The Tunnelers Campaign Session 6

Played Tuesday, July 29^th, 2025.

It has been a minute since the last time we played, due to various factors, the most exciting of which is that I have been prescribed and started taking HRT! This session has the distinction of being the first ttrpg session I have played since starting.

It is June 5^th, 2003, at about 12:45 pm.

Jel has just gotten out of the water, and the party (plus Jerry) are watching the fish in the flooded room. Ash impulsively scoops one out of the water with a shovel, and demands Jerry bring something to contain it – he sprints to his campsite outside, empties a plastic tub full of camp supplies, brings it back, and scoops some water into it. As Ash drops the catfish-like creature into the tub, she sees that it has the shape of a human body on its underside. The party hates this.

This is a loose adaptation of the Nixies in the module, who are described as more uncomplicatedly humanoid — in the more conspiracy-hidden-behind-the-mundane world of Tunnelers I decided they needed camouflage.

Again Ash makes a demand of Jerry, making him go and grab some leftover french fries from his campsite. Her argument is that the fish are “like seagulls” in some capacity, and seagulls like chips and fries. Jel and Jerry argue the particulars of this but decide to comply. Ash feeds the fish one fry as a peace offering before letting it free — it grabs the fry from the water by extending its human hands from below, like mandibles shooting forward from beneath the fish. This gives the party a plan to bypass fish hostilities: they will get lunch at Bradley’s Pizza, and take an extra pizza back to throw to the fish as a show of friendliness.

The walk to and from Bradley’s takes about two hours, plus a half hour of waiting for pizza. They get pepperoni for themselves (Bradley pays, not wanting to make someone younger than him pay for his lunch) and for the fish another pepperoni that is “lighter on the pepperoni, so the fish don’t choke” (again Ash’s idea). Jel takes the lead and performs the eating and enjoyment of a slice while she climbs into the water before tossing it to the fish. The slice is quickly devoured, and the fish are now more interested in food than driving off the party.



Exploring to the south, the party finds several more flooded corridors, and their lights disturb a beast lurking in the darkness: a metallic shrimp, which lurches erratically and aggressively towards them. A fight breaks out in which Ash is injured badly and Jerry is dropped to 0 hp before Ash finally cracks the shrimp open to reveal the golden mechanism inside it. Jel carries the bleeding out Jerry to the entrance to see if she can get help, and Ash pockets the golden interior of the shrimp.