn blood and it could do almost anything. Belial makes spade eyes at Faith. And they came to a favor agreement wherein they’d get unicorn blood to maybe heal Lailah for Belphegor in exchange for her stealing unicorn hairs from Valefor to stop the unicorn from dying.
Faith prays to Valid and he can’t tell her much. He tells them that Paimon probably has good intentions about unicorn blood and her getting it before other angels is the best option. Then they talked to Decarabia and Lailah and Lailah agrees to be healed, so then they went to find the unicorn rangers and they took them to see the unicorns. Unicorn gives them two vials of blood, takes the hairs, and they healed Lailah’s grace. Called Belphegor and everyone freaks out about the grace thing, and Paimon joins them, and now there’s a group freakout about the possibility of fallen angel grace being healed and how dangerous it was for all of them to know about this.
And Lucifer showed up again, and he just wanted to hang out but couldn’t find any of Paimon’s upper court in Paimon’s palace so found them at the exorcist’s guild, bitched about paimon to them/gave them the Paimon sucks rant, Paimon gets upset and Faith comforts her, and they all get drunk. Last thing is them figuring out what to do next, they sent Lailah to the orphanage to work/live there. New plan is to meet with Lucifer’s paladin to give them info to give to Lucifer that unicorn blood makes you grow a conscience so lailah grew one and Paimon had to kill her. Paimon then tells them not to use their own blood to create sigils anymore as that invited blood curses.
