#clown once again loses patience with the other clowns at clown school or whatever but oh my fucking god

[itsbenedict]

Kingdoms and Koopas: Ep. 3

K&K is a Fate Accelerated campaign set in the Mario universe, which I’m running for three players:

Bee @thebeeskneesocks​, playing Kandace Koopa

Jovian @jovian12​, playing Cozmo Naut

Malky @sleepdepravity​, playing Dr. Chevy Chain

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Previously on Kingdoms and Koopas: the party disturbed the restless dead, including Kandace’s gym coach, and managed to retrieve the Music Key from the Heart of Darkness. Then they tried teleporting out, and found themselves... out, but surrounded by hostile Koopalings. Whoops! They should probably do something about that.

(pictured: maps! of the Koopa Kingdom capital, Bowserburg Shellington New Bowseria Whatever It’s Called Today. above, and below.)

So, to recap their predicament in a little more detail, their teleport took them to the cloud of a Lakitu, who, upon suffering the effects of the Vacuum Shroom toxin they teleported into his cloud, proclaimed himself “the Storm God” and began terrorizing his fellow students. At least, until Kandace cast a spell to make them heavy and sink down into the fountain below, where it all got washed out and they all return to normal.

To normal, except they’re in this big indoor courtyard foyer thing, and they’re surrounded by five of the seven Koopalings. And... see, the Koopalings attend Kam Ekademy, the school across the street from Kammy Koopa’s Academy For Young Witches and Wizards. These two schools... have something of a rivalry. And a rivalry between two magic schools populated by irresponsible troublemakers... it’s more of a prank war type of deal. And wouldn’t you know it- the party contains a Kammy’s student!

Chevy, as usual, attempts to just roll the fuck outta there, but, uh... well, Kamek’s school uniforms are blue, and Kammy’s school uniforms are purple. And Chevy is purple, and seemingly with Kandace, and so the Koopalings jump to conclusions. “The Skammies are trying to escape!” Lemmy yells.

So... Roy is the first to act, firing a cannonball at Chevy. The way the rolls go, though... I guess Roy’s cannon is no match for a charging chain chomp, and it glances right off. Morton tries to stop her, too, and manages a little better- they tie, and Chevy manages to shove him to the doorway but not out. Cozmo tries to follow Chevy’s lead, doing the standard-issue X-Naut bum-rush. Lemmy tries to roll over to block him, but again the rolls are not in his favor, and Cozmo just knocks the ball out from under him and charges past. Kandace also attempts to flee, and also shout taunts at the Koopalings, but Ludwig grabs at her broom. And... just gets a handful of bristles as she speeds away. Larry tries shooting spells at them from the second-floor railing, but misses.

So as they get out the front door of Kam Ekademy, they’re attacked from behind as Wendy O. throws a ring at them from the balcony above the door. She also misses, though, and Kandace fires back with her heaviness spell, targeted at Wendy O.’s bow- causing her to lose her balance and fall off the balcony. The lot of them proceed down the front path... only to be blocked by Iggy, the final obstacle! Who... also misses, and knocks some of the pursuing Koopalings back a bit with the stray blast. They breeze right past him.

As they leave by the front gate (which the Koopalings aren’t allowed to pass out through, as school is in session), a “psst” gets their attention. Kandace recognizes the source of the voice as that shifty junk dealer that tries to sell useless crap to the kids at Kammy’s at a huge markup- looks like he also hangs around by the Ekademy.

Cozmo does not recognize that this brown Shy Guy in a trenchcoat, wearing an enormous fake mustache, is actually his boss, Shady Guy.

Chevy, with no patience for this, takes off for the hospital, but Cozmo and Kandace check out Shady Guy’s Deals Guy’s wares. There’s some weird yellow mushrooms, green dried shrooms, some weird little metal thing that he calls a “good’un” (or “G’un”), a ratty old umbrellla, and... ooh, a collapsible stunt bike!

Before buying anything, though, Kandace gets suspicious, and tears off Deals Guy’s mustache- revealing that it was, in fact, Shady Guy all along! Shady Guy tries to snatch it back, but fails- and Kandace ransoms it back in exchange for the bike. Hooray for robbery! Good thing there’s no way Shady Guy would ever go to the police about this. Cozmo gets the bike, and excitedly heads home.

Kandace returns to Kammy’s, Music Key in hand. On the way, though, she encounters... the hooded figure with the pink beak. It gestures for her to hand over the Music Key, but Kandace is suspicious. She instead insists that it escort her to Kammy personally, at which it balks, but ultimately agrees. Or, pretends to- as they’re almost there, it attempts to snatch the Music Key but fails. (Kandace cast a spell that creates a protective but freezing-cold ice bubble, before it could get her.) Kandace, vindicated in her suspicions, hamster-ball-rolls into the school and heads to Kammy’s office.

Kammy, for her part, seems surprised and slightly distressed that Kandace has returned with the Key successfully, and that it wasn’t somehow stolen from her. Odd, that. She weasels out of her promise to hand over a magic item from her treasure vault- modifying clarifying the terms of the deal such that, okay, it’s one magic item per orb for whoever turns it in, so four total- but they’re only handed out once all the Music Keys have been collected. So... Kandace better get back to work finding the rest!

Kandace isn’t happy about this, but whatever- she’s guaranteed at least one, as long as Kammy gets all the Music Keys, so if she can find the rest, cool beans.

And... cut to black, because we’re moving to the next day. Cozmo has decided to take his new collapsible stunt bike out for a spin at Plumber’s Folly, one of those incredibly deadly natural obstacle courses that occur in this neck of the woods. Kind of a companion to The Part That’s Supposed To Stop Mario But Doesn’t. Anyway, uh... Cozmo finds out the hard way that the collapsible bike “purchased” from Deals Guy has the emphasis on “collapsible”. It breaks underneath him and sends him flying into a lake of lava, causing his lives to go down from 3 to 2 and landing him with severe injuries back on shore.

He’s found by Party Guy, his direct superior at the talent agency. Shady Guy owns Shady Guy’s Talent Agency, but doesn’t do much management- that end of things is left to this clown. This literal clown, a guy who’s attended every Mario Party and knows how to have a good time. He takes Cozmo back up the hill to the talent agency, but Shady Guy calls him inside to deal with something urgent, and he leaves Cozmo on the ground after calling Kandace to come pick him up.

Kandace finds her way down past the Koopa Katacombs (think the ones in Paris, except it’s just sort of an underground apartment district for Dry Bones), and the Cavern of Gratuitous Spiky Peril, which she’s able to just ride her broom over. She picks up Cozmo and takes him to the hospital, where Chevy reluctantly patches him up again. 

...Oh, while they’re in the waiting room there, Kandace and Cozmo overhear- from a heavily-injured superhero wannabe Pokey named Pokey Man, who works for Shady Guy’s Talent Agency- that the boss was seen carrying a shiny orb into Plumber’s Folly. Weird!

Anyway, Chevy decides that she needs to see Cozmo’s place of work, and find out what conditions are like there. There has to be some reason this guy keeps getting horribly injured! So... they decide to take what should be a shortcut, since the Cavern of Gratuitously Spiky Peril is harder to navigate with three to a broom. They take the underground below the hospital, and find... one small tunnel, and one big tunnel. The big tunnel has a broken bridge, though, so they can’t go that way at this point in the plot. They take the small tunnel...

...Which suffers a cave-in, due to the fact that I came up with it just then as a way for them to bypass certain obstacles I hadn’t finished setting up on the real path. So they won’t be using that one again. But they escape the cave-in, by running really fast in a panic, and arrive at the big cavern where Shady Guy’s Talent Agency is situated.

Cozmo decides to take them on a tour! Weirdly, the receptionist, Goomfried, is absent- but there’s a lot of noise coming from the dance room. They go check that out, and find... well, as usual, a particular couple new recruits are there. This guy Mike, some kind of robot, is DJing, and Jamie Thang is cutting a rug like there’s no tomorrow. Or, well- there’s no rug, it’s one of those light-up colored grid floor things, but you get the idea.

Also in the room is Party Guy, talking to... incredibly famous Mushroom Kingdom actor/director Zip Toad! Apparently the talent agency finally has an actual client! Zip Toad, who we decide sounds like Tommy Wiseau (because Party Guy and Cozmo are already sharing the surfer dude/stoner type accent), is looking for stunt talent for his new film. Cozmo’s eager to show off, so Zip Toad, Party Guy, and the party head off to Plumber’s Folly for Cozmo to show off.

Cozmo makes two rolls, here. One roll is with +Flashy, to see how totally sick his stunting is. The other roll is +Careful, to see whether he sticks the landing and doesn’t wipe out on the Plumber’s Folly hazards.

Cozmo’s Flashy is +3. His Careful is +0. The outcomes of these rolls are exactly as you might predict.

So, Chevy has unraveled the mystery of why Cozmo is getting injured so often. It’s because he goes out of his way to do the most dangerous possible things, all the time! Wow! The case is closed. She goes down to try and peel Cozmo off the spike wall he impaled himself on, while Kandace...

Kandace has that magical ability to sort of sense the direction of nearby Music Keys, and... huh! Seems like there’s one down, down deep in Plumber’s Folly! Weird. So, of course, she heads right inside, heedless of the dangers. And then... oh, boy. Oh, boy, the dangers. A wall of rock cuts her off from the others, and then more walls of rock erupt from the ground and knock everyone else off their feet! The party and company begin to tumble down into the depths of World 9-5. Next time: we’ll see how well the party manages doing plumber’s work!

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