Scribbles and Horrors

A PDF of this session report is available here: escape-from-special-operations-complex-903.pdf

Players: Shy Owl (Ref), Jenx, xaoseed, Oldhawkeyes, Jay_zer0
5/31/2026 7:00 AM - 8:40 AM PST
Discord voice chat

Deep within the complex, lights flicker on. Cryosleep pods open in unison, waking from indefinite slumber 5 new adventurers eager to escape out into open air…

Diorama Jones, Fool ; Ostiana Mulch, Footman ; Quern Zadoki, Fool ; Garamond Micron, Fool | Later joining the party was: Shunt Organman, Assistant

The party began with a poster map of the complex plastered to the wall, and set to work finding where they were on it.

The party climbed through a vent and went westward, revealing a room which seemed to contain an immaculate red car. The party descended into the room to take a closer look, and the car was revealed to be a shimmering illusion put up by an Omegacron, armed with submachine guns and a phaser.

The omegacron warned against intruders and asked for authoritative identification, but did not engage immediately, enabling the party to slip down the western passage.

The beeping sounds of the omegacron drew a group of 3 heavily armored True Ones, however, who immediately challenged the party to a one-on-one unarmed combat, loser to be eaten.

Quern Zadoki rose to the challenge and put up a good fight, but, lacking the necessary training and chivalric military prowess, could not stand up to the muscular foe.

Moving south as the True Ones feasted, the party went up another vent in hopes of reaching a room from which to mount their escape. Within the room were 6 Galics, horrifying and smiling creatures which rolled a “friendly” on the react roll.

Upon descent, the Galics were quite happy to meet the party, and gave somewhat unhelpful-seeming advice about rafts and boats to make their escape. The galics were eager to shake hands. When shaking the hand of Garamond, a galic named Nine refused to let go and shook so hard that Garamond’s arm fell off. At this point the galics broke into uproarious laughter the arm started twitching, lurching towards its owner aggressively, and the party simply made a break for it eastwards. The new member of the party, Shunt, grabbed the arm in the midst of the flight in case it might be useful later. Honestly the galics didn’t mean much harm, and did not pursue.

At length it was discovered that a slightly ambiguous part of the map did not correspond to navigation in their favor, and the party was puzzled at how to proceed to one of the exits. No path seemed to take them where they needed to go!

They continued northwards and met some mole-like Snets, who ordered them to disarm themselves in fealty to the metaphysical lord Diss. The party simply turned around and went back.

The party re-checked the map and finally found another, secret path out, through the galic room. As a joke, they tied Garamond’s severed arm to him for the Galic to shake. The galics found this ruse delightful, and did not harass them further as the party scrambled up to the vent, which wound around for a long way.

At length the party found themselves in a used car lot run by a solitary Regik. He offered to sell them a low-end model for 6000r. When the party balked at this, he offered an installment plan at 1000r/month over 6 months, but tempers were not running well and Diorama hit it with their nun-chuks. One the second round of combat Ostiana shot him dead outright.

The party found only rusty cars there, but noticed bank deposit boxes in an adjacent room, from which they recovered 300 Chromis, 400 Galiks, 300 Rupniks, 3 Gems (worth 2500r, 1000r, and 250r), and a suit of -5 mech armor.

Knowing they were close to the exit, the party quickly made their way past a treasury room, deftly evading some Gamblers, and stumbled straight into a conference of Politicians who immediately began haranguing them with all kinds of aggressive nonsense. Eventually kerosene splashed around and lit by Shunt Organman caused enough of a ruckus that the party could escape to the exit and into the open air with their treasure. Their first adventure was a success.

Referee notes:

This game was several firsts for me: The Realm of Yolmi was new, the map was untested, and I’d also never run an online game before. I was a little anxious about how it’d turn out. It went great!

The map worked well. Because of the complexity and difficulty of the map, it proved to be a substantive (but not insurmountable) effort to navigate to the exit. The party made some wrong turns, and were able to make informed decisions and gambles.

My idea of having some passageways be vents, accessible near the ceiling, worked okay, though it got sort of muddled. I might try some other approaches to adding variety to the map.

The Realm of Yolmi is an odd duck, in part because it seems to insist on giving characters very little to work with. In practice, I’m finding that the treasure tables aren’t too bad and the combat is usable and exciting.

Fights are slightly more crunchy than my usual taste–I’m a big group initiative kinda guy–but the ability of firearms/tech devices to completely reshape the combat landscape makes for a cool system. Each weapon has its own little system, which is overwhelming at first but works well in play. We didn’t have a big combat with lots of participants, so this will need to be tested further.

I took the reaction results very seriously, which meant that most creatures didn’t attack. Even creatures which had preprogrammed behavior, like the galics with handshaking, were subject to strict reaction rolls. For the most part reactions were positive. What ended up happening is that each creature they encountered would let the party pass peaceably if they are willing to pay a cost: the True Ones demand one-on-one combat, the Galics take arms, the Snets only wish to see you disarmed, the Regik wants money, the Politicians want one of the party to be taken in as one of their own. It was a neat dynamic.

All in all my crazy idea–The Realm of Yolmi on my Zeta III map–worked really well! It was neat to see that something which I’d assumed would only really work as a wilderness adventure can work pretty well as a dungeon game.

I definitely am interested in others’ implementations of Yolmi. There’s great wealth here.