MCC: A Fallen Star For All

We continue our adventures in Terra with A Fallen Star For All, a level 1 adventure by Tim Callahan.
From the cover:
A meteor strike in the taboo crater country opens up a huge chasm in which lies a largely intact city of the Ancient Ones.
The resulting mad, mad, mad land rush to go claim the newly available cache of ancient artifacts draws interested parties from all over Terra A.D., and at the direction of your tribal elders, that includes you and your Seeker team!

MCC: Assembling an Apocalypse

Welcome to Terra AD.  While Dungeon Crawl Classics had a lot of implied setting baked into it, Mutant Crawl Classics has gone further and explicitly named and presented some facts about the base setting.  The great disaster the resulted in its current state is left unanswered, but a hothouse climate and a world of overgrown jungles filled with mega-fauna and glowing deserts beset by raging storms is described in brief.
Aside from the bestiary, which includes mutated dinosaurs, intelligent cyborgs, alien dimensional travelers, and enough other weirdness to populate your world, the Archaic Alignments probably offer the most setting information.  These alignments are factions operating in the world of Terra with their own rules for joining and their own conflicting goals.  The Gene Police work to eliminate mutations from Terra while the Children of the Glow actively seek out radioactive areas in order to accelerate their mutations.  The Curators worship ancient technology, the Chosen of Zuu believe manimals to be the next stage in evolution and humanity to be a dying breed, while the Clan of Cog - the default starting faction - believes in respect and cooperation between all sentient beings.
Patron AIs also provide a lot of insight into the world of Terra AD, both past and present.  The AI descriptions give the original intent of each entry - including a security protocol for gaming networks, monitoring weather systems, galactic invasion surveillance - as well as their current goals in the post-apocalypse world.  These entries actually give the most firm view of the world prior to the Great Disaster and generally describe a world not unlike our own in some sci-fi future.
Outside of the MCC rulebook, backers of the Kickstarter have already received 8 supplements - mostly adventures - which give additional information about the setting.  I intend to run through all of these adventures with my game group (we ran through Hive of the Overmind recently and have begun A Fallen Star For All).  I wanted to craft my starting village to be consistent from the start.

Spoilers follow.

The Weird Lore Found in Books

I've never felt compelled to build a setting from the ground up.  I like drawing maps occasionally, but actually thinking about the borders of countries, the rulers of realms, the pantheon, the lay of the cosmos, it's all kind of boring to me until I need it.  This is why I like gazetteer style setting books like Matt Finch's Borderland Provinces.  It gives me all that background detail with nice bits like the emblems of each province and the religious heresies operating in the region, while leaving plenty of space for me to develop.

Stonehell Wrap-Up

I've decided to put away my Stonehell game for a while.  I recently moved from Kansas City to Atlanta and had to put the game on hold for a few weeks, after which I didn't get much response on starting it back up.  I think that after eight sessions there may be a feeling of futility in confronting the dungeon.

MCC: Hive of the Overmind

Put my usual DCC campaign on hold last night to run through Hive of the Overmind for Mutant Crawl Classics.  This is a 0-level funnel adventure released as one of the first stretch goals from the MCC kickstarter.  Written by Julian Bernick of Spellburn fame.

From the cover:
Younglings on their Rite of Passage are shocked to regain consciousness with no memory of how they came to be in a gigantic insect hive so far to the north of their homelands, laboring as drone-slaves of the savage ant-men.
In a land where an "insect revolution" has taken place, the PCs must contend with insectoid mega fauna and a maze-like underground installation before facing the ominous Overmind: a building-sized insect queen cybernetically linked to an ancient Chaotic AI.

Stonehell: Expedition 8

The Party
Koko Googan - Fighter (Joshua D.)
Theran Helxan - Fighter (Daemian Xantos) - dead
Feldric Rotundo - Fighter (Spooner)
Beal - Torchbearer (Hireling) - dead
Raimond - Halberd Men-at-Arms (Hireling) - dead
Adjan - Archer Men-at-Arms (Hireling) - dead
Elayna - Archer Men-at-Arms (Hireling) - dead
Oath - Archer Men-at-Arms (Hireling) - dead
Ghak - Globlin Clubber (Hireling) - dead

The Crawl
It was a short expedition, and deadly.  The trio of warriors hired every mercenary they could find at the Magician's Mug and set out for Stonehell with nary a plan.  Koko wanted to try his luck at the Wheel of Fortune again, but got lost and ran into some orcs who were kind enough to redirect him to the appropriate room.  Finding a much decayed dwarf corpse, he used the dwarf's arm to spin the wheel and the party watched in horror as the bones of the corpse shriveled to the size of a mouse and crumbled into dust.  Undeterred, he spun again and found his gold pouch mysteriously emptied.  Feeling that misfortune does not actually come in three, despite the common saying, Feldric Rotundo spun the wheel and was rewarded for his dubious faith with a large amethyst.
Unfortunately, their time playing with fortune had attracted a large horde of giant ferrets, who flooded down the corridor wish ferocious intent.  Ghak was chewed to shreds and several took nasty wounds from the critters and it looked like they might overrun the group, but Koko threw a pair of oil flasks into the hallway and Beal threw his lantern, igniting the beasts and sending them into a panic.  Those burning in front chewed through the back ferrets as they fled from the flames, and a volley of arrows and lingering burns quickly putting them to rest.
Further exploration into previously uncharted parts of the dungeon found an alcove with a stone statue in the likeness of a bipedal lizard with four arms outstretched.  In front of the lizard was a large bowl, filled to the brim with hundreds of shining golden coins.  A great many stone fragments lay all about the alcove and the ceiling had ruptures and cracks throughout it.  After briefly considering the scene, Koko and Theran made a grab at the coins.  As soon as their hands entered the bowl, a crack of thunder shuddered the room and split the ceiling further.  A storm of stone shards rained violently on the group, battering Theran, Beal, Elayna, Raimond, Oath, and Adjan to death.  Koko and Feldric barely avoided hailstorm, and scooped up the rest of the gold from the bowl and fled Stonehell.  As they counted their blood-stained treasures, they only hoped it would be enough to hire new mercenaries once word of the terrible fate of all their previous followers spread.

Stonehell: Expedition 7

The Party
Burge - Fighter (john)
Casterfo Hearthwood - Fighter (Lane S.) - dead
Chrissy - Elf Magic-User (Chrissy)
Daemian Xantos - Fighter (Daemian Xantos)
Hammer Boyd - Fighter (Chris Scott)
Just Plain Jim - Halfling Thief (Andrew S.)
Koko Googan - Fighter (Joshua D.)
Odie Smee - Cleric (Chris H.)
Saevel - Magic-User (Laim O.)

The Crawl
A full party ventured into Stonehell.  Under Hammer's leadership, they resolved to return the crypts where previous expeditions had found the most treasure.  Making their way through familiar rooms, they encountered a massive cave lizard, an eight foot long scaled monstrosity that charged the group viciously.  Keeping formation, arrows flew, polarms, swords, and axes struck, and the beast was slain without casualty.
Moving on, they found themselves back in the dusky crypts.  They retraced their steps along the northern hall, seeing that all the crypts along this section had been plundered now and remained empty.  Eventually the returned to the evil priest's chamber and found a band of black robed acolytes, worshipers of that veiled goddess, who attacked with a mindless frenzy and were quickly slain.  Beyond this chamber, they encountered a room with a strange black obelisk.  Odie warned that he felt cut off from his god in this evil place, and they chose a side passage to move into.  Here they found a small room where hideous ghouls were tearing the flesh from the bones of some poor victims.  The party killed the ghouls and found a warhammer, which the magic-users were able to detect a magic aura on, though they could not say if the magic was good or evil.
Further into the crypts, they encountered a massive horde of undead in varying state of composition.  Twice Odie rebuked groups of the undead with holy wrath, splitting them up and allowing the group to take them on in smaller waves, but he was unable to rebuke them a third time, and Casterfo fell to a skeletal warrior's rusty sword.
Sad to lose one of their veteran members, the party decided to return to the roadhouse, but felt confident that the many undead they'd slain would surely clearly the way for deeper expeditions to come.