So, for context it’s just the two of us in this campaign, Victor plays Sammy and I (Emmy) play everyone else. This summary is written by the both of us, so “I” can refer to either. When we started this campaign the intent was for the party to be Sammy, Henry, and Susie, or Alice at that point. Of course other people would be there, but they were meant to be the permanent party members, which you can sort of see with the events of the beginning of the campaign. We’ve come pretty far past that now, but that’s beside the point. Sammy is a warlock, Henry is a cleric, and Susie is a sorcerer. We also borrowed Call of Cthulhu’s idea of sanity points but changed them a bit to be on a scale of 100 with progressively more harmful mechanics as more sanity points were lost (Note from future us: we learned a little too late that D&D does have a madness table, so we’ve since retired our sanity table and opted for that instead). They were gained by happy times and good (or funny) moments and lost whenever something horrifying happened. The important part of this is whether Sammy was himself or Prophet was a matter of sanity points. He started every loop as Prophet and switched to Sammy if he gained enough points, and then could fall back into being Prophet if his points dipped too low. We stopped tracking sanity points after Episode 1, but they’re relevant for now.
Okay! So the story started with Sammy in full Prophet Mode making an altar (Note from Victor: I had no idea at the time that my simple decision of him making an altar would be the point at where I started every subsequent loop), and Henry walking into the studio. Sammy went over to Henry and started chatting, and it came up that Henry designed Bendy. Sammy, of course, freaked the hell out a touch, realizing that he was talking to his Lord’s creator, and decided to protect this man at all costs. Normal Prophet things! A few minutes later they heard some funky rumbling and rushing of ink in the general direction of the Ink Machine and realized Something Was Up. Before long they found that the Ink Machine spit out a reallyyyy fucked up looking version of Boris and oh no! It’s chasing them! In an unfortunate turn of events, Bendy also started chasing them around this time, and Prophet immediately walked towards him and got killed. Oops. Oddly though, he didn’t totally die, just passed out (unconscious but stable), and deeper in the studio Henry heard a woman screaming. Soon enough, though, Sammy also got killed by Boris, and this time he woke up building an altar, the loop having once again restarted.
We also decided that some injuries/scars would carry over through loops, a mechanic affectionately named Come Back Wrong, and with this one Sammy got some fun scars on his face. Or the spot where his face should be anyway, y’know how it is with Sam.
Anywho, that general idea of Sammy finding Henry, either realizing that he made Bendy or just general curiosity causing them to travel together, starting to play through batim, and eventually getting their shit rocked by something the Ink Machine spit out repeated for a while. The only things really of note here are that every time someone died they heard someone scream, that person came back, and then no matter which one of them died, the loop (from Sammy’s [the player’s] perspective) immediately restarted. Also the Ink Machine didn’t limit itself to just fucked up Boris’s, it also had Alice Angels, Bendys, and all the Butcher Gang members. Occasionally they also made it to Alice’s domain where she immediately started yelling at (and often casting very mean spells at) Sammy.
The next important loop started out different from the others on account of Sammy rolling a nat one on remembering who Henry was, which resulted in him thinking he really hated him. Because of that, instead of them going through the plot of batim together, Sammy did his normal knocking Henry out thing. Sadly for him, Henry is stupidly strong and couldn’t be one hit with a dustpan, so Henry casted burning hands and ended up knocking Sammy out instead. This,, did not help the Sammy-liking-him situation. Henry kept progressing through the game as normal, and Sammy eventually woke up as Sammy and not Prophet (nothing to do with being knocked out just happened to be how the points turned out lmao) and then found Henry talking to Alice (Susie). This made the dynamic kinda weird since up until that point it had always been Sammy and Henry coming in already being besties when they got to Alice, but now Henry trusted Alice more than Sammy.
So anyway, they kept going and finally got the thing from Allison that lets you see the golden ink and I don’t know if it’s technically called the Seeing Eye but that’s what we’ve been calling it, and thus what I’m calling it here. So they made it to Lost Harbor and it went really differently than what happens in the game since Sammy was alive and working with Henry. He just kinda introduced Henry and Alice to the lost ones and searchers and they hung out in the village for a little bit before moving on. While they were in the hallway right before Bendy’s palace Henry came to a Realization and started writing with the golden ink. Sammy got curious about what he was writing, tried and failed to grab the Seeing Eye from him and casted Friends (Note about friends, quoting from the spell itself: “When the spell ends, the creature realizes that you used magic to influence its mood and becomes hostile toward you. A creature prone to violence might attack you. Another creature might seek retribution in other ways (at the DM’s discretion), depending on the nature of your interaction with it.”)
So he got the seeing eye, saw that Henry wrote “never alone” on the wall (a bit underwhelming, I know, but it wasn’t my idea to commit theft over it), and then Henry came out of Friends and told Sammy, “for someone who claims to hate Joey so much, you act a lot like him” which is fuckin BRUTAL and Sammy attacked Henry, resulting in a fight that ended in both Sammy and Henry being knocked out. After a while, Sammy woke up, and went to hang out in the village with the lost ones. He didn’t fully understand it since he didn’t have his memories from his years as Prophet, but he was really enjoying being around them. He kinda felt loved and accepted and surrounded by people who care about him for the first time in his life. So he found himself sitting in a circle with lost ones in the middle of the harbor, teaching them how to play music. And then Henry woke up, rolled very badly on his Chilling The Fuck Out check, and walked into the harbor to once again cast Burning Hands towards Sammy…except Burning Hands is an area spell, meaning it hit several lost ones as well. Sammy was knocked out immediately, as were four lost ones, and Alice knocked Henry out before he could do any more damage. She also announced to the lost ones (who are understandably really angry at Henry) that they could do whatever they wanted to him and she wouldn’t stop them, but they rolled high enough to wait for Sammy’s decision.
Sammy woke up a while later to a doctor Searcher who told him that there were three deaths and one injury. Sammy, without hesitation, went to the dock and drew one of his summoning circle things, and contacted Bendy. The wild thing was this man had none of Prophet’s memories! He was just normal Sammy! So, after a killer religion check and prayer from Sammy, Bendy answered his call and brought the three lost one’s back to life. After that, Sammy went back to where everything went down, which was where Henry was, and found him looking crazed and writing on the walls. After some consideration, Sammy cast Unseen Servant (which we flavored as just a little inky blob), who he had carry a can of soup over to Henry on its head. This was followed up by a pretty killer speech telling Henry to chill and reminding him that this isn’t what Linda or his kids would want (Note from future Vic: hA’..ha,,,), which succeeded in ending the fight and letting them move onto the next part of their plan: escaping.
The thing is, Susie and Henry’s plan was to kill Bendy which Sammy wasn’t exactly on board with, considering the whole miracle thing that had just happened, plus no one was feeling great about their ability to win that fight, so Sammy rolled to figure out how giving Bendy a soul would work since the whole reason he was Like That was the lack of soul, and with an incredibly well timed nat 20, figured out the entire process of transferring a soul. He also figured out that they could each give Bendy a third of their soul to the same effect, which is what they decided to go for. So, Henry sacrificed his passion (for art) and insight, Susie gave up her morals and kindness, and Sammy gave up his memory and feelings (pride). Once they had the new soul there was a fight in which they gave it to Bendy, which Susie did die in, but they were otherwise successful and since they were so close to escape and she was moving to a new body anyway (Malice → Susie) she ended up being okay. Speaking of moving to new bodies, Sammy, Susie, and Henry all woke up in Joey’s apartment as their old human selves. After yelling at Joey for a bit and Sammy forcing him to drink some ink, they left, which of course caused another loop to start. The exciting change was that since they escaped they kept their memories of that loop.
Okay! Both of us forgot what happened at this point, but essentially there were more loops, much of which involved Henry and Susie trying to get Prophet (who did not get Sammy’s memories of escape) to go along with their plans. Some notable moments were a nat 20 on creating a garden in Lost Harbor as well as a nat 20 on making an infirmary, and a very cute date with Prophet and Jack. There were also a few more escapes, all of which ended in the gang getting set back in the studio with their memories intact. This also meant that there were more Come Back Rights, and in one of them, Sammy got his crook! Truly the best thing he could’ve asked for. The Ink Machine also continued spitting out a steady stream of monsters, soon named the Soulless Ones, which made things difficult. The mechanic for this was really fun (horrifying) because every time it created another monster I (the dm) rolled a d100 and set a timer for that amount of minutes, which signaled when the next Soulless One would be created. Anyway, the gang also at one point found a Bendy hand on the switch on the Ink Machine that makes things, but some investigation revealed that this was a misdirection and it was something other than a Bendy doing the whole Soulless One thing.
Also, as for the pieces of soul they gave up, they found a small (like knee high) statue of a perfect toon version of Bendy in his castle which was made out of some sort of clear, glass-like material and had an odd glowing, colorful light inside it. Henry broke it and they got their soul-bits back! A similar thing happened in a later loop when someone (maybe Henry? I can’t remember) gave Bendy their whole soul and then got it back when Sammy broke the statue again.
The pattern was broken when in one loop they (under threat of much violence) got Joey to reveal that he knew of a way to turn off the Ink Machine. He tried to just send them back in with that information, but unfortunately for him they saw right through that and pulled him in with them. However, when he got there he found that the off button had disappeared and he had no idea how else to turn it off, so now they had no idea what to do and Joey was there, so that’s a lose-lose. After a while longer of trying to deal with Joey in the studio, including a brief segment of Joey being put through the Ink Machine and turned into the Friendly and Inviting Horse, him trying to flirt with/manipulate Sammy whenever they found themselves alone together, and general dickishness, the group comes to the realization that the Ink Machine is, well, a machine, and thus can be taken apart. The gang teamed up with Allison and Tom (Jack might’ve been there too), and they went to fight the Ink Machine. The Ink Machine didn’t take particularly kindly to this, and made several Soulless Ones to fight the group off, but Joey cast Magic Circle at a higher level on them, effectively trapping them long enough to deconstruct the Ink Machine enough to destroy it.
