[#3] Acererak the Goddam Farmer
A plane hopping encounter where existence is being turned into pumpkins
‘Twas the night of the harvest moon, and as the adventurers start to relax from another job well done they notice that their ale is starting to taste of pumpkin spice and everything nice. Glancing down the street they see everything being turned into pumpkins by a mysterious figure, and looking up in the sky even the moon begins to take on an orange hue.
In this D&D session aimed at higher levels, the players have unwittingly found themselves in the middle of Acererak’s plan to convert everything in this plane to pumpkins! They will need to pursue this Acerak from this plane to Mechanus once he flees, confront him along with many other Acereraks, and then repair the damage done to the plans before the Great March of the Modrons turns into a Mad March.
Pumpkin Merchant, Camille Pissarro, 1883 WikiArt
Setting:
This session has been designed explicitly with D&D in mind, and for higher/highest level play. It begins in the seedy city streets of the Undercity, before moving onto Mechanus, the plane of (Starbucks) orders.
Story Beats:
Everything in the area being transformed into pumpkins
Journey to Mechanus, the plane of Starbucks orders
Repair the damage done to existence
Ashes to ashes, pumpkins to pumpkins:
Resting at a street bar after a job well done, the adventurers notice something tasting off with their drinks. If the characters don’t already know each other, then this can be a celebration of new work colleagues, or an informal gathering of the city’s high level adventurers.
As the adventurers look around, they witness a cart being transformed into a pumpkin in a reversal of Cinderella going to the ball complete with club goers upset they can’t attend the ball now.
Further investigation from looking down the street the players can see a skeleton dressed in overalls and a wide brimmed straw hat pointing a spade at everything in sight to turn them into pumpkins. As cast their gaze to the club goers by the pumpkin carriage, they are transformed into pumpkin denizens. If the adventurers attempt to approach either them or Acererak then the pumpkin denizens try to swarm the party, with more appearing from surrounding streets.
Once confronted by the party, or if they present a serious threat then Farmer Acererak retreats through a portal to Mechanus.
Journey to Mechanus:
Following through the portal the adventurers are greeted with the warm aroma of bitter coffee, small succulents, and queues upon queues of customers waiting in front of an infinite amount of counters to place their order for customer portions of reality to upload to the ‘Gram. Welcome to Mechanus, plane of Starbucks orders.
This section plays out like an overcrowded shopping centre food court. The players primary goal should be locating Acererak, however this location also presents an ideal location to introduce other NPCs (like gods, or characters from other universes) to the session.
Searching through the crowd the adventurers can locate a few pumpkin denizens who eventually lead them back to a purple queue of Acereraks all waiting to place their orders with the monodrones based at the counter. There is currently a hold up as the order placed was too complex, causing the monodrone at the counter to have a literal meltdown. The soccer mum Acererak at the front of the queue is attempting to speak to the manager, much to the chagrin of the farmer Acererak who is acting in the name of the Greater Gourd.
Once the adventurers are close enough, the farmer Acererak opens a portal back to their home plane and allowing crowds of pumpkin denizens to climb through. They then also convince several other Acereraks to assist them, who proceed to open their own portals. Possible ideas for other Acererak themes are:
Disco Acererak, grooving with neon dancers.
Bus Driver Acererak, summoning tired commuters.
Santa Acererak, with their elves (Be it fantasy or the Christmas variety).
Surfer Acererak, vibing with other surfer dudes.
Acererak Acererak, surrounded by smaller childlike versions of themselves.
How many Acereraks take part will depend on the size of the party. Once combat starts, the primary goal of the adventurers will be to defeat the Acereraks, and to seal the portals. To assist special orders can be placed with the monodrone servers to summon their own allies, or alternatively beseech other members of the queues for assistance. To avoid slowing down the the session with NP combat, it is suggested that most of these interactions take place outside of the initiative order and in the background (i.e. describe combat occurring around the party as gods fight the Acereraks, and only coming into the initiative order if required).
The combat ends when either the farmer Acererak is defeated, or if the adventurers demand to the speak to the manager of Mechanus (Primus) and plead their case.
In either outcome, Primus arrives demanding to know who has damaged their establishment and who is going to repair it.
Repairing the damage done to existence:
Having torn a hole in Mechanus, the adventurers have threatened the stability of the Great Modron March, which is now turned into a Great Mad March and incapable of repairing the damage.
Working with the Acereraks, the adventurers will need to devise a plan for how to repair the hole in existence, and return everything that fell through to their rightful place. While they may use the monodrone special orders to repair the hole, this won’t help with the retrieval of anything/one that’s fallen through.
This section is deliberately left open ended to allow players creativity with how they repair existence itself. Some suggestions are:
Repairing the hole with thick shakes, and lowering a claw machine grapple through the hole to attempt to pick things up.
Requesting wood planks from the monodrones, and then lowering themselves through the hole.
Asking to have some concept of existence to pave over the hole, and a tractor beam to draw things back up. A tractor with a winch would also suit here.
As an additional note: This section is designed to let the players have a permanent impact on the world at a high level, if the combat with Acererak makes for a suitable climax narratively, then DMs are more than welcome to skip this step.
After defeating Acererak, Primus thanks the party and returns them to their home dimension to once again enjoy their drinks while they watch hordes of monodrones clean up the streets and change things back from being pumpkins.
What did you think? Any ideas, feedback, or do you intend to use this in a session? Let me know!
The original prompt for this session was an Instagram video by Goblins and Gardens ( which can be found here) sent to me by my friend Matt.
Cowritten/Edited with the assistance of Alsanna.