Between sessions here, the players noted that they had a big sandbox to play in, but no hooks. So I gave them what they wanted. Any relation to beings alive or dead is purely a hallucination you're having... except for Kim Jong Un. He's really a reptilian.
Some things translated from Elaine Cunningham's Laptop
Reptilians
1. Sen. Mark Wallace ( R ) - NM – Los Ranchos, NM (outside Albuquerque)
2. Rep. Julia Alvarez (D) – CA – Bakersfield, CA
3. The Hon. Richard Phillips – US Court of Appeals, 9 th circuit – San Francisco, CA
4. Kim Jong Un – North Korea
5. Deng Chiang – CEO Pacific Marine Seafood Exports, Hong Kong
6. General Harold Mudder – US Marine Corps
7. Alan Green – JP Morgan Chase / US Federal Reserve
8. Bishop Peter Streich – Archdiocese of Chicago
9. Yo Fujita – C.E.O. Daiichi Data Solutions – Tokyo
10. Alicia Hill – C.F.O. ConAgra – Omaha, NE
Places
1. Titan Manufacturing, Inc. – Northern Marianas Islands – (owned by Ydressius Inc)
2. Our Mother of Mercy Orphanage and Hospital – Birnin Kebbi, Nigeria
3. Soleil Noir – Sudan – Solar Power Array
4. Aqcha, Afghanistan – Land
5. Shoshoni Acres Ranch. Couer d'Alene, ID. – (owned by Ydressius Inc)
6. Pacific Marine Seafood Exports – Hong Kong
7. Rodgen Solutions, Inc (genetic engineering) – Greely, CO
8. Savage Arms (weapons manufacturing) – Westfield, MA
9. Allergan, Inc. (biomedical industry) – Waco, TX manufacturing facility (botox, cosmetic implants)
10. Katz-Harris Group (PR agency) – Arlington, VA
Ydressius Group, LLC
Incorporated in Laramie, WY, Ydressius Group is a holding company possessing stock for pretty much all of the above-named corporations and owning both commercial and residential real estate around the world. The board of directors is listed as: Marcia Kein-Kopf, CEO. Taylor Head, CFO. Allan Tete, CIO.
Random Findings
1. Confirmation of delivery of nearly 8000 units of something, so far, to Titan Manufacturing, Inc. “50% of goal.”
2. Satellite Survey Data of a site near Hpkan, Myanmar
3. Notification from Gen Harold Mudder, Afghanistan command, that surveillance data for Aqcha for the month of August in 2011 has been redacted.
4. A list of ten container ships that have carried goods for Pacific Marine Seafood Exports to ports in the Northern Marianas Island, Seattle, and Los Angeles over the last three years.
5. A report for an investigation into a UK military unit that went missing near Aqcha on 08/06/11.
6. A file containing a list of 50 warlords in northern Nigeria. Many are marked “deceased”
7. A blank requisition form for a full identity for several nations.
8. A very nasty feedback email to Rodgen Solutions about the “feature creep” in the Honey Ranch line of products and how the entire R&D staff should be fired for daring to create such an abominable “product.”
9. The script for a short film about a heroic executive in the aerospace industry and how, with the assistance of some plucky but hapless sidekicks, she manages to thwart an evil government surveillance plot that threatens her industry.
10. A list of the baby names from several countries over the past three decades. Some are marked with smiley faces.
11. A detailed, profanity-laden, story describing violent acts perpetrated upon Jacqueline Morris, 34, an employee of Google, of Palo Alto, CA
12. A list of clothing by month, indexed to the average annual temperature in Coeur d'Alane, ID
Episode 15 ~ Return to Brass
After hauling the Tablet out of the ground, the survivors stagger back. It is huge, about three feet square and six inches thick, and solid stone. They obviously can't take it back with them, so Clara busts out some charcoal and paper and performs a rubbing, then they re-bury it. No one has caught any shut-eye since they returned to Dasereth, but no one seems to be suffering for it. In fact, they all feel energized. Dasereth is a lot like Vegas - no clocks anywhere and everyone wants to sell you something.
They hike the four miles back to the dirt bikes, Afran in tow. In a huddle to figure out what to do with him, it was decided to hire him on as company scribe. He balks at the dirt bikes, but hops on behind Sam (Alex rides behind Clara), and off they go. They make the wyvern cave near dusk and start cleaning out the corpses. Chester nearly drops one on himself as he rolls it up and out the cave entrance, so Amos finishes the job. Then they hear chittering from the back of the cave and several eight-foot long insects, slick with stinky wyvern guts, crawl into view. Battle doth ensueth.
Clara shakes one and Sam kills another as Alex moves to protect Afran. One of the scavengers emits a fine blue mist which paralyzes Chester. Alex and Afran inhale some mist, but shake it off, merely fatigued. After a bit more bug-smashing and shield-bashing, the party sets up camp for the night. It is dusk again when they exit the cave, and they head down the scree and remount the bikes. They head north, doing their best to skirt the jungle.
After an hour or so of rough riding, Amos takes a tumble, and the other bikes go down, too. Jungle cannibal halflings have trapped the trail with a taut rope, and it worked perfectly. A crowd of them dogpiles Alex, Afran and Chester, and another group trusses Clara. Amos casts Smite on a chainsaw, Chester does some sweeping, and Sam punches one to death. Clara spots the leader of the halflings and notices his shaman crony, who lifts a rattling finger bone rod, and she feels the ropes around her magically tighten.
More killing of halflings occurs, with Sam taking down the shaman with her tomahawk and someone killing the leader. Demoralized, the rest take off into the woods with Afran. The survivors follow for a while, and find big avian-like tracks. Feathered velociraptor mounts. They return to the site of battle and loot the leader and shaman's corpses. Chester finds a magic coin purse. Each week it refills to hold one hundred coins. Clara finds a nice dagger that boosts strength. They also find two solar beacons, which is going to make getting home a tad more difficult. They camp for the night.
The next day is the longest they have experienced in Dasereth, and it is hot and dry enough to fatigue Alex and Amos. Fortunately, Sam remembers a gasoline stash and they refill the bikes. Near sundown the bikes run out of gas anyway, just in sight of Brass. Rather than push the bikes through the shifting sands, they grab the bare essentials and weapons and walk the rest of the way in. It is dark, so finding their portal back to Earth is impossible. They pick a tall onion-dome-topped tower and camp for the night. It is midnight on the other side, and their four guards are not responding to the radio.
After a few hours of uneasy rest - they hear lots of zombie moans from all sides - Velasquez squawks on the radio. Unfortunately, this draws the zombies to the survivors. Chester goes invisible and steps out to scout. The zombies can still sense him, however, so he rushes forward and starts fighting. Clara uses her earth-moving ring to bury zombies up their waists, effectively shaking them. Sam clambers up to the top of the minaret on their tower to throw down some LAW rockets. Alex explodes his AK-48, injuring himself and Clara. Chester sweeps and sweeps again, taking out five to eight zombies at a time. Amos manages to do sixty-four damage to one zombie with no cards. Wow.
Meanwhile, Velasquez, across the city, has spotted them and is digging out a tunnel that filled during the last sandstorm. Clara uses her ring to raise herself up out of harm's way, then builds a bridge over to Sam. Sam manages to damage the dome with her third LAW rocket, and it begins to tilt at a dangerous angle. Chester rages, moving into the best place for the zombies to see, target and surround him. The others make a break for Velasquez. Alex gets there first and helps dig out the tunnel entrance. Amos runs for the tunnel, shield-bashing zombies on the way. Chester's not clear-headed enough to retreat, so sweeps a group of eight, then another group of eight.
Eventually they all make it to safety. It is estimated they took out 120 zombies in all (Yes, 120 zombies, with 40 on the board at any one time. This combat demonstrates one of the great things about Savage Worlds, as the entire combat took about 45 minutes to play).
Amos finds a cloak that grants the Obscure power, which throws up a cloud of dust and sand. They return to Earth, exhausted, dirty and alive.
Episode 14 ~ The Akhnaat Tablet
A line of farmers and merchants slowly files through the giant gates, each one stopped by metal-clad guards that demand an entrance fee. The guards speak slowly and loudly, asking for five coin per person in the honor of the Ruby Emperor. The survivors pay their way in and are greeted by towers lined with metal plates, buildings with metal door frames, shops and streets decorated with metal signs. Bronze is a rich city, indeed.
They pass street vendors selling olives, lamb, carpets, clothing, wood crafts and beads. A fat man offers dancing girls and boys for fifty coins a piece. Chester wants to liberate one, but he lacks the coin to do so. Alex buys a bundle of native garb. Chester decides instead to get some food while Clara hunts down a map. The map seller asks for fifty coins, as the map is hand-drawn on thick parchment. Luckily, Clara thought to bring change from home, and the conversion rate is one pound of non-Dasereth coin for twenty-five local coins. Chester comments that one can buy a human being for less than three dollars.
As they make their way through the crowded streets looking for an inn, Chester gets targeted by a pickpocket, but notices the hand in his pocket and slaps it away. The would-be thief melts back into the throng. Amos mentions he is willing to sell his crowbar in an emergency. They settle on the Iron Dancer Inn near the harbor and get two rooms. The common room is choked with dancing girls, travelers and merchants. The prostitutes here are quite solicitous. Amos spots no fewer than six other spike-heads in the crowd. After a meal they head out to a bookstore to find their Rosetta Stone.
When Clara asks the owner of the book store about a book that will translate snake-person, he blanches and kicks her out. Amos catches his foot in the door. With a combination of Amos' and Chester's menace and Clara's sweet-talk, the bookseller whispers under his breath, "They're everywhere, I can't help you. You seek the Ahknaat Tablet. Go to the Great Library." They take their leave and find signs on the streets that take them to the Great Library.
The Library itself is in a huge stone domed building, surrounded by lush gardens and fountains. Thirty foot statues stand guard at the main entrance. A bald tattooed scribe guards the front doors and asks for five coins per person to enter. After some dickering they are allowed inside. Vendors line the foyer selling paper, ink and lamb kabobs. The group wanders into the main dome. Huge pillars hold up the roof, and numerous closed doors lead off the main room. High shelves stuffed with books and scrolls line the walls and fill the main floor, tall wooden ladders rest against them. Wandering here and there are the scribes, both men and women, bald and robed with scalp tattoos. Clara asks one about the Tablet, and the scribe is clearly offended and disturbed by her line of questioning.
Chester spots the rare book room and starts to enter but is stopped by another scribe that tells him he must have written approval from Deka, the Mouth of the Ruby Emperor, to enter. Clara bluffs her way in, dragging Alex along with her, but she is informed that the Tablet is most likely in the Spiral Archive. The Library closes at eight o'clock, so they leave and head back to the bookseller.
Clara knocks, and the bookseller says, "Closed." on the other side of the door. Clara offers two coins. "Closed." Five coins. "Closed." Ten coins. "Closed." Strange other-worldly metal that is not coins. "Come around to the back and knock thrice." She does and the bookseller, Alagar, opens up and sits her down with a bowl of broth. Clara asks Alagar for a copy of the laws of Bronze (?) and offers two coins from the "lost city of Brass" in recompense.
At the tea shop across the street, the guys sit and wait until some guards show up and tell them to move along. Amos clutches at his head and complains that his spike is hurting, and the guards tell him to go to the guild for help. Alagar tells Clara the Governor/Mouth can be seen from dawn to dusk. Chester radios Clara asking about something, and Alagar is amazed at the "voice from nowhere". Alagar tells Clara to be careful, as the Ruby Emperor has outlawed reptilian language and presence. Clara takes her leave, gathers the guys, and they head off to the palace. Though it is just past sundown, they are hoping to gain an audience with Deka.
They are followed by a pack of ratty beggars. The palace is epically metal and enormous and bronze. A wide garden sports fountains and torches, and a crowd of merchants and performers fill the space. The survivors spot a gallows and bodies wearing signs - presumably detailing their crimes. A group of plate mail guards stop them and say, "The Governor is a very busy woman, come back tomorrow." Clara tries to bribe their way in. It works and they are led in to an atrium. Vases filled with lush flowers and greenery rest on every surface. A guard knocks on a door four times and a woman in robes emerges. "I thought the sun went down," she says, sits at a desk and sighs heavily.
Deka is humanish, with black hair, dusky skin and a crooked nose. Clara says they are from Brass and asks for permission to enter the Spiral Archive. Deka counters - there is no such place, and to speak of it means death by flogging. Chester is rude and Deka dismisses them, explaining that she is going to go easy on them. Just then a guard rushes in and tells Deka that Lady Mumenafera demands her presence at the Palace of Gentle Reeds. The Lady is the cousin of Deka, and outranks her.
They decide, since Deka is unhelpful, to find a forger. Clara hunts down a moneychanger they met on their way in, who says he'll them leads them to a forger. What he leads them to is actually a trap. In a dark alley, several men in shabby armor emerge from the shadows. The moneychanger says, "These the ones you want?" The leader of the armed men tosses him a bag of coin and nods. He then addresses the party, "Drop all of your metal and walk away." Two of his men lower crossbows. Just as combat begins to ensue, two small groups of locals who were also robbed by these guys show up to help. Combat then ensues. Amos asks Clara if these men are demons. Clara responds, "Eight ball says foggy, ask again later."
Alex pulls his AK-48, and Amos and Chester bash bad guys against surrounding hard objects like walls and merchant carts. Clara shoots the leader in the leg and he goes down. The local rabble proceed to kick him to death. One guy gets away and the local rabble demand part of the spoils. Amos retrieves the money bag from the leader and the rabble are thrown a few coins. The survivors head out to case the Great Library since their forgery scheme did not pan out.
The Library has huge solid doors, probably barred from within. There are glassless windows, but they are three stories up and there are no surrounding buildings of adequate height. Clara figures there might be a government building close by with a basement tunnel to the library (no idea how she figures that out), and they find a likely candidate across the street from the Library. A short stairway down leads to a basement-level door. As Clara works on the lock, a pair of guards spots them. Chester and Amos make short work of the two, but more are coming. The party slips in through the door just in time.
They find themselves in a twenty by twenty foot room. Robes on hooks line the walls. Also here are benches, satchels and sandals. Scribe-wear. A door on the far side of the room features an engraving of a scribe. They go that way. They eventually wind up at the scribes' dining hall. There are a few late diners here, so they wait them out. Chester grabs a bowl of grub before they continue. They narrowly avoid a guard in the main room and find the door to the Spiral Archive.
They enter the Archive, and sure enough, the hall curves. A few feet in and a voice booms, demanding they show their written permission to be there, signed by the Mouth of the Ruby Emperor. Clara flashes a piece of paper with writing on it. The voice then demands their names so he can add theirs to the list of names of people he's killed. Chester goes invisible and shouts his full name. Something huge and mean and demonic appears and whacks Chester good. Alex tries to reason with the demon, but then Amos kills the hell out of it (Eric played a card to double Amos' damage, unfortunately negating two of Roman's cards in the process. Sorry, Roman.) Amos claims the demon's collar.
They do some searching and do not find the Tablet. They do, however, find an inventory. It seems the Tablet has been moved to the Inquiry Archive. They also find a book of ancient maps. Then they decide to kidnap a scribe to lead them to the Inquiry Archive. They find two walking down a hall, talking about books. Clara intimidates one and Chester bounces the other off a wall. The scribe says that the shadow of the Tower of Glory points to the Inquiry Archive on Midsummer's Day. Everyone looks at Alex. They find the Tower on the ancient map and head that way.
They do find the Tower of Glory, but the top is broken. Alex can't get a good fix on where they should look until he knows exactly how tall it used to be when whole. They canvass the neighborhood, looking for old people. Clara finds a guy more than willing to talk her ear off about his youth. He remembers the top of the Tower, all right. He used to jump to it from that building over there... Alex gets what he needs and leads them all to a blank spot on an old, unassuming wall. A secret door is found, and they descend a stairway. Eventually they find themselves in a chamber. Guarding the chamber are two fifteen foot stone statues of humanoids with huge crocodile heads. They grind to life.
One of them captures Alex and Afran the scribe in its cage-like mouth. The other survivors make short work of the guardians and they forge ahead to a huge room full of niches. In the niches stand mummified humans. Around each of their necks hangs a stone tablet on a string. A huge cauldron full of broken stone tablets sits at one end of the chamber. There are around five hundred mummies in here.
Chester removes a tag from a mummy and breaks it, then tosses it into the cauldron. Nothing happens. Clara asks aloud where the Tablet is. Nothing happens. Alex breaks a tag on a mummy without removing the other half and the mummy starts jerking around. A muffled screaming can be heard through the wrappings. They unwrap the mummy and a man screams that he knows nothing, he's just a merchant. He and a friend found the barge with the bodies, looted the coins and spent them in town. This merchant has been cruelly blinded, his eyes burned out in torture.
They awaken the guy next to him. He claims to have told them everything. He told them where the mask is, but does not know where the sword is. Amos presses about the mask- it is the burial mask of the Emperor of Brass. Both men are putout of their misery. Alex looks for and finds a list of assets. On it he finds a scribe about the right age. They awaken him and Clara calms him down. The awakened scribe wants proof that they are not Inquisitors, so Amos lets him touch his spike. He tells them he hid the Tablet five miles north of Bronze under a stump where sleeps a deer. They thank the scribe and kill him, too.
They take all the remaining tags from the mummies and leave town. They follow the awakened, now re-killed scribe's instructions and find a stump by the road five miles north of town. After digging down a few feet, a rough stone tablet is found. Dirt and moss is brushed away and there they see a three-foot tablet inscribed with five languages. One of them is snake-person script.
The next episode was an attempt to run an adventure from Mummy's Mask. It went sideways in the way all GM planning does, but I'll still attempt to run anything Richard Pett writes...
Episode 13 ~ Rally to Bronze
Clara's new acquisition is a five story office building with a three story underground garage. There are seventeen businesses in it, including a private investigator, an accountant, a couple lawyers, a psychiatrist, a couple talent agents, a waxing parlor and a naturopath. The survivors hire a private construction company to start working on the garage. They have the workers sign non-disclosure agreements about the project. Alex works on getting four dirt bikes.
An article appears in the LA Times about a huge methane explosion and explains the city is shutting off Spur 17 for the public's safety. Clara also purchases a modest beach house so the group has a place close by to recover from their wounds and set up a base of operations. Ashton Kutcher lives next door. Discussion about what to do with the guards they encountered but did not kill at Spur 17 does ensue.
One camp wants to kill them outright, but another camp feels they can be made useful. A third camp wants to procure memory-wiping drugs. It is decided they will be hired on to guard Brass and wipe out the zombie scourge there after being educated about the reptilian conspiracy. They are shown the doctor's body, in all its scaly creepiness, and seem convinced to help. The four XE guys are Logan Byrd, Calvin Lester, Brandon Stevenson, and Leo Velasquez. (Hooray for finishing my random name generator!)
In the downtime while Brass Construction works on the elevator, the group gets other things done. Alex builds a half pipe in the back yard of the beach house. Everyone upgrades their guns. Amos somehow tracks down a Captain America shield replica. They also get lots of block and tackle supplies. The dirt bikes are delivered. They load up and head out.
They ride the dirt bikes through the tunnels of Spur 17, and use the block and tackle equipment to lower the bikes to the cavern below. A ramp is constructed up to the portal entrance, and they ride through to Dasereth. They arrive at night, so Alex does some figuring - he thinks they are somewhere north of Kelmarine. They plant solar-powered radio beacons along their path south toward the sea.
They drop into a valley flanked by rough rocky mountains. They have seen not a living creature in ten hours. Sunrise happens and they ride for another six hours. They eventually top a ridge and see the Nidmer Sea stretch out before them. A mile or two of green rings the edge of the water. They camp for the night. In the morning they ditch the bikes and start hiking south. Alex leads the way with his machete, and the foliage becomes dense and jungly.
Alex finds a game trail and they follow it. After an hour of hiking, Clara hears aloud cracking sound from above and jumps back, but everyone else gets caught up in a net and now dangle eight feet off the ground. A great cacophony of hooting goes up, and muddy figures in loincloths appear - jungle halflings waving blowguns. Alex and Sam get paralyzed by the halflings' darts. Clara shoots the net down and Amos tumbles out of the mess of limbs and vines. Alex slurs a limerick, shaking many of the wee folk.
Clara gets knocked down and tied up as the others struggle to free themselves of the net. Sam shakes off the poison, but a couple halflings cut Alex free and make off with him as the others disappear into the jungle. Amos picks up the trail and after they all get to their feet they follow it. The group easily catches up to the stubby-legged cannibals, who drop Alex and run. Alex heals Sam and Chester. Clara hears their chattering off in the jungle, so she aims carefully and turns one of their heads into red mist. That seems to convince the rest to leave them alone, at least for the time being.
They return to the bikes and ride south as night falls, then turn west at the edge of the jungle. After an hour or so of riding, huge bird-like creatures swoop out of the sky and grab Alex and Chester and their bikes! Sam screeches to a halt and fires a LAW rocket at the one clutching Alex and scores a direct hit, dropping the bird-thing, which drops Alex and his bike in a tree. He lands badly, breaking the mounted flamethrower and maybe a few bones - he is hurt badly.
Chester, aloft, pulls out his shotgun, but he can't get a shot. Clara shoots at the bird-thing holding him, but botches and hits the gas tank on the bike instead. They mount their bikes and give chase. Meanwhile, Chester manages to pull two grenades loose, pull the pins, and shove them into the wyvern's maw. They explode and the thing is shaken. Alex uses a chainsaw to cut his bike out of the tree and follows the others. The wyvern slows and drops altitude, then enters a cave in the side of a mountain. It drops Chester and the bike and vomits a bunch of blood.
The others see where the cave is, but they have to climb a steep, rocky hill to get to it. So climb they do. They all make it to the cave entrance and a little fighting ensues. Chester blasts the wyvern with two barrels of his sawed-off shotgun just as Sam bounces into the cave to help. The enraged creature tail-slaps Chester, wounding him. And enraging him. Amos drops into the cave, katana at the ready, and beheads the beast. They loot the lair. Clara finds some nice leather armor and Chester finds a nice shield.
They camp and head out the next day, aiming for Bronze. They top a ridge and a city can be seen below them. Big walls and shiny domes. Through binoculars they spot an impressive harbor and several fishing boats on the Nidmir Sea. Sam spots an old road, so they follow it. As they approach the city, they note poles sporting red ribbons on either side of the road. A hugs sign stands before the massive stone gates: BRONZE.
Clara is Filthy Rich. She's "Bruce Wayne rich", where buying an office building is a simple matter, as well as hiring a bunch of people to excavate a lost city. This works out great for me, because there are few things I find more tedious in an RPG than dealing with how much money a PC has (counting ammo is right up there).
Episode 12 ~ Fire and Water
The smoke and dust clear, and the city below comes into view. The floor of the cavern is about 80 feet below the ledge the group is standing on. Below they can see a number of square buildings standing in neat rows of six. Each is about 30 feet to a side.
The party gathers supplies from the camp: food, water, batteries, etc. into a large Rubbermaid tub, which Chester and Sam carefully lower to the bottom. Chester offers to go down first to test the rope. He rappels down the side of the cavern and lands in a rubble-strewn street. The others follow. Amos is virtually catatonic - the spike in his head seems to have some serious side effects - but they manage to lead him down as well.
The rectangular cavern is about 500 meters long with four arches leading out, one on each wall. The buildings are laid out in a grid, and are apparently identical. They look like houses. Inside each are stone slabs for sleeping and stone countertops, all built into the stone of the houses. There is no other furniture, no household items, nothing to indicate who or what lived here. Gutters run down the streets between the buildings. They are damp and slimy with algae blooms. Along the walls of the cavern are strange habitations, also empty. Chester searches through the habitations and takes a sample of lithified excrement to be analyzed back home.
They make their way to the nearest arch (east). It is covered in weathered carvings that is barely discernible as snakepeople writing and pictures of snakepeople themselves. A long tunnel leads out of the cavern. Clara photographs everything. They follow the tunnel into a large chamber, in the center of which stands an enormous stone pyramid. Steps carved with reptilian glyphs lead up to the top. At the top is an altar with blood gutters that looks just like the shrine on the island. Behind it stands a headless statue: the decapitated god.
They follow the edge of the cavern to the next arch (north), which also leads out of the cavern and ends in a large chamber. They can see that this is where the water is coming from. Inside the chamber, four identical 3-story buildings stand on either side of a large structure that resembles nothing so much as a nuclear cooling tower. Four statues in various states of decrepitude stand in front of each building. At the far end of the chamber there is a set of freestanding double doors. A waterfall pours down from above onto the tower, and water has pooled in one corner of the chamber. There are occasional cracking sounds and thuds as bits and pieces of the stone ceiling and walls crumble. They decide to come back to this one and continue on.
The western tunnel ends abruptly in a rough stone wall. It looks as if the tunnel was never finished.
The tunnel beyond the southern arch is caved in. They find an old wooden crate labeled TNT, and bones sticking out from the rubble. There's also a satchel that contains a notebook - the journal of one James Argoth, an explorer whose brother was a surveyor. The last entry in the journal is dated 1/7/1920.
They return to the northern chamber to examine the doors more carefully. The floor at the foot of the door is covered in water about six inches deep, and gutters carry more water under the doors. As they approach the doors, there is a loud grinding noise. Two of the statues crumble to pieces, and two more start moving towards the party, one much larger than the other. Alex ducks behind the doors for cover. Chester gallantly steps between the ladies and the statues. Clara shoots off the larger statue's leg. Sam's attempt to smite the smaller one barely affects it, so Clara shoots that one too. "I'm an American. You shoot that s~!*!"
With the statues quiescent, they decide to unbar the doors. The doors themselves are very heavy. It's clear that they are unbalanced and no longer functioning properly. They pull the door open, and find a hallway, which is in no way visible from the other side of the arch. The entrance to the hallway is full of mud and sand. Water starts running through the door. They venture in, and discover footprints before going very far. It is very quiet - they can't even hear the waterfall in the chamber though they can see it. A little further along the tunnel dries out and there are more footprints. They follow the passage to an intersection. They can hear the faint sound of movement and a dry, raspy scream. Then more screams. The party backs up as six dessicated bodies move into sight.
Chester rushes the creatures swinging his bone sword, and the fight is on. More zombies move in, and more, and still more. They retreat back towards the door, fighting the whole time. Alex is wounded, then Chester - who rages - then Sam - who limps away. It's pretty hairy for a while, but they make it out with their lives. As they rest they hear more screaming a ways off. Alex sets up a tripwire with a grenade, which the zombies set off, and the fighting begins again. Finally, they retreat behind the door. Alex and Chester are both grievously wounded. Clara and Sam leave them to go back up for more supplies, including the parts to make a flamethrower (AK 47s, propane, explosives, etc.). They also bring back painkillers and antibiotics.
The portal doors start shaking as Clara and Sam drag the Rubbermaid into the chamber. They quickly gin up a very complicated trap. Using her magic ring, Clara digs a large pit in front of the doors. They line it with C4. They rig a zipline from the top of the portal to the chamber entrance, just in case. Alex builds a flamethrower out of spare parts, and they mount it to the top of the arch. Sam and Chester position themselves on top of the arch, ready to lift the bar. Clara and Alex wait on top of the tower, Clara with her finger on the trigger of her AK47 as she aims, and Alex with his finger on his smartphone, which is programmed to trigger the C4.
Sam and Chester lift the bar, and zombies spill through. Chester incinerates a bunch, then turns the flamethrower over to Sam, who does the same. Alex detonates the C4, obliterating the zombies in the pit and caving it in on them. After this, they make short work of the remaining zombies.
They make their way gingerly through the portal again and down the corridor to the intersection. Ahead they see glimmers of daylight. They are in an enormous building. At the end of the hall there is a window, through which they see a city almost completely buried in sand. They have found the lost city of Brass! From this vantage point they see that there are more zombies shambling around the city. They have no idea where Brass is in relation to the rest of the world, but they know that it is about 200 miles outside the livable radius.
For now, they return to Los Angeles. They decide to secure land somewhere above the old LA subway line. Clara, having come into even more money recently, buys an entire office building in downtown LA. They close off the lower levels of the parking garage to the tenants and begin securing their own entrance to the subway.
Episode 11 ~ Spur 17
The next step, it seems, is to go to LA to check out subway spur 17 as a portal is likely hidden there. Alex's parents are not willing to let them have the van for such a long trip, so they rent a shimmery mother-of-pearl Escalade. It's a long, boring drive down to LA. When they arrive, they settle into their motel and Clara contacts the Urban Explorers. She easily persuades them to show her the entrance to the subway. They provide a sketch of the layout, some old maps, and a detailed description of how to get to spur 17. They also told her how the entrance was protected: four LAPD officers patrolled the area regularly along with 10 contracted security guards.
The group loads up on equipment: survival gear, ropes, head lamps, etc. The first challenge is to actually get into the tunnels. The entrance was inside a small building surrounded by a chain link fence. They could see several rent-a-cops and two LAPD officers. A block away or so Alex set off a couple of M80s as a distraction to draw the guards away while the others sneak in. It almost works. Amos' katana gets stuck in the fence, and one of the security guards spots him. Everybody bolts for the door. A guard grabs Amos' scabbard as Chester slides down the bannister past him, oddly graceful. Amos drags the guard thumping down the stairs and catches up to the group at the bottom of the stairs. There's another chain link fence. The gate is chained shut. Clara uses bolt cutters to cut the chain and everyone slips through. Amos slams the guard to the ground, diving through the fence just as they hear more guards approaching. Sam pulls a U-lock out of her backpack and locks the gate shut behind them. The guards appear, and the party saunters away.
They find themselves on an empty train platform. Against one wall there is a row of toilets that had been pulled out of the bathrooms and abandoned. They consult their subway map and head down the tunnel to the right. It's hard to gauge time in the dark, but they walk for a long time. They reach an intersection and turn a corner, where they stumble upon three men at a table. Two of the men immediately point guns at them, and the third fips on a floodlight. They recommend that the party turn around. Predictably, Amos charges, drawing his katana as he runs. Sam shoots the floodlight out. The gunmen start laying down suppressive fire, frightening Clara and Chester. One of the men fumbles with a radio, presumably calling for backup. Clara recovers enough to shoot one of the men. Sam vaults the table, swings her axe, and catches one of the shooters a glancing blow. It is not enough to kill him, but he immediately frosts over and collapses. The third man runs. Chester throws his sword, but misses; then his obsidian knife, which shatters. Sam shoots the man in the back, but it is Amos who kills him, cleaving him open with his sword. The tunnel is suddenly silent, aside from the labored breathing of the man slowly dying of hypothermia. Amos slits his throat.
Clara takes the radio and has Chester signal an all-clear, thinking he was better suited to impersonate one of the guards. They continue on, using the night vision goggles instead of lamps. After about a quarter mile, the tunnel starts to bend to the left. There's a light ahead. The party hides in niches along the edge of the tunnel. Chester radios in, says that a bunch of gutter punks have wandered in and that Alpha needs backup. Beta team grumbles, but two of them wander back up the tunnel to check it out. A third guy is left behind. Chester stumbles up to him, pretending to be a drunk hobo. The ruse works until he gets close enough for the guard to see he doesn't really look like a hobo. Before he can react, however, Chester clocks him in the head and knocks him out. They ziptie the guy, gag him, and stash him in a niche.
Suddenly the radio sputters. "Bailey! We have a situation! There are three dead bodies at Alpha!" Chester attempts to impersonate Bailey, but this time they don't buy it. They come running back. Sam, Clara and Amos stretch a rope across the tunnel and trip the men as they come barreling around the bend. Sam and Clara disarm them. Amos, assuming the men are evil, kills one in cold blood. The others convince him to stand down, and Chester steps up to the last guy. "You know there are snake people trying to take over the world? This is for your own good." He kicks the guard in the head and the man falls unconscious.
The radio sputters again, and Chester answers. The person on the other end is suspicious. Clara grabs the radio and tells them that everything is under control. Apparently she is pretty good at this, because they back down. The group creeps forward to the next checkpoint. The guards here are wary and obviously keeping an eye out for trouble. Clara radios that Beta needs reinforcements. They try the rope trip again. Two start out for Beta checkpoint while the third panns around with the floodlight. They manage to trip one, but the other recovers enough to stay on his feet. The light plays across Clara and Sam just as the guards come even with them. Sam swings her axe, intending to incapacitate they guy, but instead kills him with a blow to the throat. Amos knocks another unconscious. Clara kneels on the third guy's chest and presses her gun to his head. "Don't do anything stupid." He readily gives up.
They tie him up and question him. He tells him that he'd guarding a camp; it's something like an archaeological dig. In all there are 24 guards. (The party has already dealt with 9 of them, including this one.) The man in charge is one Dr. Nicholas Reed. Clara shows him the photo they took from Elaine's house - he points out Dr. Reed. They get a few more details from him then knock him out, tie him up and gag him.
They continue on to the camp. They can see three guards. There are two people leaning over a table; they look like archaeologists from some B movie. Off to one side there are a number of people sleeping on cots and a small camp kitchen. There are also three robosnakes curled up in various corners of the room.
They quickly (!) devise a plan. They will claim to be from the Senator's office, and that they were sent to check the status of the project. They stride in, all confidence. The snakes immediately focus on them. Clara says arrogantly, "Dr. Reed, call off your pets. The Senator wants a status update." The snake backs off, and Dr. Reed calls them over, unrolling a diagram on the table. As they cross the room Sam recognizes that the sleeping people have a certain look to them, something like she'd seen in Mali. They look like slaves.
One of the scientists looks oddly at the spike jutting from Amos' head. Another eyes Chester's bone sword. Without warning, the man whips out his long reptilian tongue and wraps it around Chester's neck. "Friend, tell us why you're really here." Chester starts to spill everything - EVERYTHING - until Sam severs the man's tongue with her axe. Amos grabs the other scientist's phone before he can make a call.
The room erupts into chaos. One of the snakemen puppets Amos, causing him to toss his sword. He manages to break free from the spell and recover his sword. He fends off a snakeman who can shoot gouts of fire from his hands. Hoping a smarter man can use it to stop the snakes, Amos tosses the phone to Chester, who drops it, shattering the screen.
Meanwhile, the brainwashed slaves have grabbed picks and shovels and are starting to join the fight, and the snakes wake up again and start looking for targets.
Clara hides under a table and shoots whenever she gets a clear view. Two snakemen pin Sam to the table Clara is hiding under. Sam wriggles free and punches one of her assailants in the throat, crushing his windpipe. She backs away from the slaves, unwilling to hurt them and tumbles over a table to attack a snake. It frosts over, but is otherwise unaffected. The slaves toss over the table, exposing Clara. She rolls across the floor and lands under the next table. She kicks it over to provide some cover. She finds the phone on the floor and starts pusing buttons at random - the interface is all in snakeperson-tongue.
Chester fights off a robosnake, but can't quite duck a bite from one of the snakemen. He goes berserk and cuts the snakeman more or less in half. He then wades into the crowd of slaves and starts fighting them off. He grabs a man and starts swinging him like a weapon, smashing him into the other slaves. The man he is wielding is immediately killed, as is one of the slaves.
The runes on Amos' head spike glow as he blesses his sword. He leaps up, spins the katana, and drives it into a robosnake's head. The light in its eyes blinks out. The other snakes suddenly power down as Clara hits the right combination of buttons.
This is when reinforcements arrive.
Clara thinks fast, grabbing a grenade from Chester's belt and tossing it into the crowd of guards. All but two are taken out. Those two focus on Amos. Clara shoots one of them, and Amos pirouettes past the other and impales him on his katana.
Chester is busily pulping and maiming the slaves. Sam entreats them to stop, tries to get them to understand that they are free. The slaves are unaffected. Sam backs up into another tunnel, still trying to avoid hurting them, and runs into another crowd of snakepeople. They start shooting; she stands her ground and shoots back. Chester sees what's going on. He drops the corpse he's been wielding and runs up to attack the snakepeople instead. The last one standing is Dr. Reed. He immediately puppets Chester and turns him on Sam, but Sam slips free. Amos slams into Reed and kills him. Chester comes to, wondering why on earth he's trying to give Sam a bear hug in the middle of a fight.
There's a thunderous noise and the tunnel shakes as a bunch of explosives go off. The party heads down the hallway and find the site of the dig. The floor is littered with debris, bodies, and four decommissioned robosnakes. There is an enormous hole in the floor, through which they can see a cavern. At this point they discover that there is an entire city under LA.
Episode 10 ~ Breaking and Entering
With the pirates all but destroyed, the survivors regroup and consider their options. Self-rescue is now a reality, as they have enough fuel between several vehicles to fill the tanks on two fishing boats. The boats are big enough to carry all the crash victims off the island, as well as a few prostitutes and the friends they made along the way.
They leave the next day, in the late morning. It gets dark, but Alex is able to keep them generally on course. Just when they are about to run out of fuel, they spot a light ahead. Someone fires their last flare, and a South African freighter slowly turns around to meet them. Rope ladders are dropped and the survivors board.
They are twelve hours from Jakarta, they learn. Sam gets the ship's doctor to examine her leg. He gives her antibiotics and painkillers and tells her she'll be fine with a minor surgery.
At 3:50 AM, they reach Jakarta. The survivors thank their rescuers, who had called ahead to alert the authorities. Embassy staff from all countries represented show up, as well as a gaggle of international press. One ambassador Stevens shakes Amos' hand vigorously and asks what the hell happened to his head. Baby Enid is hailed in Australia as a miracle baby. Hotels in Jakarta and flights home are arranged. Hamburgers and coffee are consumed. Cue bureaucracy montage.
The survivors are given a stipend for food and clothes. They exchange phone numbers, those that grew close to one another, and promise to meet up later that evening for a drink. Clara transfers money. Alex finds out he lost his job and calls his folks. Amos considers suing the airline. Later, after they have cleaned up, eaten and taken care of what they needed to, they gather at the hotel bar. Benny raises a glass of beer and toasts, "May you all get as old as me!"
After a night of revelry, the survivors prepare to return to their normal lives. Sam has a disturbing dream that night - a great war takes place in a vast desert between red-skinned and blue-skinned humanoids. A Starbucks looms in the distance, and Sam trudges through knee-deep sand but can't make it to the coffee shop. Somehow, in the rush to get settled in and handle their affairs, Fungus Jack goes missing. Sam tells Joseph about her dream, but their is a new tension there that wasn't there before, a certain distance between them.
Singapore airlines takes the Americans to the States via Honolulu. They manage to check all their weapons through customs. The survivors are met at the airport by a huge gang of press and immigration staff. They spend three days in Hawaii, where Sam gets her leg surgery. They are also met by one Carol Seavie, a public relations agent, who Clara has hired to manage their stories. Clara also makes copies of all the footage she gathered and starts organizing it. She realizes they don't have much time to get to Elaine Cunningham's house before the reptilians do. There might be helpful clues or evidence there. She gets some connections to watch the Cunningham house.
Joseph visits Sam twice in the hospital, but the distance grows between them. Sam tells Joseph he could have done more to help. Sam, overwhelmed with ten thousand friend requests, shuts down her Facebook account. Clara gets Cynthia to bust Amos out of a psychiatric ward and the survivors fly to Oakland. They head to Palo Alto to stay with Alex's parents, Tilly and Gordon. At a BBQ place up the street from the Hutchins manse, Papa Hutchins buys pitchers of beer and mounds of meat and they eat, drink and talk.
This is one of those times that the note-taker missed some hilarious roleplaying moments while Gordon, assuming that Sam was Alex's girlfriend, gives Alex an embarrassing father-son talk about how to "treat a lady."
Back at the Hutchins' house, Alex gives Sam his bed to crash in and sleeps on the floor. Amos and Gordon bond over medieval weaponry lore. Tilly pores over Alex's star charts and discovers the star positions on the other side are consistently four degrees off of two axes. Sam stares up at the glowing stars on Alex's ceiling.
In the morning, Gordon makes pancakes and bacon. The survivors borrow Gordon's Volvo and head to a spy store for Clara, who picks up bugs, a directional mic, a lockpick gun and a camera. Then they hit a Best Buy, which takes forever. The next stop is a convenient gun show and arm themselves to the teeth. Everyone gets a 9mm pistol. Amos buys a katana. Clara gets a shotgun. They finally arrive at Elaine's house. Clara and Sam approach, but Alex, Amos and Chester wait in the car.
Clara easily opens the door, but the gals are stopped by an alarm in the entryway. Clara calls Alex, who talks her through disabling it. The alarm gives off one loud whoop, which gets the dogs barking next door. Elaine's place looks barely lived in. The furniture is sparse and perfect. The personal photos look perfect and fake. There is a big pile of mail,mostly bills and requests for political donations. They head to the back of the house to check out the office and bedroom.
The guys see an older woman, the across-the-street neighbor, exit her place and approach Elaine's. Clara's contacts in the van say it's Cecilia Johnson. Cecilia makes it across the street and confronts Sam and Clara, who spin a tale of office promotions, a secret affair, and peach cobbler. After she takes a photo with her phone, but before Cecilia has time to digest the amazing story, Amos rushes in, grabs her, and sits her down hard on a chair. Then he gags her and ties her up with a tassled curtain tie. Then Clara deletes the photo and breaks her phone.
Clara resumes her investigation of Elaine's bedroom. She finds a dozen power suits, a stack of Fortune and other money magazines, but no vibrator or lingerie, items which would likely be present in the bedroom of a powerful, female executive. In the bathroom she finds a thick metal brush in the shower, a roll of seven hundred scented garbage bags and a huge bottle of bleach. In Elaine's office they find an iPad dock, a stack of notebooks and a hidden staircase. They carefully creep down the staircase.
Clara squeaks when she sees something move in the shadows. There are tables lining the hallway and a big metal door at the end of the hallway. Then two pinpoints of red light flicker and a seven foot long metal snake rears up and bites Clara, poisoning her. She runs back up the stairs and slams the door on the snake,which is closely on her heels. Amos steps up and whacks the snake good with the katana, then Sam steps in with her tomahawk and does a good amount of damage. Alex, unfortunately, misses when he tries shooting the thing. With a great metal-on-metal wrenching noise, Amos finishes it off with the blade. They head back down.
Clara easily picks the lock on the big metal door. Beyond is a well-appointed office. The lights above are reddish-tinted heat lamps. They find a desk, a chair, a safe, a stack of photos and a flash drive. One picture is of a gathering at the 15th reunion of Harvard's class of 1993, Berrington House. Elaine stands next to a well-known Senator and Representative. The safe is too hard to crack, and they hear sirens. The group hightails it back to the car and gets away to hole up in a shady motel in East Palo Alto.
Sam uses her limited street cred to score some drugs for Clara from a dealer named Maurice. Sam has no street cred. She was chosen to do this because she was black and the normal social character was incapacitated. Clara needs drugs because she is delusional after being poisoned. They put her to bed and do some research. On the flash drive they find a map of the abandoned Los Angeles subway system. Spur 17 is highlighted. Also on the flash drive is a complicated math algorithm. Alex stares at it for a while and realizes it maps global coordinates from Earth to Dasereth and back. The algorithm is missing a piece, though, and doesn't quite work. The author of the file is named Paul Kuragawa. He is a PhD working at Livermore's DOE/DOB nuclear test labs on something called the Philips Correspondence Equation.
When Clara feels better, they meet up with her contacts at a Denny's. Gary, Buck and Red show up. Gary orders Moons Over My Hammy. The connections tell Clara everything they know and take off. The group decides they need to break into some computers or something, so Clara contacts a mid-level hacker named 55iver. They meet at a bookstore in Mountain View and Clara charms his pants off.
Alex figures he can get a tour of Livermore labs if he can convince an ex-girlfriend to take him through. Her name is Darla MacPherson. She is mousy and cute with an unhappy laugh. She and Alex hooked up at a Christmas party a few years back. Darla says if Alex buys her lunch, she can show him around. During the tour Alex sees, in Paul's office, a whiteboard filled with a familiar algorithm - a partial PCE! He tells Darla he's got to peeskie and sneaks into the office. He scribbles "I can help" and leaves his burner phone number.
They head to a Best Buy to use a computer to run the algorithm. 55iver kills the security cameras, Clara flirts with a salesperson, Amos stares at huge TVs, and Alex works through 738 possible solutions to the PCE. He finds a couple solutions - one is on a familiar island in the Indian Ocean. Alex realizes the PCE is really a portal probability calculator that gives location of likely portals between Earth and Dasereth. Just as he makes this realization, 55iver tells Clara they need to beat it. He blows a transformer and the lights go out. Several black SUVs pull up out front. Clara snaps pics as they escape out the back.
Episode 9 ~ Crossing Over
Amos wakes up in the dark with a terrible headache. He is lying in the sand. He hears several familiar voices nearby, and one unfamiliar one. He sits up, and Sam shrieks. Everyone is relieved he has recovered. Putting a hand to his head, Amos discovers the spike and is somewhat horrified. On the other hand, he is ecstatic to learn that he has been dead for three days. It's a miracle! The others introduce Pavel.
During the night, Clara notices moving shadows and rocks that seem to change shape. Using a cell phone for a spotlight, she checks them out, gun drawn. She spies a small shape scuttling among the boulders. It pops out and stabs her with a spear. Several more appear, including two carrying a net between them and one carrying a long hook. Clara fights them off, nimbly dodging every attempt to trip her. One climbs up her back, but she knocks it off. Finally, though, they catch her in the net, stuff a smelly rag into her mouth, and truss her up. The creatures are caked in dark mud and adorned with what appears to be war paint. One of them stomps on Clara's cell phone, leaving them in darkness.
The noise finally wakes the party. Sam spots Clara immediately and points her out to the others. Clara is struggling against the ropes, and eventually wriggles her arms free. Sam, Chester and Amos bolt toward her. Amos obliterates one of the creatures with a might swing of his bone sword. Realizing they are outclassed, the creatures flee, but not before one grabs Clara and slices off her ponytail. It bares its sharply filed teeth at her and runs off after its companions.
Since everyone is awake, they decide to continue on through the night. They argue a bit about what to do with the camel. Finally Sam smacks it on the rump and it runs off. They divide up the coins from the chest and start to climb the hill toward the treeline. The sun comes up quickly as they enter the thick jungle. Birds are hooting and calling. They follow a creek to the lake. In the distance they can see the cave entrance, but as they approach the lake they see the boats are gone. They follow some drag marks into the jungle, where they find one boat with a gaping hole hacked in its hull. Alex manages to patch it, though it leaks quite heavily. They paddle up to the hidden beach inside the temple, bailing madly the whole way.
As they make their way in, they run into two guards - XE mercenaries. Pavel tells them what happened to their companions and introduces the group. One tells him to "Get them with the rest." Clara and Chester hear a female voice crying out down the hall: "Don't! Stop!" It is Elena. Clara yells, points her gun at the soldiers. The soldiers yell, point their guns at her. Pavel tries to intervene but Clara continues to shout for Elena. Sam dashes down the hall toward Elena. She leaps gracefully down a staircase, coming to a stop right behind a mercenary who has Elena pressed up against the wall. His intentions are obvious. Chester plummets down after Sam. Chester takes one look and barrels right past the would-be rapist, wheels around, and clocks him. Elena throws herself into Chester's arms, weeping, then attacks the unconscious soldier, kicking him nearly to death. Meanwhile, Clara and Amos tackle the two guards. Amos is convinced they must be demons, but Clara explains they are merely evil men. Amos knocks one out with a punch and the other with his crowbar.
Elena tells Chester that the mercenaries have beaten people and raped a number of women, including some of the young Italian choir girls. Hooper managed to protect Marigold from the worst, but was severely beaten for his interference. Chester is enraged. He rushes straight down the hall to the cathedral, followed by the rest of the party. He throws open the doors. It is immediately apparent that some of the crash survivors are missing. Two mercenaries are sitting on the altar, passing a flask back and forth. Chester charges, swinging wildly, and takes off a chunk of one man's skull. Amos rushes in to attack the second mercenary, but Chester kills that one as well. They hoist the bleeding bodies onto the alter to see if the blood has any effect. Nothing happens.
Sam stops just inside the door and counts the survivors. Four of those that had been left behind are missing: Tomaso, Henrik, Marcia and Amy. Francesca is holding baby Enid. There is no sign of Joseph. Those that remain are terrified. The party pieces together what happened:
Marcia, the adoption counselor, had a heart attack. Tomaso was bitten by a snake and died. Unable to handle it any longer, Amy committed suicide. Henrik and Francesca were captured by the mercenaries. Henrik was shot and Francesca interrogated rather harshly. As far as anyone knows, there are about 120 pirates on the island and countless zombies. Teddy tells Sam that Joseph slipped out, intending to swim up the river to avoid the zombies and get back to the radio tower. Sam is distraught.
They decied to go back to the other side to repair the last Apache helicopter. Benny, Teddy and Pavel go along. Amos takes a nap, the others take a few pills, and they head out almost immediately. It is dark when they reach the doors at the waterfall. There is no moon. They pull out night vision goggles (taken from the mercenaries. Amos pours blood from one of the dead mercenaries onto the door. The waterfall slows to a stop amidst thunder and lightning. As they emerge, they see zombies approaching. Clara and Sam open fire - they know they need to defend the door until it shuts, about 15 minutes or so, to prevent the zombies from going through. There is much hewing, hacking and shooting.
The zombies stop their advance and start trying to dismantle the bridge. They can't leave the door, but without the bridge they would be trapped. Clara shouts, "We want to make a deal." To everyone's surprise, the zombies stop. One zombie, dead longer than most, shuffles closer and cocks its head to listen. Clara offers them three bodies (the mercenaries) and explains the party wants to rid the island of the pirates. The zombie shuffles off, then stops and waits until they follow. The water has risen over the door, and it is safe to leave.
Alex, Benny, Teddy and Pavel head off to find the Apache helicopter. The rest follow the zombie across the bridge toward the pirate village, a small crowd of zombies close behind. In the village they see lights, hear shouting and barking. Clara explains, "We can't go down there; the pirates want to hurt us." Their guide continues on. They have no choice but to follow.
There are two pirates on duty at the entrance to the village. They point their guns, but do not fire. They watch as the zombie leads the party through the gate. Another pirate makes a lascivious remark in Malaysian. Clara and Sam recognize the tone, if not the words. Sam glares coldly at him. The zombies following them echo Sam's glare, and the pirate backs down.
The village is small: four streets, three buildings with large patios, several houses. It was built by the UN when they were stationed here. There is a lighthouse that is not lit - this is where the zombie is leading them. There are sleeping pirates everywhere, as well as a number of garishly dressed whores. The steps leading up to the lighthouse door are carpeted in layers of ochre lines. The zombie clumsility opens the door and they walk in. The zombie stops at the foot of a long staircase and stairs up. A single yellow tendril flows up the staircase. They go up to the room at the top of the stairs.
A man with scraggly hair is sitting on a bare mattress. He is clearly alive, not a zombie, but yellow fungus snakes into his empty eye sockets. He is willing to negotiate with them. He has one desire: to get off the island. His attention is solely on Sam, who tells him she will get him off the island if he will forswear the Queen and follow her instead. He refuses, but is willing to help them if she will exchange essences. A little creeped out, Sam warily agrees. He coughs up a glob of yellow goo in her face. It is foul, and, revolted, Sam vomits - a pale blue goo that oozes up into him (and matches the color of her eyes exactly). He agrees to feed the pirates whatever information she wishes. She asks the zombie about Joseph and learns that he and Nevermore are approaching the beached ship.
Alex radios them to say that the Apache is repaired and ready to go. They plan a distraction. Sam convinces the Queen (through the zombie) to ensure that 20% of the pirates in the village won't wake up, and to tell the pirates that a counterattack is being planned somewhere down south, and that there's a large cache of weapons there. Meanwhile, they know that the RPG is hidden somewhere in the village. Once some of the pirates have been eliminated they will set off the RPG to take care of the rest, and send the Apache off to the tower. After much debate, the plan is set into motion. 30 pirates head for the tower, 30 head south to the supposed counterattack, and 30 are left alive in the village. The party prepares to take them on.
Sam and Clara hang back behind the wall overlooking the village as Chester rushes in, tossing a grenade, almost blowing himself up in the process. Amos sprints across the village, tosses a grenade into the building with the RPG. A pirate tosses it right back out. Amos catches it and throws it back in! It explodes, setting off the RPG. Half of the village goes up in flames. Chester barges into a house and flails about with his sword and knife. The pirate laughs at Chester's display, but is cut off when Sam shoots him in the head through the window. Bullets and grenades are flying. Sam leaps off the wall, dashes to a houses and tosses a grenade. It bounces off the window frame, but she manages to smack it back through the door with her tomahawk. Amos smashes through a window with his shield, knocking a pirate off his feet. Clara continues to shoot from above, defending Sam and the others. The fighting continues a long while. Their radios start squawking as a number of jeeps roar into town. Dozens of the vegetable people spill out and join the fray. Joseph has brought reinforcements! Chester gets shot, but barely notices it. He turns and barrels through a wall to reach his attacker, crushing him in the process. Sam takes a brutal blow to her leg, effectively hamstringing her. She has been lamed, and is bleeding heavily. Amos (apparently inspired by Chester?) smashes his way through a wall and pushes a pirate straight through the opposite wall. Almost all of the pirates have been killed or incapacitated, but one. Sam staggers to her feet, stumbles through the gaping hole in the wall, shoots the final pirate, and slumps to the ground, unconscious.
Amos' player missed the previous session, which was okay because his character was dead. "Was..."
This session may mark the point where I was no longer running an Adventure Path.
Episode 8 ~ Contractual Obligations
Amos is dead. Chester slams the spike into his head to see what happens. Nothing does. Someone runs back to tell Amarine what transpired. In the morning, Amarine and two of her guards, Sam, and Jacques ride into Kelmarine with camels and goats. Amarine wants to know if they found any treasure or if they encountered the demon trapped in the church, then hands them the key to the portal.
The party denies finding any treasure, and are reminded that their contract with Amarine stipulates they clear the demon from the church, despite its "foul countenance". Sam peruses the contract and reluctantly agrees, also noting they must deal with the giant viper in the old slave market. Chester wants to capture and study it, of course.
It is obvious the slave market was in operation just before the gnolls took over. Chester tracks the viper to its nest under a podium. Alex rigs a gaffe to help handle the snake, and Chester grabs it behind the head. Someone produces medical gauze from a med kit, and he wraps its jaws shut, pops it in a sack, and they all head back to the Battle Market. Amarine is impatient and disgusted. She insists they take care of the demon. The party agrees and heads to the church.
Before they leave, Chester obtains some venom from the viper, carefully milking it into one of Andrale's jars covered with deer hide. They reach the church's basement and insert the key, turn and pull. The glowing lines radiate outward and the portal opens. A staircase goes down, so down they go. They find a chamber below with a thirty foot well in the center. On the far wall hangs a hammer and a big gong. Sam climbs down and finds a seam in the stone at floor level - a sign of a door of some kind. Clara bangs the gong and the well's floor falls slowly. Something moves down there.
Pink tendrils coalesce into fiery figures. Sam shoves Jacques aside and destroys one of the fiery things with her axe, leaving a pile of ash. The other one turns on Clara. Alex's AK-48 jams, so he skirts the fray and checks the opening where the demons emerged to make sure more aren't coming. Beyond he sees niches bearing shrouded corpses and a cask with an elaborate topper. Sam smashes the remaining demon.
Chester and Alex open the cask. Within are ashes and bones. Chester finds a secret door amongst the niches. Beyond is a reliquary, but a metal portcullis bars the way. Several broken levers stick out of the wall here. Alex manages to repair some levers enough to get the gate partway up. They continue on. They find more niches bearing shrouded corpses, but when they are halfway through this section of the crypt, the skeletal remains shuffle and scrape to life, then attack!
One of the skeletons is huge, so Clara focuses on it, blasting it well with lead. Sam gets hit hard, but barely recovers. Alex smashes one to bits, Chester goes berserk, and Sam is cowed by the big one. Clara takes out the big one's hip and leg and it falls, but still scrambles at the adventurers. Chester finishes it off, and Sam heals up a bit. They continue on into a vast chamber with the night sky as a ceiling. Both moons shine their eerie light down. At the far end sits a throne, and upon the throne sits a man with a big axe, who looks very much like Kardiswan. So they nickname him Kardagain. The door behind them disappears.
Chester says, "I'm not gonna lie, we're here to kill you." Kardagain replies, "Let's get to it, then." Battle ensues. Kardagain stands and approaches and a low droning buzz fills the air, confusing Alex. Alex turns on Chester but Sam holds him back. Fighting happens, and Sam demands to know who he is and why he's there. Kardagain tells them his real name and explains he was imprisoned there for doing what comes naturally to his kind. More fighting happens, and Chester seems to kill Kardagain, but then he resumes his true form, that of a demon thing with a small toothy mouth and human-looking eyes.
Alex notices a weak spot on its chest and tells Sam, who goes after it with her tomahawk, but misses. The thing turns on Chester, who goes into a nerd rage, and Alex dives under it, hoping to get a stab at the weak spot, but he misses. Chester manages to cut the thing's head in two, and keeps both pieces to show Amarine. On their way out, Clara grabs the gong and Jacques helps them up out of the well. They return to the Battle Market. Amarine gives them twenty coins each for their trouble.
The next morning the party is anxious to return home, as they have fulfilled their end of the contract. They ask Amarine for a camel, and she offers to sell them one. Chester says, "F@!& that." and grabs a camel, which bites him. Sam soothes the ornery beast. They strap Amos' corpse to the camel and leave. The rest of the day is spent hiking back toward the temple and the other survivors. At dusk they hear gunfire and a roar close by. They climb a hill to get a better view of the battle.
From the top of the hill they see a manticore fighting what looks like a SWAT team - men in black uniforms and helmets. Only two are still standing. The manticore gores one, killing him. Clara shoots the manticore in the head, killing it. The group approaches the lone soldier-guy. He is clearly rattled, and points his gun at the new perceived threat. Clara convinces him to stand down.
His name is Pavel, and he has no idea where he is or how he got there. He came here through the temple, having reached the island by helicopter. They notice the logo XE on his uniform - he is a member of a privatized para-military security force. As far as he knows, six other XE team members are still back at the temple. They set up camp and Alex butchers the manticore to the best of his ability. The meat is good, if a little metallic-tasting.
In the morning they continue on to the temple. On the way Pavel tells them there were originally forty-eight XE members sent to the island to deal with the pirates and rescue Elaine. One of their choppers was shot down and two were grounded by lightning. They had a vague idea of where the temple was supposed to be, so kept a close watch on the north end of the island until they saw someone come out (Francesca and Henrick), grabbed them, and got in to the temple. He is creepily vague when asked about the welfare of the other survivors.
At this point, the PCs have started picking up some magic skills. Alex decides to go the "weird science" route and makes his AK-47 magical, which he then dubs his "AK-48". It's a singularly ineffective weapon, prone to jamming and occasionally exploding.
Oh yeah, and I'm aware now that Xe changed it's name to Academi. I just didn't care at the time.
Episode 7 ~ The Battle Market
The survivors rest up a bit after their wyvern experience and take a look at their surroundings. The ravine, forty or so feet down, features a river. It looks deep enough to float a canoe. They spot torches along the hilltop that surrounds the town, but can't make out the figures. Alex spots a dark winged shape circle the other big inn-like building. The torches disappear. As they cross the river at the arched bridge, they spot a dim light in one of the windows, so decide to investigate the other big building before entering the town.
The windows are heavily curtained. A miasma of ammonia, asparagus, sulfur and dog vomit assails their senses as they get closer. Alex figures the winged shape may have entered the building through a second-floor window. Amos sneaks and climbs up to have a look. The others approach the front door, which Clara determines is not locked. Chester knocks. A voice that only Clara understands bids them enter.
Above, Amos finds a bedroom of sorts with a nest-like sleeping area with lots of stick figurines and metal bits strewn about. He steals a knitting needle. Below, the others enter. They find a room full of multicolor smoke emitted by bubbling cauldrons. Sitting at a bench in front of an alchemy lab is a bird-like figure, around five feet tall with an eight foot wingspan. She's a harpy. Her name is Andrale. The survivors immediately pepper her with questions.
She explains she has lived in Kelmarine for four years, and that a few weeks ago a man named Kardiswan came to town with a band of gnolls. She is pretty sure he opened a portal under the church, and set up a place called the Battle Market, a sort of gladiatorial arena and bazaar rolled into one. The survivors ask her if she can sell them any potions (which she calls injections) and she says Kardiswan has forbidden her trading with anyone outside of the Battle Market. Andrale is willing to make an exception, however, because she likes Amos.
When Clara relays this information, Amos asks if she can inject him with a potion that allows him to understand her language. Andrale is happy to, and sticks him with a hollow reed and pours a noxious brown liquid through it. The injection site, when she pulls out the reed, is swollen, sore and green. Andrale says they can have two potions for fifty coins. They, of course, do not have fifty coins, so they dicker. Clara shows off a cell phone and takes Andrale's picture. Suitably impressed, she'll trade the phone for eight injections.
The survivors decide they want to take a look at the Battle Market, and promise they will return her infusion machine to Andrale if they find it there. Andrale agrees and gives them the keys to the Battle Market's back door and the cells below it. She also warns them about an ogre called The Strangler, to watch out for gnoll patrols, and to steer clear of the giant viper in the old slave market. They thank her and leave, deciding to check out the ruined church before the Battle Market.
On the way they hear screams from the general direction of the Battle Market, and spot torches and figures on a hill. A man has been attached to a wooden frame and slit open. The scene reeks of revenge or a warning of some kind. Don't mess with Kardisawn. The church lacks any recognizable iconography. A tarnished spire still stands above, and beyond a shattered wall they find rows of blackened pews. A statue still stands at each end of a hall oriented in the cardinal directions. A big winged statue stands at the center. They find a stairway going down under the big statue. Down they go.
They emerge into a small chamber that features a big door. Glowing lines emanate from a depression in the door. Amos tries the blood trick, but it does not work. To open this door, they must find the key, and they are pretty sure Kardiswan is going to have it. They exit the ruined church and spot a figure moving between the graves and tombs in the adjoining cemetery. They decide to ignore the figure and head to the Battle Market.
As they near the huge domed building, voices, clanging and music get louder. At the main entrance they are stopped by a green-skinned creature about four feet tall. He tells them they have been expected, and to come this way to meet the Mouth of the Carrion King. He leads them to the main arena, which is a circular pit surrounded by rows of seats. Circling that is a promenade of sorts half-full of booths, where the merchants sell food, weapons and other supplies. The Battle Market is roofless, but the sky is partly blocked by a third-floor balcony that features three thrones.
A great booming voice erupts from above - "JANK! THREE LASHES!" A group of gnolls grab some whips and approach Jank, the little green figure. Amos grabs him protectively. The owner of the voice emerges from his chambers behind the thrones. He is huge, scarred, wears spiked leather armor and carries a huge great axe. He introduces himself as Kardiswan, leader of the Kuldus Tribe, Mouth of the Carrion King and ruler of these lands. Clara requests an interview for a puff piece. He demands to know if she is a scribe. Why yes she is. He tells them to hand over their weapons and enjoy the Battle Market.
They do so and head up to Kardiswan's reception area. They enter a sitting room of sorts where a huge gnoll chieftain lazes, loaded for bear - Kardiswan's bodyguard. The interview begins. The Battle Market fights start at dawn, and they are welcome to stay and fight if they like. The Carrion King lives to the north. Kardiswan took these lands by force, and why are you so curious? Chester babbles something close to the truth, and Kardiswan grabs him by the neck and tells him, "This where you die." A fight in the Battle Market begins before dawn.
Clara slaps at Kardiswan ineffectively as Alex grabs a convenient cleaver on the banquet table. Kardiswan crushes Chester's windpipe. Amos grabs Kardiswan's great axe, but Kardiswan grabs it back. Chester boxes the bandit leader's ears and Kardiswan drops him. Clara shoots Kardiswan and shakes him. Amos tries to grab the gnoll bodyguard's sword, but fails, drawing the attention of three other gnolls who were hanging out in the hallway outside. Clara then walks up and shoots Kardiswan in the head, killing him.
Amos drops the sword and grabs Kardiswan's axe again, and gets a good hit on the chieftain. The other three gnolls rush Amos when they see this and run him through, killing him. Chester goes berserk. Alex gets a good hit on the chieftain, killing him. The other gnolls flee. Immediately a power struggle begins, with gnolls attacking one another, and the Battle Market main floor goes bananas. The surviving survivors each take a throne and watch the chaos from above.
~
They loot Kardiswan's quarters and find a chest containing two thousand coins, four large gems and a map showing three city-states. The Strangler tries to make a play to run Kelmarine, but the survivors publicly humiliate him. Chester shoves Dashi's ceramic spike into Amos' brain.
Most of the human merchants leave the Battle Market. As cruel and bloodthirsty as Kardiswan was, he also offered a sense of stability. Under the Battle Market they find a dead human in one of the cells.
The survivors return to the portal door. They never did find the key, so Clara uses her ring of earth moving to start a tunnel under the door. It only moves a bit of earth at a time, so they linger there, digging.
Been a while since I updated this. Plenty of updates coming...
With the somewhat irregular attendance of some of the players (Sam's player in particular), and the murder of the one NPC who could provide translations, I started running into problems with communication. Clara's player played an Adventure Deck card that gave her one skill for the session and chose to understand the language spoken in Dasereth. Since nobody being able to communicate with NPCs for the entire adventure wouldn't be fun for anybody, I decided to give her knowledge of the language permanently.
Also, in the next session is the first PC death. It's a temporary matter, as the players decided to hammer Dashi's spike into the dead PC's skull, "just in case it resurrects him..." And with a setup like that, who am I to say it doesn't?
Episode 6 ~ Kelmarine
The next morning begins with a flurry of activity. Lady Amarine grouses about the extra people in camp - more mouths to feed. Dashi uses his ceramic spike and touches Alex and Clara's temples to let them speak his language, but since Sam found the tomahawk she seems to not need the spell (becoming the Moldspeaker granted her the ability to speak the local language. Seeing how this session turned out, it's a good thing, because otherwise the PCs would have been unable to speak to anybody). Amos finds a guard to help him convert the beetle's carapace into a workable shield.
They move the last of the bodies out of the monastery, and Alex comments on Sam's eye-color change. Dashi notices the tomahawk hanging at her side and asks where she got it, then demands it. Sam declines. Dashi says something about he getting first pick of any treasure they find, but Sam holds her ground. Dashi goes off to talk to Lady Amarine.
Clara hears a phone ring, drops the end of the bench she is holding and runs to the bag of phones. Jacques, Joseph, Kimmy, Teddy and Martin gather around. The voice on the other end is unintelligible but quite sibilant. Then it switches to German. It asks who is this and where'd you get the phone. Alex, who speaks and understands German, says they found the phone in the plane crash. The caller hangs up.
Clara marks the phone with some of Kimmy's nail polish, and Teddy takes some more nail polish to mark, in English, the cairns he plans to build on his way back to the other side. Teddy takes Martin, Joseph and Kimmy back with him, but Jacques stays. Amos asks them for any metal they have on them before they go, so he can stash it and use it for trade later. Joseph gives Sam an Aussie dollar coin for good luck, and off they go.
From the north side of the monastery, they can barely make out the village of Kelmarane, just two miles away. While the survivors huddle and figure out a best approach, one of the guards summons Alex. He goes, wary, but the guard presses a ceramic coin into Alex's hand and gives him a big hug, telling him his debt to the caravan has been paid in full. Sam notices that Dashi is having lots of quiet side discussions with the guards and pointedly looking in her direction. She tries intimidating Dashi and his goons into leaving her alone, but fails.
Dinner is three-day-old goat. They all pick rooms and bed down for the night. In the morning, Sam and Clara go off behind a rock with a bucket of water from the well in the monastery's courtyard to get a quick rag bath. Dashi and four guards approach them and Dashi once again demands the axe, telling his guards to restrain Sam and Clara. Sam says no way. Dashi mumbles and gestures and the sand under Sam and Clara's feet sprouts tentacles. Sam shoots a round into the ground at Dashi's feet, which send the boys running.
Chester, Amos and Alex arrive to find the guards tangled by tentacles and Sam and Clara half-naked. Combat does, indeed, ensue. Shots are fired, blades are swung and sleeper holds are, well, held. Dahsi gets dead, and the language facility is lost. Alex plants his machete in the sand and gestures for peace. Things are looking like they could go that way, but them Amos swings his bone sword and kills a guard. Two others are quickly dispatched and the fourth runs off into the desert. Amos chases him and cuts him down. Sam sits down hard, then starts sobbing and pressing the bloody tomahawk to her face. (the tomahawk is cool to the touch and Sam has been using it to cool herself down)
After the melee, Amos returns to the monastery and kneels in front of the statue of the "angel" and asks for forgiveness. But first he loots the bodies and finds eight ceramic coins. Oh, and Amos takes off Dashi's head. Alex is having a bad time with all the killing. They return to the main camp.
Jacques greets them as they enter, but they brush by him and head for Lady Amarine. Jacques, feeling the tension and seeing the steely looks on their faces, starts gathering their few supplies in case they need to run. They confront Lady Amarine, who is shuffling battle plans in her chamber. She is dismayed to hear of Dashi's death, but only because it means she can't take back Kelmarine now. Amos pulls the ceramic spike out of Dashi's head and gives it Chester. Sam offers their services in lieu of Dashi and his guards. Lady Amarine takes them on for first pick of treasure and twice the pay she was giving the guards.
They decide to head for Kelmarine under the cover of darkness. They have a lock and load scene and head out. They take the high ground on the way there. Howling can be heard from the direction of the village. A field of thorny saguaro-like cacti is carefully navigated. They set up camp about half a mile from the village and surveil. Nothing moves down there for three hours, then a four-gnoll patrol saunters the perimeter. There is no gate and no wall, but there is a lot of burned-out buildings. A huge dome-roofed building can be seen near the center of town, and it belches forth a smoke plume.
The survivors decide to sneak in, leaving Alex behind with binocs and a signal phone to watch their collective ass. They carefully pick their way through the destroyed buildings, pass two big inn-sized structures, and cross a bridge over a deep ravine that runs through the center of town. One of the inn-sized buildings sports a water-wheel on the side facing the ravine, and they realize the water level in the river must have been much higher at some point. They signal for Alex to join them and enter the domed building. A weird roar-squawk is heard above. Chester steps in, aims his gun, and kills the poop out a wyvern. Amos climbs up to examine its nest. He finds people bones, livestock bones, and wyvern poop.
Episode 5 ~ The Eighth Oasis
Clara comes back through the portal and goes to the radio tower, where she explains to Sam and Amos that they have found a safe hiding place for the survivors. She lies and says they have a better chance to get rescued there. Sam and Amos agree to lead the survivors into the temple. Slicing her hand, Sam summons the lightning storm. The others are reluctant to continue, and Enid cries (Enid is the recently-adopted baby). The blood altar room seems, ironically, the safest place to set up camp. Once the survivors settle in, Clara grabs Joseph, Jacques and Teddy, and she and Sam and Amos lead them to the canoes. Clara had a hell of a time rowing the second canoe alone upstream, but she did it. Clara leads them to the lake, through the woods, and into the desert to the canyon. They stop to watch the moons rise, and if there were any questions as to Clara's weird telling of events, the moons quashed any doubts.
Meanwhile, Alex and Chester spend the day salvaging whatever they can from the burned chemist's wagon. The tribespeople are extremely careful, bordering on reverent, handling the metal bits. Alex turns out to be useless when helping skin a goat. He explains the meat-to-market industry on the other side, and the tribespeople interpret this to mean Alex is a noble. Since someone died in the wagon fire, Alex and Chester inherit the dead man's bedrolls and scant gear. Night falls. Weird moons rise. In the morning, the other six join the caravan. Lady Amarine emerges from her tent, dismayed at all the new mouths to feed. Chester elects to lounge rather than labor,and offers to spend the day telling Lady Amarine stories (note that Chester's stories are actually retellings of particularly awesome game sessions). She demurs and tells him to pitch in. Chester wanders over to Dashi and tries the same ploy, but Dashi is uninterested. They finish wrapping up camp and start the day's trek to the monastery.
Around lunchtime the guards stop the caravan and Chester is called forth. Nervous, he goes to them. They explain that since Chester is likely the greatest warrior among them, having killed "several dozens" of men, it is their honor to have him kill a giant beetle for their lunch. Chester grabs a weapon and heads into the desert scrub. He tries to drag a couple of guards with him to "teach" them how to hunt, but they back off "in terror" when the eight-foot long beetle rears up on its back four legs. But then, so does Chester. (The beetle is actually a somewhat harmless, but very large stink bug. The guards, realizing that Chester doesn't have much knowledge of the wildlife here, are playing a prank on Chester).
At the back of the caravan, Clara notices they are being followed. She enlists Alex to help her find out by whom. Joseph, Jacques, Sam and Amos wander over to see if Chester needs a hand. Clearly, he does. Sam motions the others to hold back to give Chester a chance to redeem himself, but Chester shrieks at Amos, "Kill it! Just kill it!" Amos rushes it and smashes it's head with his crowbar. Chester takes his bone sword and slices the thing open, spilling its foul, stinky contents all over everyone close by. Sam pukes. The smell sticks to them like pine sap. They return to the caravan and Amos pries off the beetle's shell to use as a shield.
Meanwhile, Clara, Alex and Teddy are keeping an eye on their tail. Clara thinks it might be one of the Italian teens. They decide to sneak back and get the drop on their followers, but are in no way stealthy. Teddy says, "I think it's time for Plan B." They spring forward, weapons at the ready, but pull up short when they find a terrified Kimmy and Martin crouching behind a boulder. Clara, of course, is pissed. After a few more hours of hiking they near the monastery. It features a low, squat building topped by a tower. They stop and keep an eye on the site, but it appears to be uninhabited. Lady Amarine calls Chester forth and bids he gather his warriors and clean the place out. He does so, but Kimmy, Martin and Jacques hang back.
They approach and enter a long nave with collapsed masonry in piles. At one end sits an age-worn statue of a winged woman. Tiny snickering voices can be heard from a side room. Chester pokes his head into the kitchen, then enters. Broken glass and cutlery litter the floor. A barrage of more glass and dishes hits him as a few small dog-headed, spear-wielding creatures in armor burst from the cupboards and attack. Sam follows Chester, excited to greet the first members of a new culture. She is summarily stabbed in the thigh with a spear, but more offended than injured. Alex steps in to back her up. She kicks her attacker, smashing its little brain in. Amos rushes in to help.
As he enters, the other creatures scamper up the shelves and disappear into conduits. Alex binds Sam's wound and grunting noises can be heard from another room close by. They go to investigate and find five baboons, angered and probably hungry, being egged on by the dog-heads. Amos nets and drags one out of the battle as Clara sets her phone on a statue and draws her pistol. Alex stabs and kills Amos' netted simian, and Sam leans around a corner and shoots and kills another. When Sam fires her gun, the noise stuns the other baboons and pugwumpi (and probably the tribesfolk outside). Chester's gun jams. A baboon uses the opportunity to leap on Alex and prepares to savage his face, limbs and internal organs. (As a reminder, we're using Savage Worlds. Alex had taken 9 wounds, enough to pretty much kill anybody outright. However, when he rolled to soak the wounds, he ended up rolling high enough to soak all of them, which was pretty incredible.)
Sam manages to knock down the shelf where the pugwumpis are perched and kicks one to death when it falls. Clara chases down and kills the last one. Sam hops onto a bed, bounces a few times, then launches off and attacks the final baboon, breaking its neck. They survey the battlefield, decide all is well, and continue exploring. They next find an overgrown garden, and beyond, an entrance to the tower. They enter and are greeted with some empty nests, a horrible stench, and delightful chirping. A swarm of stirges boil out of the tower entrance and envelop the party.
Amos manages to snag some in his net, which he then beats against a wall until they are dead. Sam somehow squirms past the swarm and enters the tower, spotting a pugwumpi perched on a gargoyle a few dozen feet up. She scrambles up and grapples it, trading places. The pugwumpi falls, but manages to grab her gun strap. Clara uses her phone's flash to blind and stun the stirges, and Amos uses his net to capture and bash more. With the swarm generally dispersed and/or incapacitated, Amos runs into the tower to help Sam, who ends up needing none. The pugwumpi she grapples grabs her knife and waves it menacingly, but she gently unclips her gun strap and the creature falls to the tower floor, impaling itself on her knife and getting hit in the head with Sam's gun. They regather and move on.
Through another door they find a small chapel. On the far end stands a strapping warrior, arms outstretched in supplication. Sam finds hinges on its thumbs and bends them. The statue lurches aside to reveal a stone staircase down. Spooky stairs are descended by all. Below is a crypt full of biers. Dark twisty tunnels connect the rooms. Alex finds a shiny coin of light in a bier. Clara finds a ring that grants her a limited ability to manipulate earth. Amos marks the way as they wander the tunnels for a quarter hour. They find a locked wooden door, which Clara handily picks, throwing over her shoulder, "Sometimes you do what you have to to get your story."
Beyond they find a laboratory. There are two daises and mold-encrusted tables full of beakers and other equipment. Several drains are set in the floor. They spread out and poke around. Sam climbs a dais as a few beakers rattle then shatter. A snot-thing lands on her and oozes all over her. She flips out. Alex tries calming her as Amos makes a brand out of his shirt sleeve and gun barrel. He shakes the searing brand at the slime on Sam, singeing her silly, and the slime slides elsewhere. The other dais cracks and breaks open and more slimes slither out. They use the drains to flank the survivors and battle ensues.
Amos and Chester do their best to throw slimes into burning braziers as Alex rushes the circumference of the room, lighting more. Two slimes crawl up Amos' legs under his clothes, so he strips. Alex burns his slimed shirt, and Sam grabs the one on his leg, but it sticks to her arm and starts squirming up her body towards her face. As the others burn the last of the slimes, Sam's opponent wiggles its way into her nose and mouth and disappears.
Monastery emptied, they report to Lady Amarine. She gives the order to her people to start moving in and to set up camp and watches. In the night, Sam wakes. She suddenly knows there is something she must retrieve from the overgrown garden. She grabs Joseph's collapsible spade and kneels at the base of a tree. She starts digging, slowly at first, then feverishly. Alex wakes and watches her. Her eyes are wild and have turned a different color. The spade finally clangs on something. Sam reaches down into the hole she has made and pulls out a tomahawk.
Before I post the notes for the next few sessions, a few words from the GM.
The last two sessions (episodes six and seven) have been rough. I've been battling the players' (well, two players in particular) murder hobo instincts, and I don't seem to be winning.
We've also had a few unbearably hot game days with high humidity. One day we started the session with a bottle of champagne in celebration of one of the players getting a new job. When combined with most of the players skipping meals due to the heat, and several players suffering from excessive sleep deprivation, things just haven't been gelling as well as they usually do.
I wasn't prepared for the group to go so all-in on the fantasy world to the exclusion of the "real world" back on the island. I know things have been happening on the island, but so far I've been unable to pull them back to it. It's time to turn up the heat.
Also, the note taker decided to abandon titling the sessions with prepositions, as he finally realized that he'll run out of prepositions well before the campaign ends.
Episode 4 ~ Through
The survivors pore over Elaine's notebooks but they're written in an alien script. They recognize the planet hologram as an early Terra, the continents taking the shape of the familiar proto-continent Pangea. An examination of her iPad reveals she was transcribing the walls, though the language is completely alien.
Chester finds the outline of a secret door between two big pillars on the back wall. Alex notices the patterns of markings on the pillars resembles the markings on the pillar on the beach that Chester used to lower the water. Luckily, Clara has photos of the pillar on the beach, so Alex uses it to find matching markings on both pillars here. Chester opens his cut, smears blood on both palms, and touches both pillars simultaneously, both hands smearing fresh blood on pictograms of the headless one.
With a deep rumble, the secret door opens with a muffled screech of stone-on-stone, then stops. A gap of only six inches has opened. Clara pokes her head into the narrow opening and sees the problem. She squeezes in and does some trap-fixing on the large stone gears beyond and the door opens wide enough for all but Chester to enter. The room beyond is vaguely cross-shaped. There is a mosaic of a shining city on the far wall, above a three by eight foot pedestal. Piles of mouldering junk, ceramic discs and rusty coins lie about. A few tiny cracks in the ceiling have let in enough water to ruin any artifacts here.
They spot a drawer in the pedestal and slide it open. Within are stone arrowheads, a stone dagger hilt and a bone tube.
Taking the tube out into the previous room, Clara tries and fails to open it, but Chester manages to do so. Inside are two scrolls written in snake-person script and a short length of petrified wood.
Chester explains that the pretty gal that works at his local gaming store has a snake tattoo and he likes discussing herpetology with her when he stops in for supplies. (Chester frequently spews out non-sequiturs, many of which are designed to make everybody think he's awesome. We all know people like that...)
Meanwhile, Amos feels ill after having been mentally dominated by a snake person, so Sam agrees to take him back to the southern camp, organize the survivors, and bring them all north across the island to the radio tower. It has a barracks and is defensible, especially since they took out the tiger-bat-crocodile-thing in the nearby ravine.
Below, the others leave the green arch area and enter the red arch area, not exactly eager to meet the hyena-headed creatures en masse. They follow a short hallway to a few steps down into ankle-deep water. Clara shines her flashlight all around. The once-gorgeous mosaics here are now piles of tiles. If the hallway were very, very long there would be miles of piles of tiles. Albino shrimp, blind cave fish and a few phosphorescent crabs scramble about in the brackish water here.
After two hundred feet, a few steps up lead into a chamber with a raised platform. Off the platform sit a large set of double doors and a single smaller door to either side. Clara pushes open the door on the left and they enter a natural lava tube. It ends in a roughly circular natural cave filled with water and a slick-looking narrow ledge around it. They toss a rock into the center and it goes "BLOOP", which means it is deep. They light and toss a flare down there and note the walls are composed of bones, and skeletons of humans and various other creatures litter the bottom of the well, as well. They decide against swimming the spooky water and head back to check out the right door.
Beyond is a hallway covered in slime molds and sickly puffy orange-ish fungus. The hallway runs a hundred feet or so and ends at a set of double doors. They open easily and the survivors can hear many, many voices whispering all at once. The room is octagonal,and three other doors can me made out through the gloom. They advance on the center of the room, where the voices are emanating. The raised fountain basin in the middle of the chamber holds something horrifying - an undulating flesh pile, with eyes and mouths that appear and disappear, the mouths chattering in several languages, the flesh throwing up the occasional four-foot pseudopod. Clara asks the thing if it can understand her.
The thing quiets and plops up a pseudopod, eyeballs Clara for a minute, then retracts and gets louder again. Chester tries to make out what the thing is saying, but gets a headache and panics a bit. He runs to a set of double doors to the right,opens them enough to see the area beyond is caved in, and heads for another set of doors, Clara close behind.
Alex tries the remaining set of doors, but they won't budge. Chester and Clara open the doors they were headed for. Inside there is a crashing noise and a spray of water. Down the hall about thirty feet is a curtain of water, the source of the crashing noise, with a metal grating under it. Chester steps through the curtain and finds a slimy balcony overlooking a small dock. There is no boat.
Alex hustles through the chamber with the babbling thing and a pseudopod grows a mouth that snaps at him, missing. The survivors gather at the dock and notice the water rushes along briskly to their right, and after two hundred feet or so there is a slight dip and they can barely make out something bobbing on the surface. They retreat again and approach the double doors in the first chamber.
They open easily. They find a long, tall pillared hall. At the far end is a statue of the headless one over an altar with blood gutters. They briefly discuss finding something to sacrifice at the altar, then move on (Yes, they actually took about five minutes to discuss what they could find to sacrifice on the altar). The mosaics here are also ruined, and cracks in the ceiling and walls let in trickles of water. The altar room is otherwise empty. They head back to the archway chamber and head into the white arch area.
They slip and slide on slimy stones about two hundred feet, then find a set of stairs going down, then a sharp turn, more stairs, and finally a short beach next to a rushing river. Two dugouts are tied off here. They take one and start rowing. They suck at boating and almost hit the walls, then decide to just let the current take them. The narrow river winds and dips and exits the cavern complex into a small lake with a pebble beach with rough jungle beyond. They spot an obvious trail away from the lake that follows a small creek and start hiking, and stop when they find a suitable clearing for a camp - the sun is setting.
Clara starts working on a fire while Chester naps. Alex chases rabbits with a machete for dinner. They elude him. Chester wakes to the sensation of being dragged off into the jungle! His crazy nemesis (the emaciated man from the previous session. Chester's player handed me an "Enemy" card for it, so the player has nobody to blame but himself.) has tracked him down! He shouts and the others come running to help. Chester gets to his feet and fails at judo as Clara and Alex return, just in time to witness the crazed, emaciated man turn into . . . something half rat and half human. And totally crazy. They try hitting with judo, machete and flaming brand from the fire, to no avail. The thing just won't be damaged. Its wounds close immediately. That is, until Clara steps up, trains her AK-47 against its temple and does some auto-fire murder. She blows the thing's head into several chunks and red mist.
They search the corpse. It is holding a few bills of Malaysian and American money in a silver money clip with a topaz in it, as well as three .45 bullets in a pocket. The thing is unkempt and skinny. They don't hear a pulse but tie it up anyway and cover it with a blanket. Chester takes first watch and notices the thing seems to be regenerating, despite loss of head. Alex takes the next watch and notices something very curious, indeed. There are two moons. One looks like Luna, but the other is smaller and a pale green color. He also notes that the stars seem to be a few degrees from where they ought to be. He scribbles notes and writes some equations. He wakes the others to have a look.
As they stare at the strange sky, Clara's phone bleats - it is running out of juice. They turn in time to see the blanket covering the crazy man move, so Chester grapples it and Clara bashes its head stump until it stops moving again. In the morning they build a pyre and burn the corpse. The day heats up fast, and the smoke from the rat-thing's fire smells acrid and foul. It writhes and screeches one last time, then expires.
They break camp and follow the trail down hill into a sparse woodland. They reach the edge of the trees and exit into desert, complete with cacti and scrubby low green plants. They don't think they are on the island anymore. In the distance they spy forested craggy mountains and a deep red-rocked valley. They spot movement in the valley, and move closer to investigate.
A plume of dust rises from a small caravan. It's still a ways off, so they can't make out who is walking and/or riding, but they count two or three figures behind and in front of two or three carriages, drawn by camels. They pick up the pace, despite the intense heat, but after a mile or so the caravan picks up speed and they realize they won't catch them during daylight.
They slow down and continue to follow. Chester recognizes none of the plants here. He thinks maybe some are familiar but extinct, and needs a lab to be sure. They lose sight of the caravan around a bend in the valley, but are able to keep an eye on their dust trail. The sun suddenly goes down. Sunrise was a mere six hours ago! They rest a bit, forage for cactus hearts, and gain some energy back. The moons rise, and everything casts two eerie shadows. They wander down the valley and can make out fires from the camel camp. Suddenly one of the fires flares up dramatically (in strange colors, to boot) and frantic shouting can be heard from the camp!
They get closer and can see one of the wagons is burning. A tiny piglet squeals and dashes by, but Alex tackles it. Clara provides a leash for it. Clara is convinced that these people are not human,but Chester insists they are just wearing strange robes and silly hats. Chester briefly discusses the Prime Directive, then they all rush in to help. Although they don't understand the language, some words and their sense of urgency feel universal, so they join a bucket brigade to help quench the fire.
Only one of the caravaneers sports metal - she wears jewelry and carries a silvery dagger. Everything else, including the wagon wheels and joineries, are of bits of wood or stone. The tribesmen goggle at all the metal the survivors carry - their guns, jewelry, even the rivets and buttons and zippers on their jeans and jackets. A stone and wood crossbow leans against a crate.
When the fire is out, a cheer goes up and the survivors receive a warm welcome and are offered places around a fire nestled in the middle of a stand of trees next to a tiny clear stream that bubbles up from below, the oasis. The smell of cooking meat is tantalizing, and as dinner gets under way the two groups try to communicate. The tribesmen do a lot of laughing, but it seems good-natured, not mean. Food and drink is shared. Alex high-fives one guy, and Chester takes off his armor and does the Truffle Shuffle, to everyone's great amusement. Their leader seems to be the woman with jewelry, dagger and shimmering veil. She walks off on her own to laugh at Chester's antics away from the people she leads.
Alex takes out his notes on the moons and stars and shows them around. Being nomads, the tribesmen are keen on using the night sky for guidance and directions, and laugh and point with Alex. He discovers they call the green moon "Gaarza". Clara takes pics and vids with one of her cell phones. The leader lady eventually crosses the camp to shake a tent, and a tall, thin man exits. He makes a big to-do over Clara's camera, then sits at the fire with the survivors. He removes his hat, revealing a head full of shaggy dark hair and a ceramic bolt covered in writing sticking out of his skull. He touches the spike, then touches Alex's temple, and they can understand one another.
Alex explains they come from a place with just one moon. The spiked guy touches Clara and Chester on the temple and confirms this. The bejeweled woman, Lady Amarine, is leading this ragged band to take back her ancestral village home. The survivors ask if they can help. Dashi asks them how many men they have killed. Chester boasts that he has killed several dozen, and is gifted two coin to protect the caravan until they reach their destination, and persuades his way into riding in one of the wagons. Lady Amarine, still suspicious of the survivors, will let them ride with them if they figure out who set fire to the wagon - she is convinced a traitor amongst her own people did it.
Chester proposes distributing a rumor that the wagon wasn't hit as hard as it seemed, to lay a trap so the arsonist will try again. Things get confusing at this point, as all three survivors try three different tactics to lure the arsonist out of hiding, or blame the recent misfortunes of the caravan on pugwumpis (evil Smurfs), or prove there is no such thing as bad luck by gambling with the caravan guards. Alex, gambling with one of Chester's coins, ends up owing the caravan five coins.
At bed time, the survivors all sleep next to the burned wagon to see if the trap will spring. Chester is asked for more Truffle Shuffle by the caravan guards. On Clara's watch she spots a huge bright green scorpion crawling on Chester, so tees off with her AK-47 and launches it into the desert. Perfect follow-through (Note that Chester's player, who has a four-month old baby at home, had fallen asleep at the table). On Alex's watch a tribesman freaks out about missing goats, and a knife-fight almost ensues, but Chester calms everyone down (The player snapping awake just long enough to jump in).
In the morning, when it is determined that the caravan will stay at the oasis for another two days, Clara heads back to the cave to find out how the survivors are doing. Alex and Chester stay with the caravan. Chester has inadvertently accepted an offer of employment and the caravan guards demand Alex stays around until he works off the five coins he owes them.
Before this session, I had asked the players to provide me with a little information on their character's lives back home. As is usual for this sort of gaming homework, the only two who provided me with anything were the players of Sam and Chester, who are also becoming the most fully realized characters.
Chester is being played somewhat lovingly as the stereotypic gamer. He's frequently pathetic, constantly misreads social scenes, lies almost constantly to make himself look awesome, babbles about things none of the other characters care about, but is the first one to step up and be heroic when the situation requires it.
So, in this session, the three PCs who showed up go exploring deeper in the temple, end up in an alien world, meet some residents of the world, and end up getting stuck as caravan employees through Chester's bragging and Alex borrowing money to gamble.
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So in this episode, we have the introduction of the conspiracy. I decided to try something new this time, giving the players (and characters) the outline of the conspiracy at the beginning instead of dribbling it out in bits and pieces over a year or two of sessions where all the intricate details will get lost. We'll see how it goes...
I had hoped that Elaine could be kept alive just a little bit longer, but there's something appealing to how it actually played out. The players don't get to interrogate her, and her ego came out in the final speech. This was not a group effort, this was her doing, and she's utterly convinced that she's going to be able to get out of here when her people come to rescue her. Even as she's bleeding out and dying on the floor of an ancient temple, she still thinks she's going to win.
Teddy is of African heritage with a Scottish accent. While playing him, I channel Desmond from Lost. Multiple players have said that if their character dies, they want to play Teddy. I think they just want to call everybody "brother."
Episode 3 ~ Between
In the bunker, Alex and Clara hunch over one of the phones, recording the numbers being recited by the voice. Amos sits in a corner and prays (he's now decided his delusion is that he is dead and in either purgatory or Hell). Sam sits quietly in a corner with a blank stare, trying to process the last few days.
The room shakes and is suddenly lit by a series of huge strokes of lightning outside, centered just south of the bunker.
Chester finds a locked door down a hall, borrows Amos' crowbar, and, using his weight, manages to break the lock on the door. It opens into a small kitchen filled with boxes of food, jars of preserves, cooking implements, a topographical map of the island, and a sleeping bag in one corner. He excitedly calls the rest of the party over to show them the room. Sam checks out an open tin of sardines and realizes that this place is recently inhabited. Verification comes in the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being cocked followed by a voice, "Can I ask what you're doing in my home?"
They turn to see a tall, disheveled man holding a shotgun. The group apologizes and backs away from him. He looks at the lock and asks, "and why did you have to go and do that to my door?"
Chester, Sam, and Clara all babble at the same time, explaining that they are survivors of a plane crash on the other side of the island. The man introduces himself as Teddy, part of a U.N. survey team sent to check out decommissioned listening stations to see if they could be repurposed. Between the pirates on the island, tropical diseases, and the creature hunting outside, his team of eight is now down to just him. He's been here alone for eighteen months.
They manage to convince Teddy to return to the crash site with them to check on the other survivors in the morning. He's friendly enough, but doesn't seem to think it's wise to leave the island, saying that he doesn't think it's a good idea to let that fungus that animates people off the island.
In the morning, Teddy leads them down a trail. About a mile down the trail, they hear the sounds of automatic weapons fire. Predictably, they decide to run towards the gun fire, which stops before they get to the source of the sound. They wait silently for a few minutes and then hear shouting, followed by the sound of an engine starting.
They rush forward just in time to see a jeep turn the corner, driving away from them. There are signs of a struggle here, and a lot of blood on the ground. Following a trail of blood to a nearby ditch, they find three large corpses. The corpses are humanoid, with heads similar to hyenas. Each wears leather armor. Three wicked looking swords made of some sort of bone are in the pile as well.
Teddy doesn't know what they are, but says that somebody named "Nevermore" might be able to tell them, if they can manage to talk to him. Chester and Amos immediately strip the leather armor off of two of the corpses and start strapping it onto one another. When Sam asks why Chester is putting on the armor, he responds with, "Because it makes me look bad-ass!"
Teddy leads them down to, and then along, the beach to a strange looking rock. He then pounds on the side of the rock, which makes a hollow sound, shouting "Nevermore! Come on out, brother! I got some people who want to meet you!"
The rock shifts and a mound of sand is forced from the side of it. What crawls out is a humanoid bird, looking a lot like a crow ("Wait. Is he really named Nevermore?" Asks Sam. "Hell if I know," Teddy responds, "it was the only name for a talking, black bird I could think of.")
They show Nevermore one of the bone swords, and Nevermore chatters at them, then starts walking down the beach, beckoning for them to follow, which they do. They walk a few miles, and stop when they see Nevermore is obviously leading them to the ship filled with the unpleasant vegetable people. Nevermore leads them up the side of a rock to a swaying rope bridge connecting the island to the large rock where the ship is. A number of vegetable people guard the bridge, brandishing spears and bows at the group. They don't seem to care much about Nevermore, but watch the rest of the party warily as they cross the bridge. They step onto the deck of the ship, then climb some stairs to the bridge. The bridge is choked with vines and plants growing everywhere. Towards the back of the bridge, a reddish, plump shape nearly six feet in diameter sits with something like a human head on top of it. Sam comments that it looks like an evil cranberry with a face.
Nevermore squawks at it and the face turns towards the party. Nevermore then gestures for the party to come closer. As they do, the front of the "evil cranberry" rips open with a wet sound and a cloud of spores is released, causing the party to cough and sneeze. When their coughing fits subside, Nevermore speaks, in perfect English, "it' s the best way for us to communicate with the Captain here. The spores let us talk."
The Captain turns out to be the evil cranberry. He was the original captain of this ship, which was sent here to be illegally scuttled, hence the lack of cargo containers on the ship. This also explains why there was no rescue operation mounted to retrieve the ship. Between the Captain and Nevermore, the party gets a vague idea of the factions on the island. There's the Captain and his vegetable people, the pirates, and the Queen, who is the fungal intelligence that animates bodies around the island. The two factions have a truce. The Captain and his vegetable people stay away from the pirates, who have some sort of deal with the Queen. And the pirates and the Queen's zombies stay away from the vegetable people. This truce has been in place for years, and was only broken recently when some pirates climbed on board the ship and attacked (oops. It turns out that the vegetable people do a poor job of discriminating between individual humans).
Nevermore explains that the creatures (gnolls) must have come through the temple which he came through some fifteen years ago. He would have returned to his home, but the temple doors have remained stubbornly closed all this time.
They return to Nevermore's home. He doesn't seem all that eager to answer more questions and has no desire to sit around and talk to the party. They part ways and the party continues down the beach to their own camp.
Chester, wearing poorly fitted armor and sweating profusely in the tropical heat, falls behind the group. Alex drops back to encourage him to keep going, just in time to see an emaciated man jump out of the trees to grab Chester. Chester struggles with the man, who is much stronger than his frame would suggest, and the man manages to bite Chester on the arm before Chester shakes him off. Chester pulls his bone sword back and sinks it deep into the man's shoulder. Tendon rips, bones are crushed, but the man does not go down. Alex and Chester watch in horror as the wound heals by itself. By this time, the rest of the party is shouting and running back to Alex and Chester. The man runs off into the underbrush and vanishes.
Just after nightfall, the party gets back to the camp and Teddy is introduced around to the rest of the survivors.
Kendall (one of the bridesmaids and Clara's friend) shows Clara a magazine she found in the wreckage. It's last month's Forbes. A familiar face is on the cover, Elaine Cunningham, CTO Logan Space Industries. "This is the woman who jumped out of the plane!" The mystery deepens. Why the hell would the CTO of a major aerospace company parachute from a passenger plane onto this island?
Now that they know the general location of the island, Clara gets out the sat phone to call for help. Elena (the bride from previous sessions) insists that she be able to talk to her husband and grabs the phone out of Clara's hand. Clara grabs it back and tells Elena to get her priorities straight. They have a limited amount of time before they lose the ability to make a call.
Elena, having had just about enough of this situation, screams insults at Clara and then runs off down the beach, sobbing. Kendall shouts at Clara, "We've all been through a lot, but that doesn't mean you have to act like such a b$%$~." before running down the beach after Elena.
Not two minutes pass before they hear an inhuman screech followed by a very human scream. Elena comes running back to the group. Something came out of the sky, snatched up Kendall, and flew away.
A few quick questions later, and Teddy tells them that the creature, whatever it is, nests in a ravine just south of the radio tower. Having seen two members of his team carried off by the flying creature, Teddy has been comfortable staying away from it.
Clara grabs a gun, saying that she doesn't know what anybody else is going to do, but she's going to go get her friend back, and she'd really like some help.
The party, along with Teddy, heads back across the island, eight miles through the jungle in the dark. They spot some of the fungus zombies, but the zombies don't move to intercept the group but just watch them run by, their eyeless gaze following the running group.
Teddy leads them to the ravine, which they reach right after dawn. On one end of the ravine is a massive waterfall dumping directly into the waves pounding on rocks some hundred feet below. A rickety wooden bridge sways gently in the morning breeze.
The group takes a long time crossing the bridge. Chester goes last, ropes salvaged from Sam's climbing gear tied around his waist in case the bridge collapses under his weight. It's a good thing they used the
ropes, because fifteen feet from the end of the bridge, the wooden slats cannot bear his weight and with a loud crack Chester falls through the bridge.
The ropes hold and Chester is suspended, swinging some ten feet beneath the bridge, when he spies a cave with a ledge. He tells the group what he found and manages, with some difficulty, to get onto the ledge. The cave smells of old meat and some large animal. He can hear muffled sobs coming from the cavern.
The rest of the group goes down the rope onto the ledge, except for Teddy who volunteers to stay up top so he can pull people up if need be.
They enter the cave and find Kendall, injured, lying near a pile of cracked bones and partially eaten corpses, both human and animal. Clara runs to help her friend up, while the rest of the group shines their flashlights around the rough cave, illuminating something the size of a tiger, with a snub-nosed crocodilian snout. The creature roars and leaps at Chester, who somehow always manages to be closest to anything that attacks the group. Chester is caught by the creatures claws, but the cuts are not deep. He stumbles out of the creature's way and Sam opens up on it with her automatic rifle. The thing is hit, and before it can react, Amos smashes his crowbar down on the thing's head and it drops.
Using the rope, the group gets Kendall back up to the top of the ravine and performs some first aid. While they're doing so, Alex, looking over the edge of the ravine, spies a small beach with what looks like a pillar sticking out of it. A narrow trail switchbacks down the ravine to the beach.
Curiosity gets the best of the party. Teddy takes Kendall up to the radio tower to treat her wounds, while the rest of the party heads down the narrow trail to the beach below.
They approach the pillar, a ten-foot high piece of carved stone, the inscriptions and carvings on it long weathered away. While examining the pillar, Chester notices a smear of dried blood on a spot where the stone appears to have been recently cleaned. He unwinds one of his bandages, smears some of the blood onto his hand, and presses it against the bloodstain on the pillar. Bolts of lightning suddenly dance across the sky before crashing down on the top of the pillar. As the group watches, the waterfall at the end of the ravine slows to a trickle and the sea water filling the inlet rushes out, exposing a narrow ridge coated with anemones and sea urchins, leading to a set of huge doors behind the waterfall. The doors hang ajar.
They head along the ridge and through the doors. Beyond the doors is a large, cathedral-like chamber with vaulted ceilings. A patchwork of mosaic tiles remains on the walls, but not enough to make a guess as to what was once depicted. At the end of the chamber, a passageway leads deeper into the earth. They follow the passage and come to a chamber with three arches rimmed with colored stone. One white, one red, one green. The algae on the floor shows signs of passage, and in spots actual footprints. Large footprints, the size of the hyena-headed creatures they saw before, come out of the white archway. Another set of footprints, one wearing boots, the other some sort of loafers, head through the green archway.
They decide to follow the footprints through the green arch. They walk down a short hallway, down some stairs, and onto a landing. From the landing, they can see some light coming from down the stairs and can hear a female voice muttering. They sneak down the stairs and peer into a square chamber beyond. The walls of the chamber are covered with inscriptions in some unrecognizable script. A stone block, covered in the same script, rises from the middle of the floor. Hovering above the stone floor like a hologram is a glowing globe showing the outline of alien continents. Scattered around the room are pieces of gear. A sleeping bag, an electric lantern, some food. A woman who the party immediately recognizes as Elaine Cunningham stands facing one of the walls, transcribing the writing on the wall into her iPad. Nearby, a man dressed in an airline pilot's uniform stares blankly at another wall.
Elaine sees them come into the chamber and greets them. A short argument ensues, consisting mostly of the more belligerent party members accusing Elaine of killing hundreds of people on the plane. When Chester approaches Elaine, the pilot gets in the way and raises a gun. Amos immediately crushes his head with his crowbar (One of those oh-so-predictable moments when you have a player who gets bored easily.).
Elaine steps up to Amos, her back turned from the others, and she whispers something in a sibilant language. Her tongue, sharp and too long, extends and flickers at Amos face as his eyes go glassy. Amos steps in front of Elaine, brandishing his crowbar and protecting her.
Alex and Sam jump to the front and try to wrestle the crowbar from Amos. While they do this, Elaine steps around them and opens her mouth too wide. Long fangs unfold from the roof of her mouth and she tries to sink them into Chester's shoulder, but the fangs get caught on one of the straps from Chester's ill-fitting leather armor (And that, my friends, is called a fumble.). Chester falls to the ground, bringing Elaine down on top of him. She manages to unhook her fang, but when she tries to stand up, Sam pumps three bullets into her chest, and Elaine collapses.
Amos' eyes clear and he immediately vomits. The rest of the party starts shouting questions at Elaine, who is bleeding to death on the floor. Elaine coughs weakly and gets a chance to deliver a dying soliloquy:
"This is the culmination of decades of planning. First we had to build and compromise the satellites. Then we had to get them tasked over these tiny islands scattered across the Indian Ocean. The war on terror provided great cover for our search. Just a whisper of some Islamists digging in and we had orbital photos within the day. Even then, we've been searching for this island for a decade now, and only now did I find it. Not another of my people, not our society. Me.
This place was a device, designed to siphon the magic out of your world, into mine. It has lain unused for many centuries now, as the magic is gone completely from this world that once had no intelligent life. But it has connections to other devices, including the greatest of our race, the decapitated Ydressius, in the city that lives in two worlds, Savath-Yhi. But we've modified it. This device will transfer more than just magic, it will transfer the vital force of your world itself, nurturing our world. Unfortunately, this process will render your world quite barren, but is it not the way of the stronger to reallocate resources from the weaker? What is this but survival of the fittest?
It's just like when the Europeans came to the Americas, only we do not plan to stay.
I've already transferred my notes and the location of Savath-Yhi to my people, and the numbers station has transmitted my location for pickup. I don't advise you to be anywhere near the pirate camp when they arrive. Our servants can be somewhat indiscriminate with their use of violence. I imagine they'll begin with daisy-cutters. Then, after we leave, a cleansing fire will erase all traces of the crash site and you. Every living thing on this island larger than a rabbit will die.
Even if you apes manage to best me, you cannot hope to save your world."
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I've run RotR and CotC with minor changes and modified just a bit to fit into my homebrew world. I ran Kingmaker and let the players run riot enough that the end result was that the adventure had more to do with four siblings trying to recover the soul of the fifth, who had made a rather poor deal with a demon for power.
But now, my Adventure Paths are pretty much unrecognizable from the originals. I mashed together Age of Worms and Carrion Crown, set them in 1992 and gave them a Mayan flavor. Now, I'm running Serpent's Skull as a modern conspiracy against reptilians while simultaneously running Legacy of Fire on the other side of a portal between worlds ( I will also be borrowing liberally from Mummy's Mask and I swear this time I'll fit the Sixfold Trial in).
I also run all mine using the Savage Worlds system, so I don't have to worry about XP or balance, and tend to do all the non-story and non-setting prep in about 15 minutes before the sessions begin. At this point, the Adventure Paths are pretty much there to provide a rough framework and give me something to fall back on when I run out of steam.
Episode 2 ~ Out
Day three dawns. It is determined that their desalination rig is too slow, and that the survivors have just enough food and water to last until evening. It is very hot. Curt spots a small fishing boat out from the shore a few hundred yards. The survivors stoke the signal fire and send up a thick black plume. The Jeep's headlights are flashed - SOS - and they jump and wave, but the boat does not move. They decide to rescue one of the plane's emergency rafts from the lagoon. They pinpoint the location of one of the rafts from the plane's emergency instruction cards.
Clara takes a peek at the boat using her camera's zoom feature, and finds the men on the boat peering back at her with binoculars. Amos and Sam volunteer to dive down and find a raft, while Chester serves as shark-spotter. Sam makes it down first but Chester spots a tiger shark and hauls on the rope tied around her waist. Amos dives down to help her out, and they make it to shore. Amos swings at the shark with a crowbar, missing, then tosses a big hunk of metal at it, also missing.
Duties are divvied. The choir kids look for water. Benny and Jacques lead a fishing expedition, and the core group heads for the cockpit to recover one of the rafts. Only one of the rafts is still there, and they theorize the other was taken by the pilot and the mystery woman when they jumped. Amos carries the heavy raft back to the camp. On the way, Chester spots deer and human tracks. Amos drops the raft and the guys follow the deer. The gals follow the human - Clara is convinced it's an injured fellow passenger.
The guys eventually end up at a watering hole, where a fresh water creek bubbles up from below. Alex tastes the water - it is good. They also spot three deer off in the brush. Chester fires his assault rifle and injures one. They follow its blood trail and find it, collapsed. Then they drag it back to the raft and back to camp.
Meanwhile, Clara and Sam follow the human tracks to a muddy creek. They spot a figure in the jungle about fifty feet off, and Clara hails it, bur Sam shushes her. Clara takes a look with her camera's zoom and notices the yellow lines Sam saw on another person earlier.
They approach, wary, and it turns to face them. It, too, is eyeless and covered with yellowish tendrils. It lurches at Clara. Sam shoots it, to no effect, and it turns on Sam. Clara tangles it in vines and it is knocked off its feet, hitting the ground hard with a spray of blood and a poof of yellowish smoke. Then Clara stomps its head in. The yellow tendrils detach and start receding across the ground. Clara and Sam give chase, but the foliage is too thick and the tendrils decay too fast. A bunch of survivors run up to Clara and Sam - they heard the shots, and camp is only two hundred feet or so away. They realize the thing was standing and watching them.
By early afternoon the survivors have returned to camp. The thing's body is dragged into camp where Chester examines it. The organs and brain are atrophied, and he determines it is a human that has been colonized by something else. They guess, by the faded Chinese sailor's jumpsuit, that it's a couple of years old. As they discuss the next steps, the boat that is watching them roars its engine and takes off. Clouds gather. A storm approaches.
Jacques and the core group decide to head for the container ship in the Jeep. They strap the inflated raft on top. Despite the dark, the rain, and the rough terrain, they go anyway. Chester and Amos, of course, smear mud on their faces, because that's what people on TV do before they undertake a mission at night. After a rough ride, they make it to a point of land opposite the ship. They need to cover a couple miles of water to get to it. Amos and Sam row in the very choppy water. Lightning flashes overhead. There are no lights on the ship. They draw close and realize the ship is beached, and has probably been there for years.
They tie off the raft and start climbing a ladder. Amos, then Sam and Alex, make it to the deck, but Chester falls off the ladder back into the raft, but Clara and Jacques manage to not get knocked into the pounding surf. He tries again, huffing and puffing, and makes it up. On deck, they find no containers. There are, however, ropes tied off all over the place, about four feet off the deck, and covered with hanging vines. It's almost like a hedge maze. Alex spots something dart behind a leafy curtain. Just as Chester makes it to the deck, something thrusts a sharp bamboo stick at him, jabbing his side. Then the vines seem to come alive - several figures burst through the foliage wielding bamboo spears. They are all four feet tall, and seem to be made of plants. Some wear underwear. Alex is sure they are just silent murderous children in elaborate body suits.
Combat with the plant people ensues. The plant people try tripping the survivors with their spears, but fail. Two grab Alex and try to drag him off, but he leaps in the direction they are dragging him and they fall down. Clara makes it up the ladder and joins the fray, kicking one of them right over the side. The plant people retreat suddenly, disappearing into the vine maze. Then arrows rain down on the survivors. Sam realizes they are grossly outnumbered and runs for the ladder. Amos grabs one of the ropes and takes a running leap over the side. Alex and Chester climb down to the boat. Clara is still filming.
Just as Sam makes the top of the ladder, some plant people emerge from the maze and throw a net over her and Clara, taking them down. Chester, only halfway down the ladder, comes back up and peppers the area with gunfire. Sam makes it to her feet and starts slashing, and Clara tangles herself into the net with one of the plant people. Alex makes it back up and lights one on fire with a flare gun. Eventually they manage to hold off the plant people long enough to return to the raft, with a netted plant person as prisoner. They get back to the Jeep and head for camp. On the way Amos tries to perform an exorcism on the thing. Chester examines it and tries to knock it out, but it is unaffected. So they bind it tight with rope and retire for the night.
Day four dawns, and the survivors eat venison for breakfast. Jacques rounds up a group of survivors for a spear fishing class. The core group heads off in the Jeep the way it came from originally. They follow the coast and stumble upon a big yellow raft identical to theirs. There are two life jackets. Clara determines this raft arrived after they crashed. They take the life jackets, rope and oars, then deflate the raft and take that too. About two hundred yards up the beach they find a rough road that leads inland into the jungle. They round a corner and see another Jeep heading right for them on the the narrow road. The other Jeep is filled with five men with guns. They are not going too fast, so Clara and Amos hop out and find cover. Sam cranks the cassette in the cassette player. It's Katrina and the Waves' Walking on Sunshine. As they pass the other Jeep, Alex slashes its tires, and it careens off into the jungle and hits a tree. The men with guns emerge.
Amos and Clara wade into battle with fists and feet. Clara takes out a guy and takes his gun. Amos traps two in a net. Sam slams the brakes and aims. Chester tries taunting one of the men with guns, but his voice cracks and the guy just laughs at him. Chester gets MAD (he's been bullied all his life, has some anger issues, and is full of NERD RAGE!). Sam shoots the laughing guy dead. Clara pretends to surrender, then shoots the guy who approaches her. Chester frees himself from the Jeep, then rushes into battle and pulls off an awesome wrestling move called the Elbow Drop, taking a netted guy out. The other netted guy gets free, and Amos threatens him, but he laughs as well (I have yet to have a PC actually take the intimidate skill). Amos cracks him good with his crowbar mid-laugh. Clara cracks the last guy in the head with a rifle butt, killing him. They regroup.
Chester uses a radiator hose to siphon gas from the second Jeep into theirs. Amos loots their Jeep and finds a tool kit and a pistol, which he gives to Clara. They get back in the Jeep and keep driving north. They spot a radio tower and drive towards it. On the way they pass a small group of shacks and get out to investigate. Fungus zombies emerge from the shacks and battle doth ensueth. Three of the zombies wear bikinis. These zombies move slowly, so Sam turns the Jeep around and they stay just out of attack range, shooting the zombies dead as they follow the Jeep. Clara and Amos net one for further study. They head back to the shacks to look around but do not find much. Clara removes an expensive bikini from one of the corpses ("This thing cost $600, I'm not just leaving it here."). Eww.
They head north-ish once again, intent on finding the radio tower. The Jeep gets stuck in sand, and Amos notices they have been leaking fuel and are completely out. Sam finds a flashlight rolling around under the front passenger seat. They are the base of a small mountain, atop which sits the radio tower. A series of switchbacks crisscross their way up, so the gang starts walking. It begins to rain. They hear the high-pitched screech of a tiger-bat thing as they near the tower. The top of the small mountain is composed of dark red rock. A squat cement bunker with a radio tower is there. The inside of the building is heavily vandalized. There are several rooms full of radio equipment, but nothing is plugged in. They hear a number station filtering in through a grating in the wall. They explore and find a destroyed barracks with overturned beds, broken footlockers,and plenty of graffiti. They decide to wait out the storm and spend the night there.
Note: I downloaded a rather large collection of actual numbers stations recordings and wrote a script that will randomly (every 30-45 minutes) pause the background music, play the numbers station recording, and then restart the background music. It tends to grab the players' attention, but instead of being disruptive, it's ended up making the sessions more tension filled and alien.
Episode 1 ~ Down
This is word-for-word what I read to the players as we started the first session:
You snap awake on a beach, still strapped into your seat, water lapping at your feet. A loud whining comes from overhead as suddenly a massive chunk of metal - an airplane engine - plummets into a nearby lagoon, spraying seawater and shrapnel, both coral and metal, into the air.
Around you luggage and clothing and scraps of metal are spread around the beach, as are people. Some, a small person without a head - maybe a child - are obviously dead, others may be unconscious, still others are suddenly awake just like you.
Inland, the beach gives way to a thick tangle of vegetation.
Your head is pounding like the worst hangover of your life.
Your memories of the flight are hazy. It was long, maybe you had a book. You vaguely remember watching the pilot walk to the emergency door with somebody else and open it. There may have been a fight -- a blurry glimpse of the cockpit through an open door, the window covered with blood and the co-pilot slumped over the console. When you think about it, it seems like somebody else's memory - your vision blurred around the edges and distorted. Then the lights went out and the air masks dropped from the ceiling and the plane began to plummet. Overhead baggage compartments sprang open, disgorging carry-on items into the aisles and onto the passengers. You looked across the aisle and met the blank gaze of another passenger, who looked bewildered when the plane cracked open and an entire row of seats was sucked out, including him.
Through the new hole in the fuselage, you can see a glimpse of trees -- Why are you flying so low? Why isn't anybody screaming?
But now, on the beach, surrounded by destruction, the screaming begins.
What do you do?
Chester wakes, strapped to his seat, sitting upright on the beach. He looks around - luggage, body parts and plane pieces. Clara's piercing scream rends the muggy air and most of the passengers wake, focused. Alex wakes, strapped to his seat as well, but the fuselage is sinking into the lagoon. He wriggles free and grabs the closest passenger he can find to help - a striking Italian woman, still unconscious. He tries to swim and pull her out, but the going is difficult. Sam snaps awake and looks around for Joseph, her traveling companion. She swims from the wreckage and makes the beach. Clara is disoriented. Still strapped into her seat, but stuck in a tree. She manages to get free and drops to the ground.
Chester frees a passenger, Curt, then rushes to free another, Benjamin (Korean war vet). Clara ducks out of the way when her seat falls from the tree, then shrieks when she sees her friend Libby beheaded by a chunk of shrapnel. Alex realizes he can't pull everyone out of the sinking fuselage in time and looks around for the inflatable slide so he can at least buoy the wreckage and buy some time. He has no luck. Chester finds Gabrielle, Curt's girlfriend. She's knocked out with a broken leg, so he gets Curt to make a splint for her. Alex, having problems, gets pulled out of the wreck by a fellow passenger.
Clara wanders the tree line looking for her friends. She spots a row of first class seats. They rest on Rosa's crushed head. Sam spots Joseph near the water line, where he pulls a woman free from the wreckage. Clara recovers a bit and starts helping other passengers get to land, including a bunch of Italian teenaged choir members. Geraldine, a retired nurse, punches a shark in the nose (it was a small shark) and makes it to shore. Chester witnesses a passenger, delirious and stumbling around, get sucked into a turbine and vaporized. A woman wanders around screaming for her baby. Alex hears a baby crying. Sam hears a dog barking. Alex reconnects the baby and mommy, Amy, but Amy finds her husband Andy with half a head and loses it. Sam pulls Tuba the Great Dane from the wreckage.
Eventually the survivors all make it to shore and names are exchanged. Injuries are also counted and prioritized. Thomas has a sprained ankle. Marigold has a broken arm. Renaldo, the choir director, has a head wound. Clara tries to call Robert's phone with a cell phone she finds, but a Japanese voice answers and the phone dies. Sam and Alex start working on water and shelter, while Chester starts working on food. The choir kids prove extremely helpful and help Alex prop a chunk of the wing against some wreckage for their shelter. Clara starts gathering luggage and searches for a solar charger for a satellite phone. Sam enlists Amos to fill containers with salt water so she can build a water still.
Clara finds a phone charger with Martin's help. He also brings her a hat. Then he wanders off to search the luggage for alcohol at her request. He is clearly smitten. She stays and tends the fire as Alex, Sam, Amos and Chester wander a bit inland to get a look at their surroundings. On the way to the nearest hill, they find the cockpit. The co-pilot is still here, and exhibits curious wounds. They pull him out. Chester examines the curious wounds and determines the co-pilot was bitten by an impossibly gigantic venomous snake. The black box of the plane has been tampered with by somebody.
Back at the camp, Clara interviews fellow passengers, recording with any cell phone she can find that still has a charge. Everyone seems a little fuzzy, and the idea that they were drugged begins to circulate. The easiest way to drug all of them at once would be through the ventilation system. Benjamin and Martin assist her in finding a chunk of the plane's ventilation ducts from first class, and sure enough, there's a tiny drilled hole. Further examination reveals some kind of chemical residue.
The others make it to high ground. Sam spots a five foot long snake, which Chester declares is native only to some islands in the Indian Ocean. He figures capturing the snake would be great, as he can synthesize the venom to make antiseptic. He handily snaps Sam's hair tie around its mouth and pops it into a backpack. Amos and Sam climb a tree atop the hill and see a mountain, more coastline and a container ship a few miles away. The ship seems to be stationary, and it's too far away to see if there are people aboard. Sam and Amos head for the ship, and Chester and Alex head back to camp to spread the news.
Sam and Amos hack through the jungle, headed for the ship. They find a tiny hut made of rusted corrugated metal. As they approach, a figure in the hut stirs, then exits and stumbles toward them. It's a human male, dressed in some kind of military uniform, but pus-colored tendrils snake up his eyeless face and into his ears. Sam screams and Amos bashes it with a handy stick. It remains unfazed, so Sam grabs Amos and they run back toward camp, catching up with Alex and Chester on the way.
Back at camp, a pile of medications taken from the luggage are calmly and cooly distributed to those in need by ex-nurse Geraldine. She tasks Benny with guarding the harder stuff. The choir members cover bodies with blankets up the beach a bit. Curtis gets drunk. Geraldine and Alex fail to revive Renaldo, who dies. One of the survivors doles out plastic cups of peaches and foil packs of nuts. As sundown approaches, Alex finishes a signal booster for the sat phone. Alessandra (the chaperone of the choir) asks for a bible, gathers everyone by the rows of bodies, and the choir sings an a capella hymn, but breaks down in the middle when they suddenly realize the entire alto section is dead. After an uncomfortable minute of muffled sobs, Benny starts singing Amazing Grace. The rest of the survivors sing along. Curtis finishes with a drunken, sing-a-long rendition of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (Curtis has stolen most of the alcohol on the plane as well as a good amount of prescription painkillers).
The stars are bright and sharp. Clara uses the now-charged sat phone and gets through to Robert, but there are problems with the signal, still. Cynthia (forensic psychologist) snaps at Kimmy, the life coach, for being inappropriately cheerful. Sam and Jacques walk the water's edge, talking about sharks. There may be a spark of something there, no? (there is, Sam's player is angling for an uncomfortable love triangle). Their gentle banter is interrupted when Sam notices a pair of headlights about a half mile down the beach, headed for their fire. A quarter mile away, the headlights go out. Kendall (one of the bridesmaids and a friend of Clara) sees the lights and runs screaming and waving for the vehicle to stop. There are four men with guns in a Jeep. At twenty yards from camp they kill the engine and turn on floodlights.
The men exit the Jeep. One grabs Kendall's arm and bashes her in the face with the butt of his rifle. The men shout at the survivors in a language they do not understand. Clara and one of the choir guys run to Kendall's aid, but one of the men shoots the choir guy dead. Amos sneaks into the jungle to try to flank the men with guns and rescue Kendall. Alex ducks behind a fallen log for cover. The men slowly advance, shouting in a language none of the survivors understand). Chester tries to bully his way through to Kendall, but is stopped. Clara continues to advance, filming the men surreptitiously. Sam sneaks into the jungle behind Amos.
Tuba goes bonkers and starts barking at the men. Alex uses the distraction to toss the (now opened) backpack with the (now untied) snake at the men. They are duly distracted. Clara and Amos rush forward and grab Kendall. She's unconscious, so Amos slings her over his back. The gunmen shoot the snake as Sam emerges from the foliage, sneaking up behind one of the gunmen, and takes him out. Chester grapples one of the other gunmen and uses his gun to shoot yet another gunman. Amos makes it to the trees with Kendall and puts her down. Satisfied that her friend is OK, Clara rushes to the Jeep and props her phone on the dash, using the phone as a periscope to see over the dashboard (with all the bullets flying around, she wanted some cover). Amos returns and jumps on the back of the Jeep. Sam brawls with another guy and takes his gun. Clara guns the engine and the Jeep careens forward. The remaining gunmen barely manage to get out of the way, but Amos jumps off and with much momentum slams one of them in the face with his stick. The last gunman makes a run for it, but Alex tackles him and Chester shoots him dead.
At this point, everyone is pumped up on adrenaline and the fact that they just took out four guys with guns and only lost one survivor. The guns are distributed. Clara resumes interviews and walks around filming the camp. They set up Thomas (a professional bodyguard hobbled by a sprained ankle) on the first watch. Clara takes the second watch, and Tuba joins her.
An inhuman screech breaks the tranquil quiet. Tuba goes bananas and Clara notices something fly overhead. Amos spots it and hurls his stick, hitting it. It screeches again and flies off. Luckily, Clara got it on film. It is seven feet long with a nine foot wingspan. It's got the body of a tiger and a flat, broad face. Weird.
In the morning the survivors scavenge for food and supplies from the wreckage. They loot the Jeep, finding a tool box, machete, a Gideon's bible in Sanskrit, an extra tire, and a tire iron. The bodies are gathered and they build a cairn. They decide not to bury them because they'd just be disinterred later when help shows up. Chester takes a long walk to find coconuts. He maps a bit more of the island.
Elena tries her hand at camp coffee (a very poor use of limited water), and she starts sobbing because, in her words, "I was supposed to be getting married today!" Amos backhands her. Benny puts Amos in his place and forces him to apologize to her. During the apology, Amos mentions that the only thing stopping Elena from getting married is that she's not in Australia, but they do have a sat phone they can use. Amos officiates the wedding between Robert and Elena over the sat phone, with Tuba standing in for Robert.
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Two years ago I mashed up Age of Worms and Carrion Crown, moved the adventure paths to the early 1990's, changed the system to Savage Worlds, and ran an Aztec-inspired campaign that culminated in a battle against Kyuss rising out of the Matterhorn in Disneyland. Highlights included the finale, a vampiric silver dragon being taken out with one shot, stabbed in the eye with a dagger made from her own tooth, and an antiquities dealer dual-wielding David Koresh's desert eagle and an enchanted macuahuitl. It was, in a single word, epic.
Never one to leave well enough alone, I decided to try something similarly epic by mashing together the Serpent's Skull and Legacy of Fire adventure paths. But this time, I would run them in separate worlds, with the PCs fighting a world-spanning serpent person conspiracy (i.e., Reptilians) arising from a fantasy world inspired by Dark Sun. The two worlds are connected by stable portals in secluded locations.
Since I no longer do more than 2-3 hours of game prep for an entire campaign, I have absolutely no idea how all this will turn out. The campaign will likely go way off the rails somewhere after about 10 sessions, but that's half the fun.
The last campaign (Rise of the Worm Sun, it may be in the archives here somewhere) started with nod towards the movie The Hangover. This one begins with Souls for Smuggler's Shiv, a plane crash on a flight from Rome to Sydney, and a nod towards Lost (which I just finished binge-watching).
So first, the PCs:
Alex - Astrophysicist Postdoc
Amos - Amish teen on Rumspringa. He won a free trip around the world in a contest. Is severely delusional and believes that television is a reliable reflection of how the world works and how people behave. (I swear, every character this player creates is like this. It's like he's playing a completely different campaign than the rest of the group.)
Chester - Obese herpetology professor, gamer. (After stripping primitive leather armor from a gnoll corpse and strapping it on, when asked why he was doing that, he replied, "Because I look Badass!")
Clara - An aspiring journalist, self-entitled member of the 1%, and a bit on the naive side.
Samantha (Sam) - Recently left the Peace Corp. Uses risk-taking behavior (skydiving, etc) to hide the fact that she's secretly terrified of pretty much everything.
I also asked the players to provide me with 3-5 NPCs each who were also on the plane. I ended up with over 48 of them, including an 18-member high school choir going to a festival, a great dane show dog named Tuba, an 81-year old Korean war vet traveling around the world in honor of his late wife, and an entire bridal party returning from a ridiculously high-priced bachelorette party in Rome (Clara was a member of that party).
To get them to actually create NPCs for me, they were offered a reward to be determined during the first session (for 3 NPCs, the player got to choose 1 useful item from their own luggage, for 5, an additional useful item from somebody else's luggage).
I thought the players would see through my plan to start with a plane crash, but they remained stubbornly fixated on the idea that I was going to start the campaign with Snakes on a Plane.
About the session notes: Two of the players (the one who plays Alex and the one who plays Sam) trade off taking notes during the session. Both of them tend to skim over parts of the session, generally when the most intense roleplaying is going on, so a 15 minute, in-character discussion between the PCs and NPCs will frequently get reduced to a plot dump in the notes (e.g., "John tells us that there are monsters here.") Our sessions are generally pretty high-octane and beer-fueled, and three of the players have children under the age of 5 and start fading after a few hours, so things get a little sloppy towards the end of each session and the notes get more disjointed. I'll try to fill in the blanks as I go along, but I'm lazy, so no promises.
So, without further ado, the introduction to A Conspiracy of Snakes, featuring a plane crash, a malevolent fungus hive mind, bloodthirsty pirates on an island in the Indian Ocean, a numbers station, and a beach wedding conducted over a satellite phone with a great dane standing in for the groom.
This was the final session of the campaign. I don't have the full write-up of it in my hands yet, so I'll give a synopsis below the session title and theme song.
Session 28 ~ A Whole New World
Theme Song: A Whole New World ~ The Soundtrack to Aladdin
In Anaheim, the group gets hotel rooms in one of the hotels next to Disneyland, and starts preparations. The eclipse is only 36 hours away, and there's a lot to do.
Manda busies herself with her black market contacts, trying to gather anything that might help them with the upcoming battle. She also manages to collect a small group of archaeology graduate students with guns to assist.
Candy first contacts Agent Cooper, who flies out to meet with the party, then starts calling in favors with all his mob contacts.
Plans and preparations are made, and the group is left to their "probably last night on Earth" montage. Things take a somewhat touching turn when Candy calls his wife and kids and gives them the "be good for your mother" speech (this may have been the third time in the entire campaign that Candy had mentioned he was married). Candy then ruins that feeling by buying Agent Cooper some lingerie and telling her to wear it when she comes to his room that night.
On the morning of the final battle, the players start tossing down all their adventure cards and calling the contacts they'd been hoarding. They ended up with a small army consisting of:
1) An LAPD SWAT team
2) FBI Agents
3) A group of mob toughs
4) Crips, Bloods, and various gangstas
All in all, they had nearly 300 people, most of whom were stationed in the parking lot (Pluto section) and waiting for the prearranged sign (screaming visitors), because nobody wanted to pay to get that many people into the park.
The party, Agent Cooper, and a couple FBI agents let themselves in through the employee entrance, where they surprise some cultists making last minute preparations.
Catalina, in full dragon form, arrives to greet them. She then breathes fire on the FBI agents, killing half the entourage instantly. Candy kills Catalina with her own tooth, doing a ridiculous amount of damage.
There's fighting, running, screaming, and then the Matterhorn erupts into a humanoid geyser of worms. Tla-Kyuss manifests and starts laying about the park with his giant macuahuitl.
Families run around screaming, some obviously infested with worms. Security is quickly overwhelmed as manholes belch forth masses of pre-infected zombies into the park. This is the sign the reinforcements have been waiting for, as mobsters, gangstas, and a SWAT team charge in to shoot zombies.
The party engages Tla-Kyuss, and use every trick and resource at their disposal. The battle isn't looking good for them. Their forces are holding their own against Tla-Kyuss' zombies, but the party has taken major wounds and are out of bennies.
The entire battle, and by extension, the fate of the world, ends up resting on a single die roll. Nobody has bennies left, every PC is either incapacitated or out of ammo, with the exception of Manda, who might be able to take one more hit, and has a single rocket left. She shoots the rocket, doing enough damage to disable Tla-Kyuss, as long as he doesn't roll to regenerate all the wounds.
On Tla-Kyuss' turn, I have to roll above a 4 on a d12 for him to regenerate completely. There are no bennies left on the table. No rerolls for anything. And there's no way the party can handle another turn.
So I roll the die into the middle of the table...
3
The apocalypse is averted by one.
Tla-Kyuss collapses into a tsunami of worms that quickly dissolve. All the zombies collapse, the force that animated them defeated.
Joe collapses. With Tla-Kyuss gone, he can no longer be held between life and death.
We have a short montage scene for the epilogue.
The survivors visit Joe's grave and tip a 40 to him.
Blaine takes over the family business (Johnson & Johnson's), marries Kendra, and makes a bunch of babies.
Manda is the star of her own supernatural reality show on SyFy.
Fin
Session 27 ~ The Happiest F-ing Place on Earth
Theme Song: I Could Just Kill a Man ~ Cypress Hill
June, 1993
GM's note: I hadn't planned for things to wrap up quite this fast, but everything just sort of fell together.
As Blaine pulls up silver chain hand over fist, he finds a relic - a bone needle has been sewn into the links of the chain. It grants luck, but it is unclear if he merely points the needle at the one who gets the luck or if he has to stab the person. The group heads back to the Calypso and the skipper turns the boat and heads away from the island. The naked guy introduces himself as Taloq. A random crew member brings him a jacket, but he declines the offer of pants. He says the next step is to track down Dragotha in his canyon stronghold. The Calypso traverses the scrim of storm and is buffeted for about five minutes, then the rains lessen and wind dies, and they are on familiar calm seas once again. They consult their GPS/LORAN system and find they are on the northern coast of Cuba. They head to Miami - Dragotha's canyon seems to be somewhere in the southwest United States. Taloq can point towards it, but he can't give precise directions.
Before they exit the ship, Taloq is coaxed into wearing sweatpants and flip-flops. When asked for clarification about the location of the canyon, Taloq merely points west. He gazes forlornly at a hot dog stand, and Blaine buys him a hot dog, which he devours noisily. Candy tries using his connections to get a Winnebago, and Blaine stabs him with his luck needle for extra help. Candy's successful - he gets in touch with a local mob connection, one Tommy Two-Toes. He lost some toes in the Great Pine Barren Blizzard of '84. He has since dropped out of the business to raise a family, but he remembers Candy and is eager to help in any way he can. He agrees to pick up the party from the Sunshine State Mall and yells at his wife to prep some extra cold cuts for dinner. Candy tells him to simply look for the people who don't look like they belong together.
Tommy pulls up in a minivan, and introductions are made all around. Candy notices Tommy has put on a few pounds, lost some hair, and now sports many gold rings. There are two baby seats in the back seat, full of the babies Merv and Hannah, one or two years old. Tommy says his old lady says they need to stop by the store to pick up a couple things, so they pull into a Safeway parking lot. Once in the store, Taloq wanders the aisles, and Blaine is tasked to keep him from opening packages and trying things out. Tommy vocally wonders what is up with their strange companion, and Joe says he's retarded. Tommy clucks his tongue and shakes his head. Joe and Manda are given charge of the toddlers, and Hannah starts screaming. They cruise around looking for toys or something to keep the kids occupied and find the pet supplies aisle. They find a couple bacon-flavored dog chew toys and that shuts the kids up for a while. Candy and Tommy wander together, and Candy picks up several pounds of meat for Joe. Tommy consults with Manda on the kind of tampons he should get for his old lady. They check out, return to the minivan and head for Tommy's domicile.
GM's note: That scene was largely to spotlight just how out of touch with everyday life the party had become. Manda giving the children pet toys to chew on in the supermarket was a perfect demonstration of this. More than one NPC had to be told that there was no reason to call Child Protective Services on the group...
The house is in the Miami suburbs. Tommy pulls into the garage and they are met by a buxom blonde in a red bikini - Tommy's wife Sheila. There is a pool out back, and Taloq immediately strips down and goes for a swim. A BBQ montage ensues and Candy asks Tommy for that favor. Candy tells Tommy everything. They need an almanac to pinpoint the date of the next eclipse and a Winnebago to go out west. They also need a chemistry lab for Blaine so he can do some cooking on the way. Tommy says he can manage a van with a fridge and red upholstery. It gets 10 MPG. The next eclipse is in twelve days - they need to scramble!
The boys pile into the guest room for the night and Manda bunks with little Hannah, who stares creepily at her all night. They say their goodbyes and head out in the morning.
In Alabama they are pulled over by a local cop. They don't exactly know why, but they get off with a minor citation and keep on going (GM's note: This was actually a pretty tense scene, with Candy talking to the cop while one hand rested on his gun, all the while praying the cop wouldn't want to look at the arsenal they had in the back). Candy drives very carefully after that, and they stop at a few rest stops along the way.
In north Texas they stop at a greasy spoon/truck stop. CNN is on the TV, blaring reports about earthquakes in the Four Corners area. There is also a news bit on the coming Mayan Apocalypse, slated for November 12th, 1994. They finish their meals and head out again with a renewed sense of purpose.
They eventually reach New Mexico and use Taloq and triangulation to pinpoint Dragotha's canyon. Since they realize that Taloq must be killed soon, they decide to treat him to the wonders and thrills he may have missed in life. A bucket list montage ensues, wherein he visits the Albuquerque Zoo, eats cotton candy and watches the cavorting gazelles, hooks up with a call girl, takes a hot air balloon ride over the Grand Canyon, visits the Jim Rose Circus Side show (where he learns to fire dance!) and rides horses. (This montage was totally spontaneous. I was not at all expecting the players to get into a montage of Taloq's bucket list.)
Montage over, the party gets back to planning. Taloq points at a place called Pueblo Bonito, not Chaco Canyon where they originally thought things were going down. They visit a TGIF and convince the staff it's Taloq's birthday. They sing to him, bring him a cupcake with a candle and give him a button. Over dinner, Manda declares her urgent desire for a rocket launcher. She's able to procure said RPG and four rockets, and they also purchase an entire case of grenades, 36 in total. Candy finds hookers and blow for Taloq and they also take him to the Ice Capades. Manda takes him to a bar where she proceeds to get him trashed for the first and last time.
Blaine and Kendra sneak up to the top of a mesa and have a romantic scene complete with loud, industrial music and lots of LSD (GM's note: it took me a while, but I finally realized that Blaine was recreating the infamous "Animal Crackers" scene from Apocalypse).
The next morning, after the second round of Taloq's Bucket List, they stow their gear in the van and head out. They arrive at Chaco Canyon, the epicenter of all the recent earthquakes, and survey the scene. There are plenty of white USGS vans parked around a ruin, and lots of excited white-coated USGS employees and scientists running around. Taloq points directly at the ruin. They grab their gear and head that way. At the entrance to the ruin they have a lock and load scene. They follow Taloq into the ruin and the ground shudders mightily. He leads them to a gaping hole in the ground. It's about one hundred twenty feet deep. They tie off some ropes and tackle and rappel down. Candy enters a big sandstone-walled room at the bottom first. It's a kiva. The only entrance is a small round opening at the top. The kiva is about three hundred feet is diameter. Everyone else manages to make it down with out any mishaps. There are no obvious exits from the ground floor, but huge petroglyphs line the walls. One in particular catches their eyes - it's of a huge black-skinned man with a swarm of brick-red minions around him. It must be a depiction of Dragoatha. The brick-red figures are his handmaidens. A booming voice echoes in the suddenly tight space, "How dare you disturb ME?!"
Candy turns and shoots Taloq in the head (GM's note: we all saw it coming, but it was still shocking just how casually it happened).
The huge figure on the wall comes to life and Dragotha himself steps into the room in the form of a huge black dragon! His handmaidens also animate and pop out of the wall, and battle does indeed ensue.
Manda shoots a rocket at Dragotha, shaking him. He recovers, notices the fresh corpse of Taloq and roars angrily. Dragotha breathes fire and the party advances to inflict melee damage. Dragotha himself is very difficult to damage, but the handmaidens go down relatively easily. Manda fires more rockets at Dragotha, punishing him with explosive hits, but he refuses to go down. A mighty tail slap knocks down all four of the party members, but they are able to unshake and regain their feet. Eventually, Dragotha loses all of his handmaidens and takes flight, headed up to the exit hole at the top of the kiva. He doesn't make it. His body bursts into flames as he tries to scramble out of the kiva. The earth shakes and rumbles, boulders drop from the ceiling and the adventurers barely dodge out of the way. With Dragotha gone, the party regroups and climbs out of the kiva.
The USGS crew stares, astonished at the bloodied and battered group emerging from the kiva, but give them a wide berth. They return to the van and swig bourbon. They spend the night at the ruin site, listening in on the USGS crew and discover the earthquakes are moving west towards LA. In the morning they break camp and follow the USGS vans to LA, and finally realize their true destination. As they enter Anahiem and pull into the Disneyland parking lot, they know they must face whatever they must face on the Matterhorn, a snow-covered mountain in the middle of the desert.
Session 26 ~ The Phylactery of Dragotha
June, 1993
GM's note: Once again, Blaine's player was missing from this session, hence the incapacitating seasickness. At this point, I was having serious problems converting adventures. This was due to how Savage Worlds scales to tougher encounters, what could be reasonably included in a modern retelling of AoW, and how little of the background of the adventures translated. Here's where I decided to scrap the rest of the AP and see what happened as the characters plummetted toward the impending apocalypse.
The adventurers make it back to the surface and are fished out of the water by the Calypso crew. They count heads and realize Phillipe Cousteau is still stuck in the weird gel in the submersible below. They try reeling him up, but it seems the hoses and cables have gotten stuck on an outcropping of coral far below. Radio communication with the sub is down, so they can't get Phillipe to assist from his end, either. They down the potions of not breathing and swim down to manually guide the sub back up. As they are diving, the waters get choppier and the massive hurricane draws closer. The crew starts emergency procedures and hopes the party returns quickly.
They descend past sharks, though they are not big enough to be man-eaters. They manage to get down to the sub fairly quickly and get the hoses tugged free. They ride the sub back up and wave at an incredulous Phillipe through the port window. Joe tries brushing the salty brine taste from his mouth upon their return, but it won't go away. The wind picks up as they return and the boat rocks violently back and forth, which turns into wild pitching. The skipper calls everyone inside for safety and shelter. Kendra and Blaine get violently ill. The sky gets very dark except for brilliant lightning flashes, and the boat loses all power, including the backup emergency lighting system.
Suddenly the howling wind dies and the darkness lifts. The boat's power is still off, and they float gently to an island that appears out of nowhere. There appears to be a wide beach that gently slopes up to dense jungle. Far beyond at what seems to the island's center is a mountain. The boat eventually comes to rest in the shoals and the adventurers disembark. They spot a young naked guy sitting cross-legged on the beach not too far away and approach him. He greets the party in Quecha and Manda responds. A silver chain wraps around his arm and disappears into the sand beside him. He says he can help them get to the Library, but first they must prove themselves. He wants them to pluck a feather from the bird on the mountain and retrieve the heart of the blackest tree in the jungle and bring them to him.
They decide to go to the mountain first to get the feather. They head off in that direction and hike through the jungle after grabbing a couple of machetes from the boat. The jungle gives way pretty easily, and they quickly pass through it. Beyond lies a grassy plain. Towers dot the plain, tall constructions of metal and wire. The sounds of unseen monkeys and parrots echo all around them as they cross the plain. The plain is also crossed easily and they climb the foothills below the mountain to find a path that seems to wind its way up the mountainside. The path abruptly ends after about two hundred yards, however, and they start a tough climb. A huge dark shape wheels above through the mist.
Candy slips and falls, but he's OK. Joe goes ahead and ties off a rope to help the others. The climb gets easier. They reach the summit and find a huge nest. The walls of the nest are thirty feet tall and the nest is circular, about one hundred feet in diameter. Four blue speckled eggs the size of couches rest near the center. The floor and walls of the nest have been woven out of trees. They decide to hide and ambush the bird when it comes home. Candy slips and falls, but they all manage to stay hidden when the bird arrives. The bird resembles a giant parrot, with gaudy colored feathers and a bright red head. It circles and settles down to warm its eggs at the center of the nest. It shakes its tail feathers as it settle in and the whole nest vibrates. Its wingspan is easily more than a hundred feet - humans are about the size of insects to it.
Candy, sporting a track suit, gold chains, and rings, sneaks up and takes hold of a tail feather, which is about twelve feet long. As Candy adjusts his grip on the feather, the bird moves, hoisting a stunned Candy four feet into the air! Manda tries shouting at the bird to ask it for a feather, but her voice is carried away in the wind. The bird cocks its head to look at her, then looks away, completely disinterested. Manda crawls down and joins Candy - maybe together they can pluck a smaller feather? They team up and give a great tug, and pop a feather out. At this, the bird caws loudly, turns, and attacks Candy. Manda is able to get to the edge of the nest as Joe fires shots across the bird's beak, shaking it twice. Candy. however, does not fare well. He gets picked up in the massive beak, shaken like a rag doll, and thrown across the nest. He's in bad shape.
Manda drops the feather and runs to Candy and gets him on his feet. He then unloads his shotgun on the bird, killing it. It falls and cracks three of its eggs. Joe leaves his magic duster over the fourth and they leave with the feather. It is slow going, as the feather they plucked is a good fourteen feet long. They have to carry it like a canoe, ever careful of it picking up and floating off in the strong winds near the summit.
It seems pretty obvious when they get off the mountain where the jungle is darkest, so they head off in that direction. Hiking through the jungle is difficult, because even though the feather is light, no more than twenty pounds, it is unwieldy and must be folded and bent to maneuver around the thick jungle boles.
The compasses on their survival knives do not work - magnetic north keeps changing on them. The sun remains at the noon position. The trunks and leaves get darker, the canopy denser yet sparser at the same time. The undergrowth that tangles their feet eventually gives way to bare ground, and the trunks and exposed roots become more twisted. They stop for a rest and Joe tries healing Candy, but botches terribly, giving Candy a terrible wound - he exacerbates the minor back injury Candy sustained by getting thrown in the nest. They finally find the blackest tree in the jungle. It is massive, at least fifteen feet in diameter. Reddish sap drips from the trunk in spots. Joe pulls The Lopper and Candy pulls out a machete and they start chopping. Unfortunately, the sap is very sticky and catches both their weapons fast. At the same time, the tree animates and its branches start whipping around wildly. Candy shoots the tree, and seems to do some damage to it. Joe retrieves The Lopper, Manda gets hurt, and Candy finishes it. They chop and saw their way to the very middle of the huge trunk and cut out a piece of heartwood.
Mission accomplished, they head back to the naked guy on the beach. They give him the items, and he grants answers to two questions (actually, he grants answers to two major questions and a whole raft of minor questions). He admits he is the phylactery of Dragotha. The party gathers and mutters to themselves whether they should kill him. The naked guy, who they now know is named Taloq, continues and tells them in a few weeks, during an eclipse, on a snowy mountain in a desert, they can kill Tla-Kyuss. But first they need to free him from his bondage, as he can only be killed away from the island. The key to the padlock is being held by a giant, in a gourd on his belt, on the opposite side of the island. He points the way and the adventurers head out. The way is easy. The way is marked.
They arrive at the opposite end of the island and the path leads them to a cliff overlooking a rocky outcropping over the water, atop which sits a ruined tower. A bat-winged humanoid darts out of the tower and flies around a bit - a scout of some kind. Two more figures fly out of the top of the tower, wheel, and land on the beach in front of the party. They have brick red skin and lizard tails in addition to their bat wings. They look a lot like animated gargoyles! Candy intimidates them and they back off to give them room. Yet another pair launches from the tower and land behind the party. Joe intimidates this pair and Manda covers them with David Koresh's Desert Eagle. A big voice booms out, "What's out there you miserable little f--ers!?" The party moves toward the tower like this, flanked in front and behind and finds a set of weathered steps. The entire side of the tower facing the island has fallen down. A thirty foot tall giant with ebony skin steps forward. It seems that dots of starlight fleck and shimmer on his skin. At his side hangs a huge red gourd. A silver chain like the one on the naked guy winds around his wrist and disappears into the ground (GM's note: It's the other end of the same chain, stretched beneath the island and keeping the naked guy there). Manda tries convincing him to help them kill Dragotha, but he appears uninterested in the idea. Candy fails to intimidate him. Joe rallies a few of the mistreated gargoyles to their side and battle ensues.
Both sides trade shots, axe swings and claw attacks, and Candy eventually blows the giant's head off in a spray of starry mist. They advance to examine the gourd, but it is empty. The padlock on the giant's chain falls open upon his demise, however. Bloody and bruised, they head back to the naked guy. They find Blaine, now recovered from his seasickness, pulling the silvery chain out of the ground fist over fist. He has amassed a huge pile at his feet. Taloq stands and they escort him to the boat. Suddenly the lights on the boat all turn on and music fills the beach. They board and head away from the island. The wind picks up and a gentle rain falls.
Session 25, unfortunately is missing from the journals.
In that session, the party finds the Calypso at the docks in Belize City, makes plans to steal the boat, and then realize that they don't have enough people with the requisite boating knowledge to actually drive such a large boat. Nor do they have the expertise to operate the submersible.
So Manda and Blaine get dressed up and find Jacques Cousteau at dinner, where they attempt to convince him to take them to the Blue Hole where they can drop an ancient Stele into the water. Meanwhile, Candy and Joe are harassed by representatives of the Department of Antiquities.
Luckily, Manda is convincing, and with the promise of more artifacts to be found underwater where they shouldn't be, Jacques Cousteau takes them to the Blue Hole, where they unceremoniously dump the Stele over the side.
Catalina told to wait until the next morning for the Minge to contact them, but in the morning, there is no word from the Minge, so they convince Jacques to take them down into the Blue Hole in a submersible, where they find an underwater city in a massive cave.
They explore some, stumble into a battle between the local Minge and some Mi-Go (Wake of the Watcher, for those who are trying to figure out which adventure this was), and activate the beacon to take them to the Library of Last Resort. They are lifted back to the surface, minus Jacques Cousteau's son and the submersible. A massive storm is on the way, and they need to figure out a way to retrieve the submersible and save the Cousteau scion before the storm arrives.
Manda obviously can not go hunting in a party dress, so Catalina provides her with a powder blue jumpsuit and tennies. The jumpsuit is a little tight. Manda and Joe will represent Catalina, and Candy and Thumbs will represent the Rabatino family. Thumbs is none too happy with this. Manda is the only woman hunter. They all get patted down for firearms before they board the speedboat that will take them to the island. Manda gets groped, and elbows the guard in the ribs, hard. He likes it, though, and slaps her ass. Each team member is given a bullet, and off they go. They speed to the island in three big speedboats. The silhouette of the island looms ahead under the dark sky of a new moon. The boats arrive and drop anchor. The teams leave the boats and head off in different directions up the beach and into the jungle. The hunt is on!
~
Joe leads the way toward the center of the island. Thumbs is resistant and wants to know why they are headed in that direction. Candy tells him, "You couldn't find your way out of Brooklyn on free transit day." Then he sucker punches Thumbs, and a fistfight ensues. Manda yells at them to knock it off, and they stop. Joe motions for silence and they begin creeping through the dense undergrowth. Then something moves through the trees ahead, and Joe narrowly avoids getting caught in a snare trap. A Tong jumps out of the trees to attack and is joined by his teammate. The first Tong stabs at Candy and Joe, but misses. Joe buries the Lopper in his skull as Manda shakes the other one. Candy slits his throat, they grab their bullets, and move on. They creep forward and drop down into a creek bed and encounter a huge effing snake. Joe neatly decapitates it and they head on out. Soon they encounter two more thugs,cartel by the looks of them. Candy, Thumbs and Joe fail to sneak, but Manda stays hidden. Combat ensues, wherein Candy puppets his cousin and forces him to stand completely still, Joe decapitates another guy, Candy throws his dragontooth dagger and loses it in the brush, and Manda gets hit hard by a machete then pins the guy's arms behind him for a Candy kill.
Candy tells Thumbs he wussed out, but Thumbs, chagrined, is convinced someone back on the yacht drugged his food. Thumbs notices a big hole and throws an arm out to catch Manda from falling in. The hole is stone-worked, about six feet by three feet. Joe starts making a rope out of vines so they can climb down. Thumbs doesn't want to go down there, he wants to find the DEA agents, and repeatedly and loudly says so. Manda quiets him a bit by telling him there are priceless relics down there for the taking. Candy tells him they have to go down there to save the planet. Thumbs says he's had about enough of Candy's Terminator/Star Wars b@&+~@&!. Candy tries pushing Thumbs into the shaft, but fails to get a good hold on him. As they teeter on the edge, a gunshot rings out about a quarter mile away.
The rope is ready, so Joe ties it off and Candy descends first. He slips and falls and takes damage. Candy hears a hissing and scratching in the dark and yells for light. Joe makes a torch and tosses it down. A big black shiny bug nudges his foot. Manda goes down next. The light reveals a low-ceilinged chamber. The floor is covered with bugs. Joe and Thumbs come down. The walls are covered with old paintings. The predominant color is green, and the content is weird abstract shapes and designs. Manda grabs the torch and examines the walls, then gives a vocal archaelogical discourse on the paintings. They are not quite Mayan, and she spots glyphs for heart, knowledge and memory. They press forward and encounter another chamber. A well seems to have been dug here. They shine a torch over the hole and spot shiny bits of metal at the bottom, and a tunnel leading away at the bottom. Manda dives down and grabs a handful of shiny bits. She comes up with jewelry, doubloons, and an artifact - a silver ring that casts light. They decide they need more rope to help guise them through the deeper tunnels, so Joe heads back up to the surface.
As he squats and works on twining vines together, a gun barrel touches the back of his head. He whirls with his knife, but the gun goes off, and takes a good chunk of Joe's skull and brains with it. Manda and Candy scramble up the rope after hearing the shot, and Joe manages to take the gun from the DEA agent then calm him down and convince him they are not there for his head. Thumbs makes it up the rope and starts yelling - he wants to decap the agent so they can get the reward. His shouting attracts another team. One shoots the DEA agent. Joe loads the gun and hands it to Candy as Manda spots the shooter. Candy double taps the shooter and takes him out. His team mate circles around from behind the clearing, but Joe rushes him and takes his head off. Now that it's quiet again, they gather the other pistol and bullets that the thugs were carrying and attend to the agent. Joe heals one of his wounds, and they all climb back down into the well with the extra rope.
Candy borrows the light ring, ties off and dives down to the bottom of the well, finds the tunnel, and swims for it. He finds a couple of air pockets to help him along, then emerges in a big chamber after several dozen feet. The room is full of statues of worms, insects and octopi. He heads back, they all tie off together, then swim for it. Amazingly, they are all able to follow Candy's light and find the air pockets along the way, and they find themselves all in one piece together in the statue room. Everything in there, the statues, floors and walls, is covered with a thick slimy algae. They follow a hallway leading out. The paint is fresher here, and there is a scene featuring human-like figures in a pile being eaten by a huge worm-like thing. The hall leads to a huge chamber covered in four inches of water. Across at the other end sits a pool of green glowing liquid. Standing above the pool is a big ebon statue - part worm,part insect, and part octopus. Candy shines his light away from the statue for a second to light up a pile of baskets and gourds, and when the light returns to it they realize the statue has moved. He trains his light on it and they step closer. The thing is still moving, but very, very slowly - millimeters a minute. Candy roots around in the pile of gourds and finds a potion that allows him to turn into a hawk for twelve hours!
Manda moves the light away and back to the statue, and it moves twelve feet. Joe flips out, gets an adrenaline surge, and a handful of smaller statues animate and step out of the shadows. They, too, are of polished black stone and exhibit human and snake features. Thumbs loses his s%$#, but the DEA agent keeps it together. Manda tosses him a Glock and battle ensues. After trading bullets, sword and dagger thrusts and the like, eventually all the statues go down. They turn their attention to the pool. Candy drinks and nearly pukes. The water is green and murky and sweetly dank. Joe drinks and seems fine. Manda also takes a big gulp. They dip a gourd into the pool to save some water for Blaine and Mickey later. Thumbs and the agent wonder what the heck is going on. The water brings a pins and needles sensation, tunnel vision and the drinkers feel clammy and sick. Manda passes out,then Candy and Joe, too. They awake after a few minutes, and Candy successfully gets Thumbs to shut the hell up. Then Candy dives into the well, sure there must be loot down there. He finds another artifact - a flute that grants quickness. All the while Candy was diving, a weird scraping could be heard behind the party. They turn to investigate, and see that the big statue has almost completely reassembled. Not eager to repeat a tough battle, they tie off and swim back the way they came.
When they resurface, voices speaking Spanish can be heard up above, at the lip of the stone hole. The thugs are talking about climbing down. Manda screams and pretends to die to lure them down, and down they come. Joe shakes the s~*@ out of the rope and one thug drops a machete, nearly hitting Joe. Candy chucks his dragontooth dagger and hits a thug, who falls. The other guy falls, they kill both and recover a DEA agent head. Thumbs *really* wants to decap the other agent, but they tell him no. A plan is hatched - they will decap and mutilate a different head, and leave the agent safe down here in the hole, claim the prize, and then come back for him later. Manda bashes a head against some rock, making sure it is unrecognizable. They hole up for a few hours, then head out toward the beach rendevouz point. Along the way they spot a Triad ambush. Candy puppets one guy and Manda takes out the other with a machete.
They stagger out onto the beach. Manda holds the pair of heads aloft. Cartel muscle helps them onto a speedboat. Thumbs looks nervous. They are given beers from a cooler full of cold ones. They are offered cocaine, and Manda and Joe do a line - Joe didn't get to sleep or eat any meat, and the cocaine wipes out his fatigue. The ride back is rough, and the pair of heads get their own seat. Another speedboat catches up to theirs, and they race back to the yachts. It's sunny, clear and hot. The men on the boats are wearing white linen suits and the women sport bikinis. Catalina comes swishing down the pier to meet them. She seems pleased and says, "Well done! You did a great *sniff* a great job!" then glances at Manda knowingly. Joe declares he could eat a horse. Antonio arrives to congratulate everyone, and Catalina convinces him to award every team member fifty grand. The Rabatino family gets the two hundred fifty grand in product, since Catalina isn't remotely interested. Uncle Larry is proud of Candy for his performance and says he has redeemed himself with the family. He's surprised he let Thumbs come back alive. Candy says, "He has his f-ing moments."
Catalina takes them aside and asks about the other agent. They spill their plan. She asks if they drank from the well. She tells them she can give them the exact location of, and instructions to reach the Minge.
Antonio's second speech:
As is traditional at these events in my homeland, I have arranged a hunt for our guests. This hunt offers both fabulous prizes, as well as an opportunity for those who have applied their skills so ably on our behalf, to gain some personal recognition.
Each guest may choose two of their most talented staff to join the hunt on a small island not too distant from here. Competitors may not bring firearms of any sort to this hunt, but any other sort of weaponry is encouraged. My staff will provide transportation both to and from the island.
The event lasts until noon tomorrow, or until there is a clear champion.
Without further ado, let me bring out the competitors' quarry { Two men are brought out with hoods over their heads and roughly pushed to the floor at Antonio's feet. They are wearing torn and filthy DEA jackets. A grumble goes through the crowd, and several partygoers spit on the men. }.
Ah, I see I chose the prey well. We all have had our problems with the fascists in the United States who wish to corrupt our ways of life, and steal our wealth, all with the backing of the most corrupt government in the world! Their soldiers kill our women and children. They are but trained attack dogs, ready to go for the throats of simple peasants trying to eke out a living on a land the United States pretends to own.
This is war! We all know it is war. And these are two of their soldiers. { boos and hisses run through the crowd}.
But... { he holds up a hand to shush the crowd} ... Soldiers are always to be admired for their loyalty and dedication, even if they are loyal and dedicated to evil causes. For this reason, we will give these two loyal soldiers an opportunity to win their freedom.
These two will each be given a pistol with one bullet in it. Each competitor will also carry a bullet, but no pistol. The prey will be given a two-hour head start on the island.
- Don't worry, we will have boats circling the island to prevent their premature escape. -
The winner will be the first team to return with the heads of both of these soldiers. If, by noon tomorrow, no team has succeeded in doing so, competitors will be recalled, and the soldiers will be free to leave the island on their own.
In the case of a winner, we will fire five shots and a flare from the boats,
as a signal for the competitors to return.
Winners will receive $100,000 in cash each, and their sponsors will also receive a quarter million dollars in product.
Please choose your competitors now. The boat will leave in two hours.
Until then, please enjoy our entertainment. She's a very talented girl who will doubtlessly go far in her musical career. Please welcome, fresh from her third place win at Chile's Viña del Mar International Song Festival , a daughter of Colombia, Shakira!
Thank you all, and HAPPY HUNTING!
He finishes his speech to a rousing applause, then Haddaway's What is Love (Baby Don't Hurt Me) subtly streams in and dinner is served. Waiters drop silver dishes and uncover them. The menu consists of giant green sea worms in a spicy pepper sauce. Catalina eats a pepper and warns that they are super-hot. Joe eats one and survives. Catalina talks while they eat. The worms are fatty and crunchy. The Stele has the location of the Library of Last Resort. She talks about Dragatha, the undead General that serves the God of Worms, Tla-Kyuss. One way to slow down the Worm Sun is to take out Dragatha. Being a lich, his soul is hidden in a phylactery, and the location of the phylactery, it is rumored, can be found in the Library. Catalina was going to trade the Seafoam Stele to the Minge to get safe transport to and from the Library, but then the party stole it. Candy gets restless with all the exposition.
He tries puppeting Catalina, who merely glares at him balefully. He asks her where her hoard is. She ignores the question. She tells them they must visit a place close by to prepare for a visit to the Minge. She claims the Mayan calendar does not end in 1998, as is commonly believed, but in 2012. Threads of reality are starting to converge, and time and space are folding and unfolding. They need to visit a well on a nearby island and drink of the water to see truly the path they need to take to stop the Worm Sun.
Antonio steps to the mic after dinner. He gives a general status update of global cartel operations. Manny, his secretary, then steps up and talks alliances, laundering profits, a federal contract for pumps, security, and mines. A representative from each family present then steps up and gives a similar report. There is a small break after the last speaker, and Morphine's Cure For Pain streams in over the speakers. Antonio finally takes the stage again and announces the evening's entertainment:
GM's note: The bit about the girl throwing the dog into the sea is from a book by the anthropologist Michael Taussig. I don't remember which book...
Antonio's first speech:
Greetings friends, associates, and, with God's blessing, friends soon to be.
For those of you who may not know me, my name is Antonio Zelada. I was born in a small village in Colombia. I am Cunha. My people lived in the coastal villages of what is now Colombia for many generations, nurtured by the bounty of the sea.
There is a story among my people, how the first fisherman and his wife went out into the ocean on a reed boat and was caught in a horrible storm. After weeks of floating in the ocean on a reed boat that was hardly seaworthy, this fisherman and his wife washed up on a beautiful shore full of strange creatures. They learned which of the creatures could be eaten, which could be tamed, and which must be avoided. They thrived in this new place. They were rewarded with a bounty well beyond what they needed. But of what use is a bounty with only two people to partake of it?
Even after years in this cove, the spirits had not seen fit to bless the two with a child, and they grew worried and sad that they would soon pass from this new land. Then, one day a great number of sea worms began to crawl from the waves. Now these worms were not only a source of great protein, but were very tasty as well. So the couple gathered many of the worms, steamed them, and ate them. Afterwards, they were so full that they decided to go for a swim in the surf. While they did, a worm crawled up the leg of the wife and into her vagina, quickening her with a child -- yes, you can stop snickering now. I know how it sounds. While I don't personally believe that worms can get someone pregnant, many Cunha still do. In fact, when I was last visiting my hometown, I came across a girl. She was beautiful to look at. Long hair, full breasts, and strong thighs. She was ready for love, soon to make some man very happy. So this girl was on the beach with a squirming dog in her arms. As the waves came up to the shore, she would rush into the surf and throw the dog into the waves. When the dog returned to her, tail wagging, sometimes with some piece of wood it had found in the waves, she would pick it up, rub its belly, and repeat the process. I approached her and asked what she was doing. She introduced me to her dog-- Purha, I think its name was -- and said that ever since she got this dog, she wanted puppies. So she was throwing the dog into the waves, hoping for a sea worm to crawl into the dog's vagina and bring this girl puppies... But I digress.
And this is how my people came to be, with a worm impregnating a fisherman's wife. And my people still live in that same cove, on the same coast, benefiting from the same bounty. Sure, we have dealt with the same rapacious capitalists and foreigners coming to our shores to steal what was given to us, but we are still strong, and recognize the old ways.
In this vein, I like to kick things off with a traditional meal from my people. We call it the Feast of Worms, and I hope that it is as pleasing to you as it is for me to share with you all.
A quick warning though, the red peppers in the dish are not to be trifled with. If you are not a fan of spicy food, avoid them.
Session 24 ~ A deadly game
Theme Song: Porno For Pyros ~ Pets
June, 1993
GM's notes: This was one of the more epic sessions of the campaign. As excited as I was to finally be running the Prince of Redhand (I will run anything written by Richard Pett... anything), the adventure didn't fit too well into a modern setting, so it became a gathering of criminals followed by a bit of "The Most Dangerous Game". Oh yeah, and Catalina is a filthy liar...
Well over half the population of Hopkins Village is under thirteen years old, so wherever the party goes they are followed by a crowd of youngsters. They are relentlessly friendly. At eight in the morning they show up at the low blue concrete shack and offer bread, butter, and guava for breakfast. The bathroom in the shack features a huge window that overlooks the beach. The bugs are awful. While Joe does his his morning calisthenics, Blaine and Kendra examine the Stella. They do not glean much. The group decides to lunch at King Casava.
They sit and eat simple fare. The proprietor serves lobster with every meal for a few cents extra. School lets out and a swarm of uniformed kids fills the street. They wear crisp white shirts and black shorts, pants or skirts. They wave at Manda, Joe and Candy and call them out by name. Blaine, Kendra and Mickey rest back at the shack. One of the kids runs up to the cafe and asks if Candy wants to buy a snake, but his cheery question is cut off by the honking of a long dark limo coming up the road. The kids make room for it as it pulls up right outside King Casava. A window rolls down and a rough voice asks the nearest kid a question. The kid points at Manda, Joe and Candy.
A guy in a tux exits the limo, approaches the party, and delivers a note from Catalina Suvari. It's an invitation to some kind of gangster party on the yacht of Antonio Zelata. They are to get some formal wear made in Dangriga, then fly to the location the following day. Johnny, the tux, drives them several miles north along the coast to Dangriga. It's as scuzzy and seedy as Hopkins Village is clean and simple. As they exit the limo, a guy on a bicycle, Bobby, rolls up and offers to sell them weed. Manda bites and gives him ten bucks. He rides off, promising to come back later. They enter the tailor's shop and get fitted. A getting fitted for tuxes and a nice dress montage ensues.
Manda exits the tailor's shop as Bobby rolls up. Joe is still getting fitted for pants. Bobby shakes Manda's hand and hands off a foil packet. She's still wearing the nice dress, and he says she looks very pretty, then rides off again. Once everyone has been measured and whatnot, the tailors tell Johnny to pick up the clothes at nine the next morning. They pile into the limo and head back to Hopkins Village. Johnny tells them he'll pick them up at two the next afternoon. A night of drinking and dancing is had by all. They hang out at King Casava. DJ Le (short for Leon) spins reggae. They drink the national brand of beer - Belkin - and drink tequila. A basketball game is on the TV, and the local folk shout out Michael Jordan's name whenever he appears on screen. They stumble home to the little blue concrete shack. The power fails in the middle of the night, killing the fan. Someone opens a window, and mosquitoes do their thing.
The kids are back at eight in the morning and sell the party breakfast. Johnny shows up, and they get gussied up and meet him at King Casava. The kids can't stop complimenting them an their natty duds. They jump in the limo and Johnny takes them to a local pier. They spot a seaplane. The pilot, Hector, opens the door and helps everyone aboard. He hands everyone a Belkin and a bottle opener and then gets the engine started. Manda pulls out a joint, but Hector asks her to wait until they are in the air to light it. When they are, she does, and passes it to Hector. He takes a mighty drag and turns on the radio, loud. Hector loves Bob Marley and sings along, loudly. They circle the reef and buzz a big new house on the shore. Candy sits up front with Hector. Hector says the flight will take about two hours and the weather is perfect. He sings along to Buffalo Soldier, messing up the lyrics. He claims his favorite song is No Woman No Cry (GM's note: I sang both Buffalo Soldier and No Woman No Cry in character.).
In about two hours they spot a gathering of yachts, about 20 big boats, up ahead. They are all tied off together, connected by bridges and a couple of small islands. A swarm of smaller boats, mostly zodiacs, mill and wheel around the bigger boats like a flock of bats. As they get closer, they notice armed guards all over the place, at least one anti-aircraft gun, and flags of several different nations flying from the tops of some of the yachts. Hector takes them down and gently lands on a calm stretch of water, then putters the seaplane into the maze and ties off at a floating dock. A zodiac promptly pulls up and the party is ushered aboard. They are taken to a HUGE yacht in the center of the maze, and are let off at a gangplank where they wait in line - other guests have been steadily arriving for the hour or so. The wait is not long, and as they are assisted onto the deck by a valet they are handed a glass of very fine champagne. A legion of waiters teem about hoisting plates of fancy and colorful hors doeuvres. Then Candy sees a familiar face.
It's his cousin Thumbs. Thumbs approaches Candy and tells him to leave, he's going to screw everything up, that he has let his father down and turned his back on the family. Candy's feathers get ruffled, and two burly bouncers intervene (GM's note: Candy's player and I have great RP chemistry. Most sessions feature at least one scene where the two of us just yell at each other in character until one of us (usually me) breaks down laughing.).
Just then Antonio Zelata walks up and introduces himself. He's a successful looking guy with a fleshy, pockmarked face. He's also quite congenial, and points the way to Catalina, who's hanging out near the bow. He leaves to get ready for his big speech. They find Catalina standing with Candy's Uncle Larry. He's full-blood Irish but married into the Rabatino family back in the day. Candy and Uncle Larry exchange greetings, warmer than those exchanged by Candy and Thumbs. Catalina give Uncle Larry a "go away" look, and he he pats Candy on the back and says they'll catch up later. Candy tells Catalina, "Looking good for someone who was just dead. You're not gonna lizard out on us, right?" Catalina rolls her eyes and leads them to a table - dinner is about to be served. They find Catalina's balcony table. Candy pulls out Catalina's chair. She asks, "Where's your little wizard?" They tell her he's doing something else today (GM's note: Blaine's player wasn't present. He missed a heck of a session.).
Waiters bring tequila and bread baskets. Catalina takes questions. They learn she wants to stop or survive the Worm Sun, just like they do. It's better to ask why she's a human rather than why she's a dragon. Antonio takes the stage and speechifies:
Session 23 ~ Belize it or Not
May, 1993
GM's notes: This is the point where I went way off the rails of the published adventures. I accidentally "pulled the trigger" on Catalina's true identity (a certain vampiric silver dragon) and decided to roll with it. The bit about the overturned truck filled with shrimp is a true story that happened while I was in Belize about a decade ago. I wasn't involved in the crash itself, but I witnessed locals riding their bicycles to the site of the crash, where they scooped big handfuls of raw shrimp into plastic buckets while the bodies of the truck driver and passenger were still in the cab of the truck...
The group gets directions to Belize and heads out. The journey will take several days, so they fill the kegerator in the Winnebago. They stop at dusk on the first day and hit a motel. The rooms are not bad. The windows have screens and fans. Blaine rises in the wee hours to wee, and steps on a carpet of crunchy bugs. The next day is also full of driving. At dusk they stop at a ranch-style hotel. The eat yummy steaks for dinner. Manda wakes in the middle of the night - she senses something strange. The night air is silent - no sound of the constant whirring of insects or the low dull sounds of cattle can be heard. Then she hears the screaming of horses!
Everyone wakes at that, and Manda bolts to the stable to see a huge dark shape, a dragon with shiny fish-like scales that shimmer in the starlight. The great beast pulls a horse out of its mouth and the horse's head falls to the ground with a bloody splat. Blaine is the last to arrive at the scene, as he had to don his kevlar vest and fancy headdress. A stereo blasts Sinead O'Connor's Noting Compares 2 U from one of the hotel rooms. The horses and cattle are understandably nervous, and chortle and whinny a little bit.
The dragon picks up the horse head and licks and chomps on it. Manda fires a warning shot to scare off the dragon. The dragon gets mad and rushes Manda to intimidate her, but Manda holds her ground. The dragon roars and stomps and breaks a fence, and Candy is terrified. The dragon's back leg crushes half a cow, which moos feebly. Candy recovers and yells something funny at the dragon, which shakes the great beast. Blaine casts quickness on Candy, then the dragon unleashes its breath weapon, paralyzing Blaine and Manda. Candy rushes in with his Glok and longsword. Joe also steps in and starts to swing. Combat ensues.
Everyone seems able to hit the dragon, but it is too tough to damage, until Candy lands a devastating blow which pops one of its eyes out, killing it. The dragon's eye lands on Joe, shaking him. As the group dusts off their clothes and stares wide-eyed at the corpse, it stirs, rises, and gets to its feet again! It takes to the air on its massive wings and growls at Manda, "I already told you to walk away you little b#@!#. I'm giving you another chance...", then flies off. The dragon is Catalina (GM's note: she said nearly the exact same thing to Manda back in session 16). Candy finds a relic - a dragon's tooth stuck in his arm. Blaine heals Manda and Candy of their wounds. The others retire to Manda's room to drink tequila, but Joe stays up all night gorging on delicious steaks.
About two hours later Manda sees a flash outside, but there is no sound of thunder. She dons her kevlar as Blaine peeks out the window. A humanoid shape is creeping around the Winnebago. The flashes are from a camera. The dark figure notices Blaine and tries to vanish into the jungle. Manda spots the figure escaping, runs, and tackles it. The figure, a nude Catalina, backhands Manda, knocking into the air. Luckily, Manda keeps her head and manages to grab the camera. Candy and Joe hear the commotion and join the others. Manda is able to track Catalina's tracks just three hundred feet, then Catalina must have assumed dragon form and flown away. The rest of the night is uneventful.
The next day they paint the Winnebago, Manda lands in jail for something while investigating fake license plates (and they easily pay the $80 fine to get her out), and Candy steals a set of plates. Blaine paints the Winnebago black and covers it with band logos. It takes all day, so they have a painting and tune-up-the-Winnebago montage. Kendra has a modicum of artistic talent and helps Blaine with the stencils. Blaine also buys a bunch of silver and makes some slugs and then coats the dragon tooth dagger. Evening comes and they head out. They arrive at a military checkpoint. Four trucks block the road with four soldiers on point. Around twenty more soldiers mill around behind the roadblock. Manda bribes their way through, and they arrive at the Belize border checkpoint.
They spend a couple of hours on the freeway and spot the sign for Hopkin's Village. Up ahead, heading the other direction, is a big pickup hanging low followed by a Fiesta full of toughs, hanging low, too. Something big and heavy is in the bed of the pickup, covered with tarps. It's the Seafoam Stella! Joe turns around and a chase ensues. He swerves to avoid a pair of Vespas, then they group splits up. Blaine drives the Winnebago and the others pile into the Mustang to give chase. Joe floors it. The pickup serves off onto a dirt side road, followed by the Fiesta, and Chris Isaak's Wicked Game comes on the radio. Joe manages to get even with the Fiesta and Manda takes out a tire. The pickup swerves onto another hidden dirt road. A guy leans out of the passenger side window and shoots, but his gun jams and he shakes himself. The Fiesta slides into a ditch and is out of the chase.
Joe closes the distance to the pickup, Manda takes out another wheel, and Candy manages to puppet the driver. He makes the driver pull over and Joe maneuvers the Mustang so as to pin the doors shut. The passenger points at Candy and shoots, but misses. Elsewhere, four armed toughs step into the road in front of the Winnebago, but Blaine sends off a volley of bolts, shaking one and killing two. The fourth runs off into the jungle. Blaine calmly continues on his way. Elsewhere, a huge semi barrels down on the pickup and Mustang, honking its horn wildly. Candy manages to puppet again and shoots the passenger with a shotgun. A big crash goes down as the semi hits the Mustang and flips, spilling its cargo of raw shrimp all over the road and jungle. A few shrimp even hit the Winnebago's windshield as it pulls up on the scene. Blaine shakes his head.
They figure they can convert the pickup into a trailer for the Seafoam Stella and bring it with them. As they weld the pickup to their trailer and bang out dents in the Mustang, a crowd of locals starts gathering to collect the fresh shrimp. A makeshift fire pit is also set up and Blaine organizes 6 pounds of shrimp to be cooked and stored in the Winnebago's freezer. After repairs on the Mustang are complete and the trailer is built, they head down the mountain to Hopkin's Village.
The roads are unfinished dirt, but all the signage is freshly painted and clear. The Village consists of two long roads that parallel the beach. There are plenty of guest houses for rent and two restaurants. King Casava has no walls and a big screen television. Taylor's cafe is a faded blue concrete house. They pull up to King Casava and ask around about guest houses. An ex-hippy ex-pat named Dennis rents them his place for five bucks a night, and there is, conveniently, a garage to store the trailer next door.
Session 22 ~ San Lucia Itzlan
May, 1993
After the scuffle with were-jaguars at the Stairs of the Moon, the party backs off, aware that the sound of gunfire could bring the nearby military. They head back to the cabins to regroup. Rest is hard to come by, but eventually they all fall asleep. They are awakened a couple hours later by scratching at the door. They carefully open their cabin doors and find linen wrapped packages and glimpse a couple of jaguars running off into the jungle. The packages contain gifts for the group, each tailored to each person's specialty. Also included are some very old hand-drawn maps.
In the morning they attend their final day of scuba training. The day is clear and beautiful, the water calm and the fish brightly colored. Blaine gathers ingredients. They then head back to the dive shop to receive their certifications and get them signed off, then head to a local taqueria for beers and tacos. They pull out the maps the jaguars gave them and search for the Minge Temple. It's not on the maps, they figure it's somewhere out at sea. They hope the People of the Forest can point them in the right direction. It is decided they should bring gifts this time to show their good faith. Manda does some research into local customs and learns they should bring animals, so they decide to buy a chicken and a pig.
They examine their map and find that there are two tiny villages equidistant from the Stairs of the Moon - Santa Cruz de Laguna and Juebulito. The People could live at either one. They rent a truck for the journey and buy the fattest pig they can find for $40. It's a damned big one. Their truck is a 70's Datsun patched together from several other 70's Datsuns. Candy rides in back with the pig. The huge animal starts loving on Candy's foot as they leave the village and Candy kicks it in the head. It stares balefully at Candy for the duration of the bumpy ride to Santa Cruz de Laguna. Joe follows power lines when the road disappears here and there. Eventually they pass a sign: SANTA CRUZ DE LAGUNA 4.1 KM. They carry on and eventually see a cluster of white-painted houses and a church.
There is a dilapidated sign on the only storefront: DRINK COKE ~ 1 BOTTLE 2 PESOS. The village had no power and no phone lines. Old people are sitting around in chairs on porches. An old guy whittles. An old woman washes clothes. Joe pulls over and Manda leans out and yells a greeting to the whittler. He responds, "We live in the forest." She explains they are looking for the people who walk as jaguars and have a gift for them. He says, "Leave it with me, I'll give it to them." Not good enough, so she offers $20 to tell them which way to go to find them. He says, "Juebulito." ed. note: get the feeling we would have had to go to the other village whichever village we went to first? hmm...
Joe pulls a seven-point turn and they head back the way they came. He waves as they leave the village. A bunch of villagers gather in the rearview mirror. They find the turn-off for Juebulito and a sign: TOWN ~ 3.2 KM. They arrive at Juebulito. It looks a lot like Santa Cruz de Laguna, but with more houses, a bigger church, and sturdier-looking roofs. No one is out and about. A big concrete slab, eighty by eighty feet, serves as they town square. Plastic lawn furniture litters the slab, covered with checkered table cloths. Beer-logo adorned umbrellas are stacked on the side. They spot a mercado and approach. The front is lit with neon beer signs. The sign says ABIERTO, and the models on the posters are homely. They enter.
It smells like cooking barbacoa. There is a pay phone with a sign: TWO PESOS/MIN - LOCAL ONLY. The place is a cross between a dingy 7/11 and a burritoria. Another sign promotes CANE SUGAR COKE. Blaine strides to the counter and rings a bell. A voice from the kitchen shouts, "Hold on, hold on!" A Chinese guy in his 40's appears from the back. His Spanish is horribly accented. Half his communication is done with sweeping hand gestures. Blaine asks where everybody is. The guy says, "Monkey burrito?" Blaine orders the world famous Brazen Monkey Burrito. They decide to take the pig for a walk. Blaine eats his burrito. Mr. Lee, the store's propieter, joins them. He swigs from a bottle of beer and chain smokes. Blaine gives Mr. Lee a clove cigarette. They hear some voices from the trees at the edge of the village. Men with guns emerge from the jungle.
There are about fifteen of them. In their midst they drag a beaten up guy in military uniform. The locals also emerge from their houses and start hooting and hollering. One of the men with guns spots Mr. Lee and shouts, "Cervesas!" Mr. Lee returns to the store. Manda mentions the People of the Forest to a local, who responds, "We live in the forest." The military guy whispers to Candy and Joe in Spanish, to no avail. Blaine wanders over to Manda, who is trying to give a local the huge pig. The local guy says, "We'll take it." Some men with guns, happy with the gift, come up and slap Candy and Joe on the back, pleased. Two guys lead the huge pig off behind a building. A squeal rings out,but it is quickly silenced with a squelch.
Blaine explains to the locals that they are looking for a man with a white stripe in his hair. The locals tell him he lives in the forest, off in a different village. They say don't go there, it is very dangerous. They also explain they took the military guy out of San Lucia Itzlan, where a firing squad killed around one hundred of the jaguar family a few days ago. The stripy guy's name is Zotz. The party sticks around for dinner. It is learned that Zotz likes to play checkers. Manda asks between bites of pig haunch where the military is now. They are holed up in a jaguar village. There are sixty to seventy of them there. Zotz and his people are just outside the village in the jungle. The military has a white van and a backhoe with them, and the locals suspect they are digging for something there.
The party decides to head out that way. They return the truck, have a nice lock and load scene, and wait until dark. Then they pile into the mustang and head to San Lucia Itzlan. Joe follows a recently cleared road, and around a sharp turn they are stopped by a pair of jeeps and eight soldiers. One soldier approaches, his hand held up. They consider turning around,stashing the car and sneaking through the jungle. Manda tries persuading the soldier to let them pass, but fails. They turn around and stash the car. Kendra leads the way, bur Blaine and Manda fail to be stealthy. They step on dry twigs and startle a monkey. The soldiers approach, and everyone hides. Manda fails to hide successfully. Six soldiers push through the thick, succulent foliage. Three have their guns on Manda, the other three whack and cut the bushes with machetes.
Candy sneaks around a huge tree and takes down one soldier. Manda draws her sword and sweeps three more. Blaine looses some magic bolts and takes out another three. Candy rushes forward and hides under a fallen tree as Joe burrows, reemerges from the earth behind a jeep, and cuts its gas line. Candy kills another soldier as Joe booby-traps the other jeep. Another soldier shoots Candy and hits him hard, but Blaine finds him and heals him up. The last soldier is taken out, they loot the jeeps for flashlights and other gear, and then move out. The six mile slog through the jungle is tough, but everyone is perky and ready when they top a low hill and get their first look at San Lucia Itzlan.
They see a cluster of roofless houses. Only the cathedral seems to have been unscathed by the military's assault. A line of tents and trucks edge the road, and they spot a couple of guard towers,as well. Manda sees some jaguar prints in the mud. They explore a bit and find a clearing some one hundred feet or so from the edge of the military camp. A low growling is heard from the branches above. They look up and spot five jaguars in the trees, including Zotz. Manda explains they are there to talk, but the jaguars appear to be unmoved. She shrugs and sits down. A jaguar jumps down and nudges Blaine. He pets it, and it slinks off. While the jaguars circle, a plan is hatched. They will grenade the tents and kill any soldier who doesn't get dead. It starts to rain.
The party sneaks down to the tents, but Kendra gets spotted by a guard in a tower. A jaguar takes out a pair of soldiers by snapping their necks. Blaine spots a mound of hay and grass, with a pig carcass hung over it by poles - an obvious jaguar trap. He also spots some soldiers in some windows of a house. Candy gets spotted as he sneaks behind one of the tents, and the battle is on. Candy kills a soldier and ducks behind another tent. Joe rolls grenades under the flaps of two tents and backs off for the fireworks. They both go at once, and screams fill the night air. Blaine spots a group of five soldiers headed his way. He tosses a grenade at the pit trap, but it bounces wrong and blows up in a ditch by the road. Manda tries being stealthy but fails, and runs forward to roll another couple grenades into two more tents. Candy lets loose his grenades, but rolls them both wrong - they do not have their intended effect, so he jump kicks a soldier in the face.
The five soldiers notice Blaine and combine their fire on him. Blaine nearly dies, but one soldier's rifle jams and explodes. Joe and a jaguar take out a couple of soldiers. Manda rolls another grenade and after it explodes in a tent the soldiers inside beg for their mommies. More melee ensues and the soldiers are all nearly dead when two waves of zombies descend on the bloody chaos (GM's note: There was a mass grave nearby, the source of all the zombies. That fact didn't appear to make it into the notes.). Many of the zombies were children. The jaguars get busy eating dead and wounded soldiers. Huge fireballs erupt into the night sky as the cathedral explodes and collapses. They hole up in a tent to heal up, then follow the jaguars off into the jungle, but lose them after a quarter of an hour. They head back to the jeeps. Joe un-booby-traps a jeep and they retrieve the Mustang, then drive to the resort, then head to Juebulito in the morning.
The town is bustling. Old men sit in the town square playing chess and women carry laundry. They get pointed to an old guy sitting by himself in a cowboy hat at one of the tables. Blaine plays a game of chess with him and wins. Manda questions him in Quiche, and says his mom's mom's mom's mom says they can find the library they are looking for in Belize, near Hopkin's Village.
Oh yeah... I'm posting a campaign journal here.
We finished the campaign about two months ago with an epic final battle at... but wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.
I'm missing two sessions of journals, including the final battle, but I'll do my best to fill in the blanks when I get to them.
More to come...
In the morning they hit the Guatemalan border. Traffic at the border is a nightmare, and it takes them several hours to make it through. They stop at a mercado with a faded Pepsi sign gently blowing in the wind. They get a fantastic lunch of barbacoa and beer, then turn the sink in the RV into a kegerator. They continue on and spend the night in a tiny hotel in Guatemala City. The next morning they head up into the highlands. The jungle gets denser, and they see the occasional patches of farmland that have been hacked out of the green tangle. Eventually they make it to Lake Atitlan. The lake is ringed by three dead and two dormant volcanoes. They follow bright yellow hand-painted signs to a tiny lakeside resort town. They spy a dock with a jet-ski and a couple of kayaks and a sign - Welcome to Kaibil Balam, Home of Tropical Tours. A beat up pale yellow Vanagon sits in the parking lot. A series of cabanas marches down the shore of the lake. They decide to rent a couple of cabins and rest for a couple of days.
The front office is staffed by a white-haired leathery Canadian guy named Jacques Lianne. The rates are reasonable - just fifteen bucks per cabin per night, meals included. Jacque tells them about the other vacationers. Dan and Tina are Aussies on their honeymoon. A Venezuelan couple rents another cabin, and then there's the French woman. He explains the amenities. There is no pool, but there are four kayaks and six horses. Horse tours require a guide. He also can arrange hiking, bird watching, scuba diving, lake swimming, lava tube exploration, underwater cave diving, historical site tours and cultural activities. The closest town is about ten miles away. The office also sports a lending library. They pay for their cabins and Candy drops Delfina's name. Jacques has a vague recollection of the guy coming through here. The group gets set up in their cabins, which are quite clean and comfortable. They express interest to Jacques about scuba, and he advises they check out one of the local scuba shops for certification. They also ask about the Well of Dreams. Jacque thinks it's either a ruin or a bar, but he is sure the village elders in the closest town might know. Jacques tells them to avoid villages to the west - the military has set up shop out that way and are wary of strangers.
They pile into the Mustang and head to the closest town. Animal life is active - they see monkeys and hear birds during the whole drive. They make the main drag of the little town, which consists of eight shabby buildings. There is a restaurant, a mercado, a bar and a scuba joint. They ask around and discover that an historical site Jacques mentioned - Escalades de Luna - is about ten miles off, but they are warned not to go there. Bad people and the military crawl all over the site. They decide to head back to the resort for dinner, and hope to maybe meet the other guests. On the way they see more monkeys, and as Joe rounds a tight corner he's forced to stop. A pack of jaguars blocks the road. He swerves, narrowly missing the big cats, and they make it back to the resort. They exit the vehicle and make their way back to their cabins, and Kendra notices a Whispering Way sigil carved into the trunk of a tree. A flashlight bobs its way through the jungle towards them, and they meet Lise, the French woman. The mosquitoes are unbearable. They warn her about the jaguars they saw earlier. Lise seems to know nothing about the sigil, but remembers seeing it in a book that Sally was reading. Sally is in cabin six.
The party knocks at the door of number six, no answer. They easily break in. They find a suitcase full of clothes and a bunch of empty metal cases. On the nightstand is a paperback - Stephen King's The Stand. Kendra checks out the lending library and finds a Delfina translation of the Popul Vuh. The others can not figure out what was in the empty metal cases. A dog-eared page in the book talks of the Stairs of the Moon, jaguars, Dragotha and Tla-Kyuss. They find out Sally's been gone for four days. The book also mentions that the dragon's soul is in a gourd, which means it's probably a lich, and that the dragon is also the general of an army. A couple sites of interest are mentioned - a Minge temple and the Library of Last Resort. They have dinner and retire for the night.
The next few mornings are spent doing scuba lessons. One afternoon they visit the Stairs of the Moon, but see nothing special about the place, and decide to return at night. They go back to the resort and have lunch and booze, then return that evening loaded for bear, er, jaguar. They exit the RV and Blaine dons his headdress, to much muted snickering. They hear noises off in the jungle. Other than the gentle rustling, they hear nothing else - no birds, bats, monkeys, nothing. They head for the ruins and notice they are being followed by six jaguars. Growls of yet more big cats can be heard ahead. They spot a huge jaguar pacing at the top of the stairs of the ruin. Another have dozen are lounging on the steps below the big one. Yet more can be glimpsed milling about in the thick jungle all around the site. Blaine, curious, steps forward. Candy and Joe aim at the big jaguar. It's the night of May sixth, and the moon is full. Kendra is spooked, but Blaine presses forward, trying to provoke a reaction.
The big cat roars and Blaine is shaken. The jaguars all tense up as the big one charges Blaine. Manda steps forward and shoots at the big one, shaking it. Candy and Joe also fire, but seem to do no damage. Blaine recovers and fires a volley of bolts, hitting the big one in the face, but it rushes on and ravages Blaine with its claws and teeth. Some more ineffectual shooting and swinging happens, then Manda holds up her hands and tries calming the situation, which works. The jaguars retreat to the steps, and she explains that they are there to take care of the Whispering Way. The jaguars are quiet for a bit, then one pushes Joe. Joe turns and hits it with the butt of his shotgun, but no damage is done. Melee renews, but the jaguars seem to be impervious to damage. Blaine swears at one point that they must be immortal. Candy finally calls a head shot with silver ammo and hits, killing a jaguar. It turns into a naked boy of around sixteen years old. The rest of the jaguars retreat into the jungle shadows and the party shouts a communal "DOH!" Full moon plus damage only by silver equals were-jaguars.
Session 21 ~ Stairs of the Moon
CC #4 (or maybe #3) - Broken Moon
May, 1993
After a few days of rest and recovery, FEMA gives the party enough to get to the next town and they head south, headed for Guatemala. They stop in Austin. Manda has contacts there that she can trade some of the artifacts and jewelry they have gathered for cash. They end up crashing on the couch of a college buddy of Blaine's. They also have Debra set them up with some passports. They pick them up at the local FBI HQ. Blaine's buddy Jacob invites them all out to a goth club one night. Blaine gets gothed out, and Kendra and Joe do their best to look dour and dark. Candy comes along just to witness the spectacle. The club is called Raven Temple, and it's loud and smoky inside, and there's lots of eyeliner. Joe bellies up to the bar between two couples who are both (and independently) discussing how great it would be if they were vampires.
Manda gets rid of some stuff, but some other stuff needs to be auctioned to get the best price for it. She walks out with five grand for the artifacts. At the jewelry specialist she gets another five grand for the platinum set and the rest. She heads back to Jacob's pad, and the rest arrive not long after she does. Joe is discussing his loathing for Sisters of Mercy as they walk in, so Jacob throws on some Throbbing Gristle. In the morning they bid adieu to Jacob and head out to an ammo shop and hit a couple of gun shows. They load up the Super-Chief with a box of 20 grenades and a couple boxes of the silver bullets. They head to the Mexico border, stopping for food, then gas, then water and munchies for the long desert trip ahead of them.
They cross the border. The only traffic they see for many hours is army trucks and pickups full of workers. They stop at tiny hotels and haciendas to rest up overnight - the going is slow in the Winnebago, as they are still towing the Mustang and the roads are usually pretty bad. In one town they stock up on parts and supplies for the Winnebago and several bottles of tequila. They switch off their driving shifts so no one gets to worn out. Candy is driving when they are pulled over by the police the first time. They are local policia, yet they carry assault rifles. One approaches from behind on each side of their vehicle, trying to peek in through the windows. Candy keeps his cool and shows them the necessary paperwork, and claims they are in Mexico on vacation. He hands over two hundred dollars to make them go away, and they do. The officer Candy is talking to recommends a place to stay up the road a couple of hours, and the policemen drive off.
While Manda is driving two hours later, two more cop cars pull them over. Manda successfully bribes them, and they warn that at the rate they are traveling, they won't make the border tonight, it's best to find a hotel on this side and finish the trek in the morning. The cops leave. Candy is at the wheel again when they are stopped for the third time. He's pretty pissed at this point and tries intimidating the cop at the driver side window. He succeeds, and the cop backs off and pulls his gun. Candy offers another bribe, which cools down the cituation, and they are on their way once again. They finally reach the state border and shoot right through - the guards at the border station are kicking back with a giant fan and dinner and beers, and can't be bothered. They are in Chiapas. Not too far after the border crossing the freeway turns into a two-lane road with plenty of twists and turns. There is no traffic. They round a big ess curve and are forced to stop - a pair of pickups block the road. A guy with a gun and a ski mask approaches the RV.
Around ten other men with guns are gathered by the pickups. The one in front waves a black flag with a red star and welcomes them to Chiapas. Manda comes forward to communicate in Spanish. He wants to know what is in the RV. Realizing that they are going to get in one way or another, Candy kicks things off by shooting and dropping the guy, right through the door of the RV. Blaine jumps out and casts a spell, but botches and stuns himself. Candy tells Manda to duck and fires at another bandito on the passenger side of the RV, killing him. The rest of the banditos fire from the cover of the pickups, but luckily do no real damage to the RV. Joe climbs out through the roof, then dives to the ground, which swallows him up and spits him back out directly behind a bandito. Joe drew his knife mid-dive, and buries it in the baddie's neck, killing him. Blaine recovers his senses and casts fear. One baddie immediately develops a white streak in his hair and runs off screaming. Another loses it and also disappears into the jungle. Manda takes another guy out as Blaine hurls fiery molten metal bolts at the baddies using a pickup for cover. He mangles the truck, however, catching a back tire and the dashboard afire. They kill or scatter the rest and loot the bodies and trucks. They find a couple of AK-47s and pistols, but nothing special. They put out the flaming pickup and continue on, staying at a camp ground overnight.
Back in the floating building room, Joe tries and fails to tug the statue down. It advances on Manda, slapping her around the room. She throws a floating building at it, but it shatters and does no damage. Manda, Blaine, Candy and Joe all hit ineffectively. Kendra, however, does enough damage to take it out. They dust themselves off and carefully skate to the end of the hall - they spotted a door earlier. It open easily. They find a fifteen by fifteen foot room with icicles hanging down from the ceiling. The floor is a roiling mass of scarlet-colored ice. It looks like a Slurpee machine. Blaine decides he wants to jump in and explore, so the other strap him up and hold on tight in case he gets sucked under. He not only survives the cold, he feels awesome! His spirit feels elevated for the next twenty-four hours. They head back to the ledge over the funnel fall and jump in, heading the opposite direction from they originally entered the river.
They swim until they find a big stone bridge. They exit the water on a rocky beach and climb up to the bridge. They see a set of fifteen foot tall double doors on their side of the bridge, and the walls are covered in dials and levers of random sizes and positions. There is no keyhole. Candy starts pushing buttons and pushing and pulling levers, but his work has no visible effect - the doors stay shut. Blaine walks up and touches the stone key to the doors, and they swing open...to an identical set of double doors, walls covered in dials and tubes and gears and levers. Six doors later, they face an empty wall - this was a time-wasting trap, it appears. They head back to the other side of the bridge where yet another set of double doors awaits. The doors open to the chandelier room.
The spider shows up not too far after they enter. Candy blasts it with his shotgun, but botches, losing the last of his magic ammo. He hits it with his other gun, and does double damage. This kills the spider. They spelunk their way out of Whispering Cave and emerge from the entrance at around four in the afternoon. It's a nice day. The old pickup loaned by the angry mob is still there, intact. Joe scrambles down the hill to Kendra's ruined truck to get some trip planners out of the glove box. One is from Albuquerque to Creede, the other is from Creede to Viaz Bolangna in Guatemala. They pile into the pickup and head down the mountain. The road is in decidedly worse shape - Ilthun has been at work. Eventually, they are stopped by a rock slide with trees on top. As the pickup idles and they discuss what to do, they hear the sound of trees being uprooted and dropped behind them - they are trapped on the mountain. Ilthun flaps her mighty wings and settles about thirty feet away.
Kendra freaks out and starts screaming - dragons are scary. Candy, who had exited the truck to get a look at the roadblock ahead, unloads his shotgun and hits, but does no damage. Ilthun swipes with her mighty tail and totals the truck. Blaine is thrown from the vehicle, but Manda holds on. Kendra screams some more. Joe exits the truck and shoots, but does no damage. Kendra manages to stumble from the truck just before Ilthun whacks it with a huge claw, sending it sliding down the mountain. Kendra gets a hold of herself, and she and everyone else start calling shots to Ilthun's head. Eventually, Candy gets through and does an impressive amount of damage. Then Manda shakes the dragon and Candy jumps onto Ilthun's head. He fires two guns at the dragon's head and Ilthun falls, brain damaged but not dead yet. They stab, hack and shoot until she expires. Forty-five minutes and some Lopper hacking later, her head is separated from her massive torso. Blaine guts her as the others carefully pick their way down the mountainside collecting the gear that was in the truck when it went over the side. They hike down the switchbacks and make it to the freeway.
A FEMA truck rolls by and stops, and a couple FEMA personnel help them up into the back. Creede is well-lit with floods, and tents and portables line the streets in the center of town. There are around sixteen other FEMA workers walking around. The bar is still intact, but taped off. They are let off at the supervisor portable. As they stand there looking around, A familiar figure emerges from the portable. It's Agent Debra Cooper. She wants to talk to Joe, alone. Traumatized by their last exchange, Joe freaks out a little and starts backing up. Candy uses his thing that lets him use puppet to puppet Debra and commands her to kill herself. Debra pulls her revolver and holds it to her head, but Manda and Blaine rush forward and grab the gun. She shakes her head, rattled, then asks Joe for just a word. He agrees, as long as they stay in sight of his friends.
She gets coffee for them both and shows Joe photos that have made Debra question reality. She also shows him photos that sort of exonerate Joe and his buddies from causing all the mayhem she had initially thought they had been up to. Zombies in SWAT gear, etc. Joe tells her that with his friends' help they can tell her everything. So they do. When they are done explaining the end of the world, she shakes her head, exhausted. Then she asks how she can help. They need passports - their next step is Guatemala (GM's note: There was a plot hook leading them to Guatemala, but it didn't make it into the notes and I certainly can't remember what it is.). She says she can't join them on that trip,but she'll do whatever she can to provide what they need from the FBI while they are gone. They are put up in separate FEMA trailers and get cleaned up. Candy is awakened by a soft yet insistent tapping on his trailer door around midnight. He opens the door, Glock-first and there stands Debra. He lowers the gun and gently ushers her inside. A moment later he hangs a tie from the outer door handle. Fade to black.
Session 20 ~ Out of the Dark
April, 1993
The Marquis is not forthcoming with spider-killing advice, so Candy blasts him with both barrels. The water in the pool nearby stir and two waves of reinforcements emerge. They resemble human zombies, but their torsos have been peeled back and emptied - human heads grin and gnash from where there stomachs used to be. Joe does some shooting at the Marquis, as well, but he soaks the wound(s),then Candy shakes him. Blaine throws some bolts around, then the Marquis gets to his feet and puppets Joe, who pistol whips Blaine with his pump shotgun. The minions advance, and their leader focuses its attention on Manda. Joe breaks free of the puppet spell and more melee ensues. Candy gets paralyzed and Blaine delivers the killing blow to the Marquis. They search around and find a really nice bronze longsword and a really nice heart-shaped locket.
They realize they have been down in the river complex for quite some time, so they decide to rest. Joe is fatigued, mumbling and stumbling around. The discussion of whether Candy can fly everyone out is had, and they think he can do it. Blaine starts a fire and they warm a bunch of stones and strip to their underwear to dry their clothes. Kendra and Manda hunt for fish and crab and clear the bodies from the pool, pushing them through a hole so they float down river. Joe eats a mighty meal and sleeps. They all try to sleep, but it is not restful. Candy and Manda wake, but are still fatigued. Blaine tries to make a move on Kendra, but she says now is not the time, but sitting on the rocks wearing underwear and hugging is just fine. They all rise and stretch and have oatmeal for breakfast. Then they clothe, gear up, and prepare for exodus.
Candy gets them to the room before the tomb on their first leg. The stone key must recharge, so they have a long, boring ten hour wait. Kendra goes hunting and finds some edible algae, some crabs, and a fish. They heat and eat then rest up. Candy and Manda rest enough to become unfatigued. Once the key has recharged, they fly again, up and up in the noisy dark, their headlamps and mag lights cutting through the misty murk. They realize they are running low on battery power. Candy carries everyone up to the rocky beach they found earlier, just below the funnel fall. They rest up again. For the final leg they pull out every scrap of rope and bungee cord and strap they have and bind themselves tighter than ever - they are about to go up the rough patch and the funnel fall, and they don't want to get separated. Candy alights on the ledge around the funnel fall. They unstrap from one another - it's like a game of wet Twister. They find a couple mag lights didn't make the flight.
They carefully pick their way around the ledge to the room with the floating miniature buildings. The door swings open, and they notice another set of doors at the far end. These open easily into a long hall with walls, floors and ceiling covered in a thick layer of slippery ice. Two tall scarlet statues sit at the far end. Blaine moves forward as Manda collects the floating buildings. As soon as Blaine is halfway down the hall, the statues there come to life. One of the five statues in the floating building room also animates. Joe had tied himself off to that statue earlier, in an attempt to anchor himself to something to make navigating the slippery ice easier. The building statue swings at Manda and whaps her good. Joe tugs on the rope in an attempt to get the building statue out on the ice, but he's not strong enough. Blaine bolts the scarlet statues and takes one out. Manda gets to her feet and attacks the building statue, but botches, losing ammo and missing with her sword. Kendra rushes the building statue and shoots her UZI, doing some damage. Candy skates into position in the ice hall and unloads his guns on the scarlet statue, and it falls.
Down below, Candy, Manda and Blaine make it to a tiny rocky beach and take a breather. There are no doors or anything else of significance here (except a bunch of little white crabs), and they hear another mighty waterfall ahead. Up top, Joe figures a separated party is a bad thing, so he and Kendra hold hands and jump into the funnel fall. They both land badly - Kendra is wounded and Joe shaken. The others coax them over to the rocky beach, and they are finally together once again. They decide to go over the falls as a group this time, and float on down the underground river. Over they go, and then over another. They go over one more, which is a very long drop, and find themselves in a good-sized, relatively calm basin. The falls out of this big pool are gentler, and climbable. Candy loses his footing and is carried down by rushing water, but the rest manage to climb down without a problem. At the bottom, Candy spots a cavern about two hundred feet up a gently sloping but rocky stream. They regroup and head up that way. They pass right under a smaller waterfall, and beyond is a twelve foot high corridor. Candy and Blaine find a secret door. It opens easily and they all enter another chamber. This one's ceiling can't be seen with their lights. On the opposite end of the room from the secret door is a set of huge double doors - they must be fifty feet tall. They are of dull black stone and covered with glyphs and carvings and tiny and huge runes.
There are no knockers, and the doors are too heavy for Candy to drag open. As Candy strains and grunts, Manda tries deciphering the runes. She does not have much luck, but does make out the names of the brothers - Aka, Vita and Tutu. There also seems to be a spot to place a disc of some kind. Blaine boosts Candy's strength and he pulls again. The doors open a crack, and they can make out a locking mechanism. Blaine uses the stone key to fly, and touches the key to the locking mechanism thirty-five feet up. The door springs open. A long hall lies beyond with seven stone columns that gradually get higher and higher incrementally. The floor can not be seen - a swirling blue mist can be seen about eighty feet below. In the mist can be heard howling and can be seen crackling, swirling shapes of some kind. Beyond the seven columns, at the far end, lies a platform and another huge set of doors. The howling shapes fly up to fight the party. A brief combat ensues, and both air elementals are blown to bits. Bits of what, they have no idea - they were made of air.
A deadly yet comical game of leapfrog ensues. One of the columns appears to stretch all the way up to the ceiling far above, out of sight. Manda realizes it's an illusion as she jumps and tries to hug it with her climbing axes. Another spins slowly, so landing on it requires a bit of thinking, but they easily maneuver it. Another is coated with a layer of sticky tar, but they manage to make it past that one, as well. Yet another crumbles as Candy jumps from it, but eventually everyone makes it to the ledge. They try the same tactic as before. Candy pulls on the doors and Blaine flies up, key in hand, to open them. But this time there is no lock - these doors are fake. They sit and think for awhile, then decide to backtrack. On the biggest of the columns, Blaine remembers seeing a depression of sorts - just big enough to hold a disc of some kind. They all head back to that column and Blaine touches the key to the depression - the column rises like an elevator. The column rises fast at first, then slows down as it nears the ceiling far above. Just when they think they will be crushed to adventurer pancakes, the ceiling gives way - another illusion.
The columns stops and they get off. They find themselves in a twenty by forty foot chamber, the ceiling is an impressive one hundred sixty feet up. A funeral procession is carved into the walls. Elongated rainbow-colored lanterns light the space. A floating sarcophagus drifts nearby - its bottom side is ten feet off the floor. The bottom side is carved with a Wind Duke wearing a plumed helmet and wielding two swords. Joe boosts Candy so he can get a look at the top side. The carving there is another Wind Duke, but with no swords or helmet - its hands are cupped in front of it. There is no obvious seam to crack the thing open. Blaine tosses his key up to Candy, who touches the carving with it. The sarcophagus slowly lowers, then the lid fades away. The dust of a long-dead corpse lies scattered within. Also there is an ancient suit of rusty armor. Blaine finds a perfectly preserved plumed helmet - it's another relic. Manda picks up a nice-looking sword, another relic. A foot-long metal rod with a crenelated end looks like it might open a lock of some sort. Manda stands admiring her sword, as Blaine admires his helmet. The others disappear and a figure enters the chamber through a wall. The figure asks Manda, "Why are you taking my sword?" Manda answers, "Because I am trying to save the world and you're dead. I need to stop the Age of Worms." The figure nods and turns to Blaine, "Why are you taking my helmet?" Blaine blurts, "Age of Worms?" and the figure nods, then disappears.
(GM's note: The party got here partly due to a complete misreading of the adventure on my part. I was so caught up in trying to convert a dungeon crawl into a modern game, and trying to figure out what to do with the setting elements, that I neglected to notice that the seal was required to open this area. Their use of the magic key worked just fine though.)
Candy digs through his backpack and finds a metal box sealed with a bead of silver (that they got sixteen sessions ago and never opened). Within is an amulet that lets them understand the ancient Quechan spoken by the Wind Dukes. Finished in the chamber, they touch the key to the elevator and it takes them down to the room with the column trap. Standing at the great double doors they used to enter is a wan man with wispy white hair and a long, Victorian-style goatee. Candy zaps him with his wand of jabbering, but it fails. The man asks if they need help getting off the platform, then sends over a floating disc that carries the party to him. They land near him and start asking questions. He explains that yes, he is the Marquis. He was down in the White City until a week ago, and the spider is a paranoid numbskull. The party asks for food and water - they have been through a lot, and all their gear is soaked and/or ruined. Manda wants tea. Candy zaps him again with the jabber wand, and the Marquis becomes unintelligible. Realizing he can no longer speak sensibly, he glares at Candy and motions for them to follow.
The disc takes them down to a pint where the river pools and the water is calm. The noise from the waterfalls above are muted here. Crabs and fish swarm in the pool. A big desk carved of stone sits here, covered with arcane-looking devices, books and scrolls. A pile of power bar wrappers clutters a table with a tablecloth - garbage from the river, explains the Marquis. He calls this room the Star Chamber. The party is asked to turn off their mag lights and headlamps. They do so, and pleasant green stars light up above in the ceiling. They are silkworms, he explains. The party, understandably tense about green worms, relaxes when he says they aren't "those" worms. He makes some tea. He explains that he's pretty much OK with the Age of Worms, because the White City can take over after everything on the surface is dead. The dead dragon Dragotha great name for a dragon will be the consort of Kyuss. Those in the White City, he explains further, study that which falls from above. He holds up a page from a book preserved in a ziplock bag, and a quartz disc as examples. He then says if they kill the paranoid numbskull, they can have the disc. Candy draws his shotgun.
A door out of the room leads to another winding hallway, at the end of which is another door. They open it and find a room with a funnel-like floor. A giant metal spike protrudes from the ceiling, and at the bottom of the funnel is a large globe of some kind. Kendra is in the globe, frozen. The air smells of ozone. Candy's snakeskin gloves make him immune to electricity, so he boldly steps in. A huge bolt of lightning builds and strikes him, but he shrugs it off. He makes his way carefully down the sloped floor and touches the globe. He gets trapped inside with Kendra, frozen solid - he can't think or move. The party discusses ways to get them free, and it is decided Blaine will bolt the hell out of the stone holding the spike in place, maybe it will get knocked free. He fires several volleys of bolts at the stone, and eventually chips and shards fly free, enough to loosen the spike, which falls on Candy. Kendra jumps clear, finally freed from the globe, which disappears. She and Blaine hug. Candy dusts himself off and says, "Hey Kendra, good to see yah. We're gonna go kill a Marquis. Wanna come? It'll be a blast!" She agrees and they arm her with a silver knife, UZI, and Manda's bone shirt.
She explains she has no idea why Ilthun is after her. She was down here digging for the matching disc-portal when the dragon showed up, sniffing at the topside entrance. The group notices she's covered in blood, so Manda offers her a fresh shirt from her pack. The boys turn their backs so she can change, and Manda notices a huge burn mark on her side when she takes her shirt off - she must have been hit by a lightning blast. Kendra collapses. Blaine tries to bring her around with some natural healing, but she's too far one for that, so he casts some healing spells and gets her on her feet. Kendra, when she regains her composure, says, "I was looking for another way out, but couldn't find one." Joe responds, "Well, death is not the answer." They finish a brief lock and load scene and exit the chamber through a door in the opposite wall.
A staircase going down lies beyond. The stairs go on for ten feet or so, then the passage levels off. Another thirty feet on, the floor gives way and they spot a set of rungs in the wall going down a shaft. Candy goes down first, but slips and falls. He lands on a bed of glittering red stones, but he's OK. Blaine goes second. Candy moves forward and find a tunnel, which he investigates. Manda and Kendra make it to the red stone floor. As Joe begins his descent, a massive yet far-off clanging and sliding of stone can be heard, then a great rush of water. Joe backtracks and finds the door to the trapped room is sealed shut. Candy runs forward and finds a side passage and takes it, then sees a massive wall of water rushing at him from down the corridor. Blaine quaffs a potion of "breathing is not necessary" and runs headlong down the main corridor, directly at another wall of water. Manda and Kendra clamber back up the rungs, safe for now. Blaine gets slammed by the water wall and it tumbles him head over keister, but Candy wedges himself in pretty well and holds his position. When the force of the water has subsided a bit, Blaine swims forward to find the source. Candy swims back to check on the others, but the undertow grabs him and batters him around a bit. Joe tries lifting the door to the lightning chamber, but it won't budge. Blaine and Candy run into one another in the water-filled tunnels, banging each other up pretty badly, but Candy soaks the wounds.
Joe ties off a length of rope and heads down to the water level - it's about ten feet deep at the bottom. Up top, Manda finds the pressure plate that delay-triggers the water trap. Blaine gets his act together and swims against the current toward the source of the water. Joe ties off another length of rope and swims forward, looking for Candy and Blaine. The water reverses direction, and Blaine gets sucked into a hole and falls. He lands in more water and bobs to the surface in a pitch-black chamber. There is a dull roar here - the sound of a big waterfall. Joe lets go of the end of the rope and Candy manages to grab it. Joe, Manda and Kendra make it to the corridors and move ahead carefully, but Candy gets sucked under by the receding water and falls in the hole, landing in the big dark chamber with Blaine. Joe, Manda and Kendra make it to the hole that Blaine and Candy fell through. Joe shouts, but hears no answer. A trap door that shuts the hole starts closing. Joe jumps in, followed closely by Manda and Kendra.
Blaine hears a waterfall and shouts, "I hear a waterfall!" Candy can barely make out Joe, Kendra and Manda in the gloom and shouts, "Did he say wonderful?" Blaine tries repairing his doused headlamp, Candy pulls a glow stick. Joe manages to keep his headlamp dry, Blaine fixes his. The water is tangy and metallic, and has a faint red sheen. Candy goes over a big funnel-shaped waterfall. He falls for a while, then slides down a rough and bumpy slide, then he's in free-fall again. Blaine turns on a fly spell and dives after him. Manda tries catching herself on a rock, but it's too slippery - she goes over, too. Joe and Kendra manage to anchor themselves, though, and clamber up onto a narrow lip of stone that rings the funnel fall. Down below, Blaine kills the fly spell and lands next to Manda. He and Manda and Candy are all pretty close together. Up top, Joe and Kendra carefully pick their way around the narrow ledge and find a door. It opens easily. Within is a room with several Wind Duke statues. Their hands are cupped in front of them. Above the cupped hands float miniature buildings, carved of stone. Joe grabs one, then puts it back.
Session 19 ~ Waterfall
April, 1993
Candy, Manda and Joe creep forward into the two-tiered room, looking for Blaine. The floor is a dull black stone, the tiers rise six feet from the bottom floor. A set of double doors to their right are quiet beyond - Candy hears nothing when he presses his ear to the paper-thin crack between them. They move forward. Meanwhile, Blaine finds himself in a five by seven cage with no door. He can't see very far beyond the walls of the cage - the room is quite foggy. Next to him lies the remains of the cocoon the spider wrapped him in, and to the other side is a pile of weakly flopping fish. He turns on his headlamp, but it barely cuts through the fog, granting him a few more inches of visibility. Between the swirls of mistiness, he can make out that he's in a big room. There are two chandeliers overhead. Hanging from the closer chandelier he sees a huge spider - its abdomen must be nine feet in diameter. The spider notices Blaine's movements and climbs over on a network of webbing. It tells him, "Eat fish, then help." Blaine asks, "Why?" Spider replies, "You're in a cage, you help. You kill the Marquis of the River." Blaine talks awhile with the spider, then says, "I am happy to help, in exchange for something." Spider says, "No deal." and returns to its hanging position on the chandelier.
Candy opens the double doors, the others follow him into a ten by twenty foot well-appointed chamber. The carvings are unweathered and clear here and depict a freshly-painted garden scene. Two of the tall androgynous figures embrace. There is a shiny red urn on a stone table, surrounded by six small wooden boxes bound with corroded metal bands. Joe pries one open. Within are ancient books wrapped in banana leaves. Manda touches one and it crumbles to dust. They manage to pry the rest open. Silk gowns turn to dust, leaving a tidy pile of about 200 pearls and turquoise bits. Manda figures the semi-precious stones are worth about a grand. In one box they find a wicker basket containing a set of matching platinum jewelry, unblemished by time, and Manda figures the set is pretty much priceless. They also find a set of three stone tablets decorated with unintelligible Mayan glyphs. Someone finds an obsidian cylinder, long and slender. If the wielder holds it and points it at an enemy, the enemy might start jabbering mindlessly for a short time. Manda opens the urn and slumps to knees, fatigued. Inside are ashes and bones. They head back to the tiered chamber and listen at the set of double doors on the other side of the room. Nothing is heard, so they enter a long hallway which makes a ninety degree turn and slopes down. They find themselves in a huge chamber, kind of foggy, with two chandeliers.
They take a few steps in and see a bunch of statues standing around and some big pillars holding the ceiling up. Blaine asks the spider if it will teach him the plane-hopping intangibility trick, and the spider says no. Then the spider disappears from Blaine's view and pops into the room with Manda, Joe and Candy. "I have your friend, you help me." it says. Blaine shoots a bolt or three through the cage bars at the chandelier the spider was hanging from, hoping to knock it down and crush the thing. The bolts pass right through the chandelier and the ceiling, too. The spider gets nowhere trying to get the party to help - they want Blaine back first before they agree to anything. The spider continues working on Blaine, and finally gives in to his demand for "something" if Blaine is able to bring back proof of the Marquis' demise. The proof is a quartz disc in the Marquis' possession, but one must say the names of the brothers of Zokias - Aka, Vita and Tutu - when first touching the quartz disc, for some reason. The spider returns to the main party and tells them their friend already swore to help, so Manda goes back with the spider to Blaine to verify this. The spider calls the tall androgynous figures Wind Dukes. The spider and Manda talk terms of the deal, and Blaine reminds the spider of what it promised in return. The quartz disc is some kind of seal. What it seals, no one knows.
Manda asks about Kendra - the whole reason the party is here in an alternate realm at the bottom of Whispering Cave in the first place. The spider waves one of its huge hairy legs vaguely in a direction the opposite the way the Marquis is supposed to be. She and Blaine learn that the Marquis has a few friends that might put up some resistance. The spider brings Manda and Blaine back to Candy and Joe, and the party is quite happy to be reunited. Blaine demands the spider give him another "something" to help. The spider gives him a stone key that will open any lock, make doors harder to open if used to lock a door, and lets the wielder of the key fly (GM's note: one of the weirder, randomly generated magic items. I have a soft spot for arbitrary magic where the abilities have nothing to do with the object itself). The spider vanishes and the group heads off to find Kendra first. They wander through the set of doors the spider vaguely waved at and wander down some hallways, then find a room. In the room stands a statue. It wields a jagged sword (like the one that gave Joe the horrible scar on his chest). It's made of gold and has gems for eyes. A bright ray of light shines down on its head, and it holds up a hand to shield its eyes from the light. On the walls are carved figures and the floor is littered with fallen mosaic tiles. A shallow trough is carved in the stone floor before the statue, and within lie bits and pieces of cachina doll parts. Manda throws her flannel shirt over the upraised hand, blocking the light, but nothing happens. A long discussion ensues - can Candy lift the statue and carry it out of the dungeon? Manda's pretty sure they could get a lot of money if they sell the thing to a private collector. Candy tries it, then stops, and says, "Back surgery costs hundreds of thousands of dollars." They leave it.
The sun begins to set. They drive slowly, so as to not go over the side of the road or rush into any dangerous surprises. They descend the pass and wind their way down into the valley where Creede lies. They make it out of the trees and see the town below - there are no lights anywhere, but at one end of town they spy an angry red glow. Headlights are turned off and they don their night vision goggles, then coast quietly down to the town. Creede is a wreck. Buildings are destroyed and cars have been flipped and crushed. The red glow they saw from above is the church, burning in ruins. They stop downtown in front of the pawn shop. Then they do some looting. Candy gets a scope for his rifle in a gun shop. There are no bodies in sight as they comb through the collapsed building. Then, after moving some blasted doors and cabinetry out of the way they find the bottom half of a corpse. The man has been crushed by a beam. Joe and Manda find some interesting items. Joe finds a WWI-era bugle that grants Hard to Kill, Command and Nerves of Steel. Manda finds a very nice turquoise ring that grants +4 to armor. After topping off ammo and generally upgrading their gear, they hear a soft swoosh sound. The pawn shop's roof is gone, so they look up at the night sky. A huge shadow passes before the moon. A lone cricket stops chirping.
Then they see it. Candy falls to his knees, shaken. It's huge. The dragon must be forty feet long. It has landed between the party and their Winnebago. It lowers its head and sniffs around their vehicles. It has not seen them yet. It rears up and looks around - its head is sixty feet off the ground. Candy recovers his courage and steps outside. He shouts, "Step away from the Winnebago!" The dragon whips its head around and stares at Candy. It inhales and Candy's hair whips forward. The dragon murmurs, "You're not her." Blaine steps forward and brazenly asks, "Are you Ilthun?" The dragon responds, "Give me one reason not to eat you." Blaine, shaken, falls to his knees, cowering. He recovers and asks, "Are you looking for Catalina?" The dragon does not know a Catalina.
Just then an angry mob of eight Creede citizens shows up and attacks from across the street (GM's note: sometimes the adventure deck cards can make for some foolhardy NPCs). The dragon is momentarily distracted. Candy shoots at the great beast's eye. Joe sneaks out the back of the pawn shop, headed for the Mustang. Candy manages to hit the dragon, which soaks the wound and sneezes. Blaine unleashes a volley of bolts at the dragon, and it seems to shake it. The dragon backs up a bit, knocking a flipped car into the angry mob, then rears back its head and shoots a spray of black acid at Candy, Blaine and Manda. Miraculously, they all dodge the attack. The asphalt and cement rubble around them smokes and burns, pitted and charred. Manda pops up for a double tap and hits, but the bullets spark and ricochet off the monster's snout. Candy shoots again, targeting the dragon's other eye, and hits, doing a ton of damage. The dragon seems heavily wounded and roars in anger and pain. Joe makes it to the Mustang just as the dragon claws Candy and bites Blaine. Then it turns to whack Blaine with its massive spiky tail. Blaine is knocked over, but otherwise unhurt. The dragon flaps its great wings and escapes (GM's note: Joe had spotted a nice ramp and was going to launch the Mustang off it into the dragon, using a muscle car as a weapon. The dragon, having taken way too much damage from Candy's called shots to the eye, wasn't going to stick around for that, especially since I felt that the dragon hadn't been quite terrifying enough by this point.)
The angry mob, which had been virtually useless during the scuffle, is led by Jake, the guy who let Candy and Joe use the wood chipper. He catches the party up on recent events. Ilthun flew down from the mountains and completely sealed off Creede from the outside world a week ago. She ripped Creede apart looking for Kendra, but never did find her. Ilthun spends most of her time up in the Whispering Cave behind Harrowstone. No one knows where Kendra is or why Ilthun is looking for her. The group thanks Jake for the news and heads over to the Larimore house to do some searching for clues. They find receipts there - Kendra hired a few miners and rock climbers and purchased a sizable amount of dynamite. They find a hand drawing of a large disc - it resembles the partial copper ring they saw on their first foray into the Whispering Cave. They head back to the angry mob and ask Jake to lend them a truck that can get them up to Whispering Cave. Someone does. They have a brief lock and load scene then drive up into the mountains. Candy gets out at one point and clears some heavy debris from the road.
They make it to the parking lot near the trail head, stow the truck, grab their gear and head up. Blaine sees a flash of blue by the side of the trail on their way up. Curious, he investigates. It's an arm inside the sleeve of a shredded parka. The hand sports a wedding ring with an inscription, "To Jeanette, from Michael." Jeanette is the name of a climbing guide Kendra hired. They keep climbing and are slowed by a brand new rock slide. Huge claw marks in the hill above explain the rubble. They eventually make the cave, which seems bigger and deeper than before. There are some fresh cables hanging down into the darkness, so they descend. It feels somehow less safe this time around, what with less rock overhead - Kendra and her crew have done some serious excavating down here. Rope ladders and bridges assist their descent. Here and there are piles of used flares. Manda checks for tracks and notices most traffic is leading to and from a newly dug area. They pass the room where the big broken copper ring was - it still stands.
They enter the new tunnels. At the entrance they spot a pile of three parkas to one side and a pile of D batteries on the other. Manda takes point, intent on the boot tracks in front of her. It's a tight squeeze - they must leave some bulky gear behind. They emerge into a room with a full copper disc, a whole twin of the broken one. At its center is a swirling oily inkiness. Blaine instantly recognizes it as a portal of some kind. Manda says the runes etched around the ring are jumbled Mayan nonsense. Someone pokes a mag light through the inky blackness and pulls it back out. Candy throws Blaine into the inky blackness. Inky black arms writhe into being and reach out and grab Blaine, pulling him through! They tussle with the tentacles for a bit. Manda shoots one and they dissolve.
Candy calmly steps through the portal and finds himself in a hallway. He reaches through and pulls Blaine in with him. Joe and Manda follow. It is dark down here, and their headlamps illuminate a set of double doors, propped open. They go through. A three hundred foot hallway stretches on and on and ends at an archway. Carvings on the walls are too time-worn to decipher. They enter a room about a hundred by two hundred feet big. Huge stone pillars support the ceiling. Two more sets of double doors stand in two other walls. They are two noticeably areas of dangerous-looking spiky piles of rubble. Blaine leads the way, curious. A mighty wind rises up and blows him towards the closest pile of spiky stone, but he manages to catch himself. Candy enters next, gets nearly blown over by the wind, but manages to catch himself, as well. Manda throws in a rope to ease her entrance, but Candy botches his catching attempt and gets blown into the spikes. Joe, however, keeps to the wall and creeps around the trap carefully.
Blaine steps up to the near set of double doors. The floor shifts slightly under his feet. A rolling cloud of poison gas erupts from a hidden hole on the door. Blaine avoids the gas and disarms the trap. These doors open into yet another hallway. At a T-junction sits an androgynous humanoid eight foot statue. It wields a glittering sword in one hand and a balance in the other. Six orange and yellow-lit lanterns float in a circle around it.
Blaine triggers another trap and is paralyzed. A huge spider-shape descends from the shadows above. Blaine has wandered too far ahead - the party is cut off. The spider thing quickly wraps Blaine in a cocoon and disappears up into the shadows before the party can reach him to help. As they pass the statue, someone steps on a pressure plate and the statue animates -and swings its sword in a tight arc. Candy ducks. They regather and head down the T-junction. A set of doors opens easily. Beyond is a two-tiered hallway with a vague purple light. The walls are decorated with skeletal figures and sounds in here seem strangely muted and dull.
Elsewhere, Blaine wakes. He is groggy and feels nauseated. A voice near his head whispers, "You're going to help me. You're going to do what I tell you to do..."
Session 18 ~ Return to Creede
April, 1993
The party leaves the arena through the backstage area and make it to the Super-Chief. It's not too hard to use the chaos and confusion as cover. They give Richard, Lana's brother, a call to let him know they have her and would like to return her. He wants to meet at a Denny's halfway to Denver. Mickey gets the Willy back, and they hitch the Mustang to the back of the Winnebago. They head through the crowds to the gate. Behind them the Bandimere Arena collapses. They cruise towards Creede. On the way they discuss what the heck just happened. They figure Jerry Harrison killed Lana in a fit of jealousy - she was planning to skip town with Rico. Salvador was called in to cover up the murder.
Some hours later they pull into the Denny's parking lot. Richard is there, leaning against a nice car, smoking a clove. He asks where Lana is. They tell him she's under the Winnebago. Joe hands Richard a flask and tells him to drink. He drinks, a long slow pull. They pull out the tarp, which spasms and twitches as they set it down. A clawed grey arm pokes out one end, circling in the dirt. The tarp tries to sit up, then flops around pitifully. Richard calms down when he realizes the situation and asks the group to help bury her. They agree. They drive up to a spot that Richard likes in the mountains. While Joe and Candy dig, Richard whittles a marker for the grave. The others explain to Richard that they took care of the guys that did this. Richard tells Candy that his father will get a good word about Candy's role in finding his sister. It takes a couple hours to dig the grave deep enough for Richard's satisfaction. They lower the tarp down with a couple ropes, gently. Richard tells a long story as a eulogy. Blaine raises his arms and sends bright gouts of flame into the bottom of the pit. The others back off and watch. Blaine is a trench coat silhouette. After the flames die, Richard pours a shot from the flask into the hole, they fill it, and head back to Denny's. Richard says goodbye and gives them $200 each to help them get to Creede.
They head to another Denny's on the way and stop for breakfast. Joe eats for three people, which is unusual. He explains himself. After Blaine brought him back from death, strange things have been happening to his metabolism. After long, careful thought on the differences in the old Joe and the new, and after comparing the health and habits of the living to the quasi-existence of the hungry dead, he has an epiphany. He tells his friends that he is pretty much half-undead. He needs less sleep now, but the consumption of meat heals him. Healing magic is merely a temporary fix, and he is nearly impossible to kill. The others stare, aghast and agape. Then they finish breakfast and head out. Joe sleeps restlessly in the back of the Super-Chief. (GM's note: there was some question about whether we were going to continue the campaign when we began the previous session. Joe's character had barely failed to survive being infested with worms, and I felt it was sort of cheap to kill off a major character only 15 minutes into what could possibly be the last session of the campaign, so I let him live. At this point, it was clear the campaign would be continuing and I needed a way to deal with Joe's near-death experience. Making him pseudo-undead seemed like a good way to screw with Joe's player, who generally manages to avoid my sinister machinations.)
After another 5 or 6 hours of driving, they see their first sign for Creede. 42 miles. Not too far after the sign, another sign points to a detour - the road is out because of a landslide ahead. They pull out their Thomas Guide and check the map. The detour will take them all the way around the small spur of the Rockies where Creede is nestled - they will miss their mark entirely! They carefully drive around the sign and continue on. Eventually they reach the "landslide". There is indeed dirt and rubble all over the road, but also a few trees. Oddly, the trees are all laid out roughly parallel to one another, as if they had been placed there deliberately. Candy thinks with his new-found strength he can lift and move the huge trunks, and he is right - he unblocks the road! They examine the trunks as Candy performs his Herculean task. There are huge teeth and claw marks all over them. They shudder - something that makes marks that big is going to be one big something. They unhitch the Mustang and drive both vehicles carefully through the slender gap Candy made in the debris. He's thirsty after all that work, so they sit and have a couple beers before heading out once again.
Well now I feel like I was just trolling for compliments. Ah heck, I'll take the compliments. :)
There are only 5 more sessions left to post until we catch up to the point where I put the campaign on hold. This campaign was a bit heavy from a roleplaying perspective, not as in roleplaying-heavy, but in dealing with some really heavy themes. After 22 sessions of it, we were all ready for something a little more light-hearted, and I had the then-brand new Marvel Super Heroic Roleplaying book in my hands and was sooooo enamored of the system...
But that explanation masks something. The conversions across both system and genre are really complicated. The lack of common magic makes some challenges that would be simple for a typical Pathfinder party nearly TPK-inducing, because technology has some limitations magic does not. For example, electronics don't work too well when submerged in water.
As I was looking ahead to the future adventures, they were looking harder and harder to convert. Part of this is the difference between how d20 and Savage Worlds handles scaling encounters to the characters. In d20 games, increasing character power allows, even necessitates, taking on bigger and more powerful challenges. In Savage Worlds, increasing character power tends to make enemies more numerous in encounters. Luckily, Savage Worlds supports massive combats quite well, but making the encounters challenging and/or appropriate to the party often requires significant reworking of the adventures.
Also, as the later adventures tend to rely on some well-trod D&D tropes, the genre conversion tends to get less coherent and, at least to me, the plot doesn't hold together quite as well. At this point, I have no idea how I'm going to convert some of the later adventures in AoW or how to tie any of it back in together.
But I have every intention of finishing this. My ridiculously convoluted Kingmaker game enters its 44th session tonight, but since one of the primary players can't make it to every session, I have an opportunity to pick this beast back up... if I can stop staring lustily at the new Deadlands book that showed up in the mail last week.
So, what's coming up in the campaign journal?
Joe dies and is almost reborn, becoming something not quite alive, but not quite dead either.
Manda gets a magic macuahuitl and wades into battle dual-wielding a magical aztec "sword" in one hand, and David Koresh's magic desert eagle in the other, for a whole lot of awesome.
Candy uses mind control to have Agent Cooper shoot herself, but is stopped by the rest of the group. Agent Cooper then, realizing that the Age of Worms is not only nigh, but also way above her ability to tackle, becomes an ally. Note that she also has absolutely no idea that Candy has been using his magic bracers for such awful purposes.
The party returns to Creede to rescue Kendra Larimore and fights a real dragon, twice!
The party goes to Guatemala, has a small tropical vacation, learns to scuba dive, meets a village of were-jaguars, and assaults a Guatemalan military camp funded by the Whispering Way.
Glad you're enjoying it. The campaign has been a blast to run, and a serious workout for my GMing chops.
The lack of feedback in the campaign journals section of the boards can sometimes make it seem like I'm talking to myself.
Manda and Blaine (who smells of desperation and failure - no, Drakkar Noir and Cool Water) go to check on zombie-Lana. She is still struggling in the tarp under the Winnebago. Mr. Big is scheduled to begin in two hours. Blaine wanders up to the lighting booth and is at first turned away, then he talks his way into getting a small tour. He presses the lighting crew for information about the night's event, asks if there's anything under the stadium. They say there is not.
Candy uses his contacts to get a guy from Denver to come down and keep an eye on Jerry. Mario Santini is sent down for the job. He's a blond, blue-eyed Italian mobster. His mom was some kind of Swede. Candy has him paged to the corn dog stand for instructions. Meanwhile, Manda has a mind to confront the Harrisons. She spots them in a crowd of twenty or so guards and approaches. Blaine gets kicked out of a maintenance area for being too nosy. Manda shouts across the arena at Jerry, "I know what you did to Lana!" Jerry sends Catalina over to talk to Manda. Manda shows her cards. Catalina seems pissed and intimidates Manda, but Manda does not back down. Manda tells her the zombies are all dead and that she's going to stop Catalina, stop all of them. Catalina tells Manda she's in way over her head, that she has no idea what she's dealing with, and to walk away. Candy is somehow smitten with Catalina and approaches, tries to puppet her (GM's note: seriously. I have no idea what was up with Candy's player that session.). She shrugs off the attempt and slams Candy into a wall, which he enjoys a great deal. She tells Candy to walk away, slaps him, and backs off. "Mr. Rabatino, Ms. Hugnkhis, goodbye." She turns and leaves.
Elsewhere, Joe enjoys beers with the Truckasaurus crew, cracking jokes and talking cars. It's not too long before the main event of the evening, so Joe wanders off to the RV to compare notes with the others. They gear up and head back to the arena. There are no metal detectors, but there is plenty of security. Joe, as the driver of Truckasaurus, gets to skip security, and brings a duffel bag full of guns and weapons. The others are armed and ready and set up in the front row of the track. Mr. Big starts playing. Candy loudly derides the crappy music, and a guy in the row behind him tells him to shut up, Mr. Big is awesome. Candy turns and intimidates the guy.
Stunt cars slowly start circling the track. Rico waves from a motorcycle - he was not injured in his dramatic crash earlier. Eddy Rose joins the procession in a green car. Joe comes out in Truckasaurus. The procession halts, and the stunt cars pull out to various ramps and loops around the track to do their thing. Rico and another biker do the Ball of Doom. Blaine keeps his eyes on Jerry up in his deluxe box through the binocs. Jerry leans forward and takes out a piece of paper, starts reading from it, clutching something hanging around his neck. The ground rumbles. Candy looks around for a perch to do some sniping. He sees some rigging that would do nicely and makes for it. Agent Cooper is also there at the event and spots Candy, Blaine and Manda. She knows something is about to happen, but has no clue what it might be. Blaine dons his kevlar vest and Manda pulls out her special Desert Eagle. A deep rumble and a great shaking from below stuns the crowd, a hush falls. A few stunt cars also kill their engines, the drivers rattled. Joe carries a pickup in the jaws of Truckasaurus.
Just then the massive maggot from below bursts through the magical barrier and erupts from the floor of the arena. The crowd as a whole loses their collective s$%*. People are running and screaming in every direction. The worm is so tall that Candy, four stories up in the rigging, is just ten feet above its eyeless bulbous head. Mr. Big stops playing as the worm opens its huge slavering maw. Blaine, still watching Jerry, notices that the mogul is clutching a sheet of paper and chanting. He is sweating profusely and his bad toupee is slipping off. His guards panic and bolt, but Catalina turns and slowly saunters off, leaving Jerry alone in the suite, chanting and mumbling, rocking back and forth. The giant worm pukes up a writhing mass of slime-covered bodies - they are regular zombies, there are nine of them, and they seem hungry. Joe loses his s#*+ in Truckasaurus at the sight.
Candy tries for a head shot on Jerry, but barely misses, shattering the glass wall of the deluxe suite. Catalina turns at the noise, shakes her head, and continues to walk away. Jerry, however, is unfazed and continues chanting. Blaine rushes onto the racetrack to fight the worm. Manda jumps on the back of Rico's bike and shouts, "You drive! I'll shoot!", and they speed off towards the worm. Joe recovers. He holds the pickup high over the flame jets and torches the vehicle, then tosses it, flaming, into the mass of zombies headed for Blaine. He bowls a split. The worm has a mind of its own and decides to not do what Jerry is trying to command it to. It turns and wriggles its heaving bulk at Blaine, then vomits four more slime covered skeletons, who hit the ground and advance on Blaine. Rico skids past Blaine and Manda takes a shot at one of the zombies attacking him, taking it out. Blaine unleashes a fireball at the skeletons and worm. The worm gets angry and rears up to crush him. Just then, as the worm raises its undulating slab off the ground, Joe notices a yellowish patch of flesh that seems weaker and more vulnerable. Joe batters the thing with the flaming Toyota, attempting to divert its attention from his friend. Up in the rigging, Candy carefully aims, in a Zen-like state, and lowers his shotgun. He pulls the trigger (the player drew BOTH JOKERS with Level-Headed for this shot, and did something like 64 points of damage) and Jerry goes down.
The worm turns on Truckasaurus at this point, but Joe handily reverses and dodges the giant mouth. He shouts out the window of Truckasaurus for Blaine to hit the soft spot when the worm rises again. The worm returns its focus on Blaine - it rears up again and plunges at him, mouth wide open. Before he can make use of Joe's observation, Blaine is swallowed whole! Up in the luxury suite, Jerry dies of his throat wound. Candy clambers his way up to the suite using the rigging and a couple of crossbeams. Joe grapples the worm in the jaws of Truckasaurus, raising it off the arena floor. Manda and Rico scoot by and Manda unloads the Desert Eagle at the yellowish underbelly. The worm is momentarily distracted by the attack and loosens its grip on Blaine in its esophagus just enough that he has a little room to make an arcane gesture. Blaine unleashes a series of bolts from inside the worm and blows a hole big enough to walk out. He emerges near the thing's head and climbs to stand on the jaws of Truckasaurus. Manda cheers from the back of the motorcycle. Candy tries following Catalina but loses her in the crowd. Cooper is too busy helping the freaked out and wounded to chase them down.
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