The Cast (In Order of Appearance):
DUDE EARTHMAN - Simple-minded Earth Man Fighting-Man
MONSTER MONAGIN - Earth Man Sailor and Fightingest Man in this Company
RICHARD "DICKIE" DEE - Bone Man Sorcerer
RYGARR - Green Man Sorcerer
GAN-RON THE SILVER MAN - Simple-minded Good Hero, possessor of a magic silver sword
JAIAG 11-3XG - Synthetic Prostitute
GRUBB GRIZZLER - Earth Man Thief
Part II Here, Part III Here.
The party accepts a commission from the proprietor of the Lamia's Breath Intoxicating Vapour Lounge in Agog city to recover a runaway synthetic prostitute from a do-gooder hero, Gan-ron the silver man.Their reward for returning the synthetic being 250 gold credits value of Gamma Orichalcum, a soft, highly reactive, radioactive metal that is also a potent hallucinogenic stimulant.
Tracking Gan-ron to his accommodations at the Palace of Brass Chambers, Dickie Dee managed to befriend him by casting Charm Person. DIckie Dee finds out that Gan-ron is in love with the runaway synthetic prostitute, has married her, and is leaving the city with her on a caravan tomorrow morning.
Next morning the party tracks Gan-ron and his new wife to the westbound caravan with which they are departing. Seeing their quarry enter an iron carriage, one of several in a train drawn by a triceratops, the party quickly pays the caravan master a generous stipend in order to travel with the caravan. As the caravan leaves through the western gate of Agog their friends the Earth Men Grubb Grizzler and Nigel Nightbringer hail them and after a brief discussion Grubb decides to join them, Nigel makes plans to meet up with them later after concluding pressing business in Agog City.
The caravan leaves, traveling westwards across the purple grasses of the western Iridium Plateau and stopping for the night at Fortress Cobalt. The next morning Dickie Dee and Rygarr vist Gan-ron in his iron carriage. They spy the synthetic prostitute, concealing in a enveloping burqua like garment lying motionless on the bunk. Utilizing a sleep spell Gan-ron is rendered helpless and crudely slain by means of a javelin being driven into his temple. The two sorcerers bind the synthetic prostitute and hide Gan-ron's body in a brass trunk.
The caravan leaves with the sorcerers lurking within the carriage, traveling down a steep cliff road to it's next stop, Small Dust (also known as Gully Town)
The caravan decamps for the night at the caravan grounds, and the rest of the party goes to an inn on the far side of town. Once they negotiate secure accommodations at a simple single-story inn, The Red Beak, the thief Grubb Grizzler is sent to the caravan to retrieve the sorcerers and the synthetic prostitute…
New Players in this Drama:
NIGEL NIGHTBRINGER - Earth Man Fighting-Man
Part I Here, Part III Here.
As Grubb Grizzler sneaks through the caravan grounds he is stealthily hailed by a figure lurking in the shadows around the slumbering triceratops. A caravan guard had seen the two sorcerers enter the carriage in the morning and, misapprehending the actions of the party and believing that they are attempting to steal Gan-ron's magic silver sword, attempts to solicit Grubb for a generous gratuity in exchange for his silence.
Grubb maintains his innocence, and in an attempt to turn the tables, asks instead to be taken to the caravan master, Harkam, insisting that if he is under suspicion then the carvan master should be appraised of the situation. The guard agrees, and leads Grubb through the dark streets until coming to an even darker, narrow alley entrance. Assuring Grubb that the alleyway is a shortcut to the tavern that where Harrkam is carousing, the guard suggests that Grubb enters first so that the the guard will be able to protect Grubb's back from cutthroats.
Grubb declines, and offers to guard the guard's back instead. Both parties are equally insistent, and, sensing that his bluff is up, the guard draws his sword. Grubb immediately lunges at him and the two are struggling, taking wounds from the other's blade, migrating into the alleyway as they desperately grapple and stab, both weak from blood-loss. The guard drops his sword and draws a dagger, driving it into Grubb's body, who collapses.
The two sorcerers lurking in the iron carriage tire of waiting for Grubb to show up and exchange the cadaver in the brass trunk with the synthetic prostitute, loot the body of it's wealth, including the magic silver sword and silver embossed banded mail, heave up the weighty the trunk and exiti the carriage, awkwardly bearing their burden with a nonchalant stumbling gait away from the caravan ground, seeking an inn as far away from the sordid scene as possible.
By fortunate coincidence, they chose to lodge in The Red Beak, coming across their companions in the common lounge at the same moment as their friend Nigel Nightbringer comes upon them, having concluded his business in Agog City.
Nigel Nightbringer is filled in on the party's current doings, and in return expresses grave concern for the well being of Grubb Grizzler on account of failing to reconnoiter with either the sorcerers or the inn. His companions respond phlegmatically to his concerns and Nigel spends several hours wandering the dark streets looking for his good friend.
The next morning Nigel continues the search and finds the stabbed body of Grubb Grizzler, throat slit and stripped of valuables. This turn of events outrages him and after finding an undertaker to store the body he takes his grievances to the local constabulary who respond with unconcern that further outrages the hot-tempered Earth Man.
Next Niels seeks a sorcerer in order to speak with the shade of his deceased companion to find out the identity of the agent of his demise. The local sorcerer reveals the fees associated with such a service and they are beyond Nigel's present monetary circumstances. The sorcerer offers to waive his fee in exchange for the poison gland of a "zorse sized scorpion" from the Prismatic Wastes northwest of town.
Although Nigel finds the arrangement acceptable, the rest of the party do not share his enthusiasm. At this point Dickie Dee realizes that the synthetic prostitute locked in the brass trunk at their inn has been without any sustenance for over a day.
After again visiting the undertaker and paying a modest fee for the disposal of Grubb's remains, the party returns to their room at the inn where they disinter their captive and find her pale and weak but alive. After providing water and nourishment, the very simple synthetic being regains her color and inquires about the whereabouts of her husband. However, the genetic programming of the vat-grown prostitute overwhelm her and she begins soliciting the party, who respond to her advances by binding her and wrapping her in a carpet from their room.
Next they travel to a stable where they purchase several zorses. Nigel mulls naming his zorse Grubb, but is offended when Dude Earthman also names his zorse Grubb, and the idea is quickly taken up by the rest of the party who, also name their respective zorses Grubb. Fuming, Nigel decides to name his mount Grizzler instead.
With the rug-wrapped synthetic prostitute draped across the back of one of the zorses, they set back towards Agog City. However Fortress Cobalt guards the summit of the cliff-side trail back up to the Iridium Plateau and Agog City, and soon the party finds themselves being questioned regarding the disposition of the contents within the rolled-up carpet.
Nigel responds with a falsehood, claiming that it is the body of his deceased friend. The guards become agitated and lecture the party about the dire consequences of importing diseases, parasites or undead beings into Agog City before insisting on inspecting the body. When the synthetic prostitute in revealed the guard's tension is replaced with lusty chuckling and the party is informed of a thirty gold credit duty on their cargo.
A quick thinking member of the party offers an alternative method of payment which the six guard find anticipated and agreeable. After the guards indulge in a storage room Nigel decides to avail himself of the situation but the inquiries regarding the whereabouts of Gan-ron the Silver Man afterward sour the experience.
At this point Dickie Dee begins to have misgivings about the party's callous treatment of the prostitute, synthetic being or not, and allows her to continue the journey back to Agog City seated on zorseback instead of being bundled in carpeting and slung across the mount's back.
As the fleet zorses travel the road across the purple grasslands of the southwestern Iridium Plateau the party spies a small group of travelers on foot, shrouded in gray robes, coming their way on the roadway. The traveler's demeanor makes an unfavorable impression upon the party who take a wide semicircular detour off the road in order to provide a wide berth.
The companions soon arrive at Agog City, the trip being much faster on zorseback as opposed to trailing alongside a plodding triceratops drawing a train of iron carriages, and again attempt deceit with the guards regarding the identity of their cargo, who are neither deceived nor concerned.
Immediately they arrive at the Lamia's Breath Intoxicating Vapour Lounge and present their captive. The proprietress calls for the cubes of Gamma Orichalcum, which had been dipped in lead as a preservative measure. Realizing that his friend Grubb Grizzler had expired in the pursuit of a mission for which the reward was cubes of recreational stimulant hallucinogenic metal (toxic, radioactive recreational stimulant hallucinogenic metal at that), Nigel Nightbringer again unfurls his outrage, and insists that the party accept their payment in gold credits instead, a proposal that is found acceptable by the other concerned parties.
The Bone Man Dickie Dee does decide to dabble, and soon a Xorn (their silacious composition renders them capable of comfortably handling many hazardous substances) is placing a sliver of the fuming, soft, yellowing isotope within a glass-and-brass device. Taking a lungful of the vapour from a mouthpiece, the rest of the party see the ordinarily completely transparent lungs and respiratory tract of the bone man outlined in noxious yellow smoke. Dickie Dee finds the experience gratifying, but afterward expresses concern that his teeth are soft.
Soon the rest of the party are indulging, albeit with tamer substances such as gin, and they find themselves agreeing to a proposal by the Proprietress to slay Mozug, a wrestler and representative of the Lounge's concerns in the mining town Pit, located in the foothills of the Bornite Mountains northwest of Agog City, who had accepted a large quantity of merchandise and afterward failed to pay for it. The party comes up with a scheme, and has an ordinary brick dipped in lead before retiring into the dark, low-ceiling Chamber of Cushions…
The party awakens in the dim, low-ceiling Chamber of Cushions of the Lamia's Breath Intoxicating Vapour Lounge, their heads screaming with the chemical fumes of gin and inhalants. Clumsily they stumble into the main lounge where the slightly less dim lighting, courtesy of the thick, dark indigo windows, stabs glass knives through their eyes into their forebrains.
Fortunately the lounge has a gas available that redacts the effects of alcohol and vapour abuse and soon the companions are functional again although Dickie Dee's ocular apparatus persists in occasional bouts of fractal x-ray vision, a phenomenon the bone man finds jarring.
After breaking their fast at Slygar's the Sausage Skewer Seller's Stand with sausage skewers and fortifying tumblers of gin and tea they retrieve their zorses from the stables and set out north-west along the foothills of the Bornite Mountains. After a brief journey they arrive at Pit, a rambling shambles of rusted shack, foundries, workshops and warehouses all suffused with rust surrounding a vast bottomless shaft. The dust is rust, the clumpy red-brown creepers on the walls of buildings are a lichenous rust-plant, their mouths tang of rust from the air. The bottomless shaft that the town is named after serves as access to many veins of minerals, the town is a prosperous but excessively rough mining community
They seek out a salon, the Lead Cup, the supposed lair of their quarry, the intoxicant distributor and wrestler, Mozug. The party had come up with a scheme where they pose as sellers of a large quantity of Gamma Orichalcum and thus gain an audience with Mozug, facilitating a tidy and convenient assassination.
Some gap-toothed layouts lounging outside the Lead Cup whom display the obvious physical symptoms of long-term intoxicant abuse are hailed and an inquiry is made regarding who should the party contact in order to sell a large quantity of Gamma Orichalcum.
One of the layabouts proclaims that he has a interested patron and asks them to wait while he inform the potential customer of the offer. The party agrees, shortly he returns and tells them to come with him. They follow him into a neighborhood of decrepit abandoned warehouses and the entrance to one is indicated. Dickie Dee is unimpressed with the interior lighting so he ignites his lamp and shines it inside the large dark chamber.
He is rewarded for his efforts by two crossbow quarrels impaling his transparent flesh and he falls unconscious. Soon the party is involved in melee with a small gang of intoxicant addicts who aim to take the nonexistent Gamma Orichalcum by force. In the resulting fray, taking place both outside the entrance to the warehouse and inside the large split-level chamber strewn with abandoned machinery, Monster Monagin leaps off a ramp upon one of the scoundrels that punctured Dickie Dee and while grappling with the villain is struck in the head by an ancient, rusted chunk of engine knocked off the mezzanine above by the murderous scrambling of Dude Earthman who is rapidly slaying many of the intoxicant addicts with the needle-like blade of Gan-ron's magic silver bastard sword. Meanwhile Nigel Nightbreaker stoutly hacks away at the villains with his halberd.
The knock to the head fractured Monster Monagin's cranium, rendering him comatose. His foe, however, is less fortunate and the battle soon ends with the party victorious, although two members are severely injured and helpless…
Players of Consequence to this Drama:
BULL'S EYE BUCK McGOVERN - Earth Man Fighting-Bloke
BUZZ BRAZZELHACH - Australian Fighting-Man
DUDE EARTHMAN - Earth Man Fighting-Man
KALMOR THE WHITE JACKAL - Hyperborean Assassin
MAGGOT MORT THE MALFORMED - Unhealthy Mutant Thief
RYGARR - Green Man Sorcerer
Part II Here, Part III Here, Part IV Here, Part V Here, Part VI Here, Part VII Here.
In the aftermath of the abandoned warehouse battle with the ambushing addicts the party takes stock of their situation. With both Dickie Dee and Monster Monagin out of commission due to their injuries the decision is made to strap them to the backs of their zorses and have Nigel Nightbringer take them back to the Lamia's Breath Intoxicating Vapour Lounge in Agog City to recover.
While conversing about their next steps the party runs into four wandering adventurers. Of the four two of them are well known to the party: Bull's Eye Buck McGovern the Earth Man fighting bloke, and Maggot Mort the malformed mutant thief. The two strangers are Kalmor the White Jackal, a Hyperborean Assassin and hater of Earth Men, and Buzz Brazzelhach an Australian Earth Man who got black-out drunk and came to on Algol with out any memory of the means of this occurrence. The party realizes their need of additional muscle for their schemes and convinces the two strangers to join them.
They make their way to the Lead Cup salon. Outside they find a crowd of unwholesome looking miners bearing brass tridents and lit torches surrounding a cart full of wriggling canvas sacks. One of the miners invites the party to "Play Mnor Circle with us, only one gold credit!" Inquires are rebuffed, as it would be "more fun to learn the game as you play." Four of the party pay the fee, are handed a trident and torch, and are made to form a circle with four of the miners.
One of the of the miners takes a wriggling sack out of the cart and unties it, emptiing the contents into the circle of participants revealing a silvery-furred ovoid creature with twenty segmented legs and huge, faceted black eyes. The same miner than empties a flask of naphtha onto the squeaking being and it gets onto its multiple segmented legs
Buzz asks what about the nature of the creature and is informed that it is a Mnor, semi-intelligent autochtons that dwell in the hills outside of town before the creature rushes at him smearing him with naphtha before rebounding into the ring and rushing at one of the miners who swats it with his torch igniting the silvery-grey fur of the being.
The Mnor rushes about as the participants poke at it with tridents before again coming at Buzz, who steps aside releasing the flaming creature. The miners quickly herd it back into the circle where it soon expires from burns and punctures. Buzz is chastied by the miner that invited them to join the game, "Leave! You are terrible at Mnor Circle and our recreation will be much more pleasant without you or your friends ruining it!"
The party enters the Lead Cup Salon. The barkeep sells lead cups of gin and purified water. Rygarr inquires about how to speak with Mozug, as he has some Gamma Orichalcum to sell. The barkeep takes them to a trapdoor in the back and provides instructions on how to find his subterranean offices, a vital piece of information that a nervous Rygarr quickly forgets and the rest of the party never hears.
Rygarr gathers his companions and they descend into the narrow, chipped, rock tunnels and soon come to a five-way intersection. Stymied by lack of information from Rygarr other than, "I believe the gentleman said it was to the right." the party trusts Dude EarthMan's intuition that it is the tunnel on the far right, instead of the one that loomed near. Slowly the party progresses down the tunnel, and through the dark. As they enter a larger chamber, a large muddy arthropod lunges out of the darkness, grabs Dude Earthman in it's sucker tipped claws, and inserts a large, needle-like proboscis into his torso.
The party begins to desperately hack at it with halberds and swords. All the while Dude EarthMan feels, hears, and sees his blood being rapidly sucked out through the translucent proboscis of the crustaceous monstrosity that grasps his quickly weakening body. With swords, arrows, and knives pinging and ricocheting off its thick mantle, the horrid N'grutha continues to fend off his companions effortlessly with it's multiple needle-clawed limbs. Buzz strikes the thing in the head repeatedly, attempting to sever the needle-like organ, but by the time they slay the beast Dude EarthMan lies dead; a hollow shell emptied of its blood and soft organs. Soon his armor and magic silver sword are distributed among the party. Quickly thereafter they hack his body into pieces to preclude any undead reanimation or possible hatching of N'grutha eggs.
Taking a moment, the party searches the room and finds the bodies of three previous victims of the beast, as well as a tunnel choked with rubble. Although the bodies are devoid of treasure, it appears that it may be possible to remove some of the debris and further explore the rubble-choked tunnel.
Unsettled by the recent turn of events the party retraces their steps and attempts to exit via the trapdoor. The door does not open and no one responds to their cries. In the heated discussion that follows some of the party express the opinion that they took the wrong way previously and if they took the closer tunnel they should arrive at Mozug's offices safely.
Taking the near right tunnel, leading out the chamber of five passages, the party finds themselves at a reinforced metal door. Light shone through its cracks, and they could see movement as light flourished and diminished from its glass peeping-eye. They knock, and a guard answers.
After stating their intent to sell a large quantity of Gamma Orichalcum the guard requests that they disarm themselves in order to enter. The party removes their weaponry (aside from a few cleverly hidden daggers) and leaves the gear with Bull's Eye Buck McGovern, pensively waiting outside the door…
The party disarms, leaving their weaponry with Bull's Eye Buck, and enters the guard room. Inside are three rough looking armed men garbed in brass-studded canvas and leather. A tall humanoid creature with an iridescent green exoskeleton and a head much like that of a praying mantis glares at the party from the far side of the room. It is recognized as a Phraint by the Algol natives in the party and it bears a battle hardened two-handed sword. Buzz's jaw drops; he is stupefied by the insect-being as it is something completely alien to his experiences and he begins to babble exclamations of amazement.
The Phraint, it's bug-face devoid of expression, watches the party while the guards provide further instruction. The party must exit the room from a specific door, descend the stairs, travel down a narrow passage to an intersection and then turn left and not right as that way would lead to Mozug's Gyraphont (a soul-eating extradimensional lobster-ghoul with a multitude of limbs and sensory organs; most likely a relation to the Mi-Go).
The companions are not eager to make their acquaintance with such a being, and this time remember to follow their directions. They enter a large chamber dimly lit by lamps, the walls hanging with rich velvet drapes. Looming on a stone throne is a large figure, it's appearance occluded by an equally huge black silk robe.
"You have Gamma Orichalcum to sell to me?" it forcefully inquires.
Rygarr approaches the form and presents the lead dipped brick. Immediately, the enthroned figure grabs his wrist with a huge and hairy ape-like paw. It's other hand pulls out a curved ceramic dagger that strikes down at the brick, gouging the lead coating and revealing the lack of Gamma Orichalcum.
Roaring in outrage the figure begins buffeting Rygarr with it's huge fists. With quick response the party whips out their hidden daggers and attacks. Another roar echoes the chamber as their opponent's robe falls back, revealing the barrel chested form of an ape with the head of man silver-stitched onto it's body; Mozug the Wrestler.
Although the companions stab (and in the case of the dagger-less Buzz, punch) valiantly, Kalmor the Assasin and Rygarr are soon lying senseless on the floor, blood pouring from their ears and noses, laid out by the hammer-like fists and cruel body wrenching moves of Mozug.
Buzz and Mort quickly take stock of the situation, fall to their knees, and beg mercy. The powerful Mozug accedes. He quickly binds them and places hoods over their heads before summoning his servant, the Gyraphont. The bound adventurers are unable to see due to their hoods, but their heads are suddenly filled with the sounds of the tapping and clacking of a multitude of chitinous limbs coming across the floor.
Although the hooded party negotiate fiercely, Mozug demands that they either bring him a Glowing Ocher Slime Pod plucked from an Ocher Lotus in the Slime Lands or die. They find the prospect of adventure more to their liking than death, and so choose to find the Lotus pod. With that decision made, the Gyraphont approaches the party and cheerfully asks, "Who will be first?". With a mumbled nod of approval, Rygarr the Sorcerer shook his hooded head. "Off we go!" cried the Gyraphont and clacked quickly towards the Sorcerer. The next thing Rygarr feels is the sensation of being enveloped by numerous jointed limbs, pincers and feelers before a su……..dden a…………nd na\\\\\'\.useati\\\\\\\'\\\\\\\\\\\ng wre''''''''''''\\\\\\\\\\\\\\nch i………nto no……./nbei\\\\\\\\ng…
….Waiting outside the guard chamber, Bull's Eye Buck begins to get nervous. When the door finally opens he sees not his companions but the insect form of the Phraint, shimmering in the fire-light. Bull's Eye Buck immediately snatches up the magic silver sword (formerly the property of the good hero Gan-ron the Silver Man) from the pile of his companion's weapons and runs off into the darkness of the tunnels.
With frantic speed Bull's Eye reaches the trapdoor they entered through, yet it still resists being opened. Desperately Buck thrusts the sword through the slats and uses it as a pry-bar, bending and nearly breaking it as he wrenches the trapdoor open. With a look of wild abandon he runs through the Lead Cup saloon, disappearing into the streets of Pit….
…Nigel Nightbringer rides his zorse southward across the purple grasslands toward Agog City; the sorely wounded and comatose forms of his friends Dickie Dee and Monster Monagin draped across the zorses in tow behind him.
When Nigel again turns his head from the purple plains to that of his companions he is shocked to see a blasphemous form; a bulbous red chitinous being with a legion of feelers, eye-stalks, antennae, pincers, nippers, and jointed limbs is keeping pace right behind. Taking mere seconds, it renders both of the companion-burdened zorses into a red fountain of blood and tissues. Nigel immediately drives spurs into the flanks of his mount and rides heedlessly to Agog City without looking back, leaving both of his unconscious companions to the mercies of the multi-limbed monstrosity…
Returning Players:
DICKIE DEE - Bone Man Sorcerer
MONSTER MONAGIN - Earth Man Fightin' Sailor
Part I Here, Part II Here, Part IV Here, Part V Here, Part VI Here, Part VII Here.
Deep in the intoxicant vendor and wrestler Mozug's underground lair, Buzz and Maggot Mort lie on the rough stone floor of a lightless, damp chamber. Cruelly bound with black silk cords, and surrounded by the similarly bound bodies of their sorely wounded and unconscious companions (including a reunion with the comatose Dickie Dee and Monster Monagin), the two hear again the horrible tapping and clicking of the Gyraphont.
Suddenly both hear a cheerful voice echo in their minds,
"You remind one of larva with your limbless wriggling on the floor. Time now for you to be fed like larva!"
Maggort Mort feels a mass of feelers and nippers pawing at his mouth, forcing it open before alien organs inject a foul reeking pulpy ooze into his mouth.
Famished, Maggot Mort swallows the filth. He makes an inquiry in Ghoul-tongue and finds out that he has been fed,
"…Regurgitated corpse matter. I feed you like I would feed my larva!" pluckily explains the Gyraphont.
Next, Maggot feels the nozzle of a flask in his mouth and eagerly swallows the water.
Buzz Brazzelhach, on the other hand, refuses the corpse matter but greedily drinks the water. The unconscious companions have no say in the matter, and Buzz is disgusted to smell and hear the Gyraphont feed them.
Time has no meaning in the dark, and their limbs are as numb as petrified wood. The Gyraphont occasionally returns and Buzz repeatedly refuses the meal of regurgitated corpse matter. One-by-one the comatose members of the party recover from their injuries. Buzz is the only one who continues to refuse a suckle at the mouth-teats of the Gyraphont.
Eventually, Buzz thinks to ask the lobster-ghoul if it can bring him anything else to eat. The Gyraphont is puzzled at Buzz's refusal of the delicious and nutritious corpse matter and explains that Mozug instructed it to feed them thusly; although it offers to ask Mozug if there is anything else that it could feed to Buzz.
Visions of fecal matter, ground glass, poison and worse swim in Buzz's imagination. With those sobering thoughts inspiring him, Buzz convinces the Gyraphont to instead find fresh meat and cook it for him. Buzz then has to explain cooking and is unsure if the extra-dimensional being understands.
Soon however, it returns, and tries to jam a charred, armored limb from the slain N'grutha into Buzz's mouth. Buzz asks it to break it open and feed him the contents instead. Soon the whole party is feasting (if lying bound on a stone floor, being fed by a lobster-ghoul in the darkness could be considered a feast) on the delicious crab-like meat of the slayer of Dude Earthman.
The next time their lobster-ghoul jailer returns, it telepathically instructs the party that they have healed enough to go to the slime lands. Buzz feels the legion of segmented pincers pick him up and hold him close to a carapaced body, that reeks of seafood and carrion, before ev…erything ex.\\/plode\\\\\\\\/………..\\……..…/]]].'''';;;;;;;;;„,]]]]]]]]/s into \\\\\\\\\\\\\a pulsati\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ng mael/………/strom of fra]\\\\\\\/………….]]]]]]]]]]]]]\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/ctal lig\\\\\\\\\\\]]]\///;;;;;t, nause”.,;;;;;;;;;ating sen]]\\]';,…;;;;;;;;;;]sat]]]]]]]]]…ions, an, d boo]]]]]]]]]]]]min]]]]]]]]]g, cro]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]aking pip\]]]]]]……ing…]]]]]]]]
New Players in this Drama:
EUPHORBUS - Fighting-Cactoid from the Red Sands
RODAN THE SCROUNGER - Green Man Fighting-Man
Part I Here, Part II Here, Part III Here, Part V Here, Part VI Here, Part VII Here.
… Buzz is jerked back into conventional reality thousands of feet above the purple grasslands south of Pit the Gyraphont still clutching him from behind…
…ba/ck again in t…………….he mae\\\\\\\\\\\\\\lstrom of whirling ene\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\rgy, h…………..is he\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ad feeling li……..ke i……t wo\\\\\\\\\\\uld bu\\./\.\.\'.\\\\\\///rst…
…thousands of feet above the landscape the grasslands now a scrub with twisted black shrubs glinting with coppery thorns the ground ahead dropping off to a misty sea of mud below….
…his nerves are be\\\\\\\\\\\\\ing pull……..……………ed o\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ut of h/is bo\.\……….\………dy, he is diss\.\.\…………….\\\\…………….olv\\\\\\\/…………..''''ing i…..,………nto the fract,..,.,al lig,………………………………………..ht…
…Buzz drops into the mud as the Gyraphont releases him. Clenching his eyes shut, burying his face into the mud, he must not look at the thing that is snipping off his bonds with it's countless nippers. His limbs are useless dead meat from days of cruelly tight ligature and he lies helpless as needles of pain slowly swarm through his extremities.
The Gyraphont repeats the process with the rest of his companions, while Buzz screws his eyes tightly shut and keeps his back to the thing. Some of his companions follow suite, among those who dare look upon the Gyraphont, most scream and Kalmor soils himself.
As this is occurring the companions inspect their surrounding as the blood slowly agonizingly returns to their extremeties. All have deep bloody gouges in their flesh from their erstwhile bonds, a souvenir of Mozug's regard for their well-being when he callously trussed them.
A morass of thick greenish-gray slimy mud choked with giant ferns, tall drooping moss trees, thick twisted vines, blotchy pulpy reeds and towering branched bloated gray fungi. Monkeybats shriek as they fly from perch to perch, punctuated by the harsh fluttering of hunting mothawks. Biting vermin, miniature relatives of the N'Grutha, crawl through their hair and clothing and long, thread-like white worms squirm out of the mud into their boots. The dense air is suffocating with heat; clouds of dirty sulfurous fog drift through the jungle.
Two or three miles north they see towering, steely-gray cliffs over a mile high stretching from east to west, the southward escarpment of the Iridium Plateau. To the east they see the vegetation thinning out into a vast wasteland of mud flats punctuated by a few vicious snarls of vegetation and crumbling rotting rock formations, the Slime Lands, haunt of the Limb Pirates and worse. To the west and south the vegetation is denser, the latter after miles and miles becoming the Jungles of Venom where lies the city of Sangkalla.
When the Gyraphont drops off the last party member Buzz asks how they are supposed to return after harvesting a glowing ocher slime lotus pod while making sure to maintain his gaze at a point completely opposite the Gyraphont's position. The thing responds that when Mozug was instructing it to transport them to the Slime Lands that he said that he "…never expect to see those stupid assholes again…"
Buzz asks the Gyraphont to take them back to Mozug after they complete their task and it replies that Mozug expressly forbid it to do so. The desperate Australian makes an offer to supply the lobster-ghoul with exotic, tasty corpses in return for transporting them back and after sufficient cajoling it's carrion appetites overwhelm it and it agrees. They make arrangements to meet in the same location in a day's time and the Gyraphont disappears just as two forms approach though the fog resolving into the forms of warriors: a green-skinned man, and a manlike being, green as well but also hairless and having thorns growing out of it's skin.
The two strangers make clear their peaceable intentions and introduce themselves: Rodan the Scrounger, a scavenger, archer and fighting-man; and Euphorbus, of the Red Sands, a Cactoid who carries a sack of sandy soil from the Red Sands to snack on. Buzz is dumbfounded by the Cactoid, finding the plant-being even more unbelievable than the Phraint guard in Mozug's lair.
The party bickers; Rygarr is insistent that they should head southward through the morass to the Jungles of Venom. This is thoroughly ignored by the rest. They decide to head northwest, as maps indicate a canyon piercing the cliffs looming above them in that direction, also deciding that while hunting for Glowing Ocher Slime Lotus Pods and creatures to render into corpses, they should scout out an alternative route out of the swampy hell, in case the Gyraphont reneges on their arrangement.
Roughly four or five hours later Buzz hears sounds that recalls memories of being stalked by a killer croc back in his homeland; the sounds of a large creature dragging itself through the muck behind them. He alerts the party and they circle around as the hunter becomes the hunted.
Through the mist and vegetation they see the shape of a large fin wobbling, attached to a massively jawed dimetron that charges through the mud instigating a terse battle as the fighting men fend off it's snapping jaws with the staves of their halberds while the weaker companions maneuver and fire missiles at it's flanks. Many of their attacks are deflected by it's slimy, parasite infested scales, still they are drenched by gouts of cold black blood as they hack and thrust at it's heaving bulk. Euphorbus is seized in it's huge jaws and is torn almost in half before the primordial beast is slain.
Ropes are crafted from the thick lianas that choke the vegetation, and they drag the bloody, dead reptile back to the meeting spot just as the last of the three suns set. They make camp on a cluster of damp hummocks of matted vegetation, set watches, and try to sleep without rolling into the mud as they sweat and scratch at the crawling and flying blood-suckers assauiling them.
The night passes without molestation, although they are often awoken by the distant bellowing and croaking of unseen titans wallowing in the ooze. The suns rises and it gets even more hot and humid. As the hour of their rendezvous with the Gyraphont draws close, the forms of pale degenerate beings come hopping out of the mist…Pallid Croakers…
…the deformed creatures approach their aspect that of a random mishmash of amphibian and human features with glistening, milky translucent skin, hopping on spindly bent limbs, their bony arms clutching crude fishing spears and war clubs.
Once they get close enough one of the sorcerers unleashes a spell engulfing them in somnolent vapours and they collapse into the mud slumbering. Quickly the party slits their throats and crushes their heads, Dickie Dee again driving a javelin into the brain of an unconscious victim. More corpses are heaped in a pile on top of the body of the dimetrodon, more corpses for the Gyraphont.
Soon the lobster-ghoul reappears and the majority of the companions keep their eyes elsewhere. It is delighted with the pile of corpses and plows into the heap of bodies, it's numberless nippered and pincered appendages blurring as it tears into the flesh, sending fluids and shredded flesh, fat and skin flying while it's complex mandible relentlessly gobble up the feast. Most of the party are disgusted by the wet ripping and sucking sounds, but maintain a stiff upper lip.
The Gyraphont is satiated after quickly devouring a third of the mass of the corpse pile, going after the choicest, juiciest bits, and it is draped and spattered with the remains of its meal. Buzz informs it that they have recovered a glowing ocher lotus slime pod and would like to return, but could the Gyraphont please drop them off somewhere in Pit instead of Mozug's lair?
The loyal extradimensonal being insists that they be transported directly to Mozug's lair as they should immediately take the slime pod to it's master.
Buzz bluffs and frantically searches the party's baggage, "We lost the slime pod! Could you return one day hence so we can harvest another?"
The Gyraphont agrees, and expresses anticipation for how delicious the corpse pile, swarming with insects and worms, will be after rotting for another day's span in the sweltering swamp before disappearing.
The party decides to head east this time, into the Slime Lands proper, and several hours later Rygarr's keen eye spots a dim ocher glow emerging from a hummock of vegetation just as three lumbering crabmen emerge from the fog.
After a brief melee the crabmen are dispatched and an inspection of the hummock reveals a glowing slimy ocher lotus bearing an oblong pod oozing with pungents slowing slime. It is harvested, the narcotic slime numbing the skin that contacts it, and stored in a sack. The party returns to their rendezvous point, dragging the crabmen corpses through the mud.
The bodies are thrown onto the rotting corpse pile, and again they attempt to make themselves comfortable in hummocks of rotting vegetation as they bunk down for the night.
The roars and splashing of unseens behemoths sporting in the slime is the only thing that disturbs their rest, but as the suns rise three zorse-sized crabs come lumbering out of the morning mists.
Another brutal battle occurs, the injured cactoid Euphorbus attempts to stay out of the fray and peppers the crustaceans with crossbow bolts from his perch in a bush. Two of the lumbering, armored beings are quickly dispatched as the third heads directly for the cactus man and after it's pincers tear him into unconsciousness begins dragging his body away.
The companions desperately slosh through the knee-high slime, manage to prevent it's retreat and recover their chewed up and nippered ally. The three crabs are thrown onto the corpse pile.
Several hours later the Gyraphont returns and begins ferrying the party members to Mozug's lair via rends in spacetime, dropping them off before the door to the guard chamber. It cheerfully thanks them for the impressive pile of tasty corpses.
Once they have been transported to Mozug's Lair, in the tunnel right before the door to the guardroom, they knock on the door and a small aperture is opened from within revealing the face of a guard.
The nervous companions respond to the guard's inquiry with a mixed bag of responses, "Take us to Mozug!", "We have a glowing ocher slime pod to give you", "No, we don't want to see Mozug", "Just take this slime pod", "I want to speak with this Mozug!"
This babble makes the Phraint guard within the room suspicious and they hear it's buzzing insect voice expressing it's misgivings. Intimidated by the strange being the party thrusts the slimepod through the aperture in the door and tear off through the tunnels of Mozug's Lair bearing the unconscious Euphorbus.
When they arrive at the trapdoor at the top of the stairs they are unable to open it as it seems like a great weight has been placed on it. They bang and yell and soon hear a loud scraping sound before the trapdoor is opened revealing the scowling face of the Lead Cup's barkeep who is sweating from the effort of shoving a crate of lead bars off of the trapdoor. He bids them to ascend but responds to the party's overtures and requests for refreshment with hostility.
"I don't know what you fools are up to, but I don't ever want to see you again! Take some lead canteens of Gin and get the hell out of here!" Dickie Dee attempts to grab several canteens of gin from the shelves of the storeroom and it sternly rebuffed and threatened.
The party hoists their unconscious Cactoid companion and canteens of gin and exits the dive to wander the streets of Pit seeking a physician and a hostel…
The companions are free of their obligation to the intoxicant vendor Mozug and wander the rusty, dusty streets of Pit seeking a physician. Euphorbus is a sap-leaking unconscious burden that they must tend to with some immediate attention. The party is directed to a shabby building. Entering, they see a place lined with jars and racks of gleaming bladed instruments, replete with a bloody, hacked at, slab wooden table bearing a human leg being dissected by a short rotund man wearing goggles. The doctor blinks, rises, and greets the party. A fee is quickly negotiated and the limb is tossed into a bucket to make room for the Cactoid. Although the physician seems hampered by the vegetative anatomy of Euphorbus, the cactus man is soon back on his feet.
Next the party pesters the physician about the probability of accommodations being available in town. They find that at their generous disposal are such places as the Lead Cup, a cheap dive called the Brass Tines, and an expensive, luxurious hotel called the Titanium Vault. Several express enthusiasm for the cheap dive but the physician poo-poos the notion, "It's a haven of murderers, degenerates, intoxicant addicts and nonhumans! …err, no offense to you good Cactoid. It is not a safe place by any means!"
Upon hearing this information, they decide to see what lay in store at the Titanium Vault.
Soon they are standing before a large cuboidal building, seemingly constructed from a solid piece of blackish metal. Lacking windows, the building possesses a forbidding appearance. As they approach they find the uniformed doorman is pleasant and they decide to try the hotel out. The doorman instructs them to remove their footwear in the foyer and to wear the provided curly-toed slippers (made of a rich velvet and decorated with golden lace. A very comfortable pair of slippers, indeed). This, to the rugged adventurers, seems a strange notion, but they enter and follow his instructions anyhow.
Next they enter the lobby, and cannot help but to marvel at the rich carpets and decor. A uniformed concierge sits at a massive brass desk, with him they briskly discuss terms, get fingerprinted, and sign the necessary documentation. When all is satisfactorily completed, a uniformed butler is summoned to take them to their room. A click of the door and they enter into a luxurious, windowless, octo-suite complete with 8 beds in curtained alcoves and two resplendant bathrooms.
Kalmor, the bigoted Hyperborean, immediately insists that the bathrooms be segregated: one for the Algol natives, one for the Earth Men. Although the others judge it a frivolous and baseless request, the fanatical gleam in Kalmor's eyes and his sudden angry demeanor are compelling enough, and they agree. Kalmor relaxes, and the party removes their filthy garments and places them in brass baskets for the help to launder. Steam from the large bathtubs slowly fills the room. With the splashing sound of running, scented, foamy water, roaring behind him, Buzz Brazzelhach boasts loudly, calling for a rousing bout of wrestling in the bath. Dickie Dee then runs around the tub, clacking his teeth and snapping at the loud Australian with a short towel.
The butler returns to take their supper orders, and offers them a three course meal with three choices of entrees and two choices of desert. Brandy, ghava and cigars were to be served afterwards. Although the butler is proper and reserved, he is also sincere, solicitous and helpful. Buzz inquires about any local bawdy houses but the Butler admits unfamiliarity with such due to his proper nature, but suggests that the maids employed by the hotel may respond favorably if a sufficient gratuity is provided. The personable Euphorbus befriends the butler and asks if he knows of any work for adventuring types, the butler promises to make inquires.
The delicious meals arrive quickly and soon the party are enjoying their snifters of spiced brandy and pungent green cigars in the comfort of their richly-appointed suite; the only lamenting moment being the realization of the fact that they only have enough gold for two days of this luxurious accommodation.
When delivering breakfast the next day, the butler informs Euphorbus that Lhogar, the boss of a gang of miners, is seeking hardened warriors. The butler also informs Euphorbus that he took the liberty of arranging an interview between him and the party at the Titanium Vault.
After their laundered garments and breakfast are delivered to the suite Buzz Brazzelhach prowls the carpeted halls of the hotel and finds an attractive orange skinned maid with curly black hair and an ample posterior. Buzz is in dire financial straits and lacks the usual 5 gold pieces customary for the requested service but the sole gold piece left in his pouch is enough to ensure that his mission has a happy ending.
During lunch, the party, aside from Euphorbus, are surprised to find at their table Lhogar (who is purple, scaled, hairy, and muscular). Lhogar possesses strong facial features and a bristling black thatch of hair that reminds Buzz of the aborigines of his homeland and he takes an immediate liking to the strapping purple mine boss.
Lhogar explains that the mining gang he runs, the Black Pickaxes, have been working a claim deep in the massive, bottomless pit that lies in the center of the town. A gang of miners had been horribly slain recently, and he suspects that sinister inhuman underworld denizens such as the Hluss, Shunned Ones, or Ssu are responsible. He is willing to offer 50 gold pieces for the head of every monster lurking the tunnels that the party slays, and will also pay for their accommodation at the Titanium Vault for the duration of their commission.
Although the monsters that Lhogar describes sound fierce and vile, the luxurious conditions at the Titanium Vault and generous bounty are sufficient incentive for the party to take the commission and Lhogar makes arrangements to meet the party tomorrow at his offices in the bottomless pit. Buzz immediately requests a 5 gold credit advance, which Lhogar provides before offering advances for weapons, armor and petty expenses. The party takes advantage of this and immediately decides to upgrade their offensive and defensive capabilities at the local merchants.
The next morning the well fed and rested party, some wearing gleaming new mail, set out for the bottomless pit. The pit is a massive shaft in the center of town surrounded by winches and cranes that raise and lower cage-like elevators that provide access to the mineral wealth deep in the planet's crust. A ramp spirals down the side of the shaft.
Lhogar takes them to the Black Pickaxe's lift and they sit on the benches within. It seems as they are lowered into the pit for hours before coming to their destination; a dock-like construction attached to the entrance of a tunnel bored into the side of the pit.
Lhogar introduces them to the foreman responsible for this tunnel He briefs them on the situation and leads them to a recently installed barred titanium door deep in the tunnel. He explains that the door leads to two tunnels, one unexplored and one that would lead to chamber full of mineral deposits where a mining gang was slaughtered.
The door is opened, the party enters and the door is quickly barred behind them. The foreman, through the door, promises to wait and unbar the door when the party returns. The adventurers follow the foreman's directions to the chamber full of mineral deposits, the floor is strewn with scattered tools and pools of blood. A sweet acidic odor fills their nostrils. They wait there for a while to see if they are attacked, but nothing materializes.
They then proceed to the tunnel exiting the far wall of the cavern where their sputtering chemical torches reveal reflections of blue-black, iridescent, carapaces lurking in the dark tunnel. The party quickly forms a fighting line as six, horrid, scorpion-like Hluss, charge the party, each of their six limbs waving a deadly jagged sword. Rygarr renders five of them comatose with a somnolent incantation and the remaining Hluss flee into the tunnel. The fleeter members of the party consider giving chase, but cooler heads prevail and they instead collect the heads of the Hluss and retrace their steps back to the door.
As they return the party begins choking on a sudden, foul stench. At the intersection they see two gangling, skinny humanoids dressed in black and brown wrappings. They have robes and heads that resemble mottled rotting fruit, complete with two featureless button like black eyes. The creatures stood motionless, blocking their passage with slender greatswords; they could be none other than the infamous Shunned Ones.
The party attempts parley but the gangly, brown Shunned Ones respond by assuming fighting stances, and a battle ensues. They beings are lightning quick, dodging attacks with unnatural grace. Th is only inspires the party, and they attack with all the more vigor, only to be thwarted by alien swordplay deflecting most of their blows. However the Shunned Ones are quickly slain and their heads are just as quickly collected.
Returning to the titanium door they find the foreman quaking in fear. He smelled the foul odorous spoor of the shunned ones, and only a a display of the severed heads reassures him. He then releases them, barring the door behind he takes them to his office where he pays the party. In celebration and good spirit, they enjoy a drink of gin and pungent green cigars before returning to the lift for the hours long ride back up to the surface, their pockets all the while bulging with the girth of gold credits.
Once back, they rest for a couple of days at the Titanium Vault. The fighting men recover from the wounds inflicted by the wand-like swords of the Shunned Ones. The un-injured duo, Dickie Dee and Maggot Mort, are restless, and go to the Brass Tines to see if there is something about.
The tavern lives up to it's reputation, swarming with degenerate intoxicant addicts, gnolls, mutants, and run-down machine hybrids. Although the crowd seems hostile, the barkeep is friendly and they make a deal for a half cube of Gamma Orichalcum and a room for the night. The room has two filthy pallets and some tools to smoke Gamma Orichalcum. The Bone Man and the unhealthy mutant binge on the isotope and return to the Titanium Vault the next day, their skins waxy and gray from inhalant abuse.
In the morning the party enjoys a gourmet lunch from the hotel kitchens as they count their piles of gold credits and make plans to return to the underworld beneath Pit…
After recovering from their initial foray into the underworld beneath Pitt, the party again sets off into the tunnels connecting to the bottomless shaft, this time taking the unexplored branch.
They walk through several long, dusty passages, finding empty chamber after empty chamber. One room does contain an massive lead statue of a Hluss with the caption, in the script of the Elder Races "Hail the Hluss, Masters of the Underworld!"
While negotiating the maze of featureless passages, the party again smells a terrible stench before they see 5 shunned ones peering around an upcoming corner.
Soon they are battling 2 of the slender beings of rotting aspect, the fighting-men having a hard go of it due to the incredible speed and grace of the Shunned Ones who easily bat aside their blows with their wand-like greatswords. However they are soon bloody from the companion's halberds and swords, and the other 3 Shunned Ones rish into the fray.
At which point one of the Sorcerers renders them all unconscious with a sovereign somnolent incantation. The stinking forms are searched, and the sorcerers use the gland of the third eye to seek magic emanations. One of the swords is magic, and one of the shunned ones is wearing a suit of close-fitting, light flexible mesh of some strange alloy and three ancient technological devices, "eyes" are found as well. The unhuman beings are decapitated and the companions return to the Black Pickaxe Mining Gang's office to collect their gold credits. They enjoy a round of gin and pungent green cigars before leaving.
The party returns to their inn. A physician is called in to treat their wounds and a sage is summoned as well. The youthful sage reveals the degrees of potency of the sword and mail, three auric shells, and the eyes are identified and their remaining charges disclosed. One protects against all weapons for a goodly amount of time, with only two charges; another slows foes to a third of their speed as has over fifty charges; the third can raise those who have been dead for three weeks or less, requiring only a scrap of their mortal remain, and has over a score of charges!
Over the next couple of days, while relaxing and planning their next foray, Maggot Mort and Dickie Dee again visit the Brass Tines and engage in a bout of recreation Gamma Iridium abuse. They return jittery, with grayish complexions and sores.
Monster Monagin claims the suit of magic mail, and takes a brief sabbatical as a constitutional as well as to practice his weapon skills. Rygarr also decides to study his mouldering scrolls and tomes and declines to partake in the next expedition. Visions of great magical wealth in their brains, the rest of the party descends again into the bowels of Algol.
Among their wanderings through the endless passages, they find a secret door, with a staircase descending deeper behind. The decide it prudent to refrain from exploring in that direction, and continue wandering the tunnels to encounter the reek on cinnamon, the harbinger of a pair of hexapodal beings with graying shaggy skin like layers mouldering paper, Ssu!
A ferocious battle ensues, one of the Ssu engaging the party while the hold holds back, casting an occasional spell. At one point one of the fighting-men decapitates the meleeing Ssu only to see the other cast a spell on their foe that results in it growing another head and returning to the battle, it's sword cutting a deep gash into the cactus man Euphorbus than renders him unconscious on the floor, bleeding thick green sap.
The part flees, abandoning the gregarious Cactoid the mercies of the Ssu. The Ssu gives chase and "The Eye of Retarding Destiny" is utilized and their foes slowly proceed as if walking through syrup. The party gets away, returns to the surface and resigns their commission.
Their employer is understanding, knowing too well the horrors that lurk in the underworld, and is grateful for the services rendered. He tells the party that they can stay at the luxurious Titanium Vault for a couple of days while they mend their wounds and bundle up their belongings. The companions begine to make plans for their next expedition, and many express curiosity regarding the contents of The Bronze Dome of the Desert, located in the Rust Desert eastwards.
Players in this Act:
Buzz Brazelhach - Australian Fighting-Man
Dickie Dee - Addicted Bone Man Sorcerer
Kal-Mor - Bigoted Hyperborean Assassin
Maggot Mort - Addicted, Malformed Mutant Thief
Monster Monagin - Earth Man Sailor, Bully and Fighting-Man
Rodan the Scrounger - Green Man Scavenger and Fighting Man
Part II Here, Part III Here, Part IV Here.
In the mining town of Pit the party plots their upcoming exploits. Several voice interest in an expedition to The Bronze Dome of the Desert in the Rust Desert westwards.
Monster Monagin makes inquires regarding the availability of guns, and finds out that a laser pistol is being sold for 1000 gold credits. Explaining his preference for lead-shooters, while considering the weight of his purse, he is told that some Earth Man equipment is being sold in Jakay, located in the Rust Desert westwards, as a crashed Earth Man rocket has been found and looted.
Kal-Mor researches the local assassination scene and finds out it is run by The Cult of the Scarlet Serpent Leopard. Their representatives are Mozug the Wrestler in Pit and Viridian Slasher of the Mantis Guard in the Xenon District of Agog City.
Finding the prospect of a reunieon with Mozug awkward, Kal-Mor presses the part to travel to the Rust Desert while stopping on the way in Agog City. The party agrees and after buying new mounts, this time choosing Orniths, a quadrupedal bird-horse, they make the brief journey back to Agog City.
Kal-Mor brings Buzz with him to the Mantis Guard Barracks. Meanwhile Dickie Dee and Maggot Mort immediately dive into the Lamia's Breath Intoxicating Vapour Lounge. Inquiring about new, exotic fares they are informed of a fresh shipment of the rare and expensive Eibon Matter, fermented flesh of a species of demon-centipede from the jungles of the far side of Algol.
The two intoxicant addicts pay an outrageous fee for two small lumps of Eibon Matter which they consume in a private room. They plunge into a slow, sluggish, numb, psychedelic narcotic haze where all their cares vanish as they watch universes unfold in the filth of the drug den.
At the Mantis Guard Barracks there is brief awkwardness when Kal-Mor states he is on "Scarlet Serpent Lizard" business, but soon he is blindfolded, hooded and led into the twisting depths of the Mantis Guard Barracks by two friendly, considerate Mantis Guards who, when they reach their destination, politely strap Kal-Mor into a chair and inject him with something.
Immediately Kal-Mor drops into a black, thoughtless state and feels a presence slowly and methodically going though every part of his mind, helpless to resist or even understand.
After waiting a turn, Buzz gets bored and asks around for a high class saloon. He is directed to the Flagrant Whore in Cobalt Hill and soon he in enjoying brandy and pungent, green cigars with a table of gentlemen adventurers in the dim, smoky lounge. One of the funny-coloured aristocratic sportsmen informs Buzz of a hunting expedition he is forming, to hunt the game of the northern flank of the eastern spur of the Bornite Mountains. The expedition will be staging in Jakay in the Rust Desert in 3 weeks time. Buzz is invited and accepts, and the revelry continues late into the night.
Meanwhile the rest of the party enjoys complimentary cups of Gin at the Lamia's Breath Saloon before retiring to the Chamber of Cushions, the hospitality due to their previous work for the proprietress of the Lamia's Breath, who politely does not bring up the issue of their failed assassination attempt on the rogue intoxicant distributor Mozug.
Kal-Mor, still wearing a vision-obscuring hood and groggy and rubber-kneed from the truth serums and psychic probing, is led out of the Mantis Guard Barracks, supported by two gregarious and helpful Mantis Guards whom inform him that he must slay Mohvar the Gray Man, a prospector who harvests valuable iridescent salts from the salt-crust shores of the boiling Iridescent Salt Lake north of Small Dust, a carvan town a day's journey westwards. This will serve as an initiation to the Iridium Plateau Region's assasins' guild, The Cult Of The Scarlet Serpent Leopard.
Meanwhil Buzz Brazelhatch wakes up the luxurious guest suite of his new friend Lohtar Dakalla the Red Man, the scion of a clan of rich spice traders, who has comissioned Buzz to join a hunting party setting out from Jakay in the Rust Desert in three weeks. Buzz and Lohtar have a delicious breakfast of moa eggs, sauropod bacon and spiced sausages with gahveh and pungent green cigars before Buzz sets out to rejoin his companions, his brandy and gin addled brain reeling in the morning sun.
Dickei Dee the Bone Man and Maggot Mort the Mutant arise from a drugged daze in a private room at the Lamia's Breath Intoxicating Vapour Lounge, their senses still infused with the afterimages of complex geometric and architectural hallucinatory visions, their bodies deliciously numb. They immediately begin licking their fingers and the glass plates that the Eibon Matter was delivered on, desiring more of the delicious narcotic state provided by the fermented demon centipede flesh. Eventually, after the brief blissful moment ends, they enter the saloon area and meet up with the rest of the party who are partaking of a breakfast of fried grubs and mixed invertebrate eggs with tumblers of gin to wash it down. Soon Buzz and Kal-Mor enter and the entire party is reunited.
Immediately discussion commences regarding an expedition to Jakay and the Bronze Dome of the Desert. Buzz explains the job available on Lohtar Dakalla's safari, which coincides nicely with the proposed expedition. Kal-Mor brusquely interjects and makes a brief exposition regarding his commission from the Cult of the Scarlet Serpent Leopard at the Iridescent Salt Lake. As this would only take a couple of days, and they have three weeks until the hunting trip, the party agrees and they set out on their orniths westwards out of Agog City.
Scant hours later they are descending down the steep cliff trail that serves as a westward route down off the plateau to the lowlands. Out of the crevices and from behind the rock formations of the steely gray cliff wall looming above them bursts two groups of gray-clad, ragged Cliff Bandits waving rusty bent falchions and axes…
On the steep, narrow cliffside trail the band of adventurer's scramble off the backs of their mounts (their ornith's being untrained as war steeds, thus being unreliable and easily panicked in battle).
The two knots of filthy rag-clad Cliff Bandits, who were hiding at points both ahead of and behind the party's position, race forward waving their tarnished and battered weaponry.
While the weaker members of the party scurry and cower, the fighting-men form two defensive lines and soon a ferocious melee is occurring on two fronts. While some of the party have moderate success against the rabid transients, Monster Monagin, the self-declared "Fightingest Man in the Party" waves his polearm to no avail and Cliff Bandits swarm about him, nicking and jabbing at him with their rusty cutlery.
As the first wave of Cliff Bandit casualties spill their lifeblood and entrails upon the trail and over the cliff's edge into the howling Iridium Escarpment winds, Maggot Mort the mutant and sickly cripple with a withereed arm is emboldened by the carnage and joins the fray with his sword-knife, severing arteries and gutting foes with unnatural strength.
Several of the flea-infested brigands are slain by Maggot Mort while the battle rages about him, Monster Monagin hacking and spearing futiley as Cliff Bandits dodge his strikes, managing to only nick one of them. Meanwhile the resourceful Rodan cuts down four of the robbers and the showboating Buzz keeps the party's weak flank secure, lashing about with his magic two-handed sword.
One of the vermin dashes in close and lays Maggot Mort scalp open with a blow, rendering the unhealthy thief unconsious and bleeding vigourously from his malformed brow.
Soon all of the Cliff Bandits are rendered deceased, and an inventory of their pathetic possessions is made. Crude vermin-infested armor made from scraps and uncured hides; a pile of axes, falchions and crude morningstars bent and dulled by rough use and neglect; a pitiful heap of tarnished copper, brass and bronze tokens; and a rich velvet bundle, stained with dried blood.
The bloody package is opened, revealing two velvet pouches and a metal document tube. One pouch holds several large valuable smokey quartz crystals and the other holds wrought-gold amulets of abstract arabesque design on iridium chains, loot worth many gold credits.
The document tube is unscrewed and a scroll of purple metal is withdrawn. Dickie Dee casts his invisble eyes across the scroll and diserns that it contains several incantations that he could cast using the scroll or attempt to scribe into his grimoire, a rich prize for a Sorcerer such as he!
The companions tend Maggot Mort's wounds and sling him across the saddle of his bird-horse. Soon they arrive at Small Dust and take lodgin at the Red Beak Inn where they eat, drink, and squabble over the division of their unexpected windfall while Maggot Mort thrashes in an feverish delirium on a cot.
The party rests for a week in Small Dust as they recover from the injuries incurred during their fight with a pack of Cliff Bandits before leaving town on their ornith bird-steeds, heading northwards in the triple-shadows of the steely Iridium Escarpment. Dickie Dee now bears a familiar beneath his red vest, a white nocturnal monkeybat named "Chips."
The Prismatic Salt Wastes is a vast flatland of vividly-coloured salts, occasionally interrupted by craggy garish rock salt formations. The high winds that travel along the vast cliff-face of the Iridium Escarpment drive fine sharp particles of brightly colored salt painfully into the adventurer's eyes and noses and into every crack and fold of their person.
Clouds of brightly coloured steam arise from an oily iridescent boiling lake ahead, it's shores indistinct due to the steam and heat waves, delicate spires of salt formations and the miniature volcanoes of geysers protruding from the heavy garish waters. As they approach the Iridescent Salt Lake they begin to sweat profusely as the heat strikes them and the shoreline emerges from the clouds of steam. It is a thick crust of condensed salt, stretching into the lake like ice on a pond.
Valuable deposits of iridescent salts, useful for diverse industries such as sorcery, medicine, manufacturing, etc., can be found on the salt crust that extends around the Iridescent Salt Lake. It is dangerous to harvest these salts as the Prismatic Salt Wastes are home to all sorts of monsters and raiders and the salt crust itself is treacherous and prone to breaking beneath the weight of a man, plunging him into the boiling oily waters of the lake beneath.
The Iridescent Salt Harvesters, a fraternity of which Kal-Mor's quarry Mohvar is a member, know all sorts of tricks for safely navigating the salt crust and recognizing hazardous crusts, as well as an eye for which sorts of salts are valuable. They are fiercely protective of their salt crust harvesting secrets.
After securing their mounts to a salt formation the party looks along the shoreline for any salt harvesters but the murky clouds of coloured steam limits their vision. Dickie Dee rouses his monkeybat familiar and instructs it to travel counterclockwise around the lake looking for any men.
A couple hours later a white flapping shape emerges from the steam and chitters to Dickie Dee who translates "Chips saw a group of men on the shore!" One of the companions inquires about the quantity of said men.
Dickie Dee chitters to Chips who replies. The Bone Man Sorcerer than disappointingly explains that the simple monkeybat doesn't know how to count, neither can it say what they were doing. But there were men further along the shore.
Around an hour later of traveling northeast along the boiling lake's shore, staying clear of the treacherous salt crust, the party spots a group of nine men shrouded in black and gray robes ahead.
One of the shrouded figures hails the party and approaches with a friendly jaunt. He removes his hood, revealing the violet skin of a Vhaashti Man and introduces himself, Bhorug, head mercenary guard for a salt harvester.
The companions inquire after Mohvar. "Is he here?" "Have you seen him?" "Do you know him?" Bhorug explains that he hasn't seen Bhorug recently as he is a wealthy salt harvester in semi-retirement but that he could be found at his manor several miles clockwise around the shore of the Iridescent Salt Lake. Where the northwestern shores of the lake get close to the Iridium Escarpment there is a green copper gate that provides access to Mohvar's abode. Bhorug also explains that Mohvar is a generous hospitable fellow and if he is not present that the party should make themselves at home and wait for his arrival.
The party thanks the Violet Man and sets off on a hurried pace westwards along the salt crust shore of the steaming lake and soon the Iridium Escarpment is looming above them. In the evening light a set of double doors in the cliff-face, green with verdigris, are visible.
The companions tie their orniths to a salt formation and cautiously approach the gate. The corroded copper doors open with a harsh screech revealing a large tiled passage extending into the cliff, formerly luxurious but now looking somewhat decrepit.
The adventurers proceed down the hallway and come to an large intersection chamber with passages branching left and right. The left hand corridor is chosen and after a couple of minutes the party hears the tinkling of water and sees hazy light ahead through what appears to be a curtain across the corridor.
Buzz sneaks off ahead and peers through a crack in the curtain. He sees another large tiled chamber lavishly furnished with ivory benches, elaborate urns, a silken sleeping platform, perfumed oil lamps and a lavish indoor garden with a running fountain in a small pond. On a raised platform in a throne of worked granite sits a shapely pale woman wearing a filmy gown and veil, she beckons at Buzz and bids him to enter. Buzz clears his throat, dusts off his clothes and enters the chamber. The rest of the party sneak up to the curtain behind him.
Buzz approaches the throne and the woman bids greetings. Buzz replies with flattery and asks about Mohvar. The woman replies that she will inform him of Mohvar's location in exchange for a kiss. Buzz asks that the veil be removed first. She replies that he should close his eyes. He refuses and she grabs a longsword that was lying against the throne and strikes at him.
The veil disintegrates revealing a gleaming ivory skull visage! Not the bones within transparent flesh of the Bone Men, but a skull for a head. A skull which is now screeching and gibbering as she slashes at Buzz, the silken wisps of her gown now a coat of mail.
As Buzz parries and thrusts with the slender, magic two-handed sword of the Shunned Ones the rest of the party tumbles through the curtain and attacks with the exception of Dickie Dee who attempts a spell, which fails to affect the skull headed warrior woman. Dumbfounded he looks about and dashes for a large chest. The greedy sorcerer forces the coffer open releasing flood of tiny black centipedes that engulf his arms which are soon aflame with the stinging venom of thousands of myriapod bites.
The fighting-men strike at her with weapons, but even when her mail coat is rent by their blades the flesh beneath is as hard as marble and unaffected by their blows. Only the magic sword of Buzz Brazelhach wounds her. He takes several wounds but manages to cut down the skull headed demoness who immediately begins dissolving into foul black corruption, the luxurious furnishing, gardens and pond of the chamber following suite as well. The centipede assailing Dickie Dee disappear and the venomous stings fade.
The party searches the room, but only finds stinking heaps of wormy black filthy. After making camp in more hygienic surroundings they rest for the night before retrieving their thirsty and hungry orniths and start riding back to Small Dust.
On the way they are ambushed by a huge metallic-gray scorpion like creature, a Gray Horror. They manage to make short work of the monstrous arthropod and harvest it's stinger and venom gland before continuing their return to Small Dust.
Participants in the following Entertainment:
DICKIE DEE - Bone Man Sorcerer and indulgent intoxicant enthusiast
MAGGOT MORT - Sickly Mutant Thief, shares the same habits as Dickie Dee
MONSTER MONAGIN - Earth Man Fightin' Sailor
RODAN THE SCROUNGER - Green-skinned Scavenger and Fighting-Man
RYGARR - Green Man Sorcerer
"SAVAGE" PINK PANKENS - Crested Vlesh Fighting-Man
Part II Here.
…A vast sprawl of the melted stumps of massive ancient buildings surrounded by a lumpy yet level plane of cracked glass. The city that once stood here appears to have been built once of vividly colored glass; as the melted remnants are brightly colored violet, red, indigo, dark green and other shades. However, some sages say the terrible weapons that created the Prismatic Wastes also colored the ruins of the people they destroyed. Over the eons many of the ruins have shattered, leaving jagged blades and piles of colorful fragmented glass sand lying in corners and dunes about the city. Some say that the subterranean regions of The Melted City survived the devastation that destroyed it, that there are many tunnels and chambers beneath it where Ancient relics could be salvaged…
The party returns from the failed assassination attempt upon a Prismatic Salt Harvester of the Iridescent Salt Lake to the caravan town of Small Dust. Rodan the Scrounger notices suspicious glances from some of the locals. Dickie Dee and Maggot Mort immediately head to the marketplace and buy out an intoxicant distributor's supply of Eibon Matter and Ocher Lotus Nectar before getting a room in an inn.
Rodan the Scrounger and Monster Monagin both talk to weapons merchants seeking guns; Rodan places an order with a broker for a laser pistol of the Ancients, which will arrive the next day. Both of the fighting-men return to the Inn where the two degenerate intoxicant addicts of the party pay them a small fee to keep guard during their prolonged indulgences.
The next day Rodan the Scrounger collects his new weapon, a sleek silvery laser pistol from the Age of the Ancients. The broker explains that although its radiation crystal holds a charge he is unable to discern how many shots are left before offering a custom-crafted holster and belt for 25 gold credits. The Scrounger buys the holster and after trying out a few weapon stowing configurations with his sword, bow, new laser pistol, and knives decides to wear the raygun on the belt butt-first next to his left kidney where his cloak will conceal it.
Monster Monagin talks with the weapons broker who informs him that the local sheriff has an heirloom Earth Man revolver for sale, however the sum is beyond the Earth Man sailor's current resources; although an offer is made to meet with an agent of the Sheriff in order to see if an alternative arrangement can be made. Monster Monagin leaves the party to make the negotiation.
The party meets over a meal and discusses their next course of action. Maggot Mort and Dickie Dee are jittery and groggy from their chemical exertions of the previous night and appear to have not slept. Dickie Dee announces his intentions to purchase new sorcerous incantations and leaves in order to visit the local Sorcerer.
Over a map of the Iridium Plateau Region inquires are made to the learned members of the party regarding The Melted City (in the Prismatic Wastes upon the Iridium Plateau eastward and above Small Dust). As tales tell of finds of treasures and artefacts of The Ancients in the The Melted City, the four decide to make an excursion to the ruins; and the party, being bereft of Dickie Dee, Monster Monagin or any other of their companions recruit a green-skinned Vlesh-Man mercenary, with a crested-head, from the bazaar before setting out on orinth-back east upon the road leading up the Iridium Escarpment to the plateau above.
Soon they are leading their bird-steeds out of the sharp Purple Grasslands of the southwestern Iridium Plateau into the brilliantly lurid and twisted topaz and violet, crimson and green rock formations of the Prismatic Wastelands where they are set upon by a flock of seven leprous mutant pterosaurs, twisted in form and bearing bloated fungoid tumors. The winged reptiles make short work of the party and drag the bodies back to their nest. There, upon a malformed spire of multicolored stone, the beasts began to peck and gnaw upon the bloody corpses, the shiny new laser pistol still in its holster, unfired.
Additional players in this drama:
BULL'S EYE BUCK McGOVERN - Earth Man Fighting-Man, bears Gan-ron's magic silver needle-sword
CORPORAL RADAR O'REILEY - Teenaged Earth Man, former member of a failed Terran Exploration Mission, has a metal nose
THORAZ AND KALERVO - Cactoid Brothers, Fighting-Men
Part I Here.
Dickie Dee and Monster Monagin have both taken leave of the party in Small Dust in orer to pursue their interests.
Monster Monagin meet's with Small Dust's Sheriff, Vholdhaan a portly Blue (Kerulian) Man, at the Governor's Mansion. Vholdhaan offers to sell him an heirloom Earth Man revolver for 2000 gold credits, which is beyond Monagin's finances. He than offers the weapon at a substantial discount if Monster Momagin slays a small gang of Axebeak-mounted Gnolls that have been harassing prismatic salt harvesters and Monster Monagin agrees to consider the offer and leaves to discuss it with his companions.
The still groggy and hallucinating Dickie Dee visits the local Sorcerer, Havtti the Clicking, a Bronze (Dhazzi) Man of advanced age. He seems distracted and possibly senile, and rambles on about his research into the arthropods of the Prismatic Salt Wastes. He does have several spells that he is willing to let Dickie Dee copy into his spellbook for a suitable fee and also offers to let Dickie Dee copy two spells in exchange for the fresh slain cadaver of a Giant Prismatic Scorpion of the Prismatic Salt Wastes. Dickie Dee takes leave to consider the offer and rejoin his party.
Dickie Dee and Monster Monagin meet up in the marketplace and decide to follow the rest of the party into the Prismatic Wastes. In need of additional fighting-men to bolster their ranks they recruit a pair of Cactoid brothers and a teenaged Earth Man, Corporal Radar O'Riley, the survivor of a failed Earth Man expedition who carries a pump-action shotgun and has a metal nose (a replacement for the one that was chewed off by baboons during his initial expedition to Algol's surface). They also stumble into Bull's Eye Buck McGovern, a former companion of their's who fled with a magic sword when the rest of the party were defeated by the intoxicant vendor and wrestler Mozug. There are no hard feelings and he is also invited to join. Mounts are purchased for the newcomers and the two cactus men quickly cut off the spines on the insides of their thighs and calves so as to not injure their bird steeds.
The party sets off, east up the cliff-road to the Iridium Plateau and than north through the Purple Grasslands into the Prismatic Wastes, the nature-savvy Cactoids being able to follow the hours-old trail of the rest of the party into the wastes.
Once in the twisted colorful rock formations of the Prismatic Wastes the train leads towards a towering stone spire. As the group gets closer it's erupts with the malformed membranous-winged forms of seven mutant pterodactyls who flap and caw towards the party. Radar lets off a blast from his shotgun as the cactoids scramble up onto a rock formation with their halberds. The shotgun blast misses and the party begins a desperate melee with the deformed reptiles.
Although the monsters are imposing, soon the companions are drenched with the cold, oily black blood of the reptiles, their scaly bodies lying broken and hacked on the multi-colored ground.
The adventurer's head over to the spire that the pterodactyls were perched upon and the young Earth Man Radar clambers up the rough stone. Among the filth and bones of the nest are the bodies of four recently-slain men which Radar kicks off of the summit.
Monster and Dickie Dee examine the cadavers. One is the pale, deformed body of Dickie Dee's fellow intoxicant enthusiast, Maggot Mort. Dickie searches the body and take the four remaining packets of intoxicants. Next the bodies are searched for an invaluable artifact of the Ancients, "The Eye of Bestowing Life." The gem-like relic is aimed at Maggot Mort's body and small stud is depressed. Invisible life-giving rays bathe the body of the unhealthy mutant which responds by dissolving into foul black corruption, Maggot Mort's defective DNA responding unfavorably to the life-restoring device.
Next the device if brought to bear upon the torn and half-eaten bodies of Rodan the Scrounger and Rygar the Green Man Sorcerer. Their wounds heal in seconds and the two return from the dead, fully functional their health slightly and permanently depleted by their journey's into the afterlife.
The body of the crested Vlesh-man, "Savage" Pink Pankens is ignored after it is looted, no need to waste the eye's charges upon mercenaries known for less than a day!
After a short rest and discussion the party decides to continue Rodan and Rygar's expedition to The Melted City. A short time later the massive ruins of The Melted City are looming over the party, huge chunks of brightly colored glass that have been melted like candle wax by some terrible ancient catastrophe.
Dickie Dee opines that they should seek out any intact subterranean ruins and the remains of what appears to have been a luxurious palace are searched. Concealed by a heap of jagged glass fragments is a staircase leading down into the earth, and after their now-bloody hands dig out a passage the party descends.
The stairs lead to a passageway of ancient corroded alloy which further leads into a chamber, choked with rubble and ancient machinery. The walls of the room are lined with all sorts of grotesque idols of demons and gods in stone and metal and one of the far corners of the chamber has several metal cases stacked in it.
The two Cactoids are dispatched to investigate the metal chests. As they reach the corner three of the statues stir and approach the party…demonic stone forms with talons, fangs, horns and wings. The demon-statues prevent the cactus men from rejoining the party and a terrible fight breaks out.
Although the party fights vigorously and skillfully, their weapons, aside from Bull's Eye's needle-like silver magic bastard sword, are unable to damage the stony hide of the statue-demons and the situation appears dire as the monsters claw and tear at the party while their weapons bounce and clang off of the demon's unharmed bodies…
This Episode's Cast:
BULL'S EYE BUCK McGOVERN - Earth Man Fighting-Man, bears Gan-ron's magic silver needle-sword
CORPORAL RADAR O'REILEY - Teenaged Earth Man, former member of a failed Terran Exploration Mission, has a metal nose
DICKIE DEE - Bone Man Sorcerer and indulgent intoxicant enthusiast
MONSTER MONAGIN - Earth Man Fightin' Sailor
RODAN THE SCROUNGER - Green-skinned Scavenger and Fighting-Man
RYGARR - Green Man Sorcerer
THORAZ AND KALERVO - Cactoid Brothers, Fighting-Men
Part II Here.
Desperately battling gargoyles beneath the Melted City, the party finds their weapons ineffective aside from Bull's Eye's magic silver sword. Monster Monagin is brought down by the stony talons and fangs of one of the rock-demons and lies bleeding and unconscious on the floor.
Ignoring the still-unfired laser pistol holstered on his belt, Rodan the Scrounger pulls out a techno-magical artifact of the Ancients, "The Eye of Retarding Destiny", and aims it at the foes. Two of the three gargoyles begin moving slowly, at one-third their normal speed. This doesn't stop one of the monsters from disemboweling Bull's Eye Buck, an act of retaliation for the injuries inflicted by his magic needle-sword.
As Rodan scrambles through Buck's steaming entrails, scrabbling for the magic sword, another of their foes tears into Kalervo the Cactoid, leaving several sap-spurting deep wounds in his green flesh.
Rygarr the Green Man Sorcerer draws forth one of his trophies, "The Eye of Being an Unimpeachable Shield Against Foes" and turns the tables on their invulnerable foes by rendering Rodan and the two Cactoids impervious to their claws and teeth.
With three members of the party temporarily invulnerable, the companions manage a semi-orderly retreat leaving the bloody dying bodies of Monster Monagin and Bull's Eye Buck to their fates. Using the invulnerable fighting-men to hold the corridor they pull back to the stairs and rush up them into the Melted City where they desperately run through the ruins for several minutes before concealing themselves in a narrow crevice, their wounds filthy and ragged.
The party hears no sign of the gargoyle and presumes that they have escaped. However they realize that during their mad dash through the ruins the Bone Man Sorcerer Dickie Dee was separated from the party and lost. Was he caught and slain by the Gargoyles? Is he lost and wandering The Melted City or The Prismatic Wastes seeking his companions? Some opine that the intoxicant enthusiast deliberately separated his person from the party in order to find a secure location in which to consume the four packets of intoxicants that he took from Maggot Mort's corpse.
The exhausted party decides to rest for the night in their cramped, filthy hiding hole. During the night one of them hears the sound of several men traveling through the darkness outside their hideout but the party remains undiscovered.
The next morning when they drag themselves out of their miserable hole there is no sign of the Gargoyles or Dickie Dee. Returning to where they secured their Ornith bird-steeds they only find bloody feathers, splintered bones and scraps of flesh, the handiwork of the Gargoyles or some other denizen of the Prismatic Waste.
The battered and depleted companions decide to make for the safety of civilization and begin trekking westwards through the Prismatic Wastes towards the mining town of Pit.
CORPORAL RADAR O'REILEY - Teenaged Earth Man, former member of a failed Terran Exploration Mission, has a metal nose
RODAN THE SCROUNGER - Green-skinned Scavenger and Fighting-Man
RYGARR - Green Man Sorcerer
THORAZ AND KALERVO - Cactoid Brothers, Fighting-Men
Part I Here.
The battered party makes their way to Pit without incident, all the while Kalervo the Cactoid is staggering and oozing sap from his gargoyle injuries. The companions with experience in Pit insist on staying at the Titanium Vault and soon the party are drawing baths and sending their clothing off to be laundered in a spacious, luxurious, and secure brass suite.
Even in these lush accommodations it takes several days for the Cactoid to recover from his injuries. While in town Radar O'Reily, the metal-nosed teenage Earth Man explorer, finds a weapons merchant with a small quantity of shotgun shells available; meanwhile a couple of party members head for the offices of the Lhogar, head of the Black Pickaxe Mining Gang, seeking employment where they meet with the gregarious purple-scaled mining gang boss who plies them with spiced brandy and pungent green cigars as he tells tales of his youth as an adventurer in the lands beyond the Red Sands to the east. Lhogar regretfully informs the party that he has hired a capable band of mercenaries to secure the mining tunnels from the depredations of underworld denizens, but that they may be able to find work guarding prospectors seeking minerals in the Bornite Mountains, a very dangerous area.
After Kalervo recovers, the party decides to make for Jakay to meet up with Buzz Brazelhatch, who had arranged a commission for the party to guard a safari expedition. They make their way southeast across the great span to Fortress Adamant, which had an unfriendly air and afforded no accomodation. Fortunately there is a passable inn outside of the fortress and the party feasts on simple fare before retiring.
The next morning, emboldened by stories about the artifact scavengers of the Rust Desert, the party decides that they should take a detour northeast into the Rust Desert and seek out ruins on their way to Jakay. At midday an ancient rusted hatch is found and opened, Kalervo's fighting hand is crushed in the process, and a huge subterranean rusted iron chamber is revealed. Ropes are secured and the party descends. Although a modest cache of ancient silver coins is found, Kalervo's brother, Thoraz is grotesquely digested by an ocher jelly and the four remaining party members refrain from further exploration of the giant underground iron chamber. The climb back up the rope is painful for Kalervo, not only because of the crushed hand and the acid burned legs from combat with the aforementioned sibling-devouring, oversized single-celled organism, but because of the loss of his Cactoid brother for a few mere silver.
When the party arrives in Jakay they head for the Bronze Engine (which is indeed an Inn constructed out of a massive ancient bronze engine) located next to a throbbing atomic water pump. Neither Buzz or his wealthy patron are present but lurking in a shadowy corner is a feather-crested, downy gray Tikalg man bearing a slender basket-hilted sword in a belt scabbard and clad in fancy red leather pants, a luxurious billowing purple synthsilk shirt and a dashing half-cape. Introductions are made and a round of drinks is bought. Friendly conversation begins and eventually drifts to hushed whispers over possible whereabouts of crashed rocketships, or earthman relics. It is then that the Tikalg man is found to be quite knowledgable and introduces himself as Vrroomish, a sophisticated dandy and adventurer.
Inquiries are made about adventuring opportunities and Vrroomish asks for a small retainer which is quickly paid. He soon returns with an intense, grizzled Lhoyg mountain-man who bears several battered weapons: Hobab of the Bornite Mountains.
Hobab, in a raspy quiet-to-LOUD manner (which occasionally frightens the the jittery teenage Radar O'Reily) tells a tale of a flying saucer and silver-suited beings with powerful rock-cutting rays he spied in the Bornite Mountains. Hobab explains he saw the strange flying vessel land and the silver suited beings emerge to examine and take samples from the mountainside with technological items before returning to their saucer and taking off briefly before some unknown catastrophe struck the vessel. In a sudden change of direction the saucer fell from the sky into the thick white fog of the Forbidden Mist Valley of the Bornite Mountains.
Hobab claims that he could guide the party to the crashed saucer in exchange for first pick of the loot. Vrroomish interjects and explains that as the facilitator of this expedition that he is entitled to second pick of the treasure. The party is eager to loot the crashed flying saucer and agree to the expedition.
The Cast:
Buzz Brazelhatch - Australian Womanizer and Fighting-Man
Corporal "Radar: O'Reiley - Earth Man Rocketship Soldier
Dickie Dee - Bone Man Intoxicant Addict and Sorcerer
Kal-Mor the White Jackal - Hyperborean Bigot and Assassin
Kalervo - Cactoid Fighter
Monster Monagin - Earth Man Sailor and Bully
Rodan the Scrounger - Zermish Man Scavenger and Fighting-Man
Xarnagan Vrokk - Haasht Man Fighting-Sage
Hobab - Lhoyg (piebald) Mountain Man and Guide
Vrroomish - Tikalg Man Dandy and Adventurer
Two Nguamodons - Pack Lizards
&
????….
Part II Here, Part III Here, Part IV Here.
The party is lost in the Forbidden Mist Valley, with a couple of the fighters sorely injured by an unfortunate encounter with an aggressive giant fungal polyp. The steeply-rolling hills of lush green moss and the thick, cold, white mist conspire to thoroughly confuse the party regarding their orientation, and they have made several failed attempts to find the crashed flying saucer in the Forbidden Mist Valley that their guide, Hobab, told them of and attempted to lead them to. Their current dire straits being the results of their latest effort to loot the crashed space vessel of its energy weapons.
During the night, as horrid hooting and piping echo through the hills, they are able to determine approximate direction by the ghastly displays of green and violet light playing out in the mist miles above, the radiance of the nocturnal radioactive energy storms in the skies above the Glow Stain. The next morning they decide to abandon their mission and cut across the valley, climb and cross the Bornite Mountains, and make southwards for Jakay.
The downy gray Tikalg Man, splendid in his striking outfit of tight leather pants, billowing purple synthsilk shirt and a martial half-cape, complemented by his own yellow eyes and crest of long, curling white feathers, makes the grandiose gesture of sharing a bottle of fiery brandy, that he was saving for their celebrations upon looting energy weapons from the crashed flying saucer the party was seeking, with the party in order to "burn the damp chill of the Forbidden Mist Valley out of our bones," even offering one of the elegant tiny ceramic cups of liquor to the scapegoat Hobab.
They stumble through the cold, wet, obscuring fog and the steep mossy hills for most of the day before coming to a steep upwards slope. As they slog upwards they hear a loud thrumming sound approaching from above and behind. The startled adventurers freeze as a huge flapping form passes high through the fog above them disappearing from sight ahead before they hear a loud crashing sound.
Cautiously, with weapons drawn, the party scrambles up the mossy slope and espies a crumpled, broken, form of bronze, ceramic and copper with articulated wings, resembling the trashed remains of an Art Noveau dragonfly-helicopter hybrid. A rare flying technological marvel of the Ancients, an ornithopter. Two bodies lie motionless within the twin wire mesh globes located where the eyes would be. Strapped in the flight couch of one is the lifeless form of yellow Gresh Man in grey coveralls, a jagged shard of bronze running through his vitals. In the other is an unconscious Zermish Man clad in heavy ribbed armor and a conical helm, with the weapons of a fighting-man with his baggage.
Aid is applied and the Green Man awakens. Although he remembers his name, Thragg, and his trade, that of the warrior, the blow to his head in the ornithopter crash, which left a deep dent in his tall bronze helm, has left him unable to remember anything regarding the ornithopter or why he was in it. The Zermish fighting-man appears to be a capable and companionable sort, and the companions decide to let him travel with them, dubbing him Thragg "The Skyman."
After hours of tiresome climbing the mist begins to thin and the moss end revealing the iridescent copper, green and purple stone of the Bornite Mountains. The party proceeds upwards and finds a decent campsite with an excellent view of the Forbidden Mist Valley below and the mountains beyond.
Our Entertainment:
Buzz Brazelhatch - Australian Womanizer and Fighting-Man
Corporal "Radar" O'Reiley - Earth Man Rocketship Soldier
Dickie Dee - Bone Man Intoxicant Addict and Sorcerer
Kal-Mor the White Jackal - Hyperborean Bigot and Assassin
Kalervo - Cactoid Fighter
Monster Monagin - Earth Man Sailor and Bully
Rodan the Scrounger - Zermish Man Scavenger and Fighting-Man
Thragg the Skyman - Zermish Man Ornithopter Passenger and Fighting-Man
Xarnagan Vrokk - Haasht Man Fighting-Sage
Hobab - Lhoyg (piebald) Mountain Man and Guide
Vrroomish - Tikalg Man Dandy and Adventurer
Two Nguamodons - Pack Lizards
Part I Here, Part III Here, Part IV Here.
The party rests in their mountainside campsite, taking full advantage of the opportunity to dry the cold moldy damp of the Forbidden Mist Valley out of the clothing and gear and for some of the fighting-men to recover from their injuries.
The party's guide, Hobab, is visibly troubled and makes several pathetic attempts to ingratiate himself with the party, but his overtures are mostly met with cold, if not subtly hostile, rebuffs. Buzz Brazelhatch runs out of rations and the flamboyant dandy Vrroomish gives him spicy sugared wafers of seeds and grubs from his own supplies before sharing the last of his liquor with the party.
As the party enjoys the spiced brandy and a companionable air settles over the camp, Hobab stands up and makes a stammering speech that claims that with the orientation available at their campsite he could plot a course that would lead the party to the crashed alien sky-vessel, with several apologies for the inconvenience accrued in the previous fruitless forays into The Forbidden Mist Valley.
Perhaps it is the warm glow of the liquor in the companions veins, or perhaps the visions of cutting down foes with the molecule-destroying beams of alien energy weapons, that lends the party to find the proposal worthwhile and they decide to make another foray down into the valley for the flying saucer tomorrow.
As the party settles in for the night a clipping sound is heard. Sitting on a rock is the Cactoid Kalervo, with a suit of scavenged splint mail from the party's baggage lying on the ground, carefully cutting off his spines in order to wear the fighting-harness.
The next morning the band marches down into the cold, wet, disorientating Forbidden Mist Valley. At approximately midday the black basalt fragments of a crumbled ruin are spotted atop a hill, the party investigates and finds the remains of an inconceivably ancient fortress, with a large tunnel of smooth, fused stone descending downwards in the direction the party was heading. The companions decide to investigate and agitate two glow-fluid lanterns before traveling onwards and downwards.
Soon the tunnel levels, and several hours later it ascends in a steep slope. The rugose texture of the tunnel floor somewhat ameliorates the steep angle of the passage. After traveling for what seems like forever in the tunnel sunlight is spotted ahead. The party cautiously proceeds and they find the tunnel exiting in the midst of a massive complex of black basalt ruins; the iridescent copper, green and purple peaks of the Bornite Mountains rising beyond the cyclopean crumbling walls.
As their eyes adjust to the sunlight and they take in the ruins, a bestial howling is heard before a gigantic deformed, hoofed, and horned humanoid with a single massive eye visibly oscillating with preternatural energy, emerges from the ruins.
As several party members break for the ruins to the left and others lurk behind in the tunnel with the pack reptiles the giant thing casts it's malevolent gaze on Hobab, who's nose immediately begins bleeding as he howls in pain. The black-and-white mountain guide attempts to retreat into the tunnel, but Buzz Brazelhatch is behind and shoves Hobab forward.
Meanwhile Xarnagan the Fighting-Sage mounts one of the Nguamodons and attempts to ride it forward into battle. The dim-witted herbivorous reptile panics instead and runs back down the tunnel with the scaled Hassht Man clinging to it's back.
The monster continues to gaze at Hobab who begins to bleed from his ears are well while Buzz grabs Hobab's shoulders and holds him in the beast's gaze.
From the ruins to the left a crossbow twangs but the bolt bounces off the thick, warty hide of the beast. Several party members scurry through and climb the ruins, weapons in their grips. From a niche in a tumbled pile of stone blocks Dickie Dee attempts an incantation upon their giant foe but it is ineffective.
Hobab howls in agony as his eyes begin bleeding before he tears himself out of the Australian's grip and runs back down into the tunnel. A volley of missile fire, including laser beams from the party members lurking in the ruins, rains upon the monster which is injured as a pair of stout fighters rush forth and engage it. Vrroomish lurks beside Dickie Dee, aiming a silvery needle-barreled pistol as he attempts to line up a good shot. The creature gazes upon one of the combatants who feels terrible psychic forces assaulting his brain, but manages to resist.
Meanwhile Xaranagan manages to calm the pack lizard and cajoles it into turning around and advancing.
Several blue and violet coruscating beams lance out of Rodan the Scrounger's laser pistol and into the flesh of the malformed titan as others rain attacks upon it. It attempts to use evil eye upon another but once again the psychic attack is resisted before it falls from it's injuries.
After binding their wounds the party examines the creature and an decision is made to gut it in search of treasure. In it's bowels are found corroded lumps consisting of several thousand copper and silver coins and a handful of crystals of moderate value.
As the triple suns of Algol set the part decides to make camp in the cyclopean black ruins and explore in the morrow. Although nothing disturbs the party's rest during the night in the morning screams are heard emanating from the thrashing form of Buzz Brazelhach, who appears to be in the throes of a terrible nightmare. Vrroomish dashes forward and takes Buzz's head into his lap as he rubs Buzz's brow with a brandy-moistened handkerchief while making soothing noises.
Buzz gasps and awakens, immediately writhing out of Vrroomish's ministrations and lurching to his feet to tell of terrible nocturnal visions: Of a sprawling, massive fortress of black basalt, the ruins the party are currently exploring, in past splendor of primeval times. He told how he saw it inhabited by hordes of mottled serpent men sorcerers who performed mass tortures, rituals, experiments and sacrifices upon thousands of humans, naked and chained. All this culminating in a terrible rite performed by an army of reptilian warlocks upon a colossal pile of sacrificial victims all in order to bring forth a thing too horrible to remember, and of a scale to dwarf the fortress…
Once Buzz concludes his tale, the Hassht Man Sage, Xarnagan Vrokk, calmly confirms that the ruins that the party are currently located within are indeed most likely that of the Elder Race of Serpent Men who bred proto-humans in order to use them as components in their sorcery.
Xarnagan Vrokk, the purple-scaled Haasht Man Fighting-Sage has just finished explaining Buzz Brazelhatch's nightmare regarding Serpent Men, mass human sacrifice and the gigantic primeval cyclopean structure, the ruins of which the party made camp within the previous eve.
Kal-Mor the White Jackal, Hyperborean Assassin and Algol Man Supremist, finds Xarnagan's explanation of the origin of humanity as created spell components of the Elder Race of Serpent Men story both offensive and preposterous and loudly exclaims so before stalking off in a huff to again climb the ruined walls and view their surroundings.
Unrolling a sheet map made of thin, tough, flexible metal he alternates between examining it and scanning the panorama of iridescent mountains and fog-choked valleys. With the aid of the map in his hands and shouted communications with the rest of the party, it is determined that they are near the peak of a ridge of the Bornite Mountains that lies between two sections of the Forbidden Mist Valley. To the northwest the western arm of the Forbidden Mist Valley terminates at the location of the Vaults of Eternity, a complex of crypts reputed to contain miles of tunnels, gates to other worlds, and a Primordial-One Lich and several other undead and inhuman sorcerers who wage war upon each other in the depths.
To the southeast lies the main body of the Forbidden Mist Valley. If they were to cross it, climb the Bornite Mountains, and then head southwards they could make it to the civilized safety and comforts of Jakay. Hearing this, Buzz Brazelhatch is agitated due to an overabundance of masculine humours and proposes that they make for Jakay posthaste. Others want to explore the vast black basalt ruins and soon the party is cautiously wandering through canyons of tumbled, broken hexagonal blocks and pillars interspersed with better preserved sections less mauled by the talons of the eons.
At one such area Xarnagan Vrokk notices something familiar about a towering basalt wall's architechture. Examination reveals a smoothly pivoting secret door, of huge proportions, and a large tunnel of smooth fused stone spiraling down at a modest grade.
The green phosphorecent glow of chemical illuminants reflect off the slick walls of the large tunnel as the party cautiously explores. Although the tunnel is featureless, after several turns a faint pulsating pink glow is espied further down the passageway.
Kal-Mor offers to scout and stealthily descends. The throbbing pink illumination increases and the Hyperborean Assasin soon finds it nauseating, his vision blurring and distorting at a distance.
The tunnel soon opens up into a massive subterranean chamber. Although the disgusting throbbing pink light makes the dimensions of the vast cavity ambiguous, it seems to be circular, with a concave ceiling, and the light's orgin is located at the floor level of the far end of the chamber.
Kal-Mor is unable to discern what the light source is, as the floor of the chamber is littered with various structures, ranging from large to titanic in scale, mostly composed of smooth coppery tubing weaved in vaguely organic branches. Sprouting out of the tops and sides of diverse tanks of the same metal are irregularly shaped organs or fruits, interspersed with huge crystal rods or prisms, blocks and monoliths encrusted with glyphs, and other mechanisms of a sinister and sorcerous alien bent.
At the nearest such structure Kal-Mor spies a malformed lumpy and blubbery manlike form, currently looking in the opposite direction. The Hyperborean smoothly glides forward and sinks his swordknife into the approximate location of the being's kidney. He finds the lumpy, rubbery skin resistant to being pierced but manages to drive the blade deep.
With an arm-jerking wrench he withdraws the blade only to see the wound heal before his eyes as the thing turns around revealing a deformed head like an unwholesome parody of a human baby, the features tiny and clustered around the center of the vast idiot face. It brings up a rude club of splintered metal and swings it at Kal-Mor, but the strike is clumsy, easily dodged and the crude bludgeon slips out of the being's hand before it loses balance, totters and falls on the ground.
Kal-Mor takes advantage of the opportunity as the manlike lump struggles to it's trunk-like legs and dashes out the chamber and up the sloping spiral tunnel to rejoin the party.
After the breathless asassin heaves out a description of the creature. Xarnagan exclaims that it must be a Vat-Man, a synthetic being created by necromancers in subterranean laboratories from flesh-vats. Kal-Mor considers the implied implications within the context of the Haasht Man Sage's explanation of Buzz's nightmare and is unsettled.
The party recovers from Xarnagan Vrokk's disgusting exposition regarding the Vat-Man lurking in the chamber below and resolve to destroy it. With blades and sidearms drawn the party rushes down the spiraling sloped corridor and attacks the lumbering, idiotic, visaged synthetic abomination which has recovered it's jagged metal club.
Halberds and swords slash at it's flesh while Vrroomish repeatedly fires bursts of tiny needles (which produces a soft whirring sound) that continue to miss the Vat-Man; one volley glancing off the Cactoid Kalervo's new splint mail harness. However the thing's wounds continue to close up entirely.
With quick shouts the party resolves to make one more round of attacks before fleeing, however the being dissolves into a mass of reeking overripe pink jelly, watery sticky plasma, and rubbery bones after the next volley of strikes.
Wounds are tended and the companions cautiously explore the chamber, aiming for the source of the nauseating pulsating pink glow that permeates the subterranean vault. Approximately halfway through the mass of bizarre alien machinery an ancient, slumped metal shelf filled with mouldering tomes is spotted.
Xarnagan rushes forth only to have the grimoires fall apart into dust at his touch. Among the piles of dust four objects are found, all bearing spidery glyphs: a green stone tablet, a silvery disk, a tiny black monolith, and an amber globe with sigils floating in it's depths. The sage and Dickie Dee the Bone Man Sorcerer examine the artifacts and determine that a simple glyph deciphering incantation would determine their properties. The two resolve to prepare and use the appropriate magicks at the first safe opportunity.
The party proceeds to the far end of the chamber and discovers the source of the unsettling lurid illumination: a pool of seething glowing pink flesh, writhing with the suggestions of monstrous malformed foetal forms. Several conduits and pipes of coppery metal run along the wall and the floor, many going to the varied sorcerous mechanisms in the vault.
The party is mostly unenthused by this discovery and many are visibly ill at the sight. They leave the chamber, travel up the spiraling tunnel, leave the black basalt Serpent Man ruins, and head off down the iridescent purple, green and coppery mountainside southeast towards the Forbidden Mist Valley.
Several hours of hard trudgery later a horrid cawing is heard and several of the companions are slashed by the sudden appearance of vicious hooked beaks and talons attached to gray and red feathered hawk-like avians with yellow scaled bellies and heads. There are less of the hawk-things than party members and the raptorians seem relentless in their attacks upon their initial targets.
Buzz Brazelhatch is spared the avian harassment and takes in the situation. He begins guffawing with cruel amusement at the sight of the battered black-and-white bald head of the mountain guide Hobab streaked with blood from the talons in his scalp. As the scaled hawkoid shrieks and flaps it's wings it continues to yank at Hobab's scalp with it's embedded claws while striking at his head with it's knife-like beak. Buzz Brazelhatch swings his sword at it halfheartedly, hoping to strike Hobab instead, but is repeatedly dissapointed.
Soon the flying predators are slain, although many of the adventurers bear fresh bloody gashes, and the party staggers battered and exhausted down the steep cold slope of the Bornite Mountains.
What adventure or misfortune awaits them next?
Buzz Brazelhatch - Australian Womanizer and Fighting-Man
Corporal "Radar" O'Reiley - Earth Man Rocketship Soldier
Dickie Dee - Bone Man Intoxicant Addict and Sorcerer
Kal-Mor the White Jackal - Hyperborean Bigot and Assassin
Kalervo - Cactoid Fighter
Monster Monagin - Earth Man Sailor and Bully
Rodan the Scrounger - Zermish Man Scavenger and Fighting-Man
Thragg the Skyman - Zermish Man Ornithopter Passenger and Fighting-Man
Xarnagan Vrokk - Haasht Man Fighting-Sage
Hobab - Lhoyg (piebald) Mountain Man and Guide
Vrroomish - Tikalg Man Dandy and Adventurer
Two Nguamodons - Pack Lizards
Part II Here.
It is night in a range of sleek iridescent mountains with a river of dense white mist running through them. To the west the skies are afire with throbbing ribbons of nauseating green and violet light and in the sky are two moons, one a large cratered silvery disc and the other a smaller greyish-golden hazy mass.
There is a rude camp one one of the less severe slopes of one mountain's flank, a short distance above the massive river of cold white fog. Two stand watch over the handful of men and the two snorting, twitching pack lizards, one a green-skinned wastelander with a ruthless, practical air and the other a teenage earthling with wire-rimmed glasses and a silver prosthetic nose who appears apprehensive and jittery. Rodan the Scrounger and Corporal 'Radar" O'Reily, the latter formerly of the Scout Rocket Alpha.
First the blazing Fire Demon lights ups the eastern mountains and the sleeping men stir, aside for two, Kal-Mor the White Jackal and the Australian Buzz Brazelhatch, the latter of which has a pillow clenched over his head.
While the others rouse the nguamodons, brew tea, eat a meager meal of trail fare, examine their weaponry and harness, the two continue to slumber until all three suns are above the peaks of the eastern mountains.
Hobab the piebald, hairless grizzled mountain guide's head is swathed in an a turban of rude, bloody bandages which provokes snickering from a certain Australian when he awakens.
There is a brief heated debate, as one or two madmen propose exploring the Vaults of Eternity while in it's vicinity, but the saner members of the party bring up the pitiable state of the party's supply of provender as well as the barren nature of the terrain and the unappetizing nature of it's inhabitants. At that point Kalervo the Cactoid and Rodan the Scrounger regret leaving behind the bodies of the feathered and scaled hawkoids that attacked the party yesterday instead of harvesting their meat.
The party determines to continue their journey for Jakay and harass Hobab regarding maintaining a due southeast heading across the Forbidden Mist Valley below as they set forth. It takes two days to descend into the valley and ascend the mountains across it's far shore, the party takes their heading from the suns and stars and determine that they are located directly north of their destination, Jakay, and there is much fellowship and good cheer.
The next morning Vrroomish the downy, gray Tikalg dandy brews some strong, spicy tea and fortifies it with dollops of brandy in celebration of their successful crossing. Glad to be on their way out of the horrid mountains the party sets forth southwards up and down and across the winding ridges and ledges and canyons and passes and valleys of the mountains and as they come around a curve on a ledge at the end of their days journey they see the Forbidden Mist Valley lying below and before them.
The is much cursing and abuse hurled at Hobab as the angry companions make camp on a wide ledge. Hobab angrily pleads ignorance of the trails of this region of the mountains and argues that someone else should than lead the way tomorrow. Buzz happily takes the offer and the next day the party backtracks a short distance before heading southwards up and down narrow trails through steep gullies and over piles of boulders and as Buzz crests a ridge at the end of the days journey, the rest of the party trailing behind, he sees the Forbidden Mist Valley lying before and below him.
As his foot comes down on the crest, it dislodges a small coppery-purple rock which begins bounding down the slope below him, which is composed of multi-hued pastel toned pale, soft stone like chalk. The shiny pebble continues to bound and skip down onto a ledge in the steeply sloping chalk cliffside. In the setting triple sunslight Buzz believes he sees several tunnels or caves in the cliffside ledge and calls up Xarnagan Vrokk, the fighting-sage, whom, with his keen eye for geographic features, determines that they look unnatural.
The party decides to forgo berating Buzz in lieu of descending to the tunnels and making a brief inspection regarding their suitability as a cozy, secure campsite. When they are a short distance from the ledge Kal-Mor glances up at the ridge they descended from, a habitual assassin's trait, and sees two vague pink, blobby forms, indistinct due to their distance and the poor light of the dying rays of the setting suns, but hushed cries of "Vat-Men!" pass through the party as they crouch under the sparse cover of the pastel chalk slope and rush for the trail descending down to the ledge below.
The two nguamodons are secured after they descend to the ledge and the party makes a secure formation before heading forward to examine the tunnels carved into the pale pink, sea-foam green, baby blue, lilac, and other tones of the chalk cliffside. Xarnagan Vrokk notices fluffy white matter on ground, white feathers dusted with the pastel dust of the cliff, before the five or six tunnels disgorge a small horde of a dozen or so bipedal, albino, bird-men with horrid talons for hands and colored in clashing war-paint of pastel colored chalk.
Hobab is quickly torn asunder by the bird-man claws as they shriek and caw cries that sound like chantings of "Doom!" and assail all flanks of the party. Weapons lash forth and adventurers are repeatedly wounded by cruel talons as a fierce battle rages. Dickie Dee the transparent-fleshed Bone Man Sorcerer crouches in the center of the mass of battling defenders as he chants an incantation before one flank of the avianoid attackers falls asleep. The party makes short work of the remaining bird-things while Vrroomish and Buzz slaughter their unconscious brethren, and soon they are bandaging wounds and discussing further plans.
They return to their pack lizards in order to refresh themselves and look up the trail to see two forgotten blobby pink forms, most definitely brothers of the Vat-Man beneath the Serpent Man ruins, a short distance away.
The two nguamosdons are abandoned as the party scrambles down the ledge in a confused rush. The pack lizards briefly distract the two blubbery, infant-like vat-men, one of which bears a corroded ancient sword, the other a fancy glimmering bronze axe. However the reptiles manage to rush away bearing slight injuries and the vat-men continue to advance.
Kal-Mor the White Jackal ducks into one of the tunnels, presses against the wall and begins to quietly slink into it's depths. Others grab the halter's of the nguamodons and make for a descending trail at the far end of the ledge. The remainder attempt to form a battle line, but Monster Monagin is separated and engaged by one as the chaos of melee erupts, many of the combatants staggering and faint from the bloody wounds inflicted by the bird-men.
Kalervo the Cactoid swings Gan-ron's silver needle sword as he takes the shimmering bronze battle axe to his face and falls, spasming and drumming his stumpy heels as sap oozes out of his shattered wooden cranium.
The party rains steel, missiles and laserfire upon the two vat-men, but their wounds continue to close up as they press their idiotic, bumbling assault and the one with the sword breaks off the tip off it in Monster Monagin's shoulder as he retreats only to be gutted by the axebearer, which has just staved in the face of the teenaged Radar O' Reiley.
Horrid cawings of "Doom! Doom!" erupt from the tunnels along with the high pitched shrieking of Kal-Mor, who sounds like he is being torn apart. This infernal cacophony only lasts briefly, but serves as suitable accompaniment to the sight of Buzz Brazelhatch, his hair aflame from a stray laser blast, fumbling with blood-slicked hands for a magic sword lying amidst the carnage, being soundly decapitated by the gleaming axe of a vat-man.
Vrroomish, who had been staying back and firing swarms of needler darts at the synthetic monstrosities, draws his slender, basket-hilted sword and strikes a defensive posture as he shouts for the remainder of the party to flee.
As the survivors rush down the chalk trail into the cold white fog of the Forbidden Mist Valley, some look back and see Vrroomish gallantly battle before he is run through. The Tikalg Man writhes on the blade before the other vat-man smashes his head into a wet mess with one mighty blow before the damp, moldy white fog begins to obscure the survivors' vision.
The party, exhausted and, for the most part, sorely wounded, makes camp after fleeing for a prudent period. As they make preparations for the night the silence of the thick, cold mist is broken by echoing cries from above, the sounds of idiotic, infantile bellowing and cries of "Doom! Doom!" The bellowing quickly become agonized moans before both sounds cease.
Dickie Dee - Bone Man Intoxicant Addict and Sorcerer
Rodan the Scrounger - Zermish Man Scavenger and Fighting-Man
Thragg the Skyman - Zermish Man Ornithopter Passenger and Fighting-Man
Xarnagan Vrokk - Haasht Man Fighting-Sage
Two Nguamodons - Pack Lizards
Part I Here.
The quartet of miserable survivors huddle with the grunting, spooked nguamodons in a makeshift camp, engulfed by the moldy, white, thick, cold fog of the Forbidden Mist Valley. They somberly confer over sparse rations before cautiously retracing their steps up out of the mist to the multi-colored pastel chalk cliff where so many of their companions died the previous day.
The ledge with the tunnels bears the signs of battle, pools of dried blood, scattered weaponry, but no bodies aside from the cactus carcass of Kalervo the cactoid. Thragg the Skyman shows previously unseen initiative and seizes the magic two-handed sword of the Shunned Ones (possessing three valience shells!) and Vrroomish's sleek silvery needler pistol while the others examine Kalervo's body.
Rodan the Scrounger uses his rare treasure, the Eye of Restoring Life, and Kalvervo suddenly comes to, restored to life with all his injuries fully healed, and staggers to his stumpy feet, forever drained a measure of his vitality from his experience in the realms of Thantos. The party gathers the remaining weapons, Rodan disappointed by the lack of a certain gleaming bronze battle axe, and they scurry a short distance up the trail leading higher into the mountains.
They have a desperate council of war. Although Dickie Dee the Bone Man Sorcerer has prepared multiple somnolent incantations, Thragg and Rodan are sorely wounded by the misadventures of the previous day. Although they presume that the remaining bird-things lurking in the tunnels took the remains of their deceased companions into their lair, and that if they could find even scraps of the slaughtered adventurers they could use the Eye of Restoring Life to bring them back to life, fully healed, they have no idea how many bird-thing lurk within the tunnels. Thrag repeatedly proposes that the tunnels lead to a city of the bird-things and votes that they immediately leave.
The party, for the most part regretfully, heads up the trail into the Bornite Mountains, and make for Jakay, staggering with wounds and low on food.
In the afternoon of the fifth day afterward they stagger out of the sweltering red oxide dust of the Rust Desert into Jakay, Rodan and Thragg clad in filthy, festering bandages, the entire party gaunt, exhausted and thirsty, the two pack lizards dragging their tails and mournfully grunting.
The Sorcerer and the Sage confer with the local Sorcerer, purchase some stimulants (Golden Ocher Lotus Nectar Tea) and spell enhancers (rounded, dull lead-gray pills of Sorcerers Silver), and rejoin their remaining companions at the Bronze Engine, where Rodan is drowning his guilt in gin while a multicolored band of Algol Man bohemians play cold, funky alien krautrock-analgoue.
