Tripping Balls On Narcosa - Vacant Ritual Assembly Issue#4 & Wretch Space Rpg One Shot - Session Report

 

“The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.” 
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch

So today was one of those days where we got a chance to unleash an especially disturbing OSR adventure that has been at the back of our minds for a while. Vancant Ritual Assembly issue#4 has, "The Lotus Eater: A complete adventure that takes the PCs into the drugdream of Narcosa to explore the domain of a cruel lotus czar." So today I DM'ed this adventure but moved it into our Wretched Space rpg campaign. 

So the PC's got called in by Franco's mother whose a member of the local colonial royalty & the comotose body of her son. The party's shamah Father Francis of the church of the expanded mind was called in to this particular case; "Francolo Pennington is a young and privledged dilettante, born of wealth and splendor, but lacking interest in his family’s mercantile empire. Feeling a disappointment to his father and a perpetual child to his overbearing mother, Francolo developed a keen interest in escapism. He manifested this interest by acquiring a supply of Amber Lotus, a rare drug rumored to serve as a sort of inner gateway to the astral realms." 

"In this realm, he established himself as the great and cruel czar of a remote smokescape. Soon, he identified more with the Czar than with his mortal self and before long the Czar had entirely forgotten about the outside world, trapping the lad’s spirit in a realm of his own cruel design. One night, Francolo’s mother found his still breathing, but comatose body" Now the PC's were called in because Francolo Pennington bought the Amber Lotus on a frequent joyride over to Alpha Blue.  The players want to do a very solid investigation on Alpha Blue later on. 

What a very few of the players realized is the fact that LQ 456 is now open to the purview of Narcosa itself. The player's PC's almost bought it by  spending a bit too much time in Narcosa. They did manage to save the boy at the expense of a few brain cells by bargaining a role within another alien's drug induced dream down the road. The party broke the boy outta of his czardom by confronting him with the reality of his family espcecially his mother never seeing him again. He immediately woke up and the dream should have ended there. It didn't! 
One member of the party had to take the place of the czar & kill the smokewolf. And Cracker our down & out outlaw pilot did just that as the rest of the party hunted the otherworldly monster. Narcosa borders the Beyond in our campaign & the monsters of Narcosa frequently become far more dangerous when the planes crisscross each other. 

One of the player's PC's aquired 23 violet arrows & a bow of the violet archer. He chose to join the archers for a week of training with the bow. Seazy Stevey wasn't quite prepared to hunt the dangerous high beasts that haunt the forrest near the citadel. The PC's kept trying to leave Narcosa & the realm wouldn't let them! Finally it was Francolo Pennington who brought the PC's back by cutting them off from the vapors of the Amber Lotus. They were only gone from their bodies for an extra fifteen minutes but did anything else come back with them?!